December 11, 2012

Bombing is so cool

Tonight I went and did a set at the Comedy Spot Scramble. I messed around with my oil joke. Still not sure where to go with it. Then after that I figured I’d try the Town House open mic, having never been before. It was supposed to start at 10, but didn’t start until 11:30. Finally I got on. I started off killing it hard. Then I switched to the oil joke and they didn’t have the patience to stay with me while I worked it out. Not only that, but then some new people walked in, and it was the only joke they heard. Though a few true believers stayed with me for the rest of my set, I still bombed hard through the rest of it. At least they enjoyed it. I’m very sensitive I guess, so what I decided to do was let it show, and be comfortable with that. I told them how much their insults (saying my jokes sucked, etc) hurt my feelings, and how when my feelings were hurt, it made me less funny. I told them if they wanted me to be funny, an apology would go a long way. That actually shut the hecklers up for a bit, and then I felt better so I started continuing a joke, but it wasn’t enough. Once hecklers really get going, any joke is food. So then I just quit bothering with the joke, and gave a speech about what heckling meant to me, and the way I thought it should be dealt with. Some people seemed to enjoy that a lot.

I hope it’s the same way next week. If there’s hope for making the “What do you guys wanna do?” concept truly great, this would be the ideal atmosphere for it.

It got rough in there.