Last Night's Open Mic

So last night, I braved the fairly frigid cold, on a Friday night no less, to sit in the basement of a Hawaiian themed, Korean owned, Mexican restaurant for two-hours so I could work on six minutes of material for a show I'm doing tomorrow night. Oh yeah, and there was no heat.

I'd been to this mic before, in fact, one time led to one of my favorite open mic stories. But alas, nothing that funny occurred. Actually, there was very little funny about it, which isn't a good thing when you're talking about a comedy show (but not surprising for an open mic).

One guy's act featured punchlines of how his goal is to strangle his wife with his bare hands. Another dude did "performance art," which apparently is when a person says and does anything (or nothing) and calls it"art." And a "performance."

My "favorite" guy spent his entire time on the mic screaming curses. The owner came down at one point to tell him to keep it down (they had tourists eating tacos upstairs) or he was gone. Of course the comics ate it up.

When the host reclaimed the stage, he told a story of first seeing this dude doing his act and how the audience just sat there slack-jawed, but the comics in back were rolling. I couldn't help but wonder why he was stating this admirably, like it was a good thing.

Me? I did my six minutes in relative silence, and left. I couldn't be happier for either.

Rock On,

Aitch