Week in LA: Night 2
Tonight I got a good hookup for this showcase run by some lady named Kaleena. I got to do a 9 minute set on her “pro part of the show” at this place called Paladino’s.
First they had this improv thing to get the crowd warmed up. Kaleena passed out pieces of paper to everyone with instructions to write down one liners and hand them back to her. I wrote three one liner jokes about ants that were surprisingly good if I may say so, and all three got used in the improv. I grabbed the papers after the show for keeps. Some of the improv stuff was actually really good so I was impressed by that.
I was less impressed when the standup started. Most of these LA comics that I see on these showcases are all the same. They talk really loud and fast. It’s like how guys complain about women talking too much. Sometimes women do that. I’ve met ones that do. Sometimes my sister does it. They just talk and talk and talk and you wait until you have a chance to say something but it never comes. They jump from topic to topic and you wonder how they managed to take a breath. That’s what it’s like for me watching these LA comics. So fucking annoying. Talking loud and fast doesn’t make premises into jokes. It does make it harder to get heckled. I had that thought. But then I had another though. The main point of comedy isn’t to keep from being heckled, it’s to be funny. I’d rather be funny and get heckled than be a loud annoying hack.
I wasn’t at all surprised at how obvious it was that these other comics didn’t like my comedy. Kaleena appeared to, and she said she liked it, but she was the host. There’s always that chance she was just being polite. Most of the crowd left right before my set. Probably because they got tired of being yelled at. Might as well poke a homeless person with a pencil instead of listening to these idiots. I would be more entertained.
Anyway, there were only like four people left in the crowd when I went on. I asked what they wanted to do and they said smoke pot. I explained how now I didn’t have to make them laugh, I just had to make them smoke pot. I asked more questions like do you have pot, why don’t you get it out etc. They said it was in the car and they were going to smoke it afterwards. So I asked what they wanted to do right now. They said laugh. Good. So I told a bunch of jokes. The three crowd people seemed to enjoy them at least. Hard to say I killed when there’s only three people, but I felt good because it seemed like they were genuinely enjoying themselves.
Then I sat through a couple more shouters, got my picture taken with them, grabbed my ant jokes, thanked Kaleena, and then left.