Open Mic - part 2

Besides pushing the religious envelope or being dirty or gross for a laugh, I wanted my open mic to be clever comedy, so the following was my attempt of that. Through all of this, it was hard to gauge what was really funny as most of the audience was other open mic comics and they were very supportive. Here we go...

Dental Advancements

Talk about overkill.
There’s a razor with five blades called Fusion. Five blades!

Here’s the deal with Fusion. After the fourth blade scraps away your cheek, the fifth blade gets the plaque off your teeth. Fusion has to be short for trans-fusion. Fuck that, I’ll shave over the same spot twice with my twin blade.

Speaking of teeth. The British have a reputation for horrible teeth. But that reputation can be traced back to Stonehenge. Historians think it was a calendar, but it was actually a monument to their gum line. Each stone was a rotting tooth. It was an open mouth built into the “FACE” of the earth in order to yell up to the gods, “WE NEED BETTER DENTAL CARE!”

My apologies to the British.

Open Mic Jokes - Part 1

I went through the Second City program, both improv and writing and had a blast. Once a week, you're in a group that trying to be funny and make each other laugh. It's a great stress reliever. Then, afterwards, you meet up at one of the bars and drink and be funny. I would recommend this for anyone looking to have fun, or just has a fear of public speaking. And of course, during this time that I was immersed in comedy, I decided to give stand up a shot at an open mic, because I want a life with no regrets - or at least with many experiences.

This is a taste of my routine, which I will probably follow up with more. While you read this, try to imagine a comedian delivering this with that comedic enthusiasm and timing.

What if Jesus owned a present day drug store with his disciples?

They’d get paid with bread, putting a slice or two away into a 401K.

Mother Mary would be pushing the early pregnancy tests on the virgins ‘cause you just never know.

Plus, Dateline would be nosing around wondering how they sell so much wine without ever getting a delivery.

Judas would end up being fired him for stealing money from the register.

And Jesus would have a little joke every time he saw Moses coming. He would turn off the electronic doors so they wouldn’t part for him.

Thank you, folks - I'll be blogging all week.

World's Fair Adventure

Someone brought up the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans the other day and it reminded me of a little adventure my best friend and I had. We were seventeen at the time and decided to take the bus to the fair, see if we couldn’t get drunk, and then take the bus home.

Luck was with us as we had gotten ourselves into one of the bars (actually, at that time, you didn’t need much luck to be under age and get into a bar) and got pretty lit up. When the time came to leave, we staggered to our bus stop, which drove us all the way down Elysian Fields and let us off at the campus of UNO where we thought we were getting transferred, but the bus route ended and there were no other buses running. It was midnight.

WHAT?

Those of you from New Orleans will understand this trek, but I will try to explain it fully. There was no way we were calling our folks, not that we had cell phones, so we decided to hike it. We walked from the campus of UNO along Leon C. Simon until we hit the Sea Brook bridge, which was about two miles.

Remember that we were loaded.

We came down off the bridge and got onto the levee that overlooked Hayne (Haynes) Boulevard on the right and Lake Pontchartrain on the left and walked about a mile before having to sit down and there we nodded off in the grass. I remember my friend shaking me to get up so we could keep going. Plus, this was the East, which was predominately black and a fairly high crime area, but we grew up there, so we thought nothing of it. But in the back of our minds, we knew two skinny white kids were easy targets.

The next mile my friend finds a joint that ended up in his pocket some time during the night and we thought it a good idea to light it up and smoke it in order to get rid of the evidence. Whether it helped or not, I have no idea, but we made the four miles down Hayne to my street and the two blocks up to get to my house and passed out in my room at about 3 a.m. I don't know if we woke my parents or not 'cause it was a small house, but they were cool, so it didn't matter.

I have never been so tired in all my life.

Never assume anything.

To any aspiring writers out there, don’t think that if you get your first novel published that your next one will, also. I didn’t assume, but in the back of my head, I kind of expected it would. But no, my next novel was rejected and now I’m trying to land an agent on the merits of my first novel getting published, but it seems like I’m starting from square one again.

I figure that now is the time to get all the help I can, so I’ve decided to go on my first conference, or retreat, as it is called. The Pen To Press Retreat in New Orleans – www.pentopressretreat.com -. I’ve read Deborah LeBlanc and liked her stuff, being from Louisiana, too, and she’s put this together, so I get to meet her. I hear it’s intimate, one on one, and a great learning experience. Plus, you get to pitch to a few agents and editors and I’m from New Orleans, so it should be great.

Writing the synopsis and query letters are my biggest weaknesses. I have two books that I feel are ready to go and two that might need minor work, so I’m locked and loaded. If anything, this will give me experience if I need to go to ThrillerFest in New York next year to pitch to agents out there. I hear good things about that, too.