Funny Man
11/16/02 - I guess I've always thought of myself as kind of funny. Not the funniest guy out there, not the most original, but pretty funny. I guess a few other people feel that way too. Specifically the judges of the first open-mic night they had at Texas A&M. Wow, it's quite a feeling. I'll retell the story as best I can.
I saw this ad in the school paper about Aggie Nights. I had been to one or two, and it was alright. Basically its just a group that opens up the student center here and has free Bowling, Billards, that kind of thing. No alcohol, just a good time. They were showing Goldmember and having open-mic night, and I thought it might be fun to try standing up in front of people and trying to make them laugh. I know the stuff I think about is funny to me, but I was wondering if it would be funny to anyone else.
So I kinda started thinking about some stuff I had found funny and other people had smiled at when I told them. There was a bit about a body piercing. I mean a real body piercing, like a pipe all the way through my abdomen. Kinda funny to me. Then about my idea for a tattoo of a name tag, so people could always know what my name was, even if I was shirtless on the beach or something.
Then there was this funny thing I saw a guy do a while back. He made it sound like he had something really funny on this piece of paper he would hold up, and really built it up. He talked about how "this wasn't always funny, not everyone found it funny, but this was something he liked." It turned out what was on the paper was the word THIS, in big print. I forget exactly how it went, but I basically took that idea and made up something I thought would be kinda funny.
So anyways I kinda run through it and say it to myself to see if it sounds ok. I walk over to campus (my bike got stolen, yay) and find the little sign-in place, and ask where the open mic stand up is. They point me in the right direction and I ask if I have the right place. They basically say yeah, ok, you go now. And so I went up and said my stuff. Really it was just talking for about 10 minutes, and then I stopped. I did a really bad Eminem impression, but since I was up in front of people, they couldn't just leave. I stopped when I lost my train of thought, and closed with my THIS, THAT bit.
I stuck around because they said it wouldn't be much longer. Saw a couple people I knew, but the comedy wasn't that great. I had no idea whether I would win or not, I figured there was probably some really funny guy on before me that the judges loved. Oh well, it was fun to try, and maybe I would do it again. After everyone was done, I went and said hi to someone I knew who came in and did a short set. I told her I had done one too, and she was sorry she had missed it. Oh well, the judges had made their decision.
I don't know why they picked me, but it was a great feeling to hear my name called. I asked later and they said about 15 people had been up, so it wasn't like I won by default. There was something funny about everyone who was up, maybe they just picked me because my name was Luke. Who knows. What was really nice about winning was the $250 prize for winning. Woo Hoo! Now I can buy Christmas presents for people. Good ones!
I hung around and talked to some people, none of which had actually seen me say anything. Maybe everyone who did got out of there real fast because they were so upset with the results. Oh well, yay for me! Now I at least have outside independent recognition that I have been at least moderately funny when compared to certain other people. What an honor.
Hey, and it gave me something to talk about on my webpage.-Luke