(Sunday Paper, Year V, Issue 2)

Way back before I resurrected the Sunday Paper here on the ol’ John Sucich web page, I wrote a little something about my comedy career.

I’ll link to it here in case you’re interested in checking that out.

The gist was that, after about a year of performing, I felt that I wasn’t terrible and I was ready for people to come out and see me perform.

I don’t think that was wrong.

I did pretty well right off the bat - it’s not like I had never performed before (I had auctioneered and told some jokes at school, and had a career in communications before I taught), so I wasn’t raw and starting from scratch.

But, as I wrote in that post, I don’t get out as often as other comedians, so it’s hard to tell what my progression has been like relative to others’.

I do know this: I am a lot better now than when I wrote that post….and Saturday night was another step forward in that progression.

On Saturday night I headlined the show at Exhibit ‘A’.

That means I was the final performer on the show (which I usually host), performing for a half-hour.

I spent a lot of time thinking about when the right time to do that was - I thought about headlining in July, which would have been a kind of birthday gift to myself (and also coincided with the anniversary of when I started comedy, the week after my birthday), but I felt like I needed the show to grow more before I put myself on as headliner.

And that’s when I realized it would be a cool way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the show.

So I’d been looking forward to the show for a while…because I had been thinking about it for a while.

It’s the most nervous I’ve been before a set in a long time, though I practiced it a bunch. (And a 15-minute spot at a show on Wednesday was certainly helpful in my preparation.) Partly the nerves were because I’m good at getting in my own head about something and second-guessing myself…but partly it was because with my jokes, many of which are short, it’s a lot of jokes to remember in an order that flows.

And I think it flowed well.

I’m not a big tooter of my own horn. So I don’t know that I should sing my own praises here too much. (But I would encourage you to ask someone who was there about it.)

I will say this: I’ve known for a while I could carry a 5-minute set, a 7-minute set, even a 10-minute set. There aren’t many opportunities for me to do 15 minutes, but whenever I’ve done that it’s gone well.

And I now know that I can do just as strong a set over 30 minutes as I could when I’m doing 5.

The thing that struck me as I prepared for this show was that I didn’t use all of my jokes. I might have 45 minutes (even possibly an hour?) of material.

So maybe it’s the start of venturing into longer sets.

I don’t know. There’s a lot in comedy that I can’t control. I know not everyone thinks I’m funny…but I also know that the majority of people each time I perform find me funny.

It’s not like anyone’s knocking down my door to do a 30-minute set.

But it’s nice to know that when they do….I can do it.

Notes

*Tickets are already on sale for the February edition of Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’. You can get them at this link. (I’ll be back to hosting for that one.)

*Thanks for the cool response to “Every Week On Wednesday” on the Facebook page. (You can give the Facebook page a ‘Like’ at this link.) It seems like it’s been well-received so I look forward to continuing it. I like doing posts like that. (Not to be left out, you can also give me a follow on Twitter by clicking here.)

*I was hyper-focused this week on the show Saturday night, so I didn’t have a lot of ideas for this week’s Sunday Paper. I just figured writing about the one thing that was dominating my brain would make for a good post. I plan on getting back to the regular format next week.

*Thanks to those of you who came out on Saturday night, or who sent good wishes because you were unable to make it out. I really appreciate all of the support the past five-plus years. I’ll tell you this about myself: I wouldn’t be putting myself on stage if I was going to embarrass myself. So I have enough confidence in myself to cover that…but your support definitely helps me fill in the other gaps in confidence I might suffer. So thanks.