Greenville

The six hour haul from Huntington to Greenville blew by quickly. When we pulled up to the club, the road was closed for some sort street festival or block party. The sidewalks were spilling over with food carts, live bands, and all manner of vendor booths. It looked awesome, but we’d have to wait until after the show to check it out.

Parlez-vous français?

One of the comedians talked about how much fun she had on a recent trip to France and described how enamored she was with the language. I’m undoubtedly in the minority here, but I don’t think French is sexy. It sounds like the slurry, ineloquent drawl of everyone after 15 beers.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the numbers. They all sound like the guttural groans of a person waking from a drunken stupor.

Everyone can sound French if they’re drunk enough. For instance, if you were stone cold sober and asked to name the objects below, you’d answer “Gem, Apple”.

However if you’d been ripping Jäger all day and tried to pronounce these two objects, you’d be introducing yourself in perfect French.

Deutschbag

I’m biased because German was the first foreign language I learned, but it sounds way better than French. I will acknowledge, however, that it’s not really a ‘cool’ language. Whenever I tell someone I speak German, it never elicits a positive response. They assume I’m either a nazi or I love porn where people shit all over eachother. Frankly that offends me - I’m not a nazi.

Even as a school subject German has a bad reputation. If you were a cool kid, you took French. If you were an average kid looking for an easy grade, you took Spanish. If you were a nerd looking to get a leg up on the SAT, you took Latin (which doesn’t help by the way - it turns out the SAT’s are entirely in English). And if you were a fucking weirdo, you took German.

Get up there

Through our travels we’ve met many who’ve expressed interest in trying standup but have been putting it off. They’re afraid of bombing, looking foolish, finding out they’re not funny, or any number of excuses. If you are reading this and feeling the same way, we totally get it. We were you guys. Dan and I didn’t get on stage until we were 26 and 27 years old. That’s how long it took us to work up the courage.

All we can tell you is “get up there!” We know, we know, it’s easier said than done. It’s daunting. You’re probably thinking “But I don’t know any comedians, I don’t know the comedy scene in my city, I don’t know how to sign up, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”. We were the same. We needed a metaphorical gun to the head to get on stage - meaning we signed up for a show and told everyone we knew about it so that we couldn’t chicken out.

If that sounds like you, then try this. Jump on Google or Facebook and type ‘standup comedy in (your city)’. Chances are you’ll find some open mics or events to attend. Sign yourself up and tell all your friends and family “On X date I’m performing standup at Y venue”. It’s scary, but if you don’t draw a line in the sand then your standup aspirations will forever be trapped in that nebulous “I’ll try it someday” stage.

Showtime

We did a show at The Comedy Zone. It was a nice club in the heart of downtown Greenville.

The show had a great turnout and the audience was a lot of fun. Before the show we hung around some of the comics and they were from all over. There were people from NJ, NY, and various southern states. As per usual everyone was really chill and friendly. They came up and introduced themselves and we hit it off.

Most of our new material hit, so the jokes got to survive another day. If a new joke works three times, we keep it in the rotation until it is fine-tuned and then sock it away for a longer set. If it fails three times, it’s done forever.

After the show we connected with the host and a few others and said our goodbyes.

Wait, we forgot to mention ...

Earlier in the article we encouraged aspiring comedians to get out there and try it, but we forgot to mention this one important caveat: PREPARE. We’ve been noticing a trend where totally overconfident people (usually middle aged guys, for whatever reason) get up and throw around incoherent, offensive ‘material’ and that doesn’t work. To clarify: offensive, to us, means ‘unfunny’. You can make jokes about any topic - nothing is off limits - just make it funny.

If you really want to do comedy, don’t be one of those “My friends say I’m funny, I’m just gonna get up there and riff!” types. That’s not gonna work (unless you really are a genius). You’re going to bomb, run the light, and have your confidence crushed. Do yourself a favor and write material before going up. Practice your set beforehand, too. It sounds obvious, but is often overlooked.

Au revoir!

Before leaving town we were excited to stroll around the street festival/block party we had seen prior to entering the club. By the time we got out, it looked like the city had been evacuated. The place was deserted, save for trash tumbleweeds and police questioning a midget. Realizing we’d missed the party, we hit the road for Indianapolis.