Last night I went out to the Comedy Forum to do some sets and practice for the upcoming competition. I drug my video camera along and recorded both sets, but since I left my stop watch at home I had to use my audio recorder to tell me how much time I did each set. First set, I added in my PANTS joke and trimmed some tag-lines, but was forty seconds over. So the second set, I omitted my ADVICE joke and was thirty seconds under. I am going to watch the videos and see what's up with a seventy second difference. Also I want to watch the first set because Kevin Patterson who was emceeing told me that he had never seen me get so many groans before. I was telling him; I can't look like a jerk onstage with my material because people will groan. I have to make myself look like the victim; which means looking kind of vulnerable, while still portraying stage confidence and keeping people interested. It's kind of a weird juxtaposition.
After the Forum, I headed over to Corwin's for Mikey Manker's going away party. A little while after I got there, we did a show and Mikey asked me to open. The show was set up relay race style so each comic brought up the next one; at first, we had a crowd of about 20 people (mostly comics and improv people) and I figured everyone else (who stayed in the bar area (as opposed to the dining area where we were set up)) was just there to drink. Turns out, they did come to watch Mikey and say goodbye to him, but they only really got interested when he was "on the mic". My set at Corwin's wasn't bad, but it's still not the kind that you walk away from with positive things to say. In any case, I'm playing with voice inflection, body posture and facial expressions more as I'm trying to milk each joke for all it's worth.
Check out my MySpace blog for jokes on which I'm working.
Visit RooftopComedy.com. Watch videos. Laugh. Feel warm and fuzzy.