Date: 19 June 2011
Venue: Tribal cafe
Once upon a Sunday recent While I performed, barely decent.
Using many a quaint and curious notion before many folks
While I sat in my chair after bummed out by the lack of laughter
suddenly there came a tapper, tapping me with several pokes
Tis a good mate Timo I uttered, tapping me with several pokes.
Quoth the Timo: no new jokes.
Showing posts with label bombing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bombing. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
open mic 30
Date: 15 June, 2011
Venue: The Spot Cafe
The big 3-0. The dirty thirty. The new 20. This isn't a big milestone, but it has a lot of names because the number 30 has a really good PR team. Not good enough to get it a gig on Sesame Street, but better than a lot of other numbers in the past 25 range.
It did not go well. I'm okay with that. I present now some signs that you're going to bomb.
-You're on late during a really long show.
-You're telling brand-spanking-new material without a lot of practice.
-The brand-new material relies heavily on remembering it verbatim.
You can see where I went wrong. I've accidentally bought a car, I got my current job because I applied to it on a whim and I went to my college of choice because I kinda liked a song by the band Fleetwood Mac. I've accidentally stumbled through my life, somehow managing to hit a lot of the major achievement points along the way. I now know what the guy who invented drifting feels like. It really looks like comedy requires effort.
So, I'm gonna put in effort. Not just thinking effort. Saying effort. Performing effort. Writing effort. And because I'm publicly telling people this, I'm gonna look like an idiot if I don't. The next open mic is Friday. I'm gonna be in my top form and I'm going to be super prepared.
Venue: The Spot Cafe
The big 3-0. The dirty thirty. The new 20. This isn't a big milestone, but it has a lot of names because the number 30 has a really good PR team. Not good enough to get it a gig on Sesame Street, but better than a lot of other numbers in the past 25 range.
It did not go well. I'm okay with that. I present now some signs that you're going to bomb.
-You're on late during a really long show.
-You're telling brand-spanking-new material without a lot of practice.
-The brand-new material relies heavily on remembering it verbatim.
You can see where I went wrong. I've accidentally bought a car, I got my current job because I applied to it on a whim and I went to my college of choice because I kinda liked a song by the band Fleetwood Mac. I've accidentally stumbled through my life, somehow managing to hit a lot of the major achievement points along the way. I now know what the guy who invented drifting feels like. It really looks like comedy requires effort.
So, I'm gonna put in effort. Not just thinking effort. Saying effort. Performing effort. Writing effort. And because I'm publicly telling people this, I'm gonna look like an idiot if I don't. The next open mic is Friday. I'm gonna be in my top form and I'm going to be super prepared.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
open mic 24 (for real)
Date: 18 May, 2011
Venue: The Spot Cafe
And now, the anatomy of a bomb.
"Bombing" is when you flail around on stage doing poorly, for those not in the know. Tonight wasn't a total bomb, but it was quite poor. I'd give myself a D+. And I know why it happened.
I need to keep writing jokes. I had been doing the same set over and over, so people had heard it and were bored I think. Open mics are different from rooms where there's an actual audience. It's a solid set, but I need to have the courage to try new things and to see what happens.
The other thing I need to do is preparation. I have to know what I'm going to say before I say it. Going up without any clue whatsoever about what you're saying is a recipe for disaster.
The gist of it is this: If you're doing a bit and it isn't working, see it through and then for next time have new stuff ready. At least on a sinking ship, you know where you are. Changing course mid-stream is going to throw off the people who are with you. That's all the advice I have for now. Right now, I'm just feeling like I have to earn every laugh, and I have to prove it to the world that I'm ready.
I can do this. I've got it in me. Let's laugh.
Venue: The Spot Cafe
And now, the anatomy of a bomb.
"Bombing" is when you flail around on stage doing poorly, for those not in the know. Tonight wasn't a total bomb, but it was quite poor. I'd give myself a D+. And I know why it happened.
I need to keep writing jokes. I had been doing the same set over and over, so people had heard it and were bored I think. Open mics are different from rooms where there's an actual audience. It's a solid set, but I need to have the courage to try new things and to see what happens.
The other thing I need to do is preparation. I have to know what I'm going to say before I say it. Going up without any clue whatsoever about what you're saying is a recipe for disaster.
The gist of it is this: If you're doing a bit and it isn't working, see it through and then for next time have new stuff ready. At least on a sinking ship, you know where you are. Changing course mid-stream is going to throw off the people who are with you. That's all the advice I have for now. Right now, I'm just feeling like I have to earn every laugh, and I have to prove it to the world that I'm ready.
I can do this. I've got it in me. Let's laugh.
Monday, November 15, 2010
open mic 9
Venue: Newmarket Hotel
Date: 15 November 2010
I am not an expert in standup comedy. I can really only speak about how I feel about specific jokes and gigs - anything more than that is out of my expertise. That said, tonight was not good. I wouldn't hesitate to call it the worst gig I ever did the entirety of this blog.
So I've been seeing a lot of progress in my own comedy and I got a little cocky. I thought that I wasn't some kid that's only done this 8 or 9 times, I was a veteran who'd been doing this on and off for four years. I'd even watched the performances from the USC stand-up comedy club and thought that I was better then all of them. Not that I was an expert, but that I was clearly one step above them. I'm sure they've all been doing more open mics than I have, and I'm sure that if I were in that room, that the responses I'd be getting were about the same as theirs, maybe less maybe more.
There's a tendency to believe the audience laughs loudest for you. When you're on stage and rocking faces, you believe that your laughter is louder, longer and more frequent than it is for anyone else. That's just basic psychology, and there's nothing you can really do to change that.
This gig, I could do no right. My jokes and off-the-cuff material were all met with silence. I backpedaled, backpedaled on my backpedalling, and eventually just threw in the towel. I resigned myself to defeat before I'd even told 3 of my better jokes. Maybe it was my mindset. Maybe I'd just gotten arrogant. I thought that I was something I wasn't, and it bit me in the ass.
So let's try this again. Hi, I'm Nick Klaus, and I'm new at this. I don't really have much of a clue what I'm doing. After 500 open mics, maybe I'll have a bit of a clue. Maybe I'll know even less.
Date: 15 November 2010
I am not an expert in standup comedy. I can really only speak about how I feel about specific jokes and gigs - anything more than that is out of my expertise. That said, tonight was not good. I wouldn't hesitate to call it the worst gig I ever did the entirety of this blog.
So I've been seeing a lot of progress in my own comedy and I got a little cocky. I thought that I wasn't some kid that's only done this 8 or 9 times, I was a veteran who'd been doing this on and off for four years. I'd even watched the performances from the USC stand-up comedy club and thought that I was better then all of them. Not that I was an expert, but that I was clearly one step above them. I'm sure they've all been doing more open mics than I have, and I'm sure that if I were in that room, that the responses I'd be getting were about the same as theirs, maybe less maybe more.
There's a tendency to believe the audience laughs loudest for you. When you're on stage and rocking faces, you believe that your laughter is louder, longer and more frequent than it is for anyone else. That's just basic psychology, and there's nothing you can really do to change that.
This gig, I could do no right. My jokes and off-the-cuff material were all met with silence. I backpedaled, backpedaled on my backpedalling, and eventually just threw in the towel. I resigned myself to defeat before I'd even told 3 of my better jokes. Maybe it was my mindset. Maybe I'd just gotten arrogant. I thought that I was something I wasn't, and it bit me in the ass.
So let's try this again. Hi, I'm Nick Klaus, and I'm new at this. I don't really have much of a clue what I'm doing. After 500 open mics, maybe I'll have a bit of a clue. Maybe I'll know even less.
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