Open Mic

A long time ago my mom said I was the funniest person she knew and while that might be a biased opinion, but that's what mother's do. They tell you're the best even if its not the truth.

I've always enjoyed making people laugh and so because of that have always thought about doing stand up. However, the line between being someone who occasionally says something that people laugh at and going on stage and basically telling everyone in the audience, "I think I'm funny and not only that, but I think I'm funny enough to make you laugh," was one I always scared to cross.

However, here I am in this new city. I have friends, but not a ton of them and so one day a random google search of things to do brought up a link to a local comedy club that also teaches stand up classes. They offered a free intro class where you could come and see what it was all about so I did. Then, I pulled out my credit card and signed up.

One of the biggest benefits of this class is that you are gauranteed three nights a week to do open mic. Apparently, even at clubs that host open mics, you still need to have some connections to get on stage. Obviously I'm paying for this open mic time, but a class piggy backs along with it and the people in my class are all just as scared as I am so they're supportive even if they don't have to be. That's worth something in and of itself.

Last night, 8/13, I did my first three minutes of open mic and it was probably the most thrilling and exciting thing I've done in my life. I was so nervous that I drank about half a Nalgene bottle of water during the comic's set before mine. I didn't want to open with "How's everybody doing?" because that seems lame and luckily for me the MC set me up for a quick joke after she the introduction and I got my first laugh. As soon as that happened I really wasn't nervous anymore. I would have never guessed that would happen. People laughed at my punch lines and it really felt less like a bit and more like just talking. Unfortunately, I finished my last joke before they even turned on the light letting me know I had a minute left. I sort of froze, made the joke that I was now completely out of shit to say decided I'd just do what I told a friend I'd do in this case. I turned to the hottest girl in the room and promptly hit on her to fill the rest of the time. This made people laugh too, but probably for other reasons. At least they were laughing.

I'm so stoked about how it went I can't wait to do it again. In fact I'm going to get back up for open mics on Friday and Saturday night. Go me!