Despite tornadoes raging throughout Western Mass, I went to Bishop's Lounge to do my third-ever stand-up comedy set. I got there too early because I had a lot of material and needed to make an outline of what was going to go where. The sign-up sheet had 15 slots on it and I chose number 12, so that I could go on after people'd had enough booze but so I wouldn't have to follow anyone too funny (the funniest people sign up at the end). The audience was small (I blame the aforementioned tornadoes) so it was basically a whole lot of comedians and maybe five or six actual audience members. Tough room but we made it work.

A couple of interesting things arose last night:

1: Background: two Wednesdays ago, I met a woman who'd been kind of slandered in that day's newspaper — she managed a local restaurant. I was pretty outraged so I wrote a letter to the editor, which ran in that Saturday's paper. Then, about four days later, I went to that restaurant, and a few minutes after I sat down, a waitress approached me. “Are you the one who wrote that letter?” I said that I was, and she thanked me profusely. But I didn't know how she knew it was me until I saw her at Bishop's last night. After the comedy was over I talked to her. “Did you know I was the one who wrote the letter because you'd seen me do comedy here?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. Crazy!!!!

2: Even though there were plenty of available spots, nobody signed up to go on after me. Hmmm.

OK. As for my set, it went well. I had two friends in the audience, one of whom taped me until his batteries died. Here's the link for Lynn B. Johnson's June 1, 2011 tornado-day set. This is the first five minutes and it's actually pretty safe for work. The dirty stuff didn't come in until the end. So, except for some eff words, this video is pretty tame. Another comedian taped my whole set and I'll post that link when I have it.

I'm starting to think there's something to this, people…