5 Minutes of Stand-Up at Church of Comedy: I Survived
[dc]O[/dc]n Sunday evening, I took a stab at stand-up comedy. I told some jokes, in front of a live crowd. Yes, it was my first attempt at stand up comedy. As I wrote before, my friend Melik asked me to join the fun. He puts on the monthly Church of Comedy event at the Sir Pizza Grand Cafe in Old Town, here in Lansing.
With a microphone and everything.
Was I nervous? Sure. But, I prepared. I did my research and found that about 400 words is the recommended amount for five minutes of stand up (although I could have written a bit more, I think). I wrote up my words, and practiced, practiced, practiced.
Overall, I’m happy with how I did. I got plenty of laughs, but I screwed up a couple of times by going ‘off script’ – not that going off script is bad, I just stumbled to fill the gaps. The more I do stand up, the better I’ll get.
I didn’t memorize my routine word for word, or even recite it as such. I had the key points remembered, along with a few of my favorite jokes and just kept going. Writing the routine out ahead of time helped because I had a beginning, middle, and end. (Trivia: I started things off with the opossum joke from this week’s comic).
The end, however, was my weakest part (at least I think). That is something I’ll work on more next time. I did save my ending by finishing with an off-the-cuff joke, albeit at Melik’s expense (but he expected nothing less, and it was par for the course that evening).
Will I do it again? Sure. Melik wants me to, and I had a lot of fun. Since Ginger and the Geek came to an end, I don’t get to goof around in front of folks as much. Drawing gag comic strips and writing humor are great and all, but they can’t replace live laughter.
Speaking of live laughter, on Monday night I went on Melik’s talk show, Time Slot. You can listen to the half-hour show on SoundCloud. Chatting with Melik and Franklin Mint was a lot of fun, and so was meeting fellow guest Katie Dama Jaskolski, founder of the Life as a Zebra Foundation, talking about her benefit concert on this coming Saturday.
Thanks to everyone who came out to see Church of Comedy—and thanks for the laughs.
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