Maryam vs Kelly
Tonight I went to the open mic at The Comedy Spot again. I mostly got my ear talked off by Kelly Browne. There was like a thing going on with names. She kept making jokes about her real name not being Kelly. I asked her what it was, and she said it was Kelly, it was just pronounced slightly differently. Maryam Mousavi was hosting the open mic. She once told me that her name was pronouced Mare-E-im, like “one day I’m gonna marry ‘im.” So, when Kelly told me that it’s actually pronounced Mar-E-um, I didn’t know who to believe. I had to ask Maryam after my set, which way was right. She said it actually was Mar-E-um, but she had only recently begun the work of telling people the actual way to say it, and admitted that she used to tell people the wrong way.
My set started off pretty quiet. Let me just say this too: it’s hard to perform in front of a whole audience that’s wearing masks, because you can’t see their facial expressions. You know, sometimes even if people aren’t laughing, you can at least tell if they’re enjoying your set a little bit if you see them smiling or maybe even trying not to laugh because they’re afraid to be the only one or something like that. But with the masks there was none of that. And people weren’t laughing much at my Ginger Bread Party monologue. I just kept going because I was already into it, and I wanted to see what would happen at the end. It finally started to work a little bit at the end, and then I said some other funny stuff about how I might finish the rest of it on my next booked show, and believe it or not I actually do get booked on some shows. They laughed at that. Then I explained that Maryam was going to come back, AGAIN, and bring up the next comedian.
I stayed and watched a few more people. I was conflicted because I wanted to see a few more that were at the end, including Amy Nelsen because she’s cool and was on my Tonight Play show once, and I haven’t seen her do standup before. She does improv and it’s always interesting to see how improv people approach standup. Unfortunately, I also had the urge to go to the home box store and buy more fence improvement supplies, and I had to wrap up work for the day too. Hopefully another time!