Where things can get pretty igry ...Rick's Cafe Americain

I got seven minutes and made sure that I had enough material prepared to fill the time.  I started with Spider-Man, moved on to my doctor’s office routine, a short segment about fertility, my subway/prison routine and then two short jokes about fake conveniences provided by American Express and Orbitz.  Everything went over very well - especially the Spider Man and doctor’s office stuff - until the end.  The response was especially gratifying because I was responsible for only four of the 60+ people in the crowd.

My (intended) last joke of the night, the second half of the Orbitz segment, may as well have been a request for silence for the memory of the fallen in Iraq.  The silence was complete and obvious to everyone.  Brother of Ugarte could not stifle a laugh at my expense; yes, I recognized his laugh.  (I would kill him for that if I weren’t certain that I would have the exact same reaction to someone else’s misfortune.) I made fun of myself and the silence and got a laugh from that.  In golf, that would be considered a sand save.  Up and down in two from the bunker and I exited to a good round of applause.

Then I gave the tape to my mother to watch with her friends and her sister.  At the time I had forgotten the multiple references to oral sex. C’est la vie. She was going to see that set eventually anyway.

There are a bunch of new gigs on the chart, so come on out! (And sign up for the mailing list if you haven’t.)

Sure, there were a number of acts that were, charitably, awful.  But there was also some very good stuff.  And the crowd was great.  New York Comedy Club appears to draw a very mixed crowd, but one that is mostly young, and kind of rowdy.  Not ‘heckler-rowdy’, more like ‘ready-for-a-good-time-rowdy.’ It is a very good environment for regaining confidence in your material, but one that will make you pay if you slack off.

I started with a routine that I have been doing since the beginning (a couple of segments on my mother’s obsession with getting me paired off and fathered up).  I really have to re-rehearse that bit, though.  I was so comfortable with the material that I didn’t bother to try and sell it on stage.  My lackadaisical mental preparation showed through in the presentation of the material.  I perked up a bit as I realized I was losing the audience, but any crowd (especially one as involved as this one) deserves an A-effort from the moment I grab the mic.  My next joke went well (it kills every time, actually) - though I can’t really describe it.  The Spider-Man segment was also solid.  I need to find a better way to present the second half of the joke, but if I can figure it out, it will probably be a part of my act for a long time.  (Did he just say long time? Isn’t that kind of hubris likely to be tragic? Yes.  But I can’t just sit here assuming that I’m going to fail. Why bother leaving my job in the first place if I’m not going to have any confidence?)

It is a good stage and a good crowd.  New York Comedy Club gets a return visit next Wednesday; make your reservations now.  I get $5 a head so I wouldn’t mind a decent turnout.  My poker income is, shall we say, insufficient.

I like my act, and I like me on stage.  Since I never have liked me in the past, this is a ringing endorsement.  I hope to see you at the club.

Saturday Evening at Gotham

I’ve decided to try and make the Saturday evening preshow at Gotham a regular gig.  The crowds aren’t large, but they are reliably in the neighborhood of 20-30 people.  The stage is comfortable, I like the club and the downstairs bartender is cool.  More importantly, the show is run by Jessica Kirson. She is a quality comic and a great person. She has been tremendously supportive and encouraging and may be on the verge of giving me weekday spots at Gotham. (Knock on wood. Fingers crossed. Purchase horseshoe and rabbit’s foot.) These would still be bringer shows, but the audience will be much larger.

Last Saturday’s show was strange.  Almost half of the audience was there to see me.  I brought almost 20 people to the show.  I was trying out new material, and I focused so hard on the new material that I didn’t perform my old material as well as I could have.  It was like I spent my set in a fog.  It was a pity, because my material was clicking even though I wasn’t.  The doctor’s office stuff was successful again.  I went into a routine about Spider Man that I like a lot.  The audience responded very well to the set up and first segment of the joke, and they were on the verge of responding to the second half of the joke when I completely forgot the punchline.  There I was, setup in hand, audience waiting ... and I have to make a joke about how I haven’t quite worked out the kinks yet.  Still, the audience went along, and I had them laughing at my pain.

I turned to the subway/prison material, and that stuff went OK.  I didn’t tell it with any real conviction, and I even forgot the second punchline. (Is “forgetting” a theme in this post? Yes.) After finishing that, I tried a couple of one liners out.  One did well.  The second did not.  Just for the archives, here is the joke that did not go so well:

I saw a pizza place on Houston with a sign that says Free Can Of Soda With The Purchase Of Any Two Slices.  I don’t know how that’s going to work out, since there is another pizzeria next door.

*Rim shot* Mental note: not everything that is funny as you are walking and talking belongs on the stage. The only person who laughed - literally, the only person - was my Mom.  And I think she was laughing AT me.

And, though I thought that would be between six and seven minutes, the light was still not on.  I have tightened up some of my material considerably, and it didn’t help my timing that I kept forgetting punchlines.  So I went back to the old “Is she Jewish?” routine that has been successful in the past; it was successful again.  But when I was finished, the light STILL wasn’t on and I was drawing a complete blank about where to go next.  This is truly a pity, since (1) I went right on the heels of a guy performing for just the second time and he ran out of material with at least two full minutes left - he walked off the stage without the emcee there to come up and I had to duck out of the room to call the emcee back to the stage; (2) there is a natural segue into a solid bit about my mother’s obsession with getting grandchildren, so I could have filled the time and (3) Laurie, the woman running the show, was trying to give me an extra minute.

I cracked a couple of jokes about how I had completely run out of prepared material until the light came on, and then exited stage right.

I got good feedback, though the consensus is that I am still not giving the audience enough time to react to my jokes.  I also don’t engage the audience enough.  And, as noted, I forget my punchlines.

I’ll be back here next week.

Lessons learned
* Prep hard before each show; even the jokes you know, you don’t know well enough yet. 
* Work on material that you DON’T plan to use in case you have extra time.
* Jokes about linguistic ambiguity have to be REALLY good to say them from the stage.

Monday Night at Underground Lounge

I did not heed the above lessons immediately.  Rather than taking the time to prepare for the open mic at Underground (with your host, Geoff Kole), I decided to open with a few old (did I just say old? I’ve been a comic for less than two months!) and then just do new stuff.  And by new stuff, I mean stuff that I hadn’t exactly worked out.  In other words, I had three words in my notebook and I was looking at the page and trying to remember what the joke was. Hey, Charles, good luck with that.

I didn’t leave my house until almost 8, which was a serious mistake.  The show starts at 9, but the order of appearance is strictly based on the order of sign-up.  I live an hour’s drive from the club and the signups start at 8:30.  And the show is becoming more well known.  So I was more than a little dismayed when I looked at the sheet and saw that I was going to be 20th.  This was going to be a long, long night.  At least I had time to leave, grab something to eat and come back.  With enough time to watch for a little while.  And to have Brother of Ugarte make a surprise appearance, leave to hang with him while he ate. And then to watch four performers before it was my turn.  That is a lot of time.

The person right before me wasn’t a comic.  Though most of the performers are comics, musicians and poets are welcome.  Fatima had an acoustic guitar, a sweet voice and a refreshing folk rhythym that elevated the room.  She was, by far, the highlight of the night.  So when I took the stage I told her that she had great presence but needed to work on her punchlines.  Then I told Geoff that he has to move her up on the bill to wake up the room earlier in the night.  She really was a pleasure.

Then into doctor’s office (decent response); Spider Man (so-so response, told poorly); string of new material (the good stuff went well, the bad stuff, not so much).  I did what I hate to see - I just pulled out my notebook and started telling jokes without any real presence or conviction.  I guess this tests the raw humor in something, but right now I need to work on my demeanor much more than I need to perfect my material.  I have more confidence in myself as a writer than as a performer, so I have to get my priorities straight.

That said, it didn’t go nearly as badly as I just described it.  After the show Geoff invited me to do a show he is running at Stand-Up New York (that, alas, I can’t make) and to emcee a future show at the Underground (which I most certainly will do).  I thank Geoff wholeheartedly for the opportunity.

I’ll be back here next week also.

Lessons Learned
* Pay attention to the lessons that you learn at other performances
* Leave early for shows on the other side of the City
* Start chatting up the other comics more. There are some people there that can write.

The Laugh Factory has been in Hollywood for 25 years, but the New York branch has just opened up in Times Square.  As far as I know they only have shows on the weekends right now and they are going to have a grand opening in September.  The kitchen isn’t finished but the interior design is.  This is the nicest comedy club I have ever been in.  The stage is, for a comedy club, huge.  The stairs to the stage are not an OSHA nightmare.  The seats look comfortable - and they all face the stage.  The fixtures are all new and nice and the place is just so fucking clean.

You almost forget that very recently it was a strip club.  (I think Show World closed down when the Giuliani administration was able to come up with a zoning scheme that they could no longer avoid.) Almost.

The club is trying to get 10 people from the New York club to represent the “East Coast” lawyers in a competition against the “West Coast” lawyers who do well in the Hollywood club’s contest. This could be the biggest bicoastal throwdown since Suge Knight went to jail.  (Ahem.)

The emcee for the evening was Paul Mecurio, a comic and a writer for The Daily Show.  When I last saw him my friend Alexei was telling him to shove it during some of his crowd banter because he thought he was being patronized as one of the few African-Americans in the crowd.  Also, he sort of made an inappropriate comment to a Korean friend in the crowd.  He was much better this time.  His material was sharp and his audience banter was often great.  He was a very good emcee.  I was going to go 10th out of 12.

The contest was only announced (as far as I know) three days ago, so there was not a lot of time to prepare.  I decided that this wasn’t the time to try out new material and I opted to go from the visit to the doctors office into the prison material.  Both have been reliable so far, and I thought the Jewish mother stuff would take too long. Also - even though I don’t do any lawyer material - I decided to open with a joke for the lawyers in the crowd. I expected the whole crowd to be lawyers given the nature of the contest (and the fact that lawyers tend not to hold onto their non-lawyer friends).  Since I will likely never perform this joke again, I will repeat it here. After using a standard greeting to get the crowd to acknowledge that they are, in fact, having a good time I said:

Of course you’re having a good time. You can go out to a comedy club because you’ve got a first year associate in the library trying to prove that separate is equal.

It turns out that the crowd was mostly tourists, not lawyers.  I got very little response (which is exactly the response I would expect from a non-lawyer crowd).  The only folks that really liked that joke were lawyers and there weren’t enough of them in the crowd.

Overcoming that initial obstacle, the other material went very well until the end.  My closing joke went over like a lead baloon.  It was, by far, the worst response that joke has ever received.

After the last comic, they announced the people moving on.  Before the show they said that three or four of us would move on to the next round.  They said one name ... two ... three ... four ... Shit! am I really not going to make it? I really thought I had the best set! ... Charles Star Whew. ... six ... seven. (And in the order of appearance, not ‘place.’)

Seven people qualified to move on?  Just what kind of contest is this?  Well, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but that is ridiculous.

I wish I knew what it meant, but they were a little fuzzy on the details.  They have my email, so I guess I’ll hear soon.  When I know, you’ll know.

Thanks to the crew from Proskauer for coming out to the show.  I didn’t ask anyone to come, so it was a really nice surprise.

I knew my material was better than the responses it was getting, but I also knew that it needed work.  I decided to rework all of the jokes I had been telling. I shuffled the order, reworked punchlines, added additional jokes during the setup, adjusted my timing.  The whole nine. Rewriting is almost like work, dammit!

But it isn’t like work. Rewriting my jokes is like playing with a chemistry set.  Sure, I’m bound to have something blow up in my face every once in a while but when the experiment works it is a real sense of accomplishment.  This is lofty talk for what is really nothing more than me making fun of my mother’s ideosyncracies, but that is a lesson to you: never ask someone to describe what they do if they like what they are doing.  Even the most mundane tasks start to sound as important as finding the cure for cancer when described by a person that likes doing them.

Now that you’ve been properly warned and I’ve been properly grounded we can move on.

Last night wasn’t a preshow.  At the same time that Geoff Kole told me about the open mic at the Underground he invited me to perform in a show he produces at Stand Up NY.  This bill had a number of professionals on the bill, which is nice for the people who come to see me.  A night of other comics roughly at my level can be tough to watch.  It is certainly tough for me to watch a lot of them.  Last night, though, there was a good group.  Al Ducharme, Joe Matarese and Johnny Lampert were performing. Eddie Ifft and an Aussie comic whose name I can’t remember were also on the bill.  Anyway, there was a lot of good stuff surrounding me and I was nervous as hell about performing the new versions of my jokes for the first time.

So nervous that I didn’t watch the emcee.  So nervous that I don’t even remember his name.  I also didn’t see Al Ducharme.  I confess that I have no idea if he is any good since I hadn’t heard of him before.  In any event, I eventually settled down and started watching the comedy.  I thought that Eddie Ifft was great.  He was followed by a young Indian woman whose name I don’t know, but who had a really solid set.  After a few more comics of varying quality, Geoff tapped me on the shoulder and told me that Johnny Lampert would go next and I would follow him.

Great.  I have to go on immediately after the pro.  I didn’t know if that meant that the crowd would be warmed up or if I would be exposed as a walking pile of boredom.  Lampert had a good set, too, though I don’t think he got quite the response from the crowd that he wanted.  They were laughing, though, so they were in a good mood when I was introduced.

Ten friends were in the crowd, so I had a solid base of support.  Amazingly, most of the crowd appeared to be high school kids.  I don’t know what brought them all out, but at least one of them said that he was 15 when asked.  I do a lot of jokes about my mother and her desire to see me married with children and I didn’t know how well that would play with a really young crowd.  I figure in high school you want a lot of jokes about fucking and taking drugs.  But the material went over very well! I guess even at that age you can see reflections of one’s own mother and the writing on the wall.  I rolled from the “mother stuff” into my segment about getting my physical and then into my prison jokes.  All of the segments got a good response.  It was the best that I’d felt on stage in a long time.

And then after the show I gots paid!  $30 is about what I expected and exactly what I got.  I am still a long way from making a living doing this, but at least I’m getting something.  Also, Geoff told me that he would talk to the club owner to get me the paid weekend spots that I won at the Funny Lawyer contest.

Tonight I am taking a night off from performing in order to watch.  Jessica Kirson, who produces the weekend shows at Gotham that I’ve been doing, invited me to tonight’s show so she can put a name to my face. (She works a lot, so she usually isn’t at the club for the early sets that I’m doing.) Jim Gaffigan and Greg Rogell, two of my favorites, are also going to be on the bill.  I’m looking forward to the comedy and the contacts.

Thursday night is another funny lawyer contest at The Laugh Factory, so if you can make it to Times Square tomorrow at 7, I’ll be there doing a tight three minutes.

Now go read about Read Less...

I wasn’t at my best.  I am still not accustomed to small crowds.  For some reason I am more at ease in front of a full room than an empty one.  Part of it, I am sure, is that when my friends make up a significant part of the room I can count on some laughs to regulate my pace.  When the audience doesn’t respond immediately I don’t give them time to catch up to me or think about the joke at all.  (It’s not like I’m explaining nuclear fission, but a little bit of reflection helps some of my material.)

The “annual physical” jokes were successful (though the opening joke still isn’t getting the response that I want). The prison jokes also went over well, though I expect more response from that stuff in the long run also. I really blew the delivery of the jokes about buying flowers/condoms.  And then I completely left off the second half of the segment.  (I realized this much later when I was wondering why I had so much time left over.)

The real tragedy of the night, though, is that I am taking a joke out of rotation for a little while.  The jokes have an underlying credibility problem that I don’t think is insurmountable, but is a real problem right now.  I think I am almost there, but I can’t keep getting up there and bombing with it. I like the joke too much to subject it to so much silence. It needs to be nurtured, not abused.

Anyway, tonight is another night.  I will be at Stand Up NY tonight as part of the 9PM show. I’ll report back.

Thursday, July 22 at New York Comedy Club.  9PM.  I need 3 people.

Wednesday, July 28 at New York Comedy Club.  9PM.  I don’t need to bring anyone, but I get $5 a head for everyone that I do bring.

Thursday night at New York Comedy Club

The New York Comedy Club is, to be generous, a pit.  The ceilings are low, the hallway is narrow and everything just seems unclean.  This appears to be a point of pride at the club, however, so I don’t think I’ll get in too much trouble for pointing it out.  I also note that they have some great comics performing there regularly, so the whole book/cover thing applies as well here as it does anywhere else. 

The club has two rooms, sort of.  The small room is a glorified hallway with a small elevated “stage” set up in the middle of the length of the hallway.  There is barely enough room for one row of chairs against the mirrored wall that is directly in front of the stage.  The wings have more seats, but the total seating is no more than 25 (and I doubt the Fire Marshall would like that number).  I played the small room a few weeks ago and it was a horrible experience. The big room, low ceilings aside, is a much better space.  Over 100 seats at full capacity, I think.  There is a wing to the left of the stage where the comics waiting to perform can chill without being a distraction and the crowd doesn’t feel either too close or too distant. 

The show I was performing in was an Industry Showcase run by Steve Arons.  “Industry Showcase” is a euphemism for “new talent show,” which is itself a euphemism for “bringer” show.  “Bringer” is, of course, a euphemism for “exploitation of the dreams of novices of unknown potential and more experienced comics with none.” Not surprisingly, this meant that the people who came to see me were treated to a lot of dreck.  With that noted, on to my show…

I was one of the last comics to perform, which was kind of a bummer.  I knew of 11 people (big ups to the SZEFS crew, Brother of Ugarte and Elisabeth) that had come to see me and I was hoping that I could get on early and talk to them for a while after my set.  It was not to be.  My performance, when I finally got up there, was pretty good.  I like the material that I’m doing, though my delivery still needs some work.  I hedge too much and I don’t really sell my punchlines. Still, when I delivered a joke right, I got the laughs that the material deserves.  More importantly, my audience rapport was great. (If I do say so myself. And I do.) When a joke didn’t go well, the audience responded to self-deprecation.  When the audience wasn’t helping out with the set-up to a joke, they laughed at my reaction to their unwillingness to participate.  I had to cut my last joke short because NYCC doesn’t really have a red light to signal “one minute remaining” to the comics.  The emcee flashed his cell phone light at me and I couldn’t tell if that was a “one minute” signal or I had missed that flash and he was trying to say “get the fuck off stage.”

Downer of the night: Although the NYCC website and voicemail advertise that they have “low cost recording” of the shows (BYOTape +$2), the only available video was a professional DVD for $35.  This has apparently been the case for some time now.  Booooooooo.

I got good feedback from the people I brought (natch) and some of the other novices.  I was also invited back for shows on July 22d and July 29th.

Friday evening at Gotham

I got a little panicked before the Gotham show because I didn’t think that I was going to make the modest bringer number of 4.  I had three people back out on me at the last minute.  Fortunately I had a last minute addition (thanks Juan and Beth) and a quick call to the emergency squad got me over the hump (thanks BofU (again), Frank and Beth).

The Friday night comics were more polished than most of the folks I performed with last Saturday.  There was still a mixed bag of performances, but the crowd was much more into the performances.  They were not, however, much more into my performance.  This wasn’t their fault, though.  My performance was spotty.  I lost my place after my opening jokes (a cheap scatological laugh followed by a good bit about going to the doctor).  I chose not to go all the way with a pseudo-macho joke about predate preparation.  That part of the joke sank the better material that followed.  And then I completely blew part of my lottery segment.  I didn’t even want to do the lottery stuff, but I decided to do a self-mocking segue after the dating material bombed.  Despite what sounds like a horrible experience, it wasn’t so bad. 

Once again my jokes about the performance itself went well and I maintained a good relationship with the crowd.  When I told good material well they were willing to laugh.  This was a good crowd and I did get my share of laughs out of them.  I feel like my stage presence is improving and I am constantly tweaking my material to tighten it up.  I got good feedback from some of the other comics and the owner of the club (I think) went up to my brother and complimented his set.  (In the club owner’s defense, we are told that we look very similar and we happened to both be wearing very similar shirts.)

So far, so good with this crazy experiment.

Upcoming gigs

Tonight, 9PM (arrive at 8:45) at Underground Lounge.  955 West End Ave. at 107th St.  I think this may be a free show if you aren’t performing. I also don’t need to bring anyone. (That is a code for “I thank you for your support if you do show up, but your duties as a friend still require you to keep coming to bringer shows.")

Tomorrow, 9PM (arrive at 8:45) at Stand-Up NY.  $10 + 2 drinks.  I have to bring 7 but I have the number unless people bail on me.  (Same code! But I may owe you big time if you show and someone else flakes out on me.)