Stood Up

New Friday Show at Coconuts

2009-05-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

Rudy 4-31-09 from Rudy Mendoza on Vimeo.

So there's a weekly Stand-Up show that I do every thursday night in a crappy hotel on the outskirts of town. To be honest, I dread this show. The demographic is typically comprised of drunk rednecks, hookers, truckers, some homeless people and you're occasional college student. Every show there is at least one aggressive heckler.

I always seem to do bad there. I didn't realize how badly until I started watching all of my recorded sets over the last 3 months. It was pretty sobering.

This last week a friday show was added to the mix and I was asked to do it. I walked in and scoped the audience to try to figure out what jokes I should tell. It was about 25 people, 85% of which looked like they have probably experimented with Crystal Meth. Great.

I was 3rd on the set list. As I do before every show, I write down a list of which jokes that I'm going to tell that night and watch the people before me to learn as much as I can about the crowd.

JC was the MC and he opened with some material that went pretty well but I noticed that there was a guy in the back on a double date who was heckling and trying to be funny for his female friend. He looked to be about 35 with a cap and a form fitting Nickelback shirt. That's right, Nickelback. Fantastic.

Up first was Charles Davis aka "Chuck D". One day I'll have a long and detailed post about him. All you need to know is that he is a one-legged 45 year old man who is notorious for telling leg jokes. He did 5 minutes of material. It was so silent you could hear the thoughts of the person sitting next to you. And then the guy in the back started heckling. This is going to be fun.

JC told some more jokes to revive the audience and then brought up my friend Johnny "Disco" Frazier. I think that he's absolutely hilarious but audiences will tend to disagree with me at times. This was one of those times. Nickelback fan decided this was about the right time to kick a man, ya know, while he was down. He was being such a jerk one of the other audience members told him to shut the f*ck up. Disco got off stage and called him an asshole. It was pretty tense for a comedy show.

Before I got up on stage I had alot of things going on in my mind.

I've seen myself do shows for crowds like this before. Why do I always do bad? I'm not aggressive enough. Instead of presenting jokes and hoping people will dig it, I need to try and shove it down their throats a bit. I can't be that quiet, shy guy. I need to show them that I'm in charge. If that guy heckles, then I need to show everyone else why he is an audience member and I'm on stage.

These guys are looking for blood. I can't show them any fear. They don't deserve my fear. Go up, be confident, get the job done.

And I'm proud to say that I did that. The whole set is not solid, by any means. I wouldn't submit this video to a comedy festival. But given the circumstances I survived, with my digity intact.

If you notice, somewhere in the middle, the guy tried to heckle me. I got a little louder and the audiences laughs drowned him out. Success!

After my set, JC kicked him out of the show and a fight almost broke out. Another night of comedy at Coconut's.

First Video Post

2009-04-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

4-10-2009 Gator Nights show from Rudy Mendoza on Vimeo.

So this is the first video that I'm posting. It's one of my best videos that I have so far and honestly it is the only video that I'm willing to show anyone at this point. However, I aim to change those habits with this blog.

Recently I've been having a string of relatively good shows, starting from this one and ending probably by the next show I do.

It feels great to do well in Stand-Up, because its difficult. It's easily one of the hardest things I've ever done and I've passed classes like Calc 3, Organic Chemistry, and Viking History. Books like The Hovamol and Hrafnkel's Saga aren't exactly bedtime stories.

There's alot of writing involved and most jokes don't make it to the microphone. I've filled 3 notebooks full of premises and notes. That adds up to about 200 thought out ideas and I'm only comfortable telling about 25-30 jokes right now. That's about a 15% success rate. That's awful! I Fail.

Telling new jokes on stage is pretty terrifying but its also the most exciting aspect for me because I'm invested in the jokes I tell. From the time it was conceived to the time I let it go off to college, I'm with that joke. I'm nurturing it, making sure I do everything I can to prepare it for the real world.

Now how would you react if, the moment you let your child out of the house to fend for themselves in the real world for the first time, some drunk middle-aged redneck went out of his way to stab your baby in the face?

That's what my Thursday nights feel like most of the time.

But then there are nights like the one in the video I posted. Where you go out on a limb and tell mostly new material and it becomes some of your best stuff. Where you gain some level of pride and confidence in your writing ability. And you start saying to yourself "maybe this is when I start to do consistently well" and "I think I'm starting to get the hang of this". That lasts for a while and it feels great, until you bomb again. But you know what its like to do well and you strive to get that to happen as often as possible.

I'm writing constantly. If you ever see me on the bus, you'd swear I was on my way to cross 8 mile.

First

2009-04-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

Hey!

My name is Rudy and I am an amateur Stand-Up comedian. I've been performing for the last year and a half and I've had the urge to chronicle my experiences. Today I satisfy that urge.

In February I started video recording all of my weekly sets so I could learn more about my delivery and my material. I will try to make it a habit to post the videos every week on here and add some of my thoughts on how the show went and any fun stories that may come along.

Thanks for reading!
-Rudy Mendoza