Home Club

This weekend I get to perform at my home club in Wausau WI. I’ve performed many times at the Koo Coo’s Nest but has always been in a hosting capacity or with my improv group. But this weekend is different as I get to feature at my home club.

When I first started doing comedy in Wausau it was done in a small bar room inside of a Best Western. It wasn’t the greatest room but it was a place that had comedy. I started doing guest sets there and quickly started hosting shows regularly.

It was what I looked forward to the most every week. Trying to perfect the jokes I had performed and writing new ones to add to my set. Knowing that the room was booked by an agency I always wondered if I should try and submit to them so that I could potentially get more work. But I kept seeing comedians that were really, really good; so that made me want to get really, really good before I submitted.

Soon the comedy room in Wausau switched and it went to new owners and they moved it to a new hotel in Wausau. The guys that ran it I knew really well and I kept doing guest sets and kept hosting shows on a regular basis. It was at this time I started to get more work around the state and started doing more hosting gigs at Skyline Comedy down the road.

After two years the hotel didn’t want comedy anymore so my friends lost their room and comedy moved to another hotel and under a new owner. So once again I had to earn the trust of another group of people so that I could have a place to perform.

This room didn’t do as well. I remember being furious at the city of Wausau because they had a unique thing to do every Friday night but no one wanted to see it.

Luckily, my friends had an opportunity to open a free standing comedy club. They no longer would be at the whim of a hotel. Things started slowly but things started to build and get better and better. I hosted open mics, I started an improv group there and now I get to perform there as a feature act through the agency that I was at one point too afraid to submit to.

The people who have made the club what it is have put in a lot of time and effort to make it the best place in Wausau for entertainment. They took a bar that was very notorious for being shady and turned it to something great. It is truly the hidden gem of Wausau and I can’t wait for this weekend.

Tee It Forward

Yesterday I went out for my first round of golf. I kind of figured it was going to be terrible because it’s the first round of the year and I hadn’t swung a golf club since last September.

I went golfing with my girlfriend so I thought it would be a better idea to just hit from the same tees as her. But when I started I hit from the middle tees like I usually do. The first three holes went fine, but then on the fourth hole I shanked two drives into the woods that when I hit them didn’t even see where they went.

I decided from that point on I’d just hit from the short tees with my girlfriend. So essentially restarting the 4th hole for the rest of the round I played from the front tees and had the best 6 holes ever.

So from now on I will be taking the advice of the USGA and “Tee it Forward.” And really we all should be doing this. I was hitting greens, or at least around the greens, in two shots. That’s what you are supposed to do. If I was hitting from the middle tees I’d be making the green in 3 shots.

The USGA encourages playing a tee up to help in your pace of play and so that you can play more lofted shots on to the green. But really they should be saying. “Yo! You won’t have to hit the ball as far and you will probably do way better.”

I mean I’m not going to be a part of the PGA or probably join a golf league or anything, so why does it even matter what tees I’m hitting from. The goal is to hit the lowest score possible, so who cares what tee it is from.

What really needs to happen is we need to stop assigning genders to the tees. They are just the front tees and the middle tees and the back tees. If they were called that it wouldn’t be seen as weird. Sure if I’m in a scramble or whatever I might hit from the middle tees. But if I’m just out there by myself or with my girlfriend I’m going for the low score and hitting from the short tees.

Maybe when I learn to play a little bit better and I can figure out how to hit drives that don’t slice horribly into the woods or hit my irons that go 50 yards shorter than they are supposed I’ll hit from the middle tees. But for now, let’s hit from the reds. Who cares.