Last night was easily one of the worst comedy nights I’ve had in recent memory. The list got posted and each name had a number next to it, indicating how much time each comic would get. My name was on the list (which is good) with a 3. First, three minutes is better than zero minutes, but I had already decided to work on both my Seminary and Gay Christmas bits. I was second on the list, John Doelling emceed and Nikki Glaser proceeded me. And then it was my turn. I ended up breaking my two cardinal open mic rules, the first of being ‘never open with a new joke’ and the second ‘never have an open mic set with greater than 50% new material’1. Those are my rules, and I tend to follow them for specific reasons. Other guys don’t agree with those rules or follow them, and that’s fine. They’re my rules, and it’s not like I enforce them…
Anyway, I got on stage and started off with my seminary stuff, which I admit does not have the best lead-in available; so I’m probably a little clumsy getting into it. I went from that to my Gay Christmas stuff, which actually got a couple laughs (literally, two). And then as if to save myself, I did my blind skier joke (knowing full well that there was a blind guy in the audience (the front row, to be exact)) which is coupled with my one-legged skier joke (guess what? There were three people in wheel chairs in the audience, too). It’s not as if I think those jokes are offensive, it’s not like I even make fun of the blind skier, I just mention the fact that he exists, and has cool “accessories”. Anyway, I get off stage and am swarmed by comics asking if I knew about the blind guys and wheelchair-bound. That’s not what really bothered me; what really bothered me is I’m kind of Obsessive compulsive and I didn’t know how much time I did (plus I didn’t get it recorded on my DVR to see how I delivered my set). So I didn’t know how long Andy Faasen was on stage by the time I got settled.
OK, that’s a little weird, and if that were the main reason I had a bad night last night, I would agree and say I am overreacting. It’s not even that the jokes I tried, jokes that have taken me at least a month to get out, got no laughs. I’m alright with that, it just means that I need to work more. The final straw was when some guy did a joke about taking dump on some girl’s chest. And the crowd lost it.
Now “lost it” may be a bit of an over-exaggeration, but they might as well have just given the guy a standing ovation and a parade. Seriously, a dump-on-the-chest joke? I told Paul Harris I was quitting stand up. And I should, why would I want to put for the effort, work clean, reveal myself and my flaws to countless strangers, just so someone can hypothetically defecate on a girl’s torso and get more laughs than me. It’s not even like he really has crapped on a girl’s chest. He just says he wants to. If he actually did it, I wouldn’t be so upset because that would be putting forth some work for the sake of the joke. That’s really what I’m getting at, I think…
Obviously, I’m not quitting comedy, it’s just frustrating; after the show, I headed straight home to cool off (I played Ecco the Dolphin for Sega Genesis). I’m trying to quit smoking (again) and that type of frustration is exactly what leads to me lighting-up. So I didn’t even get to hang out at Back Street with the other comics. On the plus side, I slept really well and had a dream about a really pretty red-head who asked me to the movies.
1 My Cardinal Rules explained: “never open with a new joke” – I try not to open with new jokes because I could fumble over them and make the rest of my set unnecessarily difficult. “Never have an open mic set with greater than 50% new material” – If the material isn’t all worked out, or I’m not comfortable with it, I may not be “doing well” and the audience might not be “warmed up” to me. In such a case, you can’t really tell what new material has potential. If the same material had been slipped in to a good set, it might have been received in a better manner