Tonight I did not get to go to starbucks to write before the funny bone open mic. Instead I had to wait for a lady who came to buy my couch. So I made some cash, which is nice, but I didn't write or really go over my set at all for tonight (we'll get to that later). When I finally did get to westport, I stopped by the funny bone and then headed to starbucks. My voice has been sounding hoarse (to me at least) and so I've starting drinking warm tea to make my throat feel better. I was headed to Starbucks with the intention of getting a hot tea, but Jeff the barista there, knows my order (Venti Hot Chocolate) and was already making it by the time it was my turn to order. I took that as a sign to keep up the hot chocolate streak, because on the way over to the coffee shop I wondered if having a 100% streak in something mundane like a coffee shop order was worth perserving. Saying “so-and-so always does this” sounds better than saying “well, usually...”
I didn't really go over my set very much tonight because it was the same set I did at the bootcamp last week. My new bully joke, the 2nd person shooter and the math stuff with the word problems joke. My bully joke needs a punch at the end, I could tell tonight that it needed a little work (the audience at the 11:00PM showcase weren't great for judging material). Tommy Johnagin suggested I go back to having the bully be a chick, which sounds like a good idea. I'll tinker with it and try it again next week. I did the “is this coming out in binary” line as a throwaway during the “improper” / “fraction” stuff. I keep forgetting that I want to add “mean” to that. The other day I seriously just tried to string together a dozen math vocab terms just to see how long I could go. It's harder than you'd think. My closer tonight was the word problems joke. It's really not strong enough to close on, but we were only doing 3 minutes tonight and I wanted to do it. So I did. One thing I decided to work on last week (and I don't think I had time, and I don't remember if I wrote about this yet) was to stop doing my closer like it's my closer. There's no reason to suddenly amp up the energy or start selling differently than I have been. I shouldn't cue the audience to act a certain way (I doubt that I'm doing a good job of psyching them up for my big finale, if that's what I'm supposed to be doing). From now on, I'm going to do my closer like I'm doing another joke behind it, same pause for laughs (hopefully) and then “Thank you, my name is...” only I'll say “Marcus Robinson”.