Taking Don Burnstick's advice, I started working the Native conference circuit. It was a way for me to get more exposure and more stage time. As well as make a little bit of money and travel a bit.
I did a search on the internet for Native conferences and was surprised at how many there were. But then again, Native people will get together for any reason.
I contacted a few of them, introduced myself, told them what I could offer in terms of entertainment (which at the time was 15 minutes of comedy), asked for one night's accommodations and travel and a small performance fee. I got some responses that said they would keep my name on file, others said they don't have the budget for entertainment, and so on.
The first conference I got was in Vancouver. I think it was in November. I remember I was supposed to fly out first thing in the morning, but there was a snow storm and my flight was delayed about 6 hours or so. But I finally made it down there.
The conference was held at a resort hotel. It was super nice. Because most of the rooms were already sold out for the conference, I was put in a suite.
Before the conference, I connected with an old high school friend through Facebook. He had never seen me perform before, so I invited him along. The organizers said it was okay for him to join us for dinner. I was set to perform after dinner.
Now, before this show, I had only really performed for university audiences. University students are open-minded. I can say just about anything I want.
I promised the conference people I would do about 15 minutes of material, which is all I had at the time. These very same jokes, I had done them before in front of university crowds and got a good response, so I thought it would be the same for this crowd.
The show started off great. My opening jokes got big laughs.
Now because I had just started on my comedy journey, I was learning as much as I could about the craft of stand-up comedy any way I could. Because there were no other stand-up comics in Prince George to learn from and share ideas, I got my information from books and the internet. And I read somewhere that when you're putting together your shows, start off with strong material, and finish off with strong material. So your best jokes go at the start and the end.
My opening jokes were fine. My middle jokes were good too. I still have a lot of them in my current routine. But my closing joke contained the phrase 'anal probes'. This did not go over very well at all. I don't know if you've ever heard a room of 1,500 people go silent before, but all I could hear were the clinking of forks on plates because people were still eating dessert. And this came right after they were laughing pretty hard and loud. I thought my mic went dead. I thought they didn't hear the punchline. But they did. And they didn't like it.
And because this was my last joke, I had nothing else to say except good night. Then I slinked off the stage and sank into my seat. My friend just kinda rolled his eyes at me like he didn't know what to say. What could he say?
Then the MC got on the mic and said, "The ______ is not responsible for the content of the comedian," and got a bigger round of applause than I did. I felt even lower.
Then some lady came over and handed me my cheque and thanked me for my performance. I turned to my friend and said, "Do you wanna get out of here?" Luckily there was a door near our table and I didn't have to walk through the audience to get out of there.
But when I got into the hallway, some guy stopped me and asked me a few questions and said something like, "Yeah, you....were.....funny, until the end there." And I just stood there as he was saying this. I wanted to bolt.
My friend left. I went to my room. And I hid there until I had to leave the next day. I even got room service breakfast because I didn't want to run into anyone that may have seen me perform.
I've since dropped that joke from my act.
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