I was there until about 12:30 when the risk/reward thing just became too much. From where I sat, I don’t think I would have been able to hear anyway. I wish there were a way to recreate what happened last night, but it would be impossible. What an incredible moment that almost was.

After the thing at Harvey’s back in March or April, I was kind of turned off on the whole stand-up thing.  They threw three actual comedians up on stage and one amateur.  The”real” comedians weren’t really for me, but they certainly got laughs.  The sets were filled with gay jokes, Sam Adams jokes, “Gresham” jokes, and jokes about life on the road.  Spare me.

But get this, when I announced my intention to do the three minute thing in front of a couple of friends and co-workers, they asked me to do my routine on the spot.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t have a routine, they wanted jokes.  Blah.  So I told them a little about what I’d observed about the craft of joke telling and I told them about how I didn’t want to tell gay jokes, Sam Adams jokes, “Gresham” jokes, or life on the road jokes.

Sidebar: By now you’re no doubt wondering what a Gresham joke is.  A Gresham joke is any joke poking fun at a particular part of town and its inhabitants.  This is whacky FM DJ stuff.  It’s sandbox humor for folks who never leave the county.  That said, I think the same sort of people who love to see their hometown in the movies or on TV enjoy hearing Gresham jokes.  It somehow makes the experience more relatable.  A Gresham joke is a solid go-to for any comedian, not unlike a Buddy Holly cover for a bar band.  It’s a solid basic that’ll play anywhere.

Anyway, I went on to talk about the night of comedy I’d seen and told one of the jokes I’d heard.  When I hit the punchline, milk literally shot out of one of my friends’ noses.  It was that funny.  Only it wasn’t.  At least not to me.  But there’s a lesson here.  Gresham jokes work.  The audience loves them, so you should probably tell them.

Why am I telling you all this?  Because Friday night I went into North Portland to check out the comedy stylings of the Curious Comedy Theater.  It’s kind of weird how this whole thing came about.  A friend of mine asked me to go check them out a few weeks ago.  A friend of hers’ is performing there and she wanted to go check him out.  Both of us got busy and weren’t able to make it.  Then this week, I found a coupon in the Willamette Week and decided to go check them out.

They’ve got a very nice, very clubby, very warm space up on MLK in the Vanport Square.  I paid my admission, bought a beer, and took a table down front, stage left.  The group came out a little after 8 and introduced themselves.  They also introduced a special guest they had for the evening.  ’Twas local comedian Gabe Dinger.  Gabe was the emcee the night I was at Harvey’s.  I cringed and waited for the Gresham jokes to flow.

Only they never came.  Gabe was quick, smart, and funny.  It was almost like he was playing a jazz club instead of a rock-and-roll dive.

Gabe’s role in the first bit of long form was as narrator for an Armando.  And he was quite good, riffing off a very weak audience suggestion with a good story about Halloween at a religious school.  The troupe then took it from there, creating several clever scenes.  None of them were garden variety, and none went for the lowest common denominator.  Yet they weren’t so out there that they left the audience scratching their heads either.  They’re a solid group and I’m looking forward to coming back.

There are a couple of places around town, including Curious Comedy, who offer improv and stand-up classes.  I’m kind of resistant to the idea, preferring to do it myself.  Like most things though, I probably can’t.  And the point of the whole thing isn’t really to “learn” anyway.  It’s about collaberation and networking, learning is a by-product.  So we’ll see what happens.

Comedy is a tough thing.  If you don’t believe me, go watch Comedian.  It’s taken me until the last few years to develop a coherent thought on what makes comedy so difficult.  Here it is.  You know how you can flip on the olides radio and hear a song from twenty, thirty, or even forty years ago and you still enjoy it even after you’ve heard it a hundred times?  And how you’ll pay over $100 to go see that guy sing that same song again (*cough*Springsteen*cough)?  Well it doesn’t work that way with comedians.  Every time you see that person, you expect to hear something new come out of their mouth.  And if they spend a night telling old jokes, they’ll get booed off the stage.  And if a comedian rips off another comedian’s joke, they’re instantly blackballed.  But if Johnny Cash sings Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”, he’s hailed as a genius.

I saw Dennis Miller several months ago at Spirit Mountain Casino.  He did about a 45-minute set.  He kept it together by working off a wrinkled sheet of paper he kept on the stool on stage.  He’d tell a couple of jokes, then refer again to the sheet to remember what the next joke was.  It’s the same thing any band does when they’re on stage.  Yet when I saw Miller do it, I cringed just a little.  And he told at least one joke I’d heard him tell when I saw him two decades ago at the Schnitz when he opened for Louis Anderson.  A sin?  Heck no.  It was still a good joke.  And if you can go twenty years between telling the same joke, you’re a better man than I.

I’ve been listening to the Adam Carolla podcast for the past few months.  I like Carolla because he can riff on anything at any moment.  And the podcast format suits him to a tee because he can go on for as long as he wants on anything he wants.  The guy is equal parts genius and fool.  I dig him.

Anyway, he had Brad Garrett on last week.  They talked about their various TV projects and started riffing on unfunny executives.  In the middle of his rant, Carolla gave me a little nugget to chew on.  He said something to the effect of “rather than taking some time and working up a three-minute bit for an open mic night, TV executives are concerned about story.”  The “three minutes for an open mic night” thing got me to thinking.  Could I put together three minutes?  Getting back to the music analogy, it’s sort of like writing a single song.  Yeah, it’s different, but the craft and care are similar, aren’t they?  Not that I’ve ever written a song…but…

I digress.

So add that to the list for the summer.  Come up with three minutes to perform on someone’s open mic night at the end of the summer.  Where do you even do open mic in this town?