20050202

March 3, 2006

Charlie’s Standup Comedy Journal

February 2, 2005: New Shit for the New Year

Ahhhh… this one felt good, folks.

Which is not to say that the show was good, necessarily. There wasn’t a crowd to speak of, though a few jaded old comics were hanging around to watch, and I’m pretty sure one couple in the audience wweren’t comics.

(On the other hand, I’m also fairly certain that they were there to see one rather drunken fellow go onstage.

Friend of theirs, I suspect. He went on last, lost his place a few times, announced his profession — corrections

officer, I believe it was — as though it were a setup for a joke… and then walked offstage. Rather shakily, at that.

Seems he’d downed just a few too many pints of ‘courage’ before going on, you see. Understandable, really — the shows last until the last comic has gone on, last call and decorum and work tomorrow be damned. And he was the last comic, so he’d had a few hours to tie one on. Maybe next week, he’ll be on a little earlier, and we’ll see what he’s got.)

Anyway, it wasn’t the best show ever, for certain. And I don’t think it’s my best material ever,

either. And that’s just my material, you understand, so it’s not saying too much. But dammit, it was

new material, for the first time in a couple of months, and that felt good.

Not that I don’t like my other stuff, mind you. Some of it even gets some good laughs. But I don’t want to be

doing the same crap at every show in a year — or in the spring, for that matter. I like to mix it up, throw a few

new jokes down, jazz things up on in a while. ‘Build the routine’, that sort of thing. So it was good to get some

fresh fodder out there, regardless of whose asses were — or, more accurately, weren’t — in the seats.

So, if you’ve been watching these clips — you poor, tormented soul, you — and you’ve grown tired of the

‘zany interview’ bit and the ‘i before e’ gag, and the ‘college in Kentucky’ sequence, and the ‘Spanish class’ story,

then you’re in luck. This is your first, fresh-and-still-piping-hot look at ‘puzzling pandas’ and the ‘Blue’s Clues rant’.

(Which, if you’re keeping score at home, were adapted from this entry and this entry, respectively.

For that matter, the rest of that shit started here, too — all of it. The

interview thing, the grammar lesson, the

Kentucky higher education bit, and ‘Guillermo’ — all typed here in loving detail before being hacked apart, shortened, rewritten, and reworked for standup. Makes you feel like part of the process, doesn’t it, folks. Breathe it in. Just breathe it in.)

Anyway, have a look, if that’s your particular cup of tea. Or wait and watch the next clip. Because that’s

almost certainly gonna contain the same shit that’s here, and possibly with an audience next time. Or look

now, if you can’t handle the suspense. Boy oh boy, isn’t this exciting? Yeah.

Download Clip of 02/02/05 Set —

Emerald Isle, Dorchester, MA (5 minutes, 0 seconds):