I wanted to title this post “breaking the bloglence” (get it? blog-lence!), but I realized that it was neither clever nor funny, and that I am just super tired. And the reason I am super tired is also the reason I am breaking my self-imposed seven-day blogcation (get it? blog-cation! somebody stop me!). So here’s what happened:

Last night I was a part of the first round of the “Funniest Person in My Town” contest. Now, let me just say, I HATE comedy contests. They take the fun out of doing stand-up- they are usually based on audience vote, so inevitably the person who brings the most people and is usually the least funny moves on, and they make something that was never meant to be competitive, competitive. I participated in a bunch last year, was continually beat down by them and swore that I wouldn’t do it again. But this one is hosted by my home club, so I felt like I should participate.

I tried to go into it with a “who gives a fuck” attitude, but in all honesty, I wanted to win. I was nervous like I haven’t been nervous in a long time. I had a good group of friends there, but I knew I couldn’t move on with their votes alone (I had about 15 out of the 250 people there). I watched the first couple of comics go up and completely bomb. At the last minute I decided to change my set, because at least half of the audience, friends of some guy trying stand-up for his second time ever, was over 50 and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t appreciate my joke about being in a strip club and seeing ladies’ vaginae (did you know that is the plural of vagina? Who knew?).

All this to say, I was less than sure of myself while I was waiting to go on stage. Right before I went on, a comedian came up to me and said “Just be confident. Whatever you do, just be confident.” And so I took a deep breath, repeated “confidence, confidence, confidence,” walked up to the stage, and had an amazing set. Maybe my best set ever.

One thing I like (and hate) about stand-up is that you never have to ask someone how you did. You know. Everyone knows. Either they laughed or they didn’t. And this time they did. A lot. It was great. And the icing on the cake? I moved on! I’ve made it to the semi-final round!

And I was, and still am, unreasonably excited about it. When the MC called my name, you’d think I’d been asked to “come on down” for the Price is Right. I made BF, a great sport as usual, talk about it the whole ride home and then again when I woke up this morning. I’m still beaming, sitting here at my desk, pretending to do very serious work. I am totally aware that in the scope of a comedy career, this small victory is pretty meaningless, but don’t try telling me that today!

Anyway, I just wanted to share my news!

—– RESUMING BLOGCATION—–