Hello everyone,

Next week I’m heading to London for the first time to perform two weeks of my show, “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” at the Soho Theater. London is a city I’ve somewhat avoided performing in for a long time. I mean, I’ve also avoided Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, but with those I have the language excuse.

The problem is that I’ve always felt like things MIGHT go well with London and me. London’s always been that co-worker I feel I might marry if the circumstances were right. But if the date goes badly, it’ll be awkward at work for the rest of time, so it’s probably not worth asking her out.

Over the years I’ve met and admired a whole bunch of British comics: among them Eddie Izzard, Jimmy Carr, Daniel Kitson, John Oliver, and Tim Minchin. I even emailed with Eddie the other day, who asked me what would be a good clip on YouTube to introduce his Twitter followers to my comedy. This sent me into a tailspin. I started going through all these clips on YouTube and saying to myself, “That’s not good enough. And that’s too dumb. And I have a double chin in that one.” It was like I couldn’t decide on my online dating profile photo, because this might be the one!

So I decided on this one:

It’s a collection of talk show clips from my last one-man show, Sleepwalk With Me. The more I started thinking about it, the more I started thinking that the best way for UK audiences to be introduced to me is if they downloaded the Sleepwalk With Me LIVE album on iTunes or Spotify or whatever Internet music site they use in England.

And then I thought, why don’t I give a free copy of that album to every audience member who comes to my first two nights in London?

So that’s what I’m doing.

So now, every single audience member who comes to the Tuesday and Wednesday shows next week in London, May 15th and 16th, will get a free, signed copy of my Sleepwalk with me Live CD. And they will be responsible for ripping it to the their computers, and handing it to another British person, who they will encourage to see my show.

So if you’re reading this and you live in the UK. Perfect. If you don’t live in this UK, forward this to your British friend. You know that guy who has a British accent and is slightly more intelligent than you? That’s him. Now tell him about this.

If no one comes to my shows there, I may never return. If they do, maybe I’ll move there, like Madonna.

All my love,

Mike Birbiglia

UPCOMING TOUR DATES

May 15-26       London Get Tickets Now!

June 12-16      Chicago    Get Tickets Now!

Dear Journal,

I’m sitting on a flight from California to Chicago. Just went through the “that’s gotta be way too much radiation” machine at security. You’ve got that friendly choice at the airport these days of “so much radiation your future children will be mutants” or “We’re gonna go ahead and grab your wife’s boobs.” So while I opted for teenage mutant ninja children, I watched as the guard felt my wife up, and I couldn’t help but think, “I don’t think I’m even allowed to do that.”

Here’s Joe Bags and I standing under a drive-through tree last week. It collapsed right after we left.

So now I’m in my seat next to a woman with a peanut allergy. Now, I’m all for accommodating nut allergies, but when she pointed out that there couldn’t be nuts “in the air,“ I became concerned.  With my mouth full of chicken salad on walnut raisin bread I asked her, “Duv dis’ qualify?” She nodded unapologetically, so I proceeded to the bathroom to finish my sandwich. I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten a chicken salad sandwich in an airplane bathroom, but it’s not ideal.  It made me think I might have an “eating a sandwich in an enclosed fecal airspace” allergy.

So now I’m back at my seat and I’m also a little antsy because there’s no internet – which means I can’t tweet. I’m a bit addicted to Twitter. I now speak in Twitter. I no longer laugh. I only whisper under my breath, “RT.” And I think it might be a little annoying for my wife. Actually, I know it is. The problem is she told me – which is actually the least effective way of getting in touch with me. Twitter is fastest, followed by texting, and then email.

Things got worse with my Twitter addiction this week because I finally caved into societal pressure and got an iPhone. I was the last of my friends to have a flip phone. When I bought my last flip phone they didn’t even have one on display. They had to get it from the back and when they brought it out they held it low behind the counter so they wouldn’t embarrass me. Then they wrapped it in a plain brown box with the words “Extra Small Condoms” written on it. They did not want to embarrass me.

So I called my brother Joe Bags and asked him if he could order me an iPhone. Joe Bags is the kind of brother who can always find a deal, and he LOVES the iPhone.  He found an online store that would save us $150 on a new one. “What’s the catch?” I asked. “Don’t ask so many questions,” said Joe.

A week later the phone arrives. It’s fresh. It’s new. I call Verizon to activate it and when I give them the ID number on the phone, the woman explains that the phone I’m holding has been reported “lost or stolen.”

When I explain that it was in the original packaging, I think she even laughed a little. Fortunately, Joe got me a refund from Sergi, the shady online seller. I just had to box up my iPhone and send it back, which I did.

Well, it turns out I didn’t exactly send back the nice new ear buds that came with the new, stolen phone. I kept those and sent back my old, yellowed, earwax-encrusted ear buds. Apparently Sergei was not amused, because Joe called me up, scared out of his mind, and said, “What are you, trying to get me killed?” I just thought since the seller had stolen the phone in the first place, he wasn’t going to sweat the details. That’s like robbing a bank and then going back for the lollipop.

I said to Joe, “Why don’t you have him steal some new ear buds since that seems to be one of his hobbies?”

The next day, we bought a new iPhone – for the full gouging price. Except this time I couldn’t get my mobile phone company on the phone. They had, quote, “larger than usual wait times.” So I tried again the next day, activated the phone, downloaded the Twitter app, and the first things I tweeted was “Verizon has been having ‘longer than usual wait times for the last 10 years. Congratulations Verizon!” I got 75 re-tweets, as well as a personal message from a Verizon customer care representative.

And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.

-Mike

This week, some Northeastern Tour Dates, then London and Chicago!

MAY

2 Albany, NY Get Tickets!

3 Stamford, CT Get Tickets!

4 Hartford, CT Get Tickets!

5 Northampton, MA – Get Tickets!

15-26 London, UK – Get Tickets!

JUNE

12-16  Chicago, IL – Get Tickets!

Dear Journal,

I just got back from a trip to Idaho Falls and Boise, which are the two towns in Idaho with the people.

The tour has been a whirlwind. I’ve been to 20 cities and sometimes I’m not even in a town for 2 hours when I walk on stage – and that can create problems.  Let me preface this by saying that the stories I tell on stage are true – but sometimes I’m in a jam and I have to say something nice about the town so it doesn’t seem like I showed up 2 hours ago. So before I walked on stage in Boise I asked my producer Mike Lavoie, “What’d you do in town today?”

And he said, “I went to this great breakfast place called Goldy’s. They told me the wait would be an hour but it only took twenty minutes.”

And I said, “That is a cocky restaurant. Pull it back, Goldy’s.”

And then he laughed. And then I walked on stage and said, “This morning I went to Goldy’s and they said it was an hour wait, but it was really only twenty minutes.” Then I did the punchline part. And it got laughs. It was as though as I had gone to Goldy’s! It was like time travel.

Here’s where it gets bad. The next morning I wake up in Boise and I ask for directions at the front desk to Goldy’s and the hotel clerk says, “I thought you ate there yesterday?”

And I said, “This is a pretty small town, huh? I’m used to lying in much larger cities. This town tracks its liars very closely.” Even as I say this, I’m lying about how witty I was in that moment. I was not witty. I was groggy. I hadn’t even drank my Goldy’s coffee yet – which I may or may not have drank eventually.

The truth is I don’t remember half of what happens on tour because it happens so fast – which is why I’ve been taking a lot of photos lately. After my shows, I take photos with everyone who wants one, and a lot of people who didn’t know they wanted one, but they see me there, and they see other people getting pictures, and they realize that everything in their pocket also happens to be a camera.

And who wouldn’t want a photo of themselves with an exhausted man in a sweaty shirt? Those aren’t my words, by the way. That’s what people say when they post these photos on Facebook and open it up to the world for questions and comments. People write nice things like, “Mike Birbiglia looks SO TIRED!!!”

And I’m like, “Thanks everybody! I was actually just on stage for 90 minutes mimicking a carnival ride while you guys sat in your seats eating Snow Caps and getting mentally prepared for your photo session.” And no one feels like they have to Photoshop ME. They look great in their photos. Their part of the photo is cropped and has the red-eye taken out. My side of the photo looks like the ‘before’ picture in a diet pill ad, except there’s no black bar across my eyes.

So next week in Santa Rosa and Arcata and Effingham I’m taking matters into my own hands. I’m bringing my own camera crew to make sure I capture some of what’s happening and then I am going to edit that video myself. Truthfully, I’m excited about shooting the tour, because a lot of times I don’t know which things will end up being funny later on. A few years ago, after I jumped out of a motel window in Walla Walla while sleepwalking, I remember thinking, “Well, that’s just between me and the motel clerk and the emergency room doctor.” But a few months later I thought, “Actually this might be pretty funny if I told everybody.”

And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.
-mike

Tour Dates!

April

• 13: Denison University Students Only
• 20: Santa Rosa, CA Get Tickets!
• 22: Arcata, CA Get Tickets!
• 26: Effingham, IL Get Tickets!
• 27: Wabash, IN Get Tickets!
• 28: Indianapolis, IN Get Tickets!
• 29: Cleveland, OH Get Tickets!

May

• 1: Wheelock College Students Only
• 2: Albany, NY Get Tickets!
• 3: Stamford, CT Get Tickets!
• 4: Hartford, CT Get Tickets!
• 5: Northampton, MA – Get Tickets!
• 15-26: London, UK – Get Tickets!

Hey friends!

I am currently touring my one man show “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.” The show ran at the Barrow Street Theater in New York City for almost 5 months and won the Lucille Lortel award for outstanding off-Broadway solo show in 2011. I’m touring it as we speak to 11 more cities (listed below) and then announcing 20 more Fall cities soon, so don’t get mad at me if your city isn’t listed yet. I will get there!

Also, make a note- I’m doing the show for two weeks in LONDON- so it would be the perfect time to make that trip to London you keep talking about or calling that friend in London you keep avoiding. Here is a link to a video we made of the tour and me talking about the tour on TV.

You may or may not live in one of these 11 cities, but if you know someone who lives near one of these places, please forward this email to that person! I’m counting on you. If you don’t forward this, I will have to count on my mom to forward it to the rest of America and her address book is very small and includes XRXRzebo@monkeys.tv.

love
mike

April

• 20: Santa Rosa, CA Get Tickets!
• 22: Arcata, CA Get Tickets!
• 26: Effingham, IL Get Tickets!
• 27: Wabash, IN Get Tickets!
• 28 Indianapolis, IN Get Tickets!
• 29: Cleveland, OH Get Tickets!

May

• 2: Albany, NY Get Tickets!
• 3: Stamford, CT Get Tickets!
• 4: Hartford, CT Get Tickets!
• 5: Northampton, MA – Get Tickets!
• 15-26: London, UK – Get Tickets!

Dear Journal,

I’m on a plane from the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas to my shows in Idaho. I’ve been flying so much lately that I’m starting to recognize the flight attendants. I’m like, “Oh good, it’s Martha. I wonder if her daughter got that book report finished!” There’s a guy sitting next to me talking loudly on his cell phone about how the lead singer of a very famous band jumped off stage during the festival and tried to “strangle him with the microphone cord.” As I hear him  tell this story three times, I look around for any strangulation-length microphone cord. No luck. A lot of people with cell phones seem to think that their heads are surrounded by some  sort of soundproof box. When I run for President, I’m going to run strictly on a cell phone etiquette platform. I’m going to put people like cell phone offenders in prison. And not for just a few years, either. I’ll lock them up for unlimited minutes, and I won’t let them free on nights and weekends.

As I’m writing this, the pilot is making his standard joke about, “If you’re not flying to Boise, Idaho, I have some bad news for you.” Pilots love this joke; they have no idea that it’s the hackiest pilot joke. No offense, pilots, but we’re laughing because you’re the guy in charge of the 90-ton steel tube that’s we’ll be flying in seven miles above the Earth. We want you to feel good about yourself. We want you to think, “Those laughing people seem so nice, I would never want to fly them into the side of a mountain!”

This week has been a bit overwhelming at the festival. I showed my film “Sleepwalk With Me” and saw some bands. The strange thing about “South by Southwest” is that there are just too many bands. There are literally twenty four HUNDRED. You’ll be walking down the street and there’s a band playing next to another band. This morning I woke up to find a band playing in the mini fridge in my hotel. And that was a good slot! They were psyched to be there. The lead singer thanked me for coming out, and handed me a $9 Fresca.

I’m sitting here on the plane and I have the choice of 100 different TV channels live.  I’m watching a “VH1 Behind The Music” on a man named “Pitbull.” I don’t really know who that is, so at first I’m confused. I think, maybe they’re making Behind The Music about everyone who listens to music, and it was Pitbull’s turn. But then I saw that Pitbull was given the key to the city of Miami. Now, unless Pitbull is Will Smith’s nickname, they’re making too many dupes of those keys.

I flip the channel from Pitbull to “Jersey Shore.” I have to admit, I like watching it. But I’m not like other people. I watch “Jersey Shore” for the cinematography and the subtitles. Joy Behar was upset about how “Jersey Shore” represents Italian-Americans. I’m thinking, How about just…Americans?

I change the channel to the station that’s just a map of the United States. Love this show. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure of which one Idaho is. I’m confident the pilot will know. If not, I’ll just keep laughing at his jokes til we get there.

And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.

Hello friends.

This week my brother Joe Bags joins me for what he calls the “mid-Atlantic” leg of my 2012 tour.  Joe’s not so good with the catchy tour leg naming, but he’s really good at driving the van. He calls it the “getaway vehicle for escaping his family.”

This week we’re bringing my show to Wilmington, Delaware, York, Pennsylvania, and then on to Morristown and Red Bank, New Jersey.

This has been the most exciting tour I’ve ever done. We bring my entire “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” off-Broadway show from New York, the set, the lighting, the same pair of sneakers- and we bring it right to your town.

After every show I come out and take photos with people and sign stuff- not just stuff you buy- but ANYTHING. I’ve signed whiffle balls, baseballs, ticket stubs, Sun Chips, laptops, iPhones, wet garbage, guitars, Abraham Lincoln posters, stuffed bears, real bears, oatmeal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, aviator sunglasses, legs, arms, college term papers, and gay cats.

See you out there, mid-Atlantic!

Your friend,
Mike

In case you missed it, here’s my recent appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman

All My Flame-Broiled 2012 Tour Dates

March

8: Wilmington, DE Get Tickets!
9: York, PA Get Tickets!
10: Morristown, NJ Get Tickets!
11: Red Bank, NJ Get Tickets!
13-16: Austin, TX SLEEPWALK WITH ME Screenings at SXSW!
21: Idaho Falls, ID Get Tickets!
23: Boise, ID Get Tickets!

April

20: Santa Rosa, CA Get Tickets!
22: Arcata, CA Get Tickets!
26: Effingham, IL Get Tickets!
27: Wabash, IN Get Tickets!
28: Indianapolis, IN Get Tickets!
29: Cleveland, OH Get Tickets!

May

2: Albany, NY Get Tickets!
3: Stamford, CT Get Tickets!
4: Hartford, CT Get Tickets!
5: Northampton, MA Get Tickets!

Dear Journal,

Today is Valentine’s Day, a holiday invented by a man who was really secure in his own relationship but knew that if he could put other men’s relationships in jeopardy, he could really make some cash.  He thought, “We’ll make it seem like if you don’t celebrate this fake holiday, you don’t LOVE your girlfriend. We’ll brand the whole thing with doilies, the color red, a fat angel.” It was that same guy who decided that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and then decided that a man’s best friend is a schnauzer. And this scheming man who invented Valentine’s knew men’s Achilles heel – it’s women. Incidentally, women are also our rib. So anyway, this crazy marketing genius knew that women are our rib and our heel. And the reason women are men’s Achilles heel is that they sometimes make us fall uncontrollably in love- and love makes people do crazy things like kill people and shop at Crate and Barrel.

I remember the first time I met my wife Jenny. She had hired my friend Greg Warren to perform at a wrestling event in St. Louis. From the moment I met Jenny I knew I wanted to sleep with her at least once. Stay with me. I mean that in a very meaningful way. I had just come off of a really difficult breakup with my college sweetheart where we thought we were going to get married and then we weren’t.  And when we weren’t I was so heartbroken that I kind of swore off the idea of marriage or even living with someone entirely. I decided, AS A RULE, I am not going to get married until I was sure that nothing else good could happen in my life. Which logically that made sense, because I never looked at my parents’ marriage or really anyone who had been married more than 30 years and thought, “I gotta get me some of that!” I really wanted to sleep with Jenny. I didn’t think this was going to happen. I don’t have that kind of confidence.  I think of myself as sort of a “sex maybe,” which is to say that if I’m seeing a girl she’ll think, “I’d have sex with him….maybe.” And I’m not ashamed of that.  I mean there were periods of my life where I was a “sex never,” or a “sex with self always.” And often. Surprisingly often.

I really wanted to Jenny to come out with us that night in St. Louis because we were going to one of those famous Irish pubs where no one can hear anyone speak, so I thought this would be perfect. But it took so much convincing on Greg’s part to get her to come out that by the time she came out she thought she was on a date with him, and you know, which wasn’t the idea.  So I had to kind shoo him out the door of the bar quite and bit, and it was cold.  I felt a little bad, but then eventually she realized that she was on a date with me…and she was not happy about that. But she kind of warmed to me by the end of the night. We were really hitting it off. And then we shared a cab back to their hotel and I walked her to her room and I built up the courage to lean in to kiss her and she said, “Oh, no thank you.” Which I thought was polite, but disappointing. But she agrees to come out with me in New York. We were both living in New York. And so I took her out to dinner at a restaurant that I couldn’t afford to show her how much money I could put on my credit card. So we’re out at dinner and Jenny says to me, she goes, “Everyone hates me at work.” And I said, “Why would they hate you? I LOVE you.” She goes, “You love me?” I go, “I mean, you seem cool.” I pulled it back. I didn’t want to show all my cards…just about nine of them.

Eventually, Jenny told me she loved me too- though I’m pretty sure it was a long time. And now I live in constant fear of birthdays, anniversaries, and yes- Valentine’s Day. But I have one ace in the hole-which is that I wrote a show called “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend”- which is a love letter to my wife- an examination of why someone who completely didn’t believe in the idea of marriage- got married. And if you’re a guy who wants to show your girlfriend that you understand her and that you love her- you should get her tickets to my show. And if you don’t, it will clearly indicate that you DON’T love her and that you DON’T understand her. Sorry about that, guys. Look like I might be the fat angel.

And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.

Tour dates!

February

• 13: Minneapolis, MN SOLD OUT!
• 17: NYC APPEARING ON THE LETTERMAN SHOW!
• 18: Kalamazoo, MI On Sale Now!
• 19: Lansing, MI On Sale Now!

March

• 8: Wilmington, DE On Sale Now!
• 9: York, PA On Sale Now!
• 10: Morristown, NJ On Sale Now!
• 11: Red Bank, NJ On Sale Now!
• 22: Idaho Falls, ID On Sale Now!
• 23: Boise, ID On Sale Now!

April

• 20: Santa Rosa, CA On Sale Now!
• 22: Arcata, CA On Sale Now!
• 26: Effingham, IL On Sale Now!
• 27: Wabash, IN On Sale Now!
• 28 Indianapolis, IN On Sale Now!
• 29: Cleveland, OH On Sale Now!

May

• 4: Hartford, CT On Sale Now!
• 5: Northampton, MA – On Sale Now!

Dear Journal,

I’m on a plane home from Utah on Delta’s special “seats smaller than Americans” flight. This week I went to the Sundance film festival with my brother Joe and sister Patti, the Birbiglia-hillbillies. They like to tag along to whatever trip or shared condo situation they can lock into.

My brother Joe and I are like the Manning brothers. I’m Peyton and Eli, and he’s that brother who doesn’t play football. Joe got me to go skiing this week. He said, “Let’s go skiing! It’s only 96 dollars a ticket. Two please.” So we went skiing, which is really not my forte.

My forte, in case you’re wondering, is watching American Idol while sucking on peanut M&Ms until they’re just the peanut in my mouth. Then I chew the peanut. Then I take a nap.

My favorite part of skiing is those boots. I enjoy the feeling of walking with my feet in two bear traps, without all that messy blood. Once I get those bear traps strapped down and I stop crying, I’m ready to attach those two sharp leg spears and hit the slopes!

The most painful part of skiing with my brother Joe is that he’s actually better at it than me – which really burns me to the core. When I watch him smoothly link turns together, all I can think is, “This is the same guy who wore a bathing suit in the shower until he was 14 years old?” Then I try to think of some way to publicly humiliate him.

So Joe and I get to the top of the mountain. And I follow him down a steep mogul trail. Joe told me to keep my shoulders pointed down the mountain. Apparently he has a life insurance policy on me that’s pretty good and he knew that if I were killed instantly there would be much less paperwork.

So I followed Joe’s form and I was pleased to make it down the moguls. And I’m feeling pretty good about myself, just speeding through the flatter part of the trail. And that’s when it hits me. The trail, that is, hits me…in the face. And then I hear laughing, and then I hear my brother taking pictures with his camera.

And I feel a shooting pain in my right shoulder, the same shoulder I had fallen on in a New York City subway last year – the shoulder that I had spent months rehabbing with a physical therapist. And I’m trying to remember exactly what my physical therapist had told me about skiing…oh yes, she told me never to do it.

And all I can think is, I need a hot tub – I need to be sitting in water that is hot and salty enough to be a very salty soup. So I get into the hotel hot tub – and nothing can go wrong in a hot tub. You can do things rappers do – like drink champagne…and verbally degrade women. The only thing you can’t do in a hot tub, I learned, is have your cell phone in your pocket. I mean, you can do it, but your cell phone is really not cool with it. There’s no amount of any-tub minutes that will bring your phone back from 400 degrees of water being sprayed at 75 miles per hour. If you think sperm can’t live in a hot tub, you should see how poorly a Motorola Flip 4000 does. When I got out of the hot tub, I tried to turn my phone on and it literally started laughing.  Also, my brother Joe was laughing.

But the festival was great. I got to show my film four times. At night I would go back to our Birbiglia-hillbillies condo and we would all watch Showbiz Tonight’s coverage of Sundance-which was very different from the Mike Birbiglia-experience of Sundance. Showbiz Tonight had party footage of Richard Gere and Robert Redford, but all I could recall from our party was watching my brother Joe fill his backpack with chicken wings wrapped in cocktail napkins. On my final night there, our film was awarded a prestigious audience award, which was a complete shock. I had no speech prepared. So I went on stage and stuttered for 3 minutes – it kind of sounded like me skiing.

So here I am sitting on Delta’s flight for 1970s-sized people. I’m landing in 2 hours, spending 9 hours with my wife and cat and then hitting the road for Greenville, Durham, and Louisville. I’ve asked Joe to come along on this trip, because I’m interested in having him watch me do some things he can’t. Like win the Super Bowl. And that concludes this week’s entry in my secret public journal.

Dear friends from the Internet,

Greetings from the Sundance Film Festival!

The past seven days have been a whirlwind. Last Friday I kicked off “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” tour in Salt Lake City with a sold-out show, and then on Monday I watched my film “Sleepwalk With Me” premiere here in Park City. It went great, and people seem to really like it. There’s some cool stuff online, here and here and here.

You can even view a sneak peak of the movie here and say that you want the movie to come to your town. If you say it, we will pass on the word to people who make decisions in American entertainment.

Right now I’m getting ready for more 2012 tour dates, with shows next week in Greenville, SC, Durham, and Louisville. We’ve rented a tour bus, and my brother Joe has agreed to come along and drink all of my Diet Coke and blueberry muffins backstage. I’ll see you there, the south.

love-

Mike B

And now, an entry from my secret public journal:

No person’s feelings or glasses were hurt while taking this photo.

Dear Journal,

I know it’s been quite a while for us. I’m sorry I haven’t called. Or written. Or really stayed in touch at all. The only way that you could have even known I was alive was that I was occasionally updating my twitter account while drinking. Remember when I worked on the trending topic #booksyoucaneat with titles that included, “A Tale of Two Zitis,” “A million little pizzas” “Don Chipotle,” and “He’s just not into that into Stew?”

The reason I’ve been out of touch, Journal, is that I’ve spent the past 6 months directing a movie. I know what you’re thinking, “Since when does Mike Birbiglia direct movies? He wouldn’t know how to make a sandwich if you handed him sandwich meat and bread and condiments and then forced his hands to do a sandwich-making motion.”

It’s actually not the first time I’ve attempted to make a film. When I was in college I studied screenwriting and decided I would take all the money I earned waiting tables and direct a short film called “Extras.” No, not the wildly successful HBO series that came out 12 years later. Mine was the one that came before that and was much less good and much less…done. As a matter of fact, I never finished it at all because I went into so much debt that I gave up on it entirely and really the idea of making movies at all.

So I pursued standup comedy instead, because even though I was broke, I didn’t have to pay someone to let me do it.

But last year I met up with a company called Bedrocket that agreed to make an independent film adaptation of my one-man show, “Sleepwalk with Me.” It became apparent that I might even be able to finish it – and Ira Glass agreed to produce it! So 6 months ago, I started casting. We got all these great actors: Carol Kane, Lauren Ambrose, James Rebhorn, Wyatt Cenac, and my friends Marc Maron and Henry Phillips. And we shot this film. We shot crazy hours. One week our call time each day was 2 am. So I was waking up at 1 am, working all day, and then going to bed at 5 pm. We were making a movie about sleep deprivation while being sleep deprived, which is crazy. I’m pretty sure when they were making the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they didn’t ask their actors to actually live in Texas. That would be insane.

Making the film took every waking minute of my life, and even some of my non-waking minutes.  Often, after a 15-hour day of directing myself acting as myself playing myself, I would go to sleep and  dream that I was still doing this. And as a sleepwalker, I would act this stuff out in my bedroom. And when my wife Jenny tried to wake me up, I would say things  like, “You’re standing in my light” or, “We’re filming. Can’t you see we’re filming?” And Jenny would say “We’re not filming” And I’d say, “Yes we are. I’m sorry, but we are.”

Even when we wrapped the film and we were editing, the sleepwalking continued. One night I was sleepwalking and Jenny said, “You’re not shooting right now.”

And I said, “I know, but we’re rehearsing.”

We wrapped the film in September, edited it through December, and now we’ve had the good fortune of premiering at the Sundance film Festival, which has truly been a dream come true.

Of course, when I found out I got into Sundance my brother Joe was the first person who offered to accompany me. He jumped on the Internet, found a two-bedroom condo, and put it on my credit card. He even invited his wife and our sister Patti – so it could be a family vacation, just like I always imagined. So while I’ve spent this past week trying to pretend to be a movie star, the Birbiglia-Hillbillies have been running around Park City trying to use my name to get into private parties and get free schwag. I’m pretty sure they’ve been telling bouncers that they’re with the guy from “Extras.”

Dear friends,

I hope this message finds you happy and healthy this holiday week.

This is a big week for eating turkey, watching football, watching bottles of beer play football, tolerating relatives, holding your tongue, camping out in front of Best Buy, sleeping on pull-out couches, and giving thanks this holiday is only once a year.

Right now I’m gearing up for a massive 2012 tour.  I’m bringing my off-Broadway show, “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” to theatres and performing arts centers across the country, and I’ve got the first 20 cities right here.

Tickets to my show make great gifts for Christmas, Hanukah and Kwanzaa. Bring your girlfriend, boyfriend, or difficult teen, the one who says you never get her anything. Be one of the first 100 people to order tickets this week, and my brother Joe will send you a free copy of my book, “Sleepwalk With Me & Other Painfully True Stories.” Just forward your email receipt to him at joebirbiglia@birbigs.com. You can put the tickets in the book and wrap that and put it under the tree/menorah/or other culture-specific December holiday on which you exchange presents. Think of it as a gift grenade, just waiting to detonate in the lap of a loved one.  I mean that in the least violent way possible.

Thanks everybody! Can’t wait to see you in the new year. Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,
Mike

P.S. If you want me to stop by your school on my tour, let’s make it happen. One of the perks of touring colleges is that I no longer have to host lip synch contests or perform in the centers of walkathons for lupus, which is nice. If you go to college, let your student activities board that I want to come for a show and on-campus tour. You could even start a Facebook group and get some people to join it. That plan may be just crazy enough to work.

The Tour (more dates coming soon!)

January 20 – Salt Lake City, UT Get Tickets!

January 27 – Santa Rosa, CA Get Tickets!

January 28, Arcata, CA Get Tickets!

February 2, Greenville, SC Get Tickets!

February 3, Durham, NC Get Tickets!

February 4, Louisville, KY Get Tickets!

February 13, Minneapolis, MN Get Tickets!

March 2, Green Bay, WI Get Tickets!

March 8, Wilmington, DE Get Tickets!

March 9, York, PA Get Tickets!

March 11, Red Bank, NJ Get Tickets!

March 22, Idaho Falls, ID Get Tickets!

March 23, Boise, ID On Sale Soon!

April 26, Effingham, IL Get Tickets!

April 27, Wabash, IN On Sale Tuesday, Nov. 29 @ 8 AM

April 28, Indianapolis, IN Get Tickets!

April 29, Cleveland, OH Get Tickets!

May 4, Hartford, CT Get Tickets!

May 5, Northampton, MA Get Tickets!