Saturday, August 05, 2006

'Heeeeere's Mel!'

By FRANK PHILLIPS
frankphi@hotmail.com
“Heeeere’s Mel!”
Mel Brown is getting comfortable on the stage as a stand-up comedian.
The Brazil man is used to speaking in public — he is working on some seminar material and he wants to develop a humorous, after-dinner speech.
So, he found himself on stage at Crackers Comedy Club in Broad Ripple last March.
“I’ve wanted to do this for years,” he said. “I finally decided, ‘Either do it or don’t!’”
The club gives first-timers three minutes and six minutes their second trip to the mike.
“I got some applause my first time,” he said. “They told me, ‘Amateurs never get applause,’ so I guess I did all right. It was kinda scary to be in front of the lights.”
The second time Mel performed, he was on stage six minutes (”It felt like forever,” he said.) but he felt hurried and his timing was off. No applause that time.
The audience reaction mystifies Mel.
Sometimes he uses material he thinks is really funny but the audience doesn’t laugh. Other times he uses materials that he thinks is only so-so, but the audience laughs.
“Then you think, ‘Why are they laughing?’” he said.
Mel is planning to go back to Crackers in September.

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