The Peace the Evening Brings
Like a lot of people, I picked a lucky number. It sort of fell into my lap when I was a kid and played organized sports. For what felt like years, (it was probably like 6 months,) each new team I joined gave me uniform with the number 35 on the back. (It’s possible that 35 was just the number they slapped on the chubby-kid sized jerseys, but I’m going to take it easy on myself and assume that wasn’t the case…) From there, in search of trying to feel special or destined for good things, I decided that 35 would be mine.
Growing up, when a teacher would say “turn to page 35,” or “pick a number between 1–100,” I’d quietly feel at ease, because I had my special number. Then, I got accepted into college on December 14th, 2009. Hours before I heard the good news, I realized the date, 12/14/09, contained numbers that added up to 35. (12 +14 + 9) As soon as I figured it out, while scribbling in my planner, I remember having a very strong feeling that I was getting in. And I did! (However, later that night, my friends picked me up and we got Taco Bell…so I guess I can’t be sure if “35” meant college acceptance or Cheesy Gordita Crunch, you know?)
Anyhow, because my lucky number always felt somehow personal to me and my “fate,” I never got attached to traditionally “lucky” or “unlucky” things. The number 7, for example, never felt lucky, just like breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder never felt unlucky.
So, when it came to do my 13th set of stand up, I didn’t think twice about it. I never considered that “13” might be weird, or unlucky, or fated to be strange. That is, I felt that way before I did my 13th set…
But first…
12. Greenwich Comedy Club — 5 minute set — — 3/29/17
Football
Black and White Cookie
Scotland
This was an exciting mic for me because it was my first time performing on MacDougal street. The mic, at Greenwich Comedy Club, is on the same block as the Comedy Cellar, which is the unofficially official comedy sanctuary of New York. (and therefore the world!)
Greenwich, though, like many other comedy venues, is decidedly not the Cellar. However, particularly only 12 sets in, open mic comics can’t be choosers, and so I was happy to get up on a real stage. (I haven’t talked about it too much, but in Edinburgh, I got to perform a fair amount at The Stand, which is their big club. Because of that, I got a little spoiled, because in my first 3 months of stand up, I’d already performed in front of 30–50 paying customers on several occasions: you know, like a real comic!)
Overall: My material at this mic played pretty well. (One comic even came up to me and told me he loved my football bit, which was nice hear!) Unfortunately, I went next-to-last in a room of about 17 comics doing 4 minutes each. (If you want know how long I waited, you can do that math and tweet @ me.) So, by the time I went, there were about 4 of us left. However, as can happen sometimes, the best part of the set was not the testing material, but the people interactions afterwards.
Networking:
As the mic was clearing out for the 7:30 show, I introduced myself to Sheba Mason. She’s a comic/booker/promoter and daughter of the legendary comedian Jackie Mason. In our brief conversation, we exchanged emails and numbers, and since then, I’ve gotten some real stage time on her Wednesday Night shows. (These are “bringer shows,” where you bring paying customers and they give you stage time in front of a real crowd. I’ll talk about them more when I write about sets 18 and 24.)
One of the things that I didn’t think too much about when I set out to do 100 sets was the self-promotion. I’m learning that if I want stage time, I need to be bold. So, when I get to mics, instead of sitting off on the side and quietly going over my notes, I need to introduce myself to all the comics, bartenders, hosts and audience members. You never know if you’ll get a gig out of it, or just meet another Dan to go to mics with.
And Then…
This brings us to Set 13….. minutes after set 12, and the subsequent “networking” with Sheba, I decided I wanted to do one more set. (I had time to kill because I had late tickets to see Ira Glass on a Connor Ratliff show at UCB.) So, I looked on freemics.com, found a show at Lovecraft on Avenue B, and decided to walk over.
But First: Now before I dive into what exactly happened, I have two stories about embarrassing performances. Both, and this shouldn’t be surprising, come from my college a cappella group, Duelly Noted. (Duellynoted.org.)
The first is the time we agreed to perform for the on-campus day care center. As we were singing our first selection, Elton John’s “Can you feel the love tonight?” one of our members started his solo a measure early and got flustered. Then, in a room full of 2 year-olds, he blurted out “FUCK!” (They were, of course, the children of our professors…)
The second Duelly Noted (Duellynoted.org,) performance that stands out is the time we sang at our school’s homecoming dinner. The gig sounded innocuous enough: “sing for the homecoming dinner.” However, what that meant was that we were to sing for the football team, the parents, the football alumni, and the highs school recruits…only 2 hours after they lost at homecoming, by a margin of 38–0, to finish a season with a record of 0–8.
Here’s the scene:
Athletic Director: “And so we’re going to rebuild this program from the ground up, because these young men in front of me work hard every single day, and deserve better. They’re capable of beating the best and competing at the highest level. We have failed them. Our system has failed them. They have not failed. We have. But together, we will rebuild Continental Football.”
*He’s handed a note card**
“And, now I’m getting word that we have a special performance from Hamilton’s own, Duelly Noted!
**Pitch Pipe blows**
Then we started singing a 4-part arrangement of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.”
So yeah, I’ve been in the trenches. I was in a co-ed a capella group. (Duellynoted.org.)
Set 13: Whatever the heck that was
After recounting these stories, I take it back. Set 13 wasn’t embarrassing so much as it was just really weird. Not “unlucky” so much as “not a set where you walk away and think “that’s why I do this!””
Avenue B:
So I get to the bar and two guys are seated at a table with what appears to be a sign up sheet. I ask if there’s an open mic, and the guy goes “Uh, you can perform for $5 and a drink purchase.” That’s exactly what freemics.com told me, so I thought everything was good. I got my seltzer, gave him 5 bucks, and was instructed to walk downstairs and to the left.
Now at this point I assume that the 5 of us walking down are all comics. That is, I have no reason to believe anything weird is going on. When I get down there, I ask about the order. The guy from the door says “You’re opening.” I chuckle and said “yeah, I bet. For Chris Rock?” Now at this point the guy makes it clear he doesn’t know who I’m talking about. (not a good sign.) He continues, “for the movie screening…” He then pulls down the projector screen and points to a small step in front of some chairs and says “you can go now.”
So now I’m piecing everything together. None of these guys are comics. No other comics showed up. The guy didn’t say “yes, this is an open mic for comedy,” but was coy and said “yeah, you can perform for $5 and a drink.” In other words, he got me. I got suckered. That’s when I saw that there was no microphone.
But, as I got to the step, I realized that I was the host of this 2-person film festival.
So yeah, this was my Oscars and I was Billy Crystal!
So, I did what any good host would do and I sort of worked the room. I first riffed a little bit with the filmmakers. I asked them questions, and told them how even in this basement, on Avenue B, with 5 people, filmmakers are still pretentious.
I then turned my riffing to the guy who checked me in, who’s now sitting in the back. “I can’t believe you took my $5 so I could stand here and do this. Remember this, filmmakers, I’m paying for the privilege to do this.” I then started to do some material, and right before a punchline of one my jokes, I stopped dead in my tracks to say “I can’t BELIEVE I paid for this. You better be using that money for pizza or for your kids or something. My god. The balls on this guy…5 bucks.”
I then plugged my blog, got off step, and watched some of their short films. (They were honestly pretty good!)
Now, if you were to listen to the audio of this performance, you’d hear two things. One is that these weren’t the best audience members in the world. They didn’t exactly, how do I say this, uh, laugh. They didn’t really laugh. Unless I was looking right at them and said a joke to their face, it was pretty quiet. The next is that I swore a lot, which is not typically my style. But, there was something about the circumstances where swearing showed how incredulous I was. However, even though I said “fuck” a lot, I wasn’t too worried because at least this audience was old enough understand.
Anyway, that’s 12 and 13. I’m falling behind because in real life I’ve done 27 sets. But I’d rather be doing sets and getting backlogged than not doing sets and being totally caught up. (I’m busy, you know?)
Short thoughts: Twitter, @ Gjmollica
Long thoughts: Gjmollica@gmail.com
No thoughts: Donaldjtrump.com (boom! GOT HIM!)
