Sebastian Maniscalco

I remember one night it was dead at the comedy store.

A comedian who has passed away since his name is Freddie Soto went up on stage and it was like, I don't know, 13 people.

And Mark Anthony walked in with his group, saw Freddy Soto, and from that night brought Freddy Soto on the road to open up for him.

So it's like you take a night off in this business, you never know what the hell you're missing.

So that's the mentality I had, you know, kind of navigating the comedy scene in Los Angeles in the late 90s, early 2000s.

And then, you know, 2005, it kind of started making a living, you know, $1,000 a week or what have you.

Tell me about the bowling alleys.

So the bowling alleys, this was in Manteca, California.

Again, a lot of people that have a comedy, oh, we're going to do a comedy night.

They just think they could throw it up wherever the hell, you know, the comedy's going to work everywhere.

which not necessarily is the case.

You need lighting, you need stage, you need like- Not bowling pins crashing in your- Yeah, well this was a double whammy.

This was, I performed in a boxing ring with a bowling alley behind me.

So it was like the fact that we were in a boxing ring with fresh blood from the night before on it, and then behind me someone's picking up a spare.

But, you know, that's how you, just like anything else, you know, you've got to work your way up to the better rooms.

But probably not going to open for Mark Anthony from there.

No, no, no, no.

Those opportunities were, I remember it was $100 they were giving us, and they give you an hour worth of time to do, because locally you only get 15 minutes.

It's hard to work an act out for 15 minutes.

You know, you need a good hour to kind of play around.