Hello everyone!
Apologies for the lack of comedy this week. During the last month I’ve been sort of on a trial period for a job and frankly I’m not proving myself which is frustrating, for all parties involved. Because of that I’ve fallen behind on writing humor and, more importantly, editing something very important that I planned to have complete by early July. Ugh.
I’ll have more to talk about soon. But for your enjoyment here is a bit of background on me. Lately my brain keeps slipping into the past which was probably due to me finding a some old pictures.
I went abroad right after college, and it was my first time on a plane, let alone out of the country. My goal was to stay a year in China and then come back to the US. That was 2011. I came back in 2019.
Here is one of the only photos from that first year, snapped on my birthday. I’ve said before I hated taking photos, so enjoy this peek at a still unlined (but deeply pixelated) face.
Frankly, if I hadn’t been abroad I wouldn’t have had the courage to get on stage and do standup which influenced how I think about and write comedy.
It was also quite a different experience then doing open mics in the states, a fact I learned when I occasionally returned home. One could often get 20 or more minutes guaranteed a week (4-5 minutes for an open mic set). But since the open mic audience was generally the the same rotating regulars, there was a lot of pressure to come up with new jokes every set. Otherwise they would say, “You told that joke last week!” So most of us did write new jokes, sometimes for each night. Because of this I got to be a better and faster humor writer. Not to mention I got used to bombing and being OK with it.
Below is a view from my favorite apartment. The south-facing balcony overlooked the Hutongs. This is an obnoxious photo that I’m sure I put on some dating app, but it does capture one of my favorite places to explore.
In case you want one of my more unusual Beijing stories, here is one that was published in Tenderly about a random chicken I met on a lonely alley.
That’s it for today! Talk to you again soon!
Kyrie