Comedy open mic
The Station
Baton Rouge
Nov. 19 and every Wednesday starting at 9 p.m.
Watching open mics is like watching a snowball roll down a hill. It starts slowly at first and picks up steam because of, or in spite of, whatever is in the way.
At an open mic at the Station on Wednesday, there was a running joke about hook ups with Little People. Everyone besides the host of the open mic used the M-slur. It’s understandable why that happened: Comics see what gets a reaction, and part of comedy is working other parts of the night into your own set. If one sees that a kind of joke gets laughs or at least reactions, they’re incentivized to try it themselves.
But at what cost? As far as I know, there were no Little People in that room. I can’t imagine that they would make jokes like that if there were, but it’s troubling to think that Disabled people are still a minority group that ends up as the butt of the joke to be dehumanized and talked about like a bucket list item. You don’t get a pass to say slurs because no one it applies to is there to hear it.
Current events, mental health crash outs and weird sex stuff is the bread and butter of open mic comedy. It’s meant to be transgressive and give people the platform to talk about topics that would otherwise be taboo. But if it’s gonna work, it has to be funny.
You have to read the room. Audiences have to be primed for jokes if you’re going to a really dark place or they won’t know they’re allowed to laugh. And to everyone who talks about weird sex stuff: the fact that you’re having it, not having it or simply have a penis is not funny.
Despite this, there were some gems of the night Wednesday.
“I tried to kill myself with a Zquil,” one comic named Shelby confessed after some context about how she’d just moved back to Baton Rouge. “It’s not cute. You don’t get street cred.”
In response, she said, her doctors prescribed her stronger prescription sleeping pills. She’s no doctor, but this is perhaps not the move for someone who had just tried to off themselves with over-the-counter meds.
“I love rage-baiting men,” said another performer, Madame Moon.
Her hot take is that watching porn is way grosser than watching your own girlfriend sleep with another guy.
“Cuz you’re in the room with your girl, you’re watching it all happen. You can smell it, you can taste it. You’re in the action.” she said. “With porn you’re watching some strange man with some strange woman. You have no part in it. You’re just in the bathroom or in the Porta Potty jerking it to these people you don’t even know and that’s not supposed to be grosser?”
Open mics are a hit or miss ordeal. Some people are funny, others less so. But they come to create something together, the snowball rolls down the hill, and next week, they start again.
