Dreams and heart and being proud of the effort

We all have dreams, and, for the most part, we all make at least a token effort over the course of our lives to achieve some of our dreams, Of course so many of us have dreams that we do nothing about, like my own dream to be an astronaut even though I never studied science or math with any seriousness.

But sometimes a dreamer steps up to the plate a knocks one out of the park. Such a dreamer is Stephanie Foley of Calgary. Steph is a pint-sized stand-up comic who dreamed of bringing a comedy festival to Calgary to raise money for a worthwhile cause and make people laugh 'til they peed.

In the summer of 2008, Steph's dream came true when she brought The Comedy Mile to bars and clubs along Calgary's 17th Avenue SW (aka The Red Mile, during hockey season). For the inaugural festival, Steph chose the fight against breast cancer, as worthy a cause as it gets. Dozens of comics performed in ten venues over five nights and raised quite a bit of money (I haven't heard the final total yet).

Being the first year of the festival though, word of mouth from past years wasn't a factor, for good or bad, but they still managed to sell out venues and even had line-ups to get into some. Comedy festivals face an uphill battle in Calgary, for a variety of reasons I won't go into here.

Just to show that she was willing to put her pride where her mouth is, on the closing night of the festival, at Daryl Makk's Comedy Detour on Kit's Pub on 16th Avenue NW, Stephanie had Daryl Makk himself shave her head on stage during her headlining set. It was hilarious and moving at the same time.

Suffice it to say that it was an evening of many laughs and even a few tears as a few friends of the festival took a moment on stage to thank Stephanie for her hard work and talk briefly about how breast cancer had touched their own lives.

But, just as everyone thought the fun was coming to a close and Steph, M.C. Lori Gibbs, club staff Winter Wagner and Steph's volunteers were trying to coerce a last few dollars from the already generous pockets of everyone present, we were humbled by a cowboy named Earl.

Throughout the evening Lori Gibbs had been having good-natured fun from the stage with tall, rugged cowboy/actor Earl at the bar and just when Winter was afraid she was going to be the unplanned-for center of attention in order to raise the donations to a record high for the festival, Earl stepped forward, took off his Stetson and volunteered to have his head shaved if people would pony up enough money to push the donations over Steph's goal for the night. That may not sound too inspiring to some of you who have done the same thing to raise money, but Earl had shoulder-length hair and he was in the middle of a movie shoot so for continuity's sake, his going from long hair to short hair in the middle of filming a scene over the course of a week was probably going to result in wasted footage and needed reshoots. In other words, Earl could be fired for his 'stunt'. In addition to this one movie, he was due to start another the following week, hired on the basis of his rugged western period look. Shaved heads belonged to the criminally insane in the wild wild west, not the cowhands.

So, what happened? Well, the place went nuts and there was a mad scramble to pull out wallets and raid the ATM so that Earl's gesture wouldn't go unappreciated. The money was raised and the head was shaved. I haven't heard whether Earl did indeed lose his jobs, but I'm not likely to forget his huge gesture. His baby son would be proud of him.

This is the stuff of festival legends and Stephanie and her volunteers raised the bar high for themselves for The Comedy Mile 2009. It was a blast, and to see a few of the photos, check out my album on Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=153651&l=8e1ba&id=888615220.

May you find the stuff of your dreams manifested in your everyday life.

Cheers,

Tim.
Author of Stand Up & Succeed
www.StandUpAndSucceed.com