#82 - My First Stand-Up Comedy Open Mic!

Come with me, discover how it went!

Hello, my friends,

The 100-degree heat seems to have broken in the greater Los Angeles area (it was even overcast yesterday morning!) though I won’t trust that Fall is actually here until we get more of this mild weather. I’m happy for the change and look forward to working up a sweat while jogging because I’m putting in effort not because it’s still sweltering at 9:30p. Speaking of exercise, I’ve been mentioning it fairly regularly in this introductory space over the past few months and I know that there are some readers who are less-than-interested in reading about fitness (note, I haven’t been talking about sumo, even though the Aki/Autumn tournament is currently underway! :D ). All that said, I attended a training webinar this week that gave me a different perspective on my sharing. It was called “Talk to the Elephant - Designing Learning for Behavior Change” delivered by Julie Dirksen.

Part of the training discussed the spectrum of reasons why people make less optimal decisions despite being aware of better options. More to the point was what pushes folks past those reasons to the better decisions, here’s that what I quickly jotted down and clarifying questions I just made up:

• Social proof: Are their peers are doing it?

• Appeal from authority figures: Are influencers asking them to do it? (I use the term “influencer” generally as people who are experts/persuasive to the individual unrelated to commercial purposes)

• Social norms: Is this change or decision in line with what people do in their social ecosystem?

• Identity/value alignment: Does the change confirm who they are (or want to be) as a person?

As you know if you’ve been reading HMF, I’m a big proponent of the basic building blocks to well-being: Getting enough sleep, eating healthful foods, and staying fit, among others. These activities are a constant work-in-progress for me, and I also want them for all my friends (you among them). The webinar I attended closed the loop in thinking for me that part of the reason that I share my fitness activities here is that I want to be at least one of your peers that is exercising (social proof) and for it to be a normal, everyday activity among us (social norms). Keeping in shape is just what we all do, whether that means taking a walk around the block or running an ultramarathon.

Despite having enjoyed coming up with personal calisthenics workouts lately, I don’t have any special interest in fitness or exercise. I’m not particularly inclined to read or think about it. But I do like feeling energetic and free of aches and that, unlike with so many aspects of our lives, exercise makes the distance between action and reward relatively quick and clear (more so if you want to eliminate pain, less so if your goal is to have a six-pack). So, yeah, if my pedestrian attempts at athleticism have inspired some of your own, I bow in your general direction!

“Untitled (Female Athletes)” (c. 1927) by Alexander Rodchenko

Mic’d Up

As I mentioned I was going to do last week, I attended and performed at my first-ever comedy open mic on Wednesday evening at a small venue not far from home. When I arrived, I was greeted by a book-lined room and a bunch of chairs filled with slightly awkward people, some with friends, some alone — obviously all comedians. I put my stage name (Dell Pickles) on a little ticket and threw it into the bucket. Every Wednesday, 20 people perform for five minutes each, in a random order as selected from the bucket. You find out that you’re going up when you’re announced as the “on-deck” person. In the meantime, I sat alone as folks chatted around me, some setting up fiddling with tripods so they could film their sets.

At 8pm, the festivities got underway with an announcement that there were 25 names in the bucket and five had to be removed. It would have been an anti-climactic evening if my name was called but I probably would’ve stayed anyway. Then the first comic was announced. As I told Ashley when I returned home, the distribution of stand-ups seems to be like a distribution of almost anything; there were some folks who were not funny at all, most who were good for at least a few laughs, and some who were hilarious. And somewhere among them was I.

Open mics like this seem to be a practice ground for stand-ups. Many people came on stage with notebooks, rumpled sheets of paper, or had their phones open. The presence of a memory aid didn’t determine skill level, though the most polished were obviously off-book. The worst performers were cringe-inducing young guys who had little self-awareness and often barely an idea of basic comedic guidelines; they would get so lost in their setups that it was difficult to discern a punchline, if there even was one (many times there wasn’t). These guys weren’t funny and mostly weren’t likable, either. Their worst quality was that they used comedic license (the tacit agreement among comedy people that the boundaries of political correctness are fluid, as long as the joke is funny) to talk about hot-button issues like school shootings, 9-11 (it was September 11th, after all), rape, and politics. But they weren’t funny so the audience just tolerated them until their five minutes (which felt longer) ran out.

A step above that group was mostly well-meaning, often likable, performers who were just completely unprepared. They took the time to get dressed, drive to the venue, sign up, but when they got to the microphone and started talking, it was clear that they were shooting blanks. They often had something half-witty to start with, maybe a call-back to a previous comedian’s joke, but then the stammering and silences began. They’d think, flip through their notebooks, and maybe make a half-hearted attempt to tell a joke. Surprisingly, the ineptitude could be entertaining! The guy who went on after me also had glasses and a button-up shirt on — he commented on that, and went on to make some jokes about my stage name. He was obviously not new to stand-up and had stuff prepared, but something about the evening wasn’t there for him so he spent the majority of his time rolling “Dell Pickles” around in his mouth. Probably, I should have fired back a thing or two but I was laughing too hard!

The average cats aren’t interesting to describe — they told jokes that were hit or miss. Some of them were technically proficient (solid rhythm, attentive to the crowd, nice pacing, etc.) it’s just that not all the bits they were trying out were fully cooked. I was probably somewhere in this category: I did a few jokes I had used in the comedy class a couple of weeks ago and surrounded them with new material. Of course, I rehearsed and had my set memorized but, of course, that isn’t enough. Since I’m new at this, it was hard for me to accurately gauge crowd reactions, but reflecting on the good laughs (as the opposed to the pity laughs at my failures) later, it was clear that while some of my jokes worked well enough, others were either clunkers or needed more work. Likewise, while my delivery was adequate, there is a lot of room for improvement. Still, I relished in the laughs and appreciated that a few people told me they liked my stuff. Moreover, I was actually nervous about the whole thing, which felt nice.

I don’t know exactly what my goal is with stand-up comedy — I have no particular desire to be a travelling performer, but it would be nice to do a solo show someday. Right now putting together a tight five-minutes is the goal. If I was completely without responsibilities, I’d likely hit up an open mic every night (there are a lot of options in LA), but as it is maybe I’ll do a few a month? I don’t know. I do like writing jokes so I’ll keep trying stuff out.

Overall, my first comedy open mic was a multi-layered experience, but on top of everything I had a good time. I felt comfortable sitting by myself and laughing, and even though the host mistook my name for “Doll Pickles” as she called me up, it did not affect my set. I’m not a very adventurous person — I wouldn’t call myself a lover of travel or anything — but apparently I do like performing well enough to go up in front of strangers and labor to make them laugh. As with everything worthwhile, it’s a labor of love.

“The Clowns” (1926) by Jose Gutierrez Solana

Time Machine

Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #29):

• Singing in the Car: On hearing Michael singing along.

• Ask the Dust: A list of random questions about dust.

• False Sense of Security: Thinking about basic home security, and its effectiveness.

“Infantry Guards Wandering Along the River” (1870) by Claude Monet