After my first attempt at stand-up, I solicited the advice of some of my fellow performers as to what to do next. Do I stay with the same material and try to tighten it up, or do I do all different stuff and see how it goes over?
I got a few different opinions, and in the end I chose the latter option. My thinking is (was), I'm not gearing up for some showcase, I don't need to have my five best minutes ready for anything; why not keep putting stuff out there and then go back and see what worked and what didn't?
So that's what I did. In my first set, I did some stuff that I had only recently written - this time I went back into my archives and pulled out some of the first jokes I ever wrote - mostly about dogs and drugs*.
*which is odd, because I've never had a dog, and I've never really done any drugs.
This set was different in many ways from the first, but the biggest difference was the careful wording of my jokes. Several of them had very specific wording**, and I was very nervous in the days leading up to the show that I'd forget a line or say something wrong and it would mess up my set.
**If you read the post after this where I talked about how I stopped writing this blog pretty soon after I started it, this is where I left off - In a blog allegedly devoted to covering my thoughts on my attempt at doing comedy, I didn't even make it through my second performance. I mean, how pathetic is that? The rest of this post is now my memory of that night six months later, so it's possible I won't remember my thoughts exactly as I had them at the time.
And basically, that paranoia was fairly prescent about (and probably the cause of) what did happen, which was I got into a bit about Why do we call dogs a man's best friend, and I totally and completely blanked on what I was supposed to say next.
When I watch the video of the performance, it doesn't look as bad on tape as it felt when it happened. But when it happened - man, I was shaken. Perhaps it's a positive sign that you can't really tell that in my performance, but I was totally dying on the inside.
It's funny - before I ever went on stage, I heard comics talk about what happens when you bomb, and I was like, that won't be me - I know it happens to everyone and I'm not going to let it affect me, I'll just brush it off, get that dirt off my shoulders if you will. And then I lost my place for a second, which didn't even really count as bombing, and I was a total wreck. So when it does eventually happen***, man, I really don't think I'm going to handle it well at all.
***and it will. No matter how many times I tell myself that it's an inevitability and a part of any comic's experience, I still in the back of my mind secretly hope that it won't, and that everything I say will be hilarious. But it will happen. It will. happen. Remember that, brain!
All in all, I'd give myself a B, maybe a B- for my sophomore effort. I got a few good laughs in there, but my delivery is still very passive and I feel like I kind of gave up on a couple lines where perhaps if I'd delivered them with confidence I might have gotten a better reaction.
I also feel like the material I did is perhaps territory that has been well trod by other comics. Maybe it hasn't, maybe I am lucky, but watching it now I don't feel like it was particularly fresh. But I guess we're all our own worst critics.
Other memorable moments from the night - one guy who I believe was also making his second attempt at taking the stage brought on a puppet that he kind of used as a ventriloquist dummy, and who was I believe German and a raging anti-semite. I have to say, I don't really know if he was funny or not, but he was brave, and he committed to it, and I have to say I respect that.
