Wednesday, September 21, 2011

"A Taste of Texas"

I was happy to donate a performance for my good friend and fellow department brother, Jim Dexter at his campaign kick off this past September 9th. He is running for the Baldwin Park City Council.  The event was held at Nick's "A Taste of Texas" restaurant in Covina.  As usual, the first thing I do, is scope the room for the amount of people, and how the room is set up.  It's a very large room, with a nice stage, and great lighting.  For a restaurant bar, this place a big emphasis on their stage and lighting.  It looked like the place could hold about 500 people.  Their was about 40 or so people, all eating, with young kids.  Uh Oh !,, So with a cavernous room, air hockey in the back, and quite a few young kids, already we are not in good circumstances for a comedy show.  Jeff Keller was the Headliner.  He was a great guy, who played a short stint with the NFL.  He currently hosts a radio show, and has toured with Paul Mooney.   Jeff was great to meet, obviously a class act.  He was friendly, had no ego or attitude.  We both were there to support Jim, and do the best we could for him, regardless of anything else.  AS we were waiting to start the show, everyone was spread out, and eating, and the lights were bright, and the place was very noisy.  When Jim took the mic from the stage, people moved in closer,  the music went off, the house lights went down, the stage lights went on, and hey, all of a sudden, it looked like a pretty nice show room.  I did twenty minutes of clean material, well not squeaky clean, but clean.  I was happy enough with my performance.  I could only stay for a few minutes of Jeff's performance, but as soon as he took the stage, I knew he was a pro.
He came on strong, and i was enjoying his show.  But, as it goes with being cop and comic, I was off to work.  Sometimes it's comic by evening,  cop by late night.  

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Iris Cirque Du Soleil

We went to the "Iris, Cirque du Soleil" show at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.  Wow what a show, I have to say it is spectacular.  It is a must see.  We hadn't been to the Kodak in a few years.  A lot of changes to the whole area.  Four levels of restaurants and shops.  It was nice to walk around before the show.  They announce before the show, how the show spent several million dollars to renovate the theatre, cutting the capacity down by over a thousand, to make the theatre and experience more intimate.  They reconfigured the stage, and sound system, to enhance the experience.  I thought that so unorthodox for a show to sacrifice the number of seats, therefore revenue per performance, in an effort to enhance the experience to the theatre goer.  I think it's the right thing to do in the long run, and it looks like the show plans on being there for a while.  The word of mouth will keep the shows at full capacity.  And by the billboards throughout the city, and the tv ads, they have gone to great expense for advertisement.  The feats and stunts in the show, are sometimes hard to believe as possible.  The music combined with the performance was awesome.  And the humor injected in the show was just right.  I say go see it !