My whole life I’ve been told what a funny guy I am. I was even voted “Best Sense of Humor” in my graduating class. Last night, I finally got a chance to prove it.
Howard, a co-worker of mine, talked me into signing up for Open Mic Night at The Loony Bin, a local comedy club. I have never done stand up comedy before and the idea of trying it was both really exciting and really scary. Every Wednesday, the Loony Bin allows up to eight open-mic’ers to go up on stage and perform up to four minutes of material before the headliners go on. Howard and I went three or four Wednesdays ago to check out how everything worked and how the competition stacked up. Personally, I thought that without even having any pre-written material, I could have done better than half the open-mic guys. This was the confidence booster I needed to finally agree to take the stage. Well, that, and the fact that the $6 cover charge is waived for performers. Rock!
The two of us got to the club around 8pm and put our names on the list. Terry, the owner of the club, only allows a maximum of eight open mic performers to perform. Since ten people signed up, they did a quick drawing to decide which two would sit out. Howard and I both drew little pieces of paper that read “yes”, so we were in. One guy who pulled a “no” drove from Bartlesville, about a three-hour road trip (he ended up trading papers with another local comic). It was determined that I would go on fifth, and Howard would perform sixth.
Once we knew who was going to perform, Terry gave us the rules of the club. All performances were to be no longer than four minutes long. At three and a half minutes, they would flash a flashlight at our faces, which we had to acknowledge. No f-words and no “GD” references — either of those will get you banned from the club. After all the rules were laid out, we were escorted to the area where the comics sit and were then introduced to the headliner and the MC of the night. It was at that point that Terry informed us that the club had almost sold out and that there were over 110 reservations.
The last time Howard and I went to the Loony Bin we saw eight comics and I can tell you what and how every one of them did. I can recite most of their acts verbatim and tell you what most of them did right and what they did wrong in their acts. I really spent some time studying how they performed. Last night though, I couldn’t tell you much about the other seven performers. I remember a couple of them were really bad; one seventy-year-old guy did four minutes about toilet paper rolls. Another guy just told people to keep staring at his face, and then did a song about going to Canada in case there’s a draft. While the fourth guy was performing, I made my way down to the side of the stage, ready to make my grand entrance. Finally, the MC came to the stage, and announced that the next comedian of the night would be … Mr. Rob O’Hara! Come on up here Rob! And so I did.
My bit went pretty well. I stammered around a few times but the stuff that went well got a lot of laughs. I was very surprised to find that I could not see the crowd at all during my performance, due to the bright stage lights both above me and on the floor. I honestly could not see past the first row of tables. Once or twice I had what seemed like long pauses (to me) to gather my thoughts and refocus. Howard said he basically didn’t notice the pauses, so they must’ve seemed much longer to me on stage than they did to the crowd.
Howard followed me, and did a really good job. Howard told me after his act that he had forgotten a bunch of jokes and left a lot of material out, but I couldn’t tell at all. Howard’s act was a bunch of jokes strung together. Mine was more of a flowing story, which I thought would work out better but if you forget where you’re going with it (which is very easy to do under the pressure and stress) then it doesn’t work out so well. I think both styles worked pretty well. With our performances out of the way, we kicked back and enjoyed the rest of the show!
I’m pretty proud to say I can add “amateur stand up comic” to my resume. In retrospect I see a lot of things I could improve on. I really need to hammer down my routine some more and learn/memorize it inside and out. One thing I really didn’t realize is how much acting is involved in stand up comedy. When you see stand up comics interacting with the crowd, basically they can’t see the people (which is something I really expecting to be able to do). It’s a weird feeling, telling jokes into a microphone and staring off into the dark, knowing that there are over a hundred people out there and hearing them laugh but not being able to see them. Helen Keller would have never made it as a comic. Another thing I need to work on is my timing. I learned that writing comedy is completely different than performing it.
After the show, many of the other comedians came up to Howard and I and congratulated us on a job well done. It was weird to be a part of that “inner” circle. Here we were, “the comics”, standing around the bar while other people walked around, waving at us and stuff. I even had a couple of people from the crowd come up to me after the show, shake my hand and say “good job!”
As a bonus to everyone who’s read this far, here is the act that I wrote and performed last night. A couple of bits got left out just due to nerves, but this was what I had written and prepared.
[ Rob’s Comedy Bit #1 ]
“How’s everybody doing tonight? Is everybody having fun? Is everybody glad to be NOT at work? Me too. I hate work. I’ve got one of these managers that’s really into self-improvement. The other day, she called me in to her office and said I need to work on my multitasking skills. I rolled my eyes at her and she said to me, “are you getting this?” and I said “yes, I’m writing it down” (pretends to be writing) … “TWICE!” (pretends to be writing with both hands).”
“So today I’m at work, and I’ve got three porn windows open on my computer … because I’m MULTITASKING , right? The problem with having all these windows open is I keep getting all these pop-ups, and the one that keeps coming up says “click here to take an online IQ test.” Personally I think anyone who clicks on pop up ads doesn’t need an IQ test, because we already know how smart they really are.”
“You know what the problem is with IQ tests? We don’t need to know how smart people are. We need to know how DUMB they are. If you’re hiring somebody, you don’t need to know if they’re a rocket scientist or not, you just need to know if they’re a MORON. I’ve decided we need to come up with a new IQ test, not to see how smart people are, but to weed out all the idiots.”
“The first question of my new IQ test is, ‘have you ever been hit by a train’. This is an easy one. Only an idiot could get hit by a train. I just read a newspaper article the other day about these two homeless guys who got killed because they were sleeping on train tracks. They heard that snakes cannot cross train tracks, so to avoid getting bit by a snake in the middle of the night, they slept on the train tracks. Now first of all, anyone who believes that rumor is an idiot. I’m no snake expert, but I do have the Discovery channel. I’ve seen snakes climb trees, why would they not be able to cross train tracks? Do you think entire snake families got separated forever when they finished the Transcontinental Railroad? Some poor snake just went to work, came home and was like, ‘what the hell is this??? I guess I’ll just go around it …’ (cranes neck really far left and right). ‘Well, crap.'”
“And you know, even if snakes can’t cross railroad tracks, I’m taking my chances with a snake over a locomotive. Do you know how much a locomotive weighs? I do, because I looked it up today at work while I was MULTITASKING. The average locomotive weighs 150 tons. How does something that weighs 150 tons sneak up on you? That’s like getting into your shower and not noticing me in there with you!”