Crickets…

The comedy class I’m taking meets in a comedy club in a Vegas casino, just before the Thursday night comedy show starts. During our class each student takes the stage for 5 minutes, then the teacher and other students critique you.

So last night the teacher (who is a professional comedian and also the M.C. of the real shows at this club) asked me to not do my 5 minutes during the class but to instead do them in the actual show. So I had to wait for the show to start, then got to “open” for the real comedians.

That was cool, and a real honor, and I was excited … until I saw the crowd. This comedy club fills up on Friday and Saturday nights, but Thursday night is usually pretty dead. This particular Thursday night was very dead. There were about ten people from my class who stayed to watch me, but have all heard my routine at least three times, so it’s kind of hard to make them laugh at it now. And there were not even ten other people. It was about 18 people, in a room that holds 150 to 200, and they were almost all sitting spread out along the back wall.

It was pretty painful. I would tell a joke, wait for the laughter, hear nothing, and move on. A couple times I almost begged for laughs, repeating words for effect: “… called Cat Fancy. Cat Fancy! I said Cat Fancy!!”

My friend David who was there said the people around him were laughing but were so far from me I just couldn’t hear them, but I think he was just being nice. ‘Cause all I could hear were crickets…