Go to enough New York City open mics, and you start to recognize a cast of recurring characters. Who are the recurring characters of New York City open mics? And more importantly, have I become one of them?

Check it out here.

I glanced down at the piece of paper as I walked. It was printed with even rows of text, each line a separate idea I would riff on. It was my set, my bits, my jokes and my gags. My goal was to make a bar full of strangers laugh, and just for a few minutes at a time, loosen their grip on reality. I looked down at the paper, and then back up to make sure I didn’t walk into someone: I spotted packs of men and women in their suits and dresses on cell phones making plans for the evening, looking for relief. I was in my work clothes, t-shirt and jeans, also looking for a sense of relief. Eyes back down on the paper. I read sentences, already memorized. I wanted to read them again. Just in case.

If you forget something while you’re up there, take out the paper and have a look. That’s what everyone did last time. That’s what open mics are for: practice. No, no, that’s amateurish. You’ll seem vulnerable and no one will laugh.

Four blocks away. Paper still in my hand, but down at my side, folding against my jeans with each step. I ran through my routine (can something be your routine if you haven’t done it before?) in my head, counting 1, 2, 3 before delivering a punchline to an audience that wouldn’t exist for another 20 minutes. The stories and set ups were easy; They were just like a regular conversation. Punchlines were more difficult. Infinite ways to deliver, only a few ways to get a laugh. The 1, 2, 3 pause before a punchline…creates tension. In a few seconds of silence…the ears tense and wait. Relief was the reward for patience.

You’re only going to be up there for six minutes. Depending on how quickly you get your first laugh — if you get one at all — it will either feel a lot longer or shorter. Don’t try to seem cool. Just go up there and do it like you practiced.

Three blocks away. The paper was now stuffed in my back pocket. I made a detour at a Wells Fargo to use the ATM. The bank was styled like a McDonald’s: glistening reds and cheap, plastic yellows. There’s a joke here somewhere. A bank that’s like McDonald’s… Storing the thought for later, I took a twenty from the ATM. $5 to perform; A small cost for a new experience.

Don’t forget to introduce yourself once you step on stage. Your name is easy to remember, and if for some reason you do well, you’ll want them to know it. Do I introduce myself before and after, or just before or just after? Wait to see if the host introduces you, and then decide.

Two blocks away. Headphones on. Take the mind in another direction,. Music on. The blues. Comedians are supposed to be sad, right?

The link between music and comedy. In music, a verse builds tension, and a repetitive, catchy chorus relieves the tension. In comedy, a story or setup builds tension, and a punchline relieves the tension.

One block away. I quickened my pace and approached the club. A guy stood outside puffing a half-burned cigarette. I removed one headphone, looked at him, and reached to my pocket to grab my wallet for my ID. Nevermind. He wasn’t a bouncer; He was a patron temporarily trading his beer for a cigarette. I walked past him and entered the club.

I walked to the back of the bar and pushed away a draped black curtain. The room, revealed. Brick walls, bare except for two chalkboards with the week’s schedule. Tomorrow night was trivia night. One bright light — the spotlight — lit the corner stage. I paid my fee at the door.

“Yeah, I’m here to perform.” My name was scribbled on the bottom of the list. “That’s Mann with with two n’s,” I said correcting her. I took a seat on the metal folding chair in the back of the room.

The jokes about shit and dicks and porn always work, but are easy. I can make Jewish jokes because I’m Jewish, right? Seinfeld did. Most Jewish comedians do.

I chipped away at my nails, and a pile nail debris formed by my sneakers. I kicked the pile and sat on my hands. I wasn’t paying attention to the comedian on stage; I was only anticipating my turn.

I hope I didn’t have my routine too memorized. Canned material never sounded right, only when Carlin did it. My bin Laden bit is a little dated by now, but the cab driver I told it to the other night still laughed. He was Middle Eastern.

Brendan went on stage. He placed a voice recorder on his chair before going up. Brendan is friend and has been performing for about a year. He seemed relaxed, almost bored, greeting the host like he did each week previously. He forgot his new bit half way through his routine and transitioned to the bit about the time he threw up in the back of the cab. Most of Brendan’s bits are about alcohol. He’s Irish, with red hair. It works for him; It wouldn’t work for me.

Hopefully the audience is intelligent, cerebral enough to pick up on my references. What if they don’t know who Anne Frank is? That joke I have won’t work if they don’t.

I tapped the host, who had taken a seat in front of me after introducing Brendan.

“Hey man, it’s my first time doing this. Mind giving me some feedback after my set?”

He turned his neck towards me, but not his body. Concerned, he asked, “It’s your first time on stage?”

“Yes, well, no. It’s my first time on stage doing standup. I’ve done improv comedy and given speeches…”

“You gotta wait until I see you a few times before I give you any feedback.”

He turned his head back towards the stage. He was either being honest, or wanted me coming back again and again. Probably both. Brendan left the stage and sat down. The host went back up and grabbed the mic.

I was called up. My turn.

“Good luck, dude,” Brendan said.

Performing for the first time felt like drowning. Trapped, stiff, tense. Each laugh from the audience would be a gulp of air. Get enough laughs and you can breathe, maybe swim to the surface.

I made eye contact with a few members of the audience. I had my jokes memorized, but I threw in some “well, what else do I want to talk about?” to make it seem less so. The non-sequitors helped me relax.

Jokes are math. Add the right variables together and you’ll get laughs.

The room was filled with sad people, or so it seemed, which is more obvious once you are on stage. No smiles until right after joke. Everyone was slouching, beer sipping. Because the audience was made up of other comedians, everyone was on the defensive. “Go ahead, try to make me laugh” is the attitude. Everyone anticipating the other guy’s punchline.

The host gave me my red light when I hit the 6 minutes mark: An open cell phone flashed in my line of vision. I was only ¾’s of the way through my material.

Too much. Better than not enough.

I put the mic stand back in its original position and hopped off stage back to my seat. Brendan nodded, but didn’t make eye contact. “You did well,” he said, staring at the empty stage.

I approached the host again at the end of the show and asked how I did. He hesitated, then relented. “It was good that you took the mic off the stand and put it behind you. It lets the audience know, you know, that you mean business.”

Some comedian once said there is no practicing in comedy. The only way to get better is to go do it. It’s like boxing; You’ve got to get jabbed in the face a few times until you get better.

That’s right, I was just an intern. It feels so funny to say this now, because I always felt above the deprecating title. I suppose this was how they wanted you to feel, even as an intern: delusionally elevated.

Hubris is what makes Wall Street everything it is and isn’t: a mechanism of the functioning world markets while contributing to the dysfunctional perils of political and economic evil. And, the over-achieving, mostly Ivy League interns are all competing for the same end-of-summer “prize”: a high paying banking or trading position to continue the roles of the men (and all two, maybe three women) who came before them.

I beat myself up mentally during the time I was trying to break into Wall Street. So much that I when I look back, my actions do not feel like me and my words do not sound like me. Eventually, a few smart people and pieces of literature snapped me out of it, but the crowded memories still linger.

The following cringe-worthy recollections seemed appropriate, serious and even prideful at the time they occurred during my short stint on Wall Street. Now, they are telling, reflective and even funny.

–

1. During an interview, an interviewer told me I was “intense,” and proceeded to recommend that I “relax.” I grinned, thinking honestly to myself “Yes. I fucking nailed this.”

2. I opened an interview proclaiming, before giving the two colleagues interviewing me a chance to speak, that I had just walked around the block listening to Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name of.” I then gave them permission to “begin the interview.”

3. I attempted to convince a group of high-frequency traders to use Google Reader for their media intake because it was “faster” than the tools they were already using in their terminals. This clearly wasn’t the case, but I thought it was because I was “internet savvy” and, oh yeah, they were writing advanced algorithms to trade 300 shares-per-second.

4. Barely a few months into my nascent Wall Street career, I wrote a how-to piece for college students eager to compete in finance. Upon publication, I immediately emailed the editor begging to take it down because the comments shit on me worse than I had already shit myself.

5. I signed all thank-you emails “Appreciatively” or what should have read “I hope you appreciate me sounding like a douche in the attempt of writing something different than ‘thanks.’”

6. I would openly tell my managers I was a masochist in hopes that they would assign me more work, while ironically complaining to myself all day how uncomfortable my shoes were.

7. I’d strategically place one “fuck” or “shit” in my enthusiastic “why I want to work here” pitch to the senior male managers. If I was pitching a women or minority, I’d always mention the “great diversity” the organization offered.

8. I used to wake up to so early for the train that the last-shift of b-squad prostitutes were still lounging on my street. I would shake my head in disgust, only realizing now that I should have said: ”You and I — maybe-a-lady possibly-a-dude in the five-inch heels and smeared lipstick — our jobs are not that different!”

9. An actual email written back to me once said “try to use ‘please’ and ‘thanks’ in your emails, otherwise they seem a bit arrogant. I don’t care really, but lots of ppl on the street dont like that.” Thanks, asshole.

10. I wrote Michael Lewis a long, self-aggrandizing email and closed with quite possibly the worst question ever. While I won’t reprint my question, Michael’s single-line classic response was “Alex: There’s no good or even useful answer to this question. Best, ML.”

11. This was one of my favorite movie scenes. Okay, it still is.

–

I started writing, mostly as therapy, in notebooks during my summers on Wall Street. The reason being wasn’t clear at the time, but it is now: a pen and paper was the only time I could be myself.

As much as I can laugh, mock and narrate my previous, often ridiculous behavior, what bothers me is that it really wasn’t me, not even at the time. It was me being someone else attempting to meet the expectations of a culture where there is no such thing as enough.

Sure, there are plenty of intelligent, rational people that work on Wall Street who enjoy their jobs, make a good living and manage perfectly stable lives outside of work. But for the most part, I found it a difficult culture and career to keep up with where the monetary rewards aren’t in line with the personal job satisfaction, and the only measure of success is a P&L statement.

My jump post-Wall Street to entrepreneurship-land was a selfish decision: I wanted to take the wheel. No bullshit, no acting and no playing dress up. I wanted to be in control, good or bad, of my own fate and monetary outcome.

And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?”

The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”

Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.

- Woody Allen, Annie Hall, 1977

The technology culture in the Bay Area is saturated. The justification for working on a startup requires little explanation because the person you are talking to is probably working on one as well. In New York, it parallels the density of the financial industry. Many of the professionals living in the city work on Wall Street. And if they don’t, they probably want to, even if they won’t admit it. In Los Angeles, I’d assume it’s similar with the entertainment industry.

Cultures cause a tunnel vision, and the result, if you stand back, can be laughably absurd. For example, the nuances of the technology culture in the Bay Area drag along the pettiness of social media counting. If you’ve been to a technology conference, I guarantee you’ve overheard a conversation as ridiculous as this:

Geek #1 in a “If you were coding Ruby, you’d be home by now” shirt:

“Dude, my follower count dropped from 147 to 143 yesterday after I sent out that NSFW link without warning.”

Geek #2 in a “I’m huge on Twitter” shirt:

“Ah, that stinks. At least you’re still not trying to break 100. I’ll just follow a few hundred people until they follow me back, then drop them all!”

I’d interject, in reference to what Howard wrote, that you have to be willing to be unfollowed or unread if you want to be followed or read at all. It’s similar to investing; you need to be willing to lose money to make money. Any progression has its waves in and out, up and down, happy and sad.

But seriously, now taking another step back. The conversation I referenced, which happens more often than you might think, is about losing Twitter followers. These are people you probably don’t really know. What does it mean?

The irony is that I’m taking the time to write about it and fight about it. It’s as ridiculous as the guy with a brother that’s a chicken: maybe I’m the crazy one. For jobs or hobbies, including mine, the bullshit just might be part of the opportunity cost. My criticism is stale, but to me, it feels warranted.

Conversations like the one I described aren’t about the love of technology, fascination with social media, or about the group-think the two cause together; they are about being in love with the tragedy of it all.

And, if you can’t laugh at it, everyone else will for you. Or, at least I will.