The Comedy Odyssey - Part 2 ("The WRONG Way...")

So I left Tommy T's after the night of my big debut feeling pretty good. After all, I hadn't just achieved the goal of simply getting up and doing it, but I'd done pretty darned well. Like, winning-the-contest well. After having spent years wondering what the stand-up experience would be like, I now knew, and I LIKED it.

Now I had to go back the next night and open for the Wednesday night comedy showcase. And they even handed me up to five additional minutes. That's pretty short notice. I had less than twenty-four hours to pretty much double my set, so I figured I'd better get right home and get it figured out.

I got home, still pretty wound up from the experience, and it was getting on toward midnight. I first had a lot of Facebook things and emails to answer about the night, since everyone on there was all a-buzz about the reports Vlado and I had been doing during and after the show. That took a while. It was getting quite late, though, and I knew time was short because I had to get up early(er) the next day. See, I had arranged with Tim to go see a matinee of Sherlock Holmes, and had already bought my ticket online. Plus, I had also told my friend Barrie we'd come grab him afterward and we'd all head for Tobacco Road, my cigar lounge, a place Tim, unlike Barrie and I, hadn't gotten to experience yet. So I had little time to work with that night, and no time the following day to work before having to arrive for the show.

But I wasn't that stressed about it. After getting off stage that night, I'd had one clear impression that stuck in my head, surprising at is was.

"Wow. That was EASY."

This was problem #1.

I had faced the great on-stage challenge, and it had gone unexpectedly well. Based on this, my mind told me that all my stressing out and preparation the first time around had been a waste of time. Doing comedy was a piece of cake! So I figured I didn't need to sweat it so much the next night. Yes, I had five additional minutes to come up with, but that really wasn't a problem. As I mentioned last time, there was lots of stuff that I'd had to throw out to work my material down to five minutes. Now, I figured, I could just relax and take my time up there, and all I had to do was to select a few things from the cutting room floor and insert them into my previous material. How hard could THAT be? Not very for me, I figured. So instead of sitting down and writing, preparing a new set and rehearsing it, I just decided I would go to Tommy T's, get up on stage, and "just wing it".

Because, you know, I had SO much comedy experience at that point, why SHOULDN'T I expect to be able to pull that off?

So I finished up my Facebook stuff, had a celebratory cigar on the patio, and got into bed, setting my alarm to get up early to get ready and make it to the movie on time. But I was still wound, and had a million things going through my head (possible new jokes being many of those million), and I just could not fall asleep, try though I did. In the end, I ended up getting about three hours of sleep before the alarm went off.

This being problem #2.

I got myself up and around, packed up all the stuff I'd need for the night since I wouldn't be coming home before the show, and headed for the theater. Tim met me there and we saw the film, which I enjoyed quite a bit (despite the fact that, due to the lack of sleep, I started dozing off a little at one point). After that, we grabbed Barrie, and we headed to Tobacco Road. Some of my regular guys I hang out with there were on site, and wondered how the big comedy night had gone. I told them about the win, and Zack bought me a cigar to celebrate. Cool. So we chilled out and smoked up, until it was finally time to get underway. Tim headed over to the joint, while I dropped Barrie off and then went and picked up Vlado. To Rancho we did go.

The night before, after the show ended, the manager Christine had told me to call and and let them know how many people would be coming with me the second night, as they would reserve a table for my party. Reserved table? My, my. I liked that. In addition to Tim and Vlado and I, Tim's brother Brian, A.T., Ken, and my housekeeper Cindy had said they were coming. When I called Christine at the club, I gave her the number, and she said the table would be waiting, and she said she'd just get us our "regular table". Vlado and I had sat at this table both times we'd been there, and now it appeared that we were becoming such regulars that we had an acknowledged "regular table". NOW we were starting to feel like comedians. And showing up and finding a sign on your table that says "VIP Reserved - Michael O'Connell"? Now THAT's living the dream.

Cindy coming was an awesome thing. During all the lead-up time, when she'd come over to clean my place and do the laundry, I had been telling her about this. And she very much wanted to come see my open mic. But Cindy is also the mother of my friend Tami, who's married to my friend Chris, and Cindy is their babysitter. So she knew if both Chris and Tami went, she'd need to be with the the kids and wouldn't be able to attend. So I told her, jokingly, not to worry - I'd just have to win the contest so she could come see me the next night. Well...THAT turned out well. So she showed up, very happy to be there, and I was very happy that the win had allowed that to happen.

So we relaxed at our table before things started, with me, kind of in a daze and half-awake, feeling no fear. I was chill. That night was going to be a comedy showcase, with three comedians and a host, and me opening. The host came over and say hey to me...nice guy named Robert that I'd met and chatted with after the previous night's show (he'd been one of the comics on stage, but not competing to win, as he'd already won a previous open mic...just working on his stuff). He soon got ready to head up, and Tim and I took our cue to head for the stage door (luckily no one was seated in our row of travel this time). The place was pretty full-up. People hadn't spread up to these seats this time, though, because apparently the floor paint had dried in front of the stage, and those tables were back. This intimidated me a little. I had, the previous night, been initially bothered by the open floor, but it turned out to be kind of nice without having people looking right up at you. Now I'd be able to clearly see faces. Hmmm.

Tim got me up the stairs, and Robert quickly introduced me...and kindly mispronounced my name (O'Conner. That's helpful when you're trying to make a name for yourself. At least he didn't call me a "fist commander"...). Out again I went, though this time not as zen...and this time, kind of a zombie from the lack of sleep. I arranged with Tim to come out and set the mic stand for me, so I wouldn't have the same problem with the having to lean over. He got it to a certain height, and I told him that was fine. It LOOKED fine when he set it, but as soon as he left I realized it was just a little bit too tall...and because of that, and because of my non-bending spine, leaning toward it was going to make my head go down even further. To get the mic up to me, I had to grab the stand and lean it up to me, holding it at a balanced angle. This was kind of awkward.

Which kind of set the tone for the performance.

I got started, and felt out of sorts from the start. This got worse when I went from my same opening joke and moved right into the "new" material. Which, again, I hadn't practiced with (because, again, I'm so much of a pro that I don't NEED rehearsal...). So I felt unsure about it, and I think that came through. And the new material wasn't necessarily great. Pretty early on I did a Jerry Lewis joke that fell totally flat, which was my first taste of onstage crickets. I now knew what it was like to hit the wall of silence. It's not a pleasant feeling the first time, believe me. You get a rush of panic when you've not experienced it before and you're not too sure what to do with it. Please note, also, that the first two tables in the front row were filled with a group of college girls celebrating a birthday party. Clearly, none of them were old enough to have any idea who Jerry Lewis WAS. Coyotes howled in the distance. A tumbleweed went by. I longed to have an emergency dick joke in my quiver for backup.

I pressed on, not having a grip on my set, fumbling in a couple of places trying to integrate the old and new. More new stuff didn't hit big. More panic. More nerves. I was not only out of it, but had lost my previous night's confidence. My energy level was low. My mind was all over the place. So much so that I didn't even realize until a day or two later that I'd left out part of a bit, which made the punchline not make too much sense. The hits just kept on coming.

Was it a total tank? It sure as hell felt like it up there, though there was laughter. By the end, I did my final joke, kind of lingered for a moment, and then said thank you and good night. I left the stage feeling like I'd totally blown it, and just to add that little extra helping of goodness, Robert asked the crowd to one more time give it up for Michael O'Conner. Greeeat.

I got back to my table, and the others were kind about it. But I knew what doing it right felt like, and that had NOT been it. I ordered food and drink and dealt with it, and listened to the rest of the comics. I'd asked Vlado to video it for me, which he had, because good or bad, I wanted to be able to review the game tape for learning purposes. I had things to learn, all right. They included:

1) Sleeping before a performance is kind of important. I should have said no to the movie and gotten a good night's sleep. Sleep helps you brain more better.

2) Practice, practice, practice. Winging it is not a game for the noob. I should have gotten home the night before, decided for sure what I was using, typed the new stuff into the existing routine, and practiced it a number of times. I heard a good quote that night from Vlado, who was quoting Sting: "You have your whole life to make your first album. Then you only have six months to make your second one". I had very little time to come up with a longer routine, but I still should have taken that time. I'd forgotten how important all my previous prep had been to making my confident.

3) Going first sucks. The opener is the one who has to has to warm up the crowd. By definition, then, the crowd is COLD when you get them. This is not pleasant. I prefer a crowd thawed and pre-heated. Will try to avoid that in the future if possible.

4) Confident is not the same thing as cocky. I'd gone up the previous night confident, because I'd gotten myself into that state. Because of the way the experience went, I let it get into my head that doing a set of comedy was a breeze. You never know, from one night to the next, what kind of crowd you're going to have, whether there will be tables or an empty, just-painted floor in front of you, or if a sorority girl is going to be having a birthday party. You have to respect the stage. And I did not. This was a lesson learned the hard way. Which is a good thing, I think.

We enjoyed the rest of the night, though I had a lot on my mind, smarting from my lukewarm sophomore showing. Turns out I could have done worse. Robert, the host? All of a sudden, another comic ("Boogie"...very funny guy) was up on stage hosting instead. Where had Robert gone? Well, I talked to Lou the manager after, and he said that Robert was supposed to be doing like three jokes between comics, and he'd been doing just one. So he got yanked in the middle of the show and replaced. Ow. That made me feel bad for Robert, but made ME feel a little bit better. At least I didn't get fired.

After it was over I ended up talking to a couple of comics, including the last comic of the night, whose name, if I'm remembering right, is Brian Diamond. While he had shown up late and hadn't seen my act, I talked about it not going too great, and a got a lot of good advice from him from his twenty years of doing stand-up, mostly about how there are way too many factors that affect what a crowd, and a night, as going to be like, to stress over trying to figure it all out. You just need to get through it and get on to the next gig. I really appreciated what he had to say. And also, a couple of girls stopped on the way out to tell me how great I'd been. I simply said thank you, when what I wanted to do was apologize. I let my co-ed fans down! Oh, the humanity!

I always try to look for the lessons in any seemingly bad situation, and found many of them that night. The biggest silver lining was that if I want to continue doing comedy, I'm going to have to learn to deal with a bad crowd, and with moments of silence when the jokes don't quite work. And I got that experience on that Wednesday night, very early on in my "career", and felt it prepared me nicely to deal with that possibility in the future. Having a great first time out isn't necessarily a positive thing - they aren't all going to be like that, and the sooner you get that through your head, the better. It is, I can tell you, through my head.

And getting back on the horse is very important, too, so I wanted to do so as soon as possible. Vlado and I both felt that way, and agreed we needed to come back the following Tuesday night for open mic, and, like many comedians there, work on our acts in front of a crowd.

Of course, "crowd" can sometimes be the wrong word, as we were going to find out in less than a week.

Part 3 to come.