Blog Updates

July 2, 2007 - Holiday Parties!!! Is there a better comedian for holiday parties? I say no there is NOT!!!

Just a quick note, my holiday season is rapidly filling up with corporate parties and private shows. If you're interested in booking me for your company's end-of-year party, contact me SOON for information!!!

A special note to military/veterans groups in the U.S. and around the globe - PLEASE contact me ASAP for the holiday season. Some overseas groups (Far East, Europe) have already been in contact so we may be able to put something together for a special price, if we can route it so there's only one plane ticket involved.. As you know, I LOVE performing for the military to give back and say thanks, so shoot me an email and let's put it together!

July 1, 2007 - Comics Unleashed has now posted my entire episode up on their website, if you're interested....and why wouldn't you be? I mean, come on IT'S ME!!!! Just hit up www.comicsunleashed.com ands scroll to my name in the list of comics, click it and you're off!!! 20 full minutes of hilarity!!!!! Once again, can't thank Byron and the staff at the show enough; not only was it fun, but everyone involved couldn't have been more professional and nice. They treated me like a huge star even though I'm not (yet), treated my wife like royalty; simply top notch and I'd go back any time.

Thanks to everyone out there who watched and has written to me with your kind words as well; apparently I have fans who only know me from TV...which is WAY cool...and still odd in some ways. It takes some getting used to, but couldn't be cooler!!!! MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL, BAYBEE!!!!

June 20, 2007 - Finally got the video up on the web! Click HERE for my camera time on Comics Unleashed. Boo yah!!!

June 13, 2007 - OK, so it aired, and it went GREAT!!!! I got a ton of camera time and a ton of laughs...and the best promo video I've ever had! (Anyone with a clue on how to get it up on the web, please let me know....) It's already had a positive effect, too; some pretty exciting stuff is in the "possible" file...but I can't say anything about it yet! STAY TUNED!!!!!

Left to right: Andre Kelley, Tracy MacDonald, Byron Allen, yours truly, and John Caponera.

May 16, 2007 - Stu Jackson is a moron. Congratulations on handing San Antonio the NBA title, idiot.

May 15, 2007 - OK, so my taping of "Comics Unleashed" finally happened this past Saturday. Wow, what a neat experience. First, let me just say that Byron Allen is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet in this business, and a true professional. Next, let me say that everyone involved with the show was fantastic as well, over-the-top nice in every possible way. It was a top-notch experience all around.

Now, let me say this: I NAILED IT. I think it went better than I could have hoped! Knock on wood, but I think this could end up being a big step for me, and maybe a turning point in my career. I'll post up any more developments, and of course I'll post the air-date as soon as it's known...and a clip or two if I can ever figure out how to get video up here.

Thanks to everyone who sent me well-wishes and good karma before the taping, it helped a ton!!!!

May 8, 2007 - Finally back home and rested, just wanted to let everyone know that VEGAS.....WAS......AWESOME!!!!!!! The Comedy Stop at The Trop is fantastic, the best comedy club in LV. The people who work there are wonderful and are some of my new friends, the crowds were kickass, I sold out of merchandise.....what more can I say? I can't WAIT to go back, and also to go to the Comedy Stop at The Trop in Atlantic City. Watch the schedule page and I'll keep it updated when it happens!

Saturday is the big day. my taping of Comics Unleashed finally happens. Send me some good karma and help me make this my big break!! Woo hoo!!!

April 12, 2007 - ***UPDATE*** My taping of "Comics Unleashed" has been moved to May 12, and changed on the schedule page. Nothing wrong, the show just had to reschedule the taping from April 3 and comics got shuffled around. Hollywood, baybee!!

March 20, 2007 - Take time to stop and look around once every day. If you don't, you might miss the fact that where you are is right where you should be. Where you are is where you are happiest. Look at what you have right in front of you; it will fill your heart. I know it does for me. I look around, and I know there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

March 8, 2007 - Just met some new friends on Royal Caribbean this past week; the out-of-this-world vocal band Mosaic. Hit their website and tell them I sent you - they're at The Flamingo in Las Vegas most of the time, opening for comedian George Wallace. Seriously cool cats, and incredibly talented. Make a point to go see them, you will NOT be disappointed!

February 28, 2007 - The following is titled "Steve's Excellent Adventure Through The Mexican Countryside." It's about my trip to the Carnival ship this past weekend. Coincidentally, all of this happened on my birthday. Ahem...

So we're delayed 20 minutes at LAX, no explanation as to why. We land at the Manzanillo airport, conveniently located just 30 short miles from actual Manzanillo. My bags are of course the last two bags off the plane, so I'm the very last one though customs and security. I head to the taxi stand, tell him I need to go to the cruiseport and the Carnival Spirit, and the guy tells me to go outside and tell the taxi reps "Coledo Marco" and they'll know I need to go to the seaport and the ship. I repeat it back to the guy several times so I get it exactly right. So I walk out and say "Coledo Marco" to the 3 taxi reps standing there, and everyone says "Oh si, si OK." They call over one of the cabs and the rep leans in to the driver and says "Coledo Marco," "Oh si, si OK." The driver speaks zero English, not a word. (Now before you lefties get in a huff and start asking why he should speak English, here's why: He works in a service industry in a tourist town where over 90% of his fares - the people who pay his salary and feed his family - are English speaking. Should he be fluent? Of course not, but he should be able to understand the major destinations around town where he drives most of the time. So there.) We take off and I hold on. 40 death-taxi minutes later he pulls up to some skanky hotel called "Casa De Marco." We're in some tiny little Mexican Village waaaay inland somewhere, I swear this place looks like the village in "Romancing The Stone"; there are literally goats running around loose. (Write me out of this one, Joan Wilder) I tell him no, and show him my letter from Carnival with the Carnival logo and a picture of the ship and say "Manzanillo." He smacks his head and says "Coledo Marco?" I say yes, and he starts rambling in Spanish, which of course I don't understand, but I can make out the body language and tone of voice, and the jist of it is he's basically asking why I didn't tell him that before - which I did, and the rep did. There's no way to argue with the guy, so I say "Aeropuerto" to try and get him to take me back to the airport. He glares at me for about 20 seconds, and we take off again. Now I'm wondering if we're actually going back to the airport or to the village of Wiwiaca, where his cousin runs a very profitable business in the white male slavery sex trade. (Look for their coupons in your Sunday mailer) I'm sure I'm going to run into Natalie Holloway at some point. Maybe I can borrow her lipstick, because I look better with lipstick and my bookings will go up and....but I digress. We did go back to the airport, and I walk back in to the taxi stand and explain what happened. The guy says "I don't know why that happened, 'Coledo Marco' is where you need to go." I make him write it down, in Spanish, on a piece of paper so I can simply show it to the guys outside. It's now going on 5:00, and I know the ship sails at 6, with "all-aboard" being 5:30. I go back outside and show the piece of paper to the taxi rep, who calls over one of the cabs and shows it to the driver. "Oh si, si OK." Filled with confidence, I climb in. For all I know, the paper says "Take this guy to the village of Wiwiaca; Manuel's cousin needs new gray-haired sex slaves." This second taxi driver is either training for Talladega or took his drivers test in Jamaica. I am white-knuckling, which means it must be pretty freaking bad; after all, I drive the LA freeways regularly. Seriously, I knocked my head on the ceiling not once, not twice, but three separate times as he took speedbumps at no less than 145 KPH, which is around 90 MPH is I'm not mistaken. What the hell, is Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltraine chasing us? We roar up to the cruiseport at 5:32, and he stops outside the gate; apparently only certain types of taxis can go on the cruiseport grounds, and his is not one of them. (Why the guys at the airport put me in this kind of cab, I don't know.) I jump out and run up to the gate, where miraculously my name is actually on the list as a fly-on act. (I found out later the other fly-on act waited at the gate for 45 minutes earlier that day, his name was NOT on the list.) Through the gate I realize I'm a good 1/2 mile from the ship itself. It's 88 degrees, and I'm wearing my fatigues (which I found on later you're not supposed to do. Apparently Manzanillo is a Mexican military port of some kind, and anyone in fatigues can be stopped for any reason at any time...and sent to Wiwiaca, I suppose) . I sprint as best as I can to get to the ship, and as I round the final corner I see ship security pulling in the gangplank and waving to the Mexican authorities. I start screaming my head off, which in hindsight was probably not the smartest move; for future reference out there, it's probably not a good idea to run - wildly screaming in a language they don't understand, mind you - directly at the security figures of another country. Just food for thought. They're staring at me and growing a little nervous, hands on their weapons, as I run up and show them my paperwork. After some back-and-forth between them ("Is this the guy Manuel's cousin was asking about? Si, si, OK) they re-extend the gangplank, I walk on, they pull up the gangplank, and we sail.

Everyone, all together now...."Theeeeeeere's NO business like SHOW business, like NO business I knooooowwww...."

February 22, 2007 - BREAKTHROUGH!!! Just got off the phone with Bob Kephart, the owner of The Comedy Stop At The Tropicana in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and finally got my first week of work! I'll be in Sin City in April, it's now on the schedule page. The Comedy Stop is the longest running comedy club in both Vegas and Atlantic City, and I'm thrilled and honored to be added to their roster of legendary comics - I'm trying to be the best, and this is where they work! As my friends in the service would say, HOO-AAH!

February 21, 2007 - Last night I got a great surprise for my birthday, which is this coming weekend. My wonderful and thoughtful wife took me downtown to The Staples Center, where my favorite NBA team - The Phoenix Suns - were in town to play the Clippers. Suns 115, Clippers 90. Aah, nothing better than watching LA fans after their team is humiliated. Of course, I'm smarter than to have gone around boasting in the parking lot after the game...LA fans are whiny, but have also been known to be packin' on occasion. GO SUNS!!!!

February 20, 2007 - Last weekend at Cozzy's Comedy Club in Newport News VA, I ran into another soldier who had seen me across the sea. After the first show Saturday night, he came up and said he was not buying my CD "...because I bought it when you were in Osan (Korea) last year, but I will get a t-shirt." Always cool when I see someone who's served our country overseas; I get to tell them thank you all over again. Hoo-ah! I also must say this; Cozzy's has what just might be the nicest comedy condo I have ever seen. Most comedy condo's are dank, secretion-filled places that make Motel 6 look like The Plaza, but this one actually didn't make me want to sleep with my clothes on and chuck my lunch. Kudos to Lorain and the gang at Cozzy's!!!

February 9, 2007 - This past week on the Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship "Rhapsody of The Seas," I went through 2 days of 10-15 foot seas; for those of you not familiar, that's pretty rough (Navy guys, please hold back your "That's nothing, comic-boy" comments!). For two days I had basically enough energy to not hurl, and that was about it. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no chance of getting away from it, just completely and totally trapped. Being completely trapped in a situation like that, with nowhere to go, puts the rest of the situations in your life into perspective. You can make your situation better, you just have to take the action if it's available to you. There's nothing going on that you can't make better, because it's YOUR life, and no one else's. YOU have the power, so DO IT!!! (By the way, the seas cleared up by the night I did my show, so it went well; after 2 days of hurling chunks on each other, apparently the passengers thought I was HYSTERICAL. Maybe that's what I need to do at all of my shows, juts get everyone violently sick beforehand....maybe pass out Kool-Aid spiked with Tide....or just food from Denny's.....hmmm.....)

December 17, 2006 - So I'm standing at LAX this past week, waiting for my flight, when I notice 4 Secret Service looking guys hanging around my gate. I'm wondering what they know about my flight that I don't, and if I should get on the plane or not, then a gaggle of about 10 more come down the aisle. They are escorting former President Jimmy Carter onto my plane. Kind of weird, I didn't even know he was a Steve-head, but apparently he's following me on tour. He was gracious enough, walking through the entire plane shaking everyone's hand prior to takeoff (with Secret Service Joe watching closely, of course). Despite what my friends suggested afterwards, I did not tell him what I really thought of his Presidency or post-Presidency statecraft....somehow his protection detail didn't come across as having a great sense of humor.

The next night I did a show at Loons in La Crosse Wisconsin, and a guy came up to me afterwards and said he had seen me in Afghanistan in 2003. Pretty cool, he remembered a lot about that particular tour through Bagram; I told him to be sure to check out my journal from that trip here. So a big HEY to Jack in La Crosse - thanks for serving your country, my man!!!

July 30, 2006 - Something pretty cool happened aboard Royal Caribbean's Mariner of The Seas. A Marine who had seen my show in Qatar last year was cruising and remembered me. He came up and said hello, and it was quite cool to talk with him again. I thought about it, and this has actually happened more often that you'd imagine. I had two Air Force folks who had seen me in Uzbekistan come to my show at the Pittsburgh Funny Bone; I had an Army Ranger who had seen me in Kuwait come to my show in El Paso, Texas; I had two Army Medics who had seen me in Kyrgyzstan come to my show in Chicago; I had a soldier who had seen me in Iraq bring no less than 15 friends to my show in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. It's also happened in Dayton Ohio, Clarksville TN, Los Angeles, and probably a bunch of other places I'm forgetting. it's rewarding enough to go and do those shows for the troops, but when I see someone back home and they remember me and say that my show had a positive affect on them and their entire base morale....well, I can't tell you how good that feels. Kudos - and I mean big, giant, hairy KUDOS - to all of our men and women in uniform around the globe. Thank you for what you do, and I'll be overseas again soon!!! Hoo-ah!

July 11, 2004: So much news! Well, I won the World Series of Comedy....AGAIN. I'm still in shock that I managed to wade through the minefield a second year in a row, but it was a blast. My friends Tony Boswell and Steve Homes took second and third respectively, so it was even more fun because I was able to hang out with pals the entire time. Also saw old buddy Bryan Kellen, and made new friends in Marc Scalia and Shuli Egar.

April 28, 2004: Did a private show last night for a wonderful military organization in Boston. I want to thank them for having me at their Sergeant's Farewell Dinner, it was my honor. It was also a great way to start my week at The Boston Comedy Festival, which is in my opinion the best festival out there.

October 20, 2003: Added some Press Clippings today, and other articles about the tour through Afghanistan, read them here.

August 9, 2003: MONSTER NEWS! September 4-25 I will be touring Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, and other countries throughout Southwest Asia and The Middle East, entertaining our troops! I'm honored and thrilled to be helping our armed forces in some small way, and I'm so excited I can hardly sit still. I'm also nervous that I'm going to yack my lungs out on the cargo planes and helicopters, but that's another story and a small price to pay. If you have friends or relatives over there, tell them to keep an eye out for us at their location!

July 4, 2003: Last weekend I won "The World Series Of Comedy," a national contest held at the Funny Bone in Pittsburgh, PA. Over 50 comics entered and competed throughout June, and after good sets and good fortune I came out on top! What's my prize? A nice check, a week of work in Pittsburgh, and a growing ulcer from the stress of the contest. It was fun, thanks to everyone at the Bone for a professional event!