So, last night's SF Comedy Comp show was at the Black Oak Casino in Tuolumne, CA.  I have to say, I'm really enjoying the whole thing and hating it at the same time...

The show was good... All strong comics that I'm fine with losing to. :)  If you haven't guessed, I didn't place in the top five at this show either.  However 4 of the top 5 were completely different from the first show. 

So was the audience.  Instead of the hip, smart, young college crowd from Berkeley, we had a much older more blue collar crowd.  One of the themes that keeps popping up in my life is that I don't fit in with crowd's easily.  And that makes doing short 5 minute sets difficult. 

In my mind it was because people don't like me at first.  But my friend and fellow comic Dave Reinitz put it a different way on the ride home today.  He said I'm a puzzle to them.  Not that they don't like me, they just don't understand what I'm about until further in the show.  Which explains why I can win a crowd over with an hour show, but doing 5 minutes is tricky.  He used the example of Jacob Sirof, another friend and comic.  Jacob comes on stage and tells the crowd right off that he's a nerd.  Boom, job done.  Crowd knows where he's coming from.

What perplexes me, and apparently my audience, is how to define the fact that I don't define myself as a single thing.  Especially when, as an entertainment character, that's an important thing. 

So I'll be flipping my script a little bit tonight at the Marin Civic Center.  Again, a different audience.  Older crowd, more affluent, and different tastes once again.  And once again my job is to define myself and find a common ground with my audience that we can explore.  It's that connection that makes a performance work.  The being funny is the easy (easier) part.

Phil Johnson
www.RoadsideAttraction.com