yesterday morning as i was taking a shower, i came up with a stand up routine. it just flowed. but i didn't try to write it down until night time. i thought it'd be cool to flesh it out and possibly go to some open mic night and do some stand up. kids in high school always told me i should be a stand up. i would dissuade such talk because secretly that's what wanted to do but my dreams were with music. i thought it'd be cool to be in a band and perform stand up as an opening act.

at night when i tried to write down what i had come up with in the shower, it just wasn't as funny. it was different. i couldn't really remember what i had come up, which i think was more current, and what i wrote was mostly talking about the past. i think jokes about the past are fine as long as they are funny and you make it work. i'm going to have to embrace the past and dig up all the jokes i used tell.

tonight i went through what i wrote yesterday and timed myself as to how long the routine would be as is. it was about 10 minutes of junk that wasn't really funny. i crossed out the unnecessary crap, polished it up a bit, and tried again. it was still about 10 minutes of junk but a little bit funnier. i think i'll keep doing this. it's funny how you can sit there for 2-3 hours working on a bit and not get much done. time just flies. i mean, it's not like i filled up a whole book worth of material. just a few pages. but really big pages. i'm using a huge ass notebook for this stuff.

i'm already thinking about labeling these bits, (assigning categories if you will), so that i can flow between topics seemlessly. to me the comic greats are able to flow seemlessly and then bring it all back together. i also need to come up with several variations on an intro. and of course, a little later on, i need to think about how an audience might heckle and how to turn it around to my advantage.

i'm not saying i'm funny. i'm not guaranteeing anything. i just thought this would be fun to do. maybe in addition to open mics, i could podcast. i just hate the way my voice sounds. that's what sucked about timing the routine. i didn't really give a performance because i was all alone and it was so quiet that i became very critical of my timbre. the same thing happens when i attempt to 'sing'. i just have to accept myself.

what i'd really love is to see is an asian bilingual stand up comic. there's plenty of latinos out there doing bilingual or talking about their culture and making it work for them. but there is a serious lack of asians in the media, especially comics. (i love you margaret cho!) and i would really love to see a couple people represent the face of asian-americans today. a big issue i think is a lack of a common culture as easily identifiable as latin america. just by being hispanic, you can tap into and make so many people laugh as a comic. millions of people speak spanish. but for asia, it's difficult because every country speaks its own language. if i did some bilingual/bicultural comedy, it's really going to narrow my audience. it might just be japanese-americans or even smaller, just okinawan-americans. but i think it's what 'we' need. 'we' as in people that share a common demoninator with me. or i could just do 'half' jokes. i could gig at all the military bases! ahahhaaaa