I'm sure one of the factors is the fact that I made a little bit of a stir in the comedy world as Tolu Robertson . And part of it was seeing a couple of friends go to some open mike nights and doing okay. I figured I've listened to enough comedy albums (true story, I would listen to comedians' records before going to sleep or when doing homework my junior year of college), and I have enough funny stories that I can come up with 5 minutes of decent stand-up comedy.
I pretty much came up with most of my set on a lazy Sunday waiting for the Redskins v Rams game to come on. A lot of it was self referential, I figure if I'm going to go onstage and be nervous and talk, it should be about a subject I am an expert in (myself). Plus its impossible to steal material (intentional or unintential) when most of the jokes you're making are about yourself and are based on real life experiences. At an open mike once, I saw a guy pretty much do Mitch Hedberg's act but with his own material. Technically it's not stealing but when you go out and take someone's delivery and manerisms on stage, you're not being yourself and I'd rather go out on stage and bomb/suceed with my own material.
Here's video of my standup. It was performed at the Blue Banana in DC on September 25th. I'm very self critical of myself, I still haven't watched it and I probably won't watch the video for a while. Before going on stage, I felt really nervous but once on stage, I really didn't feel anything. Maybe it was cause I knew my material, maybe it was the alcohol or maybe the cheatsheet I had on the side of the stage helped me. I felt like I did a good job, considering I'm an amatuer and had no idea what I was doing. I got some groans from the Jerry Sandusky joke I did, but that inspired me to write more Jerry Sandusky material... But I am kind of mad that I forgot to include a really funny herpes joke in my set. It was fun, I can't wait to do this again
