By Paul Oddo
August 22nd, 2014 | New York City, NY
Edited by Al Bahmani
Open mics are like slaughterhouses. We all want the meat, but few of us have the guts to get down on that killing floor to witness the carnage and appreciate the process. Beautiful jokes are prime cuts of expertly carved funny meat. What ends up on your plate is the end result of a long gruesome undertaking, which is the practice required to hone the skill to make it look so easy. When people see Louis CK, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman or Russell Peters perform they buy the ticket, enjoy the show and go home with those memories. They don’t see the failure that went into reaching that polished level. There is a lot of effort involved in making it look effortless, many levels to get there, and open mics are one of the most important.
To many people open mics are not seen as important. They can be excruciatingly awkward at times. Other times open mics downright offensive and even frightening. During our mic people have asked me questions;
“Is it always this misogynistic?”
“Is this mic supposed to be this offensive?”
“Do people make jokes about race a lot?”
“Do comics do a lot of homophobic material like that?”
“Why do you let people say things like that?”
My answer is always the same,
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