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	Podcast:		Other News
	Episode:		His First Time Onstage, This Comedian Killed. Then He Nearly Died.
	Category:		Government & Organizations
	Duration:		00:07:58
	Publish Date:		2018-05-12 12:04:00
	Description:		Brad Upton was a fourth grade schoolteacher in Pasco, Wash. who dreamed of becoming a standup comic. On a Tuesday night in 1983 he finally summoned the courage, and made the long drive to Seattle to try his first open mic at the Comedy Underground in Pioneer Square. Just before he was supposed to go onstage, he lost his nerve. “I walked out of there and drove home and waited for a year,” Upton says. “I just hated myself that whole year. I’d gotten that close and chickened out.” When Upton returned to the Comedy Underground a year later, on a trip to retrieve a souped-up Trans Am for his dad’s rental car franchise in Pasco, he was finally able to follow through with his plan. He took the stage, launched into his five-minute set and got big laughs. “To this day I’ve never felt that kind of elation onstage,” he says. After his set, Laura Crocker, the “godmother of Seattle comedy” in that era, introduced herself and informed him that he had just passed the final night of auditions for the
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