This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 3, 2009 - There's really no set way for stand-up comics to come into what's a hobby for oh-so-many, and a profession for a lucky few.
So, Mike McGuire's route into the world of stand-up - and what's definitely a hobby, not yet a profession - is as unique as anyone's.
A real-estate investor by trade, as a partner in Capital Investment, McGuire's got a pretty nice, normal life during the day hours. He has a wife, Mary Lou; two daughters, Kathryn and Meg (15 and 11); and a fine house in suburban Webster Groves. He also has a mild obsession with writing, which occupies the first 90 minutes of his every morning. That discipline of striking the keys and moving the pen so early in the day gives his writing regularity, as well as providing the bedrock of his act.
"I wake up at 6 o'clock and get to writing for 90 minutes," he says. "At lunch, I take a few minutes to go over it. Writing every day, I've got a ton of material."
His writing, as you might suspect for a moonlighting comic, is often, though not always, comedic in nature. He's been at it for years, workshopping with writing groups, reading the pieces at open mics every so often. Over the years, members of his group mentioned the need for him to take his writing in the stand-up direction, though he resisted for no small amount of time. It wasn't until he took an improv class with LA-and-STL-based instructor Bill Chott that he finally summoned the nerve to take the challenge of pure, open-mic comedy.
Asked when he debuted, there's not a second's pause as he says, "March 30."
And why does he remember the date so well?
"I remember because I was afraid to do it," he admits. "I took Bill's beginning improv class and it really loosened me up. I'd been reading my essays for years and had been turning them into a stand-up act. But for a long time, I was afraid to do it."
Asked about the nature of his act - which can veer between 5 and 15 minutes, depending on the venue - McGuire says that his life provides the basic text.
"Relationships," he ticks off, mentioning his core topics. "Middle age. Being married for 17 years. The battle between the sexes. That's some of it."
And for what seems like a mild-mannered guy, McGuire's definitely got some edge to his material. It's not necessarily locker-room stuff, but ... he's not going to worry about every bit of language if things head in a randy direction. His improv work, in particular, can take on a certain blue hue when he's really going.
His good friend and writing group partner, Lisa Odak Ebert, says, "I'd been working with him for six years, in a writing group that lasted seven or eight years. Once he actually started reading, I thought, 'he might just be funny.' There's a lot of funny stuff in there about marriage, 'he said/she said'-type material that's going to work with a middle-age crowd."
Maybe taking a page from a comic's book of put-downs herself, she riffs on McGuire, saying he comes off as "dirty and flirtatious to many. He's self-deprecating. He's abusive to the audience." As for the wife jokes? "I would not want to be his wife."
Local actor and improviser George Malich has seen McGuire's edgy side in that setting, saying "I've had the privilege of taking improv classes with Mike. He is clearly the mischievous type. I bet when he was a kid, he got put in detention for talking in class."
Which might bring up the question of how McGuire's daughters respond to his newfound hobby? And the thought of dad standing on stage, cracking jokes that might just be about them?
"They don't really pay attention to it," he suggests. "They're just mad at me if I can't take them to the Y. I still have time to go to school events, still have time to make them do homework."
But there's less time to do the writing work in the morning. Or, at least, he's not quite as bright-eyed as he used to be, now that he's logging anywhere between one and four appearances at area clubs in a given week, with two to three nights out the norm. That often means getting to a club by, say, 8 p.m., then waiting until 10:30, 11 or later for a quick shift on the mic. Travel time has to be factored in and by the time a night's over, he might be lucky to wind down and get into bed by 12:30 a.m., if not later.
He's now played rooms all over the region. There've been clubs better known for music (Spooty's, Off Broadway), or hipsters (The Atomic Cowboy, the Wedge), some that have already closed (the Westport Funny Bone) and others that are more like holes-in-the-wall (Sherri's Ashby Inn). In the case of Sherri's, he's played the room enough to even mourn the loss of a regular. "One of the best audiences members there died," he says.
Ultimately, he figures that any room has the same key components.
"There's a stage," he says. "A bunch of tables and chairs. And hot lights."
Since the fateful night of March 30, he's lost some sleep, but McGuire's gained the ability to look forward to the few minutes under those hot lights -- even if there's still a bit of fear mixed into the night's equation.
"The more people you have, the easier it is to get laughs," he figures. "It's only about waiting your turn. My wife wants to know why I keep going out. Because I like it. It's a fun hobby. I'm still afraid to do it, but the more people are there, the easier it is to do, somehow. When there's a lot of energy in the room, I'm ready to roll."
Thomas Crone is a freelance writer.