\u201cWell. That\u2019s my fun for the day.\u201d That\u2019s what my brain says once I finish my five daily word puzzles*, usually by 8:30am. Sure, there may be other moments that bring me joy\u2013when Patrick cracks a wry joke; or Arlo announces he\u2019s going to give himself a bath by running into the living room naked, jumping into a starfish shape, and doing jazz-hands; or a Lizzo song comes on and it aligns with my walking pace and I kinda feel like I\u2019m dancing. Wheeeeeeeee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But my life is not overwhelmingly fun<\/em>. Part of it\u2019s that I work seven days a week, so\u2026when fun? Fun when? Mostly, the things I find fun require childcare, which when you\u2019re a single parent almost always means a fifteen-dollar-an-hour premium on top of any admission costs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That said, I\u2019ve been trying to schedule some stuff for myself. I buy tickets to things, which forces me to find and budget for a babysitter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A few months back, I checked out the Improv\u2019s website. A comedian I\u2019d seen online, Ashley Gavin, was coming. Her crowd work was sharp, and I thought what the hell and bought tickets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When the announcer\u2019s voice invited her onstage, I was surprised. Usually, there\u2019s an opener. And actually there was one, but Gavin came out first and instructed us how to laugh at the show, i.e., not with smirks or giggles like we would at home scrolling our phones, but with big open-mouthed guffaws. I got it. I\u2019ve MCed storytelling shows before, and it can be helpful to tell the audience more or less how to be a good crowd. So, OK, I was ready to laugh frequently and audibly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Gavin brought up the opener. I\u2019d never heard of him, but he was BIPOC (yes), fat (yes<\/em>), and queer (yaassssssss<\/em>), so I was prepared to like him a whole bunch. And he was pretty funny. Had some good bits. But he had this thing where, at the end of each punchline, he would say, \u201cBut…\u201d Except he pronounced it, \u201cBbbbboooooiiiit.\u201d Like he\u2019d almost blow a raspberry on the B and follow it up with just the weirdest pronunciation of -ut. I know some comedians have a regular tag or a verbal disfluency that defines their voice, and it can definitely work, but maybe you didn\u2019t catch above how I said \u201cat the end of each punchline.\u201d Right hand to god, at the end of each punchline<\/em>. It landed less like a catch-phrase and more like a verbal tic, and it took the funny straight out of the jokes. I felt nervous<\/em>, like I would clench my abs to prepare for it, and then it would come and I\u2019d cringe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was relieved when Gavin came back up for her set, and I want to say up front that she was funny. I found her very funny. The last twenty minutes of her hour were worth the ticket price, but the first forty were also good, and that\u2019s how it\u2019s meant to be done: Tell good jokes the whole time, but build to your best stuff, and end with a bang. In that sense, it was a success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bbbbboooooiiiit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Very<\/em> early on, she started evaluating how her jokes were landing, and she didn\u2019t stop. Again, that can be funny. I\u2019ve seen comedians\u2013Mike Birbiglia\u2026 others\u2026\u2013notice that a joke didn\u2019t work and make another joke out of that<\/em>. You know, pick up an imaginary notebook and mime-write \u201cRemove joke about pickles from set, period\u201d or whatever. And they get a laugh. If that kind of thing is done\u2013sparingly\u2013it can be hilarious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this wasn\u2019t that. First of all, it wasn\u2019t sparing; it was near-constant. And second, she didn\u2019t evaluate her jokes. She evaluated us<\/em>. She judged the audience <\/em>on how her jokes performed. She called us slow, asked what was the matter with us, that kind of thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And I was like, bitch, I didn\u2019t pay $60 for tickets, $30 on a two-menu-item minimum, and $50 on a babysitter, to come here and be assessed<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I love stand-up, so I\u2019ll probably go back to the Improv, maybe even to see Gavin again, bbbboooooiiiit only if she agrees to get a new opener and stop judging my shit<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n *Wordle, Mini-crossword, Strands, Connections, and Squardle<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWell. That\u2019s my fun for the day.\u201d That\u2019s what my brain says once I finish my five daily word puzzles*, usually by 8:30am. Sure, there may be other moments that bring me joy\u2013when Patrick cracks a wry joke; or Arlo announces he\u2019s going to give himself a bath by running into the living room naked, … Continue reading FUN!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9210,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209\/revisions\/9210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avidbruxist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}