Mic 28 Overtime

Venue: Lakewood Village Tavern

Host: Zach Welch

Show: The Village Idiot

Set Time:  5 minutes

Earlier in the night I'd been at Story Club, which is a competition. I didn't win. I kind of win everything, so this is genuinely starting to make me nuts. I'm considering buying small millennial participation trophies to keep in my car — something to hand myself through the driver's side window after a mic so I don't develop a complex.

The woman who won told a story about her Jewish mother and her Hebrew name, Rose — a rose and a rose bush — and it was a wonderful story. Truly lovely. And she won.

Martin Scorsese once said if you want to win an Oscar, make a movie about Jews or the Holocaust. I'm starting to think Story Club runs on similar logic.

I picked up a fellow new comedian and we went to the LVT for a 10:00 open mic. Yes, it is a Wednesday. Yes, I have to work in the morning. Yes, the Cavs are playing Game 6 against Detroit and the game is on when we get there.

The place is packed with comedians. I like these people. And although I am usually the odd woman out, it gets more welcoming every time I go. Tonight is different though. Tonight is genuinely friendly in a way I haven't felt here before. The open mic is delayed, and somewhere in that delay, the room stopped feeling like something I was crashing and started feeling like a party I was invited to and just showed up a little late. I still had all those feelings — do they really want me here, will this be fun, was it worth the drive? But they were quieter tonight. It felt good. Accepting. Friendly, even kind.

I split a hamburger with Noah Ryan. Noah is hilarious. He does an amazing Donald Trump and other great impressions, but the funniest set I ever saw him do, he didn't speak at all. He played music and just reacted to it. That's a specific kind of confidence — the kind that trusts the audience enough to stay out of its own way. He waited for the part in the piece that called for jazz hands, and he did exactly that. Just that. He stood there, deadpan, straight-faced — and then jazz hands. He committed. It was funny, then unexpected, then awkward, then funny again. I love that. I've been thinking about what draws me to certain comedians, and I think that's it: I love people who are at home in their own skin. Not performing comfort. Actually comfortable.

This back room at the LVT — the one that's normally dark at 10 on a Wednesday, small stage, one mic, one light — is bright tonight with the glow of the game. We are cheering. I am cheering. Professional basketball. I have no real interest in professional basketball. But that collective electricity is real and it doesn't care what you came here for.

I haven't been out with the comedians socially before. I don't go to karaoke at Corkies after mics. I don't go to the bar. I am old and tired and I drive 30 minutes to get to a mic, so I go home. Every other Wednesday I show up, I perform, I watch, I drive back out into the dark. I am adjacent to this group but not inside it.

Tonight, for the first time, I am rubbing elbows. Chatting. High-fiving over a basketball game I don't follow with people I've been quietly watching for months. It's fun. More than fun. It's the thing I didn't realize I'd been waiting for.

They are a clique. But a welcoming one — and those are rarer than people think. There's an unspoken entry fee, and I'm still not entirely sure what I paid or when, but tonight something cleared.

What I notice most about this group — and I've been watching long enough to notice — is that nobody starts a sentence with "don't take this wrong." They just say things.

"There are not a lot of funny women."

"I have had it with these white women."

I wasn't bothered by the comment about funny women. It's not true — women are innately funny, we just don't parade it out. And now that I'm out here doing this, I think it's less that women aren't funny and more that fewer of us show up. What bothers me is the white women comment. Not because it's wrong, necessarily. Just because I'm standing right there.

Both sentences, same room, same night, no preamble, no apology, no full stop while everyone checked their feelings. Just said. And then the conversation kept moving. I'll admit there are things I heard tonight that I wished I hadn't. But it has been a genuinely long time since I've been in a room full of people who read, watch the news, see the world through a lens that is both sarcastic and critical — and then defuse it with comedy instead of a fight. The fact that they can make fun of everything means they can talk about anything. That's not nothing. In a world that is one spark away from exploding at every turn, that felt like something worth noting.

I don't judge. I mock. Own what you put out there. If you love that sweater your aunt knitted with the pink llama on the front, wear it — but own it — because I am absolutely making fun of it.

One of the comedians, Martin Malloy, was recently on something called Kill Tony. I didn't know what it was and hadn't looked it up yet, but it's been explained to me: it's a YouTube show out of Austin, Texas where they draw names, people perform, and some get asked back. It's a big deal because exposure is a big deal. It's also apparently random and chaotic, and Martin got on and got asked back.

Martin isn't super social. The other comedians are good to him — kind to him, and also mock him, which in this room is the same thing. Martin is older than his 30s but I don't know by how much. He stands on stage in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that doesn't quite make it over his midsection and deadpans jokes, one right after another. Smart, funny, one-liner-style jokes. No eye contact. Doesn't chat anyone up. Odd in the specific way that reads as: completely unbothered by your opinion of him. But in this group, he is comedian. That's the whole credential. That's enough.

By the time the Cavs won in overtime, it was too late for most of the room and half of them left. I would have liked five minutes from some of them. About ten of us stayed. I drove 30 minutes to get here and I wasn't driving back until I got up, so I was staying.

The comedians who remained were drunk. Some sets were sloppy. There was a lot of heckling. There were even moments that got mean. A comic who started the same class as I did shouted from the stage at me to get off my phone and pay attention to his set.

I opened my set by apologizing for being on my phone. I said: "Temu was offering 95% off and you have to take those when they come up, or you pay 88 cents for a pair of pants."

Then I moved into the tradwife material from Mic 26, working through some tags and timing, added some stuff from earlier in the evening. It went okay.

They defuse as fast as they ignite — a specific skill, I think, that you develop when your whole job is reading a room.

I drove home at midnight. Thirty minutes back out into the dark, same as always. But something was different about it.

I split a hamburger with Noah Ryan. I high-fived strangers over overtime basketball. Nobody said "don't take this wrong."

I'm calling it a win.

Get new posts straight to your inbox — no algorithm, no ads, just the funny stuff - Sign Up!