Second Show Wrap-Up

So, uh, that could have gone better.

Yay, my first bomb session happened in only my second show! Others should be so lucky. Yeah, I bombed, and in front of all my friends to boot. But here’s my rationalization. First, that audience fed on the misery of the aspiring open mic-er. It was like 20 of this one girl’s friends who hated every other comedian, 3 ladies from Mexico who just noticed the sign in the hotel advertising a comedy show in the basement, and my 7 friends, who may or may not have laughed at all either. I don’t know, I kinda blacked out when I went up on stage.

Although it’s ridiculous to say this, most of my material was new, meaning I had written it in the last week and hadn’t performed it at the last show I did. Mostly it was about porn and September 11^th. Of course, I only had 3 minutes to analyze these deep, complicated issues, so maybe the audience was upset at my generalizations and logical fallacies. Also, the jokes may not have been that funny. The biggest laugh was probably my Paris Hilton joke (you heard me), which I threw in as a no-brainer to make sure someone laughed at least once in my set. It’s a crutch I hope to get rid of eventually, but I don’t want to challenge myself too much right now. Right now just getting up the nerve to perform is challenge enough. Especially when I have to draw laughter from the audience like blood from a stone (Song title!).

Oh, yeah, also my voice hasn’t come back, so the whole set was like early Tom Waits performing awkward college-style humor.

Anyway, I saw some truly great comedians perform awesome sets and get similarly destroyed (www.roryscovel.com, www.funnydanny.com*), so I don’t feel as bad about it now. I am performing with both of them and a few other guys at a similar open mic this Wednesday, but none of you are invited until I get funny again. At that show I will be picking up a DVD of my performance on Thursday, so when I get famous I can show everyone what a hacky douche I used to be. It’s going to be torture to watch that set over and over, examining why I lamed out, but hey, since I paid $4 a minute for that disc of comedy gold, I am damn sure going to use it.

Hopefully, I can be like most other stand-up comedians and never deal with disappointment or rejection again after this. A girl can dream…

*Matt, if you read this blog, Danny Rouheir did a hilarious Tony Soprano that nobody laughed at, but it was spot on. I would have died laughing, but my voice was dead and I didn't want to hurt it before the show. Ho!