Mixed Blessings (and Drinks)

Guess it was good that I took a step back from planning every moment and instead just going with the flow of our new open mic. I and my two co-hosts stopped on by a little early and initially were elated by the influx of people. It was a good crowd - or so we thought. As we started counting the minutes to the mic it became abundantly clear why so many people were there.

Fun fact: did you know fantasy football season overlaps with actual football season? Yeah, who knew? Seems like a scheduling conflict to me but who am I to judge what sports fans do with their time. A crowd of seven backwards baseball hat wearing ultra-bros had made a bet the previous season whereby the dude with the lowest score I guess had to go up on an open mic. You know the thing a lot of us are trying to do for a living - yeah, they wanted to do it on a lark!

As the mic started, guess what; another group of five or so came on in the with the exact same plan. This, in addition to the usual drunks and weirdos that kill a decent mic on a good night, basically created a perfect s**t storm so profoundly ridiculous that it most certainly will wind up in a bit for at least one of us.

To their credit, my co-hosts did a great job holding their own amid the onslaught of jeers, epithets and drunken yelling. Between me and the bar owner, we had to break up two fights and kicked out another two people - the overlap unfortunately was not as vast between the four incidents as you would think. One woman tried to drunkenly grab the mic from one of the more seasoned comics creating a scene that would have made a sailor blush. Before the woman was kicked out, she whispered something racist to one of the drunken football guys creating another altercation.

The other fight occurred after the football guys had their fill of tequila shots and were on their way out. One of my co-hosts unwisely goaded one of them which prompted me, a 5'7" Puerto Rican to parse the room between two 6'3" men. Had one of them wanted to pick me up and throw me like a lawn dart they probably could have.

Amid all that chaos the actual comedians were not feeling the vibe and one of the names I recognized fled before he could go up. Another guy visiting from New York started his set saying "I've never felt so insecure in a room in my life." What's worse we only had three women go up. One was a poet, one was one of our co-hosts...not a great precedent.

On the positive side, now we know it can't get much worse and despite all the rigamarole we were complimented on how we handled most of the night by the bar owner. The man has a poker face but I have the feeling last night was one of the worst nights he's experienced which makes me feel better about the whole ordeal. Plus thankfully Fantasy Football season is finally over...right?