Hosting Fody’s and Charity Show In Review!
I hosted the show at Fody’s this Thursday to practice for the Headliners hosting offer I got that starts in September. I was really excited that Alana was so open to letting me cut my hosting teeth on her room, much more excited than nervous anyway.
Normally there are ten comics who do ten minutes each. But there were eleven and Alana gave two other comics time because they came to the show. So she bowed out to bring the total to twelve. I did abut five minutes up front and was a bit rusty since I hadn’t gotten up in two weeks.
I was really struggling with the hosting thing. I realized that one of my favorite parts about just being one of the comics is that when you get offstage you’re done. Not the case when hosting my friends, not the case at all. I fumbled a hand shake or two, I bumped into one of the guys, my intros were weird and unnatural. Part of my wanted to ask Alana to take over but the shame of that would be far worse than the embarrassment of doing a poor hosting job on my first try.
But hosting is a skill that I want to have. And it’s a skill that I need to master by September lest the offer to have me host weekly at Headliners will be quickly retracted.
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The charity show in Greenville, NH was for the Tom Gallagher Fund. He is a paraplegic and the town is raising money to buy him a van. Nice guy. Very appreciative of the fifteen comics who came out for the show.
There was some confusion about when it started so I got there around 7 PM since I thought it started at 8 PM. Nope, we didn’t get going until 9 PM. But the comics were provided food and one drink on the house which I didn’t know until I arrived. So that was great.
Everyone got seven minutes or so and I would say that most everyone did well. Some of my favorite guys were there so I had a good time. It was a mix of my favorite Grog and Shaskeen comics.
I had made my set before leaving home but when I got there and saw the crowd I changed things up. I opted to do my parent friendly jokes. It was an older crowd and I didn’t want to alienate them with my losing my virginity jokes. It was the right call.
The guy who went on before me did nine minutes. WAY over time. And he didn’t get a single laugh so the room was kind of dead for me. But I knew that going into my set and I was determined to win them back. And I really think I did. I tried to be slightly more high energy than I am normally and it helped a little. I did six minutes and was pretty happy with my set.
The crowd was about forty people strong and the other comics and waitstaff put it at about sixty people. Even when someone didn’t get the laughs they were expecting the crowd was respectful. I would happily do that room again. The owner is hoping for a twice a month sort of thing. It’s about forty minutes from Nashua and I’d make the drive for another night like last night.
I will hopefully be posting a video of some of my newer jokes later tonight.
High five as always lovelies.
