Al Canal gave me a call today to fill in as the host for the show at the Comedy Forum tonight. It's Valentine's Day, but Sarah's out of town so I said I'd do the show. I tried focusing the crowd before I jumped into my jokes, and thought I had the audience ready to pay attention; but one table wasn't able (read: sober) to listen. These two guys in the front row were at a table to two women; the guys were closest to the stage and facing each other (not even facing the stage!) and they had some valentines flowers in front of them so they "had" to yell to hear each other. Eventually I did my shampoo joke and around half the crowd didn't get it initially, so when I said "you're not paying attention" I pointed out that the one guy wasn't even looking at me, so he COULDN'T get the joke. I also said that a blind guy would get the joke before he did (he was quite drunk). Dan O'Sullivan was there for the show and told me I did what I could. I felt kind like I didn't set the table for the feature, William Alexander, but the crowd was entirely focusable to start with.
At least I got some good video for a montage I'm working on, right now I've finished 1 minute and 11 seconds out of 5:19.