I went back and did more stand-up comedy last night. Spoiler alert: I got more laughs than expected. I arrived at 7:36 and the list was already pretty full.

“Is there room on the list?” I asked Nick, the M.C.

“Just put your name down toward the end,” he replied. Score!

The place was super crowded and my friend Ruth showed up with a couple of friends in tow, so this time I knew someone in the audience. This made me a bit more nervous than I would have been, but it wasn't anything a Maker's Mark on the rocks with a splash of water couldn't cure. I had to sit through a lot of comedians because I was in the final four (final three, actually, but who's counting? Me.).

I'd prepared a bunch of stuff over the past week and then didn't use any of it, choosing instead to use the stuff I wrote in the car on the way over. It worked great: much better than expected, per the spoiler alert. I'm proud to say that I didn't recycle any jokes from the week before; it was all new material.

Once again I was the only woman to take the stage, so my opening line was, “I'm Lynn B. Johnson and let's give it up for all the guys who came before me (big applause) because I was on the balcony with them before the show and they ALL came before me (big laughs), which means they're all either really good at it, or really bad at it.

Then I talked about how it's my personal philosophy to set the bar low, except when playing limbo, and how I've lost 60 pounds since the day I gave birth to my second kid, and about my size 16 skinny jeans being like a one-night stand: you're not fooling me, and you're not fooling you, but you're saying what I want to hear, so yeah, I'll get in your pants, Old Navy. Then I talked about fast-food and I got to tell my filthiest joke, yay, and then I talked about BK's $1.99 apple fries (because when I buy an apple I want to pay extra for the packaging), and how God is smarter than us and how that was proved by my conversion to Christianity, and about this Saturday's alleged apocalypse, which everyone had heard about so really, not a bad return-on-investment for that guy's life savings, and then I closed with, “I'll tell you this one last thing: if on Saturday, I'm raptured away, and you loot my house, I will fucking haunt you.” Big laughs. Thanks, you've been a great crowd, goodnight!

Then, at the end of the night when the M.C. puts all of the comedians' names in a hat and the bartender pulls one out and a crappy prize is awarded, guess what? I won! I gave the M.C. shit about the sweater vest he was wearing — I accused him of stealing it from my mom but seriously, I would *never* let my mom wear that thing — and he gave me a credit-card-payment folio with a “happy anniversary” bean in it; I'm to plant it and then it allegedly will unfurl a blossom that somehow conveys a message of “happy anniversary.”

Well, we had already known each other for a week, so I suppose it's apropos. Got lots of “you're funny”s after the set and plenty of hearty handshakes from the other comedians. Nick told me how happy he was that I won tonight's mystery prize, and how he just grabs something crappy from his room to raffle off every week.

Terrific, terrific, terrific. Maybe there's something to this, after all.

Not bad for halfway through my first cup of coffee this morning… this is a “how's it sound?” track as a warm-up to a little concert I'm giving at Teacher Appreciation Day this Wednesday. It helps me a lot to hear a recording of an in-progress song: completely revolutionized my rendition of “Fields of Gold,” though that's not what this song is.

Motormouth fans will be excited to learn that this is my first “New Music” post to feature Mr. Koa (my new tenor uke) as well as my alter-ego, Auntie Haole Badass. Enjoy!

And I know this because a jury of people 10+ years younger than I, with whom I was in no way personally acquainted, laughed their asses off at the stand-up comedy routine I performed at Bishop's Lounge last night. Twelve hours later and I'm still buzzing from the high of it all.

I'm particularly happy because boy oh boy did they set me up to fail. I got there late so I was #11 on the list. Number 10 was a guy who was obviously a crowd favorite, who started his set with the announcement that this would be his last night at Bishop's because he was moving to NYC, and then he went on to do a hilarious set that included jokes about how his grandma buys his clothes and how everyone in the room had measured their own penis at one time or another. Trust me, it was funny.

Then the M.C. took the mic and introduced me with, “I think this is this person's first time here, and I don't know anything about her, so don't feel like you have to react, just do what you'd normally do, it's cool. Please welcome Lynn B. Johnson.” Thanks dude. No blowies for you.

So I changed my opening line to “I'm Lynn B. Johnson and I have never measured my penis, that last guy is full of shit.” And the whole crowd laughed. Then I talked some more and they kept laughing. I couldn't even tell you about 25% of what I said, it just flowed from my hastily scribbled set-list outline. I talked about my Michelle Obama arms (yeah, OK, you got me, I'm not black), about childbirth, about Baby Safe Havens, about diaper changes, about allergies and married sex and snoring. Some girls in the front row had been eating pork paninis, and the M.C. had made much of this, so I referred to Monstro's tool as a pork panini and I thought those girls were going to fall down laughing. My final joke is a thinker, so people were laughing hard and then harder as I left the stage and went back to my corner in the back of the room.

A young woman at the bar got my attention and we went to the lounge area, where she told me that a guy she works with puts together comedy nights in Holyoke and she had to get him in touch with me because I'm “fucking hilarious.” It was about then that my friend Dana showed up (“Lynn, I was on the sidewalk three stories down and heard people laughing and clapping for whom I can only assume was you.”), and after the comedy was over and we were outside on the balcony, she was there to witness all the other comedians coming up to me and saying wow, how great I was, and how they hoped I'd come back next week, awesome set.

I feel like Cinderella. Well, Cinderella with a filthy mouth and no pumpkin.