A good night

Last night, I had a great night at the comedy club. It could've gone downhill very easily, but my stuff killed.

I drew the fifth spot out of seven for open mic night. I drew up my set list. I was gonna try some new stuff: Revised versions of the Chinese food and Hitler jokes that I posted on New Joke Different Day, a new bit about this poor kid from New Jersey that I read about whose name happens to be Adolf Hitler Campbell, and finished it all up with my "To Catch a Predator" bit... Always a good closer.

But...

The guy that went up second, it was his first time. I felt a sense of dread as he did over a minute about Chinese food. I was about to re-do my set list before a friend told me I shouldn't. He said, "Do your joke. Fuck him. They should hear at least one funny Chinese food joke tonight." So, I felt better.

The woman who went up before me, went up and did five minutes about being the crazy cat lady. She went over by one minute, which happens from time to time, but when you get the 30 second warning light, it's a sign you should wrap things up. The flashing red "Get off the stage, now!" light, is NOT the time to say, "OK, one more before I get off." It's not any different if you're doing well and getting great laughs. "You get four minutes" means you get four fucking minutes, not five.

The fact that she did five minutes about her cat, and boring the audience in the process, made me feel better about doing my Chinese food joke, because it also involved the killing and cooking of cats. These two comics I speak of, while their material was hardly what you'd call-what's the word I'm looking for-GOOD, I owe them for a tremendous setup.

The Chinese food joke, one of my darkest, was a decent opener. The crowd could've easily turned on me, but i managed to pull it off in a manner that no one took it too seriously. It also helped that I acknowledged immediately afterward that it was a pretty sick joke. Then, I went into the Hitler joke, and I ad-libbed at the end of it, "What, did you think I was gonna get up here and do pro-Hitler material? I'm German, but I'm not that German!"

That segued perfectly into a new bit about this kid, and it was a good middle-of-the-set joke. If you read the article, you can tell that most of the material writes itself. I gotta get it on video, it's pretty good. I got the 30-second light, and the "To Catch A Predator" joke fit perfectly, as it usually takes 20-25 seconds. Perfectly timed, and I was proud of how it all came together.

I dig doing this stuff so much.