Open Mic 003

I am actually cheating a little, this is being written on my bus ride home from New York on December 3.  I guess I can post this as the second post of the day, and put another up tomorrow, but I think I will just write this today and put it up tomorrow, thereby keeping my daily streak intact (by my rules, anyway).

I am writing this on the bus because I did not bring my bag with my study materials.  I did not bring my bag because I anticipated hanging out with a friend of mine, Shamus.  Well, Shamus cancelled on me.  This validated my decision to not buy cigs today, whcih I have done several times in the past.  The cancellation also allowed me to do my open mic as I planned to do before he asked me to chill.

Friday night mic, again at Times Square Comedy Club.  This is by far the nicest and most professional open mic venue I’ve ever performed at.  There was an event going on in our usual room, so I was told to go upstairs to Theatre 3.  Theatres 3 and 4 were up there.  Comedy clubs I’ve been to is just a bar, and a room.  Other open mics are in basements of restaurants, but this place has 4 different rooms.  Well the room was nice but…

My performance tonight was not.  Even when I bomb (do horrible comedy), I rarely regret doing it since I at least learn something about my jokes or myself.  Well, today was just too horrible to get anything out of.  I think being rusty and not being prepared with my tried & true material were two of the main reasons why things went down badly tonight, but there certainly were other reasons.

First is that there were literally 5 people watching me.  There were about 2 dozen comics, but since most comics leave soon after their turn, I had a 4th-to-last spot, and performed in front of 5 people.  And I couldn’t see those 5 people because the lights were really strong and right in my eyes.  I’ve been on stage before (more professional than open mic), and not being able to see the audience due to the lights isn’t unusual.  However, I was not used to it.  Plus, the microphone didn’t work.  I didn’t have a problem projecting but I was not used to not having a microphone stand.  I actually swung at air, reaching for a microphone stand that was pushed to the side, as I got up on the stage.

Finally, my little rant that I wrote up today just got a couple of pity laughs.  I talked about Qatar, connecting it to Asian Games, West Asian Games, and Indoor Asian Games.  I think it can be funny if I work at it, but it was not funny today.  And being unprepared with other jokes, and only having taken the stage twice after a 6-month break, I had a hard time remembering some of my better jokes.

So I guess you can say today was a perfect storm of bad open mic experience: unfamiliar stage, no microphone, being rusty, relying too much on one long unfunny rant, not having other jokes ready to go, a very small audience.. I guess that is it.  At least I didn’t have hecklers.  I wish I had met up with Shamus instead – I would have avoided this experience.  But like a closer (baseball relief pitcher) who blows a game and wants another shot at a save the next day, I also want to get back on stage and wash this bad taste out of my mouth.  But I will have to wait until at least Monday.

Smoking Update: since I am writing this on Friday, I am still on Day 5.  But tonight, I want to drink and smoke.  Maybe tonight’s bad open mic stressed me out.  I don’t know… I will probably have at least one drink, but not sure about smoking and drinks 2 and on…

Update from yesterday’s post: Apparently Qatar is not absolutely horrible in football, and they have hosted the Asian Games.  Still, U.S. would have been a better pick, and I’ve never said that about any event the U.S. has hosted or would have hosted, since this country has already had its share of Olympics.

Christmas Spirit

This was supposed to be titled “Open Mic 003.”  (I know I said I will not put period inside quotes because it would be more consistent to have period outside quotes, but it just does not look right.)  Last night, I was meeting up some friends for drinks so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone by booking an open mic at the Times Square Comedy Club.  Even the timing was perfect, as the open mic was from 6:30pm to 9pm, and I was to meet my friends at 9pm.  But I ran a bit late and did not arrive at the club until 7:15pm.  When I got there, about a dozen comics were just lounging around.  Apparently, the host of the mic was not there yet.  I heard some of the comics asking the club employees to let them just do the show themselves and pay the club $5 each, since that’s what we would pay anyway.  But for a few reasons, none of them convincing, the club denied their request.  According to them, mic was run by that host, and if that host was not there, there was no mic.  This was certainly disappointing, but I felt better about being late.

Comics gave up and left around 7:45pm, so that’s when I left.  I took a s…l…o…w… stroll from the club (8th Ave. and 42nd St.) to K-Town (6th Ave. and 32nd St.).  I had to make this 15-minute walk last 75 minutes.  I still had 40 minutes to kill when I arrived at Macy’s on 34th St., their flagship store.  They had a Christmas story called Virginia something being shown on 6 window displays, each display showing a 2-minute episode of a 6-episode story.  With plenty of time to kill, I stuck around to watch all the shows.  Story was about a little girl named Virginia who wanted to find out if Santa Claus was real (original, I know).  Well, I guess this show had an effect on me because I got a bit of the Christmas Spirit after viewing the show.

Throughout the show, there was a constant jingling of the bell rang by the Salvation Army donation collector.  I’ve ignored this bell for many, many Christmases but for some reason, I wanted to do something about it this time.  How much should I give?  $1?  $5?  $20?  I settled on 2 $5’s, and stuck my money into the pot.  But to my mild surprise, I did not get a thank you, or any kind of acknowledgment from the collector.  I would have expected at least a “God bless you” or a “Merry Christmas” but there was nothing.  Maybe it is not easy to find volunteers for all those collection pots, and these guys are just minimum wage workers.  I don’t know.  Oh well, I didn’t do it to get a thank you, so that was okay, just unexpected.

As I was watching the Virginia story, I was debating the donation.  I’m about to drop some money on drinking in a few minutes, and I probably would not even notice if I spent an extra $10 on drinks.  So wouldn’t it be better to have that $10 go to a good cause?  But then, my $10 would not even be noticed in the millions that Salvation Army is collecting this season, and this $10 bill would make more difference to me than divided into thousands of different kids or needy people, minus the administrative costs.  Finally, here was the winning argument: but if everyone felt that way, no one would give any money and that would be the worst case scenario.  If we all give just a little, it would make a big difference.

As a penny pincher, I rarely donate money.  I don’t even remember the last time I gave money to the Salvation Army, if I did at all.  But maybe this is the beginning of something new.  Maybe I will be a more generous giver.  We shall see.

Open Mic 002

Instead of trying to come up with a clever new title, I decided it would be much easier to just number them.  And a math geek in me wanted to trash the archaic # sign, and assign 3 digits in it.  I think it will be pretty safe to say I will do between 100 and 999 open mic shows, and hopefully more.

And 002 was worse than 001.  I did not do that great in my return show, but yesterday was worse, and felt more worse, or worser.  (This is a legitimate situation to use the term “more worse” even though every grammatical bone in my body tells me that “more worse” is never correct.)

I went to Times Square Comedy Club (referred to as Times Square Arts Center in signs), a place I’ve been to a couple of times before but never on a Thursday.  There were a couple of talented comics there, ones that may not have gotten much laughs but whose style seemed polished.  I guess they are the type who are more funny than being a good writer.  I am the opposite, and that is not to say that I am a good writer, just that my writing is better than my ability to orally share it in a funny way.  (Now that I brought it up, I do think I write some funny stuff but not sure if it is funny enough to be professional, in an industry.)

There were about 15 to 20 people in the crowd, which dwindled down to about 8 by the time I took my turn.  I did get a few of them laughing on a couple of my jokes, but none enough to be considered successful.  I want to say I bombed but I have done shows where I got no laughs at all, so I came very close to bombing.  It wasn’t easy to take but I know there will be many more days like this one.

Not getting laughs is not all that bad because I’m trying new material all the time.  I see some comics that do 5 minutes of same jokes everytime I see them.  But maybe I should start working on a solid 5-minute set.  Figure out my best jokes, add some keepers, and memorize it by heart, instead of going up there with my notepad and reading random jokes.  I think that’s a good idea.  Even if I end up repeating my jokes, I’ll figure out what my best jokes are, and build a set around it.

It feels good to finally write about comedy, though, instead of fast food or cell phone cases.  I am finally living up to the name od this blog.  But I am going to Atlantic City again tonight so tomorrow’s post will be about that.

Getting Lucky?

There are usually a few comics that will duck out early or come in late, generally staying for their set only, and watching a few other sets before and after them.  (Wow that sentence seems like a grammatical nightmare.)  This leads to 30 comics being on the cast list, but only having 10-15 comics at the place as “audience” at any given time.  This is why I don’t like going last at an open mic because not many people will stick it out until the end.  It is disheartening to wait and watch other comics for two hours with a nice group of “audience” and then seeing that group dwindle down to 4-7 comics when it gets to be my turn.  To prevent this, some open mic hosts resort to giving out a lottery prize at the end.  If the open mic costs $5, the host may give some of that money away via lottery to one of the people still left.  I’ve won this once, when I came away with $20.  Yesterday was #2.

Having left work at 3pm due to Memorial Day weekend, I made a plan to visit 3 open mics – Village Lantern at 4pm, Broadway Comedy Club at 5:30pm, and Times Square Comedy Club at 6:30pm.  No one showed up at Village Lantern, so I had to kill a lot of time watching the local street ballers ply their skills at the West 3rd St. basketball court.  Broadway Comedy Club was nice but I had to be like one of the comics that I described above and leave the place right away because I wanted to visit the Times Square Comedy Club.  This place is good for me because it’s right next to Port Authority, where I take the bus home.

I got to the place a bit late but the host let me sign up anyway – I was #16 and going last.  The set went okay, some jokes that had done well before did not, but some bad jokes did okay.  I sprinkled in some new jokes in there – they may need a bit of polishing.  But at the end of my set, the host was giving away 10 free tickets to shows at the club.  I did not want to win this because I don’t watch pro shows, and having gone last, I didn’t think it would be right for me to win.  Well, lo and behold, I won the tickets.  I protested but other people told me to keep the tickets.  Maybe they didn’t want them either?  Anyway, I guess I’ll be catching a show sometime just because I have the tickets.

If any of you want free admissions tickets to Times Square Comedy Club (Times Square Arts Center), let me know.  You can e-mail me or leave a comment.