After being urged for quite some time to attend a comedy open mike night by friends who apparently thought I was funny, or at least funny by their bizarre standards, I did finally sneak off to an open mike night in August of 2003 to check it out. I listened to a few aspiring comics perform, and said to myself (as James Fenimore Cooper once said to his wife just after reading a particularly bad novel, and just before launching his own writing career) "I can do better than that."

I went home and wrote some material and went back to the same club on the next open mike night. By the end of my 10-minute spot, I had gotten so many laughs that I was hooked.

One year after my first open mike performance, I had my first paid professional gig (and thereafter incorporated the word gig into my vocabulary to an obnoxious degree). Anytime you couldn't hear the sound of anyone in the audience coughing or plates rattling in the kitchen during my performance, my show was considered a success. Since then, I have performed in various venues, including performing at Saratoga's "First Night" New Year's Eve celebration the last two years and in front of local college and club audiences. I have done a number of charity benefits, including fundraisers for Hurricane Katrina Relief, the Round Lake Auditorium renovation, CAPTAIN Youth and Family Services, and Rape Crisis. I spend time most every day working on my monologues: creating, editing, revising, and in some cases, throwing something out that just doesn't work well enough because it's only funny to me. I work at keeping my routines lean. I write all of my own material and, with sufficient notice, I can write personalized routines for specific events. I have built up a respectable reputation in the area and am interested in expanding my audience and performing in other areas of New York and New England. Inspired by my comedic muse, my wife Elaine, I draw my humorous observations from everyday life, encouraging all of us to laugh at ourselves.