Mic 40: Pivot

Venue: Ground Xero 

Show: Rock Comedy 

Set Time:  5-7 Minute

There's a first-Friday show around the corner from my house, produced by Rock Comedy. I had a guest spot.

Produced shows have a different air than open mics, and you feel it the second you walk in. Open mics are a room full of people waiting their turn, half-listening to everyone else while they run their own set in their head. A produced show is a room full of people who come to laugh, which is its own kind of pressure. Nobody's there out of obligation, other than my husband. You can feel the difference in how people are dressed. You can feel it in the fact that I don't know a single person on the lineup, and that my name is spelled wrong on the flyer.

This is all so sitcom adjacent. It's the mistaken-identity cold open. New girl shows up to the big meeting and her name tag says something else entirely, and everyone in the room already knows each other except her.

I have a guest spot. That means I get five minutes or so before the other comics. My name is listed on the flyer as Missy Hates. I have been circulating it for who knows how long and hadn't noticed, because I didn't have my cheaters on. Missy Hayes, comedian. Missy Hates, apparently, also a comedian, and possibly a better premise.

The other comedians introduced themselves and were incredibly welcoming. I was recently told I need to cut the "I'm new to the crowd" bullshit.  Apparently people know who I am, I'm a comedian, and other comedians will want to talk to you. Which is great, if I could get it through my head.  You see,  I'm funny chatting with people. Honestly, my funniest bits happen in the banter, the conversations around the dinner table, or at the bar before anyone's on stage. Chit and chat is where I shine. I'm not sure if that's some deep-seated need to fill silence, or a latent self-esteem problem where I only feel comfortable once a joke's involved. Whatever the origin, it's money.

Nancy Patrizi-Abraham is one of the comedians. She produces a couple of shows, she's funny, and she laughs at our quick back-and-forth like she's collecting material. She's delighted I'm new and has real advice about networking and getting to know people to help get booked. Nancy is like a comedy aunt, specifically a Jewish one with Torah ties, and I mean, look at the name. Talking to her felt like kibitzing with someone who's been doing thissince the holy wars, well, those are still happening, so reference lost. I have no idea where she hangs her faith flag, but I'd bet money she makes a hell of a challah. Every nugget of advice helps, and I want to devour it all. So challah, yes. 

Another comedian, stage name Timbuktu, thought Hates was a brand, and honestly, he might be right. He's a delight. He's also a larger comic, Samoan large and heavy is a huge part of his craft work. He talks about it in a self-deprecating way that has you right on the edge of discomfort, that place where you're laughing but you're also not entirely sure he's okay with it, and you're doing the math on whether it's safe to keep laughing. And then, mid-set, he pulls a chicken wing out from under a belly fold. Wrapped in the paper from the basket. For a second the whole room just sits there.  Nobody's sure if this is the bit and then he opens it up and eats it. On stage. During his own set.

Still warm.

Dying. I am fricking dying.

Genius, concerning, hilarious, disgusting!

it hit all the notes.

The headliner was Aaron Lamar.

Bank robber. For real. Did time at Leavenworth.

I love Kansas. Did a ton of work there in my early days. I love Wichita steaks, KC barbecue, and I'm a Jayhawks fan. Aaron came in from Michigan to do the show. Bank robbery is a federal offense, so Leavenworth was the place and although he spent seven years inside state lines, he didn't share my love of Kansas.

He robbed banks old school. 

I'm talking Converse high-tops, ski mask, the whole thing. He has great stories from being inside, and great learnings.

Apparently that's the era we're in, where even ex-bank robbers do a TED Talk on potential. 

His whole thing now is: he was doing it wrong. Old school is a young man's game, a get-caught game. 

The smart money moved to the internet decades ago with its shell companies and embezzlement, nothing that requires a ski mask or a getaway car. 

An old white man’s game. 

It's a young man's crime that got automated out from under him, the same way everything else did, and he found that out the hard way, seven years at a time.

Be a smarter bank robber. 

Ski Masks to Spreadsheets: 

A Bank Robber's Guide to Upward Mobility.

Brilliant premise 

I was up first.

I started my set talking about the current social media trend of sourdough bread. 

For the love of God, I have no idea why we're all going back into the kitchen. Maybe it's the food scares, maybe it's the need to protect ourselves from Robert Kennedy and his entire snake-oil brigade, but honestly, what are we doing? 

I don't mean to sound like a suffragette, but we spent a hundred years fighting to get out of the kitchen, and now we're willingly going back in.

Fucking feeding a jar, naming it, photographing it in better light than we photograph our own children. I feel like we're one Instagram post away from calling our husbands "the Provider."

My set played well, and I was feeling good about timing and rhythm. 

Big Rich Green, who sees me Mondays at the 5 O'Clock, grinding through the open mic, paid me that weird, surprised compliment. You know the one.

"That was a great set."

"No, really."

"I just never saw that out of you."

There's a version of that sentence that's a compliment, and a version that's a diagnosis, and it's both at the same time, and you're supposed to just say thank you. 

So I did. 

But it sits with you for a second, the gap between what people expect from you and what you actually do, and how good it feels and how strange it feels to close it in front of someone, live, without warning.

I'll keep saying this comedy thing is very much like an open tryout. Occasionally I throw a forty-yard pass, right to the numbers, and everyone's head perks up like they forgot I could do that. Even though I've been showing up for two-a-days since fall.

I got a booking out of it with Nancy, and I got to meet some new comedians which is honestly what I want my next batch of mics to be about. Networking. Building the room, not just showing up to it.

But here's the thing that was sitting underneath all of it, the whole night, compliment and booking included.

I need anyone reading this to know something very important about me: I finish nothing I start. Flying lessons, college, home projects. There's one door painted in my family room, and not the other. The list of unfinished projects is so long that it's easier to share the finished list instead: I had two children. 

That’s it. 

Two pregnancies, carried to term, complete. 

Things come to a natural end, or they wear out, or people move on. But rarely, if ever, do I actually take a thing to completion on purpose.

So I need you to know: I almost quit. This blog thing.  The thing that I created to keep me accountable.  

Not dramatically. Just quietly, the way you quit things at forty.

Irish goodbye. 

Forty is a lot. Well done, me. Whoop!

But instead, I'm pivoting. Losing the origin story, the one painted door, and starting a new chapter on the jokes themselves, the writing, the building, the part where the work actually is.

You get it by now.  This scene is a dysfunctional community, not unlike high school. It's full of fakeness and love and competition and drama and drugs and alcohol in roughly equal parts. It's debauchery and creativity wadded up into a spitball, loaded into a straw, and spit into the wind. There are fascinating characters in this scene and there are poor souls. There are geniuses and there are hacks. I'm funny, and I'm going to start showing you the funny directly, so you can decide for yourself how funny.

Blogs going forward will be jokes, narratives, material I am testing, sets I am trying.

Less diary and more monologue!