Last Saturday, I attended a holiday party at a friend’s home in Granada Hills. Prior to the party, the host asked me to find a comedian that would be willing to perform for the guests. For a comedy nerd/evangelist like me, you are giddy at the chance to bring comedy and laughter into people’s homes. The very funny and extremely professional Paul Ogata agreed to do the gig.

Paul walked into a situation that would intimidate any comedian – large, immaculate home, unconventional setting, uncertainty of the crowd. He even followed a choir. But Paul handled his business like a pro and absolutely killed it. It was truly great ending to a fun night with friends.

But what made the evening even more special was this email that I received from the host the next day:

Brendon,

I want to thank you and Paul for adding such a positive energy to Saturday night’s festivities. In spite of the glitch with the equipment (which won’t happen again) Paul’s performance was incredible. Laughter is such a gift and Paul is truly blessed to share that with those he comes in contact with. I heard a short story which summarizes how magically someone was touched that night and I’m compelled to share it with you. In the audience was a family who lost their beloved father recently and who had not ventured out much. The wife has been grieving the loss of her husband and the children their father. I heard and saw that Saturday night was the first time in a long time that the children laughed. Thanks to Paul and you for making it possible. Please pass this on to Paul.

All the very best to you and your family during these holidays and into the New Year.

Warm regards,

Vince

I’m not sharing this email so Paul or I can receive praise, but to highlight the power that laughter has. For one night, comedy helped this family with their tragedy.

We do not hear enough of these personal, day-to-day stories about how comedy and laughter affect us in a positive way. Depression, sadness, and behavioral problems are on-going issues for many people that stem from job loss, illness, and death. Often times people turn to prescription medication, drugs, and alcohol to deal with these issues. If you know someone who is going through some rough times, take them out to laugh for an evening at a comedy show. It will make all the difference in the world. Their mind will rest, the tension in their bodies will ease, and their spirits will be lifted.

2010 is just around the corner. A new decade most of us can’t wait to see. If you’re family is anything like my family, the last few years have been rough. But we’re still kicking. I’m positive the only thing that has gotten us through it is Love and Laughter. Because at the end of the day, that’s all we have. Since I’m not a love doctor, I’ll tell you about laughter. Let’s make 2010 the Year of Laughter. Bring it into your life and give it as a gift to others.

Postings have been a little slow around here lately. I’ve been working on a separate small business I have started to help comedians with their web presence, I have ramped up my own job search again, and I’m a little tired of doing show reviews to be honest. Over the past year, I have tried to build out the content on this site so it wasn’t so centered on just reviewing comedy shows. Of course comedians love to read the reviews, but do regular people? I’m not sure.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing for the Pittsburgh Steelers Blog Blitz on NFL.com. The editors have an editorial calendar that we follow, so that there is specific content that can be chosen and written about by the bloggers. I think I’m going to pull a page from over there and apply it to LCLA.

Here’s what I have in mind:

Monday – Comedian Chat
Obviously, we’ve done the podcasts and they have been great. But I want these chats to be about specific topics. I’m of the opinion that comedians are smart, interesting people. So why not pick a topic and talk about it. Gives them an opportunity to be funny and express their opinion. Who knows what the topic will be? More often than not, it’ll probably be about sports. But, hey, we can talk health care or business if you want. I’m reasonably intelligent.

Tuesday – Comedian Spotlight
The goal of this site always has been and always will be to help comedic performers who I believe are good and to encourage people to see live comedy. So, on Tuesdays, I’ll “spotlight” a comedian that I think is good and that I think you should go see. What does “spotlight” mean. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a written interview or a video interview or a just a piece I write about the comedian. The point is, you can count on learning about a comedic performer who you can go see perform in L.A.

Wednesday – Industry Spotlight
I’ve always wanted to talk to the folks who make the comedy business go ’round. So…that’s what I’m going to do. Not sure the form yet, but I’ll do my best to make it informative.

Thursday – Show Review
Usually I go to at least one live comedy show a week. I’ll give you my thoughts on that show on Thursday.

Friday – Weekend Pick
Usually there is a good live comedy show for you to see over the weekend. I’ll make sure you know about it here.

Haven’t made a final determination on when I will fully implement this new editorial plan, but it should be soon. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions.

When I created LiveComedyLA.com 2 years ago, the goal was always to create a site where could find the best live comedy shows in the city quickly and easily. I only wanted to provide the best shows, so no one is wasting time or money. Not just generic listings. But an informed filter for whats good. It didn’t really exist. It’s taken a bit of time to get there but I think the LCLA Comedy Calendar is a resource people can use to find the best shows, the best comedic performers, and the best deals in town to just GO LAUGH.

Now the time has come for live comedy in L.A. to go viral.

I’m very excited to launch the LCLA Comedy Calendar Widget!

You can now get all the info on the best live comedy shows in L.A. on the websites and social networks you are already visiting.

Do you have your own blog or website? Boom…simply copy and paste the embed code from our widget.
Do you use Facebook (of course you do)? You can add our widget as an application on your profile.
Do you use iGoogle? Add our widget as a Google Gadget so you can see it when you do a search.
Are you a Mac user? Awesome…add our widget to your dashboard.

Basically, you can add or share the widget all over the internet. Just click the “Get & Share” button and you will get a menu with options-o-plenty.

If you are a comedian, a show producer, a venue, or you just love live comedy as mush as I do, its time to start spreading the word! Tell people to add the widget, add it to your social networks and websites, tweet about it, post about it…do whatever you need to do to help live comedy go viral. Don’t F around. Just do it.

If you are a website or Twitterer who covers the happenings of Los Angeles but aren’t really covering live comedy (which is basically all of them), we have solutions for you. Check out our LCLA Comedy Calendar syndication options. We’ll do all the work. You get all the content for none of the cost! Pretty sure that’s a sweet deal.

Hope you enjoy getting out to see more live comedy.

Live Nation recently introduced its “Club Passport”. For $49.99, you can go see unlimited club shows for the rest of the year in a participating Live Nation venue in your city. In Los Angeles, that means any of the House of Blues venues, the Wiltern, the Palladium, and Avalon. If you’re a music fan, this seems like a great deal.

For years, I’ve felt that this could be done with comedy. Why not lower the barriers for people to go see more live comedy and get them into the venues with an annual pass? For $50 (or whatever the amount may be), people could go see any show at a particular club or set of clubs (i.e. Improv Hollywood, Irvine, Brea, Ontario) they wanted.

In reality, how many of you go to see more than 1 or 2 live comedy shows a year? Probably a small percentage. More things need to be done to get people into the clubs more often and spreading the word. An annual pass is a great option. Amusement parks have been doing this for a long time. “Buy a day, come back for the rest of the year”-type of deals. Because they know it’s about getting people in the venue, having them purchase other products, and bringing their friends.

Special shows could be made available only to the annual pass holders. Create exciting exclusivity like the inside tip on club performances by Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock. At the end of the day it about creating buzz and word of mouth hype.

This is also a much better option than offering free tickets. Free tickets devalues your product. It basically says, “I know my normal prices are too high for people to pay and I haven’t done a good job promoting the product to create any demand.”

Now of course there would be some set of rules governing shows you can see, as I’m sure there are with Live Nation. I believe there might be a wait list for certain shows. And I can imagine clubs would have to work out any situations where comedians get a portion of the “gate”. But this can be done.

I wonder how many of you would be interested in buying an annual pass for live comedy?

I’m doing everything I can to make this site more content rich. So when folks come by they can really get an idea of all the great comedy we have going on in the city. Where to go see it, who the comedians are, etc. Over the past several months, I’ve added the podcast (which will pick back up) on a weekly basis, the Comedy Calendar, and now a video bar at the top of the site. I’ll mostly feature videos of comedians performing during the week in L.A. so people know who they are going to see. Eventually, I’ll begin adding more of my own video (interviews and stuff) and possibly be creating a video gallery. I’m extremely happy with the direction of the site and hope to keep getting more and more people out to live comedy shows via this site. I really appreciate anyone who spends even a few seconds on LCLA.

Just some pick-up over the last week:

The 2nd Annual Birthday Comedy Show this past Saturday was a huge success once again. Red Rock was packed with some of my closest friends. Most of which don’t get out to see comedy that often. Which is the whole point…spread the gospel of laughter. Plus the comedians were excellent. Lachlan Patterson just crushed the room and Christina Pazsitzky once again showed she was a big timer. Matt Balaker and Geoff Lott showed they belong in the same room with anyone. Jason Gillearn is beyond professional and in my opinion borders genius. Dragon Boy Suede had a rough trip, I can’t lie. I’ll call it a Sarah Silverman moment. The guy is awesome, but something unexplainable happened where timing and follow through were rough. Ahh well…it happens. Corey Holcomb may have been a little dirty for the room but he got good laughs…and I love him. All in all, it was a great night and I can’t wait to do it again next year.

Had a chance to catch a live taping of my favorite show tosh.0 last night. It was great. Daniel Tosh is awesome. If you can get down to a taping, I recommend it. They tape at the Tennis Channel in Culver City. Probably can get tickets via “On Camera Audiences”. There are only 3 shows left I think.

Finally, my time off has allowed me to explore some new ventures in the world of comedy. Not sure if they are fully flushed out yet to announce, but rest assure the best interests of comedians and spreading the gospel of laughter and live comedy are at the heart.

Yesterday I wrote about how terrible the websites of most comedians are. Because they are. Now…if you don’t want to listen to me…listen to a fellow artist…Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Check out this post from NewTeeVee that was posted this morning. Below is an excerpt from the post Reznor made. He’s obviously a musician, but many of the same principles apply to comedians. If your agent, manager, online media agency, website guy, etc. isn’t on top of this…drop them immediately. This is the future of media folks. In fact, its not even the future…its now. Its called the Internet and you can’t afford to have people in your camp that don’t get it.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on – like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it – find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig – good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Hope this helps, and I’ll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.

TR

Someone has to say it…most comedian websites suck. They do. And it needs to change now. It’s time to jump into Web 2.0 and head into the 2010 web (as Robert Scoble calls it). It’s not a hard change to make, but you first need to recognize what the problem is before you can accept that your site is needs an overhaul.

I’m no website guru, but I do enough reading and web surfing to know that comedians in general need a complete overhaul of their web presence. Here are a few signs that you are waaay behind and not taking advantage of the internet like you should be.

1. Your site has a splash page of any type before you actually get to the website. (Pablo Francisco)
2. Your site has to “load” because it has so much flash. (Charlie Murphy and Ralphie May)
3. Your site is built with way too much flash. (Adam Ferrara)
4. Your site navigation is so “not” intuitive that you have to have a link that says “Click Here to Switch to Standard Navigation”. (Bert Kreischer)
5. Your site is just a brochure and there is no reason for people to keep coming back because you are offering them no content. (Jimmy Dore)
6. You can’t see your site on the iPhone.

I’m not knocking the comedians btw. Just giving you examples of problems.

These are actually just a few of the things to look for when determining if you need to make a change. But let’s not concentrate on the negative. Let’s concentrate on the positive.

Your website should look like Chris Hardwick’s a.k.a. Nerdist. It’s simple. Easy to read. Loads quickly. Offers updated content so people will comeback and interact (i.e. comment). It is REALLY easy to maintain, change, and control. And wouldn’t you know it…ties in all of his social networks. But not just with a logo. The content he provides on the site makes those social networks relevant and effective. By effective…I mean driving traffic to his site. Not just keeping his fans on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. What good is that? You want to be able to own your relationships on your social networks and be able to move those people onto your site and create repeat, loyal users/followers. On your site. That’s called marketing.

Chris uses Word Press. He uses a theme called Thesis (I use the same theme…it’s very easy to make updates and change things around). Created a few logos and some links…and boom…he has more interactivity on his site than most comedians could dream about. And it didn’t cost him thousands of dollars…I guarantee it. Word Press is free. Thesis is $87 (and there are free themes out there like Thematic that may work just as well). You can get cheap hosting. So maybe you need a graphic artist/CSS/HTML guy to do a few tweaks for you…no big deal. Now you have yourself a website that is relevant.

Some other comedian sites that you can look at that make sense: Paul Ogata (easy to read, simply, loads fast), Joe Rogan (great content, relevant info, community, loads fast), Brody Stevens (needs some tweaking…but he provides content), Christina Pazsitzky (low tech, good content…gets the job done perfectly).

The point is…most of the sites for comedians that I am seeing look like consumer products websites. How often do you visit “Oreo.com”. Never. And if you do…you never visit again…because there is no reason to. Most ad agencies put all this flash in so they can justify their cost. They can say, “Whhooo…look how nice and pretty it is.” Your guy is probably doing the same thing.

Check out the sites that have risen to prominence in the last 3 – 5 years. Gawker Media sites, Federated Media sites, Buzz Media sites. Your site should be the same…and it’s not hard to do. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Remember…you are in the content business. Don’t forget it.

OK folks…busy week for me in the comedy world (and technically I’m not even in the comedy world…maybe one day). In addition to podcasts with Josh McDermitt and Lachlan Patterson and a video interview with Bill Lucas of CandorTV, I’m headed out to the following shows. Join me if you can:

Tuesday – June 30th
8:00PM
Ice House – Pasadena
FREE
Paul Ogata and several other comedians are filming a special for Comedy.TV. Byron Allen’s new network. Email Paul for free tickets: paulogata@yahoo.com. Or you can pay $14 at the door. Your choice. Actually, don’t be a douche…just email Paul for the tickets. If you missed Paul’s podcast…when he was locked out of his house…it’s here.

Wednesday – July 1st
8:00PM
UCB – Los Angeles
$5
The Birthday Boys and A Kiss from Daddy hit the stage for some sketch comedy. I definitely don’t see enough sketch comedy, so it’ll be cool to get out and see these two groups. They are both supposed to be awesome. Plus Neil Campbell is in A Kiss from Daddy…I interviewed him for the podcast here.

Thursday – July 2nd
8:00PM
Laugh Factory – Hollywood
FREE or $20
Ryan Sickler is performing at the Laugh Factory at Tom Arnold’s weekly show. Sickler kills and Tom is the man. Both did interviews for LCLA here and here. You can get in for free if you are currently without employment. Otherwise it’s $20. You’d almost rather be unemployed at that price. Why is their pricing so out of whack? Not Tom’s fault…or Sickler’s for that matter. Holla at Mr. Masada on that one. He owns the joint.

Anyway, that’s the lowdown on the showdown for the week. Join me if you can. Hit me up on Twitter and we’ll try to connect if you are going to be out and about: twitter.com/livecomedyla