Every once in a while I get the crazy idea that I should chase my dream and do an open mic. Bad. Idea.
Stand-up comedy has been my dream ever since I got my first big laugh in Sister Gregory’s second grade class. The details escape me, but I think it had something to do with my take on Catholic Dogma or possibly how I thought Jesus’s last name was Criminy.I was a latch-key kid and after-school time was spent doing homework, setting the dinner table, then turning on the TV and watching The Merv Griffin Show. My favorite guests? The female comedians. Totie Fields. Renee Taylor. Joan Rivers. Kindred spirits. Which is why every once in a while I get the crazy idea that I should chase my dream and do an open mic.
Bad. Idea.
Open mics are in bars or nightclubs. They usually start way past my bedtime. Quite a challenge for me, a post-menopausal woman who has yet to make it through any episodes of the Law and Orders.
So, on the day of open mic night, I had to ingest enough caffeine (coffee, tea, Extra Strength Excedrin) to simulate a cardiac episode, then, at 9:30, wild eyed and palpitating, I left my husband in his leather chair with the current James Patterson book, and drove to the dingy nightclub full of twenty- and thirty-somethings who chain-smoked. Apparently D.A.R.E. had done nothing for them. I signed the open mic roster. I was fifth in line.
First up? A guy with tattoos, multiple piercings and issues with women. And then came another guy, same issues. Their themes? Sex – their need to have it and their lack of getting it.They talked about their “dicks,” their “crotch rockets,” and shouted out stuff to the audience like, “Are you feeling me!?” They dropped so many f-bombs, the room was a cuss word Nagasaki.
The audience went nuts.
Then, it was my turn. Jason, the host, introduced me this way: “Hey! Let’s give it up for Mel. She’s really f***ing funny!”
Kind of set the bar too high right off the bat, I thought.
So, I did this hi-larious bit – the same one that I had performed a week earlier at a fund raiser for my son’s high school – about Teenage Jesus. Think of it. He’s The Son of God. Talk about a kid with an attitude! On and on I went about Him having all these so-called friends, just because He could change water into wine. At the high school, I killed.
