The "Oh My God I Want to Kill Myself" In Open Mics

Show seventeen was my weekly beast of burden, Takin Off the Ritz, which happens every Monday at The Ritz (gay bar, not douche bag hotel) around 10. Free show, so come by if you're not an asshole. The crowd shifts between mostly lezzies to mostly gay boys depending on the night, and I will say that hipsters, gay boys and lesbians are the trickiest audiences I have found thus far. My success in front of them all depends on how willing they are to make fun of themselves, which varies between very willing to make fun of their cold irony/bitchiness/love of hummus (respectively) to being coldly ironic, bitchy or loving hummus respectively.

Eighteen and nineteen double whammed on Tuesday with Big Mike and Friends at The Boxcar Lounge and Penny's Open Mic, both repeat offenders, and both epicly long, which brings me to my next point, sitting through all these open mics may well be the death of moi. There is a code of conduct at open mics, adherence to which is inversely proportionate to your level of street cred fame. The bigger you are, the easier it is to bend the rules.

Comics stay poor much longer than other artists, as even when you have sort of made it, you still probably need a writing job or a Cablevision commercial here and there to be able to comfortable afford that one bedroom in hell's kitchen I've heard so much about. And even the big guys still have to work out new material somewhere, so it isn't uncommon to see performers you think should be way out of your league jump on a line up of a mediocre show at a decent club, or following that logic, to see comics who are about to break into the "big time" of $40 primetime spots at the Chuckle Hut working it out in the backs of bars at lowly open mics. If fellas such as these fail to meet the one drink minimum or duck out before the end of the reserve list to hit the next spot, or, I don't know, go home, smoke pot and masturbate (which, from what I can gather, is the bulk of what successful comics do) it is less of a social transgression than if I, an up and commer who must rely on befriending people and being known as a good person for booking unpaid spots on other people's line ups, were to follow suit and ship out.

Translation: I have to sit and be cordial through all the performers at all the mics. On this particular night, the amount of time that required was a synonym of epic that I am too exhausted to think of at the moment, because my brain is fried from too many hours at open mics. It isn't anybody's fault. That's the open mic lay of the land. Go. Be nice. Listen. Have whatever beer is on special (unless you share my gluten intolerance, in which case you go for a vodka soda and curse the penny pinching bags of douche who get away with $3 PBR's night after night) and listen to every Tom, Dick and Harry tell jokes about his hairy dick and Tom Catting ways.

Point! Wordplay!

Time management is beginning to become more and more of an issue. Sure, I can get up there and tell some jokes, and maybe some of them are funny and maybe some of them need to go back up on the chalkboard of ideas for a bit until they find their feet, but the sheer hours of just sitting there, waiting for 135lb unshaven peach fuzz comedians to reach the "blowjob" climax of their jokes--by which I mean the word "blowjob" is actually their punchline. I would say this happens an average of two to three times per open mic--will surely do me in.

Nothing is more deadly for an ADD-lady than boredom. Suck my soul out with one reaction-less audience after another, but please, God, do not end my life in the back of a bar somewhere in alphabet city with a whimper.

Perhaps I am being dramatic. Perhaps I am hitting a wall. Perhaps I should hit my head against a wall just to mix things up.

Either way, thank you and GOODNIGHT!