Brian Hope Comedy

MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2009

Well – my day turned to shit pretty quick. I was going to drive down to the Apple store to get more RAM for my computer. I forgot that I had an external hard drive but right before I left I remembered. Great, right? Saved myself money? No.

And I guess I can’t blame the external hard drive completely. I was the one that deleted everything….I copied all of my videos over to the external – don’t worry, it was just our wedding video and every single video of Ethan since birth. No biggie. I was happy that they finally transferred over and then I deleted the movies on my computer. Or so I thought….I accidentally deleted it from BOTH the computer and my external. The good news is that I have a TON of free space on both now…..

I panicked, went online and found a program called Data Rescue II – which, as you guessed, helps in situations like this apparently. It takes about 5 hours to scan the full computer (and costs $100 to download) so I started this option as soon as I deleted all of the videos. And I waited….and waited….and waited…Kat came home so I told her the great news and we went for a walk with Ethan.

We came back at 8:10pm – and why do I remember the exact time? As we walked in the power just flickered on and off – a power surge I guess. And yes, that COMPLETELY screwed up the scanning as the external hard drive was plugged into the wall. So now, at 9pm, I had to start again so I won’t know until the morning whether this works or not.

Now – it’s not the end of the world – we do have the original tapes for most of the videos – but it took hours and hours to get it on the computer. Fun times – and I’ll probably be starting that tomorrow….

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29th, 2009

Well….just did a Hell Gig. A Hell Gig is when there’s a group that’s really not there for comedy. I did a show for my friend Carol who was raising money for breast cancer. Now, I’m glad I did it – I like to help….but it was a Hell Gig. The stage was nowhere near the audience. If I stood on it only about 5 people out of 120 would have seen me. So I had to stand on a small platform where I could barely move around.

Couldn’t grab people’s attention – they were all in their own conversations – which is once again fine because they’re supporting a good cause but no good for me. At all. A few people came up after the show saying they really liked it – BUT – it happens to every comedian that does a Hell Gig. I think people walk up because they feel sorry for ya – some people were laughing mind you – I didn’t do terrible – but the laughs get drowned out by the conversation. Lovely.

Got a baseball game tomorrow night – Game 3. We better win the damn thing. I’m not pitching tomorrow but I will be for Game 4 next Thursday. Starting to mentally prepare now.

I went to a comedy club tonight and saw a guy who I performed with years ago. I remember him being pretty decent but he’s gone really downhill. He’s probably 20 years older than me and he hasn’t really changed his jokes. Well, I think he might have…but not in a good way. I was watching him host from the back on Wednesday night and thought that he was having a REALLY bad night. I heard Thursday and Friday were the exact same thing and so I watched tonight – equally bad. I’m not sure if it’s his first time performing in Toronto or if he just hates comedy – either way it wasn’t pretty. If you watched it, and had never done comedy before, you could legitimately say you could have done just as good. Now, he’s a nice guy so I’m hoping he’s just had his worst week of his life. Hopefully…is that a good thing to hope for?

Ethan didn’t take a huge spill today but he did walk into the wall in our family room. Kathleen and I were both watching – it was FUNNY. He was giggling then he turned around to run and WHACK! Right into the wall – he got up and didn’t cry. It was hilarious and I wish I was taping.

Oh wait – he fell down one step trying to walk on his own and fell flat on his back – so I guess he did have one big fall.