So, I checked out another open mike last night down here in the South Bay area. This time at the Rose and Crown in Palo Alto.

Once again, I didn’t perform. Even after so many shows and open mikes, I like to check out the room quietly and unobtrusively before jumping in myself. Mostly, a new room is where the clench of pathologic shyness starts to get me.

I really am such a pussy sometimes. The bartender was friendly, and after seeing me whip out a notebook surmised I might be a comic. Even though he said he would introduce me to the organizer, I didn’t press it, because of the pre- and post-show chaos and the large number of young boys who all clearly knew each other milling about. Passively, I’ll send an email.

The place looked fun enough with a pretty sizeable crowd for a Monday night comedy show at a dinky little English pub. However, unlike the other handful plus shows I’ve checked out so far around SF in the last year of visiting, it was heavily young, white boy dominated. (As was the audience probably because of Stanford.)

I just want to punch myself in the eye socket to counteract the pain of hearing yet another 20-something boy make the same wry observations, have the joke fail and blame anything else besides the joke and his delivery sucking.

(Worse yet, I fear the supportive California, I’m OK-You’re OK, have a nice day vibe here might sometimes be a bad thing in comedy. I observed a little camraderie-type reassurances on some not great shit, when constructive criticism may have been warranted. A lot like the Emerald Isle.)

The weird thing about the show for me, apart from the eerie and painful similarities with your average Boston open mike sausage fest, was the number of comedy doppelgangers. There was a Dan Newbower sort of Jew, doing some similar stuff, but with Max Silvestri’s haircut and sideburns. I literally did a doubletake, when from the corner of my eye I thought I saw Dan Sally.

One of the hosts, half of a funny bass and drum comic duo called Naomi Crystal, had exactly the same sleepy eyes, skinny build and lips pursed in a half-smirk delivery of purely offensive shit as Randy Winn. A semi-attractive, semi-lecherous guy could have been Ben Joplin, especially with the line to Terry Schiavo with a self-grab, “I’ve got your feeding tube right here.”

Perhaps the eeriest was the Andy Ofiesh twin. Jimmy Gunn has a not dissimilar body type and came out as a crappy magician working the same flavor of squirmy uncomfortable, odd character and fucking funny as Andy. Weirder still, later in the show someone yelled to him something about streaking the show, and his dismissal of “not tonight” made me think that the dude had bare-assed a few shows, just like buddy Andy.

Not sure (although I probably will, because I’m a masochist) if I’ll try to do this open mike. Everyone just felt so twenty-ish and testosterone-y. (Of course, the Walsh Brothers Show isn’t exactly devoid of either, and I loved it and did fine there.)