Every year, Helium cancels its open mics for four months to concentrate on Portland’s Funniest Person. In that contest, 250 people are brutally whittled down to 8, and then someone wins, usually a white guy.
Preliminaries:
There are roughly one thousand preliminary competitions. They are judged by the audience, so it’s super important to hype up your friends and family and get them to come. I didn’t understand that the first time I competed in 2010, and never made it out of the first round.
I mean, that’s OK. Most people don’t.
The first round was 11 people to get to 3, which felt very do-able. The first round has people in it who’ve never been onstage before, people who have only done comedy on the back of a dog cart, etc. once I had my comp list filled, I was pretty secure in my ability to move on- however, some very funny people I like and respect didn’t seem to.
This show was the most fun, because Arlo Weierhauser and Adam Pasi roasted EVERY participant. The weird racist guy, the lady with the notes, and me, who they said looked like Wednesday Adams after her third divorce. Clearing this round, I was in the top 27% of participants.
SEMI-FINALS:
The next show felt intense- there were several comics I really liked on my show, and we were cutting from 14 people to 2. Me and Jeremiah Watkins made it through, and were now in the top 3% of everyone in the comp. Kyle Kinane greeted me warmly at the end, and that was nice. I’ve always really dug Kyle’s comedy and he is a mensch to boot.
The finals didn’t worry me as much as the semi-finals, although the cutoff is the same- somehow, 14 to 2 felt harder than 8 to 1. This is probably because I am bad at math.
I liked my semi-finals set tho, here it is:
FINALS:
The morning of the finals, I woke up and thought, well, whatever happens, it’ll be over soon. I had a nice day, had lunch with a friend and spent the afternoon preparing my finals set.
I turned up and sat in a green room, meeting the comics I had not worked with yet.
Then, the show started, and went by very quickly, and then it was me, and I had a good set. Everything went exactly how I wanted it to go, and that’s all I could do. For a while, I thought, well, I’ve won this thing. Nobody had a better set than me, but that’s not entirely how it works. Our hard-working host, Ben Harkins, did a stall set so the tallies could be completed.
Then, we all filed out onstage, and I got the #2 spot behind Jordan Casner, who is a nice fella and all around good guy. I was now in the top .8 of all participants.
I immediately started scheming for what I would do next year, although there is probably not a good reason to compete next year, except for REVENGE. Congrats to Brent Lowry, who also placed, and congrats to everyone who got through to finals. Let’s all go to sleep.
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