The Niagara Wrestling Trip

I am part of the wrestling club here at Albany, I wrestled all throughout high school and it’s a big part of who I am. Towards the end of Senior year I fucked up my shoulder in a match but kept competing. To this day my shoulder has never been the same. Freshman year at Albany was the only time in the past 8 years I didn't do any wrestling at all. I joined the club team up here because I wanted to get involved in wrestling but not have to sacrifice my life for it like I did back in high school. I'm not a major part of the team now but I was sophomore year and I took part in the annual trip to Niagara Canada.

Every year the team goes to Niagara New York for an open tourney that features a lot of tough wrestlers. Why would anybody do this while in college, because the team crosses the border to Canada that night, and the drinking age there is 19.

There were 7 of us including our coach. It was Phonebook, BJ, Beast, Big D, and Flex. Niagara New York is a fucking dump compared to Niagara Canada. Like there seriously is nothing on the American side except for the falls themselves. The Canadian side however was an incredibly beautiful city especially at night. We were staying at a Comfort Inn that was literally right on the border so Canada was walking distance. We passed through customs and began walking across the freezing cold "Rainbow" bridge. The bridge went over the falls and right into Canada.

Our first stop was this bar called Kelsey's, it was in a nice restaurant and had a smoking hot bartender working that night. Coach was trying to hit on her the whole night but the fact was he didn't have a shot. The drinks were flowing and it was a pretty chill start to the night. There was a local there who tried to start a Canada is better argument with me that I easily won, (fuck do I love those retarded Canucks). BJ got a drunken text from his girlfriend so he naturally took a picture of his cock and sent it to her. Phonebook, staying true to his nickname was trying to get the hot bartender's number but to no avail. After a while BJ, Phonebook, Beast and I got bored and wanted to go bar hopping. Flex and Big D were still 18 so they ended up staying with coach at Kelsey’s the entire night.

On route to our first destination we pass a group of good looking girls. It wasn't until we saw their faces that we realized they were like 15. This still didn't stop Phonebook and me from talking to them. They were trying to get into bars by using fake IDs that said they were 20. Sorry honey but I think the braces might give you away, and you should wait till you're at least Seniors to destroy your livers.

The second bar we went to that night was Boston Pizza, which essentially was the Canadian version of Dave and Busters or Jillians. It was a pretty cool place that combined booze, food, and video games, but it was way too expensive ($7.00 for a jack and coke...fuck off) so we bounced pretty quickly. On our way out we walk by a group of girls. This is verbatim how the conversation went down.

Phonebook: "How's it going tonight ladies"

Girl #1:  "OH MY GOD I'M SINGLE! I'M SINGLE!"

Phonebook: "Cool"

He then sits down with Girl #1 and gives us the hint to go on without him. So while Phonebook was getting head in the bathroom of Boston Pizza, the rest of us continued looking for a solid bar. This is when we hit up The Wild Mushroom. This place was awesome, random dollar bills all over the walls, nice crowd and of course cheap drinks. BJ, Beast, and I get a table and order a round of Irish Car Bombs. This hit me and BJ pretty hard but Beast continues to pound down the drinks while we slowed down considerably.

There was a table of very good looking girls our age next to us. Feeling pretty drunk I hit on them immediately, but I didn't scare them away which was a nice change of pace. Beast the entire time was buying glasses of wine for one of the blondes while we just continued to talk to them. Not too long after Phonebook comes out of nowhere and is pretty hammered along with the rest us at the table. We were pumped to see him and to top off the moment chumbawamba comes on and the entire bar goes fucking nuts.

A few rounds later I am officially shithammered and horny. I start getting the feeling that the girls we were talking to weren't going to give it up so I start looking around the bar. All of sudden I hear one of my favorite sentences in the English language when I'm wasted. "Oh my God my friend is really fucking drunk". When a guy says this I find it hilarious, when a girl says this...jackpot. Sure enough I turn around and I see this red head at the bar pretty hammered. I make a move, start a conversation and somehow end up hooking up with her. She wasn't the best looking girl there or the lightest one either, but dammit fuck standards I'm trying to get some random ass tonight boyeeee.

We have a few solid make out sessions when the bar begins to close. I got a text about two hours earlier from Flex saying they headed back to the motel. So we left the bar and proceeded back across the border, while highly intoxicated. Before we step into customs we decide to take about a 20 minute break to chuck random shit over the bridge because it seemed like a fun thing to do. After we somehow make it through customs without incident we sprint to the motel get to our rooms and then pass the fuck out.

I woke up the next morning mad hungover, with only a $10 dollar Canadian bill and a few coins in my wallet. There was also an ATM receipt that stated I had no money left in my account.

Solid trip.

"She Used to Be the Sweetest Girl" an Infamous Night at ZBT

Freshman year I had the pleasure of living on the 3rd floor of Montauk Hall along with some of the coolest and craziest fucking people I have ever met. I was randomly roommates with Harry, and even though we had our differences back then we grew closer over our college tenure and I now consider him one of my closer friends at Albany. There also was Blanka, a Brazilian immigrant with an incredibly obscene sense of humor and maybe the best dude I have ever met. There's also a lot more memorable people who I'll probably mention sometime in this blog. The only person I knew before move in day was Burgundy. We went to the same high school and had a lot of friends in common. It was pure coincidence that we ended up living on the same floor. Well that spring semester we decided it would be a good time for some of those mutual friends to come and visit.

The visiting crew included Fat, and Scope, who would later transfer up to Albany, as well as Pro, Linus, and Gomez. This was the first time Burgundy and I had visitors and we knew we had to show them an epic time. Well they helped get things started by bringing up 2 handles of vodka to pregame with. There was about eight of us and we killed that 1st handle. Now this may not seem impressive but Burgundy and Scope can't drink for shit so they only took like 2 shots each, the other six of us finished the rest of the bottle in I'd say less than 2 hours.

We were all pretty fucked up before getting on the bus (at least I know I was Shithammered), but we knew exactly where to go. Our destination was the ZBT house, we knew about a party there because two of our friends who lived on our floor; Turtle and Gambit got into the frat that previous semester.

So we get to the frat house relatively early because from what I remember it wasn't packed yet, and the keg was just chillin outside with nobody using it. Now in steps our crew, and now the beer begins flowing nonstop. We were all doing keg stands and just continuously chugging beer. That's when the party started. Tons of people started showing up, the guy to girl ratio was actually really good for a change and everyone was just getting retarded. Even in this drunken state I will never forget when "Sweetest Girl" by Wyclef Jean came on, at this point the place was bumping. Seriously every single person at the party was drunkenly singing away to this song it was amazing. The girls were getting into it; dancing on tables, making out with each other and  doing other crazy shit. My friends and I were pounding down our drinks fast and enthusiastically while reciting this theme of the night. However these moments of pure college euphoria were my final clear memories of the night.

At this point our entire crew was insanely drunk, especially Burgundy and I. Burgundy was struggling to stay on his feet, he was being held up by Harry and Gomez. I was told he; fell a couple of times, failed with this one girl reallllly hard, and probably had no idea where the fuck he was. May have been the drunkest I have ever seen him while we've been at Albany. Pro and Fat got some solid pics of him passed out on the bus trying to eat bread or something too.

Not to be out done I on the other hand…well I was McMandy and that was not a good thing for me. 1st I hit on this one blonde repeatedly because I kept thinking she was a different person each time and she wanted to stab me seriously she wanted my head on a fucking pike. There was a girl playing flip cup and I just started grinding behind her because...actually I have no idea why. Upon seeing this I've been told the entire party was laughing at me and I staying true to the McMandy persona became one of the resident creepers at the party. I ended up throwing my guts up in the upstairs bathroom while Turtle helped me. The ironic part about this was that Turtle set the bar in being fucked up for our floor. Numerous times while he was pledging and after have I've seen this guy wrecked beyond belief. But on this night I was the completely annihilated one and he was the caregiver.

As for the rest of the crew, I heard that Pro, Scope, Linus and I believe Burgundy all puked off the deck at the same time. Fat puked back at our dorm after we got Chinese food, and I think Gomez and Harry were the only ones to come out clean. After all I think they were too busy taking care of Burgundy or pretending to at least.

The next day I woke up and after being informed about that infamous night. I felt nothing but pure shame and embarrassment, not to mention I had a ridiculous hangover. Gambit also told me that the blonde chick I kept hitting on was basically the president of ZBT's girlfriend. This resulted in me being banned from the ZBT house a feat I did not think was possible but my dumbass pulled it off anyway.

I guess the lesson I took from this experience was not to pregame with about 10 shots before going to a kegger. Also if a girl's at a table playing flip cup she probably isn't interested in grinding with you. Oh yeah and of course BE CAREFUL OF WHO YOU FLIRT WITH.

Despite the pure humiliation Burgundy and I still accomplished what we wanted to do. We showed our friends an EPIC fucking time and a night that none of them will forget...well at least half of it.

Possibly the Luckiest Night of My Life

Labor Day weekend freshman year, it was a Sunday night and we had Monday off so naturally I was down to get fucking shithammered. I had just gotten a text from a friend I met at orientation about this party downtown. I haven't seen the guy all year so I was down to go. I was roommates with Harry at the time and originally he was going to come with. We get to the bus stop at about  11:00 pm and to our surprise the buses stop running at like 10:30 on Sundays. What can I say, we were freshmen, only 2 weeks in, and needless to say we didn't know shit. After becoming aware of this unfortunate fact Harry bailed, I found out later that he actually had plans with his future girlfriend who lived on our floor so I can't hate.

So there I am by myself, still with the desire to go downtown and get wasted like the energetic freshmen I once was. While standing around trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get downtown, I over hear this group of guys talking about a party they were trying to get to. Coincidentally this was the same exact party I was trying to go to. I introduce myself, let them know I was heading for the same destination as them, and I asked them if I can join their ride to the party. Surprisingly they were cool with this a let me ride along.

While we were waiting for the ride a drunk slutty looking girl named Bonnie walks up to us and asks how we were getting downtown. Random Dude #1 tells her about the ride and she joins our crew. A car pulls up and Random Dude #1 informs us this is our ride. We pile into the car and Bonnie ends up sitting on my lap which I find awesome because she was thin and had a nice ass. The entire ride downtown Bonnie was giving me an unintentional lap dance and it was spectacular. The dude who was driving the car starts asking Bonnie and me questions since he didn't know us and naturally he wanted to know what random people he was driving downtown for free. Once he hears that Bonnies' name is actually Bonnie he demands to see her ID to verify this was her name. I don't know why but for some reason he found this absolutely fucking hilarious. After that he asked me if my name was Clyde and that was what everyone called me for the rest of the night. I do think it’s worth mentioning that the dude driving was really drunk and upon realization of this fact I was scared shitless for the entire ride.

By some miracle we make it downtown to the party without dying. We all go into the party except for Bonnie who wandered off to some bar. Once we get there I start texting my friend from orientation but he doesn't answer me. Meanwhile the party starts emptying out except for the guys I came in with and a decent number of random people. The party began to clear out because apparently the beer was gone. This was an example of being at the right place at the right time because just has the first crowd of people left two dudes come up the stairs with a full keg. Since so many people left the small group of us who remained received full access to this surplus of beer. Everyone got to do multiple keg stands and our cups were always full it was legit.

There was this one girl, Jen, she was a Junior at Albany, and I felt that she was into me, so I talked to her for most of the night. About 8 beers and a keg stand later I was drunk but still coherent to keep up a conversation with her. We walk outside the kitchen and she gives me that look. I'm talking about that look where once you see it you know you‘re one move away from getting some ass. I am proud to say I pulled off one of the smoother moves I've ever done. I was wearing a Yankee hat and I turned it to the side, This is how the following conversation went

Jen: "Why did you turn your hat that way? You think you’re cool"

Me: "Nah it’s so I can do this"

(I move in and start hooking up with her)

Jen: "Let's go outside"

This was my first hookup at Albany and Jen was one of the hotter girls I've ever hooked up with. Naturally I felt like I was on top of the world. We go outside and continue to make out. I'm biting her neck, feeling and kissing her tits which I say were about a B cup, she's grabbing my ass, rubbing my back. It was incredible a solid way to start my college days. Things are going great until her friends come over, and like the cockblocking bitches a girl's friends can be they pull her away and leave the party, fuck.

So I go back upstairs just to find out that the guys who I came with were fucking gone and I am now by myself at the party. The way I felt was probably pretty similar to how Ethan Hawke felt in Training Day, when he finds out Denzel Washington left him at that house alone with the drug dealers who then try to murder him. Well maybe not quite like that but still I was starting to get scared. Fortunately for me I find a friendly group of girls and start talking to them. They're freshmen too, they tell me they were about to leave and head to another party and I was welcomed to come with them. Thank God.

As we head to the party I start feeling a little drunker and start stumbling on the street still following the girls. There are some fucked up sidewalks in downtown Albany and I would become well aware of this when I trip and face plant on the fucking concrete. However because alcohol tends to numb my face I feel little pain and get right back up. Luckily none of the girls saw this and I was able to keep up. We then get to the party and its pretty chill. They had a bunch of keystone cans in the fridge and there were a good number of people there. I then notice this one really attractive Latina chick and I start macking on her. While I was talking to her the girls I went into the party with tell me they were catching a cab and asked if I was going back to campus with them. Thinking I was totally going to bang hot Latin chick I respectfully decline. BAD MOVE.

Once the girls leave I continue to talk to the hot Latin chick until she informs me she is still in high school, lived at home with her parents’ downtown and had a boyfriend. My stomach sanked, I knew two things after being told this, the odds of me fucking her went out the goddamn window, and I had no one to go back to campus with. I was a freshmen I had no idea of any cab numbers, I knew nobody who lived downtown and the one thing people always told me was being downtown by yourself late night was the quickest way to get  robbed and murdered.

It's 4 AM I stumble out of the house onto the streets of downtown Albany fucked up and alone. This may have been the scariest experience of my life. I was on the verge of tears from fear as I made my way down the street. However the streets were deserted and the cops were up the block from me breaking up a party so the risk of getting stabbed was somewhat lowered. Then thankfully a cab drives down the street and I was able to flag it down. I jump in pay him the 5 bucks to drive my dumbass back to campus and somehow get back to my dorm unharmed. I usually have shitty luck, but that night lady luck was on my side and basically gave me head.

I never heard from Jen or anybody else I met that night. As for the friend I was supposed to meet up with after orientation it turned out he puked about 5 times that night and had to be carried out before I even got to the house. That morning I woke up to find cuts and scratches on my hands and face from wiping out on the street. It's been 4 years now and even though I've had some memorable and shithammered nights here at Albany, I haven’t had a night like that since.

Doing Standup Comedy Part 3

When we got to Dukes bar I realized two things. First this was a completely different crowd; instead of a mix college crowd made up of mainly stoners this place was full of other older comics and older people from Glenmont. Second I couldn’t do my jokes on shitty rest stops off the highway in the middle of fucking nowhere because that was basically what Dukes was except with two smoking hot waitresses I really wanted to fuck.

 The host whom I’ll call Kirby split the four of us up throughout the show. I went third, Blanka went seventh, Burgundy went ninth and Urkel basically went last.

Before I knew it I was on stage in front of a new crowd and I had no idea what to expect. Still feeling shitty about my last act I decided to just go with the routine I did 1^st time out. I managed a few laughs and felt like I did better than that previous night but still I wasn’t able to top my 1^st performance. Blanka and Burgundy repeated their acts from the night before. Blanka got a pretty decent reaction and Burgundy basically got the same reaction he did that previous night. Then it was Urkel’s turn to perform. Straight up the kid bombed. The entire time he was up there, he looked like he was a second away from grabbing a knife and slitting his wrists; honestly it was painful to watch.

We left Dukes shortly after Urkel’s performance. It was kind of a quite ride back mainly because we feared that Urkel was going to jump out of the car while we were on the highway. That was the last time we performed with him, I guess he’s still hosting the SUNY Albany open mic but who knows and I really don’t care. We went to Dukes one last time as a crew before the year ended. It was during finals week and I was fucking drained of all life. However Burgundy is a persuasive motherfucker. He convinced me to come with him and Blanka to Dukes for one final stand up performance for the year. I’m not making excuses but this was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew if I didn’t go I would regret it.

So there we were back at Dukes and this time it’s just the three of us, we sign up and go in basically the same order we’ve gone all along. While we were all waiting to go on one of the regular comedians pulls me aside and tries to give me advice about standup. I can’t lie I really wasn’t paying attention to him while he rambled on about God knows what. This can be due to the fact that I have college kid ADD and the Yanks were on the TV right behind the guy. Mark Teixeira just slapped a 3 run homer over the faggot Boston Red Sox too so I was solely focused on that display of awesomeness. Also I was too tired to give a shit what the guy had to say. While this was going on Kirby cornered Blanka and was kissing his ass about his last performance like Blanka was Mr. Burns and Kirby was Walen Smithers. Burgundy and I were (and still are) pretty sure that Kirby realllllly wanted to blow Blanka or at least that what it seemed like.

After those awkward events the show started and just like that I was back on stage. I pretty much improv’d my entire act with potential material I had stored in my head. I think I got maybe two laughs tops, it was a pretty pathetic display but hey like I said at that point in time I did not give a fuck about doing well. Blanka went on next and he had one of the most disgusting and fucked up routines I’ve ever seen I mean we found it hilarious but still he was talking about some pretty fucked up shit. Countless times during his act Burgundy and I just look at each other and was only able to utter the shocked words “damn dude”. Burgundy went at the end of the show and I’m pretty sure waiting that long to perform struck a nerve. He opened up with just a battery of insults towards almost everyone who went on before him. Now Burgundy can be an asshole and one of his best asshole talents is ripping on people and let me tell you, the guy was fucking owning everyone he targeted. Everyone in the crowd was fucking dying of laughter. Unfortunately once he went into his routine the crowd basically went quite. The moral of the story here is to stick with your strengths. If it’s either insulting people or making fun of yourself, STICK to what you are best at.

So this concludes my experience in the world of standup comedy. I regretfully admit that to this day I haven’t done any standup since that night at Dukes. Burgundy and Blanka performed one more time at Dukes and that was the last time I ever heard about either of them going. We planned on doing more standup over the summer but it just never happened. It truly does suck that I haven’t performed for so long, but what can I say. Sometimes your priorities change over time and you find yourself unable to accomplish everything you set out to. I do hope to one day return to the stage because I can honestly say performing comedy is one of the most redeeming and fulfilling things I have ever done in my life.

Doing Standup Comedy Part 2

Six minutes and thirty seconds, Thats how long my first act lasted and I fucking killed it! There have been very few moments in my life where I have felt such a sense of reliefe and accomplishment. Being in downtown Albany late at night on my own, shit hammered and not getting stabbed that’s one of them. My first relationship (which lasted about a month), yeah you can put that on the list too. However performing my material on stage for the first time almost flawlessly, and getting big laughs from the crowd the entire time I was up there, that might top all of those milestone moments.

 I was so relieved to be done and now able to celebrate that night with everyone by getting inexcusable intoxicated. Also I was anxious to see how Blanka and Burgundy would do, we were a team and I wanted them to kill just like I did.

Blanka went after me and the nerves got the best of him that first time around. When Blanka is nervous his horrid accent becomes even worse so it’s even harder to understand him. Plus he just looked like he wasn’t enjoying himself on stage and what makes Blanka’s depraved material funny is not only how fucking perverted it is but how he delivers it. Blanka was disappointed but motivated to go back to the drawing board and improve.

Burgundy closed for our group and the guy killed it too. He honestly got some of the biggest laughs of the night. There were some points during his act where he had to stop and let the audience continue laughing. For the most nervous one out of us three he honestly did great.

Now our material compared to rest of the performers was completely obscene and absolutely filthy like there was one kid joking about aliens being racist towards humans or something lame like that and then there was me talking about having a small dick and Burgundy talking about busting a nut all over his sister’s teddy bear. It was no wonder we killed that night. Needless to say our confidence was sky high but with that sky high confidence came sky high expectations for our next routine.

We went through the whole process again with new material except this time our friend Harry decided he wanted to get in on the action too. So the four of us went back to the SUNY Albany open mic a few weeks later and expected to kill like last time.

I went led off for our group again, however I did not do as well as the previous time. Some of the jokes I thought were my best weren’t getting the laughs I thought they would. When I finished I for no reason was furious at myself. I shook hands with the host, gave Burgundy one of the most violent rage filled high fives I've ever given someone, and stormed out of the room with the feeling that I had bombed. I felt the exact opposite of what I felt that first night, it was absolutly horrible. Looking back I actually didn't do bad but at the time I wanted to top my first act which just did not happen. Storming out like that was one of the most shameful things I have ever done in my life and ask anyone I party with at Albany that’s saying a lot. Fortunately for me I did the right thing and went back inside immediately to watch the others perform. Burgundy ended up doing about the same as me but his initial reaction was better than mine. Probably saw how I acted and decided no matter what not to do the same thing.

The best part of the night though was watching Blanka come back from his poor first performance and kill it this night. It was nice to see the guy rebound and it made me feel that if he can come back from a bad performance so can I.  Harry had the first timer luck that Burgundy and I did, plus he just had a really solid routine too, talking about constantly puking and having a chained up Vietnamese kid in your garage gets big laughs.

After that personal rough night Burgundy and I wanted to get back at it has soon as possible. Blanka wanted to ride his hot streak too. Also out of us all he wanted to do as much stand up as possible. So Burgundy got word from the host who we’ll call Urkel, that a bar out in Glenmont was having an open mic the very next night. So the four of us hoped into Burgundy’s car and drove out to middle of fucking nowhere Glenmont NY, to perform at Dukes bar.

The Andy Mark Drunk Scale

If you read I hope they serve beer in hell then you are familar with the "Tucker Max Drunk Scale" I'm not trying to rip the guy off but I too have my own scale to define my state of drunkness on any given night. Here is that scale

1. Tipsy:  A couple of games of pong and maybe a shot or two in, I'm a little off balance, I'll forget shit someone just told me like names of people I meet for the first time that night, or other random shit. This is also the stage where stumbling and slurring occurs. However I'm still an OK member of society at this point 
2. Drunk: 9 beers or so later, now I'm really feeling it. All my senses start getting really fucked up right now but I still have semi control of what I'm saying although I will tend to talk more shit to people too but nothing to drastic. I can still hold a conversation with a girl without shoving my face into her tits or coming off as a rapist. This is the last stage of my drunkenness where I am still cool to be around.
3. Shit hammered/The Shark: Usually the result of multiple self made drinks or doing a lot of shots for the hell of it now I'm realllllly fucked up. I may repeat what I've said over and over again, laugh at dumber shit than usual, hit on basically anything with tits and legs, and be overly aggressive with random girls at the bar. Also I will eat almost anything at this point.
4. MCMANDY: I either found a large supply of free booze or I try to see how many shots I can do in 30 seconds.NOW I am fucking done my highly intoxicated alter ego as appeared. McMandy takes part in all the lowest forms of human behavior and is drivin by two things only, food and sex. I have eaten pizza I have dropped on the ground in this stage and have spent more money on food then booze that night. I will hit on EVERY girl in the room, be mad aggresive and somtimes "handsy" especially if shes dressed mad slutty (basically a bullseye in McMany's mind), doesn't matter if; 

• She ignores me
• The friend standing next to her has just turned me down
• She has a boyfriend
• I'm friends with her boyfriend
• She threatens to mace me
• She screams at me

Nope McMandy is the definition of not giving a fuck and will destroy everything in his path

Side note:
Freshmen year about half of Albany met McMandy

Doing Standup Comedy Part 1

This summer I was an intern at the Long Island Press and I wrote a story for them about my few experiences doing stand up comedy. They edited the shit out of it and made me expand the story to have a more "Long Island" theme to it. I was cool with this because I had no idea what the fuck I was doing and just was excited about being published. However I did save the unrated version of this story. This is the first part of that story....

Every group of friends always has the “funny one” in it. This person is usually loud, makes inappropriate comments and of course…is funny. Now this individual if actually funny has heard it from friends or whomever they perform their comedic role in front of at one time or another that they should be a comedian. This innocent comment may actually cause the person to think

“Gee you know what I fucking should, I’m the funniest fucker in my group and I basically can make anybody laugh their ass off like a stoner watching South Park!”

Well this individual may take this idea very serious and put together a routine, practice it, ask for feedback from his friends, and look for an open mic to perform his “God given” talent. Unfortunately what this amateur may find out is that it is not easy being a comedian and what’s funny to you and your retarded friends is not funny to the general public.

If your reading this and find yourself wondering “what the fuck does this guy know he’s made like three jokes in this thing and they all blow” well readers me and my friends have started down this path to becoming stand up comics and let me tell you it is not as easy as you would think. I do not claim to be a total expert on the subject in fact I may be the worst amateur amongst my friends but I felt like sharing my experience since it was a unique and still ongoing journey into the world of standup comedy.

It was this past semester of college when Blanka, Burgundy, and I decided that we wanted to try standup. I remember this idea coming up while we were all home for the winter and Blanka in his horrible Brazilian/Portuguese/”Americanized”/Mentally Challenged accent, kept egging me on to do two things. Match.com (don’t ask) and standup comedy along with him and Burgundy. I decided why not could be fun and a better form of procrastination than playing super smash brothers (best game ever by the way) all fucking day. So we decided (months later) to look for open mic spots, actually put together a routine, practice it, give each other feedback, and then finally perform at the open mic.

The three of us had very different ways of coming up with material. Burgundy was going to use stories he had created for his blog that he hadn’t posted yet along with other experiences he's had. Burgundy’s blog has been around for over a year now and it’s not solely the opinionated type of blog which I passionatley hate. What I believe separates his blog from the other pieces of unfiltered crap out there are his crazy, usually completely retarded and drunk stories about us, his friends.

So that was Burgundy’s well for material. Blanka on the other hand, had a notebook were the thoughts of his perverted mind were written. Don’t get me wrong I mean I may be top 10 horniest/perverted individuals at our school but Blanka takes the fucking cake. After living with him for one year the guy definitely rubbed off on me (figuratively and literally unfortunately) has he did to anybody who lived with him. I’d say if you’re in constant contact with Blanka for over a month you will start acting like him and always impersonating his horrendous accent. I would describe Blanka’s accent has a mix between a Latin pornstar, and that scumbag immigrant Oskar Kokoschka from Hey Arnold.  The quality of a Blanka impersonated accent varies from person to person.  Anyways Blanka’s arsenal of jokes was in the category of obscene and totally perverted.

My material was basically jokes I’ve made to my friends that they found funny, self deprecation which I’ve been told is my best stuff, and just observable humor. So that was the first part easy, done, and surprisingly simple. The next step was a little more challenging and that was putting together our routine. There are 3 aspects in my mind one must take into account when putting together a successful routine. One is the opener.

Like talking to girls an opener in a routine may be the head start to some action and results. Now I’m not saying if you have one good opening line you’re going to get laid automatically or in this case put on a killer set, but you will want to hit the audience with your best stuff in the beginning because once you get them cracking up from the start they're more likely to laugh at your later stuff. I always felt this worked better than saving your best stuff for the end and hope to get your big laughs then. On a side note I may be great with approaching girls and starting a conversation but I am no Mariano Rivera I cannot close for shit especially when I’m drunk but that’s a different story.

Anyway back to standup, the second important aspect to a routine is your transition. You don't need to perfectly transcend from one joke to another but I found that during my brief experience that if you’re able to transcend well, your flow will be better.  For example you can’t just go from talking about a recent STD you acquired to why Europeans love soccer so much without noting that it is an extremely random transition. Believe it or not I took a history of hip-hop class at SUNY Albany and I remember one class where we compared rappers to standup comics. This actually strengthens my point because just like any singer or rapper needs to have a good flow within their songs so does a comedian throughout their routine.

The third important aspect of a standup routine is the ability to improv. Improv is one of my best talents, it has helped me half ass class speeches and presentations as well as stay out of jail. The ability to improv during your routine is invaluable when dealing with the unexpected. The unexpected includes forgetting what you were going to say, heckling, a unrelated outburst within the crowd or area, a bag of dicks being thrown at you (Louie C.K.* your the fucking man) or basically anything that may fuck with your performance. Ways to successfully improv include the ability to talk shit back, make up jokes on the spot, and just make timely funny comments. Preparing to deal with the unexpected and mastering or at least improving your improv ability comes from the next step of doing standup comedy, practice.

We all would usually practice at my place or downstairs where Blanka worked. Blanka “worked” in the gym his job was to sit on his immigrant ass and make sure nobody killed themselves witht he gym equipment while he was down there. Also he got to work out during his shift and check out the hot girls on the treadmills so yeah real backbreaking labor.

Anyways during our practices we would try to run through our routine, ask one another what we should get rid of, what we should add, how we should perform each part, and how long our routine lasted.  Honestly this was the fun part because we felt like comedy writers sitting around pitching ideas and suggestions and just joking around with one another. That part motivated me to start taking this comedy thing more seriously because I mean think about it imagine getting payed to sit in a room with two of your close friends and talk about comedy all day long, what more could a guy want…well besides pussy and free taco bell for life.

After the three of us figured out the main outline of each of our routines we decided to find any open mic spots near campus. Fortunately the first one we found was on campus and was hosted by a school group called the sketchy characters. Now I need to state this, this group may have been the corniest/blatantly unfunny group of kids I’ve ever seen, like they were those geeky kids in high school who hung out together in the library laughing their asses off while they played world of war craft or some shit like that. But none the less they were nice kids and provided Blanka, Burgundy and myself a forum to test out our routine in front of a decent size crowd.

So after we sat through one of their open mic shows we decided no question we were going to go for it. We had about two weeks to practice our routine down to the point where we could recite it from memory. Balancing this with school work was tough but manageable also considering the fact that the three of us were fucking insomniacs the time of day really wasn’t a factor. Besides to us this was leisure not work so we were always down to practice.

Two weeks fly by and our debut night into standup comedy was about to begin. Long before the show began Blanka and Burgundy were freaking out. Burgundy especially, the guy over thinks every little part of his life to begin with so constantly analyzing the possible results from his act was driving him fucking crazy it honestly was getting on my nerves. Blanka was just nervous like anybody else would be which made me wonder why I wasn’t nervous. I had no reason to be calm I guess I was just tired from a rough week and looking forward to the weekend or something. I remember thinking “This isn’t going to be so bad I'll just ggo up there and have fun. Public speaking is my thing anyway and that’s basically what this is…right?”.

Well I was calm until we got to the place where the open mic was being held. I remember right after we signed up I started getting butterflies in my stomach, my mouth was dry, my heart was racing and I thought I was going to shit myself. Burgundy and I insisted that we rehearse one more time before the show started. We went upstairs to a private room went over our routines one more time and then headed back down for the show. I felt so much better after that last rehearsal. We were up at the end of the show and the anticipation of performing was starting to get to me. Besides I was the first one to go out of us three so I knew I had to man up and lead off with a bang.

I’ll never forget waiting for the dude before me to finish and it feeling like a fucking eternity. Three hours later the guy finished his act and I started to walk near the stage prepared to go on. Then finally I heard my name called out by the host and I walked on stage to begin my very first stand up act.