Last night a friend of mine from work and I went to the Loony Bin for open-mic comedy night. Neither of us performed, we just wanted to see how the whole thing worked.

Admission is $6 ($4 for students and seniors — good thing I held on to my SNU Student ID card!). Starting at 8pm, stand up comics got to go up on the stage and perform their 5-minute routines. Some of them were pretty good. One guy did a bit about how his girlfriend was mad at him, and discovering why she was mad was like determine someone’s poker hand. “You know I was with Trish? Damn, that’s a good card.” Some of the other open-mic’ers weren’t as good. One guy did a bit about turtles raping each other. A couple of the other comedians seemed content to get up on stage and simply cuss. Whee. Almost all of them did Michael Jackson jokes.

After I think seven open-mic performances, the headliners performed. I had the same experience with music. I was listening to a lot of unsigned and amateur bands for a while, and it’s not until you back to listen to “professional” musicians that you realize how good they really are. Such was the case last night as well. You really don’t realize how funny and smooth the comedy pros are until you can directly compare them to the amateurs. Don’t get me wrong, there were some funny amateurs, but they were definitely amateurs.

PS: Our telephone is still out of order. The technician who came out yesterday said that he thinks lightning hit the phone pedestal and that it’s completely dead. It’s been dead since Sunday, hopefully they can get it fixed soon. If you need to reach us, e-mail and cell phones are your best options.