THE FIRST TIME I BOMBED

I had performed at open mics where I got little to no laughs, but because I was satisfied with my performance and the crowd brought no energy, I didn’t consider them to be true bombs. Sometimes the audience is just a bunch of other comics waiting to perform and only really care about their own, and aren’t always willing to be supportive. It wasn’t until one fateful summer day that I experienced what I considered to be my first real bomb.

It had been several months since I had performed at an open mic and the ring rust was starting to wear on my mind. A female comic that I had a crush on was hosting an open mic at a brewery in downtown Portland and it seemed like the perfect place for me to stage my return to the comedy scene.

The first problem when I arrived was that there was no air conditioning in the brewery on an unusually hot day. The host I had a crush on was tending bar and when I arrived I had already worked up a light sweat. She served me a beverage and the open mic started shortly after. I’d been working on some new material, but instead of going with the new jokes, I decided to go with some safe material that I had some previous success with, which would later turn out to be the wrong choice.

Each comic had four minutes to perform their set and I recognized some of the other comics from different open mics. They all seemed to be on top of their game, which motivated me to do well when it was my turn. The host introduced me and I strutted on stage with full confidence. I got some audible laughs with my first few jokes and I was doing pretty well at first, but half way through my last joke I started to get a funny feeling that I had chosen the wrong material to perform, which quickly caused me to lose confidence. The combination of my own insecurity, the summer heat and the lack of air conditioning, I started sweating uncontrollably. I started to forget the lines I’d carefully crafted and rehearsed and before I could finish my set, I mumbled something weird and walked off stage awkwardly and for the first time since I started doing comedy I felt like a failure.

In retrospect the experience reminded me of something film director Christopher Nolan once said about how careful he is when choosing projects to work so he doesn’t get bored and lose interest in the material in the middle of the process. From then on I vowed that I would always find a way to challenge myself with my material and never go with something simply because it had worked before. I remember an interview with Steven Spielberg about how he lost his motivation half way through filming The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which may have contributed to the ill fated decision to have Jeff Goldblum’s daughter single handedly kill a velociraptor with her gymnastic skills.