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RandomPauI posted:I don't have clips yet and probably won't for a while. I'd love to hear more about the show though. It's called "Hypno Comedy" and the next show's Saturday, February 21at 8:30pm. I'm on the east coast these days so I won't be there, but I used to do it every other month and the comics are amazing. The crowd's super hot too. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/events/313469125519397/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
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Feb 11, 2015 19:58
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Well, I finally got a chance to perform again. Feb 24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDHzbGCYJGQ I still tend to talk way too fast and it is hard to understand me. There were also a couple of times where I continued the bit too quickly and didn't allow the crowd to laugh. That said, my nervous twitches were absent this time around. I feel I started out pretty strong but it sort of fizzled at the end of the bit.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:23
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So I've been going into a bit of a comedy crisis over bombing on stage. I think I've expressed the opinion that when things go bad, it is the comedians fault. The last couple of weeks have led me to question if this is true, so I wanted some feedback. I was at two different venues working on material that I have established and that generally works. One was an open mic at a bar, with sports on. This place only has a mic once a month. It is small, but I go because it is run by a friend. Everyone had a pretty miserable performance and most of the bar didn't appear to be paying attention. The second one in the middle of a snowstorm that made the roads and performers miserable. This was also at a bar, although they turned off the televisions once the show started. One guy went first and had brought all his friends. He then left with them, leaving about two non-comics. I recorded myself both times. I delivered my set pretty well. It was weaker in the second half in both, but that is a result of getting no positive responses from the audience. (Which I realize shouldn't affect my performance.) At both of these places, there were local headliners that were having an equally miserable experience. The key difference between us was that I tried sticking to my set, and they just improvised a bit. I think they got better results because of it, but my goal at both of these was to work on that specific set, so I did it audience appreciation be damned. The problem is, I don't think doing this helped me get a better set. My question is, how do you try to work on a set and still get an audience on your side, when you have about 5 minutes of talking time? It just felt like I couldn't win regardless.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:13
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Those shows are great opportunities to riff around and have fun. gently caress the set list. Challenge yourself to change the atmosphere of the room. That will serve you better as a comic than polishing up 5 minutes that you won't be using a year from now.
freud mayweather fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 19:36
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freud mayweather posted:Those shows are great opportunities to riff around and have fun. gently caress the set list. Challenge yourself to change the atmosphere of the room. That will serve you better as a comic than polishing up 5 minutes that you won't be using a year from now. Thanks for confirming what I was thinking. I spent my last set doing a lot more crowd work and not letting myself be bottled in by what I wanted to say. The times I'm talking to the audience seems to go over a lot better than when I am doing prepared material, even if what I'm saying isn't that funny. I think I'm going to spend the next week working on blending the two. On a positive note, outside of those two bombs, my sets have been going pretty well. I think I have definitely found my stage voice. When I go on stage now, I don't really feel any different in how I'm speaking than I do before I go on stage. I still use too many "You know's" and "um's," but I think that'll go away with time.
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Mar 4, 2015 16:57
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Well when things go bad, that is the comedians fault. Except maybe it isn't but act like it is because it's better to be hard on yourself needlessly sometimes than blame the room for your screw ups and not improve. If a room is dead or not paying attention or whatever try and engage with the crowd which wont give you much time to do prepared stuff but it's better to get used to existing in that environment and dealing with that than saying your jokes to what you already know is going to be nothing. If you're in a room where people literally aren't paying attention to you because there's other stuff going on just deal with it basically they're probably there to watch the game or talk to their friends or whatever and usually they're more important to the venue than whoever is doing a mic once a week, since they're real humans who pay money and write yelp reviews and not a beardo broke scumbag. I'm about to go to a mic that's usually like that but they don't give a poo poo about time so I can build by doing my stuff and just chugging along and gaining people as I go. But that's basically impossible in 4-5 minutes. Well enjoy your night.
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Mar 5, 2015 05:56
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Yeah, my new short-term goal is just to start working on my crowd work. The only part I feel like I struggle with on that front is that initial conversation. I always want to say something interesting, but no level of small talk is ever interesting.
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Mar 5, 2015 17:14
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I tried open mic standup for the first time this week. I think it went well - it seemed rehearsed (it was) and I got some laughs. I'm interested in keeping it up as a hobby, that and improv classes. I hope to learn a little about comedy writing and feeling comfortable in front of crowds (I'm a teacher). I feel really lucky that the local community is super supportive of beginners. Any books to recommend? I like doing silly exercises for inspiring creativity. edit: Is it fun to travel to new cities to do open mics when you're brand new in standup? This'd be in early summer of this year. I'd keep in cheap, bringing a pup tent and staying with people via Couchsurfing. edit2: Bombing at an open mic really isn't that bad. The thing you want to happen (laughter) simply doesn't happen. It's not like bad performers get beaten and drinks thrown on them. Comedians are so needy. If I had a dime for every failed lesson I've taught, I wouldn't have to be a fuckin' teacher. Mortley fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 6, 2015 00:31
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So interesting little anecdote I thought I would share. I was at an open mic at a bar this past Friday with the televisions on. In case you are unaware, it is March Madness, so the bar was packed full of people completely disinterested in hearing jokes. As you can imagine, it was a terrible night for everyone. One of the guys there, in anticipation of the lovely night, decided to just read excerpts from Mein Kamp from his iPhone, clearing out half the bar when it was his turn to be up. That is on the list of things I never thought I'd see at an open mic.
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Mar 24, 2015 06:12
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Sataere posted:So interesting little anecdote I thought I would share. I was at an open mic at a bar this past Friday with the televisions on. In case you are unaware, it is March Madness, so the bar was packed full of people completely disinterested in hearing jokes. As you can imagine, it was a terrible night for everyone. One of the guys there, in anticipation of the lovely night, decided to just read excerpts from Mein Kamp from his iPhone, clearing out half the bar when it was his turn to be up. Walking the room during a bar's busiest month sounds like a great way to get the mic canceled. Some comics don't understand that at bar mics, 9 times out of 10, comics are imposing on the crowd's good time. Not the other way around.
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Mar 25, 2015 15:20
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This mic is pretty terrible all around, and he told me afterwards that he honestly didn't think people would be paying attention. This mic probably will be cancelled in the next couple months regardless of facist manifesto's. Not that I'm defending him. I personally would never do that, because the best case scenario is that someone isn't alienated by it. No real reward for it.
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Mar 28, 2015 20:25
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Last night was my second appearance at Zanies, the biggest comedy club in Nashville. The first time I was there I did mostly "just ok" and had a brain-freeze moment where I forgot my next joke and made a not-so-great attempt at crowd work. It wasn't a disaster but kind of a disappointment, since this is the room all comics in the area set their sights on when they start. Last night was much better. It was just a three-minute spot but that made me perform with a bit more energy, waste zero time and just go opener, quick joke, quick joke, quick joke, so I was getting pretty solid laughs the whole way through, and I could tell I had a couple of moments where the punchline really caught the audience off guard, so, yeah, I was happy with it.
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Apr 8, 2015 22:56
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Shovelbearer posted:Last night was my second appearance at Zanies, the biggest comedy club in Nashville. The first time I was there I did mostly "just ok" and had a brain-freeze moment where I forgot my next joke and made a not-so-great attempt at crowd work. It wasn't a disaster but kind of a disappointment, since this is the room all comics in the area set their sights on when they start. Last night was much better. It was just a three-minute spot but that made me perform with a bit more energy, waste zero time and just go opener, quick joke, quick joke, quick joke, so I was getting pretty solid laughs the whole way through, and I could tell I had a couple of moments where the punchline really caught the audience off guard, so, yeah, I was happy with it. That's awesome to here. I wish I could make it down for the festival next week. It looks like it's going to be incredible. Are you planning on doing the comedy festival down there?
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Apr 10, 2015 15:10
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Sataere posted:That's awesome to here. I wish I could make it down for the festival next week. It looks like it's going to be incredible. Are you planning on doing the comedy festival down there? Well, depends on what you mean by "doing the festival." I am nowhere near the level to be booked on one of the Wild West Comedy Fest shows although I may try to attend a couple of them as my schedule allows (I'm also in rehearsals for a play coming up in a couple of weeks so a lot of my nights are tied up). I am, however, taking part in the Broken Record Comedy Show (the official attempt to break the Guinness Book World Record for longest multi-comic stand-up comedy show.) So I'll be doing 15 minutes starting at 8 AM on Monday, before I go to work, which will be fun. Or at least weird, and therefore kinda fun.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:39
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Shovelbearer posted:Well, depends on what you mean by "doing the festival." I am nowhere near the level to be booked on one of the Wild West Comedy Fest shows although I may try to attend a couple of them as my schedule allows (I'm also in rehearsals for a play coming up in a couple of weeks so a lot of my nights are tied up). I am, however, taking part in the Broken Record Comedy Show (the official attempt to break the Guinness Book World Record for longest multi-comic stand-up comedy show.) So I'll be doing 15 minutes starting at 8 AM on Monday, before I go to work, which will be fun. Or at least weird, and therefore kinda fun. Ah, I had no idea what your experience level was. That Guinness Book World Record sounds awesome though. I know some Chicago guys are planning on heading down there to try being a part of that. If I didn't have a family, I'd make the trip down to try giving a terrible ten minute set.
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Apr 10, 2015 23:10
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Sataere posted:Ah, I had no idea what your experience level was. That Guinness Book World Record sounds awesome though. I know some Chicago guys are planning on heading down there to try being a part of that. If I didn't have a family, I'd make the trip down to try giving a terrible ten minute set. Turns out they're streaming the whole thing on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRnlch15vDQ
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Apr 12, 2015 19:03
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I can now say: 1) I've taken part in a world record. 2) I've been on a show with Hannibal Buress, Nate Bargatze (second time!) and Rory Scovel 3) I was bumped for Hannibal (on what would have been my second appearance on the show) Good week.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:21
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Shovelbearer posted:I can now say: Once you start getting bumped, your career is done. 
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Apr 17, 2015 19:22
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Hey folks. I've been reading through this thread. Some interesting advice. Anyway, I don't expect anyone to care about some fuckin guy coming in and dropping a link to his open mic out of the blue but here it is anyway in case anyone is feeling charitable and wants to gimme any feedback https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23900371/Open%20Mic%2028-04-15.mp3 2nd time up. 5 mins. Room of about 20 people. Pretty low energy all night, felt I did okay. First 3 minutes I wrote today, last 2 I did my first time also. Comedy Creche night in Glasgow. I didn't hit all of my laugh lines in it, forgot a few and jumbled up some of the ordering cos these jokes are a little long and complex. Too long without laughs, will tighten them up for next time. Also I should vary my energy more. That's my own feedback on it.
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Apr 29, 2015 01:19
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Well, I had my first bomb back on Tuesday night. A non-receptive crowd coupled with all of the comics before me not doing well and myself having sub par material just made it a perfect storm of poo poo. No one did well that night. I suppose going on stage 5 times before having a bad outing isn't bad, but I really wish I could have that one back.
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Apr 30, 2015 23:17
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buffto posted:Well, I had my first bomb back on Tuesday night. A non-receptive crowd coupled with all of the comics before me not doing well and myself having sub par material just made it a perfect storm of poo poo. No one did well that night. I suppose going on stage 5 times before having a bad outing isn't bad, but I really wish I could have that one back. Nah, absorb the pain and celebrate the fact that the world didn't end. Now you'll know every time you go up that the worst case scenario is you have a bad feeling for a little while and then move on with your life. Well, ok, I guess someone might physically attack you, but, edge case.
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May 1, 2015 01:07
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buffto posted:Well, I had my first bomb back on Tuesday night. A non-receptive crowd coupled with all of the comics before me not doing well and myself having sub par material just made it a perfect storm of poo poo. No one did well that night. I suppose going on stage 5 times before having a bad outing isn't bad, but I really wish I could have that one back. Now you just gotta do it a hundred more times until you can have fun bombing and then you'll be bulletproof.
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May 5, 2015 11:55
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freud mayweather posted:Now you just gotta do it a hundred more times until you can have fun bombing and then you'll be bulletproof. I haven't bombed a lot, but I can't wait to get to this point. I haven't been out as much lately, because I want to be more prepared when I hit mics now. If I really know what I'm going to say, it is so much easier to react when people don't respond to me. As it is, bombing just destroys me now. I just feel like poo poo until the next time I can make it out.
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May 5, 2015 19:33
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thunderspanks fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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May 12, 2015 00:13
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Great job breaking the tables with a photo of empty tables.
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May 12, 2015 00:47
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XIII posted:Great job breaking the tables with a photo of empty tables. Ahh poo poo sorry, posted from the app, I didn't realize it came out that large. Just threw a timg on it but I don't know if it worked
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May 12, 2015 00:54
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So I just realized that I'm officially at my six month anniversary of doing this. It's been pretty interesting. A few weeks ago i noticed that I am a lot more comfortable on stage. More natural. For some reason, even if my material isn't hitting on point, it just feels like I'm doing better. I guess I'm just more in the moment. I'm finding it a lot easier to react to poo poo as it's happening too, which helps a ton. So have any of you ever guys done a set where it just feels like you crushed it, and people tell you that you crushed it, but when you go back and listen to it, all you hear are the jokes that didn't hit? That's not to say there isn't laughter or that it is bad. It just feels like all I notice are the things I'm doing wrong. Is that normal?
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May 18, 2015 21:33
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I went to an open mic tonight and someone offered me a "you can use this" anecdote that turned into a funny idea for me, but I won't be able to use it until I have an audience of just comedians. Thus I offer it to you, Comedian Thread. This woman I was talking to is a paramedic, and she told me about her first-ever call, that happened to be at a horrific car accident. Some guy was pinned up between a car and the concrete barrier. They told her, "We can't extricate him yet. We need you to go in there and find his pulse and stabilize him." She was super panicked and ran in, grabbed his arm, no pulse. She felt up on his neck... where was his neck? She couldn't find it, and couldn't find the pulse. She runs back, the cops are all laughing, and she says, "I couldn't find his pulse! Where is neck? What do we do?!" The joke was that the person was already decapitated when emergency personnel arrived. Ha ha ha. I realized: even "hilarious" civilians are sometimes just weak-rear end prop comics. Anybody could be funny with a decapitated body and zero fuckin' scruples regarding what's OK to joke about.
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May 21, 2015 04:28
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That is a pretty hosed up story. It would probably crush at an open mic full of comedians. On Sunday at this open mic I go to, this guy whose pretty big locally went on stage with a cowl, cape and these fake bracers and started delivering five minutes of stand up genius. It was an interesting dynamic, because the front rows were full of regular audience members, and the back was full of comics. He was basically doing Gilbert Gottfried, Rodney Dangerfield, Andrew Dice Clay and other jokes of that ilk, only as if he were from some mythical realm. The regular folks kept looking back, because they had no idea why we were all losing our poo poo in the back. It was really quite excellent. I can't imagine that set ever doing well for normal people, but for comedy junkies, it was just amazing.
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May 21, 2015 16:03
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So nice week of milestones for me. On Sunday, I will get to host my first ever open mic. And yesterday, I got invited to participate in a showcase. It is especially nice because I've been feeling blah and almost didn't make trips out this week. It just goes to show that you can't get opportunities if you aren't out there.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:21
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Great Christ almighty. That was the longest (2+ hours), most brutal (never once was there room-filling laughter, not loving once), and petty open mic I've ever been to. Well, it was the worst comedy show, period. The host got called a "two-faced fag" while on stage by the guy who had just performed (and stayed standing 5 feet away and yelling), and he and the insulter continued to argue audibly (from the room for the mic) during the next set or two. Who says "fag"? Later, a person with literal mental illness got up and sang some unfunny songs; this was after he heckled (somewhat unintentionally) the first and last 5 comics. All night the shittier, cheaper material got laughs, and the thoughtful, well-written stuff was spoken into a pool of silence. My story from above also got no laughs.
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Jun 11, 2015 07:06
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^^^^ I was just at a mic this Sunday where there was no stage and the mic stand was five feet to the left of the front door, in front of the bar. Just think about that for a second. Also, T.V.'s on and they were offering free pool in the back. I was at the back half of the list and had already been to two mics. It was my first time there, and about four comics in, I realized that I didn't want to be there, so I didn't bring out any new material at all and just phoned it in. I'm sort of angry at myself for doing that, but I wasn't gonna get any good feedback in a room where nobody was listening. I always go back and forth on how to handle bad bar room open mics. I generally avoid them if I can. So just got my first rejection from a comedy festival. (Not that I'm surprised, I should've been rejected.) Been marathoning mics all week, hitting new city mics. There really is a ton of stuff in Chicago. It still feels very underrated as a comedy town. Haven't gotten more than 4 hours of sleep this week, but it feels good. I've gotten a few comments from people this last month about how hard I work, which is weird because I feel like I could be working a lot harder. But it is probably a good thing.
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Jul 7, 2015 17:03
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All right. I've had a bit of down time lately and recently decided to get back into the standup thing. Hit up a couple of open mics (which I have found are easier than comedy shows, since comedy is a welcome change from some random guy with a guitar) and also performed at the local comedy show last Tuesday and this Tuesday. Both shows went pretty well. Got plenty of laughs and got compliments from fellow comics on my sets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEtTPDzBF8U This one is from June 30th. Once again I have my recurring issue with speaking too fast and not clear/loud enough. But all in all I felt it was a successful performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4onud75NZI And this one is from July 7th. I felt like this one was better all around in comparison to the previous week. I can understand everything I'm saying in the video, there was minimal stumbling through the set. Of course, I guess it's easy to get cheap laughs when you're slinging wicked sick burns on people who have been dead for 50 years.
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Jul 10, 2015 20:43
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Debuted a couple of new jokes at an open mic this week in Portland, OR (I live in Nashville but was traveling) that went so well the first time I told them that I got offered a showcase (the host not knowing that I'd have to take an extended rain check on that, but still.) So I was excited to do them a couple of more times that week, wherein they went less smashingly. And then I came home and hosted my own showcase and they did meh. Of course, that's something I'm still figuring out... stuff that often works for me at open mics or in showcases, I come out to host my my own show and they get nothing. I haven't had a really great host set to open a show, yet, but I guess that's yet another separate thing that requires practice. Or so I will continue to tell myself until I can figure out what is going wrong. Oh well, at least I have audio of all my sets in Portland so I can see if there's a compare/contrast to be done. A little frustrated but I know, expect to be frustrated. I think maybe I need to go on an intense cardio regimen and become a more high-energy hype-up-the-crowd guy.
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Jul 27, 2015 16:33
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There are very few things in comedy more frustrating than having a joke crush the first time you tell it then never getting another laugh in the subsequent tellings because you will keep telling it far longer than you should because of that goddamn first time.
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Jul 27, 2015 16:54
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The sink or swim date for this material is going to be this Tuesday night. The subsequent "meh" reactions in Portland were at open mics where hardly anyone was getting more than scattered chuckles, so they can be questioned a bit, and then last night I was hosting, and like I said, for some reason my jokes often don't work as well when I'm hosting as they do in other situations. This will be just a straight-up open mic in a room where I've done really well before and seen others do really well on a regular basis, so no asterisks.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:03
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So I finally got a couple of local showcases and the general reaction was that I crushed it. I personally think they could've gone a lot better, but I also didn't hate myself afterwards. It feels good to be making progress. The current five minutes that I'm working on is easily the best thing I've ever written and I finally feel like I found my comedy voice with it. Now I have to go back and rewrite some of my older stuff to make it sound right. Feeling really good about comedy at the moment, so this week will probably end up feeling like getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts.
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Aug 10, 2015 15:42
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Congrats man, keep it up!
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Aug 10, 2015 16:06
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Sataere posted:So I finally got a couple of local showcases and the general reaction was that I crushed it. I personally think they could've gone a lot better, but I also didn't hate myself afterwards. It feels good to be making progress. The current five minutes that I'm working on is easily the best thing I've ever written and I finally feel like I found my comedy voice with it. Now I have to go back and rewrite some of my older stuff to make it sound right. Feeling really good about comedy at the moment, so this week will probably end up feeling like getting repeatedly kicked in the nuts. That's awesome, hopefully the momentum carries for a while. As for my own mini-skid... well, that night I had set as that batch of material's drop-dead date, I forgot they had announced a special "we're-filming-all-the-sets" version of the open mic, and as such, I didn't get on even though I was there a half hour before sign-up (not common in Nashville, though I hear that's pretty normal in LA or New York.) So that was kind of a bummer, because I really would have liked to do a four-minute greatest-hits set in front of a full room and potentially have some nice video to send around (I currently have no decent video.) I then went to the after-hours mic which was mostly empty, and while I tried to turn my annoyance into performance energy, it didn't work, and I kind of died on my rear end. Which, basically everyone that night did. But I was in a more depressed than rational state so I just kinda hated life that night. That was probably the rock bottom of that particular skid. Didn't go up for a few days, and then I had pretty good sets on back to back nights, including a much better response to one of the jokes that had been part of the "killed the first time, followed by diminishing responses" material. So... while I'm still in a bit of a confusing place, I'm at least on a more positive side of it, and no longer in the "oh no it turns out I'm the worst comic ever" zone. I look forward to my next trip to the "I'm the motherfuckin' man" zone.
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Aug 10, 2015 23:08
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I got to talking with one of my friends about the venue that fills with the nicest crowds in town pretty much every time. My friend says (truthfully) that he kills there every time, and that he's almost starting to wonder if he ought to start skipping it and focus on the places that challenge him in order to improve. Do y'all have a policy on this? Only hitting the "easy" mic when you're feeling down, or when you want to work out new material, or NOT when you want to work out new material...?
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Aug 12, 2015 23:01
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