Modified On December 30, 2006
This year’s San Francisco International Comedy Competition winner, Jay Wendell Walker sent us the following:
Can’t thank you enough for all press you have given me. But I am starting to feel like an ambassador for senior citizens. There will always be people who say your too old or too young or from the wrong part of the country. It is kind of fun proving them wrong! Thank God there are people like Jon and Anne Fox who give us a chance to do it. I don’t think they get as much credit as they should. A lot of great talent came out of their contest over the past 31 years. I watched Jon for six nights a week for three weeks. I was impressed with his love of the business, the respect and support he gave every comic and how hard he worked to make sure the contest was fair, honest and a learning experience for all of us. So, for every person who says you can’t, there are people like Jon who says you can.
Wishing both of you a Happy New Year,
Jay Wendell Walker
Thanks, Jay. And, as for the senior citizen thing, we hope that every time we mentioned your age, we also mentioned the amount of experience that you have acquired. That’s the impressive thing to us. We’re dumbfounded by the lack of respect that experience commands in the business. And we’re doubly perplexed by the premium placed on youth– which, with few exceptions, necessarily indicates an utter lack of experience. (Trust us, if your or someone your age won the SFICC after only having done standup for two years, we would have made far less of a deal about the victory.)