My first comedy show: Carlin

When I was in 10^th grade, my dad surprised me with tickets to see George Carlin at the Alys Stephens Center in Birmingham. After sitting through a decent opening act and an intermission, we waited anxiously as the lights dimmed and George took the stage. Dressed in all black, he grabbed the mic, took a breath, and said “You know what you don’t hear about a lot in public? Pussy farts.”

I turned to my dad and said, “This is going to be a great show.”

I think that is the type of tone I wanted to set with my set on Wednesday. See, when I showed up at the club, I overheard 2 guys about my age talking about how you gotta get the audience on your side from the beginning, and that opening with a long, drawn out premise is death to an unknown comedian. So I panicked and decided to change my setlist so I could do my very funny dirty one-liner as my opening joke, and then go right into my prepared opener. Suffice to say, it didn’t go over quite as well as I had hoped.

So what went wrong? Well, for starters, it’s kind of a gross joke (I’m not telling, you’re just gonna have to come see my show). I don’t know if that audience is really prepared to hear that type of immediately sexual one-liner right off the bat. Sure, I thought the supportive comedians that made up about half the crowd would be more into it than they were, but I think they were more interested in seeing if I froze up and died onstage than actually laughing within 5 seconds of my set. Not to mention the fact that George Carlin has the innate advantage of being George Fucking Carlin, Comedy God.

I still love the joke, so it’s staying in my set, but not as an opener. Maybe when an audience gets to know me, like the Boston crowd next year, I can be a little more risky with my opening jokes, but for now, I’m going to stick with my rather safe, pretty funny joke, just to let the audience know that I don’t completely suck.

Oh, and let me state that, until some arbitrary time when I break this vow, I vow to never open with a new joke. Nothing spells comedic suicide than trying new material the second you get onstage. I have only watched 2 nights of open mic comedy, but 3 people have bombed with admittedly new opening material, and I don’t want to be one of those guys.

Also, anyone who reads this blog: “mic” or “mike”? Windows spell check is all up in my ass about spelling it like “mic,” but I like it that way. Unless popular opinion sways my judgment, I am sticking with it.