John Scalzi Live in Concert

Posted on June 7, 2014    Posted by John Scalzi      7 Comments

Last night I tried something kind of new for me: I did a concert with Paul and Storm and Pat Rothfuss, where I attempted something like stand up comedy. Which is to say for the first half of my opening set (because of course I was the opening set, as P&S and Pat have done this gig before) I went up on stage without reading material or prompts, and tried to be funny on several different topics in front of an audience of several hundred people.

Did it work? Well, people laughed mostly when I hoped they would, so I would say yes. Afterwards I pinged the opinion of a couple of people who I trust, and their opinion was that it was a decent attempt — places where the material could have been sanded down or trimmed a little better, but not bad overall. I think that’s about right. If I were doing it again, I know where I’d trim things down or punch up the delivery. But I had fun, and I think the audience has fun, and I wouldn’t mind doing that again. So overall, success, I think.

The second half of my set included me and Amber Benson reading this piece of mine. It was awesome, largely because Amber rocked it (because she is awesome). And then both Paul & Storm and Pat Rothfuss were excellent, and we all came on the stage for a 25-minute version of “The Sea Captain’s Wife’s Lament.” It was all a blast. My life is pretty neat sometimes.