I’m pretty proud of my MBDC post about the official historic status and preservation regulations of Eastern Market. If you haven’t heard, Eastern Market burned nearly to the ground last night. I wasn’t a regular attendee, but it was one of the coolest markets around and a great place to go for good food and people watching on a weekend morning.
Tom sums up my feelings pretty nicely about Drive.
The show had aired a grand total of THREE episodes before FOX pulled the plug. Nothing like deliberating over a decision, guys.
The video from comedy graduation came! I’ll hide it behind the jump. You might consider not watching this at work, or in front of little kids, okay? Language and themes are appropriate for a comedy club, but not necessarily your boss.
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I had a bit of a chat with a friend yesterday about Tuesday’s comedy performance (he had to miss it, so he wanted to hear about it), and occurs to me that I ought to be writing more about this experience than I currently am, so I thought I’d share some of those thoughts with you.
I Twittered on Tuesday that I was simultaneously less and more nervous than I thought I’d be. All day, I had a weird, tense feeling in my stomach. I was hungry, but didn’t want to eat. The day dragged by. I couldn’t stop checking my email or flipping my phone open.
I wasn’t afraid of getting up onstage to talk- public speaking does not frighten me at all. In fact, I actually enjoy it quite a bit, and I’m reasonably good at it. What I actually was afraid of was that no one was going to think the jokes would be funny. I mean, sure, I thought they were funny, but I’m a pretty high-context person, and a lot of the jokes I make on a day-to-day basis rest on a strong foundation of shared experience and knowledge between me and my friends. I can’t count on that in a standup context, which means I had to ruthlessly pare down material until it could stand on its own with people who have never met me. That meant that The Denver Incident, a 10-minute story about irresponsible alcohol consumption on our road trip last summer got boiled down to the only part of it that’s really funny on its own- a few sentences about having an ex-con buy you a shot.
So I was nervous about that. Contributing to that issue was the fact that I was on next-to-last in the program, so I had to sit there and watch my new friends absolutely KILL with their jokes, being thrilled that they were doing so well while also wishing they hadn’t set the bar so damned high. Freakin’ mixed emotions, messin’ with my Zone.
I walked from the green room, down the hallway, and to the immediate offstage area during the set of the person who was on before me to await my turn. I tried to concentrate as I looked at that one bare panel right before the stage on which years of comics have signed their names as they’ve come through the Improv. I didn’t add mine- I’m going to hold off on that until I’m being paid to be there.
Our teacher and I waited back there during the set, listening to the delivery of the jokes and how the crowd reacted to them- the fun thing about taking this class is that you get to know everyone else’s routines almost as well as your own- and saying things like, “I gave him that line, glad it worked,” or, “You gave him that line- that was great!”
I greeted my classmate as he came offstage and congratulated him quickly- I had to be sure to listen for when Matt called my name: “…please welcome to the stage, Tiffany Bridge!”
Even though the audience had been sitting there in the dark for well over two hours by this point, the applause I got as I walked out was pretty astonishing. It was immediately obvious that the cheering wasn’t coming from just the group of people specifically there to see me, but from the whole room. It’s cliche to say that the tension “melted away” at that point, but that’s really what it felt like. My stomach released its knots, and I nearly started laughing myself from listening to all the cheering. Suddenly there was nothing else- me, my jokes, and an audience mostly concealed by the bright lights in my eyes.
What Matt said was true- getting up there and making 300 people laugh is a pretty intense feeling. There’s power to it, and the affirmation of all that laughter directed at you is pretty heady stuff. I can see why a comedian’s success seems to correlate to his personal dysfunction- it’s hard to walk away from that kind of energy every night and go back to being just a normal person instead of a superhero with a microphone.
But I did walk away- I didn’t see the light to tell me my time was up, and I don’t know yet whether I went over my time or not, but I do know that I ran out of material. And my closing line? I had nearly dropped it because it had never gotten much of a reaction, but since I couldn’t come up with another closer I kept it, just to see how a real crowd would react.
They LOVED it. Awesome.
It was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life. Going to have to do more of it. Yeah.
Do you see this? I just sent this photo to flickr from my Helio phone. (Yeah bitches, I refuse to call it a “mobile device” until you make the software better.) I couldn’t do this a little while ago, because, essentially, Helio’s software designers are on crack.
But this is fixed now, with the important kicker being that your Flickr upload email address has to have 12 characters or fewer before the @ sign.
I now hate my Kickflip significantly less. That said, since they STILL haven’t fixed the fact that you can’t use the phone’s address book from the phone’s email, or the fact that you can’t save a phone number to an existing contact, only a new one, I STILL think their software people are on crack, and I still can’t recommend Helio to anyone. But maybe someday, since their all-in data package with unlimited data transfer and unlimited text messaging is a pretty good deal if those features become good enough to want to USE.
It’s kept my newfound Twittering habit from getting too expensive, after all.
(Oh, and I took this photo originally to highlight the ridiculousness of having both a 6 bulb “value pack” and a 6 bulb “convenience pack” which are precisely the same except for the name on the package.)
I absolutely KILLED. People laughed at all the jokes, even the stuff no one had laughed at before. Most of my classmates killed too, and it was really gratifying to see these people who I’ve watched get funnier and funnier have their hard work validated that way.
And yeah, getting up in front of the brick wall and having nearly 300 people laugh hysterically JUST when you want them to is pretty damn addictive.
I’m going to have to do this more. Definitely.
My comedy school graduation show is tonight.
I’m a little distracted today. Must concentrate. Web stuff now, comedy later.
Eeeeeeek!
