I did a show on Tuesday night. In the beginning, things were going really well. Surprisingly well, actually, given the fact that it was an obviously stoic audience that night. Then I did two very new and very involved jokes, back to back, and could feel the audience fading away from me. (One of the new jokes is about how my new therapist is in Chinatown, and all of the stupid things that come with this e.g. her office is filled with cheap Chinatown knock-offs of real psychology textbooks like The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Floyd. AND OTHER GREAT, HILARIOUS STUFF.)
After the set, I was talking to a friend and was in mid-complaint, when someone in the audience approached me. He said something like, “I just wanted you to know that I loved that one joke about ‘facing Mecca’ [while having sex in the back of a cab]. I might have been the one who was laughing at it, but I thought it was amazing.”
I thought that was nice, and it wouldn’t have bothered me that he was the only one laughing at the joke – but I was performing it in front of 50,000 people. Good night.
