Convicts of Comedy - kicking off 2012 in Fresno!

The 2012 Convicts of Comedy kicked off in the place that it all began, Tokyo Garden in Fresno. It was great to see our friends Toshi, Ross and the rest of the Fresno gang. The show almost didn't happen because 4 of the 7 comedians weren't available for the gig.  But luckily comic's Karl Hess, Harmony McElligot and Carl Degregorio did a great job of filling in for the missing convicts.

We took two cars up to Fresno, I drove all of the "Westside" comics and the other car was for the Eastsiders. (aka poor people) After our usual stop at the A&W restaurant in Bakersfield, we arrived in Fresno at around 5:30pm.

The first thing we do when we get to town is to drop off all of our shit at the venue and then we go out and promote the show.  I take about 30 sticks of colored chalk and basically graffiti the whole town with the show information. Using chalk actually works pretty well because people always stop to see what is written on the sidewalk and it washes away pretty easily. (at least I think it does, who knows!)

 *I never mention how much the show costs .... they can find out when they get there!

After drumming up some business, we then went over to "Me and Ed's" pizza joint, so we can hang and relax and figure out the lineup. (who is hosting, who has to go up first, etc.)
Earlier while we were out promoting, we ran into some other "comedy dudes" who were debuting their podcast that same night in front of a live audience. They invited us to be there special guests.  So me, Carl D, and Dimo went and did a quick interview on the Podcast. (I can't remember the name of the podcast but they were really cool guys. If you want to find out what podcast it was, just google "Shitty Fresno Comedy Podcasts" and I'm sure it will come up!)

Anyways, it was a great show and we had a blast as always. AND the most magical part of the night was when I discovered that our Fresno friend Ross used to hang out with Guns N Roses!  I had no idea that Ross was part of the music scene on the Sunset Strip back in the day!  What an awesome coincidence!  I guess he used to be a music director at a Long Beach radio station and was roommates with GNR's 2nd manager Doug Goldstein.   I made sure to play my "Use Your Illusion 1 & 2" CD's all the way home.

from left: Carl DeGregorio, Dimo, Harmony McElligot, Chris Gehrt, Karl Hess, Adam Feureberg and Justin Kiang.
*notice my eyes are glowing like "Teen Wolf" .... "Give me a keg of beer" (in a wolf voice)