Is This Thing On?I’ve become lax in my blogging. Not as lax as Rick, of course, but lax all the same. I haven’t posted about poker in ages (a post is in the works, but in need of serious editing) and very little about comedy. So here is a review of my week in comedy, in the form of a quasi-diary, with most of the boring parts removed. Leaving only the other boring parts.
The open mic scene in New York is a strange and beautiful thing. There are so many comics that on every night of the week, there is a comedy open mic going on every night of the week. The upside is a lot of places to play. The downside is that getting good stage time is still a crapshoot because so many other people show up at the mics.
On Monday I went straight from work to Chinatown to do a six minute set at Yello on Mulberry Street. I got there early, and signed up eighth. Eighth isn’t very good; audiences usually start flagging after six comics, and a mic like Yello (which starts at ~7PM) has very little audience to speak of anyway. I didn’t go eighth, though. I forgot that the host of the room gives priority to people that email him in advance to let him know that they are coming. So I went 14th. I felt like a dog at an animal shelter. Every time the emcee stood up to introduce the next act I thought “Pick me! Pick me! You’ll love me if you will just pick me!!!” By the time comic number 11 hit the stage all I could think was “Fuck it. I’ve been in the pound too long. Just kill me, OK?” The night was going to be really long.
The emcee, after doing a full set up front, kept doing almost two minutes between the comics. Getting longer.
There was also a “headliner.” A guy who has done Conan, among other glamour credits. He did 15 fucking minutes. Ugh. I don’t want to see Chris Rock show up and do 15 minutes when I’m at an open mic and I certainly didn’t want to see impressions of - seriously - Laurel & Hardy, John Candy and Jackie Gleason. And the night just got longer.
I followed a woman that was more performance artist than stand-up comic (her act involved a lot of shreiking and overpronunciation of her own name “Squeeeeer!") and - in a serious open mic felony - she went over by a full two minutes. By the time she was done I was ready to strangle her with my bare hands, even if the entire killing was taken out of my stage time. Longer still.
I finally got up and just died. The crowd had dwindled to the four comatose comics that still had to perform plus the emcee and the booker. I got some laughs from two people who hand’t seen me before, but it was a wasted experience. I didn’t feel like jinxing new material, so I didn’t do any of the stuff I wanted to test and half-assing the old stuff isn’t worth the amount of time I spent waiting. The night perked up a little when the woman who followed me decided to perform her set shirtless (but not braless) so the stragglers would pay attention. I stuck around.
By the time I left Yello it was 9PM. Bowery Poetry Club has an open mic that starts at 10, so I hoofed it across town. (Yes, you read that right. I walked. Seriously.) I got there in plenty of time, went around the corner to grab a burger at Great Jones Cafe and was still one of the first people to toss my name into the hat. It was pulled out roughly 40th! If I waited, I would get to do a four minute set at 2:15 in the morning. Maybe. It was possible that I wouldn’t get on at all before the show closed at 2:30. I stuck around long enough to see Rick Shapiro do an uncomfortable improv bit that involved using the word “nigger” 100 times in seven minutes. It was horrid. It was like watching that stupid “Dead Nigger Storage” scene in Pulp Fiction, which I am sure QT wrote strictly to say “nigger” in Samuel Jackson’s face without getting the shit pounded out of him. It was a thrill to then to see Victor Vornado get up and slam them for the pseudo-intellectual-oh-so-meta-ironic-bullshit that sketches like that spring from. I waited to see Jessy Delfino do a few profane songs because I had heard good things (which were true) and then I left. At 11:30.
To recap: I watched over three hours of comedy and half-assed a six minute set. Not a good night.
Tuesday I went back to Alligator Lounge in Williamsburg. The Alligator is a great room because the bar is full on Tuesdays and they just announce the free comedy show in the back room, which usually draws six to ten people. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really makes a huge difference. Again I ended up at the bottom of the list. Frustratingly, this was largely becuase early-arriving comics signed up their friends, so I had to follow people who came later than I did. Still, the beginning of the show ended up being a bad place to be. We had an audience of three - and none of them were willing to laugh. Fortunately, the comic two ahead of me was so painful, they left… and were replaced by three guys that laughed at ANYTHING. So, despite the wait, I actually had a pretty good set. Nice to have a night that isn’t a total loss.
It is now after 4AM and I have to get some sleep. Plus, this is really way too long already. I’ll post the rest of my week tomorrow. I know that you can’t wait.
Read Less...
