Adventures Of Atom Smith

I stood up last night, and it was a good time.  The show was at JC’s Ground, which is a coffee house which “happens to be a Christian business.”  I had assumed that this meant that the owner just happened to be a devout practicing Christian, and was especially fond of telling folks about this fact, but it was an ordinary coffee house.  As it happens, the walls were covered in bible quotes, prayer cards, posters for bible study groups that meet there, and all sorts of fun stuff.  Needless to say, as soon as I got there, it became abundantly clear why Dan, the guy who organises the standup show, had asked me to come with strictly G-rated material with no swearing, cursing, sexual situation, or taking the Lord’s name in vain.  I should probably do more research on the venue where I am performing before I get there in the future.

I find it funny how extreme everything seems to be in the inside of entertainment, and how reasonable the advertising tries to make it sound.  “The possibility of some female nudity,” means I’ll be on a porn set all day.  “Try to keep the material G-Rated,” means that I’ll be surrounded by quotes from the bible on every wall and ads for bible study.  Imagine if they advertised a new Star Trek film as having “the possibility of some themes or situations which may be considered as potentially pertaining to science related types of fiction.”

Anyhow, Dan was the MC, so he introduced the show, and then did a few minutes of his standup, and then I was the first actual performer.  This made me a little nervous because I was trying new material, and it was somewhat obscure.  I always find that somewhat obscure stuff usually fits best when it isn’t right at the front of a show because the audience is already used to laughing.  Once you get them in the habit of laughing, it is generally pretty easy to keep the momentum going.  Also, it was a pretty small crowd.  Small crowds are naturally quieter, which means people are less inclined to laugh because there are so few people laughing around them.  But, even so, my routine was fairly well received.  The audience didn’t fall out of their chairs laughing or anything, but I was expecting that, and I was pretty happy with how it went. It was an education themed routine.  My jokes included the perils of writing a paper with a keyboard that doesn’t have a working R key, the difficulties in actually getting your dog to eat homework, the perils of reading wikipedia, and a survey of linguistics technical jargon and how it all sounds like the name of a Scandinavian rock band.  Like I said, some of it was slightly obscure.  At least I don’t think anybody will accuse me of having stolen the list of linguistics terms from another comedian.

After the show, Dan said that he liked what I had done, and told me that if I wanted to do the show again some time next month, I was welcome to come back.  So, I guess I am a proper standup comedian now.

I did Freak Train last night. It was a good time. I’ve been spending most of my working time lately finishing up the screenplay, so I haven’t gotten around to bothering to write a standup-routine. I had been thinking Freak Train was next week, and I’d have plenty of time to write one during this week, but apparently I suck at calendaring. Such is life.

By the time I realized it was Freak Train day, I pretty much had to leave immediately so that I could stop by my Dad’s place on the way. I figured I could sign up for one of the performance slots toward the end of the show, and have plenty of time to think about what I was going to do during the other acts and the intermission. Unfortunately, only the first and second slots were still available when I got there, so I didn’t have a lot of time to come up with anything. I managed to sort out a few ideas about what I was going to say. Of course, dearly departing co-host Dave, co-hosting his last Freak Train, decided to do some of his standup before the show. Remarkably enough, he managed to hit some of the topics that I had half-thought out. Now, I can’t claim he stole my material or anything, because I hadn’t even said what I was going to do. He also did it much better than I probably would have, since he had obviously prepared his material in advance. So, for the sake of the audience, it was probably a good thing. Of course, this left me scrambling in my last few seconds to figure out some filler. I didn’t use my whole 5 minute slot, and I didn’t have a solid ending joke, so I just sort of finished by declaring, “That’s all I have.”

Maybe I’ll recycle some of the material into a routine in the future. It was just about the subjects of living in Boulder, jogging, and being terribly white and having no rhythm or musical talent, so it’s not like I would take his specific jokes. It’s just that covering the exact same topics scant moments after he did so would have been really awkward.