“A comedian is someone who tells jokes. A comic is someone that is just a funny person.”

“And you’re a comic.” – very flattering words from Dwayne, a white guy with a black name, after I tried doing standup at an open mic for the first time. Thanks DWAYNE! YOU MADE MY DAY BY GIVING ME VALIDATION NOBODY GIVES ME REAL VALIDATION I AGREE WITH SOME OF THE GUYS AFTER MY “SET” TOLD ME I WAS FUNNY AND I SHOULD TRY THIS COMEDY SHIT OUT THANKS BROSKIS

I started the night off in Bushwick, NYC at a bar named Wonderville. They had 3 local bands playing, and I left after seeing the first band. I had earplugs on but they were still blowing out my fuckin’ ears, and they honestly sucked. Most of these indie rock bands just starting out all sound the same, and don’t have much character. You can only listen to so many loser-vibe songs with basic ass chords and bad singing where it’s not bad singing for the vibe, but because they actually suck at singing. See ya guys when you guys get better at music. Everyone has to start out somewhere. Also, the arcade games at the bar sucked ass in my opinion. They were all indie retro arcade games (made by random people in Bushwick I guess?) that were boring as fuck. Also the people there were kinda like the white nerdy hipster kinda vibe, people that would be big fans of indie games and shit, but maybe not the ones making them per se? So like not fun/cool imo. idk I just profile people super hard without knowing them. Bad habit? YES. Will I stop? PROBABLY NOT

I sauntered down the street because I had nothing better to do. A guy was observing a wall with a shitton of circuit boards melded in. Cyberpunk vibes and I loooooove cyberpunk!

A random white guy with curly ginger hair was smoking a cig next to it. And he was like, “there’s a comedy open mic next door, wanna check it out?” I’m super susceptible to peer pressure because I am a fucking tool, and also I had nothing going on with my life, so I went in. No friends, no girlfriend on a Friday night, anything interesting would make my night better.

I walked into the standup place, and immediately I noticed a cute Asian girl sitting there with a retarded looking Wallmart onesie that was in full winter print – snowflakes, snowmen, light blue. We’ll call her M for the purpose of this story. I wondered whether I should join the open mic night, because at that point, I didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thought of me. I was a nobody, and I knew it. I was never going to see these people again. After watching 3 guys bomb in a row, I decided to enter, seeing that the bar was not THAT high.

Almost immediately after, I got chosen randomly out of the jar of names. I knew generally what I was going to say. I had never done standup, but I wasn’t a stranger to comedy itself. I had written humor stuff before, and honestly that’s a lot harder to do than standup, because with standup, you can be expressive with your voice and body, but if you only have words, they really have to speak for themselves and matter. I basically remixed this post w/ a couple life experiences – having an insanely high Rice purity score, entering a super smash bros melee tournament on Valentines day, then getting knocked out by a guy with a girlfriend. I definitely fucked up on the storytelling because I had never put all these different stories together in a cohesive joking way before. But I don’t think I did too bad, because some people laughed. Some of the guys were listening to my virginity chronicles and putting their hands over their eyes and shit, laughing while shaking their heads. Good enough for me.

After I finished my 5 minute set, the organizer said “I know who you’d be perfect for” and pointed at M and everyone laughed their asses off. People kinda tried to set us up in different ways throughout the night. A bit of it was definitely racial profiling, since we were the only two Asians there, and we were both Korean. But she also offered to deflower me multiple times, which I rejected. Horny me is definitely going to regret that later, but thankfully horny me was not present for those couple hours. LOCKED IN MY BASEMENT, like the prolific Eminem once said.

A lot of standups did their shit over the course of the night, and one guy rapped, and another guy sang. I think all of us could agree that we all had a lot of honing to do on our respective crafts, and we were all nothing compared to the greats, but definitely some funny moments here and there. But I want to bring special attention to this M character. She is an interesting specimen to me, because I hadn’t really seen anyone like her quite yet, but through conversation and social deduction, I was able to observe/deduce some things about her. AKA me vibe-profiling yet another poor victim, completely misconstruing their character within my imagination.

So first of all, she completely bombed her set. Which is honestly not a bad thing — plenty of people bomb, and how else do you get good but by first bombing? But some things she did other than that was also cringe. Let me explain.

Basic profile:

in her thirties (looks young even to me an asian guy i thought she was like 25), she’s pretty, really unfunny. I’ll give her a pass because English is her second language. Her life path was Korea –> lived in CA for 1 yr when she was 12 –> went back to Korea –> went to America for grad school, finished, worked in US –> went back to Korea to work, started doing standup there –> and she is back in the US, almost out of here because she’s just on a tourist visa, exploring the local standup scene.

Things that irked me:

The general direction of her comedy is shock comedy because she’s one of those female comedians that think that talking about their vaginas in incredible detail is the funniest thing ever – it’s not funny if it’s just shocking. Is it a rite of passage for female comedians, or a phase some of them never get through? It’s always tricky saying that those jokes are not funny is because then people will pull the misogyny card on you and tell you to check your privilege. But reverse the gender roles and consider a male comedian describing their penis in intense detail. “There’s a weird wrinkle on it an inch down, and it curves to the right.” Actually, that kinda sounds like a bit that Mark Normand or Shane Gillis could pull off, but they set it up nicely, okay? They’re not saying, LOOK AT MY DICK, MY PENIS, putting it in your face. I’m not a fan of shock comedy, especially things sexual in nature because it tends to be a race to the bottom (who has the weirdest sex experiences) and honestly it’s such an overused and cheap bit that comedians that don’t know what else to say use as a crutch (judged on what I saw today). “HAR HAR I HAD SEX WITH AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL AND SHE MOANED IN AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT HAR HAR” SHUT THE FUCK UP AND COME UP WITH SOMETHING ORIGINAL YOU BITCH YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A CREATIVE

She also was trying to tell some jokes about Jews using some play on words like Juice, etc. but then was like “I’m not racist”. She honestly should have just doubled down – nobody in comedy actually cares about racism if it’s funny. Probably because English is not her first language, her wordplay was pretty meh.

She also has this weird fake laugh which is a nasal “ha haaa” which to me sounds like a laugh that is more like a laugh that signals “I understood your joke, look at me, I got that joke I’m so cool” more than “that was fucking funny”. I personally only laugh when something’s funny. That’s why I was the only one doubling down in giggles when a guy started talking about filming a prank on orphans by not showing up to adopt them after signing a contract to adopt them.

Then we had some live music moments and she started twerking and doin’ something that I can only describe as stripper dancing in her chair. Some promiscuous shit, I tell you. I don’t say that lightly. I’m not going to give her flack about doing that when she’s in her thirties, whatever, who give a fuck. She’s already much more willing to explore than most Korean people, and genuine about pursuing a passion, which is more than you can give credit to most people, especially Koreans.

I’m giving her flack because she’s very clearly Korean, and Koreans aren’t really born like that. I mean, I would find it weird if any other race did that in that situation, but it was weird to see someone I know the exact cultural context of pulling that shit I KNOW is not in her character. You can say like “oh you’re a misogynist, you have no right to judge her, give women freedom to be themselves etc.” If you’re thinking that or saying that shut the fuck up because I can tell when someone is not being true to who they are, because it comes off as unnatural and weird. And you can never count horny guys out on laughing at a girl’s jokes and keeping them around because they find her attractive (she’s kinda hot).

I can only guess she’s picked up some shit from what she thinks is American (even though most Americans don’t even do that shit) and she does that, and sometimes you can tell that something is kinda unnatural, like a costume to someone instead of their real skin. I think people are funniest actually when they’re real about themselves, and she’s wasting her potential if she isn’t leaning into that. Maybe I can’t speak for most people because most people aren’t as weird as me, meaning that there’s like less to have other people laugh about being genuine if you’re just a normal ass human being. But comedy has always been about presentation, and twisting expectation, and it’s possible to do that with any story, any experience, no matter how boring it seems. As long as you have a good eye at seeing the human experience for what it is. Funny shit is all around us. That’s what I say. Don’t use sex stories as a crutch, because it’s overdone and we can’t wait for you to shut the fuck up.

This might be reading too much into her character, but she might be one of those Korean girls (there’s men like that too don’t worry) that have experienced some life abroad, but are like, I’m cooler and more educated and more liberal than all you conservative ass koreans with a closed mind on how the world works. Eh. Maybe too harsh of a judgement. But I have some thoughts on this – nobody can truly be free from their cultural context, and each cultural context is equally both broken before God, and also gets some things right. Nobody can really judge from the other, and it’s not such a bad thing to keep your cultural context. I would argue that Korea often makes the mistake of choking on America’s dick too much and accepting every cultural trend in the West blindly without any sort of filter at all. We are really good at copying shit and fast following. We do not have backbone like the Japanese or Chinese. This is a double-edged sword — just look at Korean history.

Some interesting deflowering moments throughout the night

Bro I’m a virgin, but you think I couldn’t really get pussy all this time if I really really really wanted to? I know I have no fucking game, and am a fucking loser, and really fucking neurotic, and secretly a huge asshole, but as much as who I am has kept me from being a sex-haver, I also have kept myself free from those kinds of situations. And God probably has done it as well. But at the same time, I’m no saint. I’m not going to lie, if I was attractive as fuck and women were falling head over heels for me, I would not be a virgin. Going to be real about that. I have horny thoughts all the time, and so really, I’m not pretending I’m better than anyone else here. I really don’t think of myself (at least try not to) as better than these people, because I am a hedonist at heart, and I completely, COMPLETELY understand them. If I did not believe in Christ, I would be doing worse shit than them on the daily, so I definitely do not have the moral high ground here. Isn’t it all just God’s grace in the end?

New character idea / arc unlocked:

mid thirties, loser vibe (sorry M <3 but being in your thirties trying to make it as female standup comic in Korea while your friends are all getting married is kind of a sick loser vibe, and I love loser characters since I am also a loser), trying to explore the world, become more open-minded, less like other Koreans, but at the same time running into a cultural wall, where it’s like, you’re not really that. Like there’s nothing actually separating you from acting like an American, and not like a Korean who’s been brought up a certain way her whole life, but the heritage bears down on her heavily and she kind of has this tension with “I should be fine doing this, hell yeah, giving power to myself as a woman” but at the same time feeling “unnatural” about it and “guilty”. If you do that part in a very stereotypical fashion, it comes off as a basic character so you gotta handle that one in a very sensitive manner and give it a shitton of depth and thought.

Pursuing a career in standup in Korea, America, getting into a shitton of one night stands with guys because she’s asserting “power” over her sexuality, hella liberal, all that. But she has to come to terms with what being herself means, and take a stand. She goes from this, to really coming into her own and writing genuine comedy where it comes from the heart, not a fake persona.

Am I reading too much into someone I know nothing about? Yes, of course! But probably at least 60% of what I said had some truth, and I’ve seen/heard about shit like this before, which is where all this assumption comes from. I’m never the type to be unconvinced when presented with evidence, so if our paths cross again, and I notice something different, I could judge her differently.