For Struggling Comics: Things For You to DO at Various Museums

MUSEUMS CAN BE USED FOR MORE THAN STUDYING SKELETONS

When you see, read, or hear these names: The Museum of Natural History ; The Met ; The Guggenheim ; The Cloisters and American Museum of Natural History, your blood pressure instantly rises, your palms become sweaty and you squirm in your chair just like a kid on Christmas Eve. You are excited almost beyond human expression.

Thing is, you are at the awkward age of pre-teen, but you still love the idea of you and your family heading-out to one of these high-class museums in the morning. You love the museum for you are a pre-teen who loves to learn new things ranging from Early European Domesticated Cats to Mysterious Spanish Liquor That Never Fermented. The subjects cannot get too complicated or controversial for you for you are a one-pre-teen learning machine.

YOU EITHER GIVE UP OR GET ALONG WITH YOUR CAREER-BUILDING

But as time goes by, you hit adulthood and your excitement for learning begins to wane. You are now divorced after two-years of a rocky marriage (due to your career choice of being a stand-up comic faltering), and you are now spiraling downward into dark areas of depression thanks to your failing comic career. Somehow, your “ex” could never grasp why you had this yearning for telling jokes and making people laugh. She was a detailed-oriented person. She believed in you working to provide food, shelter, and other necessities for her, the wife, who was taking care of the apartment you both chose for a home.

But now as you look back on these two-years, all you can remember is one fight after the other. Her meeting you at the door every evening asking, “Did you get a job today?” And with head hung low, you softly answered no. Then the nightly-fight begun. If it weren’t for the money her mom and your dad had lent you, there would be no groceries, lights or water. It was that bad. It was so bad in fact you thought when you overheard people using the term: Terrible to describe your marriage, you thought they were paying you a compliment.

LIFE HAS A MYSTERIOUS TECHNIQUE OF TEACHING

Life has a way of opening our eyes. With nothing better to do, one day you pay a visit to the local art museum and while standing, admiring a priceless-piece from Vincent van Gogh, you overhear a group of kids laughing and cutting-up while following a few adults who are taking them on a tour of the museum. Then it hits you. You need to come back to this museum for many days straight and compile yourself a list of

For Struggling Comics: Things For You to Do at Various Museums

1. Stand directly behind the tour-guide at any museum and make faces at the group following them. If the group breaks-down in gales of laughter, making faces can be used in your act.
2. Sneak into an exhibit featuring Prehistoric Man, and you pose as a hunter with a spear taking aim on a dinosaur, but as the tour group stops to observe this vital exhibit, you wink at the pretty women in the group. Then without the tour-guide noticing, you do "The Twist," as if you are dancing with the female cavewoman mannequin.
3. Dress in a road-runner costume and run (as fast as you can) up and down the passageways of a prestigious museum. When you hear people yell, "Did you see that giant road-runner?" then bellow laughter, then the road-runner costume is "in" for your act next weekend in New Jersey.
4. Climb onto a statue of a T-Rex and get in a stationary-pose. When people stop to study the T-Rex, you change positions of your arms when they look off. Soon, they will laugh at how foolish you look with a tie made from animal skin and bam! You have found a new "tool" for your comedy act.
5. Get to the side of another dinosaur skeleton and make its jaws move up and down as if it were talking to another group of teenagers. Deepen your voice and "growl" now and then. The kids will love it, but not the security guards, so be prepared to make a quick get-away.
6. Put your hands on a stuffed monkey then lay on your back and hold the monkey over you as if the monkey is attacking you. Whatever group or citizen will laugh their heads off at your spontaneous "monkey shines."
7. Push your face against the inside of another interesting exhibit (without guards or tour guide present) and do facial impressions of famous celebrities as possible before you are discovered.
8. 
   As fast as you can, hand-out index cards telling the person getting the card to "Call the Essex Comedy Zone A.S.A.P and Tell Them About YOUR NAME." The results should prove amazing especially since you promise each card-bearer a $20-dollar bill next week.
9. Hang by your knees by a rope swing attached to the celing of the museum and do some fanciful trapeze work that will get museum visitors to laughing and pointing at you. Exposure is the friend of any struggling stand-up comic.
10. Find the exhibit of Marilyn Monroe. Then paint your face to look like a mannequin, dress in stylish clothing and be locked-in a passionate kiss with her when tourists stroll by, but you b est learn to stand still almost perfectly. What crowd will not love a display like this?
11. If this act with Marilyn doesn't work that well, if this museum has a display of French Can Can Dancers bearing their behinds (with silk underwear), go lay down on your back still painted-up like a mannequin and be staring at their butts laying pefectly-still, but this time, when the last person of the tour group wanders by, look at them and give them a huge smile.
12. If you can rent or buy an authentic gorilla suit, get it and sneak into a jungle display with you acting as a black mountain gorilla and when the tour group stops to look at the jungle scene, you go "all in," and beat your chest while growling as loudly as possible. Then wait and see how much laughter "this" act gets you.
13. Get to be good friends with one of the museum guards and then rent his uniform for one day. Take several tour groups for a look at the ascinating things in the museum, but tell each group as many jokes and funny stories as you can. This is probably THE BEST of all of mysuggestions for you to get the exposure you need to be a good comic.

Legal disclaimer: No children, adults, domestic or wild animals, or any museum of any category was injured during the writiing of this hub.