For the past several months I've been working hard on some new material involving thimbles. When I'm doing my thimble work, I'm not in the NerdGician character. I'm my own character and I realized that I had to get real live stage time so I could try out my nerw material. It's not always easy to get stage time when shows are slow. So I decided to get creative and incorporate my material into the "Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club" A few weeks ago I got a call from a producer of the "Laugh Out Loud" comedy chain. He saw my WGN TV segment when I did the NerdGician bit and so he tracked me down on youtube and contacted me.
I was pretty excited to be able to do some stand-up as the NerdGician. I put some material together and rehearsed it in nerd mode. Finally the big day came. The club was packed and I was ready to do my bit. I think comedy clubs have such an unusual and diverse audience. I noticed in the audience a young girl, about the age of 15 with her parents. I was thinking to myself "What kind of parent brings their kid to a comedy club? You know there is going to be raunchy, vulgar language." Yep and there was. And the comedians all night were ripping on the 15 year old. She seemed to be the theme of the comedy that night. The parents didn't seem to have a problem with it. Who knows. Maybe she's a inspiring comedian and her parents wanted to give her a real life education of what she may be in for.
There was another young person in the audience. He was about 15 or 16 as well, but he was a comedian. when he went up I was impressed about how he handled himself and how professional he was. He did a bit about how when he was 2 years old his dad would take him ice fishing. He went on about how they would get up at about 3 in the morning, pack up the car, drive 15 hours to a frozen lake, set up a tent, drill a hole into the ice, get a fishing pole and then sit on a bucket. That was some funny stuff he talked about. Very nice kid.
The other comedian that engraved a memorable implant in my brain was a man who has Cerebral Palsy. When the mc introduced him, he slowly made his way up to the stage using his two walking sticks to help him get around. After a long silent struggle onto the stage he said "You know you had a bad night when you go our with your friends and in the morning you wake up like this." the whole room was roaring on the floor.
Finally it was my turn and the mc announced me. I decided to open up with the "Bowling Pin Production. Michael Mode really did a FANTASTIC job on this effect as well as the packaging and dvd tutorial. Nice job Mike!
It was kind of odd. When I made the Pin appear I didn't get much of a reaction or laugh, then suddenly the whole place busted out into a loud laugh, hence the name, "Laugh Out Loud'
I kept going on with my routine and throughout my routine, I was getting these off beat laughs.
Finally my time was up and I packed up and went home. I was kind of up set because I had a few mishaps happen. Nothing big, just small minor things.
When I got to my studio to review my video footage, I was surprised to see and hear how much people were laughing. It made all the mishaps seem very small. Overall I was very pleased with my performance. It made me notice a part of me that I didn't know I had. The part where I seem to have to off beat humor where people laugh way after the expected punch line joke.
I'm looking forward to making many more appearances at "Laugh Out Loud"
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