It’s sad when you feel like the mic is over and it hasn’t even started. And that’s what last night felt like.  Here’s a picture of the crowd right before the show started at 7:30pm:

Yep, there’s 5 people in the audience and those 3 sitting together came to see a guy who was doing his very first open mic. It did grow a little. I counted 12 people by the end.

I didn’t make the list, and I was honestly okay with that. I had planned to try out some new jokes but after walking in and seeing this crowd I knew I would have skipped the new jokes and just done a solid standard set.

Two of my friends made the list so I stayed to watch the show and support them. And there were some good comics. One of my friends immediately started critiquing his set after he was done and I reminded him that tonight wasn’t a good night to judge his set based on the audience’s reaction. They were semi-quiet most of the time. The best laughs were coming from the back of the room where the other comics were seated, and you don’t want to play to them anyway.

But that’s an open mic. And that’s comedy. It’s always unpredictable. The audiences aren’t always going to be great…or even exist. We put in our time and we’re just happy to get it. And if you sucked on stage, no one is going to be talking about it today. Heck, no one will remember.