China, baby, China!

There's two bits of news I want to share - BadSlava.com has gone national while Slava is going international. This Sunday, 12/21/08 I will be leaving for China with my beautiful girlfriend for 18 days. I will be back on Wednesday, 1/7/09. I will not be checking my voicemail nor email during this time so that I can have a real vacation. This is also going to be my last blog post for the next 3 weeks. Unfortunately, I won't be able to update the nyc open mics as well. But the Slava mic will continue because the show must go on! Joe Maywalt will host next week's show and Phil O'Reily the following. I hope this year was as good for you as it was for me. Happy New Year!

About Dave

Meet Dave. He is a comedian from Alabama who travels all over the U.S. and may even come to NYC next year. He is also an avid blogger who got to go on a paid trip to Prague on a blog consulting gig. His blog is called "On The Road with Dave" and covers 4 years worth of his travels in the world of stand-up comedy. He found me through a Google alert (if you don't know what that is - Google it), and he seems like a helluva guy. Dave, when you make it to NYC, I will buy you a beer.

The interview

A couple of months ago I was interviewed by Evan Seplow, the brains behind Stagebuddy.com, a completely FREE way to find out what LIVE SHOWS are playing around New York including Theatre, Comedy, Dance, Music and more. StageBuddy's unique interface give you more information than you can find elsewhere, including full synopses, cast & crew, pictures and even videos of the shows before you go! So without further adew, here is the interview! If you are wondering why I am smiling so much, it is because I am nervous.

Zen comedy

If you've read this blog before, you know how much I believe in writing, reading and rehearsing every day. It turns out the Japanese even have a word for it - kaizen. Wikipedia defines kaizen as "a continuous improvement." Apparently, it is very popular at Toyota as well as in overall Japanese culture. So if you are writing, reading and rehearsing every day, know that you're in good company.

Review: "The 80/20 Principle" by Richard Koch

"The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually leads to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards." What does this mean? Does it mean that 20% of your jokes will work 80% of the time? Does 20% of your audience provide 80% of the laughter? Does 20% of all your time spent writing comedy result in 80% of material? Does 20% of comedians get 80% of the gigs? The point is not the exact percentage, but the idea that the world is unbalanced and cause and effect are rarely linked in an equal way. You may not agree with anything in this book. But you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Evite and Yahoo

Here's something else you probably didn't know about. If you send out invitations to your party using Evite, some of your friends with Yahoo email accounts with not receive them. Here's the interesting part. Yahoo doesn't refuse all Evite invitations, just some. And Yahoo doesn't put them in the spam folder, they just never arrive. Which creates quite a situation. You're wondering why some of your friends didn't show up to your birthday party. And those friends are wondering why you didn't invite them. Of course, by the time you find out about the Evite/Yahoo problem, it is already too late. I decided to send three test invites to my Yahoo account from Evite. Only one arrived. As usual, each company will probably say it is the other one's fault. Oh well.

Myspace and Google

Here's something you probably didn't know about. If you keep a blog on MySpace, Google doesn't index it. To see if I'm right, copy any sentence from your MySpace blog into Google and hit Search. If your results differ from mine, do let me know and I will write an update. In the meantime, I will assume when it comes to Google, your blog doesn't exist. Maybe you don't care that your blog isn't on Google, and maybe someday either Google or MySpace will fix this problem, but for now you're missing out on a very large audience. And as a blogger, to me that seems counterproductive. What bothers me is that when you start a blog on MySpace, you are never told about this problem. And by the time you find out, it is too late. And this is not a rant against MySpace, or Google, but against the way things usually are when you're dealing with two companies and how each company will probably say it is the other one's fault.