Open Mic 025 & 026: After Show Surprises

Today I booked my spots by e-mail and although both shows have more requests than available spots, I got on both shows.  I’m still getting over a cold I had over the Thanksgiving break, but I did not want to cancel so onward I went.

First is a spot I somehow did really well at my first two times here, then pretty bad on my third time, Greenwich Treehouse.  I did the same set I’ve been doing recently, mostly involving homeless, and I did fairly bad.  Some days, I feel like you’re definitely funny enough and only need an opportunity to make it, but other times, like tonight, I realize I have a lot of work to do.  But after the show, some guy at the bar approached me and said he really liked one of my jokes, which is an encouragement.  Too bad he wasn’t at the show, since the bar area is curtained off (but you can still hear everything if sitting near the curtain).

Second show was at CB’s Comedy Club, where I luckily got to go 2nd.  Since I’ve performed in front of this mic’s host many times, I decided to debut my new baby jokes here.  Most of them did not do so well, but a couple were keepers.  But overall, I did not like my set tonight, both here and Greenwich Village.

As I was ducking out early, a guy sitting outside said, “interesting set” as he struck up a conversation.  Not quite as good a compliment as “funny set” but I’ll take it.  He says he is a producer, although he does do comedy, and gave me his website and e-mail.  I mean, there are so many comedians and producers in this town that one can’t take everyone seriously, but since he is still a connection in comedy, of which I don’t have much, I’m glad I met one more person today.  He said he is looking to fill a few positions, although I don’t know what that means.  I guess I’ll check out his website and maybe shoot him an e-mail.

My next open mic is also a booked mic, coming this Thursday.

Open Mic 024: Fastest Facebook Friend

Today being Thanksgiving Eve, I thought there would be less comics at the open mics, if they’re open at all.  So I was planning on going home until two circumstances intervened.  One, my wife’s friend was coming over.  Granted, she was coming over at 10 pm, but still, she was coming over.  And two, Marty wanted to grab some food.  I didn’t want to turn him down, nor did I want to go home after eating, so off to New York I went.

I arrived at CB’s Comedy Club a bit too early, and got to talking to another comic who was also waiting to get in.  Within a couple of minutes of talking, bam, he wanted to find me on Facebook, and I accepted a few minutes later.  I know Facebook friendships are shallow, but I don’t think I’ll ever beat that record for quickest friending after meeting.  I just checked his profile and he has over 1600 friends.  I guess for him, 1600 is everyone he’s ever met.

Once downstairs, I ordered my mandatory drink.  Last time I was here, I tried to go cheap with a Bud Light Draft, only to find that it cost $7.  I also suspected that all drinks here were $7.  So tonight, I went with Rum & Coke.  While nursing that drink, I met the guy who asked for my e-mail last week (his name will now be E-Mail).  He did e-mail me that night and is looking to start his own open mic.  He asked if I was interested in joining him… we’ll see how that goes.

I talked with the Facebook guy a bit more, and he said he had a show this Saturday in Long Island.  How to get shows?  Connections and dick sucking, he said.  He also felt a lot of pressure from the comedy club owner or booking agent to bring a lot of people to the mic.  I guess that’s low rung business of comedy for you.  He also showed me his typed set – it was pretty much a script.  Me, I just go by one or two sentences.  And after all that build up, he was not funny.  I think I got better jokes than he does.  And I’m jumping to that conclusion because this was his warm-up for the Saturday night show and I’m assuming this was one of his best material.

As for my set, I did a whole new batch of jokes tonight due to E-Mail’s presence.  I did fairly well, although my pedophile joke did cause one woman to repeat “gross” several times.  Trust me, the joke is as tame as it gets, considering it’s about pedophilia.  No physical acts are described nor pantomimed.

After the show, I had 2 options: Charley O’s mic at 8 or 1-Republik mic at 9.  It was already 8:30 and I didn’t know how to get to 1-Republik via subway or bus so I decided to go home… until I changed my mind and stopped by Charley O’s.  As I feared at the beginning of the night, there was no mic.  Oh well, at least I didn’t have to travel far to find out.

Open Mic 022 & 023: Hit the Ground Running

Today, I was able to hit two spots, both my first time visits and both on the east side of the island, where I tend to go less due to PATH train and Port Authority being on the west side.  But I decided to do some walking and check them out.  Oh, and I was just reminded that I decided to title my posts, so here it is.

First stop was the Karma Bar and Lounge on 1st Ave near 3rd St. I got there 10 minutes before the scheduled time, and ended up waiting another 30 minutes after that time.  But time really wasn’t an issue here, as only 4 or 5 comics took their turn on the stage.  There were about 7 people there total.  I’ve performed in front of less people before, but this was the shortest open mic I’d ever been to.  Show went just about as I expected, which wasn’t very well.  I once again did mostly the same jokes from last week.  Nothing worthy to note happened here, except that there is a comedy workshop here every other week.  Maybe I’ll check it out later.

From there was a short walk to Identity Bar on 6th St near Ave A.  I found out the host only books 8 to 10 comics here, but I got lucky and nabbed a spot.  Crowd was decent, laughing at even jokes that weren’t very funny, and comics were pretty good as well.  The transvestite made her appearance once again, this time doing a comedy routine, which was all about her, ahem, gender preference.  Since there was a couple of people here who saw me do these jokes just 3 days ago, I switched things up a bit with a couple of old jokes, which went great.  Then the homeless set I’ve been doing recently did not do quite as well, but I’m still gonna work on them.  I started off great, but did not end on a good note.  I wasn’t too satisfied with my performance here, but I think this is a good mic that I would revisit later.

As for the title of this post, it refers to the first few seconds to a minute of my stage time.  Most comics on TV get the crowd excited with a “how y’all feeling tonight?” or something like that, but I never start off excited.  I think I come off as if I’m forced to do it.  That’s something I need to work on, although it’s tough to get excited about 5 minutes of open mic.

Open Mic 021

Today, I reached the highest point of my comedy career.  That is, I performed on the 11th floor of a building tonight, and my previous high was 2nd floor.  I wasn’t planning on going today, but due to my wife being at her friend’s house and me already having had my packed lunch for dinner, I had to get myself out there, and headed off to Stark Reality Open Mic.

This was my first open mic that wasn’t exclusively comedy, as it welcomed open mikers of all types.  But the acts were all comics and musicians in about equal numbers, plus one tap dancer.  I’ve avoided these types of mics before because I assumed that there would be all musicians and I would be one of the few comics.  However, today I realized the benefit of performing at such a show, as the crowd wasn’t full of people working on their own jokes who watches bad comedy 7 nights a week.  Almost as good as a real show audience, I would say.

On an unrelated note, I did surprisingly well tonight.  I did the same jokes I did last time, but the laughs were strong tonight, as opposed to complete silence.  I’m still trying to figure out why that is.  Comedy is such a fickle beast.  Or like a box of chocolates.  I guess my goal is to come up with jokes that are guaranteed to get laughs all the time.

One guy sitting next to me was also a comic, and he asked me for my e-mail address.  I saw him asking for the same from a musician.  What he plans to do with those e-mail addresses, I guess I’ll find out.

There was also another Asian comic tonight.  He lost me in five seconds when he pointed at me, saying “I’m glad my twin is still here” and followed it up with a joke involving Asian accent.  Rest of his set was quite lame, but there were a couple of decent jokes in there.

After the show, as I walked on to Port Authority, I passed by Charlie O’s and peeked into the back room, where the open mic is usually held.  Whoa, a full crowd?  What’s going on?  I went in, met a comedian I just saw at Stark Reality, and found out it was a real show with real audience.  I saw the girl who runs the open mic and she told me she can put me on a show like this if I come to her open mic.  Hmm… is it that easy?  And am I ready?  Whatever the case may be, the lesson learned is that I need to get out there more, meet more people, and make connections.  Open mics should be something I do on the side, not the only thing.

Open Mic 020

Even though I hadn’t been doing comedy lately, I was still getting the weekly open mic cast list from a couple of places.  I saw a couple of Korean names once in a while, one more so than the other.  I wondered if they were any good, and if I would ever meet them.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a comment made on my “friend’s” page on Facebook.  Comment was made by the Korean comic whose name I’ve been seeing.  Upon checking out his page, I confirmed his identity by our one mutual friend, plus two more who were comedians.  Now I was more intruigued.

I signed up for tonight’s show at CB’s Comedy Club, which used to be a Wednesday show at Village Lantern.  I looked through the cast list but did not see his name.  Then I noticed… he was a guest host for the night.  Dang, he must have a decent amount of friends in comedy if he is hosting the open mic, I thought.  But I already kind of knew that because comedians were commenting on his Facebook page.  While I’m friends with some comedians, there is no interaction.

So I was a bit nervous about finally meeting this Korean comedian who was already “in” with other New York comedians.  I was going to do a whole new set based on my new baby, but decided to go with some older material.  I wanted to do better.

In hindsight, maybe the new stuff would have been better.  My biggest laugh came in my opening line,  when I mentioned that I’m usually the most established Korean comedian in the room, but not tonight.  I got some laughs here and there but nothing solid.  And some jokes got no laughs at all.  I was disappointed with my set.  These jokes have worked before, why not tonight?  Maybe they’re not good jokes, and maybe I’m rusty.  I guess I’ll find out as I keep practicing.

But the real story of the night wasn’t the Korean guy or my bad set.  Rather, it was a Hispanic dude whom I talked to, or more accurately, who talked to me, after the show.  As has been my attempt at having an excuse to stick around to meet other comedians without looking like a loser, I smoked a cigarette outside the club after the show.  One guy said he liked a couple of my jokes.  Then the Korean guy said he liked my stuff too, I just need to come out more.  Then, the rest of my time outside was occupied by the hispanic dude.  He talked to me while we were standing on the sidewalk.  For 45 minutes.

He was going on and on about my identity as Korean-American, how I have to be myself and not conform to a specific culture.  I am referring to him as the hispanic guy not because I’m racially insensitive, but because he also talked a lot about growing up in a hispanic country with English speaking family.  I zoned in and out throughout his lecture, which, as these rambles tend to do, repeated same points several times.  I guess my idea to meet other people worked tonight, but way too well.  To top it off, he wasn’t even a comedian, he just dropped in while walking by.

But to give him a break, he did seem like a nice guy, just very talkative.  And he was learning Korean, which is probably why he was interested in talking to me.  My time is now more precious than ever because when I’m working and doing comedy, my wife is home all day with our son.  Allotting proper family time is a legitimate concern.

So I think today will be it for this week, but hopefully I can do two shows next week.  And maybe see the Korean dude again.

Open Mic 019

Exam done.  Not passed, but done.  And I cannot give up my only way out of being a cubicle slave, stand-up comedy.

So tonight, I ventured out to Charley O’s in Times Square.  I didn’t have any notes on me, so I had to remember some on my way there.  How did it go?  Not terrible.  Performed in front of 8 people, although I was prepared for less.  I have a few baby jokes now, and I used one tonight, to decent reaction.  I want to start doing comedy twice a week, but let’s see what the wife and the baby think about that.