This contest was pretty awesome for a number of reasons so I thought I’d make a blog entry to give the visitors to the site a little idea on why.
At the time of this writing (June 22nd, 2007) its the morning after I lost in the semi-finals of the contest. I was out of the top 5 by 1 vote, but I’m really not bitter at all.
This contest got a lot of publicity which came out of nowhere really. There’s all sorts of contests that come and go in the local DC area and as local comedians, we mainly compete in them just to get out and do it for a crowd. To get publicity is icing on the cake – unexpected icing at that.
Washington Post
Thanks to this contest, I was finally able to get my name in the paper again after 5 years. The first time I got my name in the paper was in UMBC’s Retriever school newspaper when I ranked 3rd in the Funniest person at UMBC contest back in 2002 (The first time I did stand-up). This time around, I got mentioned or was featured in the Washington Post in multiple articles including
Rachel Beckman’s “Who Will Be Crowned D.C.’s Funniest Fed?:Government Workers Yuk It Up in Contest” and Dan Zak’s “Seriously Funny.”
The “Seriously Funny” article also had clips of our sets with a poll set up where people voted on their favorite comic and I’ve been in the lead for a while so that was pretty cool.
Voice of America
Also, the “Seriously Funny” article led to an interview with me and Voice of America when Avi Arditti, the feature editor of VOA Special English, came across it.
That was another great opportunity to talk a little about myself and stand up and a few other things.
Kaiser Permanente’s funnyfed.com
And one more good thing about this contest, it was sponsored by Kaiser Permanente who set up another website called funnyfeds.com. And this nice, simple, well-designed site had some clips of our routines (like the Washington Post) so that was another vehicle for us comedians who were finalists to get ourselves out there more.
So all in all, thank you to the Funniest Fed contest and Naomi Johnson its organizer. I had a great time and am glad I was able to participate.
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