I’ve been hanging out at the beach for the past couple days hoping to get some time to focus. Last night a friend hosted a comedy show at Hopmonk in Sebastapol. His middle guy was a no-show, so he asked me to do fill in and do 15 minutes.
I wouldn’t say I was prepared, but I do have a few jokes in the chamber for just this kind of occasion. I’ve always had this fantasy where someone coaxes me into playing a number at a party and I sit down at the piano and just start wailing on the keys like Ray Charles. This isn’t quite that, but it’s close.
I know what it’s like to have someone flake out at the last minute. In fact, the person who did last night, has done it to me a couple times.
It was good crowd, mostly women, who are way more fun as an audience. There was a party of 8 women in one corner. You zero in on them and you’re all set.
It was fun being up there and acknowledging I wasn’t planned. That’s a good way to de-escalate the expectations and build them back up. The fun part was asking what kind of jokes people wanted to hear. Did they want to hear sick or gross. I was a little surprised how many wanted sick. What’s worse, I couldn’t think of too many sick jokes that I’ve come up with over time. I can think of plenty, but I really don’t tell them on stage.
In the end, it went very well. People laughed, and that’s all you can use to measure success when doing standup comedy. That, and I got paid. Nice.