A Great Night Downriver

What a great goddamn night at the Parks & Labor open mic.

I had been on the road with work for the last couple of weeks attending to my professional duties, which included shopping and evaluating retirement communities in suburban Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Akron (oh…suburban Akron) and hadn’t had a chance to hit a regular ol’ mic for a minute.

That isn’t entirely true. I could have hit a bar mic in Cleveland on Tuesday. I had the time, and I need to make some inroads into that scene, but Animal House was on TMC, and…ya know.

I could have gone a little later, but then Aliens was on, caught it right at the beginning and I really couldn’t turn that down. Then I was just going to turn in early, but then High Plains Drifter was on, and I had to watch that. That movie is fucked up, man.

I fell asleep before the end, though.

So anyway, I was tired and road-weary and in need of human connection that didn’t include questions about Assisted Living.

This guy Brett runs an open mic every Thursday at the Parts & Labor Bar in Melvindale, and though it’s a little bit of a trek for me (not really, but I get fussy these days), I thought it would be nice to run through some shit I had worked out for a club gig last weekend and see if it worked for disinterested Downriver barflies, currently ranked NO. 7 Most Obstinate Comedy Crowds in the Industry, between Portland coffee shop hipsters and middle management-types from Tulsa, OK. My ego was in store for a good drubbing, and I was hoping to see some friends and let down my hair over some Topo Chicos.

Unassuming, but high-quality, I assure you.

The comedy open mic is a curious thing. Anybody can sign up, and if you have any experience with people in general, you know that this is a bad idea. Anybody can be funny or witty in the right context, but let them talk for more than a minute, I guarantee your eyes will start to glaze and you’ll be thinking about what you had for breakfast before they finish – ESPECIALLY if they think it’s a funny story. Give that person a microphone and set them at a back of a room where alcohol is being served and you’re just setting yourself up for a bad situation.

Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil. The joke writing process can be vicious, not in the least because it demands a physical audience to evaluate new material, which is often not very good. The only way to make it less-not-good is to do it over and over and over and over until you can put together a couple of sentences that hold the audience’s attention and hopefully gives some of them a few chuckles. Seasoned, working professionals might develop a good enough ear to know when something is going to work, but they still need to confirm it in front of real people, with the real risk that it’s gonna tank. Just plop down like a dud grenade at their feet. This can feel more painful with newer comics, especially brand new, because the duds are more consistent and sustained, but it’s always difficult to watch. Until you start to love it.

Runners and other fitness-types talk about an addiction to the burn, like spicy foods, actually craving the pain that results from the work out and the long-distance run. Open mics are a little like that. You start to crave the painful birthing process of new jokes, and revel in the awkward silence when a punchline doesn’t land, both for yourself and for your friends (and just as often the people you don’t like, but Schadenfreude is only a small part of it). When I moved back to Michigan after years of those shitty open mics in Chicago, I finally felt like I came home when I found the New Way open mic, then run by an older comic who would do forty five minutes of rape and dead baby jokes to the shocked audience of Ferndale locals who just came in for a nice IPA.

I loved it.

Open mic now under the “management” of the notorious Eastside Goombahs Outfit. Mondays @ 7pm.

Add to that there was no list, at least that was visible to the comics, so you never knew when you were going to go up, sometimes for hours. Sometimes it would be 12:30 am and you had been there since 8 and the crowd had dwindled to three drunk accountants who were watching a Pistons game on the TV beside the stage. There was no way any of this was going to work. It was awful. And I fucking loved it.

This isn’t to say that Parts & Labor is a shitty open mic, only that comedy open mics are inherently at least a little bit shitty by nature. (And unlike the bygone days at New Way, you at least know when you’re going up.)

The bar can get a good crowd, including a few blue collar regulars that enjoy it, even if they sloppily interject comments after everybody’s jokes (now and then). Last night, most of that crowd wasn’t there, unfortunately. A few older guys came in, right before my set, but they clearly weren’t enjoying me or anybody else for the most part. Jokes died horrible deaths, stabbed and stomped by the silence and halfhearted heckles (you ever been casually heckled?). Brand new comics gave it their all, even with a decent punchline here and there, then walked back to their draft beer, dejected. Comics started commenting on the energy – which is always a great idea, because telling people they suck definitely gets them on your side. People ran the light. A guy told Nick, the host, that he had to do six minutes, not the five that everybody else got. He did seven and a half, closing with a bit about “people of color” that involved, horrifyingly, breaking out paint swatches.

It was glorious.

I’m by no means a professional, but I’ve gotten paid gigs, and especially for the bigger ones, you want to do well, give them your best A-material, or at least stuff that fits in with the audience. There’s some point of contention on this philosophy of course, that a comic is always supposed to be “true” to themselves and not adjust to the room, but I’m from the camp that sees making the audience laugh as the primary motivation. Figuring out what I and a roomful of strangers find funny in common is a fascinating, endless challenge, so for a booked gig there’s always this pressure to be as funny as possible. Fucking kill, man.

That pressure goes away at an open mic. You still want to be funny, but the responsibility of actually doing well goes away. As long as you’re not an asshole, it doesn’t matter what you do at a mic, even if none of it works. And after weeks of work for me, the Parts & Labor mic really hit the spot and let me relax with my friends.

The bar staff was cool and supportive, the bartender even recommending some CBD soda when I told her I wasn’t drinking. The cook made great burgers (at least they smelled great, I’m not eating after 7 these days and consequently I want to murder everyone), and all the comics went onstage. Many did okay, at least to the four non-comics who were watching. Everyone worked shit out. John McDonald closed the thing out saying ridiculous nonsense.

I fucking loved it.

“I’ve been eating a lot of stew lately.” - John McDonald, 2021