Tonight is my favorite open mic, and, before you judge me, even I can’t believe I pay $14 a week to perform for 5-9 minutes when I’m thinking about giving up my apartment because I can’t afford my rent, is the one at The Comic Strip Live.
DF Sweedler, who runs the mic, and books it in advance so there’s no stress about getting up, also was the teacher of a comedy class I took when I was first starting out. That class feels like it happened lifetimes ago. I never know what to say to people who ask how long I’ve been doing comedy.
“Too long, not to be further along,” is my standard retort, with a playful smile on my face.
The truth is that I was on stage for the first time in 1998. I was young. DF taught me how to craft a joke. I performed once a month for the next year, had the worst bombing of my life (when one of the audience members asked loudly if they could turn down the mic - during my set!), and then decided to move to LA to get famous.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, I bounced from running a comedy theater to producing AIDS Rides to life as a ski bum in Aspen, Colorado. I’m infamous in certain circles (ask any Groundling from 1999-2000 about me), but famous, not so much.
I can make excuses. I was young. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed more life experience. All of that is true, but the most true is that I really needed to work harder…which is what this 40-day experience is all about.
My life so far has been a quest for material. I’ve outlined a book about working on the AIDS Rides (that someday I hope to find the focus to write) and written six screenplays, all loosely based on experiences I’ve had and/or wished I’d had. And then there’s comedy. No matter how far up the mountain I run, comedy seems to find me.
A group in Aspen started doing stand up and I talked my way into one of their shows. I was still a guppy, but now I was a guppy swimming in a puddle instead of a guppy lost in the ocean and doing her best to avoid the circling sharks in LA that looked at her as just another piece of chum.
I wrote sixty minutes of comedy about living in Aspen, dating ski bums and Serving Bait to Rich People at the local Nobu, which was also the name of my show. I got myself booked around the US and Canada in festivals and at clubs and even coffee shops, toured the continent, and then moved back to New York City.
Record scratch. What?
I moved back without a plan and without a big enough savings account. Is there such a thing as a big enough savings account for moving to NYC without a job?
Oh, and my only recent experience is bartending, which I haven’t pursued because the hours conflict with comedy clubs. I’ve spent the past year half-heartedly looking for a job and half-heartedly trying to start over in comedy. They’re both taking a toll on my psyche.
When you start over in comedy you leave your ego on your nightstand and you go to open mics. I trolled the sites: badslava.com, freemicsNYC.com, Laughing Buddha. I gave $5 to the guy at the door of the Village Lantern and another $5 to the server for a glass of rancid grapefruit juice (my fault, for choosing grapefruit juice, but I was trying to stay healthy) to listen to something much closer to a therapy session than a comedy show. I found an all women’s open mic that I love, and need to go back to, but then they changed from weekly to bimonthly and I haven’t been good about keeping up with which weeks they have shows.
Then an angel, in the form of a sixty-something year old man hitting on me in a coffee shop, gave me a gentle push in the right direction. He bought me a chocolate chip cookie (dark chocolate always being the easiest way to my heart), sat down, and started telling me about his friend who runs shows at a club on the Upper East Side called Comic Strip Live, had I heard of it?
“Is your friend DF?” I asked, and a plan was born. The next week my name was on the list to perform at the open mic.
Flash forward six months and I’m auditioning this Saturday for a spot on the late night roster at that very same club. The angel is going to be our host and I’m a dreadful mix of nerves and excitement.
I get it. I’m right back where I started, but, after doing lots more of the work, this time I feel like I’m where I belong.
DF Sweedler, who runs the mic, and books it in advance so there’s no stress about getting up, also was the teacher of a comedy class I took when I was first starting out. That class feels like it happened lifetimes ago. I never know what to say to people who ask how long I’ve been doing comedy.
“Too long, not to be further along,” is my standard retort, with a playful smile on my face.
The truth is that I was on stage for the first time in 1998. I was young. DF taught me how to craft a joke. I performed once a month for the next year, had the worst bombing of my life (when one of the audience members asked loudly if they could turn down the mic - during my set!), and then decided to move to LA to get famous.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, I bounced from running a comedy theater to producing AIDS Rides to life as a ski bum in Aspen, Colorado. I’m infamous in certain circles (ask any Groundling from 1999-2000 about me), but famous, not so much.
I can make excuses. I was young. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed more life experience. All of that is true, but the most true is that I really needed to work harder…which is what this 40-day experience is all about.
My life so far has been a quest for material. I’ve outlined a book about working on the AIDS Rides (that someday I hope to find the focus to write) and written six screenplays, all loosely based on experiences I’ve had and/or wished I’d had. And then there’s comedy. No matter how far up the mountain I run, comedy seems to find me.
A group in Aspen started doing stand up and I talked my way into one of their shows. I was still a guppy, but now I was a guppy swimming in a puddle instead of a guppy lost in the ocean and doing her best to avoid the circling sharks in LA that looked at her as just another piece of chum.
I wrote sixty minutes of comedy about living in Aspen, dating ski bums and Serving Bait to Rich People at the local Nobu, which was also the name of my show. I got myself booked around the US and Canada in festivals and at clubs and even coffee shops, toured the continent, and then moved back to New York City.
Record scratch. What?
I moved back without a plan and without a big enough savings account. Is there such a thing as a big enough savings account for moving to NYC without a job?
Oh, and my only recent experience is bartending, which I haven’t pursued because the hours conflict with comedy clubs. I’ve spent the past year half-heartedly looking for a job and half-heartedly trying to start over in comedy. They’re both taking a toll on my psyche.
When you start over in comedy you leave your ego on your nightstand and you go to open mics. I trolled the sites: badslava.com, freemicsNYC.com, Laughing Buddha. I gave $5 to the guy at the door of the Village Lantern and another $5 to the server for a glass of rancid grapefruit juice (my fault, for choosing grapefruit juice, but I was trying to stay healthy) to listen to something much closer to a therapy session than a comedy show. I found an all women’s open mic that I love, and need to go back to, but then they changed from weekly to bimonthly and I haven’t been good about keeping up with which weeks they have shows.
Then an angel, in the form of a sixty-something year old man hitting on me in a coffee shop, gave me a gentle push in the right direction. He bought me a chocolate chip cookie (dark chocolate always being the easiest way to my heart), sat down, and started telling me about his friend who runs shows at a club on the Upper East Side called Comic Strip Live, had I heard of it?
“Is your friend DF?” I asked, and a plan was born. The next week my name was on the list to perform at the open mic.
Flash forward six months and I’m auditioning this Saturday for a spot on the late night roster at that very same club. The angel is going to be our host and I’m a dreadful mix of nerves and excitement.
I get it. I’m right back where I started, but, after doing lots more of the work, this time I feel like I’m where I belong.