Open Mic'er

"That's all I got." are the words that fall out of my mouth when I begin to panic, and I'm ready to cry uncle. My jaw is starting to lock, and my mouth is dry as summer asphalt. The jokes don't sound like jokes, more like a bad soliloquy written on a crumpled 3x5 card. I'm performing stand-up, or at least making a feeble attempt at it, and I'm bombing (comic speak for failing). As bad as this experience is, I intend to do it again. As a comedian, you learn to walk on hot coals, burn your feet to a crisp, and then be willing to repeat it.

I began performing stand-up comedy three years ago. My first comedy club appearance was at Yuk Yuk's, which was then located in the basement of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Ottawa. Family and friends were there to cheer me on. I did OK for my first time. My material was either half-baked or downright lousy, at least in my opinion, but my opening line was good--"We're in a hotel basement! Let's do some laundry!"

I was merely relieved that I didn't bomb but survived. I wasn't so naive that I thought it was going to be so glorious every time I got up on stage. I knew that the grind of performing open-mic stand-up involved failure, awkward silences, and an almost suffocating sense of uncertainty. I would question my decision to be a stand-up comic at regular intervals. "Why can't I be a normal, boring person who wakes up at 7 am and goes to his well-paid civil servant job like everyone else?" Why must I be someone who lives what his mother refers to as an unconventional lifestyle? I sleep late, I work odd hours running a 90-year-old cinema, and I walk thirty minutes to work because I don't have a driver's license and I don't trust the bus schedules. Surely I must reserve the right to have some personal inadequacies and limitations, so that I have material?

I've always loved stand-up comedy. I have fond memories of my father lying in his bed, watching his 13-inch TV and calling out to me that Evening At The Improv was on A&E. He took me and my Mom to see Steven Wright at the NAC and Mike McDonald at Yuk Yuk's when I was a teenager. It was inspiring and yet, I never made the leap to the stage in my youth. When I was 30, and my father was on his deathbed, he would proudly tell visiting friends and family, "He's going to do stand-up!" He was ultimately correct, but why didn't I start earlier? Now that I've been performing for 3 years, I can assess that if I had attempted this at a younger age, I wouldn't have stuck with it. My skin was too this,n and I would have quit too soon. At least now, I can give myself a couple of days to shake off a bad set.

I wasn't one of those young go-getters who performed at their first open mic at 16. I had to wait until I was in my late thirties--sober and late to the party. During the COVID lockdowns, I decided to quit drinking because I realized that consuming an entire case of craft brews alone in my basement while waiting for the Premier of Ontario to announce that I could go back to work wasn't a good way to ensure a stable future for myself. When Covid ended, I decided it was time to emerge from the safety of merely existing and take the risk of standing on a stage and uttering jokes in front of strangers. I've always been a person who has lived in an introverted shell and I suppose it was only a matter of time before quiet desperation kicked me in the ass.

Sometimes it goes smoothly, sometimes it goes horribly. Sometimes you're surfing, other times you're drowning while others watch with blank stares. Stand-up is a strange art form; it must be practiced and honed in public. A friend of mine is a filmmaker; imagine if he had to edit his latest film in front of an audience while wearing underwear. That's what stand-up is like.

I'm incredibly fortunate because Ottawa has a solid and supportive stand-up scene with a diverse group of smart and talented comics. There are plenty of opportunities to get on stage and improve. It's a humbling process. One thing I've learned is to stay humble or be humbled. An oversized ego is the enemy. I try to remember that I'm not that good and yet not that bad either. I'm at the stage where I need to be. Recently, I've noticed some slight improvement. When I go on stage, my jaw doesn't lock (at least not so tightly on bad nights), and I feel more comfortable. I'm trying to practice creative discipline and write material regularly. The getting on stage part I don't find as difficult as the writing funny stuff part. At the movie theatre I manage, we have a large stage and a microphone, and I sometimes stick around after my shift and riff on the mic to 325 empty seats. I've been told that the cinema is haunted, so I probably do have an audience; they're just dead and invisible. On good nights, I've cooked up some promising material. On bad nights, I've just stood there frustrated, with the feeling that my head is empty and filled with nothing but brisk movie theatre air conditioning.

Overall, I've learned the value of patience and incremental progress based on my own personal metrics. As a comic, the cliches pile up quickly--"It takes 8, 10, 15, 20 years to become good!" "It's a marathon, not a sprint." "You're not as good as you think, but you're not as bad either." Time and obscurity are a struggling comic's best friends. Ultimately, the best goal I can set for myself right now is to have fun and not take it so seriously. A professional comedian once told me, "The best thing to tell yourself is, 'I don't HAVE to do this, I GET to do this.'" It's easy to forget that. It's not my job, it may never be a career, so I may as well enjoy myself, even when the coals I'm walking on are extra hot.