This artwork was done by Ambrose Quintanilla, at gopheritcomics.com

I took this picture myself, somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Here’s a link to my official page on the Laugh Out Loud Comedy Festival’s website, where you can see clips from the Festival, including a few of my clips that aired on Showtime.

The picture above is from a commercial for a Doritos Super Bowl Contest that some friends, extended family-in-law, fellow comedians and I did together. We did not win. But anyway, here’s the link: http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery?video=7369.

Miscellaneous:

• If you look at my calendar on the right-hand side, you’ll notice I’m starting to add gigs for 2011. Club owners and bookers, please use the “Tell Me Things” link to contact me.
• I wasn’t lying about Showtime. We taped a show way back in June or July, and it will still be airing sometime soon.
• I’ve been getting a ridiculous amount of “comment spam,” so if you try to comment on a post, and it doesn’t show up, email me directly using the “Tell Me Things” link and let me know. Thanks.

Some people know this already, but here’s the official announcement: I just got back from L.A., where I performed in the LOL Comedy Festival, in the show “Louie Anderson Presents,” which will air on Showtime later this year. (I also attended Stand-Up Mastery, which was an amazing experience itself, and deserves its own post!)

I want to say (as publicly as I can) THANK YOU to Louie Anderson, and THANK YOU to the people at Showtime.

The entire experience might have seemed completely surreal, except that I made a conscious effort to enjoy it, moment by moment, which is something I’m just now learning to do.

On Monday, I decided that I needed to celebrate, so I went to the San Diego Zoo. I was mostly excited to see the polar bears. I texted my wife, who replied that we have polar bears at Como Zoo here in Minneapolis. And it’s a good thing we do, because the polar bears at the San Diego Zoo seemed pretty lazy. I could see only one of them, and he slept for about an hour, then he walked into his little apartment and they shut the door.

The good news is that while I was watching the Grizzly Bears, an official Zoo Lady showed up and started throwing food at them. She just threw a few peanuts, and they went crazy. I got some pictures, and I’m going to try to post them below.

I should be more clear. The goal of the contest is to write new stuff, and then perform it on a stage.

For Week #3:

1. Write anything new, at least 1 minute in length.
2. And since it’s my website, it has to be mostly clean.
3. The goal is to see who can do new stuff, and how many weeks in a row, so everybody who does new stuff moves on to next week.
4. The deadline is next Saturday, July 24.

Oh, and here’s my entry for last week.

First person to post a comment below gets to choose the topic. Write, perform and record your original material on that topic, and post it on Youtube.

The deadline is Monday, July 12, so people can have time to prepare a set for a weekend open mike.

Super bonus points if you do comedy like this guy does drums:

The Challenge for week two will be posted later today.

Here are the videos from week one. Vote for a winner in the comments below. I’m officially voting for mine because I give myself extra points for performing my jokes onstage, although I have to give credit to Josh Lee for taking it to the streets, and to Dave-Johnson-I-mean-Rick-Logan for playing.