Whoa, I try to update my blog at least once a month. It's been slow at the top of this year though, but barely made it in time for April. So I wanted to share this video of me doing standup. People have always told me that they could see me doing standup because I have a very particular opinion and a voice to tell it. For the longest time I was intrigued by the idea of doing standup, but never actually worked up the courage to do it. About two years ago, I went to my friend Johnny Pemberton's show, who I had worked with on the Jump Street movies, and I realized the power of doing standup. For a few minutes, you put yourself on stage and really give people a very intimate portrait of who you are and I felt like that was really cool and valuable. So me and my friend Dante vowed that we would do a standup set within a 3 month period.
We regularly went to open mics a few times a week to see what it was like and I built up a lot of confidence from it and started working on what my first standup set would be. After maybe a month or two I finally decided that it was time for me to put my name into the open mic lottery. I went to multiple shows though and didn't get called and finally on the 4th or 5th open mic where I was ready and willing to go up I got called and did my three minutes and realized... it wasn't for me. It was fun, but it was such a struggle to just get one set done and I had heard from people that in order to really get into standup I had to be doing multiple sets a night. I decided that I may as well not take on another struggle so I hung up my standup aspirations.
Cut to a few months ago... I went to a show down the street from my apartment on a whim that my friend Teresa Lee was hosting. It was a show that was build around the idea of artists doing something on stage for the first time. It was an interesting concept. After the show, I went up and talked to her and she said if I ever wanted to go up to just let her know. I was kind of afraid to take up the mantle again, but I decided to just go for it. I performed this in January and I'm only just now posting it. My roommate Phil recorded it, but I only got the recording a few weeks ago and I only just now viewed it for the first time and uploaded it. I was kind of afraid to watch it. I always thought I wouldn't really get stage fright, but I remember it not going so smoothly and I think it kind of shows here. I really stumble through even my planned bits at the end. But, I think it's worth seeing and hopefully you'll get a laugh out of it.
