I had a really great time working at the Improv this past weekend. Holy cow, is that a great staff! Everyone there treated me like a king. It was really nice. Tonight, we had a run through for our upcoming Gentlemens Hour show at ComedySportz here in Milwaukee. I am pretty excited for it. We are doing some skits that have worked really well at the Alchemist Theatre and are putting them up at this big show along with some new ones. Hope to see you there if you are in town. It’s this Friday, May 2nd at 10pm.
I have recently added a couple of videos from my time at the Improv to the video section of the page. I also added a few different videos to my myspace (www.myspace.com/johnnycomic) Well, it’s 2:29am and I am going to bed. I will be traveling ALL OVER this summer so I hope to see you out on the road. I will be going to Florida, Las Vegas, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, North Dakota, Indiana… just check out the schedule page. Good night. I love you.

Today was a good day. I booked quite a bit of new work. If you live in the Milwaukee area, I would love for you to come to the Comedy Cafe downtown May 29-31. I will be in Appleton the next week. Also, May 2 (a Friday) we are having our first big all new Gentlemen’s Hour show at ComedySportz in Milwaukee. We’d love to see you there. Not a lot is new. I have been crazy busy on the road. I was in Illinios, Alabama, Ohio, and Wisconsin in the last couple weeks. I am loving it, though. Please take a second to sign the guestbook if you haven’t already 9 times. See you at a show sometime soon, hopefully.

    Well, the new revamped site is up.  I do hope you all enjoy it.  I loved the old one, but, like all things, it needed to be updated.  I just think its much brighter and more positive now.  The old one was cool, but I think this one is more parallel to the mood of my comedy;  Not quite so dark.  A special thank you to Ryan Fitzgerald, my web guy, for designing this new monster.  This should be much easier for me to update from anywhere so hopefully I will be posting posts more often.  I had some new ones that were lost in the transition, but that’s alright.  I have an exciting week ahead of me.  I am seeing Counting Crows tomorrow in Iowa City, and then I am driving to Omaha, NE to see my newest niece!  This weekend, I am headlining a show in Springfield, OH and am driving down with my pal, Tyler Kroll.  Should be a fun road trip.  I’m so used to making these long drives alone.  It might be a little awkward peeing in a gatorade bottle with Tyler next to me, but, hey, what other choice do I have right?

    This past weekend, I put in some quality car time.  I had a few Illinois gigs, then shot down to Alabama for a show at the military base Redstone Arsenal.  The highlight of that trip (besides the photo id laniard that I got to keep) was when I was running from my car to the general’s quarters where we were staying and I fell down and scraped my arm up really bad.  Did I trip?  No.  Am I grown man?  Yes.  I just fell.  28 year olds dont fall down.  10 year olds fall down.  102 year olds fall down.  I have no excuse.  I worked with Michael and Dan Swartswout.  We put on a great show.  Alright, I am going to bed now.  Here is a copied and pasted old post from March 26, 2008 that I think was lost:

    I am sitting in my hotel room and just thought I would do some writing. I normally blog this stream of consciousness stuff on my website, but right now my website is being completely revamped (check it out soon, a whole new look to johnnybeehner.com) so I will post it here. Counting Crows new album came out yesterday and it’s great! You should get it. I was just reading a bunch of articles online about Adam Duritz and what an interesting life he has. I like the similarities between being a traveling comic and that of a rock star. I, by no means, am comparing myself to a rock star. I just mean that a lot of what he says in interviews, I can relate to. I am away from home a lot. I don’t get to see my friends and family as much as most. Basically it’s the negative stuff that people don’t see that I can relate to. Obviously, Adam Duritz has a lot to say about the negative stuff. Also, I am not at all complaining here, either. I love what I am doing. I am excited by my own life and I think it’s important to focus on the good in life. People don’t talk about how lucky they are very much. I think its human nature to complain. I do it a lot. I am just excited because I have written a lot of new material and I feel like I am making my way in life doing what I want to do. I started in 1999 and have been traveling since 2002. It’s weird, my overall mood is generally a reflection of how my writing and performing is going. When I hit a dry spot, usually brought on from pure laziness, I don’t feel good as about myself, but after spikes of heavy writing and good shows, I am very happy. A lot of my recent writing is about my relationship. It’s happy goofy stuff because my relationship is fantastic. My girl is very much like me, and that is just so… I don’t know what word I am looking for, but she’s like a muse. I don’t want my show to be 45 minutes of girlfriend stories, but it’s tough not to talk about her when her suggestion for a mind-blowing closer is “What if you get someone from the audience to come up on stage and smell a bunch of bottles and they have to guess which one you farted in.” I think when I have kids, if they ever ask me when “I knew,” I’ll be able to answer them.

I get to meet interesting inspiring people every day I go to “work.” I am on a run now working with Rick Richards. He’s been at it for 30 years. When someone that has been at it that long compliments you, it’s exciting. I love writing and performing. The legwork behind it is what we get paid for, I think. We don’t get paid to tell jokes and make people laugh. We get paid to drive 12 hours. We’re able to pay our bills because we are constantly on the phone, or emailing, or bugging the shit out of bookers and club-owners in some dumb creative way. Performing is the reward. Writing is hard. I am currently reading Steven King’s “On Writing” and it’s a great book. It’s all about how you have to treat writing like a job and do it EVERY day even when you don’t want to. It’s a great book for anyone to read. I think its kind of old, but I just got it so it’s new to me.

Also, if you live in Milwaukee and haven’t seen The Gentlemen’s Hour, you really need to. It’s our sketch/improv comedy group and we have shows at the Alchemist Theatre every other Sunday. We also have a show May 2nd at ComedySportz. It’s fun and different. Check out thegentlemenshour.com if you haven’t yet. I’m pretty lucky to have met these guys and to be a part of the group. I don’t think it would work with any other people. Mike Kauth, Tyler Kroll, and Patrick Schmitz are funny guys. I think it’s difficult and rare to find people that you mesh with onstage. We have similar senses humor and know each other well so it works. It’s a good balance for me, to be a part of that on top of my solo “do everything yourself” stand up career. My brother, Scott, who happens to be the star of the record breaking smash hit comedy classic, “Tomcats,” is out in LA and he is a member of the Groundlings Sunday Company and the amount of writing he does for that is very inspiring for me as far as writing for the Gentlemen’s Hour. He is definitely the funniest person I know… besides my penis.

Well, that Taco Bell I ate about 3 hours ago is starting to nag for attention, so I better get to bed soon or I will probably get sick. This has been a fun series of ramblings to write. I guess my point with all of this is to say go buy the new Counting Crows album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. It’s great. And while you are at the record store or on itunes or whatever, also get Kathleen Edwards’ Asking For Flowers album. Tell them Beehner sent you. And when they, “Who? What are you talking about?” just say, “nevermind.”

    I went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum with my better half yesterday.  It was very interesting.  If you have never heard of it, what it is is they have real actual human bodies with out skin on them displayed and so you can actually see how the body works and looks.  Like they have a guy with no skin or organs on him in a pose as if he was dribbling a basketball.  All you can see is his skeleton with the muscles attached.  I don’t know what its called, but they somehow plasterize the parts of the body so they don’t dry up, stink, or rot away.  They even have the actual eyeballs in the bodies which I found sort of discomforting.  I kept imagining their line of sight shifting from looking up to focusing right on me, and thinking about how I would totally shit in my pants if that happened. It’s a good think they didn’t.

We bumped into the dumbest person on the planet while at the exhibit.  We were looking at a body displaying the muscles and tendons and skeleton only.  And then we heard the girl behind of us say, “Ughh, that guy is ugly.”  How do you react to that?  I wanted to turn around and say, “Which guys ugly??  Are you talking about the guy that took our tickets?  I agree, he was ugly,”  just to see if she would correct me and say, “No, I was talking about the dead guy without a face.”  And then I could reply, “Really?  Did you SEE the guy taking tickets!  Ughh!”  What a dumb idiot.  Was she going to Body Worlds to try to scope out hot guys on display???  Did she think she was at a singles bar or something?  I just thought that was hilarious.  I wish I was by her when we went by the display of the real skeleton just to see if she said, “Gross, that guy needs to eat something!  He is WAY too skinny.”

Well, today has been another annoying day in the career forwarding department.  It seems like at the end of 2007, I got so much work on my 2008 calender and I was all proud and excited.  Now that 2008 is here, as each week passes, more and more of my scheduled work is just falling off.  It is really frustrating.  I think I had 1, maybe 2 gigs fall out on me while I was still working at the dildo factory dayjob.  Now that I have made the leap and committed to a life of stand up, this is when gigs just get cancelled and moved around like it’s nothing.  That is the business and I better get used to it, but I will tell you, it’s tough.  It’s hard to stay positive.  You always hear about all these tragedies with comedians and you wonder, “Why?  How could someone with a career of making people laugh and smile be so miserable?”  Well, it’s very clear.  I am not saying I am miserable.  I love doing comedy, my eyes are just slowly being opened to the barrage of stress that is this lifestyle.  So next time you see a comedy show, after the show, go give the comic a hug and tell him or her, “You made my night.  Thank you for doing what you do.”  And then give them $500 in cash.  If you don’t do that last part, you are just rubbing it in their face that you can afford to spend your money on things that aren’t ramen noodles and gatorade.  It’s a sad day when you contemplate becoming a waiter because you are sick of not having any money.  That’s not a rip on waiters.  The world can agree that waiters are grossly underpaid.  I am making a statement about the tragedy of how comics are paid.  Comedians’ pay hasn’t changed in 10 years.  But I guess its that way because people know we will do what we love because we love it, not because of the pay.  I am going to stop complaining now and go find a hooker.

I really think car commercials are getting a little out of hand. Who is gaining valuable information from the insanely ridiculous situations they are putting these cars in?? I speak particularly about the truck ads. Last time I went car shopping, never once did the thought, “I wonder if this car can pull a commercial air liner,” cross my mind. I’ve never said to a salesman, “Yeah, this is a cool car, but if I were driving directly toward a huge I beam swinging toward me on a giant pendulum, could this car stop on a pre-marked safety mark?” or, “I like it, let me ask you this: How does this car handle driving up a 45 degree metal ramp that has thousands of little tiny silver marbles being released from the top of the ramp?”
If you want to sell Johnny Beehner a car, here is what your ad should be: A guy pulls into a parking spot outside of a hotel and gets out of the car and says, “Wow, that was a shitty 15 hour drive. At least I was comfortable and didn’t have any car trouble.” And then he checks into the hotel, takes a huge dump in the bathroom and then falls asleep.

I just saw a  commercial for back to back episodes of a reality show called “Parking Wars.”  Remember that Geico commercial where you think its a commercial for a show about tall people living in a small house?  I would rather watch that than a show about a meter maid.  That’s all I had to say.  I added a couple of shows to the shows page.  Hope to see you out there.

    Well, today is Wednesday.  Yesterday was my good buddy and fellow gentleman, Mike KAuth’s birthday.  I have to be honest when I say that I sat down at the computer a few minutes ago with nothing on my mind at all and that is still the case.  What do you guys want to read about?  … Well, I don’t really know a lot about horse-shoes so instead I will write about what’s on tv.

    Well, I will tell you one thing, I am VERY sick of all this reality tv crap.  I don’t know if I am have already written about this, but it is very obvious to everyone (and this writers strike isn’t helping any) that reality tv is taking over and we are all letting it.  Hell’s Kitchen, Bridezilla, The Girls Next Door, America’s Top Model, it’s all crap.  Yes, kudos to them for succeeding and somehow making it so that a lot of people watch it, but I really feel it is polluting the airwaves.  There is a show on tv, I don’t know what it is called, but it is the equivalent to American Idol, but it is for people that want to be marketers!  Are we serious!??  What the Hell is next, America’s Top Bellboy?  I don’t watch tv anymore.  Sure, every once in a while I will watch the Office if its new, but I haven’t watched tv on purpose in a long time.  I watch 24, Lost, and Heroes.  That’s pretty much it.  I will watch something else if my girlfriend and I are on the couch and she is not letting me molest her.  I have had this discussion with my lady a million times.  You ask anyone in the world and they will agree with you and then totally contradict themselves immediately.  And I mean everyone!  “Oh, I totally know what you mean, I hate reality tv.  It is all garbage… well, except for Survivor/ or Real World/ or Rock of Love/ or blah blah blah.”  It’s all shit.  I don’t know why I even wrote about this.  Who cares.

    Call me a hypocrite, but I have an idea for a show.  I think it’s going to be huge.  We take 6 hidden cameras, we put them in public toilets pointed up…

    Welcome to the twentieth century, everyone!!  We made it.  Alright, well, I am sitting here in my bathrobe next to my girlfriend’s cats’ litterbox.  I know I am clean, but this whole room smells like I did before I got in the shower.  Well, I shouldn’t say that;  I didn’t exactly smell like cat-shit.  Regardless, life is good.  I am still plugging away trying to make this whole stand up comedy career happen.  I am having a blast.  If there is one thing that has been on my mind in recent months, its this:  I love doing comedy and I feel very blessed that my life path has led me to the point where I am making a living doing it.  However, if there is one thing that rains on my parade, and luckily it is VERY rare in my experience, it is being complained to by the other comic.  I don’t mean to complain about complainers, but if I am headlining a gig and it doesn’t pay well (first of all, if you got into comedy for the money, you are retarded) I sure as HELL am not going to bitch about it to the feature who is making, at most, half of what I am making.  I’m just sick of it.   Okay, that was not a good note so start off on.  I apologize.

    I forgot to make a new years resolution so I will do what I do every year when I remember a week late to make a resolution and I will try to think of something that I haven’t already done in the last week…  Wow, not a lot left…. I guess 2008 will be the year I give up farming.

    I am happy to report that the Gentlemen’s Hour is still kicking ass.  This has been an exciting start of the year for us.  Just yesterday, we performed at the nation’s largest sketch festival, the Chicago Sketchfest!  It went great.  We had a blast.  It was very exciting and everyone involved was awesome.  My Second City instructor, Brian Posen, is the director of the whole thing so it was good to see him again after probably almost 6 years. 

    So we all drove out to Chicago together with our main sound and lights man, Matt Tremle.  That was fun.  Then we raced back to Milwaukee for our first of many, many shows to come at the new Alchemist Theatre in Milwaukee.  I guess it’s technically in the Bayview area or something.  That was very fun.  We did an hour of all improv and it went over pretty well.  We will be having those shows every other Sunday.  Usually, it won’t be all improv, but we were very excited to do some live improv as we haven’t done that in a long time in front of a crowd.  Those shows are going to mainly be used to workshop sketch ideas, do stand-up, show new videos, show old video favorites, and of course perform improv.

    Tomorrow I am off on a string of one-nighters for stand up.  I am excited about it.  I do miss my lady when I am out on the road, but aside from that, I really like being on the road.  Yeah, I get bored during the day, but that is sort of good, because it forces me to be productive.  For example, just last week, I was in Davenport, IA.  I was really bored, I hadn’t done anything all day, so at 3:30pm I put on some clothes and went to KFC.  I’m on my way to becoming a great comedian!

    I don’t have a lot more to say.  I just wanted to update the old girl as I can’t really do that much on the road.  I need to use my girlfriend’s computer to update my web-site.  I can update my myspace on the road, but not this site.  Well, I hope everyone is have a great year so far and sticking to your dumb resolutions.  I’m gonna put some pants on and go farm.

    ps.  I miss my hair.

    Well, the year is almost over.  6 days til Christmas, 12 days til 2008.  I am excited for December to be over.  This year has been a great year for me, career-wise, but this month has been disastrous as far as fall-outs and horrible bookings go.  I am doing the best I can to solidify my 2008 bookings, but there is only so much I can do.  I just have to keep a positive attitude.

    My show on Saturday the 15th was one to remember!  I had a lot of friends and a TON of family in the crowd at the Comedy Cafe that show here in Milwaukee.  I had a fantastic set, doing mostly all new material (new to them), and then at the end, I pulled my mom onstage, told her it was time for me to give her her Christmas present, and handed her a pair of scissors.  It was dead silent for about 2 seconds til she realized it was for real and that I was letting her cut my pony tail off.  She had whined about it enough.  She got very excited and after much hemming and hawing, the ponytail was cut off.  She left a little rat-tail, which the crowd thoroughly enjoyed.  I went a couple days looking like a douchebag, and then had a friend clean it up.  I am once again just another short-haired run of the mill everyman.  Its exciting because I can pretend I am Jack Bauer a lot easier now, but I know that in a few days severe depression over the loss of my locks will set in, and the Johnny Beehner you all once knew will be gone for about a year and a half to two years.  Then it should have grown back.  Ha, actually we’ll see.  Is not that my hair was so beautiful, there’s no debate there, its that I was and am very lazy.  That is why I had long hair, that is why I have a beard.  It saves money and time not having to buy haircuts or shave.  Yes, I care about my appearance.  I love looking like Jesus.  Anyway,  if you would like to see a clip from the show where my mom comes up on stage, go to youtube and search for “beehner hair” and it should come up.  If you wanna laugh really hard again after you watch that do a youtube search for “Beehner fake selling tshirts.”

Just a quick note to any Milwaukee people,  I may be on Dave and Carol in the morning on WKLH this coming Friday at either 8am or 9am.  I will not know for sure until Thursday night so stay tuned.  Also, please be sure to come down to the Comedy Cafe on Brady street in downtown Milwaukee if you are around this weekend.  271joke.com  is their website.  Shows thurs-Sat.