Gary ~ May 23

 

Tonight is Open Mic Night at the Phoenicia Playhouse in Phoenicia NY.  The message was waiting for me when I got home from Boulder on Monday evening and checked my email to see if there was anything interesting or exciting going on.

 

Since taking a stand-up comedy workshop a few years ago (before Covid) and performing a 5-minute routine at the Stockade Tavern in Kingston as part of our "graduation ceremony" for the stand-up comedy class, I've wanted to test my stand-up comedy mettle by doing some Open Mic performances, but that never came about for one reason or another.

 

The main reason why I never followed up after my stand-up comedy debut is because I hardly ever go out at night and I'm usually in bed by about 10pm at the latest.  I think that's about time Open Mic nights really start to get going, at least that's my impression.

 

But this one starts at 7pm, with 6:30 sign ups, so there's just no way I'm not going to be there.

 

All I need is a 5-minute routine.  For the comedy workshop we had 6 weeks to develop a 5 minute routine about different aspects of our lives and the topics I chose to cover were: My experience with religious cults; my experience in AA, retirement;, and one or two more subjects, but I forget what they were.

 

I'm tired of talking about spiritual cults and recovery from alcoholism. I've pretty much beaten those topics to death.  I could do, I suppose, a routine on recovering from being a spiritual seeker for more than 55 years, but that would only fly in a spiritual seeker environment like the one I just came from in Boulder CO, but I'm not sure how many people in the Phoenicia NY audience would dig it or even understand it, so I am scrapping that idea.

 

Alcoholism and Retirement seem like real boring subjects to me at this point, so the only thing I have left, I guess, is Elizabeth and the blind date I had with her last Saturday at the Chautauqua dining hall.

 

The only thing is how to make it funny?

 

I think having a blind date at age 80 with a woman who is 82 is kind of funny off the bat. At least I hope it is.

 

Blind Dating at 80 might be my theme.  My first blind date in over 50 years.  That she thought I might be gay b/c of the way I "threw myself around" definitely has to be included, along with the fact that she was really turned on by the dark aging spots the freckled my wrinkled hands, My grandmother used to call them "liver spots." And the fact the suggested I try to lighten them up with lemon oil the way she was doing, if I felt so inclined.  I definitely do not feel so inclined in the least.

 

Love me, love my liver spots.  

 

What  else can I play up?  Eggs Benedict?  Maybe there's something there.  After submitting this, I'll have to come up with a 5 minute routine, which is not an easy time slot to fill, as those of us who took the comedy workshop a few years ago found out.  And you have to keep the jokes coming, you can't pause and try to think about what might me coming next, you've got deliver them Pop! Pop! Pop! or else the audience will quickly tire of your lame routine.

 

According to at least one stand up comedy theory, I'll have to have 10 jokes, that's 2 per minute, for tonight's 5 minute routine. Right now I can maybe think of two or three.  

 

But I have all day to come up with 7 or 8 more. I have about 9 hours to do it, so that means I have to come up with 1 joke per hour for the next 8 hours and then I can take a break before showing up at the Phoenicia Playhouse and log on to the sign up sheet.

 

Can't wait to throw myself around.

 

I wonder if they'll think I'm gay.