In eight days I will be making my stand up comedy debut, at no place less than Fanime, Northern California’s biggest Japanese animation convention. I would like to cite working here for four months as the genesis of this flight of fancy, and before you start pegging me as a nerd or whatever (nerds are smart, I am not), I honestly haven’t watched the stuff in six years. Fanime to me is more of less a yearly four-day bender for me and my closest friends where we ponder the decline of human civilization while gawking at ill-fitting costumes.

The sheer notion of mixing stand-up comedy in anime, honestly blew my mind, and upon first hearing about the union of the two existing, I was light-headed for about a solid ten minutes. Worlds were definitely colliding, to wit. And the fact that this isn’t the first time this happened before (Presenting Exhibit A) only intensifies the mind blowing. Although its success is still being debated.

I did have experience with slam poetry, had brushes with community theater coming up, and my stand-up comedy intake has increased eleventy-billion-fold since I started work here, but I figured, hell, I was going to need advice, so I played mediocre high school newspaper reporter, broke out the pen and pad and called up resident graphic fabricator and comedienne Andi Smith (Holy cats did you know she just released her first album?) for advice for just starting in stand-up comedy.

Stay tuned for the bone-chilling conclusion to my stand up debut!

- Before going on stage, all the people in the audience are the same people you hate at the grocery store.
- Don’t worry about not getting laughs.
- Practice telling jokes to a light bulb (Aside from the few people in the front, you’re only going to be seeing lights.)
- Go up prepared, and prepared to fail! Think that you are totally going to freakin’ bomb.
- Build stories into jokes.
- The hardest part to write is the opener, with the 2nd hardest being the closer.
- Get comfortable: on stage, as long as you’re having fun, the audience is going to have fun.
- Think of it as telling stories to your best friend.
- Have funny friends.

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