Gentle Reader,

Our final show is upon us.  I'm going to live blog the performance.  It will be just like my live-blogging of the tsunami only not as funny.  Here's the premise:

1. I convinced the owners of the Improv Olympic West in Hollywood to give me a private 1/2 hour show by employing my usual, "Conan or Bust is coming into town and your club needs us" approach.  When asked how many people I could get, I told them 75.  Then, I set about the process of getting 75 people to attend a show -- I was a little nervous since I couldn't even round up 75 people to check out the webite (I'm looking at you, Jean Lacy Harte).

2. Strategy: I placed an ad on craigslist for a free comedy show.  Zero bites.

3. Strategy II: I placed an ad for actors on craigslist. I told them it was for a punk'd-style reality show.  We were doing a screen test at the IO theater -- there were hidden cameras set up and we would gauge their ability to "react" to a comedy show.  Me?  I'm Rob Mccaul, a writer for Leno.  I'm purporting to be Joe Piccirillo, a comedian trying to land a job on Conan.  I even have a website, conanorbust.com, which is fake.  Conan producers will be in the audience and the joke is that "Hey, I can write just as well as a conan writer."  100 actors showed up.

Here we go, live blogging:

9:35 AM: woke up.  Checked CNN.com to see if we were on the homepage. 

9:37 AM: fell back asleep.

12:01 PM: woke up.  Followed Charlie Sheen's twitter feed.

3:15 PM: suffer brain hemorrhage after watching twenty minutes of Yo Gabba Gabba featuring a cameo by singing/dancing fat machine Jack Black.

3:45 - 3:46: practice for tonight's set. 

3:47 - 4:25: make and eat a turkey and swiss sandwich.

6:15 PM: Arrive at the meeting spot I gave the actors: Knickerbocker hotel in Hollywood.

6:16 PM: discover that it's not a hotel but a retirement community.  At least Torio will have somewhere to go afterwards.

6:20 PM: reunite with Torio.  We caught up on his latest adventures wth his job search and diabetes.

6:25 PM: I deliver my "Rob Mccaul" speech to the actors to thunderous applause (after I locked Torio in a newspaper kiosk)

6:35 PM: Actor cornered me and is asking questions about working for Leno.  He is believing everything I say even though it's clearly wrong.

7:04 PM: talking with other comics about the devastation in Japan and the aftermath of the radiation poisoning and also how no one predicted Ice T's successful foray into acting.

7:15 PM: race to set up the stage.  Shouldn't have spent 10 minutes loading and watching the trailer for Hop.

7:30 PM: show begins.  Torio tells me he is going to do new jokes.  Improv people chant/dry hump behind us.

7:33 PM: torio does a great job with his set.  Ahmed Baroocha is next.

7:40 PM: Ahmed does well.  My turn.

7:50 PM: Reveal the celebrities I promised: a cardboard cutout of the cast of Mighty Ducks 3.  Audience boos.

7:51 PM: Ask audience if they are booing me or the movie Might Ducks 3.  Audience throws things.

8:15 PM: Successful show.  Stepped on time of Improv group.  Told them to imagine I didn't do that and not to negate what I said -- a classic rule of improv comedy.

10:15 PM: Reward myself with a celebratory episode of Law and Order: SVU.  They put the sexy back in sex crimes.

11:02 PM: Check the site to see how many hits we have: 2.

11:03 PM: Realized that I was looking at the number of hits for the previous day.  Updated the system for today's date: 0 hits.