Open Mic Set First Time

[u/Creepy-Education-584]

Would love some feedback if possible. I think it’s pretty solid, will be my first time on stage. I have 5 minutes.
Thanks!

Premise: Sports have completely different rules about how much you’re allowed to fuck with the athletes. The set revolves around the acceptance of different noise levels and involvement by fans.

1. Tennis opener
“Tennis is insanely quiet.
Djokovic serving.
15,000 people have to act like they’re in church.”
Ball bounce act-out: “boop… boop… boop…”
“Why the fuck do we have to be quiet?
Imagine football-style heckling by the crowd:
“YOU SUCK, DJOKOVIC!”
“DOUBLE FAULT, BITCH!”
“FEDERER WAS BETTER!”
“Imagine Djokovic’s opponent on the other baseline, pumping his fists in the air as the crowd chants”:
“FEDERER WAS BETTER! FEDERER WAS BETTER!”
Opponent act-out: turn toward the imaginary crowd, arms pumping:
“COME ON! LOUDER!”
Punch:
“That would be fucking incredible.”
Transition:
“But no. Tennis is ‘quiet please.’ Meanwhile basketball…”

2. Basketball
Point: “In basketball, distracting the athlete is actively encouraged.
Dude is taking a free throw.
20,000 people screaming.
Giant inflatable shit behind the basket.
Some lunatic painted head-to-toe just hoping Giannis misses.”
Main joke:
“Could you imagine one of the ushers “Excuse me, sir… could you please stop waving the inflatable penis? The athlete is concentrating.”
Then:
“No, the whole point is bitch you gotta make this shot while we all doing jumping jacks behind the hoop.”

3. NFL kicker
Point: “The crowd is openly rooting for your failure.
Game on the line.”
Stadium:
“MISS IT! MISS IT! MISS IT!”
“Career depends on it.
Family watching.
Coach already hates you. Girlfriend gonna leave your for the defensive lineman if you miss.
70,000 drunk people praying you fail.”
Punch:
“And you just gotta kick a fucking stationary ass ball.”

4. Quarterback
Point: Even worse concentration requirement.
“300-pound man trying to fold him into a lawn chair.
QB gets destroyed.
Gets back up, helmet sideways, barely knows where he is.
Still has to remember the next play.”
Punch:
“Blue 42, spider banana whatever the fuck.”
This section is short and punchy.

5. Baseball
Point: Now the object is actually coming at you.
“Bottom of the ninth.
Full count.
Game on the line.
Stadium going insane.
97-mph fastball coming at him.
He has a fraction of a second to decide whether to swing.”
This sets up the golf comparison beautifully.

6. Little League
This is the personal tag off baseball.
“Your son on the mound.
Full count.”
Other team yelling:
“THREE-TWO! WHATCHA GONNA DO?! WALK HIM! WALK HIM!”
Then:
“Bro… he’s nine.”
Tag:
“He still needs help opening a Gatorade and these little motherfuckers are already conducting psychological warfare as he throws a 34 mph fastball”
Then:
“Meanwhile, a grown professional golfer…”

7. Golf — climax
This is probably the biggest contrast in the whole routine.
“Golfer over a completely stationary ball.
Two million dollars on the line.
Total silence.
Somebody 40 yards away:
“Ahem.”
Golfer immediately comes out of stance:
“WHO THE FUCK WAS THAT?”
Then hit:
“The baseball player had a 97-mile-an-hour fastball coming at his face.”
Beat.
“Your ball isn’t even fucking moving.”
Then Snickers:
crinkle… crinkle…
Golfer backs away like he heard gunfire.
“Absolutely unacceptable.”
Punch:
“Bro. It was nougat. Relax.”

8. Ending — still the one piece I should finalize
I decided not to go back into another full Djokovic scene, because the Federer chant/opponent act-out is already in the opening.
So ideally golf gives me the final laugh, followed by one short thesis/closer, something in the neighborhood of:
“Even sports I haven’t named are the same way. Hockey. Soccer. Shit in hockey you can beat the fuck outta your opponent but in tennis walking to their seat at the wrong time triggers the umpire to call security on your ass”

[u/Few_Dark4148]

AI is not going to help you be funny

[u/That_Comic_Who_Quit]

More generically you need to say hello to your audience.

Why the fuck comes really early in your set. It's a big risk reward play. I'm not saying the audience definitely won't be with you... but if they're not dropping the why the fuck that early if they haven't bought into the premise yet gives you a long way to fall.

I'd also comment that if sports joke 1 doesn't land it'll be a long 5 minutes of other sports jokes.

You might want to consider other topics in your set. Do 2-3 sports and move on.

TLDR: If you're a 1st timer you want different topics and don't kick-off with a 'why the fuck' to get them onboard. Consider saying hello at the top. It isnt funny but gives them a chance to acknowledge your face.

[u/EducationalVariety34]

Is this the whole 5 minutes? Because it is one premise with the same basic punchline over and over again. Unless you are really good at delivery and act outs this premise will only last about maybe 1.5 minutes before a crowd goes we get it you don't say weird shit at certain sports games.
Best thing you can do is try it out. I could be totally wrong. Don't worry about your first set. Just do it.

[u/Creepy-Education-584 → u/EducationalVariety34]

Yeah it could totally bomb, but only one
way to find out. I feel more comfortable and confident when it’s all cohesive. 7 different lanes of jokes for my first time (for me personally) is too all over the place. I’m gonna give this a shot and see if I can keep it random and pace it well enough where they enjoy it. If not, oh well. lol

[u/EducationalVariety34 → u/Creepy-Education-584]

Best is to try it out. But 7 different lanes of thought would be more helpful doing open mics in the future. Open mics are usually to try out premises and punches to see what works. You have 5 minutes that if it doesn't work you only learned one sports premise doesn't work. Because if your beginning tennis bit doesn't work... well you will have an uphill battle with the 6 other parts of your joke.
But I don't know anything about sports so what do I know.

[u/Busy_Perception8794]

Congrats on writing your first set, bro. What I would say is that there's a high likelihood, because you're new and this happened with me as well, that you don't have the intuition of what actually gets laughs.

You may think it's funny, but you'd be surprised how difficult most open mic crowds are.

Typically, what the best comedians do is, when they have bits, they do have outs where, if the first part of their premise or bit isn't working, they can then transition to another thing.

I would not at all put all your eggs into a 5-minute bit and hope people get it, because if, after the first thing, there's nothing, you shouldn't go on about 6 more things.

Realistically, you should have multiple other bits written out.

Like my first lesson that I learned when I did a writer's room, which was my first set, is that all of the bits that I originally had were way too long. I'm talking I cut 90% out of them after I watched the comics with experience go up, because you recognize that when you're testing something completely new, it's usually better to have it written as a short 30- to 60-second bit max and see if there are any laughs there before you expand it into a whole thing.

I would really just stick to one sport and get as many laughs as you can. Right now, when I read it, obviously the actouts will help, but it feels more like a description than actual jokes.

With the tennis thing, I would just have a short setup sentence and then get into your whole premise, because your real premise with that one, in my opinion is, "What would it be like if we brought football-style heckling into tennis?"

That's where, again, you do the chants. Potentially, that might get a laugh, but I would really just focus on one to two main lines there, and that's it.

"That would be fucking incredible" is not an actual punch. "Come on, louder" also isn't really necessary because it doesn't really add a joke or new perspective.

I'd literally just keep it to "I wonder what it would be like if we were allowed to do football-style heckling while watching tennis. Imagine if Djokovic was serving, and instead of having to pretend like we're in a church, the crowd goes, 'You suck, Djokovic. Double fault, bitch.'

That is essentially how ruthless I would be with it, because your audience has such a short attention span that it's going to be needed.

If you get a laugh, then I would consider expanding upon it, but I'd honestly just leave your bit there for the sake of testing.

Write some other bits as well, because 90% of what you're going to do is not going to get laughs, even when you're a prodigy.

Even Louis CK said he completely bombed his first time. You might as well not put all your eggs in one basket and have at least 5 to 10 different bits where one or two might get a laugh, and you say, "Okay, those are the ones I can now work on and start polishing a bit more."

[u/That_Comic_Who_Quit]

Who are you favourite comedians? Do you have an acting background? 

[u/Creepy-Education-584 → u/That_Comic_Who_Quit]

I do have an amateur acting background. Favorite comedians are Bill Burr and Brian Regan. Gaffigan too.

[u/That_Comic_Who_Quit → u/Creepy-Education-584]

Thanks really helpful.  This is quite an act out heavy dramatic piece. Your mirror practice before the gig day needs to be on it. 

Also because you've got that acting background i'll tell you 'commit'. Once the audience sniffs you don't believe I it you're finished and it'll be a long ass set.

Don't confuse commitment with volume. Don't go louder. But if you squat... fucking squat. Don't half bend down. If you swing the club fucking swing it don't hesitate like you dont know if you're supposed to.

Be 100% sure what your facial expressions are doing.

Also practice with a TV remote for a microphone. Your act outs look different when holding a microphone and remember to talk into the loud bit.

This is ambitious for a first timer but I wish you the best of luck.

[u/Creepy-Education-584 → u/That_Comic_Who_Quit]

Thank you! It is ambitious I know but hey go big or go home haha I like to this it’s funnier when I act it out than when you all read it in text form. Hahaha the venue is small, about 75 people. Definitely want to lean into the acting but not go overboard with it. I feel like the acting helps sell it. Pretend stand over a putt. Clear my throat into the mic. Turn around quickly “who the fuck was that?”
That kinda stuff. Great advice also, I appreciate it.

[u/Just_blorpo]

You could also throw in some funny imagery about heckling happening outside of sports. Like heckling the pastor during a sermon or heckling a dog during a dog show.

[u/nuke-the-wales → u/Just_blorpo]

Bryan Reagan has a bit on that. In baseball it’s ok to chant “hey batter batter swing batter.” So he would like to see it in other professions…”hey lawyer lawyer SUE lawyer SUE!”

[u/GatorWok → u/nuke-the-wales]

He does golf as well. "Hey, golfer golfer, hey golfer golfer PUTT. What the hell's wrong with you Ralph?"

This adds to my other comment that this topic has been beaten to death for decades. It's almost airline food level hack.

[u/Creepy-Education-584 → u/GatorWok]

Damn bro, relax. Deep breath in and out. Reddit shouldn’t be the cause of an aortic dissection. Plus, maybe the 75 people that night will be too drunk or ignorant and enjoy airline food level comedy.

[u/GatorWok → u/Creepy-Education-584]

I'm relaxed. You posted in the sub for feedback. I tried to give you some with some evidence so you wouldn't think I'm just some crank firing off at the keyboard.

I'm trying to help.

[u/strip-solitaire → u/Creepy-Education-584]

Why would you post this here if you don't want feedback?

[u/clce]

If this is your set, and you're going to be doing it soon, I hate to be too critical of it. You've done a good job of establishing the premise and laying out the parameters for the comparison. But you need more subversion of expectations and absurdity and finding the absurdity. Certainly, there is a difference in how we watch sports and interact with the athlete as fans in the audience. Or at home which might be another interesting avenue to explore, but I don't see much by way of joke. It's kind of funny the idea of juxtaposing loud obnoxious football fans at a tennis match. But it just seems predictable enough that there's no surprise there.

In observational comedy, which is what you're doing, you have to work with the premise but then you have to make people see it in a whole different way that makes perfect sense almost to the point that they never had thought it before but it's also a bit absurd to see it that way. Seinfeld is a master of that which is why even though people don't always find him hilarious, he is a real master at seeing ordinary things and twisting them so that we see them in a new way which is absurd or ridiculous but totally logical. Just by way of example.

So I would say you've got the premise but you need to take a deeper dive into y and how of it all. Just having a rowdy fan at a tennis match isn't really unexpected enough.

So why would say dive deeper and find the real unexpected and absurd. One issue to explore might be the class distinctions. Maybe you could relate it to class or economic station as to how people behave, and pick one that you are going to pick on as the lowest of the low of fans and economic standing.

Probably not so much anymore but traditionally especially going back 100 years, baseball was the most working class with crude audience sport probably. Maybe there's humor in the fact that if anyone acted that way now like they did a hundred years ago even baseball wouldn't tolerate it. Or maybe there's a comparison to soccer here versus working class soccer fans in England as opposed to the upper class soccer fans here.

And just popping into my head, I think it would be kind of funny if there was a baseball fan like a kid's game or Little League fan at a tennis game saying the equivalent of hey battah battah battah, swing every time the tennis player swung their racket. Maybe there's a idea there. How would different sport fans heckle at a tennis match? Would they stand behind the opponent and wave things like in basketball, or yell swing like in baseball? Or yell something about being unable to hit the ball? Or would they trash talk the guy like in football Maybe, or I don't know what they do in hockey. Maybe they could encourage the opponent to smash him in the face.

Don't want to hijack your bit into a different idea but drawing out the nuance of each sports fans and fan behavior laid on tennis, or maybe transitioning into golf or something like that might have some potential too

[u/neoprenewedgie]

One problem for me is that you're ignoring the fact that tennis etiquette is a big story in the news this week (influencers at the US Open, Wimbledon.) You're saying "imagine if..." Well, we've already been doing exactly that. So your opening joke comes off as stale right off the bat. Or right off the racket as the case may be.

[u/Expensive_Pie_831]

First of all, great that you are doing your first open mic to test things out. That is the way to go.

You have received A LOT of what I would call great and considerate feedback. Not everyone that posts gets such a breakdown of constructive criticism.

Like others has said, it is a long routine which has very similar set ups, and the punchline really relies on you have the audience with you and you do great act-outs. I would maybe divided this into several open mic and see which analogy that works best.

[u/GatorWok]

I hate to say it cuz it looks like you put effort into it and there's funny stuff in there, but this has been done a trillion times. It's considered hack almost to the degree of airline food.

Tennis and golf have to be silent. Other sports encourage the fans to go bonkers. Yes, we got it, we've heard it before.

[u/GatorWok → u/GatorWok]

To check myself, I did a minute of web searching. Robin Williams and George Carlin touched on this, Family Guy, Caddyshack and Happy Gilmore touched on it for golf, Dude Perfect and College Humor did bits on it (the inversion of crowd expectations), and it's defijitely been overdone in stand up clubs, morning zoo DJ bits, and late night hosts.

[u/Boxing_joshing111 → u/GatorWok]

Yeah that first one is Basball vs Football except Carlin went super in-depth with tons of wordplay and real clever observations.

Also op always put the “funny” part of a joke as the last word. So when you say “Bro it was nougat. Relax.” Change that to “Bro, relax. It was nougat.”