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.