GA Day 3 - Flights and Flights
Today was my day to fly back to Georgia and resume the Big Dumb Road Trip. But first I had to stop for one last swig of my favorite coffee from home: Marylou's.
And then I took to the skies and bid Boston a fond farewell.
When I landed in Georgia, my plane just sat at the terminal for a while and the traffic was very bad so most of my afternoon was spent in the airport. My friend Ian was eventually able to pick me up and drive me back to his place where I had left my car.
Once reunited with my beloved Scion, I was pretty darn hungry so I set off for food before my first open mic. There were two mics I was hoping to do and they were close to a neighborhood called the Little Five Points. I had heard it was a super hip area and as soon as I laid eyes on this bar I knew I was gonna like it there.
The Vortex, besides having the coolest exterior I'd ever seen also happened to be ranked one of the best spots for burgers in the city so I knew I'd made the right call. I ordered a flight of their house beers, the Laughing Skull Craft Lager, White Ale, and Amber Ale. The amber ale was my favorite because it the most full bodied maltiness, but everything made for really good smooth-drinking beers. The house beers paired nicely with my Blue 'Shroom burger, which came with house bleu cheese spread, bacon, and sautéed mushrooms. The description of the burger on the menu called it mind-expanding and claimed "You'll see God". I don't know that it quite lived up to those lofty expectations, but it was one of the best burgers I've ever had. Bleu cheese can be a pretty strong flavor but whatever they did to make the spread worked to cut down some of that strength and just make for a really delicious flavorful burger. All the menu descriptions for things were really funny, as well as their kinda-saracastic-but-not-totally-sarcastic house rules for ensuring the best possible experience for customers and employees. They can be found here: https://thevortexatl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/foodrules_draft10-1.pdf
After dinner, I decided to recharge with some coffee. I went to the nearby Aurora Coffee. I went there because they were close and open late, but they also happen to be one of the oldest and most beloved independent coffee shops in the city. It was a good day for stumbling into good food and drinks. Aurora's specialty are their "bears" which are half iced coffee and half flavored milk. I got a Hula Bear which is mix of coconut and chocolate milk with iced coffee. It was absolutely delicious, one of the best flavored coffee drinks I've ever had.
With this newfound energy, I drove to the first open mic of the night. It was at a bar called BQE Restaurant and Lounge. I read online that their food is supposedly very good, but I didn't have any appetite after my massive burger.
The mic itself was a bit of a mixed bag. The other comics were quite funny, but the audience was really more focused on their food, their conversations, and the basketball game going on, so the comedians really had to work hard to engage them. I saw comedians who I thought were funnier than me struggle to do this, and I think direct crowd work or material that was about everyday relatable things tended to go over the best.
I went on first so I didn't realize either of those things yet, and just tried to do short one liners which fell pretty flat. I felt like the audience didn't really care, and I wasn't delivering the jokes with enough confidence or energy to convince them. I got a few laughs here and there, and those tended to be on more universal topics like food and family so I should have learned from that but it was mostly a pretty rough outing for me.
I will also mention that I was the only white person in the restaurant at the time. I don't think that actually figured much into me not doing wellThat would be more the presence of distractions like food and basketball and my own weak delivery, but I do think it makes it funnier that given that I didn't do great I then also stuck out to everyone even more, so I couldn't really hide from the bad performance. I think if you're funny enough though any audience should like you, no matter what their demographics are.
I give the host, Daryl Dale, a lot of credit for doing what he could to engage and warm up the crowd. He talked to almost everyone there, trying to get them involved and scoring some big laughs along the way.
Some good lines from the nights:
Daryl - How long you been married? Still pulling out I see.
Mr. Eman - Old people do things we don't keep doing. Like buying shoe polish.
Sweet Baby Keerah - I've seen almost every color of fur coat, but I never once saw rabbit that was purple or pink.
After a few comics, I got a call from my cousin who was coming back to Atlanta for basic training tomorrow. He got an uber to the bar from the airport, and after we met up I drove him with me to the next mic. It was at bar above a pizza place called Camelli's back in the Little Five Points. I figured this second gig would allow me a chance to redeem myself comedically and have the added benefit of giving my cousin his last chance to have pizza until he finished his army training. He said it was possibly the best pizza he'd ever had.
I missed the beginning of this mic because I showed up late, but what I saw was really funny.
My favorite line from the night came from a guy named Travis Allen. He was doing a bit about how it's weird that whenever someone's really homophobic people say that means they're probably gay but nobody does that with any other phobias. "Oh he's agoraphobic, I bet he's actually the outside."
Some other good lines from this mic:
Matt Pesci - My favorite laxative is getting the shit kicked out of me.
Kyle (didn't catch his last name)- People saying what their Hogwarts house is, is basically like saying "Oh I would've gotten into a better school if magic was real"
Colin (also didn't catch a last name): I don't think there's any white gangs because they never made it past the handshake phase.
My own set went very well here. Partly that's because I learned from my mistakes and brought more energy and partly that was because the audience wasn't as distracted by other things. It is a weird feeling to have one of my jokes fall totally flat at one mic, and then have that exact same joke do so well at the second mic that I have to pause for a second because of the laughter. If I wasn't fairly confident in my own material at this point, I'd have no idea what to make of such disparate reactions in terms of determining whether or not the joke was actually funny or not. That's one of the reasons it can be so hard trying to learn comedy through open mics.
Favorite random sightings: Optimist Lofts; "We make mouse calls"; Psycho Sisters; A record store called Criminal Records
Regional Observation: My cousin said that everyone from the south in his basic training talks a lot about saving up to buy trucks, and now that he's said that I can't help but notice there are way more pickup trucks everywhere.
Albums Listened To: Masseduction by Saint Vincent (I love Annie Clark, but this was the first St. Vincent album I actually listened to start to finish); The Masters by Townes Van Zant; Matthew Ryan- In the Dusk of Everything by Matthew Ryan; Me Doing Standup by Norm Macdonald (one of my all time favorites)
People's Favorite Jokes:
Did you hear about the karate master who joined the army? He almost took his own head off when he saluted.