New material is scary

Doing new material is scary; especially when you are doing a set with "lots" of new material. I opened tonight with my Dairy Queen joke, and it was pretty well-received. The third punchline in the list of three I do in that joke got groaned a bit, but Tommy Johnagin talked to me and told me how to play around with it to get the best response (ie get laughs). I did some new material about waiting tables (this list is basically for me stroke, baby, dreams) and it went better than I had hoped. I closed on my health and smoking bit. That was weird, especially because I've been using it as an opener basically since I wrote it. I got more laughs on the kryptonite line than I have in most of the times I've told the joke as an opener.