open mic 6/2

My name is Benjamin Idle and this is my first time performing stand up.

I have a few friends who are comedians and when I asked them for advice for my first open mic, they told me to avoid writing jokes about how nervous I am, or how anxious I am. The problem is they also told me that I should write what I know, and these two bits of advice are contradicting. If I can’t write about anxiety, all I have left is smoking pot and watching reruns of Whose Line Is It Anyway; there’s just not much else to me. Plus, the advice, “write what you know” only serves as a reminder for how much I don’t know. I shouldn’t be nervous anyway, because even though this is technically my first time doing stand up comedy, I used to play trombone in a ska band…and that was essentially the same thing. I was standing; people were laughing…generously too. If you don’t know what ska is; don’t worry about it. I assure you it won’t come up again.

We didn’t call ourselves a ska band; we just told everyone we were a punk band that happened to have a trombone and a trumpet and a saxophone. But no, we were punk rock. I was very punk rock when I was younger. When I was a teenager I used to rebel against everything; now I just rebel against my waist line and my slowly forming insanity, but I digress. When I was like 15, I decided I would shock my conservative, Bush loving parents by coming out to them as gay, which I mostly wasn’t, but whatever. It ended up backfiring on me though, because my mom was just like super accepting and supportive and she told me that she loved me and that all she cared about was that I was happy and that she loved me no matter who I loved. And my other mom was also cool with it. I think I might have misjudged the vibe of my household.

I don’t actually have two moms; I made that up for the sake of a joke. It also causes people to think for a moment that I might have a unique perspective on the world, but no I’m just another boring white guy doing comedy. There are too many of us. I feel like I’m part of the problem but I’m honestly just a big comedy nerd. I think part of the reason there are a lot of white guys doing comedy is due to all the spare energy we have at the end of a long day of having like zero adversity to overcome. I mean, I do have my own adversities to overcome, such as the fact that I am depressed and overweight, which means I constantly feel both full and empty at the same time. Other than that I know to check my privilege.

Has anyone here ever been driving recklessly, maybe due to debating on what song to play next off your ipod, or you’re checking your gps, or maybe you’re just drunk, no judgments, and you look up to see that the car you’re about to smash into has a bumper sticker on the rear windshield that reads “Baby on Board” so of course you reverse time and put your distraction away and focus on the road? What exactly is the point of putting a sticker on the rear windshield of a car that reads Baby on Board? That sticker has to have zero effect on anybody. What effect can it honestly have? And also, chances are I don’t even know your stupid baby, so why would I care? Maybe if the bumper sticker read, “Baby Tiger on Board” I’d probably do whatever I could to improve the safety of my driving while in proximity of your vehicle, because tigers are an endangered animal, unlike babies which are aplenty. I’d also heed a bumper sticker that said, “Ben Idle” is on board, but that’s because that’s my name and although I’d be confused, I’d definitely not want to injure myself in any sort of way, so I’d avoid accidentally crashing into that particular vehicle at all cost. Maybe “Baby on Board” just means that this person’s baby is down for whatever. It doesn’t matter what you guys want to get into, this baby is on board. He’s DTF.

Having just said whatever that was, I’d like to establish that I’m actually a very ethical person, when I find it convenient. I was actually a vegetarian for like 10 years, which was a really long time. Well, I should clarify that I at least I thought I was a vegetarian for 10 years, but then a friend of mine sat me down and explained to me that chewing on meat and spitting it out didn’t actually count. He also told me that I can’t keep telling people I was straight edge for 14 years because it doesn’t count if those 14 years of being drug and alcohol free started when I was born and ended when I turned 14 and subsequently went pretty hard.

I did go a little hard for a while. I’ll say medium; I went medium. I don’t do drugs anymore, though, because at the place I now work, they randomly select 10% of the staff to be drug tested every 3 months. The other day a coworker complained to me about how he was selected for the most recent one and I don’t know what else he had to say because I was immediately pissed that I didn’t even get selected after all of my abstaining. I just wasted three months of my life. Think of all of the drugs I could have been doing!

I was talking to this guy I work with recently and he told me that he met the woman who is now his wife while playing the online video game World of Warcraft, and I thought about how cool it is that online dating is a thing now. People can find their ideal matches by scanning profiles to find common interests and discern personality similarities. It makes me feel like a cave man for having met my girlfriend at a party in real life. However, I did meet my mom online. I mean, I had a mom already but the one I have now is way cooler. She’s into film noir and she listens to Fugazi. She’s also way less into child abuse than my old mom was, which is awesome.

A ton of my friends have children now, and I can’t figure out why. I mean, I think I might want kids some day, but not like right now, because I’m really busy right now and whatever, but maybe in like 10 years or so once I’ve waited enough time to be certain that dogs won’t learn to talk within my lifetime. I’d take a talking dog over some little shit who looks like me any day. Thank you for letting me be here; my name is Ben Idle. You can find me on the internet if you’re interested.