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A cruise line was looking for new talent so they had a comedy contest. The judges at said contest happened to be owners and bookers of several really good comedy clubs. I wanted to play at these clubs so I entered the contest.

Before the show, we were strongly encouraged to do a clean show, as that would be what was expected of us on cruise ships. I didn't want to play the cruise ships, so I elected to go dirty in the hopes that I would curry the favor of the club owners. I did a bit about my wife sticking a finger in my butt and the crowd loved it.

In comedy, there are nights when everything goes right, when the audience is plentiful and excited, when the comedian is particularly "on" and the planets seem to align for a really great show. This is not a story about one of those nights.

After doing comedy for a few years, a comedian starts to develop the ability to "smell" what an audience is going to be like before the show even begins. Most shows, the audience is talking and laughing as they come in to take their seats. This is a good sign. It usually means that they're ready to have a good time. Comedians love this because when an audience is ready to have a good time, any comedian worth his or her salt can hand them a great show with a bow on it.

There are people who will tell you that heckling is part of the comedy business. That a good comedian should be able to handle it and move on. The people that say this are usually not comedians.

The truth is that most comedians despise hecklers. Comedy is an endeavor that requires timing and precision and when there's some drunk douche in the audience that wants to yell out random bullshit, it screws up the flow of the show and makes things less fun for everyone.

Most comedy clubs today have a "no heckling" policy and will reprimand an audience member for doing so. A lot of people who are at a comedy club for the first time are surprised by this, but most comedy clubs who have shows five nights a week, every week have managers who are seasoned enough to know that it detracts from what would have been an otherwise enjoyable show.

To a working comedian, credits are extremely important. People want to know who you are when you get introduced to them. When an emcee says your name, they want to know who you are, what you've done, and where they might have seen you on their Teevee Box.

I've always been confused by this. People assume that because someone is a comic actor and is funny on a sitcom, said person will be funny onstage in front of a live audience. This is not always the case. The two skills are different. There are a lot of people who are funny when they're given 23 takes to say something that was written by someone else. There are fewer who are able to stand onstage and be funny for an hour. I will refer to T.V.'s Kramer and then I will rest my case.

However, credits are still the lifeblood of a comedian's career. Mine are terrible.

I happen to be in the unfortunate position of being what is called in the biz, a No Name Headliner. That means that I'm funny enough to be the last guy in the show, but no one has ever heard of me because I haven't really been on television or in movies. I don't think this should rule me out of being taken seriously as a comic, but I don't make the rules.

I'm not going to the gym again.

There. I've said it. That feels good. Gone are the days when I sat around on my fat ass lying to myself and promising to go tomorrow.

The problem is that I'm not really a "gym guy." You've seen them. They're at the gym every day, working on their pecs and their delts and their pelts (c'mon some of those guys are pretty hairy). They really seem to care about working out. They're big guys who wear tiny spandex outfits that show way more skin than anyone would ever want to see.

(Matt Sadler has the week off. This week's article was written by Matt Sadler's computer.)

Hello. I'm happy to help you shoot around cyberspace at lightning fast speeds. Together we can locate and download all sorts of information at the click of a mouse. Where would you like to go first, Mr. Sadler?

Ah, cnn.com. Good choice. Excellent way to start off the day. We'll have a look around and see what's going on in today's news. See anything interesting? No? Same old same old, huh? No problem let's just jet somewhere else.

I was talking with a guy I know yesterday, when out of the blue he asked me a question that gave me pause and forced me to reflect on the entire nature of the way that men relate to each other and the very process by which one person can truly know another.

We had come to a break in our conversation when suddenly he looked me in the eye and solemnly asked, "So? Which one of the Golden Girls would you do?"

I instantly knew from his expression that he was not joking. He was not merely making conversation. This was not a question of the boxers or briefs, Ginger or Mary Ann, Chocolate or Vanilla milk.