I Waited For This?There was a packed house on Wednesday night at New York Comedy Club and I was primed for a good show. I was using tested material, but I still wouldn’t bore my friends because it would be an entirely new set for them.
And it was still a disaster.
I don’t blame the crowd, but I don’t exactly blame myself. I actually blame the structure of the night. This show really tested the limits of how much comedy people can watch. It especially tested the notion of how much novice comedy people can watch.
The show started at 9 but I didn’t go on until 11:30. The club still had a large crowd, but about 1/3 of the original crowd had left after seeing their friends. It also didn’t help that the people who were still around were almost completely drained. I followed two AWFUL comics, one of whom ran over by a full two minutes during which he actually dropped his pants. He did not get a laugh in that extra time. Or from dropping his pants.
Even if the comics that led up to me had been good, two and a half hours is a lot of comedy. The crowd looked like I was going to take them into the back room to make a hostage video. My opening joke fell flat. Not good. Particularly because I—and past audiences—really like that segment. I recovered a little in the middle, and I thought I had the crowd on my side, but I heard my closing jokes echo off of the back wall. So I opened weak and closed weak. I’ll get used to that eventually, but after waiting so long to get on stage, bombing is just salt in the wound.
I got $5 for each person I brought, so I made $25 last night. That hardly makes it worth it. I know somebody has to go on last, but that was just brutal. Particularly because I wasn’t even closeto being the last comic to perform. When I got off the stage, there were still another dozen comics that were waiting to perform.
I wished them luck and headed out into the drizzle.
I’ll be at Gotham on Saturday, so come on out and watch me rebound.
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