We just finalized our travel arrangements for next month’s trip to Vegas for the World Series of Comedy. It’s going on September 20-25 and it’s the brainchild of comedian Joe Lowers. It’s the second time he’s done a WSOC (the first time, he did it in his home market of Pittsburgh), and this time, he’s promising to hand out 30 weeks of feature work to the winners. (From our calculations, upon observing the front page of the WSOC website, it looks like he’s got 32 clubs promising 75 weeks of work!)

We’ll be in attendance as Exalted Ones. Not quite sure what our capacity will be. We’ll be kinda like Jimmy Carter observing the elections in Nicaragua. We’ll be at the Alexis for nearly the entire affair (after arriving late on the 20th). There’ll be a golf tourney, a poker tourney, a headshot session, so-called “breakfast roundtables” for bookers and agents and meet-and-greets where the bookers and agents are forced to reckon with the comics in attendance… which will probably be far less excruciating than the bookers and owners think it will be. And, of course, a ton of shows to determine the winner– out of 101 comedians selected to compete. (There will even be a show for “Registered Comics”– comedians who are in attendance, but were not selected as one of the lucky 101.)

If we understand it correctly– if we really “get it”– it’s a great idea.

Who pays any attention to feature acts? Who pays any attention to aspiring feature acts? Nobody, that’s who. Oh, sure, everyone goes gaga over the closers, the headliners, the marquee players– they have festivals in far-off exotic locales and industry fatcats and agents and managers flock to them and the floor is slick with slobber and deals get made and whatnot.

So… why not have a bunch of acts who are hungry for work (and, God knows there are a ton of them) come out to the desert and show their stuff (in a lengthy contest format) and hang out with club owners and bookers and agents and maybe come away with a full calendar? Sounds like something The Industry should have been doing all along.  Although, with such innovations as YouTube and Facebook and email and DVD’s, you’d think that gatherings such as this one would be obsolete.  It’s kinda retro, in a way.  People getting out of the office, flying to Vegas and actually eyeballing comics in a club setting for the purpose of assessing their talent.  How 1984!  Maybe it’s the wave of the future.  With the emergence of Southwest Airlines, has it ever been cheaper to actually get off your ass and actually prospect for talent, Mr. Booker Person?  The colleges do it.  It’s been their modus operandi for as long as anyone can remember.

The  club owners and bookers (primarily from the heartland of America) and comedy clinics and seminars will afford everyone plenty of opportunity for… “bonding.”

We organized something similar back in 2001. Only without the shows… or the agents… or the bookers… or the seminars… or the golf or poker. (We basically just told comics to come to the desert for three days and eat and drink and eat and drink some more and just celebrate the fact that they are/were standup comics. We ended up with about 135 or 150 people at the Union Plaza in Glitter Gulch and everybody had a swell time.) This should be similar… only with the added pressure of a competition. And a bunch of agents and bookers and club owners. Come to think of it, it won’t be similar at all.

But it will probably be fun. And, if  the quality of the acts is anywhere near decent, it will probably happen again next year. (Like we said, this is the second time.  Why such a gap between WSOC’s?  Between that one and this one, Lowers moved from PGH to LAS.)

We assume the first one was a success, otherwise, how could Lowers have convinced all these clubs to give up a week or two or three for his crazy scheme?

We hope there’s another one.  It’s probably good for the business.  Had there been something like this when we were featuring, we would have been all over it.  Stay tuned.