Blog #3- What Little Momentum I Had...

What made me apprehensive about pursuing stand-up after the nights in CT was that it would be hard to perform anywhere. I was in my last semester of college without a car, and not really a place to live. Fortunately, a friend of mine let me stay with her and her family until I graduated, in a house about 3 miles from the campus. The house was also about a mile from a restaurant called the Alley Cat that hosted open mic nights on Wednesdays. So of course, I was doing a lot of walking.

Performing at the Alley Cat was frustrating. The main reason is that in Carrollton, open mic night does not mean showing off a talent other than musical. To narrow it down a little more, if you didn't play guitar and sang, no one cared. The music usually served as background noise anyway, so imagine trying to tell jokes to people who aren't listening. I knew that I had to perform at comedy clubs in front of people who came to hear jokes. The problem with that? I can't walk to Atlanta...

So I continued to write. I did something I had never bothered to do before: watch the news. I stopped watching the local news a few years ago after becoming frustrated with the randomness of it, but now I can use the randomness for a comedy bit. The presidential election would look like a goldmine of material, but what could I say that hasn't been said already? I only wrote one joke regarding the election, and you'll see that later.

I drew some of my material from some pretty dark places, because I thought about how I tried to find the humor in everything, and I came up with some pretty funny things. I was able to make fun of myself, my family, and even some of my friends without them knowing it. I was able to develop a style, that being dark-humored stories and my cynical perspective on the world. I've been told that I'm quite cynical, and now through writing jokes, I'm aware of it. I play up the cynicism in my act, kinda like Lewis Black...minus the yelling. I sound awkward when I yell. After a few lackluster showings at the Alley Cat, I decided to focus on one performance that I would do in December...the UWG Coffeehouse.