About 15 years ago, I dabbled in standup comedy. Across three or four open-mic nights at two different bars (The Moon on Berry and Best Friends on Lancaster, neither of which exist anymore), I tripped and stumbled through what might generously be called “pothead observational comedy,” because in the late 2000s, marijuana had only recently been invented and I thought the sort of people who attend open-mic comedy events would find it hilarious if a guy in his early 30s got stoned in an alley behind the bar and then told people about it into a microphone for five minutes.
A “tight 5,” my “set” was not, and even calling it “loose” would extend far more grace than I deserved. But extending grace to unfunny comedians is tacitly parceled into the very concept of an open-mic night, a reality I was reminded of on a recent Monday evening when I checked out the weekly open-mic at Big Laugh Comedy Club downtown (604 Main St, Ste 100, 512-817-9535).
For one thing, the host, a guy named Jason, made a point to remind the audience that merely taking the stage at an open-mic requires a good amount of courage, and to be kind — or at least not actively prickish. He also instructed us to laugh at anything we thought was funny and not to laugh if a joke wasn’t “because these assholes will just keep telling them over and over again.”
I thought that was useful advice, and I made a point to apply it. And you know what? Treating my laughs like a thing to be earned felt nice. If you’re a pathological people-pleaser and are trying to practice setting boundaries, a situation that actively discourages courtesy affirmations (i.e., offering a polite chuckle when you really would rather press your lips into a thin line) is right up your alley. Big Laugh’s open-mic participants offered plenty of hacky jokes — “I’m a Mexican who doesn’t know Spanish, which is like a white guy with bad credit” was one of them — to be silent about. But some of these people — most of whom appeared later in the lineup — brought some genuinely funny material. What’s actually cool about enduring a steady drizzle of not-funny jokes is that when one of these fledgling comics lands one, it hits like tennis ball-sized hailstone bouncing off the pavement and nailing somebody in the crotch.
Big Laugh itself is kind of funny, because its stage is found deep within what used to be a restaurant downtown. You walk through the bar and past the kitchen to get to the room with the stage, and the decor has that kind of bare-bones, thrown-together aesthetic I would expect from a comedy club opening in a turnkey space a couple blocks south of Sundance Square. The bar is serviceable, but the comedy lounge feels like you’re at a club where people try to make you laugh on purpose — the room is dark, and the stage is not, lit by the spectral glow of green LEDs — which is really what matters.
Comedy is this place’s reason for being, after all, and while its open-mic night sets the bar pretty low, its other regular programming is pretty solid. Wednesday nights are a “crowd work” show called “What’s the Worst that Can Happen?” and on Thu, Aug 15, Dressed to Kill encourages the audience to wear nice clothes for “Fort Worth’s Classiest Comedy Show.” Big Laugh also hosts local and touring performers who have managed to emerge from open-mic purgatory with material that actually gets them booked.
On Friday and Saturday, up-and-comer Alfred Kainga (he’s been on Comedy Central, in other words) headlines four shows, and he’s pretty funny, and Friday night features viral sensation That 1 Mailman, a.k.a. Sean Fogelson. Then there’s Wes Barker, the Stunt Magician, who’s playing Big Laugh on Saturday. All of these guys’ followings number in the tens of thousands, and they will likely pack the house, which brings me to the one thing I thought was annoying — and not in “oh, another thirtysomething dude telling a joke about jerking off” sort of way. I get that people buy tickets to shows and that shows sell out. I also get that a $2 cover is absolutely reasonable to pay to see an open-mic. But if you have a door open onto a street at 7:30pm on a Monday to entice passersby to come to said open-mic, must you make me go through the hassle of giving my email and phone number to the door guy taking my money? Can he not just have a bucket to drop a couple singles in and forgo the halting capture of audience information? Because not only was that experience an aggravating speedbump on the way to a subsequent experience that may also prove to be an asswhip, but when that door guy took the stage, I felt bad that he had to endure people like me rattling him before he went on. But whatever. That’s part of the game. It’s people like me with our stone(ed)face miens that sharpen the open-mic’ers into weekend headliners. Drop by Big Laugh Comedy Club and do your part.
