psychoSnorts

This is the first post of (who knows how) many that log each night that I do an open mic. I've always been enamoured by the idea of exploring something I learn from the start through keeping a regular and up-to-date log. Unfortunately, I never have the idea soon enough and having to back-date the journey would be far too laborious and would miss so many thoughts that happened more in the moment. Hopefully, it may give future comedians an idea of how (and how not) to approach stand up comedy and open mics in the future. Or not, I don't care. It's at least a keepsake for me.

Showed up to Rotary Centre for Workshop hosted by Kate Belton. Class was cancelled due to insufficient registrations. Quite disappointed and had to choose whether or not I keep doing open mics.

Performed a 12-minute set centered around Kelowna at Runaways, with a poem at the end. Nice critiques from fellow performers: No more phone unless bullet points, preferably no phone at all. Need to project more, don't be afraid of the mic. I was surprised to get more than 12 minutes and not get kicked off. It appears much less time is offered at official comedy venues.

~4-minute set at Dakotas Sports Bar in the Kelowna Comedy Club wing, a dedicated comedy open mic. Next time I'll be allowed 5min. Mostly a rapid-fire set about schizophrenia, my gal, cars, and taxes. No criticisms from fellow performers. Most 'bombed', even the pros (according to them). I had fun and felt like an alien for not feeling down like all the other comics were. They complained about the bad crowd, being nervous, and losing their place in their set. I had fun doing my jokes (even if I sucked at delivering them) and even more fun watching all the other comics, — they felt like they were bombing, but I enjoyed pretty much all of them.

This ended up being a nice venue for acoustics and a bit more of a casual feel.

Today was a big shuffling of variables and I'm still trying to sort through all of them. The biggest was back-to-back open mic's starting at Kettle River Brewery and then scrambling myself over to Runaways to perform a second time there.

A more casual setting at a Jam night for the small local community at Apex Resort — made even smaller by the fact that it is summer with few summertime recreational activities supported by the mountain.

Had a good set that trailed off around the 4-minute mark. Which I very much did not realize. I had a fellow open-mic'er record on my phone for me and I can see Dave squirming as I continued to go over. I didn't know I went over until I got home and reviewed the video. I'm not sure why no one told me to, you know, not do that. But, at least I found the problem for myself and can strive to better self-moderate.

Despite trip-ups in audio and stumbling over new material after a long hiatus from performing, I still managed to get a decent number of laughs, thankfully!

Just practicing "old" material with a new bit at the end.

In Bo Burnham's Goodbye of his famous and poignant Inside film/album, he asks, "Does anyone want to joke when no one's laughing in the background?"

Today, I answer this important question with: yes. There is probably something wrong with me.

While being waylaid once more in Kelowna, my downtown wanderings encountered good news! Kelowna local comic Kate Belton is putting on another comedy workshop and I only missed one.

I got myself in and got to workshop material with my classmates after she gave an overview of some of the fundamentals of comedy, such as the anatomy of a joke. Some real nitty gritty nerd shit that I am all about.

For this round at Kelowna comedy club, I tries some experimental material about the wealthier and showier types in town (of which there are many). I explored my precarious housing situation and I've gotta say props to comics like Tig Notaro bringing their audience along for their ride without it getting too sad. I was quite annoyed how my words struck their empathy more than their funny bone.

Today was experimenting with a little bit more new material. Some of the material has been practiced in my zero-audience set previously, but I still consider it as 'new' since this is the first time there was an actual audience. It's fascinating to observe how a joke can fall short when I don't have the delivery dialed in. I truly think the "hair loose, glutes tight" joke will get much bigger laughs once I can figure out where I fucked up.

For the sake of brevity and not belaboring thoughts about every single night, I am from now on mostly just going to post videos of the open mics I do. At this point I think I'm at a place where it's merely a matter of practice, delivery, etc. I also don't want to overburden my time.

At this set I was still in the psych ward, and while I was in did a bunch of one-liner joke writing.

For this one I decided to practice my LGBTQ set with a segue into comparing men crying with womens orgasms. I didn't realize how short it was, I had about 1-2 minutes of additional material, but oh well! That's learnin' for ya.

For this set, I decided to take all my psych ward jokes and put them all into a single set. I think this is the first time I actually went under the allowed time then accidentally over.