Mic 5, 6 and 8: How I got to Hot Nuts
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Venues: Imposters Theater / Brother Lounge
Hosts: Bill Squire / Cam Godfrey and Dezhawn France
Shows: Graduation Night/ Ajar Mic / Brothers Lounge Showcase
Set Time: 5, 3, 5 Minutes
I took Bill Squire’s class again because a scheduled class for a couple of hours over a couple of weeks gave me something adulthood rarely does: protected time to try something foolish. It also gave me stage time, feedback, and a room full of people contractually obligated to listen—my favorite kind of audience.
This time I wrote a five-minute set about the double entendres of the oil industry.
My first real career job was in oil—an industry both crude and refined. Oil men are rugged, polite misogynists. They stand when a lady arrives or departs. They consider women fragile and modest, yet every workday sounded like a schoolboy who had just discovered his body parts. They laid pipe, inspected buttholes and bottom cracks, and worried about proper penetration.
I spent two years not making eye contact with the only engineers who actually make eye contact. I’m a Catholic girl. I had to go to confession after my first lubrication conference.
The best part was they never heard it.
For decades, I laughed at those conversations. In my head, this set was comedy gold.
Then I performed it.
The room laughed—but something was off.
“Venn diagram” did not hit.
Some people didn’t know what a double entendre was, which meant they were laughing at dirty words instead of the joke beneath the joke.
Those are two different laughs.
One is for craftsmanship.
One is because someone said “unit” in public. Yes, I giggled every time.
That bruised my ego. I thought I’d written layered comedy. Turns out I’d written a scavenger hunt for people holding beer.
Still, some parts worked.
I did a voicemail bit:
“Hey Miss, Iron Mike here. My big unit is down, sweetie, and I need you to work your magic and get me back up.”
That got laughs.
Then I told my daughters:
“Iron Mike is a regular. He has the largest unit in North America. I know this because I was hand-selected to be on his erection team. You like your lattes, private schools, and vacations—don’t question how Mommy makes the money.”
That got bigger laughs.
So I learned something painful and useful: the crowd meets you where they are, not where you wrote the joke.
I rewrote that set 64 times in four weeks. I began with the pearl-clutching version of me. I really don’t talk about things under your bathing suit or what goes on in bedrooms or bathrooms. But if need be - I can hold my own. I stopped pretending I was shocked and started talking about how ridiculous they were. That helped.
I added a bit about purchasing equipment from Cleveland Vibrator—the longest 45-minute meeting of my life. It begins with the Vice President of Vibrators thanking me for coming.
Presumptuous.
That line worked instantly. No explanation needed. The timing was right.
I felt good about the set, booked five minutes at Brothers Lounge, then got notes, watched the tape, and took the material back to open mics.
I went back to Imposters because I hadn’t been anywhere else.
There were only about fifteen people there—not all comics. A couple of audience members and Scott representing the civilians.
I almost didn’t sign up. Then Dezhawn, smiling like a man who could convince you to help hide a body, encouraged me. So I put my name down. Third from the end.
Here is what I learned about the list: comics leave. They finish their set and head to another room, another mic, another cigarette, another life.
A room can be full when the show starts and nearly empty when you go up.
That night there were six people left when I got called.
I did the oil set anyway.
Afterward, a woman came up and said:
“I didn’t get what you were saying at first. Then I caught on—and it was hilarious.”
That sentence became a roadmap.
I drove around running the five minutes in the car. I listened to the tape and heard where I got laughs. Then I made a list of terms to figure out what was funny and what needed explaining. I felt like George Carlin working through Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television from his 1972 album Class Clown.
Shafts, rods, blow jobs, suckers, pumpers, strippers, lube.
Then I remembered something from Dale Carnegie, whose courses I later taught: the audience is never wrong. If they don’t follow you, that is on the speaker. Get a “yes” early. Establish common ground before asking people to go somewhere unfamiliar.
I needed a yes.
Then came my first booked show. Not Netflix. Relax.
A booked show means you ask a host for an amount of time and they say yes. Sometimes they’ve seen you. Sometimes they ask for tape. Sometimes they make you audition. This one was at Brothers Lounge. Bill Squire hosted and it was five minutes for each comedian. I was in the middle of a twelve-comic lineup.
I took the mic, moved the stand behind me, paused a little too long, and said:
“My grandma loved hot nuts.”
Laugh.
I paused again.
“She talked every Christmas about how excited she was to get them. She loved how warm they felt in her hands.”
Bigger laugh.
Then I snapped at the room:
“Stop thinking about my grandma holding nuts.”
Now they were with me.
Then I said:
“This is a double entendre. A phrase with two meanings—one innocent, one filthy. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.”
Then I went into the oil material.
It was a better set. I was swept up in the joy of improvement. I felt comedic, so I headed to Winchester for One More Joke. At 57, I should know better than to chase stage time after 10 p.m. on a weekday. Instead, I was learning something far more dangerous: I was starting to like it.
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