Smoking Moose
Open Mic Night
W
hat’s fun about an open mic night,
aside from having a few beers and
listening to local talent, is that
there’s no telling what’s about to happen
on stage.
“Play guitar, sing, standup comedy, spoken
word poetry — even juggling,” said Dougie
Alvie, musician and first guest host of at the
Smoking Moose’s new open mic night on
Wednesdays. “If you can juggle, I want to see
you to get up here and juggle.”
Open mic isn’t meant to be a serious artistic
struggle, according to Alvie. It’s like a community talent show, a place for confessions
and rants and beauty and struggle and magnificent, uncompromisingly bad comedy.
There’s no set structure to the kind of acts
going on; if you want to do magic tricks,
that’s fine. Want to play the ukelele and ride
a unicycle? Check with the venue for insurance information, but you’re probably set.
“[We want to] draw people out of their comfort zone to mingle with other entertainers they may not normally meet,” said Chris
Patterson, who organizes open mic night at
the Moose. “We’re just trying to keep local
entertainment alive and give these artists a
place to be heard.”
INSIGHT’S HALLOWEEN INTERACTIVE FICTION
You see the front door, the only sure chance
to escape this house of horror, and make your
decision. You summon your totem animal, the
spirit creature that guides you on the quest of
life, for the strength, wisdom and tenacity to
persevere and outrun the gerbil.
Ironically, your totem animal is also a gerbil.
Your totem animal and the gerbil give each
other a high-five before mauling you to death.
YOU DIED!
FINAL SCORE: TOTEM ANIMAL? I PICKED THE
FRONT DOOR!
If you’d like to go back in time to before you
did something you didn’t have any reason to
think you would do, you can always go back
to page 67.