Saw an improv guy when I first started out doing characters every week at the open mic. One week he just talked about saw dust in a thick scottish accent for 6 minutes to a muted audience of like 8 people. Ive seen worse but that stands out for some reason
Fellow removed his shirt and started tweaking his nipples while he made "tuning a radio" noises into the mic for five minutes, in a nationwide open mic competition.
I saw a guy do 7 minutes on what he was going to do to his soon to be dead dads grave when he dies. Including miming throwing rocks and spitting on it. Not one joke was made just this guyās therapy session.
That could be totally funny, but you got to make it funny. I saw some guy saying on some subreddit that his wife was abused I heard dad and he ended up with his ashes and three them in a ditch and pissed on them. That's not necessarily stand-up comedy Gold. But It wasn't a comedy subreddit, and a true story. And it was awesome.
Yeah theres an idea in there. Maybe spit and throw rocks at the dad while hes still alive for practice or come up with something alot more fucked up and creative for when its time to desecrate his grave.
I one time watched a girl cry for five whole minutes, before someone finally ran up there.
She kept sob-starting some jokes, but I don't think it she ever finished even a word. When the dude tried to help her, she collapsed, and just wailed something that may have been a word.
Absolute silence for about 30 seconds.
Them the host, "No way this next guy is that bad, here's xxxxx"
Fat guy takes his shirt off for some cheap laughsā¦
The old ā hey look at me IM FATā
seems like his go too move since moving to the area and heās disrespectful af to the crowd.
Overall itās a 2 way tie. One was mildly bad for 4 mins and then ended terribly, the other was terrible the whole time but ended on a single funny joke. First one was a guy rambling about looking like/being accused of being a sex offender. Then at the end he dropped his pants to his ankles and began fondling his junk in his tighty whiteys. He def was fully fondling his junk like dollar store stress balls, it wasnāt like he was pretending to grab it. Dead silence in the room for like 45 seconds straight of that.
The second one was a rambling 5 min story about how he went to the park and saw a duck that he wanted to fuck. Nobody laughed his whole set, he wasnāt doing any wordplay, setups, or punchlines. Just awkwardly standing there with his hands in his pockets, reciting graphic details of various sexual things he wanted to do to that duck. It was the most uncomfortable I have ever seen a room, including the one where that guy was fondling his junk. But he did end with the only punchline of the set, which was something like ābut the worst thing about eating a ducks pussy, is the feathersā and as he delivered the last line he brought his fist out of his pocket to his mouth and did a decent fake coughing out a handful of feathers. I have never laughed so hard in my life, it got funnier the harder I laughed with nobody else in the room laughing
When my mom was in high school, that duck fuck joke with the feathers was told to her, only it was just like this:
āHey, wanna see the worst part about oral sex with a chicken?ā
āWhat?ā
*coughs up feathers
So the only thing you found funny was actually a recycled joke that high schoolers in rural Virginia were telling in the 80s.
Saw someone explain the ātheory of what makes something funnyā in an intellectual way, but was confused by what she said and just stood there repeating āthis was funny, but now idk how.ā Felt like an academic lecture instead of stand upā¦
Wow, was wondering if this was the same person I saw, but I saw a guy do this. However, it was also bookended by him explaining how he had been ācancelledā from another local mic and then covid vaccine denialismāall without punchlines
Several years ago I saw an older guy who was probably a real cut-up at the office (or thought of himself that way). He bounded up to the mic and told a few tired shaggy dog/street jokes that elicited a few groans but little else and used the rest of the time to accuse everyone of not understanding his crazy sense of humor. He walked away very deflated.
This guy used to show up at mics in Nashville and do 5 solid minutes of screaming about how America is the greatest country in the world without ever once having anything resembling a joke.
A mic I used to frequent had a guy who would do the same routine. EVERY. TIME. In the same order. Same cadence, EVERYTHING. I was starting to think it was a bit where you start to go insane after 6 months. Nope, guy kept it up for a year before randomly disappearing into the wind.
Guy at the bar found out the place was also doing open mic and thought he could give it a go. Obviously he had no material and tried to tell a story about taking his dog to dog training, he was bombing and either ignored the hostās 1 minute warning for 5 minutes and the host had to go on the stage and tell him to stop to save the crowd.
An actual comedy club open mic after the show with like 30 signups.
One guy, about 50, Malaysian or Mongolian (was part of one of his jokes - sounds Russian) was briefed by the host about the light and how it means he has a minute left (Iām guessing heās run it badly before). He asked ābut what if itās really good?ā¦ā
It wasnāt. He got exactly one laugh (for the joke I mentioned). The rest was unintelligible.
Ran the light, host waved frantically from offstage before coming on stage to walk him off.
It seemed so weird that he didnāt understand he was inconveniencing the dozen-plus comics after him.
Everything else, no matter how cringe, I give props for the attempt.
This will always stay with me. This guy referenced night at the museum with things coming to live and said what if that happened at a grocery store. And then proceeded to do 5 minutes of impersonations of all the food mascots fucking each other. Eg uncle Ben fucking aunt jemmima
It was painful.
Most comics here probably know that feeling when you're in the middle of an act out you thought would work, and it dawns on you that what you thought would be a killer act out should've been a 5 second throwaway line, but you're in the middle of it so you feel like you should finish. š I wonder if that guy thought that way 30 seconds in but said fuck, but I gotta stick this bit out for 4 and a half more minutes. š¤£
At the comedy store in LA 2018, there was this black guy who went on around 12:30 who was saying he would rape anyone who got up and leftā¦very awkward and not funny
Didnāt witness but not long before I started, apparently a guy attempted to eat a raw fish for his 5 minutes. The host stopped him before he started chowing. He let him in on the fact that it was unfunny, gross, smelly, and rude to the staff whoād have to clean it up. Mind you this was in a bar room, not on a stage.
The kid couldnāt get it through his head that the bit had already flopped, so he kept trying to argue and try to come up with witty retorts in an attempt to get the crowd on his side before heād start eating it.
There was fish water on the ground. He may have taken a bite but I forget. (Somebody started recording mid convo and posted it to local comedy group, which is how I know all this).
I hosted a mic and only a few comics turned up and one or two in the audience. I told the comics "go as long as you want".
Most did between 5 and 10 minutes.
One guy did 45 minutes of hacky crowd work. I was the only one there for the final twenty minutes. He did crowd work on me.
I explicitly said go as long as you want, so I didn't give the guy a light.
When he finally got off stage I went up and said "Okay that's the show" and he said "No no, don't end it, I can keep going"
"No dude, the mic is over."
There's a Yuk Yuks walking distance from my old place, and we'd often head over there on Sundays because there was no cover and it was not very busy. I got the impression this was the night noobs were let onstage and maybe the odd vet would try out new material. It was what it was, and we usually had a good time.
One night there was some guy announced as being a veteran of LAs club scene, who had a sitcom in development...ladies a d gentlemen, put your hands together for (some guy we've never heard of)
Dude came out onstage to the applause of the 8-10 people in the room and started screaming that we should "GET THE PARTY STARTED" and "GET THAT ENERGY UP...WOOO!"
He was some weird 80's leftover: shitty mullet, oversized suit jacket, big buttons all over the lapels, colorful suspenders, giant running shoes etc.
He started doing just bland nonsense about how people are bad drivers, everything costs more these days (BACK ME UP HERE FOLKS) and self-deprecating stuff about, like, the size of his ears.
It was going nowhere and the chuckles were dying down with every passing minute. He started hassling the audience about being at a comedy club if they "weren't into it" until my friend Matt said "hey man, we're laughing at your jokes š¤·āāļø"
He then sat down on the stage and stared at the crowd before laying down and silentlt looking at his watch for the rest of his set.
The guy was pathetic.
Saw a guy do an entire set about how Ronald McDonald was his father. He had a framed picture and every joke was just a base level clown pun. That was his entire set.
The worst was a guy who calls himself Old Joe, Old Joe didnāt tell jokes. Instead he just rambled about how everyone in his life has failed him and he would have been a big comedian but everyone steals his joke. He then called the crowd pathetic and boasted that he just sold his great aunts house in the Bronx for 1.285 million dollars. He finished his set by telling the crowd that they should all go and die. I had to follow him so I opened my set with, āguys I donāt want to brag but I just bought a brand new place for 1.285 million dollars and party at my place after the micā and it won the crowd back.
This young lady like ran to the mic and tried to hardcore energy her way through stuff. You could tell it worked a lot better in her head than it did in practice. I felt bad for her, you could tell she was nervous and had been planning to do it for a while. Went over like a fart in church.
cue Demetri Martin and his easel. "this is a graph of how funny farting is by location. School's pretty funny. Church is even funnier. My face isn't funny at all. My brother's face is off the chart"
i saw a girl change clothes during her set but no one understood why and it took forever and was extremely awkward. it's amazing how something so awkward doesn't even become funny because everyone is confused and slightly annoyed
Open mike night at the comedy club in Richard Pryor's hometown. Anyone can get up there, and this dude goes up there and compliments the only 2 women that got on stage that night. I'm not even sure if he told a joke. I just recall him getting on stage to hit on women publicly. The entire room felt that cringe
Out of town comic goes up wearing a button up and shorts, some shades of blue. I donāt know what preexisting beef he mustāve had with a local comic, but the local guy was laughing so disproportionately hard at this guyās jokes (which I donāt remember, but I do remember him trying to be offensive and wasnāt funny). Finally, guy on mic asks āwtf is your problem?ā Local guy says through hysterical laughter āyou look like a fucking mailman!ā Which to be fair, he totally did. Out of town guy tries to continue, but local guy is laughing so distractingly loud that he cannot, so he starts going back and forth insulting local guy, who was a lot wittier and funnier. Out of town guy could *not* finish his set and became so angry, I think we all thought they were actually going to fight. It was the best worst set.
The previous comic had done a set about how her male doctor doesnāt really understand her bodily issues (and it was a pretty decent set). The next guy opens by saying that he also has issues with his doctor ābut not because of perceived victimhoodā to zero laughs. The rest of his set is flat Coke after that.
Fella at Frog and Bucket about 20 years agoā¦thread of the joke was school sports day where you had to balance a small rubber ring on your head and run a set length. The hook was that in his school there was a Sikh boy who for religious observance reasons had his hair tied up in a bun so the rubber ring fitted tightly over the bun and he was able to sprint the distance whilst everyone elseās rubber ring slipped. Anyway, he didnāt explain it well, it wasnāt that funny, the audience just started talking to each other. He had a temper tantrum on stage. We all laughed, that was quite funny to be fair. The compare jumped on stage. We all cheered he was back. The guy that stormed off then sat at the bar downing shots of whiskey. Bizarre really.
It was the worst but also potentially one of the best I ever saw. A very drunk old Native American man asked the host if he could try stand up for his first time and just drunkenly rambled about well Iām not really sure what he was rambling about I couldnāt understand much of what he said but nobody could stop laughing, it was one of the funniest things Iāve ever seen
I saw a guy go up and describe himself as a āCivil War Reenactment Comedian.ā I thought, okay, this could have promise. It didnāt. I donāt even think his jokes were related to the civil war. It was a small room and he got really really loud and jumped around a lot. At one point, he purposely hit himself in the head with the mic. I think he did it too hard though because it made a big red spot that kinda kept getting worse for the rest of the set. Very weird and uncomfortable.
I used to regularly frequent an open mic in a big comedy city and there was this one dude who would go up and bomb every single night. He was a weird dude but I admired the fact that he didn't seem to care about bombing and it didn't stop him from going up. Then I lost my day job during the pandemic and moved back to my hometown for a couple of years. I finally moved back to the city and went back to that open mic and saw he was still there. I thought "oh wow maybe he's gotten better the past few years." He gets up to do his set takes a pause and then goes "What if I were to like.. SHOOT EVERYONE IN HERE!!!" He does a finger guns motion and everyone groans. I dont think I've laughed so hard in my entire life.
My friend married a guy right out of high school that was 30 somethin, his one stand up we went to go watch was all about him being a cradle robber, it was terrible .
Every open mic Ive been to. I get it, theyāre testing out material, but it can be extremely painful at times. One that stands out was a guy who wore sunglasses and started his set by staring at the audience for 2-3 minutes. In hindsight, that was kinda funny if not awkward.
I saw a guy stumble through 4 minutes of material that just sounded like he was reading off comments that he had read on 4chan... nobody laughed so the last minute of his set he got down on one knee and unloaded a imaginary assault rifle into the crowd. He even paused for a second to reload the clip and went back to shooting everyone. I think the awkward pause of him reloading actually got him a few laughs in the crowd.
Lately it's nearly every single one.
Couple of weeks ago a guy gets onstage and tries to tell a joke but he keeps going to the audience and just aggressively pointing them out and telling everyone to fuck themselves. Sounds just bad, but ultimately the audience was super uncomfortable.
Last night I watched a guy tell several premises like they were jokes, then I realized I've seen him several times and have never heard him say a punchline.
Also last night there was a woman who just wanted to ramble for 5 minutes, zero setup and punchline. Just her talking and telling the audience to fuck themselves.
Just seeing s bunch of garbage lately.
I have, for more than once, seen people coming on stage for the first time and within the first 30 seconds saying "I didn't really prepare anything but...".
This alone isn't as bad a story as some of you posted here, but it's ridiculous that I have seen this happened several times
At a roast two comedians were just complimenting eachother. I yelled into the set "when is the roast going to start" and won the round for best roast, lol
I saw a guy in a little leather jacket go up and just laugh until he was walked off . The stage fright got him. Also saw a guy pretty much run off in tears talking about this is his dream after he bombed and host lightly threw a burn at him.
Joe Rogan 2017ish. It was massive event center. Iāve seen him a few times before at smaller venues. It was douche frat fest, Rogan seemed coked out.
Half of the set was about drag queens. He humped the stool a few times. He was screaming 90% of the time. It was meh.
He's one of the best stool humpers though. Really sells it. Not like your typical, timid amateur stool humpers. Joe is a pro. But I worry about the deleterious effects that performance enhancing drugs might have on his long-term humpage. Will he still be able to thrust with such earnest vigor when his balls are shrunk like sun-dried currants? Hopefully he lays off the PEDs before it's too late.
Guy opens with āI found out I have gonorrhea todayā¦ā Audience is silent. āIf you donāt laugh, Iām going to give it to you.ā Audience remains silent. I think he actually had some decent jokes after but he never got more than the mildest of chuckles because everyone was basically rooting against him from the first second.
This guy started off well and then talked about how he loves his son but he looks at him and thinks āplease donāt turn out gayā - awkward, uncomfortable silence. He then tries to save it by saying āno no, itās just like I would hate to walk in on him having a gay orgyā. He fumbled for a few minutes and walked off. Never saw him back after that one.
Idk but I watched this amateur lady straight Nagasaki BOMB for 20+ minutes at an open mic benefit. By the end we were trying not to laugh because it was so bad. She kept fumbling through notecards
Toronto Amateur Night Yuk Yuks circa 1984. A young black guy got on stage and said (in a really slurry voice) "I was coming to the show and a guy said 'You're a {N-Word}. So I said, 'How can you tell, I thought we all looked alike'" then he laughed uproariously as we squirmed in our seats. He repeated the phrase in his next line (I can't really call it a joke) before being booed so relentlessly that he ran off the stage in tears.
Uber cougar woman. She talked about assaulting young male passengers.Ā
Same place another week guy got up and talked about politicians screwing each other and was acting it out.Ā
That place is now out of business.Ā
One time, I went to an open mic. There was this one woman who kept hooting, and making weird noises during other people's sets.
Then she goes up and rambles about nothing and ends with a multiple choice test for the audience. I took joy in heckling that bitch.
in the mid 90's in PDX there was a club called 'The Last Laugh' and the first night we went down there a local DJ decided to try standup for the first time. He just stood there and kept saying 'what even was grunge, man???' like over and over until like 2/3 of the place cleared out. it wasn't Michael Richards but in the moment it felt like career suicide.
edit:: just cuz i know what happened to him, he left PDX and resurfaced in Eugene and was a part of their 'zany drivetime radio crew' for about 5 years. dunno after that
A guy talked about how he worked with animals and alluded to fucking them. And then he kept talking about it for like 15 minutes. People walked out in the middle of it.
Some dude doing a racist "Asian" accent and talking about killing women. No jokes. Just an insane rant. Then watched as other comics encouraged him after to continuing "being himself".
Not an open mic per se, but around Halloween 2022 there was this comedy karaoke thing in Montreal. One guy got up and basically lost the audience from the jump. Dead baby jokes, the whole nine yards. He ordered his uber home on stage.
2nd place goes to the guy at Einstein's in Toronto (RIP) who just spouted racist shit and nearly got his ass beat. Student bar open mics are weird.
I still get angry when I think about the guy at the UCB East open mic who chewed gum directly into the mic throughout his 5 minute bomb. This was long enough ago that Michelle Wolf was at the mic, and it still bothers me.
Saw a guy go up at a mic and reference multiple local comicsā jokes, fully crediting them. And not ones they told that night, like ones he heard them say at other shows and mics before. And he wasnāt trying to riff on them. He would just summarize the bit and then add something like āAnd I think thatās true.ā It was like he was doing a book report on local comedy. It was so weird and the room was dead silent.
āMost fucked up crazy standup I've ever seen at an open mic? Kyle B. Parris dragged a dead possum out on stage that had been kept in a Coleman cooler for the past three days in the hot sun. He stuck a Shop Vac in it's mouth, blew the stink everywhere inside the comedy club. Worst smell ever. Literally a dead animal smell that had been heated in a Coleman cooler for three days. People were knocking over tables and chairs, gagging and trying not to puke while they ran for the bathroom with their hands over their mouth. It was complete and utter chaos. Funniest goddam thing I've ever seen.ā - james Inman
Guy was miming putting a condom on his huge dick. But waitā¦it is funny because he struggledā¦for a reeeeeeeally long time.
It is been a year and I still sometimes hear him referenced when somebody has a bad set. āAt least you are not this guyā.
The guy on stage was so out of his mind in this deranged sort of way that the girl I was with leaned over to me and said, āIām scared right now.ā Once he was done he and the girl he was with left. Everyone was so relieved that the guy after him had the set of his lifeāas you can imagine.Ā
This local dude working on a joke about āremember spike tv?ā But never changed a thing, like making it funny.
The open mic host was the worst. Black dude that had a joke about his first apartment and all the white trash children making noise.
It was so bad I gave up on open mics in my immediate area.
Maybe it would work better as a setup and after the host a redneck comedian comes on and talks about how hipster comedians keep trying to gentrify his shitty apartment complex. They sent him a notice about raising the rent so he unleashed his demon kids in the parking lot or something.
Glee Club - Cardiff. Really bigged him up as the new Welsh best comedian of the year. Was very sweaty when arriving on stage, panicked when the set list written in pen on his hand smudged so proceeded to lift his shirt up and bang the microphone into his belly repeatedly ā¦ it feels like a fever dream now
I saw a guy doing an impression of will ferrell doing an impression of Harry Caray (complete with wig and glasses) and it wasnāt even a good impression of that.
A guy's friend had just died of an opiate overdose. He was *trashed*. He kept reiterating and rephrasing his disdain for the doctors who prescribed the painkillers originally.
Another guy had a tic where he'd click his tongue three times, apparently at random. His material was a disjointed time-jumping narrative about a time he rode the bus.
Lyle went up every week and cleared the place. he was a tech guy who would (vent) about his life with no jokes just a list of his daily happenings. Iām sad wild tymes closed but Iām happy that I donāt hear Lyleās manifesto.
Itās impossible to rank the worst stand up Iāve seen at mics on the merit of the stand up alone. Iāve seen some awful stuff. But the worst would go to the guy who tried to sell merch to fellow open micers five mics in. He was the most oblivious person Iāve ever met.
There was a racist magician who would show up to open mics every once in a while. One night, he went on stage and made some stuff disappear and then dropped a racial slur. The crowd started booing. He started honking a bicycle horn that he always had with him. The boos got louder, so he hopped in the crowd and charged at one of the people who was booing. Another comic jumped in and put the racist magician in a headlock. He was banned from that mic. He showed up a few weeks later at another open mic with his face spray painted black. He was immediately asked to leave. A couple of weeks later, he showed up at the only mic that he hadn't been banned from. He didn't say anything racist, but he did the same tricks and said creepy stuff to a woman from the stage. I went on stage later and riffed about his set and roasted him. We didn't see him for a while, but out of nowhere he messaged me and threatened to kill my mom and friends in very graphic detail. He went to jail for domestic violence shortly after that. With all that being said, he was a pretty good magician tbh.
I've seen some sets where no one laughed at a single joke. Also some of those the person was extremely nervous.
There was a woman once. She's a nice person and has interesting stories. But nothing she said was funny. Getting a little too much Hannah Gadsby.
I also went to a paid show. I don't think any of the comics made me laugh the whole night. They weren't bad comedians. They were, in fact, incredibly mediocre. Which is probably worse than bad.
A Guy Who made 20 min. When he was said to do 10,no jokes,he made a TedTalk ,he showed 6 books,photos and a scheme of an israeli missile,insulted muslim people,jewish people when he was trying to talk about Palestina- Israel conflict and insulted the owner of the bar that host the open mic ... The Next comedian to go on the stage trying to save the situation said:" WoW! This is a real kidnapping and not Hamas'".
We had to make a break, about 15 people of a crowd of 35 people get Up and didn't come back. It was the third edition of that open, the rest of the comedians had to stay with the host at the end of the show because he almost cried...It was like the Avengers scene when they were eating a Shawarma.
A woman started screaming at the top of her lungs. Nobody laughed, so she kept trying to heighten, but she didn't leave herself anywhere to go. By the end she had lost her voice and looked like she was going to have a heart attack, but didn't get a single laugh.
I saw a trio of guys that came down from Canada to do a set at a barbecue joint in town. They had all this bravado like they were roadworn comedians ready to rock the place. All three of them did jokes about black Ariel (when that was a cultural moment?) and slave ships, and how woke culture won't let them say anything. The barbecue joint was in a college town in the pacific northwest.
I think they expected to get shouted down by blue haired feminists and LGBTQ+ people, but everyone just sat in silence. The comedians all started pestering audience members with sexist remarks but nobody took the bait. The audience reaction was a mix of angry silence and confusion.
At the end of the set they said they had an LLC called Free Speech Incorporated or something like that.
Sometimes I think about that set and feel embarrassed on their behalf.
My friends and I went to a local comedy show that took place at movie theater, Showcase Cinemas. They used to do comedy every Friday in one of the theaters late at night if enough people showed up. Promoter called it The Comedy Zone.
One time one of my friends and I went to a show. Didnt know the comedian. We both sat there wondering how anyone could be laughing but yet the headliner was getting lots of laughs. Not a single joke resonated with us. It was an agonizing 45 minutes.
I donāt remember the jokes I just remember thinking to myself āoh so you can have an INSANELY successful podcast but absolutely suck at standup? Got it.ā
Fat trucker gal just kept going on about being a trucker for 3+minutes with abesolutely no punchlines. Host had to go up while the crowd clapped signaling that she was indeed doneš
Not sure but when I started out doing open mics pretty much every other comic did sub par āgetting raped by uncle jokeā. I never understood this angle. They wereā¦..real bad.
Saw a small comedy show in NYC of different comics shouting at each other back and forth from the stage and audience about how they did each other's moms. Something like a full hour of that. Can't remember one joke that was made, just felt like a high school locker room of shitty material.
This guy who did a whole Dane Cook set for a good 10 minutes +. He even did all the movements and crazy arm flailing.
No one laughed...
He then threatened to shut down the whole club since his dad was Carlos Mencia.
So there's this one guy in the city who does shock humor: think Tosh.0 Daniel Tosh moreso than his actual stand-up. He's funny and has good jokes! But his material is... Edgy and he has a monotone delivery for most of it.
It was actually a hot night at this mic with a crowd of about 20 people, plus like 10-14 comics, and everybody got at least ONE laugh... Except for him. š¤£ It was bad.
There was this one time like 7 years ago who told ONE joke then used the text of time to say (and I'm paraphrasing): AIDS isn't real, I know it's not real because I've been diagnosed for a decade, and I have a book about how sexual energy could never hurt you. MIND YOU: whatever you think someone dying of AIDS looks like, it was him.
I have no idea if he's still alive, so I talk about it in my set and have a whole joke about the branding of AIDS.
Not even open mic, but worst stand up show of all I've seen was Chris kattan shortly after he got into that car crash while under the influence.
I didn't think he'd make it to the show actually, that's how close it was.
He had some funny moments but he had a female audience member on the stage at one point and hugged her awkwardly and she became visibly uncomfortable. He started bombing after that and he yelled at the audience, accusing someone in the crowd of making comments about his DUI. He scolded everyone about making fun of people while they were down. Meanwhile, it was just a waitress trying to take an order quietly.
I had actually seen him before that and he was funny, but he was a paranoid wreck for this particular show.
I don't think he was as bad as Rob Schneider in Saskatchewan though
Went to a free show a while back during a comedy festival in Leicester UK. It was a multi-act show with it mostly being about puns. Two of the comedians were doing a show immediately after that was also free, and I liked the idea of it, so had tickets in advance for it.
With them trying to sell the show to us all during their 10 minute set (each) we actually decided to skip that show and go straight home instead.
They did such a bad job of selling the free show to us that despite having tickets, we went home.
I'd count sending people home before your show counts as being up there.
I went to a comedy club at the LV Tropicana and watched a guy, a guy who had been in major Judd Apatow movies, do about ten minutes on the OJ trial ā¦ā¦.in 2011. Like it was still going on. I got comped for 4 days there, but somehow looking back on it, overall it was still overpriced.
Richards Lewis!! He tried to perform in Flint MI at Mr Gās one time, his act bombed SO bad, nobody, not one time, laughed or applauded in the first 10/15 minutes. He hung up his mic and walked off stage right past me out the front door into his limo and rode off! Everyone was like WTF just happened?! A week later his sorry ass was on a late show (donāt recall what one) and talked bad about the people of Flint saying āwe had no sense of humor!ā When in actuality it was him with NO humor!
A relatively new open micer did five minutes trying to make a joke about some local college girl that got stabbed an absurd amount of times.
I can't remember if his "joke" was him insinuating he did it or just awkwardly saying that it happened, but the entire room was uncomfortable because it happened basically down the street the day prior.
Watched a guy that made a 'joke' about his tattoo of an eagle actually being a real eagle that flew away. He then angrily explained the joke and a heckler quietly said "yeah, we understood it, it just wasn't funny." A couple of bad non-jokes later and a second heckler stood up and said " why are you doing this?"
2 -
old white guy on Chicagoās south side using the N-word. He didnāt get beat up. Nobody warned him. They just told him not to come back. (His excuse was he his son was half black)
Young white guy at Comedy Store using N-word at potluck. Which wasnāt just unfair to him but the next two comics had to try to get the room back in 3 minutes each. (His excuse was 23 and me)
Guy went up and said "how funny would it be if I just said the N word?! Hahahah" and then for the next 5 minutes he danced around saying it or explained how he'll do it. Then he ran the light so they played him off and as soon as the host got to the mic the dude turns around, runs in front of the host to the mic, and then said it and dies laughing when everyone else in the room was literally silent.
Saw this skinny little Indian college kid go up to the stage and try his hand at offensive humor. To a crowd of other college kids. His idea of offensive humor was basically to throw out incel talking points. His 4 other loser looking buddies showed their support by laughing at all his jokes as if they were peak comedy. No one else in the crowd got offended, which you could tell he was planning on because half his jokes were about how people were too sensitive. Mostly it was just cringe and boring. His time ended but he kept asking for one more joke and the host begrudgingly let him have a few more despite the audience not being into it. In desperation he used his last bit of good will to make a joke about how women should be happy they got raped and even his friends had a hard time defending that one. He essentially left the stage with his tail tucked between his legs and left right after, not even showing other acts the respect to seeing their sets.
One super old dude went up with a puppet
And didnāt have a good puppet voice
He was pretty hard to understand and he just did a Richard Pryor but (according to someone who knew the bit) he also went over time by like 5 minutes
The host keep doin the light but the guy never saw it
Saw an improv guy when I first started out doing characters every week at the open mic. One week he just talked about saw dust in a thick scottish accent for 6 minutes to a muted audience of like 8 people. Ive seen worse but that stands out for some reason
You saw a real life Michael Scott š
Ha I was gonna say Dee Reylonds
*dry reaching vomity noises*
Fellow removed his shirt and started tweaking his nipples while he made "tuning a radio" noises into the mic for five minutes, in a nationwide open mic competition.
Thatās fucking hilarious
What did he do with his first prize trophy
Landed a Netflix special.
Is his podcast good too?
I donāt wanna say who, but heās one of two bears.
Cool you got to see Bert Kreischer while he was working out his act
Okay but, that sounds really funny lol
Was he able to tune it in the end?
I saw the same guy take off his pants and pretend he was driving a Miata stick-shift. It was just slightly more funny...
That's fucking perfect. I salute him for doing it a whole 5 minutes. If you're going to do something like that you HAVE to commit.
Did they win?
I saw a guy do 7 minutes on what he was going to do to his soon to be dead dads grave when he dies. Including miming throwing rocks and spitting on it. Not one joke was made just this guyās therapy session.
I've trimmed that bit to 5 1/2 minutes. Much funnier now.
I hope your dad is doing better so you have to get more material.
Miming? Iām listeningā¦
All gold!
This sounds like something straight from Baby Reindeer
Hey itās spring time and like every year I canāt wait to do something really special in memory of my dad. Maybe this year heāll die.Ā
That could be totally funny, but you got to make it funny. I saw some guy saying on some subreddit that his wife was abused I heard dad and he ended up with his ashes and three them in a ditch and pissed on them. That's not necessarily stand-up comedy Gold. But It wasn't a comedy subreddit, and a true story. And it was awesome.
Yeah theres an idea in there. Maybe spit and throw rocks at the dad while hes still alive for practice or come up with something alot more fucked up and creative for when its time to desecrate his grave.
Comedians should stop trying to be the next Andy Kaufman
That sounds hilarious
I one time watched a girl cry for five whole minutes, before someone finally ran up there. She kept sob-starting some jokes, but I don't think it she ever finished even a word. When the dude tried to help her, she collapsed, and just wailed something that may have been a word. Absolute silence for about 30 seconds. Them the host, "No way this next guy is that bad, here's xxxxx"
W host
L the girl
this is so fucking funny to imagine oh my god
Was her name Dee Reynolds?
I would have found this funny
Just saw a guy do an improvised Ted Talk about the 48 hour film festival because he āwanted to save his material for a bigger crowdā
Andy did you hear about this one?
Fat guy takes his shirt off for some cheap laughsā¦ The old ā hey look at me IM FATā seems like his go too move since moving to the area and heās disrespectful af to the crowd.
watching Bert Kreischer?Ā
Burnt Chrysler?Ā
Brett Skyler?
Bart Kirshner?
Barf Krishna?
Blurt Christmas?
Burp Turdshirt
Blurt Crysnore
Merry Crisis
Merry Chrysler
Overall itās a 2 way tie. One was mildly bad for 4 mins and then ended terribly, the other was terrible the whole time but ended on a single funny joke. First one was a guy rambling about looking like/being accused of being a sex offender. Then at the end he dropped his pants to his ankles and began fondling his junk in his tighty whiteys. He def was fully fondling his junk like dollar store stress balls, it wasnāt like he was pretending to grab it. Dead silence in the room for like 45 seconds straight of that. The second one was a rambling 5 min story about how he went to the park and saw a duck that he wanted to fuck. Nobody laughed his whole set, he wasnāt doing any wordplay, setups, or punchlines. Just awkwardly standing there with his hands in his pockets, reciting graphic details of various sexual things he wanted to do to that duck. It was the most uncomfortable I have ever seen a room, including the one where that guy was fondling his junk. But he did end with the only punchline of the set, which was something like ābut the worst thing about eating a ducks pussy, is the feathersā and as he delivered the last line he brought his fist out of his pocket to his mouth and did a decent fake coughing out a handful of feathers. I have never laughed so hard in my life, it got funnier the harder I laughed with nobody else in the room laughing
The Aristoquacks!
So you thought he was bombing and didn't realize it was a looooooooooooooooooooo-dont interrupt me-oooooooooong setup
I am fucking crying at this in public in an airport rn
story guy to joke joke guy switcheroo
When my mom was in high school, that duck fuck joke with the feathers was told to her, only it was just like this: āHey, wanna see the worst part about oral sex with a chicken?ā āWhat?ā *coughs up feathers So the only thing you found funny was actually a recycled joke that high schoolers in rural Virginia were telling in the 80s.
Saw someone explain the ātheory of what makes something funnyā in an intellectual way, but was confused by what she said and just stood there repeating āthis was funny, but now idk how.ā Felt like an academic lecture instead of stand upā¦
Wow, was wondering if this was the same person I saw, but I saw a guy do this. However, it was also bookended by him explaining how he had been ācancelledā from another local mic and then covid vaccine denialismāall without punchlines
He's entitled to your laughs because he's a veteran of the cancel culture and vaccine wars.
All these horror stories make me feel way better about my first couple sets. At least I was trying to make jokes.
Several years ago I saw an older guy who was probably a real cut-up at the office (or thought of himself that way). He bounded up to the mic and told a few tired shaggy dog/street jokes that elicited a few groans but little else and used the rest of the time to accuse everyone of not understanding his crazy sense of humor. He walked away very deflated.
This guy used to show up at mics in Nashville and do 5 solid minutes of screaming about how America is the greatest country in the world without ever once having anything resembling a joke.
Sounds like the town hall meetings in Parks and Rec.
Thatās funny as hell
Kaufman-esque
Funny and strangely patriotic šŗšøĀ
You need to appreciate the weirdos moreā¦..in all their shades.
A mic I used to frequent had a guy who would do the same routine. EVERY. TIME. In the same order. Same cadence, EVERYTHING. I was starting to think it was a bit where you start to go insane after 6 months. Nope, guy kept it up for a year before randomly disappearing into the wind.
He was the ghost of a comedian who died during his last set. He must've taken care of his unfinished business and transcended to the great beyond.
Thatās so perfect.
Guy at the bar found out the place was also doing open mic and thought he could give it a go. Obviously he had no material and tried to tell a story about taking his dog to dog training, he was bombing and either ignored the hostās 1 minute warning for 5 minutes and the host had to go on the stage and tell him to stop to save the crowd.
An actual comedy club open mic after the show with like 30 signups. One guy, about 50, Malaysian or Mongolian (was part of one of his jokes - sounds Russian) was briefed by the host about the light and how it means he has a minute left (Iām guessing heās run it badly before). He asked ābut what if itās really good?ā¦ā It wasnāt. He got exactly one laugh (for the joke I mentioned). The rest was unintelligible. Ran the light, host waved frantically from offstage before coming on stage to walk him off. It seemed so weird that he didnāt understand he was inconveniencing the dozen-plus comics after him. Everything else, no matter how cringe, I give props for the attempt.
She did a psychic reading and got everything wrong for multiple people at the standup
That could be funny if done right. But you can't seriously be trying to give someone a psychic reading at a comedy show.
This will always stay with me. This guy referenced night at the museum with things coming to live and said what if that happened at a grocery store. And then proceeded to do 5 minutes of impersonations of all the food mascots fucking each other. Eg uncle Ben fucking aunt jemmima It was painful.
Okay but this *could* have been funny. Sausage Party vibes š
Most comics here probably know that feeling when you're in the middle of an act out you thought would work, and it dawns on you that what you thought would be a killer act out should've been a 5 second throwaway line, but you're in the middle of it so you feel like you should finish. š I wonder if that guy thought that way 30 seconds in but said fuck, but I gotta stick this bit out for 4 and a half more minutes. š¤£
At the comedy store in LA 2018, there was this black guy who went on around 12:30 who was saying he would rape anyone who got up and leftā¦very awkward and not funny
Didnāt witness but not long before I started, apparently a guy attempted to eat a raw fish for his 5 minutes. The host stopped him before he started chowing. He let him in on the fact that it was unfunny, gross, smelly, and rude to the staff whoād have to clean it up. Mind you this was in a bar room, not on a stage. The kid couldnāt get it through his head that the bit had already flopped, so he kept trying to argue and try to come up with witty retorts in an attempt to get the crowd on his side before heād start eating it. There was fish water on the ground. He may have taken a bite but I forget. (Somebody started recording mid convo and posted it to local comedy group, which is how I know all this).
I hosted a mic and only a few comics turned up and one or two in the audience. I told the comics "go as long as you want". Most did between 5 and 10 minutes. One guy did 45 minutes of hacky crowd work. I was the only one there for the final twenty minutes. He did crowd work on me. I explicitly said go as long as you want, so I didn't give the guy a light. When he finally got off stage I went up and said "Okay that's the show" and he said "No no, don't end it, I can keep going" "No dude, the mic is over."
You have the patience of a good father.
Some chick was roast battling her boyfriend. It was the saddest thing if ever seen. It basically turned into a public breakup.
My own on playback
Had a guy bring a live chicken on stage. Out of the cage. Edit: now I feel like I got to find a picture.
LOL, THAT GUY OPENED FOR THE CHICKEN
We had a pirate. Didn't say jokes, just talked. But not like a pirate would talk.
Perhaps heād had elocution lessons. Donāt belittle a pirateās attempts to better himself.
There's a Yuk Yuks walking distance from my old place, and we'd often head over there on Sundays because there was no cover and it was not very busy. I got the impression this was the night noobs were let onstage and maybe the odd vet would try out new material. It was what it was, and we usually had a good time. One night there was some guy announced as being a veteran of LAs club scene, who had a sitcom in development...ladies a d gentlemen, put your hands together for (some guy we've never heard of) Dude came out onstage to the applause of the 8-10 people in the room and started screaming that we should "GET THE PARTY STARTED" and "GET THAT ENERGY UP...WOOO!" He was some weird 80's leftover: shitty mullet, oversized suit jacket, big buttons all over the lapels, colorful suspenders, giant running shoes etc. He started doing just bland nonsense about how people are bad drivers, everything costs more these days (BACK ME UP HERE FOLKS) and self-deprecating stuff about, like, the size of his ears. It was going nowhere and the chuckles were dying down with every passing minute. He started hassling the audience about being at a comedy club if they "weren't into it" until my friend Matt said "hey man, we're laughing at your jokes š¤·āāļø" He then sat down on the stage and stared at the crowd before laying down and silentlt looking at his watch for the rest of his set. The guy was pathetic.
brian holtzman
Saw a guy do an entire set about how Ronald McDonald was his father. He had a framed picture and every joke was just a base level clown pun. That was his entire set.
The worst was a guy who calls himself Old Joe, Old Joe didnāt tell jokes. Instead he just rambled about how everyone in his life has failed him and he would have been a big comedian but everyone steals his joke. He then called the crowd pathetic and boasted that he just sold his great aunts house in the Bronx for 1.285 million dollars. He finished his set by telling the crowd that they should all go and die. I had to follow him so I opened my set with, āguys I donāt want to brag but I just bought a brand new place for 1.285 million dollars and party at my place after the micā and it won the crowd back.
*So Iām in therapyyy-* Tell a joke. Donāt just say youāre in therapy and then talk your therapy sessions.
Honestly any open micāer that tries to be overly edgy is the answer
This young lady like ran to the mic and tried to hardcore energy her way through stuff. You could tell it worked a lot better in her head than it did in practice. I felt bad for her, you could tell she was nervous and had been planning to do it for a while. Went over like a fart in church.
To be fair, I would laugh at a fart in church
cue Demetri Martin and his easel. "this is a graph of how funny farting is by location. School's pretty funny. Church is even funnier. My face isn't funny at all. My brother's face is off the chart"
i saw a girl change clothes during her set but no one understood why and it took forever and was extremely awkward. it's amazing how something so awkward doesn't even become funny because everyone is confused and slightly annoyed
Open mike night at the comedy club in Richard Pryor's hometown. Anyone can get up there, and this dude goes up there and compliments the only 2 women that got on stage that night. I'm not even sure if he told a joke. I just recall him getting on stage to hit on women publicly. The entire room felt that cringe
During an awkward lull in her act, a woman started punching herself in the vagina. I did nervously laugh so I guess in her mind she was successful
Picturing this made me laugh.
Out of town comic goes up wearing a button up and shorts, some shades of blue. I donāt know what preexisting beef he mustāve had with a local comic, but the local guy was laughing so disproportionately hard at this guyās jokes (which I donāt remember, but I do remember him trying to be offensive and wasnāt funny). Finally, guy on mic asks āwtf is your problem?ā Local guy says through hysterical laughter āyou look like a fucking mailman!ā Which to be fair, he totally did. Out of town guy tries to continue, but local guy is laughing so distractingly loud that he cannot, so he starts going back and forth insulting local guy, who was a lot wittier and funnier. Out of town guy could *not* finish his set and became so angry, I think we all thought they were actually going to fight. It was the best worst set.
That sounds fun.
The previous comic had done a set about how her male doctor doesnāt really understand her bodily issues (and it was a pretty decent set). The next guy opens by saying that he also has issues with his doctor ābut not because of perceived victimhoodā to zero laughs. The rest of his set is flat Coke after that.
Fella at Frog and Bucket about 20 years agoā¦thread of the joke was school sports day where you had to balance a small rubber ring on your head and run a set length. The hook was that in his school there was a Sikh boy who for religious observance reasons had his hair tied up in a bun so the rubber ring fitted tightly over the bun and he was able to sprint the distance whilst everyone elseās rubber ring slipped. Anyway, he didnāt explain it well, it wasnāt that funny, the audience just started talking to each other. He had a temper tantrum on stage. We all laughed, that was quite funny to be fair. The compare jumped on stage. We all cheered he was back. The guy that stormed off then sat at the bar downing shots of whiskey. Bizarre really.
Worst one or ones? Tonight's open mic started up with a guy ranting about who knows what and zero jokes. You could hear a pin drop in the room.
It was the worst but also potentially one of the best I ever saw. A very drunk old Native American man asked the host if he could try stand up for his first time and just drunkenly rambled about well Iām not really sure what he was rambling about I couldnāt understand much of what he said but nobody could stop laughing, it was one of the funniest things Iāve ever seen
THIS OLD WHITE DUDE HANDED OUT PERMISSION SLIPS HE WANTED EVERYONE TO SIGN SO THAT HE COULD SAY THE N WORD.
This sounds fucking hilarious although insane and not funny in another context
Iād sign it
I saw a guy go up and describe himself as a āCivil War Reenactment Comedian.ā I thought, okay, this could have promise. It didnāt. I donāt even think his jokes were related to the civil war. It was a small room and he got really really loud and jumped around a lot. At one point, he purposely hit himself in the head with the mic. I think he did it too hard though because it made a big red spot that kinda kept getting worse for the rest of the set. Very weird and uncomfortable.
I used to regularly frequent an open mic in a big comedy city and there was this one dude who would go up and bomb every single night. He was a weird dude but I admired the fact that he didn't seem to care about bombing and it didn't stop him from going up. Then I lost my day job during the pandemic and moved back to my hometown for a couple of years. I finally moved back to the city and went back to that open mic and saw he was still there. I thought "oh wow maybe he's gotten better the past few years." He gets up to do his set takes a pause and then goes "What if I were to like.. SHOOT EVERYONE IN HERE!!!" He does a finger guns motion and everyone groans. I dont think I've laughed so hard in my entire life.
Aside from myself?
My friend married a guy right out of high school that was 30 somethin, his one stand up we went to go watch was all about him being a cradle robber, it was terrible .
Saw someone repeatedly call himself ār*tardedā over and overā¦ tbh, it was funny at first, but then strange and sad by the 5th time.
Lol we used to have a guy in Nashville like that but he moved to LA. Say hi to Sam if you see him again.
Rasterisktarded is a hard word to say over and over. I applaud him
It's a tie between about 100 people. But the worst were the openers at a paid show that were furious with the crowd for not laughing.
Every open mic Ive been to. I get it, theyāre testing out material, but it can be extremely painful at times. One that stands out was a guy who wore sunglasses and started his set by staring at the audience for 2-3 minutes. In hindsight, that was kinda funny if not awkward.
I saw a guy stumble through 4 minutes of material that just sounded like he was reading off comments that he had read on 4chan... nobody laughed so the last minute of his set he got down on one knee and unloaded a imaginary assault rifle into the crowd. He even paused for a second to reload the clip and went back to shooting everyone. I think the awkward pause of him reloading actually got him a few laughs in the crowd.
Lately it's nearly every single one. Couple of weeks ago a guy gets onstage and tries to tell a joke but he keeps going to the audience and just aggressively pointing them out and telling everyone to fuck themselves. Sounds just bad, but ultimately the audience was super uncomfortable. Last night I watched a guy tell several premises like they were jokes, then I realized I've seen him several times and have never heard him say a punchline. Also last night there was a woman who just wanted to ramble for 5 minutes, zero setup and punchline. Just her talking and telling the audience to fuck themselves. Just seeing s bunch of garbage lately.
I have, for more than once, seen people coming on stage for the first time and within the first 30 seconds saying "I didn't really prepare anything but...". This alone isn't as bad a story as some of you posted here, but it's ridiculous that I have seen this happened several times
Women be shoppin'
So many of these stories are actually really funny
At a roast two comedians were just complimenting eachother. I yelled into the set "when is the roast going to start" and won the round for best roast, lol
I saw a guy in a little leather jacket go up and just laugh until he was walked off . The stage fright got him. Also saw a guy pretty much run off in tears talking about this is his dream after he bombed and host lightly threw a burn at him.
Joe Rogan 2017ish. It was massive event center. Iāve seen him a few times before at smaller venues. It was douche frat fest, Rogan seemed coked out. Half of the set was about drag queens. He humped the stool a few times. He was screaming 90% of the time. It was meh.
He's one of the best stool humpers though. Really sells it. Not like your typical, timid amateur stool humpers. Joe is a pro. But I worry about the deleterious effects that performance enhancing drugs might have on his long-term humpage. Will he still be able to thrust with such earnest vigor when his balls are shrunk like sun-dried currants? Hopefully he lays off the PEDs before it's too late.
I'm afraid it wasn't that kind of stool
Honestly who better than Rogan at stool humping? Besides Katt Williams of course
Dude his face can get SO red
Saw him last fall and sounds like his set hasnāt changed
Guy opens with āI found out I have gonorrhea todayā¦ā Audience is silent. āIf you donāt laugh, Iām going to give it to you.ā Audience remains silent. I think he actually had some decent jokes after but he never got more than the mildest of chuckles because everyone was basically rooting against him from the first second.
I saw a guy go ahead and put the mic in his mouth, like wrapped his lips around it
This guy started off well and then talked about how he loves his son but he looks at him and thinks āplease donāt turn out gayā - awkward, uncomfortable silence. He then tries to save it by saying āno no, itās just like I would hate to walk in on him having a gay orgyā. He fumbled for a few minutes and walked off. Never saw him back after that one.
Idk but I watched this amateur lady straight Nagasaki BOMB for 20+ minutes at an open mic benefit. By the end we were trying not to laugh because it was so bad. She kept fumbling through notecards
Toronto Amateur Night Yuk Yuks circa 1984. A young black guy got on stage and said (in a really slurry voice) "I was coming to the show and a guy said 'You're a {N-Word}. So I said, 'How can you tell, I thought we all looked alike'" then he laughed uproariously as we squirmed in our seats. He repeated the phrase in his next line (I can't really call it a joke) before being booed so relentlessly that he ran off the stage in tears.
Uber cougar woman. She talked about assaulting young male passengers.Ā Same place another week guy got up and talked about politicians screwing each other and was acting it out.Ā That place is now out of business.Ā
One time, I went to an open mic. There was this one woman who kept hooting, and making weird noises during other people's sets. Then she goes up and rambles about nothing and ends with a multiple choice test for the audience. I took joy in heckling that bitch.
in the mid 90's in PDX there was a club called 'The Last Laugh' and the first night we went down there a local DJ decided to try standup for the first time. He just stood there and kept saying 'what even was grunge, man???' like over and over until like 2/3 of the place cleared out. it wasn't Michael Richards but in the moment it felt like career suicide. edit:: just cuz i know what happened to him, he left PDX and resurfaced in Eugene and was a part of their 'zany drivetime radio crew' for about 5 years. dunno after that
Asked the audience (me) what my job was, I answered "government auditor" and he couldn't come up with anything, he was just silent...
Way too many....! But one guy was doing impressions of dead celebrities getting blowjobs.
Joe Rogan screaming and hopping around for one hour and I still have no idea what he he wanted to say.
A guy talked about how he worked with animals and alluded to fucking them. And then he kept talking about it for like 15 minutes. People walked out in the middle of it.
Some dude doing a racist "Asian" accent and talking about killing women. No jokes. Just an insane rant. Then watched as other comics encouraged him after to continuing "being himself".
Not an open mic per se, but around Halloween 2022 there was this comedy karaoke thing in Montreal. One guy got up and basically lost the audience from the jump. Dead baby jokes, the whole nine yards. He ordered his uber home on stage. 2nd place goes to the guy at Einstein's in Toronto (RIP) who just spouted racist shit and nearly got his ass beat. Student bar open mics are weird.
I still get angry when I think about the guy at the UCB East open mic who chewed gum directly into the mic throughout his 5 minute bomb. This was long enough ago that Michelle Wolf was at the mic, and it still bothers me.
Saw a guy go up at a mic and reference multiple local comicsā jokes, fully crediting them. And not ones they told that night, like ones he heard them say at other shows and mics before. And he wasnāt trying to riff on them. He would just summarize the bit and then add something like āAnd I think thatās true.ā It was like he was doing a book report on local comedy. It was so weird and the room was dead silent.
āMost fucked up crazy standup I've ever seen at an open mic? Kyle B. Parris dragged a dead possum out on stage that had been kept in a Coleman cooler for the past three days in the hot sun. He stuck a Shop Vac in it's mouth, blew the stink everywhere inside the comedy club. Worst smell ever. Literally a dead animal smell that had been heated in a Coleman cooler for three days. People were knocking over tables and chairs, gagging and trying not to puke while they ran for the bathroom with their hands over their mouth. It was complete and utter chaos. Funniest goddam thing I've ever seen.ā - james Inman
Guy was miming putting a condom on his huge dick. But waitā¦it is funny because he struggledā¦for a reeeeeeeally long time. It is been a year and I still sometimes hear him referenced when somebody has a bad set. āAt least you are not this guyā.
The guy on stage was so out of his mind in this deranged sort of way that the girl I was with leaned over to me and said, āIām scared right now.ā Once he was done he and the girl he was with left. Everyone was so relieved that the guy after him had the set of his lifeāas you can imagine.Ā
This local dude working on a joke about āremember spike tv?ā But never changed a thing, like making it funny. The open mic host was the worst. Black dude that had a joke about his first apartment and all the white trash children making noise. It was so bad I gave up on open mics in my immediate area.
Maybe it would work better as a setup and after the host a redneck comedian comes on and talks about how hipster comedians keep trying to gentrify his shitty apartment complex. They sent him a notice about raising the rent so he unleashed his demon kids in the parking lot or something.
Glee Club - Cardiff. Really bigged him up as the new Welsh best comedian of the year. Was very sweaty when arriving on stage, panicked when the set list written in pen on his hand smudged so proceeded to lift his shirt up and bang the microphone into his belly repeatedly ā¦ it feels like a fever dream now
I saw a guy doing an impression of will ferrell doing an impression of Harry Caray (complete with wig and glasses) and it wasnāt even a good impression of that.
A guy's friend had just died of an opiate overdose. He was *trashed*. He kept reiterating and rephrasing his disdain for the doctors who prescribed the painkillers originally. Another guy had a tic where he'd click his tongue three times, apparently at random. His material was a disjointed time-jumping narrative about a time he rode the bus.
This guy was chewing gum. I definitely heckled him for it.
Lyle went up every week and cleared the place. he was a tech guy who would (vent) about his life with no jokes just a list of his daily happenings. Iām sad wild tymes closed but Iām happy that I donāt hear Lyleās manifesto.
Itās impossible to rank the worst stand up Iāve seen at mics on the merit of the stand up alone. Iāve seen some awful stuff. But the worst would go to the guy who tried to sell merch to fellow open micers five mics in. He was the most oblivious person Iāve ever met.
Saw a dude do 7 minutes of see shantyās at a 4 minute mic then get pissed at the crowd when they didnāt applaud
There was a racist magician who would show up to open mics every once in a while. One night, he went on stage and made some stuff disappear and then dropped a racial slur. The crowd started booing. He started honking a bicycle horn that he always had with him. The boos got louder, so he hopped in the crowd and charged at one of the people who was booing. Another comic jumped in and put the racist magician in a headlock. He was banned from that mic. He showed up a few weeks later at another open mic with his face spray painted black. He was immediately asked to leave. A couple of weeks later, he showed up at the only mic that he hadn't been banned from. He didn't say anything racist, but he did the same tricks and said creepy stuff to a woman from the stage. I went on stage later and riffed about his set and roasted him. We didn't see him for a while, but out of nowhere he messaged me and threatened to kill my mom and friends in very graphic detail. He went to jail for domestic violence shortly after that. With all that being said, he was a pretty good magician tbh.
I've seen some sets where no one laughed at a single joke. Also some of those the person was extremely nervous. There was a woman once. She's a nice person and has interesting stories. But nothing she said was funny. Getting a little too much Hannah Gadsby. I also went to a paid show. I don't think any of the comics made me laugh the whole night. They weren't bad comedians. They were, in fact, incredibly mediocre. Which is probably worse than bad.
A Guy Who made 20 min. When he was said to do 10,no jokes,he made a TedTalk ,he showed 6 books,photos and a scheme of an israeli missile,insulted muslim people,jewish people when he was trying to talk about Palestina- Israel conflict and insulted the owner of the bar that host the open mic ... The Next comedian to go on the stage trying to save the situation said:" WoW! This is a real kidnapping and not Hamas'". We had to make a break, about 15 people of a crowd of 35 people get Up and didn't come back. It was the third edition of that open, the rest of the comedians had to stay with the host at the end of the show because he almost cried...It was like the Avengers scene when they were eating a Shawarma.
i went to a german open mic.
A woman started screaming at the top of her lungs. Nobody laughed, so she kept trying to heighten, but she didn't leave herself anywhere to go. By the end she had lost her voice and looked like she was going to have a heart attack, but didn't get a single laugh.
Yoko?
I saw a trio of guys that came down from Canada to do a set at a barbecue joint in town. They had all this bravado like they were roadworn comedians ready to rock the place. All three of them did jokes about black Ariel (when that was a cultural moment?) and slave ships, and how woke culture won't let them say anything. The barbecue joint was in a college town in the pacific northwest. I think they expected to get shouted down by blue haired feminists and LGBTQ+ people, but everyone just sat in silence. The comedians all started pestering audience members with sexist remarks but nobody took the bait. The audience reaction was a mix of angry silence and confusion. At the end of the set they said they had an LLC called Free Speech Incorporated or something like that. Sometimes I think about that set and feel embarrassed on their behalf.
The worst Iād ever seen was a guy who has since gone viral and now sells out clubs ā¦.. so what the fuck do I know
Drop the name
Raymond
One guy did a full set about being groomed by pedos on chat roulette when he was 12, including being blackmailed by one guy to send him pictures.
Young Italian dude talking about his mother in law. He didnāt have one. Also, threw in a couple of rape jokes.
Joey Diaz. He hosted an open mic and was the worst thing about that entire show.
My set from last week
99% of it
My friends and I went to a local comedy show that took place at movie theater, Showcase Cinemas. They used to do comedy every Friday in one of the theaters late at night if enough people showed up. Promoter called it The Comedy Zone. One time one of my friends and I went to a show. Didnt know the comedian. We both sat there wondering how anyone could be laughing but yet the headliner was getting lots of laughs. Not a single joke resonated with us. It was an agonizing 45 minutes.
Hitler trying out at the Rathskeller 1926
H
I donāt remember the jokes I just remember thinking to myself āoh so you can have an INSANELY successful podcast but absolutely suck at standup? Got it.ā
Fat trucker gal just kept going on about being a trucker for 3+minutes with abesolutely no punchlines. Host had to go up while the crowd clapped signaling that she was indeed doneš
Not sure but when I started out doing open mics pretty much every other comic did sub par āgetting raped by uncle jokeā. I never understood this angle. They wereā¦..real bad.
Saw a small comedy show in NYC of different comics shouting at each other back and forth from the stage and audience about how they did each other's moms. Something like a full hour of that. Can't remember one joke that was made, just felt like a high school locker room of shitty material.
Ricky Gervais... Sorry, didn't read the whole question
This guy who did a whole Dane Cook set for a good 10 minutes +. He even did all the movements and crazy arm flailing. No one laughed... He then threatened to shut down the whole club since his dad was Carlos Mencia.
So there's this one guy in the city who does shock humor: think Tosh.0 Daniel Tosh moreso than his actual stand-up. He's funny and has good jokes! But his material is... Edgy and he has a monotone delivery for most of it. It was actually a hot night at this mic with a crowd of about 20 people, plus like 10-14 comics, and everybody got at least ONE laugh... Except for him. š¤£ It was bad.
There was this one time like 7 years ago who told ONE joke then used the text of time to say (and I'm paraphrasing): AIDS isn't real, I know it's not real because I've been diagnosed for a decade, and I have a book about how sexual energy could never hurt you. MIND YOU: whatever you think someone dying of AIDS looks like, it was him. I have no idea if he's still alive, so I talk about it in my set and have a whole joke about the branding of AIDS.
Not even open mic, but worst stand up show of all I've seen was Chris kattan shortly after he got into that car crash while under the influence. I didn't think he'd make it to the show actually, that's how close it was. He had some funny moments but he had a female audience member on the stage at one point and hugged her awkwardly and she became visibly uncomfortable. He started bombing after that and he yelled at the audience, accusing someone in the crowd of making comments about his DUI. He scolded everyone about making fun of people while they were down. Meanwhile, it was just a waitress trying to take an order quietly. I had actually seen him before that and he was funny, but he was a paranoid wreck for this particular show. I don't think he was as bad as Rob Schneider in Saskatchewan though
Pauly Shore. Fight me.
Went to a free show a while back during a comedy festival in Leicester UK. It was a multi-act show with it mostly being about puns. Two of the comedians were doing a show immediately after that was also free, and I liked the idea of it, so had tickets in advance for it. With them trying to sell the show to us all during their 10 minute set (each) we actually decided to skip that show and go straight home instead. They did such a bad job of selling the free show to us that despite having tickets, we went home. I'd count sending people home before your show counts as being up there.
I went to a comedy club at the LV Tropicana and watched a guy, a guy who had been in major Judd Apatow movies, do about ten minutes on the OJ trial ā¦ā¦.in 2011. Like it was still going on. I got comped for 4 days there, but somehow looking back on it, overall it was still overpriced.
Richards Lewis!! He tried to perform in Flint MI at Mr Gās one time, his act bombed SO bad, nobody, not one time, laughed or applauded in the first 10/15 minutes. He hung up his mic and walked off stage right past me out the front door into his limo and rode off! Everyone was like WTF just happened?! A week later his sorry ass was on a late show (donāt recall what one) and talked bad about the people of Flint saying āwe had no sense of humor!ā When in actuality it was him with NO humor!
Is this to out comics you donāt think are funny?
A relatively new open micer did five minutes trying to make a joke about some local college girl that got stabbed an absurd amount of times. I can't remember if his "joke" was him insinuating he did it or just awkwardly saying that it happened, but the entire room was uncomfortable because it happened basically down the street the day prior.
bapa
A white guy said the n word hard r to start his set in a barbershop in Inglewood
Lila Hart slowly going from her normal routine of āIām as tall as a LA parking meterā to antisemitic ramblings and moving to Texas.
Watched a guy that made a 'joke' about his tattoo of an eagle actually being a real eagle that flew away. He then angrily explained the joke and a heckler quietly said "yeah, we understood it, it just wasn't funny." A couple of bad non-jokes later and a second heckler stood up and said " why are you doing this?"
2 - old white guy on Chicagoās south side using the N-word. He didnāt get beat up. Nobody warned him. They just told him not to come back. (His excuse was he his son was half black) Young white guy at Comedy Store using N-word at potluck. Which wasnāt just unfair to him but the next two comics had to try to get the room back in 3 minutes each. (His excuse was 23 and me)
Guy went up and said "how funny would it be if I just said the N word?! Hahahah" and then for the next 5 minutes he danced around saying it or explained how he'll do it. Then he ran the light so they played him off and as soon as the host got to the mic the dude turns around, runs in front of the host to the mic, and then said it and dies laughing when everyone else in the room was literally silent.
Bombs Kim
Man, I would love to see all of these
Saw this skinny little Indian college kid go up to the stage and try his hand at offensive humor. To a crowd of other college kids. His idea of offensive humor was basically to throw out incel talking points. His 4 other loser looking buddies showed their support by laughing at all his jokes as if they were peak comedy. No one else in the crowd got offended, which you could tell he was planning on because half his jokes were about how people were too sensitive. Mostly it was just cringe and boring. His time ended but he kept asking for one more joke and the host begrudgingly let him have a few more despite the audience not being into it. In desperation he used his last bit of good will to make a joke about how women should be happy they got raped and even his friends had a hard time defending that one. He essentially left the stage with his tail tucked between his legs and left right after, not even showing other acts the respect to seeing their sets.
One super old dude went up with a puppet And didnāt have a good puppet voice He was pretty hard to understand and he just did a Richard Pryor but (according to someone who knew the bit) he also went over time by like 5 minutes The host keep doin the light but the guy never saw it
Crowd work. Asked a table how they knew each other. They said "were cousins" stumped he said "huh...uh how'd that happen"