I. Finally. Went. Skydiving.

I’ve wanted to go as long as I can remember, and my friend Haley texted me one day and said “Hey, wanna go skydiving this weekend?”

No planning, no big group, no working out schedules, we just… went. Like two days after she thought of doing it. It was exactly what I expected it to be. No fear, no nervousness, just pure fun. I highly recommend that you do it, if you think you’ll enjoy it. I’m not looking to cause any heart failure here at g27.

In other news, I’ve been performing as much as I can, including a great show at the Irvine Improv, opening for Bret Ernst (you may know him from Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour), and, I completely bombed on the Comedy Store Main Stage:

I was psyched to be invited back to the Comedy Store, it’s a crazy famous venue and I feel lucky to even have the chance to SEE comics perform there, much less BE one. I’d done a few sets there, and they had gone really well, I brought a ton of friends, family, and Make It Work clients to come see me, and everyone loved it. I killed to a room of 350 and held my own when I performed in between the two producers of the show.

This last time I performed, none of my friends were available to come see me; everyone was out of town or had something to go to weeks in advance. I had a whopping two people at the show to see me perform, one of my Make It Work clients and her boyfriend. I hadn’t packed the place, and therefore I got what I deserved (?), the worst spot in the lineup of seventeen comedians… seventeenth.

I was dead last.
In a show of seventeen comics.
This was bad news.

So, sixteen comics have performed, and it’s 10:45pm. The producer of the show, Vargus Mason, hurries up to me and says “Dude, Peet, our headliner Tommy Davidson has to be on stage in the Original Room in fifteen minutes. I’m so sorry to bump you, but can he please go before you?”

“Sure, whatever. Yeah, he can.”

We were already two and a half hours into the show, nobody was doing well, and I wanted to be nice to Vargus who has been nice to me. So Tommy Davidson goes, and when he’s done, most of what little crowd remains gets up and starts heading for the door, assuming that they just saw the end of the show.

“And coming up next, Peet Guercio everybody!”

I hit the stage with most of the crowd walking out the door. They wanted to leave an hour ago. I completely bombed, got a few laughs off an improv talking to some rowdy guys in the second row, offended a very cute girl in the front row, and got the hell out of there. But! I didn’t half-ass any of my jokes, I didn’t cut my set short and run off, and I didn’t give up. I did my jokes as though the crowd was semi-interested in the show (which they weren’t) and there were at least 100 people in the audience (which there weren’t). I was proud of myself for not giving up, but it still sucked bigtime. Can’t win ‘em all…

I hate not giving the kind of attention I’d like to over here at g27, but I’ve only gotten busier recently. Maybe I should do smaller, more frequent posts. I dunno… I feel like most blogs out there are too little, too often.

“Today I had chicken at lunch! I’m wearing blue socks OMG!”

Awesome. I don’t care.

The show in Florida with Erik was underwhelming, but hanging with Becky and him for the weekend was awesome. We got paid, we did a nice little show for the kids at Lynn who weren’t cool/douche-y enough to be out getting irresponsibly drunk for St. Patty’s day, we enjoyed the beach (which is not as good as the Santa Monica beach… SoCal represent), and we got two hotel suites with two rooms each. Very baller. During the day, we went through the dorms at Lynn and knocked on doors, handing out free tickets to the show that night. As pointless as that was because everyone was going to be off-campus and sloppy drunk by 4pm, it was still a lot of fun. I love Erik, I can’t wait til he moves out here and joins the LAPD SWAT team. How many cops do you know that are brilliant standup comics? That’s what I thought. And he’s a ladykiller. Watch out.

Make It Work still consumes a lot more of my life than I’d like it to, but there isn’t much I can do about that. I’m working my ass off, making as much money as there is to be made, keeping all of my customers happy, and being promoted soon.

Speaking of customers, I’ve become good friends with a little lady named Anne… she was one of my Make It Work customers. After fixing her computer/router a few times, we started hanging out and now we’ve got a very cool brother/sister duo thing going on. She’s a lawyer and a general smartiepants and has been introducing me to managers and agents and stuff; coming to my shows, bringing friends, she’s beyond awesome. I’ve taken meetings with Sovereign Talent and ICM thus far. Just talking to people about possibly signing me for standup is an absolutely amazing feeling and I definitely didn’t expect anything like that to happen within my first year and a half of standup.

Vargus Mason has been booking me regularly on his Comedy Store Main Room show; one of the most famous and important stages on the planet. I had a huge show there a few weeks ago, my parents were in town for Passover, my sister Anna came up from Irvine, and about 20 of my friends all came to laugh with me. The show couldn’t have gone better, it was an absolute blast. I would do a big standup show every night of my life if I could. As much as I’m still very new to the sport, I’m getting more and more comfortable on stage with each performance I do. I’m keeping a running list of all the big name comics I’ve seen, and it’s getting pretty impressive… the other night I had a long talk with Nick Swardson about comedy and possibly opening for him on his next tour. But that’s a huge maybe.

Oh, and I got new license plates. Spiffy, no?