I’m thinking about it.
Of course I’m probably not near as funny as my mom says I am, but I’m reading a book about how some famous comedians got their start and thought it’d be fun to try. I have no aspirations of making it…but it might be fun to take a bunch of friends out and try it. Even if I bomb, I’d be funny…at least to me and my friends.
Anyone ever try it?
Yes. I was a comic for about 18 months and I did lots of open mikes. I also competed and did well (11th out of 110 comics, in LA).
I suggest you get your hands on a copy of the SNL with Jerry Seinfeld and closely study the “Stanup Comics” Jeopardy-style game. It is an excellent primer for what NOT to do and the jokes NOT to tell.
I’ll do that…but wouldn’t it be funny to be totally inappropriate and do everything you’re not supposed to do?
I have a friend who is now president of his speech team, but his first time competing at the college level, he tried an ADS (After Dinner Speech - basically, a comedy speech) that deliberately and blatantly broke every rule (including the time limit).
The one thing I remember his judge saying about that was that his problem was he wasn’t established yet as a competitor. Meaning, you can get away with these things as long as your audience is convinced that you know better. So I guess the moral of the story is, wait until you have a sitcom 
Ok, I gotta know. What are the rules? What jokes are you not supposed to tell?
A good start is the Hack Stand-Up Comedy FAQ. It’s almost five years old, but reading it will allow you to realize that some of your jokes may not be anywhere nearly as original as you’d think. Or as funny.
Excellent, Alphagene! And dead on.
The rule is: don’t suck. And that FAQ will go a long way towards helping you not suck.
I’ve never done it myself, but I’ll just relate one experience I sat through - a 20-minute routine by an amateur comic in a local coffee house, where I heard not one laugh, guffaw, or even chuckle for the whole 20 minutes. I was wondering how the poor guy found the courage to continue. He was sweating bullets by the end.
The book I’m readind has interviews with just about every top comic you can think of…and they all say they’ve been thru periods of not getting a single laugh. they’re just the ones that kept going anyway.