bitterisataste . . . words and ramblings . . . v.6.0

Friday, February 22, 2013

this entry brought to you by nine inch nails, "discipline"

It's been super frustrating when people have accused me of being chicken because I haven't done stand-up at an open mic yet, despite wanting to for years now. I mean, sure, I was nervous-- how could I not be? But chicken?

Listen, there have been a whole bunch of circumstances against me. For one thing, I work overnights, and my shifts start at 11pm. I work Sunday through Thursday and have Friday and Saturday off. Most places that have stand-up comedy tend to not have open mics on Friday and Saturday on account of that being prime time for literally everything else that attracts paying customers. Comedy clubs have headlining acts. Bars have singles nights or whatever it is bars do.

Michelle does not have a set schedule, and can work Sunday through Saturday, with shifts that either start at 8, 12, or 4, and can come home as early as 4 or as late as 10. And to top it off, neither of us knows our schedules before the Friday before the start of our week, so we can request days off all we want, but we won't know until Friday what days off we're going to have.

I also have children, and getting supervision in the middle of the week isn't easy, so it would have to be a day, in the middle of the week, that we both happen to be scheduled off, because it's not like I can just spend my evenings doing whatever I want to do.

Furthermore, every single time I've Googled "open mic Phoenix", I kept getting places with ridiculous catches. For one, I live in Chandler, which is a suburb, and I could never find anything near where I lived, so if I was going to do this, it was going to be a trip. Some places said I had to do a clean set-- no thank you. Some places said I had to schedule in advance, and they were booked for months. But the worst part was that if you Googled "Open Mic Phoenix" you keep getting what are known as "bringer" shows, where you have to bring X amount of people. The reason for this, from the comedy club's perspective, is that this means they now have guaranteed drink purchases, so you can keep the lights on for the night. From the comic's perspective, however, this means you have to convince 10 people you know to make the drive out, and... well, what if only eight people show? You've just wasted both everyone's time and yours. Also, I think I know ten people, period.

But the biggest obstacle between me and stand-up comedy is that I do not have a car. The nearest bus stop is a mile away, and the last stop is at 8:30, which, you'll note, is before most "night" activities like stand-up comedy shows even start. In short, I would have to rely on a ride to get to and from the open mic.

So when Kristen, whom I've known for years now and is one of my closest friends, told me she saw an open mic, that the comics were pretty good, that it was a very positive environment, that they hold open mics every Wednesday, that she would be willing to take me, and I unexpectedly got a Wednesday off shortly thereafter, I thought, well hell. Let's fucking do this.

Actually, uhm, I prolonged it for a week. It had been so long since I'd thought about my prepared five minutes that I had completely forgotten entire punch lines and the flow of jokes, so I needed a little more time to go over it again. But by the next Wednesday (which was this past Wednesday, the 20th), not only had I memorized all my old jokes again, I had come up with new tags to several jokes, and had taken out one joke and replaced it with a new one that I then memorized that day. I had walked to the store earlier to pick up something for dinner, saying the punch line two or three times, making sure I wouldn't stumble over it. Gigantic, untrimmed 80's style bush.

Right. Got it.

(cont'd tomorrow)
-----

with love from CRS @ 10:10 AM

Friday, February 22, 2013

0 Comments: