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[21 Jun 2009|12:37am] |
Well, I might as well keep a record of these open mics. I told myself I'd think about keeping up a blog--a real blog, which is to say a different blogging website just with "blog" in the name of it--about this New York City experience, but among all the other shit I've got going on, it's just one more goal that I suppose can wait for better days. This LiveJournal will have to do, for now.
On Wednesday, I went to the Village Lantern to try to get in on their open mic, and after showing up late for the first show and sitting through both terrible comics who didn't know they were bad yet didn't seem to mind and some pretty good comics who were using the mic to work their crowd skills a bit, I put my name in for a stand-by spot in the second show. Just then, the waitress came up to me and asked what she could get me, and I said I'll hold off a little bit, so she said, "Well, there's a two-drink minimum for downstairs," and I said, "Oh--okay. Well, I already bought a beer at the bar, so--" and she was all like, "That doesn't count. Buying a beer at the bar doesn't count towards the minimum. You gotta buy it from me."
This fucking bitch, I thought, in thought-words maybe not quite so mean--she just wants more tips. So when she turned her back I ducked out and sacrificed the mic spot for the sake of saving a few bucks. When you don't have much, you've got to think fast.
On Friday, I went to a place in the East Village aptly named Eastville Comedy Club, where I hoped to find an open mic that was listed as first-come, first-serve. When I got there, there was another guy waiting on the stoop, already taking reservations from his friends, who were calling and texting him so they could arrive later, and I put my name fifth on the list. A fat guy approached us and the guy on the stoop groaned, said, "Here we go," and then shifted into Friendly Mode, humoring the fat guy with a completely isolating conversation about the local comedy scene. They were dropping names of comic acquaintances, one of whom apparently made the New York Times, and talking about all the local events, so I sat there and half-listened.
At one point the fat guy pointed at my Decemberists shirt, said something involving the word 'heuristic', and made some inane comment about how anyone who wears a Decemberists shirt is likely to understand words like 'heuristic'. I didn't know what the hell he meant by that--am I smart? am I a nerd? do I have a pretentious vocabulary?--and for a second I felt bad because I couldn't think of a joke with which to respond, but then I comforted myself in the thought that it wasn't really a conversation in the first place.
Eventually the rest of the guys started showing up, and I quickly realized two things: one, this open mic was almost entirely guys who knew each other and weren't going to say hi to any newcomers; two, they were all, without exception, miserable pricks. One of the guys had apparently won some contest the night before, so many congratulations were had, and I was excited to see his set. The only other newcomer was a girl, maybe a year older than me, who was also ignored but seemed to get a slightly warmer welcome, probably because she was a girl. (Hey, I'm just keeping it real, ladies.)
Anyway, the set started with the contest guy, and immediately it was a mind-fuck. This guy was just doing characters and impressions--the definition of hackery--and I mean, it was funny but, what? The whole line-up quickly devolved into the guys riffing on each other and each other's sets, calling each other faggots and virgins and all sorts of other shit idiots do to flatter each other. The fat guy went up and told some lame jokes, and when he left to go to another open mic, the next guy spent half his set talking about how fat the fat guy was, which got more laughs than any joke the whole night. When it was my turn, I went up and got absolute silence for stuff that worked at school, ended my set with, "Really, guys? Really? Okay," and finished watching the clusterfuck. The girl went up and delivered a fairly amusing monologue, which got some laughs, but still I got the sense that as an outsider she was doomed from the start.
I honestly have no idea whether the stuff bombed because it wasn't good or because the other comics simply didn't want to pay attention, so I learned absolutely nothing. At least at the Comix open mic I had a sense of what went wrong--nerves, an over-reliance on the material, etc.--and I'm excited to go back tomorrow and work towards loosening up and being myself and trying out some stuff that's been on my mind for the hell of it, which, I suppose, is what these open mics are supposed to be. It's not very comforting, though, to think that at any given mic, I could just be wasting my time taking five minutes out of some assholes' douchebag orgy instead of actually improving on stage.
At any rate, I now have a pool table in my bedroom, basically, so I've been trying to practice a lot of pool lately. The thing about pool is that, unless you own a table, you only get to play it like three times a year, so even if you think you're good, you suck. Developing a consistency and getting the balls to go where I want them to go is a fucking asshole-open-mic-esque challenge in and of itself.
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[14 Jun 2009|11:42pm] |
For those who are wondering, I'm feeling a lot better now. In terms of that internship, I managed to swallow my pride and now I'm having a lot of fun at it--hell, most of the day I get to fuck around on the Internet anyway. I feel like I needed that initial breakdown to really appreciate New York City. I'm glad it's out of the way.
Tonight was my first open mic to prepare for this New Talent showcase at Comix on July 7th, and boy did I learn some lessons. I spent a while taking my best (or favorite, anyway) material and making sure it fit the right structure, told the right story, et cetera, made sure it kept things brief, only provided enough information to set up the joke, yada yada--basically, everything that works when you analyze comedy but is guaranteed to never work on stage. So after sitting through some pretty good sets and making notes to myself about what works, what doesn't work, and all that, I went up and realized that I was nervous as hell. I kept looking at notes, even though I knew the jokes by heart. I kept pausing after punchlines, even though that's not how I want to tell jokes. I kept delivering jokes like they were one-liners, even though everything is supposed to flow together.
Basically, although there were laughs, I bombed, and it's because I wasn't myself up there. I was a nervous wreck, trying too hard to get the words right and forgetting that I just had to get the words out. I sacrificed my personality, my persona, everything that makes me a comic individual, and had a bad set because of it.
After the show, I was feeling a little miserable and was even considering cancelling the showcase in a few weeks, until I ran into one of the older comics from the open mic, a nice lady by the name of Amy D. She was very funny, very physical, and after reassuring me that I knew what I was doing, she gave me a piece of advice that I think is one of the best pieces of advice in the world. She told me to do a bunch of these open mics, obviously, but more importantly to take one or two of these open mics and just go up there and talk, without having any material planned--just go up and talk and be myself and hopefully make people laugh but just get comfortable enough so that whenever I have a show where I have material that needs all the right words said in all the right ways, I can do it as me.
Let's go look for an open mic for Tuesday. July 7th is onnn.
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[28 May 2009|06:19pm] |
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We've been miserable the past four days, unable to resist texting each other and generally feeling sad, so Eden and I are going to try the long-distance thing. I feel good about this. It isn't the logical decision, but when has love ever been logical? Love. What a crazy Goddamn concept you've come up with, humanity.
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[28 May 2009|03:11am] |
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mood |
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 confused |
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You know, I wish there were advice for this sort of thing.
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[16 May 2009|02:57am] |
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mood |
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 drunk |
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I am behind on four or five weeks of The Office, 30 Rock, and 24. This is a tragedy.
The fact that this is the biggest tragedy in my life--and that I have a wonderful girl, a great internship coming up, and a successful semester behind me--means that the machinery's in motion.
Oh, wait, another tragedy: my friend Joe and I wanted to go to a bar where we'd be the coolest guys there. I suggested we might as well go to a 7-11 and drink a six-pack by the refrigerator. But no, we got to a bar downtown and I was about to step in when Joe realized he forgot his ID, so we walked away in shame. I think I was right in this situation--I could have gotten at least a couple numbers at the 7-11.
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[05 Apr 2009|02:22am] |
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I just had a pretty major epiphany while watching The Simpsons stoned for the first time. Let me find a way to put it into words and I'll get back to ya.
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[21 Mar 2009|11:56pm] |
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Hey, kids, sorry I couldn't make it to Beauty and the Beast. I'm hearing good things, though, so... congrats.
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| End of an Era |
[03 Mar 2009|12:53pm] |
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mood |
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 nostalgic |
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I've been trying to explain this feeling of sadness that hit me last night watching Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. I don't think it's that Jimmy doesn't deserve the spot--though I don't believe he does (side note: Amy Poehler would have been the right choice)--or that there was something fundamentally wrong with his show--though when your house band is funnier than you are, you know something's fundamentally wrong with your show.
What I think it is is that Conan's Late Night is over, and I can't help but remember all those nights--hundreds of them--I spent watching and revering that show. It's what made me realize that I could be funny, that my sense of humor was okay, that silliness could thrive. It was like he said to comedy geeks, every night, "This is for you."
People say that Conan will be back!, that The Tonight Show will still be silly!, and maybe they're right. Sure, it's the beginning of something bigger, maybe even better. But what will be gone is that feeling of intimacy and exclusivity, that feeling that even though there were maybe a million other people watching, Conan's Late Night was somehow personal.
I still remember the first night I ever saw Conan. It was back in middle school, right before Andy Richter left. I was at my dad's, watching TV after midnight to escape from the world where everyone seemed insane, and suddenly, there was this man at a desk, bantering with his pudgy sidekick, taking that insanity and using it, shaping it into something tame and beautiful.
Lorne Michaels had this to say about Fallon: "Jimmy's built for this kind of show. He's funny, he's charming, he's got a really good way of connecting with people. And he knows music, movies and TV really well, which is the backbone of these shows."
Well, that's great, Lorne, but Conan O'Brien wasn't a formula. He was a friend. Conan was there for us--us, who knew in our hearts that fart jokes weren't as funny as everyone seemed to think--and I can only pray for those 12-year-olds looking for a friend at 12:35, someone to say, "It's okay, dude, I know it's crazy!" and finding only a funny, charming, connectable guy, a guy just like every other Goddamn funny, charming, connectable asshole we resented in middle school, a guy who's exactly what we knew we could avoid for the nightly hour when Conan danced.
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| Noon at the Bookstore, January 20, 2009 |
[12 Feb 2009|04:07pm] |
Here's a poem I wrote for class, the requirement being 'write a poem with five-beat ('iambic pentameter', though that terminology is obsolete) lines about your recent inauguration day experience':
Noon at the Bookstore, January 20, 2009
I thought I might return some books today,
regain that arm and leg I spent last week
on ninety bucks of hand-me-down CDs
and margin notes. But then I saw the four
big high-def screens aglow with crowds who stood
in cold and wind to watch a man recite
a few well-crafted words. Well, shit, I thought,
a couple bucks can wait. Obama’s here.
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| "Carlos, don't make me come up there--because I physically can't." |
[01 Feb 2009|11:56am] |
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mood |
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 ecstatic |
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Yesterday was my first time delivering some stand-up.
A few kids from the Cornell comedy scene organized a stand-up showcase, so eight of us--two Humor!Usians, three Shrimp, three Skits--each wrote a set, swallowed our apprehensions, and, one by one, stepped out into the lights.
The unsureness I felt about my material, the self-consciousness of not knowing whether what I thought was funny would be what a crowd of people would think was funny, kept banging at the gates on Friday, hoping to force a retreat and make me sit and watch as my friends took the risk instead. But then I read my set to Dan and Lukas, they reassured me I should allow myself some confidence, and I practiced, fine-tuned, pumped up.
The show: Dan kills. He's got the goods. Lukas delivers ten minutes of solid material with a warm persona. Laughs all-around. He's good, too. My turn, so I psyche myself up backstage, my heart racing, trying to flush that nervous blood to where it won't matter, and I hit the stage. Instinct kicks in, I don't read or recite or deliver my jokes but live them--whether or not they're stupid, I give them all the energy I have--and the laughs don't stop. I forget a joke, so I rewind to tell it and get a laugh from repeating a transition. This is crazy! I think in the little room I have to think. I finish, I come backstage, and I have to sit down.
This is the most fun I've had in my entire life. Fuck humility. I could be good at this.
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[17 Jan 2009|06:20pm] |
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Back in Ithaca. Play's going well. Classes should be interesting. Hurdles have been crossed. Life is good.
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[30 Dec 2008|11:08pm] |
Year End Review for 2008
Go into your archive and copy the first sentence of your first post from each month of this past year. Skip pictures and memes. Only copy sentences which you actually wrote. This will give you a miniature review of your year:
January
A coworker asked me today, "Has anyone ever told you you look like a hobbit?"
February
Can't we all just
fuck like humans
already, and stop worrying
about who likes who?
March
I just did a huge load of laundry and everything came out of the dryer sort-of damp and smelling like, well, sort-of-damp clothes.
April
All in all, life's pretty much become such a disappointment that those good moments feel like stupid mirages--surreal, brilliant hallucinations against the stale backdrop of inadequacy.
May
A+ for Iron Man!
June
Ugh, no one with Verizon's getting a new phone anytime soon and is willing to sell their current, stylish, functioning phone to an old friend, are you?
July
I think I might buy this. Any thoughts?
August
My stepbrother's taken over my room for the last two weeks, so I've been squatting on friends' couches and spare beds for a while, living off of four shirts and a couple pairs of socks and treating pets like confidants in lieu of any family.
September
From The New York Times, regarding Sarah Palin's pregnant teenage daughter
October
So, McCain is apparently giving this speech right now that includes the following:
November
Here is the story of my 21st birthday:
December
Tonight my dad asked me how I was doing and for the first time I could honestly say I'm doing great. Life is good.
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[28 Dec 2008|05:21pm] |
Review of Valkyrie:
Tom Cruise is terrible--just a terrible, terrible actor, whose range extends from 'whisper' to 'speak this line like it's important'. As far as I recall, the Nazis--even the dissidents--weren't entirely composed of famous British actors. Also, you can't make a conspiracy thriller about trying to assassinate Hitler, because we know Hitler isn't assassinated. Other true stories work because there's at least some sort of mystery involved--"we know this happens, but how?"--but Valkyrie fails precisely because nothing happens. There is absolutely no suspense. Still, maybe there could've been, if Tom Cruise wasn't such a boring idiot.
Score: 3 1/2 Twilights
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| I thought you guys might be interested... |
[19 Dec 2008|01:13am] |
So, my, erm, cohort and I missed the 10:00 showing for Casino Royale last weekend, so we decided, on a whim, to see what all this fuss about Twilight amounted to, and my God, I can't believe I expected it to be less stupid than it actually is. Here are some reasons--just a few examples, mind you, of many--that Twilight is terrible:
- The main girl has no personality and is boring.
- The main vampire has no personality and is boring.
- The dialogue has no personality and is boring. (Case in point: "Anaphase." "Let me check. Anaphase."
- The secondary characters have no personalities and are boring.
- The secondary vampires have no personalities and are boring.
- The tertiary characters/vampires have no personalities and are boring.
- The vampires can't go out in sunlight not because it kills them, like in any other vampire mythology ever, but because it makes their skin all sparkly and they'd be embarrassed.
- The abstinence allegory punches you in the face right away and never relents.
- The special effects are boring, and whatever personality they have would've been outrageous in 1974.
- For such a misogynistic story of epically sexist proportions, it still manages to have no personality and be boring.
Don't even get me started on that baseball scene.
Anyway, after wasting precious hours/dollars/brain cells on that piece-of-shit 'phenomenon', I was cajoled into watching Buffy as a counter-example--that is, a story that takes everything that's apparently cool about Twilight (teenagers in love with vampires, vampires in general) and makes it entertaining and thoughtful. And oh, look at that. Vampires kill people. Sunlight kills vampires. Teenagers have personalities.
Go figure.
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[03 Dec 2008|01:27am] |
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Tonight my dad asked me how I was doing and for the first time I could honestly say I'm doing great. Life is good.
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| It's Mystifying |
[22 Nov 2008|04:19am] |
I'm digging these negative reviews of Twilight--it only confirms my nagging suspicion that the story is as terrible as it seems--but then again, I almost want to see it, if only for the wholly spiritual feeling of self-flagellation it surely resembles.
I haven't read the book--and probably never will, God forbid--but I assume it's a shallow, misogynistic caricature of teenage romance that ignores both standard vampire mythology and, almost as important, the complexity of actual human emotions and relationships.
Correct me if I'm wrong, ladies, but you probably don't care about any of that, right? You just want a man who looks like What's-His-Face and refuses to have sex with you out of some misplaced sense of chivalry. But let's be real here. No man looks like What's-His-Face, especially no pale teenage boy, and furthermore vampires don't care about love and werewolves don't even exist and sex is awesome so none of it makes any sense.
Still, I have this lingering fascination with this whole phenomenon. How is a story so obviously terrible so immensely popular? Please tell me so that I can invest some money in the next big venture. Where's What's-His-Face? I need to talk to him about my business plan. Item one and only: brood.
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| Corrections |
[19 Nov 2008|05:49pm] |
Panic! at the Disco sounded like a name for hip indie rock band. But nope, it's just lyricless emo rock bullshit.
I apologize for this egregious error in judgment.
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[04 Nov 2008|09:33am] |
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Here is the story of my 21st birthday:
I was like, "Oh, hey, it's a Monday, so I'm just gonna go out, have a couple beers, not really get drunk." Then I got wasted.
The end.
Come on, Barack, old buddy, don't let me down!
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[28 Oct 2008|03:17am] |
Nestled under an umbrella and bundled up in the 40-degree weather, I was just walking home from the library at 2 AM and Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Cold Rain" came up on shuffle on my iPod:
Cold rain down on my face...people heading home.
I stopped for a moment to think, Huh, that's weird, at almost the exact same time they sang "Wait a second!"
Strange. Pure coincidence, considering the next song to appear was from The Offspring, but strange nonetheless.
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| Back to politics! |
[06 Oct 2008|03:41pm] |
So, McCain is apparently giving this speech right now that includes the following:
Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, "a good idea." Well, Senator Obama, that "good idea" has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Here is an excerpt from Barack Obama's speech from September of last year:
Subprime lending started off as a good idea...
Those consequences are now clear: nearly 2.5 million homeowners could lose their homes.
Well played, John. Well played.
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