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Last night, Mitch Magee, his friend Todd and I were sitting in a Williamsburg bar which gives away free pizza when a stand-up show suddenly sprung up right around us. We had gone to the back, in a tiny alcove, trying to find a place in the bar that did not have music blaring so loud that it prevented any conversation. There were only ten people or so, and it turns out that about six of them were stand-ups waiting to go on. The host didn’t seem to have any jokes, although maybe he was rattled since the room was almost empty and those of us sitting there were silent and bewildered. Instead he would wait for anyone in the audience to do anything or move, and then he would label the person according to that action. “Oh, this guy, he’s the designated clapper! Look over here, this guy’s lounging! Are you lounging? That’s great! I love lounging! Uh-oh, this guy’s hooting!” I felt bad for him, but I didn’t want to move and attract attention (although I was already designated clapper).

The tragic thing is moments before this guy lept up and started, I had been talking about how I have been doing stand-up and enjoying it. Mitch was saying that he wanted to do a routine in which he jumped up on stage and just asked people for recommendations of good Thai restaurants.

We ducked out right as the host was introducing the first act. The host pleaded with us from the stage to stay, and it just made us run faster. He lost his designated clapper, lounger and hooter all at once. We went to Barcade where I got a text message from Eliza as she was standing next to John Flansburg at the 10th Anniversary ASSSCAT show. I then got my butt kicked in Centipede and Robotron.

I went to the ASSSCAT after-party and danced to “Scenario” with about 4 people. The party was bigger, but that’s all that was on the dance floor. It was really a series of sparsely-populated events for me last night.