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Happy Holidays Everybody! It‘s been a busy couple of weeks but now I actually feel like a comedian again. After taking a month or so off for the wedding and the honeymoon, I felt refreshed and ready to hit the stage again. I had a brand new six minute chunk of material I’ve been trying to mold into my next television showcase set. After performing this six minute chunk about 20 times in the last three weeks, it has quickly become some of my best material and probably the best part of my show. Hopefully, everyone will get a chance to see me perform it on TV sometime in 2005.

So let’s recap: Two weeks ago, I spent the week in San Francisco performing at the Green Room Comedy Club on Fisherman’s Wharf. The showroom is one of the best I’ve ever performed in. The acoustics are perfect so the sound is so crisp and clear even when you are whispering into the microphone. It has the mystique of an old Jazz club with a very intimate and relaxed atmosphere. They aren’t getting sell out crowds yet, but hopefully everyone will find out what a great place the Green Room is for standup comedy.

San Francisco is easily one of my favorite cities. It was actually a very hard decision to choose between moving to SF or NYC back in 2001, but I picked New York. So I moved to New York City one week before September 11th. I have great timing.

San Francisco is one of the few cities that I would still like to live in at some point. It has the history that most of the west coast cities lack, and it’s got that New York City energy, a packed-in feeling with lots of great restaurants, music and culture. The downside is that the weather here in Los Angeles is so nice everyday, that I almost expect it now. I’m afraid I’ve become to much of a wuss to live anywhere but southern California, at least for now.

After San Francisco, it was down south to L.A. for a day before heading to El Paso, Texas to work at The Comic Strip. I worked there for the first time in the summer and holy shitballs does it get hot there in August. I decided to go back in now during the winter so it was a lot more comfortable. We drove through Tucson, Arizona and about nine hours of nothing to get there. El Paso has a very unique location. It borders Arizona, New Mexico, and , well…old Mexico. In fact, you can see the city of Juarez from interstate 10, as it’s only a few feet away.

We ate lunch at a restaurant called Avila’s every day and it was the best Mexican food I’ve ever had in my life. We ate sopapillas everyday for desert, which are these deep fried, puffed pastries that taste great when you pour honey on them. I guess cardboard would taste good if you put enough honey on it but these sopapilla things were great -trust me.

Against my better judgement, I agreed to go up a in a tiny cable car to the top of Ranger Peak, which is 5,632 feet. According to my calculations, that’s about 17 miles up. My math isn’t so good. Kimmy did the math too and said it was a little more than a mile high. Marriage is full of compromises.

The view from the top of the hill was stunning. You could see for seven miles in all directions. I was even more amazed to see that there were five guys working on a Television tower on top of the mountain. Seeing the three guys at the bottom of the tower (which was the top of the mountain) was scary enough but as I looked up, I could barely see that there were two men hanging by a cable near the top of the tower using a pulley to bring things up from the bottom. They must have been related to the guys I saw hanging from the helicopter last week. I wondered if on their taxes, they write "daredevil" for occupation. The shows at The Comic Strip were incredible. Probably the friendliest and funnest staff to spend a week with. They came close to selling out every show and had one of the biggest crowds I’ve ever seen at a comedy club for the Saturday Late show.

The showroom holds three hundred people and there wasn’t room for me to stand in there. People sometimes ask me," what’s the best part about being a standup comedian?" Just being on stage in front of an energetic crowd and really being in control is great, but I really love looking out into a full house just a few minutes before a show. Everyone is crammed together and thinking that this must be a really great show if everyone is here. The energy is in the air, it’s almost like a championship game. That’s when I really get excited can’t wait to hit the stage and do my thing.

On the drive home, we kept seeing these signs on the road, "What is The THING?", "You gotta see the THING!", "You can’t miss The THING!" It’s the Arizona version of "South of the Border". There were about fifty billboards for this annoying "THING" and the ad campaign worked on Kimmy. What had to see what this "THING" was all about. Turns out it was noTHING much. It wasn’t even that interesTHING. For legal reasons, I cannot tell you exactly what the THING is, I can only show you this picture of my reaction to seeing the THING in the glass case. If you still want to know, I can’t tell you... but I will give you a hint: The THING is the skeleton of an 1800’s Chinese railroad worker in a glass case. If you still can’t figure it out, I’m sorry, but that’s as much as I can legally tell you without giving it away.

It was back home to L.A. for the holidays. We try to do something non-traditional and fun for the holidays so on Christmas Eve we went to Medieval Times. For those of you that saw the movie,"Cable Guy," it’s a lot like that. Eating chicken with your hands and cheering for your section’s Knight to kick everyone else’s ass in jousting. We were in the red section, so of course I had to cheer for the Red Knight. I actually got into it a little too much and I threw my apple pie at the Green Knight for beating the Red Knight. Just kidding, do I look like a guy who would throw away my desert?

What’s Christmas without Fondue? Well, I think Christmas would probably be just fine without it but we decided do something for the French community on Christmas in a time where everyone else spends their time hating the French. I told you we were non-traditional. I know it’s been out since the seventies, but trust me…Fondue is making a comeback, baby! Ride the wave! I’m not sure why Fondue ever went "out." I mean, what’s not to like about frying your own food and dipping everything in bowls of chocolate and cheese. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

The day after Christmas, we decided to go whale watching. The ship took off from Redondo Beach and it was a little chilly. We caught up to some whales about an hour into the voyage and just chased them for another hour before heading back. We actually were pretty lucky to see three or four of them. They only come up to the surface every five to ten minutes and my camera trigger-finger wasn’t fast enough to catch them. If you want, print out this picture and draw in your own whale. Go ahead, it will be fun! The whales were kind of in a hurry. I guess they all swim down to some beach in Mexico for a couple of weeks to have sex with each other… it’s kind of like a college spring break for whales. I guess we mammals aren’t that different after all.

The rest of the week, we ate a lot of cookies, saw Meet The Fockers and went to a Clay Aiken Christmas concert. I tried to slip that Clay Aiken thing by you there but I’m sure you are wondering why the hell anyone would see Clay Aiken. Well, the Mrs is a big fan. I actually got her the tickets for Christmas, along with Clay’s Christmas album, it’s called "Merry Christmas, I’m Gay." Marriage is all about compromises.

I’m hitting the road with full force on the west coast January and February, then on the east coast most of March and April so check out the schedule to see if I’m coming to a city near you.

Thanks for Reading,
Paul C. Morrissey