So... I was back at the Shaskeen in Manchester last night, for Nick and Brad's Open Mic Comedy Night - in this case featuring neither Brad nor Nick hosting (but with a special guest performance by Nick) and it went... all right. It's my third time which you'd know if you've been following (but judging by my follower list on here that'd be made up of a group of... me. It feels like mastablogging at the moment, but oh well) you'd know and you'd also know that the first time was pretty good and the second... not so much.
This time it was a lot more like time one than time two. Similarly to the first time I didn't use my entire time but I got some laughs and was generally fairly comfortable on stage and little went wrong. Like the second time I had some level of not going on exactly when I might have chosen - namely last. I personally was trying to view it as headlining but it's hard to do when half the crowd leaves before you go on. And when several of the people on before me were far better (not to mention polished) than I.
So, I enjoyed the whole night of stand up, saw Jenny Z and Louis Bercelli, among other do their thing (and do it well in both cases) and was able to have that lovely 'I'm about to go on' feeling in the pit of my stomach last a whole two hours. It's difficult because I've been getting by on my memory and on practice to do my sets, but after a few hours of not practicing (because I was watching everyone else) I was getting worried I'd start forgetting things - this did not happen, thankfully.
In the meantime I chatted with a local comic and had an experience I'm thinking you probably have had, of being a few minutes in conversation with someone before you figure out 'oh man - we are never going to be friends' based on a single comment. In this fellow's case it was that he wanted to appeal to everyone and that his role model in comedy was... Jay Leno. Ouch. There are few, if any people I can think of that would make me repulsed more than Jay Leno, as the end of that sentence. Hitler, maybe. We can maybe get back to this another time.
My act, last night was a bit of a composite of my first two bits. Or at least it had at least one joke from each, cast in a new light-
The topic at hand (and I'm really attached to the idea of having a single topic - this might be a flaw or it might be good, time will tell) was that I had decided that I should embrace failure and live a failure based life style, because when I thought about it: the only thing I've ever been very good at is failure.
I related this back to a recent break-up and retold a joke from last week (namely that when a girl says she wants to be friends and means it it basically means "I like you being around me... just not INSIDE me") and back to my first bit, with my older sister telling me to shut the fuck up and that I wasn't funny.
What I found in going up and doing this is a few things -
1) I should really do this in front of friends and family before I go up - because I find myself, after lots of practice thinking, on stage 'shit I don't want to say that' and cutting things, which likely I'd do when doing it for other people
2) To follow my instincts more on cutting things, because instinct is what I'm running on, on some level on stage and if I never like something before I get onstage, even if I say 'oh we'll see how it works' well... no, we won't because I'm likelier to just not say it.
3) If I don't do these things I really need to stop timing myself - because 5 minutes without editing turns into anywhere from 3 and half to 4 minutes with it, on stage
That all being said - I think it went as well as it was going to. Only time #3 - I feel like I'm getting more comfortably on stage and that I'm getting a better idea of the sort of stuff to be saying and racking up a few new jokes that work each time.
I am trying to not overwhelm people with long drawn out posts, so that's all for now. Click the little button and follow me! Or comment! I'd appreciate it! You can tell how much by the exclamation marks!!!
