Over the past 15 years, I’ve written nearly 300,000 words for this 160 year old institution. From these words, two books have emerged. Tens of thousands of my brain burps are available on Twitter (I’m never calling it “X”) and my hope is that a few of those have been funny.
So I’m trying something recently that has been at the top of my bucket list since I first watched David Letterman. I’m trying stand-up comedy. I think the “comedy” part is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but I’m giving it a shot.
Last week, I did three “sets” of about three or four minutes apiece at three different comedy clubs. Honestly, I didn’t even know Kansas City had three different comedy clubs. But they do. KC actually has a very robust and passionate (albeit small) comedy culture here.
But converting what I write here into actual spoken-word funny things is a lot harder than it looks. Last week, I wrote in this column about Donald Trump farting in court. Well that certainly sounds like a good premise for a joke, right? It turns out that it takes about a minute for 100 words to be spoken. So my columns are all around 500 words = 5 minutes of talking, right? Well, you don’t see Steve Martin or Dave Chapelle just get up and read a 500 word essay, they’ve got to craft it into bangers and ha-ha’s.
So, the first night, my hands are clammy, and I get up on stage to the brightest lights I’ve ever seen. The five minutes of material I had rehearsed for a couple of days completely evaporated. I couldn’t even remember my name. “Uh… hi. This is my first time…” The crowd was so sparse, I didn’t even get the anticipated “WE KNOW” from some heckler. I think I made a joke about Trump and a threesome and then wobbled off the stage. The sense afterwards was one of shame but also accomplished ambition. I got up there. Did I bomb? Absolutely. But I got up there.
I decided to do it again the next night at a different venue. This time I was much more comfortable, and got through my prepared material. I don’t think anyone laughed, but I was just more focused on executing the five minutes. There’s a bunch of mechanics that you don’t think of when you stand in front of an audience with only a microphone and a mic stand. Someone sent me a picture and I had a death grip on the microphone so hard my knuckles were white. For someone so full of nonsense ready to speak, actually speaking in a condensed, pre-prepared way is a lot harder than it looks.
Thursday, after succeeding at getting through my jokes, I tried to at least look at the audience. Which I did. The format at the event on Thursday was that you had SEVEN minutes. Well, I only had four and a half minutes of jokes. What do you do then? You say goodnight and get off the stage – at least at my level.
I’ve learned so much about ‘doing’ stand-up after only a few tries. I am still very, very bad. But it is something you get the bug for. You get a rush like no other after getting up there – and the rush seems to only happen when you do it again and again. Maybe I’ll string together enough jokes to actually make a total set and I’ll make sure to advertise it here. Who knows…Maybe someone might even laugh!
(Laugh along with Chris Kamler on X, oops, we mean Twitter, where you’ll find him as @TheFakeNed)
