Comic-in-residence: Day five

Day five: Thursday, January 8, 2008

Tonight's show was hosted by Zach Sherwin, a.k.a. MC Mr. Napkins, who is an excellent comic rapper. This sounds like it wouldn't be funny, but he's hilarious. Please visit his MySpace page and listen to his track about sphygmomanometers. It will change your mind. (Note: If you listen at work, you maybe want to put on your headphones since he drops a big MF right in the middle.)

I paid special attention tonight to not backing off jokes when they don't get any response from people and I didn't back off any jokes that I'm aware of, I just barrelled ahead.

I have to give mad props to my pal Nancy, who in a condolence note said something about No-legs having had a good run and I thought, "Can I use this?" And it turns out I can! So I added a tag to the joke, where I say, "He was 88 when he died. He had a long run." I tried it tonight and there was dead silence, so I just stood there and waited and it washed over the audience like a warm bath. There are a number of parts to that joke that I will never be able to tell again what with them being very rude parts, but I am really happy that I'm able to salvage some of it and write new parts.

When Zach got back up after my set, he said that he hadn't heard about No-legs and said something along the lines of, "Gosh, I've been hearing about your grandfather for so long, I almost feel like he was someone in my extended family."

I guess he kind of was, since we're all members of each other's extended families.

I was watching the video of me telling some of my nerd jokes about Scott and I noticed I got a better reaction in one set when I described my own nerdy behavior first before I started making fun of Scott's. So I tried the jokes again tonight and included the critique of my own behavior first and I think it turned out pretty great. I'll get the video at the end of the week and watch it early next week to decide for certain.

I'm really enjoying the part where I'm having a chance to actually make friendly-friends with so many comics I've been just passing in the night for so long. I think half of glory and fun of the comedy is all the great friends I've made so far. I'm on my way to making even more.

I really love the comedy.