Archive for September, 2009
 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
–Douglas Adams, English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 – 2001)
Addendum…
“Now only if my suitcase could say the same thing…”
–David ‘checkerhead’ Aiken
With any luck it will end up saying the same thing, but as I write this, the black Samsonite suitcase I travel with when doing cruise ship jobs is somewhere other than in my hotel with me… This is only mildly disconcerting… I’ve got bits and bobs enough to make due with out the contents of my suitcase, but I would very much like to get it back. My hope is that I’ll get a call in the morning from the front desk letting me know that the case has been delivered… Alternatively I’ll call the airport to see where things are at… Not much I can do about it currently though, so sleeping on it seems like the best option.
Addendum… Called in the morning and apparently the airline luggage tag came off the suitcase and they didn’t know where to send it… Hopefully by the time this goes live I’ll have my case back!
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 Where in the world am I today?: Headed towards Victoria, BC, Canada aboard the Golden Princess
Prologue: My first ‘Official’ face to face encounter with Jay Gilligan came in 1997 at the Winnipeg International Children’s Festival. Jay was traveling with his then girlfriend and her family and just happened to be at the Festival. I had heard of Jay before this first face to face encounter and knew a bit about his work, but ya never know how personalities will mesh before you actually get the chance to spend some time hanging out. Jay endeared himself immediately to me by offering my wife Emiko (originally from Japan) and I ‘Pocky Sticks’ (a chocolate covered cookie snack from Japan). Our time together at that Festival proved to be so much fun that we decided to put a show together the following year and performed as “The Instigators” about a year after having first met. The goal that we set was to try and mesh or performance styles together and also wear shorts made out of Fake Fur. In hind sight it might have been fun to set slightly different goals, but we did achieve what we set out to do and have been friends ever since.
STATS
Name: Jay Gilligan.
Birthday: February 18, 1977.
Place of Birth: Arcadia, Ohio, USA.
Started Performing/Working in the Industry: First show at the age of 8!
Discipline: Started with unicycling which lead to juggling.
Websites: www.renegadesignlab.com • www.buildingweight.com • www.shoeboxtour.com • www.instantjuggler.com
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYxDgzMWqQE
Venues Worked: My favorite place to perform in the whole world is The Pirate House in Patreksfjordur, Iceland!
Hot 10 Questions:
- What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream and why? • Chocolate – because it tastes like chocolate and also this flavor contributes greatly to the existence of chocolate milkshakes…
- Name one movie that would make it to your Top 10 all-time great films. • How about three: Lost in Translation, Waiting for Guffman and True Stories
- What was your favorite toy from childhood? • Lego.
- Who were your biggest inspirations when you got started? • Anthony Gatto, Dana Tison, Michael Moschen.
- From the world of animation what one character do you most identify with or see yourself in? • Jack Skellington – from the world of stop motion animation.
- Name something that scares you. • Train tracks.
- Apart from the entertainment industry, name one other job you’ve had. • Sleeping?
- What’s something you haven’t done yet that you’d like to try? • Play professionally in a band.
- What’s your least favourite thing about being a performer? • Not enough time to do everything in the world!!!
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? • “You get to go back down and do it all again!”
The Nugget:
Pick one nugget of wisdom you’ve picked up from your career in Show Business to share with the World.
“If you can’t make it good, make it big. If you can’t make it big, paint it red!”
&
“Pro gear, pro attitude. No drugs, no ego.”
–Jay Gilligan
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 Where in the world am I today?: Ketchikan, AK, USA boarding the Golden Princess
Somehow one day off between finishing up at the Pacific National Exhibition and leaving to join the Golden Princess just didn’t seem like enough time to really shift gears properly from being a Wiener Wrangler in The Hot Dog Show and the familiar world of comedy juggling as The Checkerboard Guy… Mind you had I been leaving the very next day I would have somehow made it work… It’s amazing what one can scramble to do if you put your mind to it and need to catch a plane to make the next gig happen…
Even better than the return to a world I’m so comfortable in is the fact that I’ll be doing mini 15 minute-ish shows in ‘The Piazza’ of the Golden Princess. This will almost feel like a vacation after the 17-day, 51-show extravaganza that I lived through as part of the Street Stars Program…
As I mentioned a couple of days ago my new The Hot Dog Show panned out more or less the way I had anticipated it would and the performance grew and developed enormously over the course of the run. Doing something so new, watching as it grew and evolved, was incredibly exciting and rewarding. It was also hugely exhausting. Even though my confidence with the show grew daily, I was constantly looking for ways to improve the performance and figure out how to maximize the potential of the show given the limited time that I had to work on it. This proved to be a wonderful exercise in creativity and persistence but it was also a huge drain on my energy, so it’s a bit of a relief to be returning to the familiar territory of a show and character that’s very much second nature.
I think of it a bit like a visit to a museum… I’m good at absorbing the content that your typical museum has to offer for about two to three hours after which I don’t seem to be able to ‘get’ much more from the experience. I need to let my eyes and brain have a rest so that I can process the information that I’ve bombarded myself with. In a similar vein I’ve picked up enough French and Japanese over the years to be able to listen to conversations and pick up most of what’s being said provided I stay fully tuned in and really concentrate. By the end of the day in a foreign language I need a break and all my brain really seems to be able to process is a conversation in English…
I think this week aboard the Golden Princess will be the rest I need from having lived through a pretty intense two and a half weeks with the new show at the PNE. Before leaving I put some wheels in motion so I’ve got a couple of Hot Dog Show related projects to work on upon my return. I did this deliberately as I’d hate to loose my momentum with the new show, but I think that taking a week off will allow me to return to the props, the ideas for retooling things and the video footage that was shot at the fair with fresh eyes. This will hopefully mean that the next round of work on all things Hot Dog will be more productive from having had the break.
Besides, I still really like The Checkerboard Guy Show and the work I do as a comedy juggler, so not only will this week be a nice break, it’ll also be a whole lot of fun!
Posted in Performance, Thoughts | Comments Off on A return to the familiar…
 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada enroute to Ketchikan, AK, USA
I’ve had a lot of people asking me what my plans are for the 2010 Olympic Games that are coming to Vancouver in about five months… I guess, for what ever reason people feel like I’m tapped into the local scene enough to be able to have sourced gigs for this time period already and have everything set up and in place…
The truth is somewhat different than the perception. The Winter Olympics officially run from February 12 – 28, 2010 and the Paralympic Games run from March 12 – 21. I’ve had a few local event producers contact me about possible MC work, but nothing solid had fallen into place yet. Rather I seem to be included in ‘proposals’ for various events and venues that are being planned.
The over all impression that I get is that the big stuff like the Opening and Closing ceremonies have been sorted out, but that the stuff that trickles down to the venues where my talents will be needed are just starting to be looked at. I have a sneaking suspicion that in the next few weeks/month or so things will really start to materialize. If/when I here more I’ll be sure to post more information.
In the mean time, I’ve just come off a successful 17 day run at the PNE and am heading out tomorrow for a week aboard the Golden Princess and have my hands plenty full with the act of living through the days in the coming week. Got a question about a venue or a gig that I haven’t discussed on the blog yet? Leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll be more than happy to share whatever I know with the world at large!
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 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
August 22 a day that lives on in infamy… Well at least for me as it was the very first day of performances for my new Hot Dog Show. September 7, 17 days and 51 shows later I’m pleased to report that I’ve survived the experience. Went for dinner with the rest of the cast from the PNE Street Stars Program after finishing up today and then drove home and dragged all of the props into the basement. Thought I’d snap a quick picture of the gack that made up the last two and a half weeks before shifting gears and getting ready to head to Ketchikan to join the Golden Princess on Wednesday… No rest for the wicked…
So… How was it this new show? I’m pleased to report that things panned out more or less exactly how I anticipated before the run began. I knew that the first few days were going to beat me up pretty badly as I just struggled to get from the beginning of the show to the end of the show remembering to properly execute the mechanics involved in each routine, but bit by bit the show began to flow. I’m enormously thankful to all of the members of this year’s Street Stars Program as they all came by multiple times to give me notes and suggestions, and I owe a lot of the growth of the show to their feedback.
I was also thrilled to get video of the show at various stages of development over the course of the Fair, and if there’s anything purely technical (it is after Tuesday and Tuesdays are usually dedicated to technical issues) about this post it would be to strongly recommend that you video your show as it’s developing so you can check back to gauge your progress and self direct the show and make notes of those things that are working and those things that aren’t. I haven’t had a chance to review the footage fully yet, but I’m thrilled that I was able to collect 3 hours worth of tape of the performances over the 17 days, an hour of which, shot in the last two days of the fair, which will hopefully form the basis of a promotional video for the show.
Now that the run at the PNE is done I’m all excited about retooling a few things to see if I can make them work even better. I’ve also ordered some other props and will continue to push forward as though I’m going to be doing this show again… It was such fun to be living inside a show that’s so different from my juggling show and by the end it really did feel as though I had started to really figure out how the new beast worked… It’ll be good to take a break from it for a bit, but I do hope that I’m able to maintain my enthusiasm for this new project and can continue to enjoy watching it grow and progress…
Nice to feel this pumped about the execution of an idea that’s been floating around in my head for about the last 5 years and lived through a pretty intensive boot camp of getting through it’s initial run! Yippee!
Posted in Performance, Reviews, Technical Tuesdays | 4 Comments »
 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Back in December of ’08, almost a year ago now I started a dialogue with the guy who’s launching the CreativeMix a conference for people who rely on creativity for a living. The very first CreativeMix ‘Ideation Conference’ will take place on October 22, 2009, and yours truly will be one of the guest speakers at the conference along with some pretty seriously creative types from around Vancouver… It’s pretty cool to be included in such illustrious company… For more info about the conference, check out the website and consider dropping in to be a part of things…
But I digress… Monday’s are for a discussion of marketing ideas and I thought I’d throw this one out there because Corwin Hiebert head-honcho for this little party said that he was pro-actively marketing the event by having custom coffee cup sleeves printed and distributed to coffee shops around the lower mainland. Apparently the statistics were something crazy like the average person who drinks coffee holds on to their cup for between 30 – 45 minutes and he figured having his logo and information about his event on a sleeve was a potential 30 – 45 minute advertising plug to his target market. Apparently creative types drink a lot of coffee… Who knew??? I don’t which makes me wonder about how on Earth I got selected to be a guest speaker, but that’s another story…
Knowing your target market and finding a way to sneak into their psyche like Corwin is attempting to do with these coffee cup sleeves is a pretty clever approach. Will it work? Hard to know exactly, but it’s a promotional/marketing angle that I’d never considered before and got me thinking a bit more outside the box about ways to reach a potential buyer in a different way… I’m not saying run out and have a bunch of custom coffee cup sleeves printed, but what I am saying is push yourself to come up with new and original ways to set yourself apart from the crowd as people will remember it and as soon as they remember you, your chances of getting a gig skyrocket!
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 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”
–Phyllis Diller, American Comedienne (1917 – )
Addendum…
“Pick your battles wisely and when in doubt smile…”
–David ‘checkerhead’ Aiken
My wife started a job about a year and a half ago and came home a bit disillusioned during her ‘training’ because she didn’t feel that anyone was actually teaching her anything. It was rather an on-the-job immersion into what she’d be doing with very little in the way of instruction. She made every attempt to learn, but found it rather odd that long time employees didn’t give her much in the way of instruction. She made several mistakes during her first few training sessions, but when others scowled at her she’d just smile and amazingly the scowls would disappear. She came home saying that when she really didn’t know what to do next she’d smile and that smile won people over enough so that they’d explain how to do things… The power of a smile is awesome!
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 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Prologue: Normally I write a little prologue about how I know the person being interviewed, but this time around Lee provided the following –
I met Dave in 1993…I was working at the Edmonton Fringe, trying to earn enough to marry my wife later that year in December. That was my hat line…bragging about how I couldn’t afford to blow it with a PMOY and how bad I was at asking for money. Dave came in, repositioned my show for more audience comfort, and worked on a few hat lines with me. He encouraged me to go even further and bolder, as he always does, and then he gave me a rare and treasured insider’s collectible–a hand made by Dave black and white checker bag! He did the exact same ‘formatting thing’ when I ran into him at Universal Citywalk several months later that year…He took a five second glance at my arrangement, and then changed my staging area ever so slightly; he bought me four extra feet of crowd space and the ability to LOSE a piece of gear, my despised and unnecessary ladder. That guy rocks!
STATS
Name: Lee Zimmerman.
Birthday: December 30, 1963. (People who were also born on December 30th include: Bo Diddley, Sandy Koufax, Tracy Ullman, Tiger Woods, Rudyard Kipling and TWO of The Monkees, Michael and Davy!)
Place of Birth: Wilmington, Delaware, USA.
Started Performing/Working in the Industry: July 3rd, 1983, at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, while at was still at Art School in Philly. First hat? Eight dollars and twenty-three cents (US); just enough for the 2 sheets of Matte Board I needed, and one game of “Joust“!
Discipline: Puppetry/Etch-A-Sketch/Stand-Up Comedy.
Websites: http://www.myspace.com/leezimmermanthepuppetguy and coming soon: www.etchasketchguy.com
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVZ386vCQYg
Venues Worked: Philadelphia’s Head House Square, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Pier 39 in San Francisco, Venice Beach, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, Universal CityWalk at Universal Studios
Then–
The Impro in Santa Monica, LA and at the Riviera in Las Vegas, The Viper Room in Hollywood, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, Frank Zappa’s studio/home and many more celebrity homes and functions.
Many TV shows, including “The Drew Carey Show“, music videos for Lisa Loeb and Flea, and three films including the cult classic “Eddy Presley“, co-starring Quentin Tarantino.
Hot 10 Questions:
- What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream and why? • Things with things in it. Ben and Jerry offers a wide variety of fare this area, perhaps Chubby Hubby is the best, with chocolate covered pretzels and a special jizbo goo sauce of darkness wrapped around many things with other things.
- Name one movie that would make it to your Top 10 all-time great films. • ONLY ONE?! Are you mad? True Romance, Hope and Glory, Shawshank Redemption, Perfume, Being There, Groundhog Day, Amadeus, L.A.Confidential, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, The Man Who Would Be King and True Romance again.
- What was your favorite toy from childhood? • Is there any better toy than the original lap-top, Etch A Sketch?!
- Who were your biggest inspirations when you got started? • Jimi Hendrix and my brother Drew.
- From the world of animation what one character do you most identify with or see yourself in? • Krusty The Clown. Please just leave it at that…
- Name something that scares you. • My nightmare is the same every single time I have one…with just a few minor script and staging changes. I have it often…I’m expected to perform somewhere right now and I am not prepared…the whole dream is of me moving from place to place, carrying my gack, trying to sort out a stage, trying to untangle the puppets, finding an MD player that works with these faceless useless stage crew wankers doing nothing to assist…the occasional ex girlfriend appears in a cameo for the mocking… sometimes it’s all of my gear floating underwater. REALLY. Somehow though, I almost always pull it off!
- Apart from the entertainment industry, name one other job you’ve had. • I managed an art supply store in Philadelphia right after I finished art school.
- What’s something you haven’t done yet that you’d like to try? • Just once, I’d love to perform on stage as a lead guitar player…WELL.
- What’s your least favourite thing about being a performer? • GEAR.
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? • “You are hilarious!” ~ A treasured memory and in the very top ten moments I ever ever ever experienced, like ever. In 2003 I won the “Performer’s Choice Award” at the Halifax International Buskers Festival! My peers actually really really loved my show, man! I am very proud of that!
The Nugget:
Pick one nugget of wisdom you’ve picked up from your career in Show Business to share with the World.
“To be on time is to be late. Always always always arrive EARLY.”
–Lee Zimmerman
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 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
As I’ve mentioned a few times already on the blog I’m currently in the middle of a run at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) where I’m performing a new show entitled “The Hot Dog Show” which features me and my six inch tall stuffed Hot Dog partner, Willie The Wiener. My friend Bruce Thorson came by to watch the show the other day and thankfully he saw what was likely the best show I’ve done during the entire run of the fair… Everything just seemed to work.
Bruce used to work a the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival where we first met and became friends, then moved out to Vancouver a few years ago to go to the Vancouver Film School. We worked together on one of his assignments and created a piece called “47 Dutch Lessons on Cassette.” Bruce is a long time fan of the Art of Street Performance and after watching my show, I got an email in which he asked the following three questions. I had to think quite a bit about the answers and as such, thought they might make a great post… Here then are the questions and the answers I gave…
1. – Why would an audience buy into a silly concept like the Hot Dog Show? Well I think more than anything else it’s because the performer (in this case me) appears to enjoy the concept and deliver it with such confidence and bravado that the audience is drawn into the sales pitch because of the dynamic nature of the story and the charisma of the performer. Any good pitch man can sell a sucker anything because people come under the spell of a good pitch and the delivery… There is something genuinely intriguing about watching a good pitch man at work which is why I sometimes like to go up to the Marketplace building at the PNE and watch the guys selling the magic slicer machines, Ginsu Steak Knives or what have you… There’s almost a hypnotic effect, a trance that they’re able to put you into that entices you to buy their product and the most successful pitch guys have built their careers and fortunes on being able to use these techniques to get money out of people’s pockets…
2. – How do I ensure that they do buy the pitch? Well to be honest I’m still not feeling that they do entirely I’m still fumbling a bit with this new show. That being said, a good pitch is a combination of many factors. As mentioned above, confidence and charisma play a huge role in the process and I can state that over the first 10 days of the fair my confidence with the new pitch/new show grew tremendously so that when you came yesterday – Day 11, I was no longer fumbling to get from point A to point B to point C. This is HUGE!
The hypnotic-ness of the show starts at the beginning by getting the audience to unify as a group with some simple exercises like – ‘Everyone clap when I count to three…’ The Call and Repeat game style of this technique isn’t very threatening and eases and audience into unity and encourages them to get behind what ever is to come next. I’ve long been an advocate of the ‘Hype’ style of performance. This style get’s an audience wound up into a frenzy with what ever stunt that’s being sold being representing the climax that they’re all building towards. In many ways this has become so instinctive to me that I don’t even really think about it any more, but the effect is that the audience is drawn in to the pitch and is willing to come along on the journey.
3. – What is the audience buying into? In the end it’s the performer. The audience isn’t necessarily buying the fact that the Hot Dog is a Super Stunt Hero, they’re buying into the fact that I’m going to make this journey a fun one and one that they’re willing to invest a half hour of their life into. If the audience doesn’t like the performer, then no matter how good the pitch is, be it a skill show or a show like the Hot Dog Show, then the audience will likely not want to watch. Likability is everything! The performer can be aggressive, caustic, in your face or calm and gentle, but with out some degree of charm, with out charisma and confidence, forget about it… It just won’t work.
Also, I think as a performer you really need to love your show too… If you loose the love of it, if you loose the joy of being in front of an audience doing what you’re doing then it becomes very obvious to an audience that you’re heart’s no longer in it. I think this is one of the reasons I enjoy watching Glenn Singer’s show so much. He still loves telling that story and it’s a joy to watch him taking such pleasure in the telling of it.
I’ve got 5 more days at the PNE (including today) and am looking forward to each and everyone of them. I’m still not sure about the future of the Hot Dog Show, but it’s been an awesome work out for my performance muscles and it’s been really interesting being at the center of a show that doesn’t rely on skills and tall unicycles to make it work.
Posted in Performance, Thoughts | Comments Off on Questions I got asked the other day…
 Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
The National Association for Campus Activities or NACA for short is an organization that helps connect performers with the people who book entertainment on campuses across the United States… This description comes directly from their own website –
NACA hosts a National Convention each February. This high-profile, high-energy, four-day event provides networking opportunities with other professionals, students and associate members. Attracting more than 2,000 delegates from nearly 450 member schools, NACA’s National Convention is the nation’s largest campus activities marketplace.
During the Convention, delegates can view more than 80 live performances ranging from music and comedy to lecture and interactive programs. Educational programs focus on topics such as professional and student leadership development, programming, multicultural education, campus organization dynamics and advising, and identification of current trends in the field of campus activities. These programs also include Featured Speakers in targeted areas of professional development. NACA’s Campus Activities Marketplace gives students and staff the ability to meet member agents and artists face to face, enhancing familiarity with the marketplace and facilitating campus bookings.
This is another one of those conferences like Pacific Contact and Artstarts that I’ve discussed on the blog previously. If you’re lucky enough to secure one of the 80 live performance slots described above and knock it out of the park in that performance then your chances of landing a TON of quite well paying work is pretty great! I know many variety entertainers who based much of their career on touring colleges in the US and have had great success at it.
If you google ‘booking college gigs’ you get a slew of different people telling you the pros and cons to this market along with a ton of advice on how to best capitalize on the market. Though I have done a few dates at universities in Canada, it was never a market that I pursued in ernest. That being said, I can say that the shows I did do for college audiences were a bunch of fun!
Had I been more driven to pursue this particular market I’m sure that I could have tapped into it and done very well, but I’m a big fan of booking a diversity of gigs in a variety of venues. Somehow by mixing things up on a regular basis I’ve managed to keep things fresh and interesting which is what works for me. If this is a market that’s of interest then I’d highly recommend exploring the many resources available on-line that can help you tap into the potential gold mine that exists in doing college shows!
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