My return to stand up comedy in Lisbon, Portugal.

After almost a decade I had the opportunity to try stand up comedy again in Lisbon, Portugal. All thanks to a series of wild events you can read about here. It was an amazing experience that went way better than I could have imagined.

This was a much different situation than my first time. I was surrounded by friends in a super positive atmosphere. The people in the crowd were awesome and I think that really helped me get through a lot of the anxiety I had getting back on stage.

I was only supposed to a 5-minute set that turned into a solid 10-minutes. I didn’t have a good sense of the timing when I was planning the performance. I also did a lot of ad-libbing while I was up there which I didn’t plan for either.

Given that this was in Portugal I wanted to start off with some jokes ribbing Portugal in general. I really didn’t think that was going to turn out well. Everyone was going up there and ripping on the Portuguese. I figured by this point they were probably tired of hearing that shit. In the video, you can hear the emcee reminding the crowd that it’s all in good fun right before I went up. Then I go up and immediately jump right back at it. That made me really nervous and you can tell the way I sound when I get started. There’s a point where I’m talking about how difficult it is to meet up with Portuguese people and it’s almost silent until this Portuguese guy in the crowd goes “yeah”. Immediately a few people let out a laugh and I felt so. fucking. relieved. I’m not sure who “yeah” dude was but I really feel like he broke it open for me.

The jokes about TAP scheduling my return flight and the pastel de nata were throwaway jokes I stuck in there for filler. They received a way better reaction than I had expected. I almost lost it and started laughing myself because I thought it was so funny they even got a good reaction.

Sometimes being lucky is better than being good. Nobody believes this when I tell them because it’s so silly there’s no way it can be true. This is totally true though. I had a joke in there where I ask “Is anyone here from the uninhabited island of East Timoria”. The place was not supposed to matter at all. I needed some made up location that nobody had ever heard of. It was supposed to emphasize the ridiculousness of anyone remotely identifying with that place. For some reason, I came up with “East Timoria”. Well, guess what? There’s a former Portuguese colony called “East Timor”. After the show, so many people came up to me and told me how much they loved that joke, and some of them referenced the real nations name. Everyone thought I just mispronounced it, or something. As is turns out I’m a complete fuckin goober. I’m guessing some people had no clue and they perceived it the way I had intended it to. Either way, it was one of the more popular jokes of my set and I think it was mostly down to pure coincidence.

Here’s where my nerves started to pick back up again. Everything was fairly fun and clean up until this point. That’s not really the kind of comedian I want to be though. You ever hear Bob Saget do “The Aristocrats”? I love that shit. Edgy, dirty, and ridiculous humor is my jam. I think I eased into the dirty stuff fairly well. Start off by making fun of the TSA, then reference a national tragedy, and finally right into butt stuff jokes. Classy.

I had a reasonably long pause after this. I thought it went fairly well, and I was considering cutting it off at this point. Again, I had no sense of time and wasn’t aware that I was already running significantly over. Things seemed like they were going good though and I truly was having a great time at this point. So, fuck it. I continued.

I feel like the end went waaay better than I thought it would. How many times can you hear a dude go “hur durr I can’t get laid” before it’s not funny? The answer is zero. It’s not even funny the first time. Why did I even write that up? It’s so lame. It served its purpose though and lead into the whole doggy style joke. Even if it was wedged in there rather carelessly. I’m still shaking my head about that.

Earlier in the night, a couple of male comics decided to joke about women. Guess how well that went? They got straight up silence. Now I’m gonna joke about faceplanting a girl into my bedroom wall during doggy. That joke is actually the reason I paused so long before getting into all the sex jokes. I remember how hard they bombed. Do I really want to finish up with silence? How did I still think I was under 5-minutes at that point? I wasn’t sure there was going to be another comedy show, so I might as well get all of my material out of the way right now. When I finished up the line about putting a frame on the makeup face and they started clapping I was so relieved. I’m really glad I pushed through with it cause that applause felt god damn amazing. Then I finished up with a small dick joke right before almost falling off stage and landing face first into the ground. Karma? Maybe.

It wasn’t perfect, but I had a lot of fun. The people there were so encouraging and many came up to me after the show to share some kind words or tell me their favorite joke. It felt really good. If I didn’t go so well I might have given up after that. I felt inspired after that night and started writing a whole lot more.