Opening the Velv

I opened the Velv again this weekend. Feel pretty darn good about it.

MCed the open mike Thursday. Opened with a brand new speech, where I basically roasted the Velveeta Room. It's a shithole, but it's our shithole. Ended with the battle cry, Viva Velveeta and a toast. Did a couple quick one-liners, then off to the open mike. But the very fact I opened with something new was something I usually cower away from.

Headliner was Chris Mata -- great crowd work. Carey Moore featured.

Friday night, early show was pretty good. "Spanky" did a guest spot -- reminded me of JoJo in his delivery. Hecklers late. Carey didn't like her show. She bounced back late.

Saturday night early show, the crowd was nothing less than magnificent. Laughed at everything. Late show, they were completely devoid of energy. All the comics -- Carey, Spanky and I -- were weirded out by the intense lack of energy. Chris, by utilizing crowd work, rescued the crowd and ended up having quite a good show. It made me realize that I really want to learn crowd work. It's a tool I'd like to have in my belt for when I need it.

Spanky had a joke about showing up to an old folks home dressed as the grim reaper. I have a very similar joke about doing the same at the Race for the Cure. We had three shows together. The first one was forgivable, as I hadn't heard Spanky's set. Then, he left before the late show, and I forgot all about it. Early show Saturday, I did my set again, heard him do his bit, realized the redundancy, but didn't write anything down. Late show Saturday I did the same damn bit. It's confusing, because I think of the bit as Keep Austin Weird, not Grim Reaper, so when I'm picking jokes to tell they're not indexed by punchline. Ergo, three out of three times we had the redundancy.

Since I audio recorded both my sets Saturday night, I noticed the early show was short. Near seven minutes instead of ten. Not a big deal with Shane Hebert doing an unexpected guest spot. I made adjustments for the late show, though, and finished very close to ten. Maybe I'm getting through my jokes faster now.

Most importantly, I pulled out some new material Saturday night. It actually worked about as well as the old stuff. I am inspired to continue writing. Also, I used to have guideline of never pulling out new stuff in a paid show that hasn't already worked at an open mike. I think I'm ready to ditch that guideline. Open mikes are moving me toward simple one-liners, but my writing wants to progress to more complicated rants. I think I'm going to let it.

I had recorded both shows from Saturday night. I had the impression that the late show really sucked, but the recording suggests otherwise. While you could definitely sense the lack of energy, you can also hear the energy pick up during my set, so that when I leave, they're in a pretty good spot. Long story short, I think I did an admirable job in difficult circumstances.

Next stop, I want to learn crowd work. It's going to be difficult. I'm going to suck at it for several Velveeta open mikes. I'm going to accidentally hurt people's feelings. But I want that tool, pretty bad.

After seven years of performing stand-up comedy, I experienced the strangest comedy club event so far in my career at the Velveeta Room open mike on March 5.

Now, open mikes are for trying out new material, and I had a bit I was working on. It still needed work, and I had not committed it to memory, but I had written it out longhand in my notebook:

I met a United States senator, and this is what he said:

These are trying times, but America has lived through difficult times before. We have been through a Great Depression, a Civil War, and we won World War II.

And I thought, he's right. Mexico has not persevered through these. Neither has Canada. And you know who else? Me. You. Everyone currently in power. Our generation did not win World War II. We're not the Greatest Generation, we're the Facebook generation. We made "Deal or No Deal" a hit.

My grandfather once saw a poster of an old man in a top hat saying, "I Want You!" And my grandfather said, "Well, then I'm going to join up and fight." You and I wouldn't have that reaction, because we were taught to fear sexual predators.

Ask anyone from my generation, "Who won the last battle fought on American soil?" What do they say? Do they say, "The Japanese, at Pearl Harbor?" No, they say, "Blu-ray." I know, still Japanese, kinda creepy.

And I know what you're thinking: "Dan, the Japanese occupied some Alleutian islands in Alaska for a brief time, so technically, by driving them out, the U.S. won." But I say that browsing for facts on your iPhone in a comedy club doesn't make you a better American. I think it makes you a bit of a douchebag.

That was the bit. I'm not saying it was strong; it definitely wasn't. But I was working some stuff out. And certainly it wasn't offensive. Right?

After performing it to a lackluster crowd, I went straight to the bar and ordered a drink. A sleight man taps me on the shoulder and demands, "What did I do?!!"

In a comedy club, I absolutely positively cannot tell when someone is joking. After a tense minute or two, I figured out that he was not.

First of all, he was an Asian-American. Perhaps he didn't like the lines directed at the Japanese, right? True. But as luck would have it, he also received a text message in the middle of my set, and was responding to it when I described people with iPhones in comedy clubs as "douchebags".

I explained to him that stage lights prevented me from seeing anybody, let alone his phone, and that I had written all this out beforehand, and that I'm not good enough to write an entire routine to insult a particular unlucky member of the audience on the spot. He didn't believe me. But I was lucky -- I showed him the entire routine written out longhand in my notebook. That calmed him down some.

I offered to buy the poor guy a drink, but he had to leave (and may have been under 21). And once again, I marvel at the enigma of what people consider to be offensive.