Thursday night I went to The Velveeta Room to watch Hedges perform in Spite Club, a stand-up comedy competition of sorts as well as the open-mike night following Spite Club. Since stand-up comedy is one of my super-secret interests, I sucked it up and decided to sign up for the open mike. It sounded simple enough, a three minute bit. How hard could that be? I started getting extremely nervous the second I hung up the phone after signing up. Damn me and my fear of public speaking.

Starting the night off, Spite Club was entertaining. Hedges’ opening statement was awesome, unfortunately the guy he was going up against killed in the first two rounds and there was no way Hedges could recover. Still entertaining though. Before the open mic night started, Ruhmann mentioned that the comedians at the open mike were *really* good. Jesus he was right. There were some damn funny comedians. Like fucking touring professionals. That’s when my nervousness kicked into high gear. To combat the nerves, I went with my usual plan of drinking myself silly. That wasn’t a good idea, but still better than my decision to not rehearse or prepare any material. I had no concept of how long three minutes really was. It turns out that three minutes is a lot shorter than I thought it was. I did work out a bit in my head, but I never really tried it out or timed it. In the end, I guess everything worked out alright though. I cut myself short because the last thing I wanted to do was go over my time. I felt really awkward up there, but everyone that stuck around to watch me was really sweet about my performance. Next time I’m definitely practicing though. Here’s the content of what I wanted to cover in my bit.

“I went back to my hometown recently. I love going back there because it’s a small enough place that everyone knows everyone and the majority of people never leave. So if you are one of the few people that left town, you get this instant celebrity status when you go back. Random people recognize you and are interested in you. And that’s the real definition of celebrity. When people you don’t give a fuck about are interested in your life, you’ve really made it. Being a celebrity is nice. The part that’s hard for me though is that all the people that recognize me are people that I should theoretically know, since we both knew each other at some point. But my memory is terrible; I don’t remember anyway. That’s alright though because I’m the celebrity; I don’t have to remember anyone. That’s what I have the entourage for. When some jackass working as a parking lot attendant says “hey, you’re Gus. You went to Mustang, right? I’m Brian.” Yeah, like I’m supposed to remember a Brian? I’m a fucking celebrity. I turn to my best friend and say “who is this fucking guy?” “Yeah, that’s big tall Brian, the stoner that was always begging for change in high school” Ooooohhh, that guy! It’s all so clear to me now. It’s unfortunate that people don’t just mention their most embarrassing quality to try to help you jog your memory. That’s the only way I can remember people. I don’t remember Stephanie Baker, but I do remember the girl that came to my house after huffing butane and got naked in my living room just as my dad got home from work. Why couldn’t she just say that as she was introducing me to her four year old in the Walmart parking lot?”

From there I wanted to get into my propensity for throwing up when drinking, even at my ripe old age. It may take me a little while to figure out how I would make the transition into that bit though. Now I just need to put myself on a schedule so I will actually stick with it.