Open mic 6

Date: 18 October
Venue: Newmarket hotel

This was interesting. Interesting indeed.
I invited my housemates to come see me. They'd never seen me perform, so there was some pressure. And I was first. I hate going first, I think. I mean, jumping on stage to a ripe and fresh crowd was an amazing boost of confidence. I came at it pumped and ready to rock some faces and blow some minds.

So the set started out brilliantly, but fell apart as I started the CSI bit. It never really recovered after that. That makes 3 bits that worked (well, two really) and 3 that didn't, if you care about the math. Not exactly what I was hoping for, or expecting.

I think what I need is more consistency. Last time I was here, I told some jokes that went over amazing. This time, I told those same jokes, to the same (good) room and got nothing in return. Different people, but the room should be fairly identical week-to-week. So the thing that must have changed was how I delivered it.

This reminds me of something that happened in high school. I used to do a competitive humorous speech category. After a while, the jokes didn't work. What my coach said I needed to do was to keep it fresh.. to not just go through the motions, but to perform it with something behind it. Now, this lack of skill came about after 6 or 7 tournaments, after I'd given the speech at least 25 times. 25 times made it stale. Here, I've only done some of these jokes two or three times. Some of them aren't good to begin with so there's no saving those. But two times should mean the joke is still fresh, right?

I don't feel like I'm yet at a place where I can give out advice to other young and aspiring comics. What I can do is try and give the reasons behind why I'm doing what I am, and then evaluate those choices after 20 or 30 sets. And what I am choosing to do is to be ruthless. I'm still fresh and I don't yet have a stable of jokes that work every time. I figure I get about 6 to 8 jokes per 5 minute set I perform. So swapping out jokes until I hit that magic 8 good jokes benchmark. Then I just drill that until I get those consistent.

I figure I have 2 jokes that are consistently good, and 2 that might still have legs in them but aren't there yet. This lineup's gonna change a bunch. Let the games begin.