Friday, April 27, 2007

Phew! That's Out Of The Way

Last night, my set was good and bad. It's hard to explain why this makes me feel good, but most honestly it's because I'm a little superstitious. I had been on a stretch of really great shows. It seemed like I could do no wrong, and it was making me uncomfortable. Anybody that's worked in stand-up will tell you, you're bound to have some stinkers in the mix, it's just how it goes, but it'd been too long.

First off, the first half of my set went great. I was killing throughout. That was the set I keep running getting ready for Portland's Funniest Professional next Wednesday. I feel really good about that set, and feel it represents my humor well, as far as delivery, content, and creativity. The material isn't over the top raunchy either, and as a matter of fact, I don't believe there's any cussing at all in the set.

The second half of my set is where the gravy train lost the biscuit wheels. I didn't bomb at all, but I wasn't cohesive either. I ran a couple of new ideas I had floating around, but it's obvious they need to be flushed out to become jokes. I ran a couple of other jokes too, and my "accidentally gay" joke seemed to have fallen a little flat last night. In retrospect, it still got laughs, but maybe I'd gotten too used to the harder laughter my usual set gets. Not a problem though, I took the opportunity to play with the crowd. It was fun, and I realize that when I "spar" with the audience, I usually do pretty great. It's becoming a bit of a fail safe for me to bail out if I don't like how things are going.

I capped the set with a street joke, but I had gotten away from my clever joke material, so it seemed to come out of left field. It got some laughs and chuckles, but not uproarious by any means. But it felt good to get it out of the way, to suck a little life out of the room. I'm not very worried about that for next week though, because I feel like I have my competition set down pretty well, and there's not a lot of room for error. When you only have between 3 and 5 minutes, you don't play much with the crowd, and surely don't bounce new material off a crowd.

I'm excited for the competition. Once again, not because I think I'll win, because the crowd should be big and fun. Also I'll be tripping the light fantastic with some great comics and close friends. I was sad to find out that my friend Dustin didn't make it to the finals. He went over on his time, and if you go over, it's done for you. I was really hoping to find myself, him, and Timmy Brochu on the last night if possible. Those have always been my favorite shows to do all along. They're great guys and really funny. I think the three of us have material that plays well off the other and our target audience is about the same.

My next update should be next week Thursday morning, because the competition is on Wednesday night. Regardless if I have a great night, or a lousy one, you'll still get to hear about it. Wish me luck and say some prayers. Because as we all know, God wants a little unknown comic from Portland Maine to do well with his fart and rape jokes.

Stimulater!

1 comment:

Friend Mouse said...

So, Rob, I finally went ahead and tried out this blog thing ... there's not much up on it yet, but one of the few things there is a link to you. I'm feeling muy connected! Nice to see you at Thatcher's the other night. Ciao - Amanda B.