(#4 – Psych!) Funny Fridays at Samuel French

June 13, 2015

Aurora in welp this isn't happening pose(This is one of the 52 performances in 52 weeks project.)

So, I say “psych” because this one didn’t happen.

In the half marathons project, there were a couple that were false starts (because I screwed up daylight savings, or missed a flight, etc.). There were also some I didn’t talk about much in the blog, because I thought I’d do one and it’d get cancel.

It was weird to me back then that half marathons would get cancelled, but when they’re small I guess it’s not that surprising. (Heck, even when they’re big it happens sometimes! (As we saw with the NYC Marathon (which I was not registered for anyway).))

And then, I was surprised to learn in the volunteer activities project that sometimes those fall through because you literally just get sent home when there’s not enough work to do.

In both projects, I’d kind of made the assumption that once things are publicized and planned, they happen and you can be a part of them.

Well, I suppose that’s a silly assumption because you never know what’s gonna happen in life. And everybody’s just trying stuff. Sometimes stuff doesn’t work (or it doesn’t work as well as you thought or in the way you thought). Of course sometimes, it works out even better (which is I think why we all try and take chances).

Aurora writing her favorite musical on the board at the Samuel French Bookshop
(writing my favorite musical on the board)

But yeah, I suppose (even though it’s often a pretty safe assumption), I still shouldn’t assume everything’s always gonna happen as it’s publicized.

Anyway, that’s what happened here.

After one of my (awesome, fantastic, amazing) workouts with Class Pass (with which I’m totally obsessed), I wandered a little and happened upon the Samuel French Bookshop. I’ve heard about it all the time, but never been in there!

When I went in, I saw it is indeed totally as cool as you’d expect.

(There was a board with chalk pieces that asked, “What’s your favorite musical?” For me, it’s 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee all the way (no matter how much I adore Avenue Q and Book of Mormon.))

One of the things I noticed in this welcoming awesome bookstore is that they have “Funny Fridays” where they do a “no-mic open mic.”

I’ve never done stand-up comedy, but I had what I thought was a semi-funny story about someone getting arrested. (I know. Sounds hilarious, right? But really, I *think* I had a funny spin for it.)

Anyway, it didn’t matter if it was gonna be funny or not, ’cause when I got there, it wasn’t happening. Only three people showed up, so the person at the desk said it wasn’t worth having it.

Funny Fridays flyer for Samuel French bookshopThe other woman who showed up seemed disappointed. She was like, “There are three of us. We’re here. It doesn’t hurt anything to just let us go up for each other, right?”

I was kind of with her. I mean, I part of me was slightly relieved as I didn’t even know if my thing was funny. But I’m trying to take risks and get up there and her logic made sense to me.

….But not to the woman at the desk, because alas, it did not happen.

It was so chill in there, and the comedy area was in the back and didn’t even have a real stage. So I’m pretty sure we could’ve gone back there and done it anyway without anyone even noticing or caring. But oh well. The staff didn’t want us to do it. So, I just headed out.

(Perhaps it was all for the best though, as I have since heard that Flappers on Wednesdays is the best place to do your first comedy open mic though, so I suppose we’ll see!)

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