Saturday night I did 10 minutes of my favorite material for a SF audience and it hit well. Bits about growing up in a redneck town, German guilt, Tom Cruise, my knack for attracting lesbians, and a short bit about my shrink got decent laughs through the end, with two applause breaks. So far, not bad.

But Friday night was another story. Friday I did the same 10 minutes in SF for a younger crowd that, I later found out, was mostly from a suburban town 40 miles east of SF.

A red flag should’ve been flapping. Young is one audience; suburban is another; young and suburban is a third. And San Francisco is another audience altogether, with all of its many subgenres—straight, gay, urban, geeks, etc. The backwards trucker caps in the audience and short skirts in the 40-degree SF nighttime weather should’ve been hints that these people were not from SF, and that adjustments to my set might’ve be necessary. But of course, OF COURSE, I failed to scope out the crowd. Bad move.

I’m second up. The MC gives me a warm intro and I jump up to do my 10. I open with with the redneck jokes, then go into Tom Cruise, and all’s fine—the crowd’s embraced me and I’m 4-5 minutes in. But then I start the German bit. As soon as I say ‘German’ and ‘guilt’, I feel a downturn in the room’s energy. A sudden cold breeze. There are still laughs, but something’s shifted in a way I’ve not sensed before. And instead of turning outward toward the flesh-and-blood people sitting there, I turn in.

I finish German with some ok laughs and get into Lesbians. I hear some initial shock, then some laughs, then another energy downturn—but worse than before. It feels almost like people are afraid to laugh—they’re missing the ironies, and sticking on the word ‘lesbian’ just like they seemed to stick on ‘german’ and ‘guilt’.

At this point, I have a choice. I can trudge forward and try to finish Lesbians, really milking it, trying to get the audience back, or I can stop the bit cold and rip on myself with self-deprecating cracks about the bit falling on its face, and then try some other topic.

I decide to power forward…because in the back of my mind I’m thinking, just wait for it, people, this bit’s heelarious and the big punches are coming! And when the punches finally arrive—and they usually kill—I get nothing. NOTHING. Not a single laugh. Zero. A sea of faces just looking back at me in the dark. Again, at this point, I should’ve pointed at my glaring failure. I should’ve exploded it on stage, shined a spotlight on it, let the crowd know that I knew that they knew I’d just eaten shit….

But I don’t. Instead, I fool myself. I think, hey, I’ve got an ace in the hole: my big 1-minute closer! That’ll get ‘em! So without commenting on the previous 2 minutes of totally obvious and horrifying silence, I go for the big ending—and again, NOTHING. Fail fail fail. I say good night and get applause, finally…as I leave the stage…and after ending on nothing. I jog off totally embarrassed and hoping nobody taped that shit.

A few people in the audience came up to me after and said they’d liked my act, but it didn’t heal the sucking wound. I’d served myself a huge lesson. None of the other comics ate it that night because they either worked hard at connecting with the crowd, or they adjusted their material to better feed younger and suburban appetites.

Let my failure shine as a beacon, o fellow comics.