Last night I was slated for 21st on the Comedy Forum open mic list. Usually at that point in the show, the crowd's ready to go and not exactly paying attention (in my experiences, I've found this to be true for all open mics, so I'm not just-bad mouthing the Forum, far from it). Add the lateness of the show to the fact that all of Stevie P's friends left when he was done (who could blame them, really, it was late) and all of Josh's friends left after his set (I directly followed him too, so the exodus during my set gave me that special, heart-warming feeling only felt during Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney duos) and you have the perfect formula for me to go up and self destruct. Burning bridges. Why not just go after the audience? That's what I normally do; but not last night. I took my stage time seriously and actually did my set. Sometimes I let those kind of circumstances agitate me, so I end up working blue, but not last night. I don't remember my set's order, but I know my black-name, jeeves, motorcycle, scorpion and email bits made appearances. I felt like I did alright too, all things considered.
I didn't blog yesterday; of course I wasn't on stage Tuesday, so I didn't have anything really to put down about the show. The thing right now that's dominating my life in comedy is: Severe writer's block
The writer's block started a couple of weeks ago. Janine and I meet every day at Starbucks and pitch jokes and work on bits. I haven't brought a "new" bit that's even remotely salvageble in at least a week or two. I used to "free write" before we got started, but now even that's becoming hard to do. It's like I can't start my brain thinking about comedy because it's so congested with all types of other crap, some of it personal, some work related, and some envolving comedy. It's disheartening to say the least, especially when I see other guys with new bits and it doesn't seem like I'm producing.