Amy’s First Time.
The date was November 10, 1998, the place, Buzz
Coffee, Los Angeles. That was the
day that my stand up cherry was popped.
I had just moved to Los Angeles from Charlotte, North
Carolina in June 1998, and had given myself 3 years to become “famous” (like
Madonna famous). As I look back on
my original plan, I realized that was one of my funniest jokes ever. …”Madonna
famous in 3 years”…hilarious.
I was taking improv classes at The Groundlings School and
met a girl named Rylee Newton in my Level 2 class. She was thinking about doing some open mics and asked if I
wanted to come along. “Fuck yeah”,
I said. Well, maybe it was, “Hell
yeah!”, or possibly even, “I’m feeling thin, want to get a burrito?”.
For a couple of weeks, I painstakingly watched Rylee suffer
through her 5 minute sets – literally reading her jokes off a piece of paper
(by the way, Rylee is an AMAZING comedian. She has performed on Comedy Central, etc. She is living in Portland, Oregon
now. If you ever have an opportunity
to see her perform, do so. It will
be worth your while). I finally
grabbed my lady balls, and decided that it was time to do the do.
I had written material for weeks…and all of my jokes were
BRILLIANT, of course (see below for an example of on of my brilliantly written
jokes for my first set. Get ready
to be blown away by my comedy genius).
Sunday came around and it was time to do an open mic and get famous.
Once at Buzz, I signed up for a spot and nervously awaited
my turn. The night slowly dragged
on. Finally, Joe Wagner was on
stage and I was on deck – ready to blow people’s minds. During Joe’s set, he either
accidentally or purposely poked fun at an old man in the audience, which didn’t
go over well. All hell broke
loose. The old man jumped out of
his chair, rushed the stage and took a swing at Joe. The old man’s wife jumped on her husband’s back and tried to
restrain him. Chairs and lattes
were a-flying. It was like a
fucking Wild West saloon fight.
All of the excitement was moved outside so the show could continue. Most of the audience followed the chaos
outside. So, 3 people remained
inside to watch my set: Hal Sparks (only because he was going up after me),
Rylee and Adam Gropman, who was running the mic.
I walk up on stage and begin my set with (hold onto your
pants…shit is getting ready to be brilliant), “I hit myself in my face while I
was doing Taebo and my roommate asked how I got my black eye. I told her that my boyfriend hit me. She said, ‘I didn’t know that you had a
boyfriend’”. HILARIOUS. I stood there waiting for a glorious
outbreak of applause. Instead, I
heard crickets and saw three blank and confused faces. I blacked out for the remainder of my
set. I have no idea what I said,
or how I said it. Whatever it was,
didn’t lead to a development deal from NBC.
14 years later, I’m still “pushing the rock up the never
ending hill” and trying to lead myself to the promise land. I have a huge fan base that consists of
my two dogs. Living the
dream, people. Living the dream.