Stand Up NY

Below is a new open mic from Stand Up NY, you might notice that it's pretty short... mainly because I stuttered and stammered through about half of my set. Obviously I tried once again to do a joke I thought up the day of and this time it was chaos. I think I was a bit too cocky after my previous two sets. I think the joke was just a little too complex to just work through out on stage, and quite possibly not very funny. There's no real punchline in it and I think that if I'm just gonna riff on stage the joke needs to have a pretty simple premise and a clear punchline that I can throw out there at the right time. I also felt compelled to remove the truly heinous parts of the set because the parts I left in were not particularly well received either. But I think they're quality, and though there was laughter, I think the audience wasn't particularly in the mood to laugh. Or maybe the jokes just weren't funny.

Judge for yourself:


And since I feel like a cheat for cutting out the weakest part of the set, here's the joke that bombed, though it should be noted that the joke should not bare the brunt of the blame, I barely told the whole thing, and I messed up a good portion of the parts I did get to.

I love how the media tries to be equal even when it doesn’t make sense. Like I read this article about how McCain hasn’t released enough of his medical records, and they were like, plus Joe Biden had two aneurisms removed… has he been getting regular checkups, we don’t knoooooow. Are they saying maybe he hasn’t been getting the checkups? Because if so, then I’m pretty sure the title of the article should have been, breaking news, Joe Biden has death wish. And then they tried to make a big deal about how Obama and Palin have only released one page of medical records which were basically like, "yeah we’re fine." Yeah that’s about all I need to hear from them. They’re in their forties, no one dies in their forties by something we can see coming, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they don’t have cancer. What're we afraid Obama may have a serious case of tennis elbow and Palin might have a bad back? Look it’s ok to want to see McCain’s record because he’s old, it’s not age-ist. Did you know that a recent scientific study found that 100% of old people… DIE.

Yeah, not funny. I think there's a funny idea in there somewhere... but I didn't find it.

But I'd like to briefly take you inside the world of the open mic, there are certain recurring characters or personalities. A very common one is the person who treats the open mic like it's a real gig. I don't know where this illusion begins for these people, but it must be at some point after we pay the $5 for 5 minutes of stage time. One guy "worked the audience" for his whole five minutes. Have you noticed that I always am a little hesitant to label the people watching as "audience members?" That's because it's generally comprised solely of open mic'ers. For some reason working an audience of open mic'ers just seems silly. Also, now I'm no laughalogist, but I think working the audience is basically a skill reserved for masters, which believe me, he wasn't. Not that I am, or anyone else at these things is, but the point of the open mic is, in my opinion, is to try out your jokes. Not only that, but 5 minutes is nothing, something I'm learning the hard way. I've been trying to banter a little and tie my jokes in with what other people have been saying, and that's been cutting my time in half.

Anyway, another guy got up there and gave us shit for not applauding loud enough. This is really ridiculous, we don't even know the guy and in a sense we're all there to work. That's one of the hardest things about doing open mics, your "audience" isn't really there to laugh, they're there to try out material, and often times they're going over that material while they're waiting to go up. But whatever, that's the way it is, and to be fair the audiences in all the videos I have up were pretty cool and attentive. But anyway, this is guy goes on for like a minute and a half about how we're not giving him enough applause... then the poor guy bombs out of control. Hiroshima was less tragic. I mean tragic, that-has-never-happened-to-me-not-even-my-first-time bomb. Like children would be scarred for life and pregnant women would miscarry, bomb. He managed to stumble though a couple of bad one-liners before forgetting... everything... literally. He spent another minute or two on stage muttering about how he forgot his jokes and then gave up and just sat down well before his time was up. Now I'm not making fun of the guy, I'm sure something like that will happen to me someday, and he could be the next Chris Rock for all I know, but he deserved what he got because he was acting like we weren't at an open mic. 1. He didn't bring any material up with him, just in case. Now practicing for the real thing seems like a good idea, but this guy was trying to sprint before he could crawl, and no one is impressed by people who don't bring up material on index cards or a piece of paper. Not to mention, real comics (e.g. Sarah Silverman) still bring material up on stage with them, at least when they do small venues. 2. He gave us shit about not applauding loud enough. Now that shit might work on a real audience but it just seems out of place in an open mic, he's working a crowd that isn't there, he might as well be asking amputees to clap louder, just awkward, borderline insensitive.

God, I really feel bad for the guy, if he hadn't bombed so bad I'd be giving him more shit, and I was planning on giving him shit when I got up there, like saying something like, "You're giving us crap about not getting involved enough, but you couldn't take you phone-ear-piece out before you came on stage, you expecting a call?"

Look, these open mic'ers are a good crowd, these people have a lot of courage, heart, dedication and faith in themselves. A lot of people bomb, probably a good 30% only get a couple of pity laughs (even the worst get pity laughs, that's how kind these open mic'ers are, despite the fact that we're all tired and bored and every bad set makes it that much more painful), but generally the heart these people are showing makes up for it. This guy just really rubbed me the wrong way. You could tell that he was just doing it because he thought, "My friends say I'm funny, I'll become a comedian and make a bunch of money." He went up there, told a couple of contrived one liners about him and his parole officer and jail (he was black, so I think he was just like, "Oh I know, I'm black I'll tell jail jokes"). So you know what, he deserved what he got. He wasn't there out of a love for comedy or at least a love for the open mics, he was just there out of greed and stupidity.

What I mean by love of the open mics is that, a lot of people who do them don't really seem to want to become succesful comedians. A lot of them are seriously there for group therapy. They just go up there and talk about their lives and the depressing shit in them. Here's an example of one GEM that I've been hearing a lot lately. "I got fired recently... sucks." Brilliant! No fucking punchline, just sheer misery. Hahaha it's ABSURD, I don't know what possesses these people, maybe shrinks are just too expensive, but it's SO common. Anyway, I've ranted long enough. Hope you enjoyed the video... doubt you enjoyed the rant, but I thought some people might be interested in the open mic culture.

UPDATE: The video has eight views on funny or die, one live vote and two die votes... and I think I gave it the one live vote, so maybe the shit just ain't funny. You can let me know what you think through comments, because I really thought these were good, if somewhat poorly delivered. And don't be afraid to give bad comments, if you tell me something is good that isn't I'm just gonna find out the hard way that it's not funny.