Creating a Comic

I really enjoyed Conan’s final Tonight Show, especially his parting message (embedding disabled, unfortunately, or I’d include it here). I fully endorse the thoughtful posts that my friends Andrew and Eva made on the subject.

(NOTE: In yesterday’s post, I talked about an entry level job I once had at UPS, and how the outrageously high employee turnover kept employees from being accepted, among their co-workers, until they had been around for a while. The situation with stand-up comedians is much the same. This is part two; here’s part one.)

The best social advice I can offer to a new comedian is to just accept that you’re going to be ignored for a while. A new comic is like the kid who transfers, mid-year, to a new high school across the country. You’re walking into a situation with an established social hierarchy, strangers who have all known each other for years, and cutthroat competition for, well, everything.

Understand that for the time being, nobody is going to pay attention to you, nobody cares what you have to say, and nobody is going to remark upon your unparalleled comedic genius.¹ It’s not fair, but at least it’s not personal — so try not to take it that way! It’s not even hazing, exactly. It’s just that veteran comedians have seen hundreds of aspiring comics walk through the same front doors — just once, or a few times, or a dozen times — only to disappear and never be seen again.

During those initial months at open mic, patience is your best friend. Bide your time for a while and I promise that you’ll start to make real friends, and eventually become a welcomed part of the community.

Like monkeys grooming each other

The scene offstage at a comedy club resembles nothing more than a bunch of monkeys grooming each other in accordance to a strict social hierarchy.

Here’s a typical scene from last week that illustrates the goofiness I’m talking about. Before open mic there was a group of comics standing around and talking, a group that included the club’s top-seniority professional comedian, several medium-seniority comics, and one or two relative newcomers to the group of regulars (like me).

Backstage at open mic

A young but veteran comic enters. He’s been doing comedy for about three years, and is just below the very top rung of seniority at this particular club. He’s friends with some of the other medium-seniority guys, with whom he went to school, but that doesn’t matter; he walks right past all of them until he’s standing directly in front of the high-seniority pro. He then started making very generic chit-chat with the pro about the Conan/Leno late night situation. They joked about it back and forth, with the rest of us occasionally pitching in with little conversational assists.

Now, the young veteran could have talked about the Leno/Conan situation with any of us — including the comics he was friends with from college. So why did he go out of his way to specifically address just the pro? Because the latter was the Alpha of the group, and the topic of conversation itself was just a pretext.²

While all this was happening, a new kid who just started coming to open mic was on the periphery of the conversation circle. He’s a nice guy, pretty funny, lots of potential, etc. He kept trying to jump in and offer his comments — and for the most part, his contributions were ignored.

It’s not like the new guy’s comments were stupid or anything. No, his basic mistake was in thinking that the topic of conversation actually mattered. But what we were talking about really couldn’t have mattered less. The point was simply the face time with each other, reinforcing our respective places in the pecking order through the social conventions of small talk and teasing. The new guy was going to be ignored no matter what, even if he came up with an earth-shatteringly funny new joke about the situation. If everyone’s mouths had been tied shut with duct tape, we probably would have gone through the same social rituals by sniffing each others’ balls or something.

Remember, it’s not personal

Put in the time, treat open mic with respect, and others will eventually take notice. Be patient. Don’t try too hard to be the center of attention. And most importantly, keep showing up.

1. Of course, very little of this applies if you’re a female who is even slightly attractive. Male comedians are just as hilariously pathetic as every other type of male — arguably moreso, in fact — and because cute girls are such a demographic rarity among comics, they are slathered with attention, advice, and opportunities. I’m sure this raises its own unique set of problems — problems which I am spectacularly unqualified to address. [↩]
2. Later on that same evening, I found myself doing something similar. The group was a little smaller now, and the aforementioned second banana was now the top dog. Before I realized what I was doing, I found myself looking right at him and starting another generic conversation about something I knew he was interested in. [↩]

About three years ago, after some early years as a suit-wearing corporate tool, I went a little nuts in the opposite direction and got one of the most menial jobs imaginable. For a year I worked as a package loader at UPS, on the overnight shift, in the most notoriously crazy section of their busiest regional hub. It was an absolute madhouse — but when the back-breaking work didn’t make it a living hell, I had a blast.¹

When I started working there, though, all of my co-workers seemed like antisocial jerks. Nobody even made a token effort at being friendly, and they couldn’t be troubled to remember your name even if you introduced yourself. There was a cadre of “cool kids,”² employees who had seemingly been there forever, but they didn’t even bother making eye contact with new employees. Eventually I stopped trying to be friendly and just did the work.

The Marines use this slogan, now, but it
could just as easily apply to the UPS Night Sort.

After I had been there for three months, almost to the day, my co-workers started to thaw. They finally remembered my name, for one, and I became sort of included in the periphery of their conversations. This thawing trend continued, day by day; by the time I had been there six months, I might as well have been there six years. I was now one of the “cool kids” myself — albeit its most junior member.

At that point I began to realize that there was actually a reason for the seemingly sociopathic behavior toward new employees. Because the minimum wage job was so crappy and physically grueling³ — and on the graveyard shift, no less — the employee turnover was ridiculous. A full 80% of new employees didn’t even last 90 days. Turnover at six months was 90%.

If nine out of every ten new hires are going to be gone within a matter of weeks or months, then does it really make sense to spend time getting to know them? I tried to, at first, and gradually realized that it was a colossal waste of energy. Eventually I adopted the same attitude as the other veterans: I’d wait to see if the new meat survived before investing the time in getting to know them. Ignoring newbies was actually a perfectly rational conservation of energy.

I’m sure you can see where this is going, and how it relates to the social hierarchy among stand-up comedians. Unfortunately, I appear to be congenitally unable to make a simple point in under 600 words, so please tune in tomorrow for the not-so-thrilling conclusion. I’ll discuss similar examples from backstage on the comedian social circuit…

1. You seriously would not believe some of the shit that goes on there, but that’s a story for another day. [↩]
2. The average age was about 23 — similar to the demographics of new stand-up comics. [↩]
3. I am not exaggerating about the physical rigors of the job. I lost 20 lbs in my first two months; it was not uncommon for new hires to lose as many as 50 lbs. [↩]

Dedicated fans of stand-up comedy knew about Zach Galifianakis long before his breakout role in last years The Hangover. But did you know that, before he grew the crazy-Jesus beard, he briefly had a late night show on VH1? Here’s an old gem from Late World with Zach:

There exists a fairly rigid hierarchy among stand-up comedians, which I’ve discussed before. Simply put, stage time for open mics and weekend host/feature spots is largely based on seniority — and since experience and talent tend to be roughly equivalent in stand-up comedy, this is a system that benefits the audience, too.

At my home club of Giggles, the format for open mic shows has been the same for as long as I’ve been going there. Every Thursday and Sunday night goes down roughly as follows:

• First 2-4 comics — Open mic regulars with enough experience to be able to reliably warm up the crowd. 5-7 minute each.
• Next 3-8 comics — Professionals and other highly experienced veterans; this is the heart of the show, and guarantees the audience gets their money’s worth. 7-10 minutes each.
• Next 2-8+ comics — Bringers, or people who brought audience members to guarantee their stage time. Bringing a large number of paying guests (6+) can also get you some extra stage time, up to ten minutes total.
• Final 3-10+ comics — Everyone else who wants to go on stage, with the order determined by seniority, until time runs out. 3-7 minutes each.

Climbing the slippery totem pole
of open mic comedy monkeys.

Historically, the show has stopped at 11pm — or sometimes as early as 10:30pm — which often meant that very few (if any) of the last group would get up. This is where I’ve toiled, for about a year, and why I sometimes go half a dozen open mic visits between times on stage.

About a month ago, I started to occasionally get drafted up as part of the first group, the low-ranking open mic veterans. This is a lot more fun, when it happens; I get to go up when the audience is still fresh, I can socialize afterward without interference from pre-stage jitters, and I can catch the last bus out of the city without making a panic-filled dash for it. It’s a little thing, but it feels gratifying to have some tangible benefits after all the months of slogging.

In a hyper-competitive environment like stand-up, even tiny gains tend to get noticed and magnified by others, especially those comics with comparable levels of talent and experience. Some of my peers and friends have been happy for me, while others with a little bit less seniority have been, well, let’s say audibly and visibly annoyed. While I’d like to be a better person than this, a small part of me must admit that if someone’s going to be envious and malicious about it, then their tears taste delicious.¹

On the other hand, the club is changing ownership in just a few months, at which time all of my hard work and seniority might get reset to zero.

TACTICAL ERROR: ME

1. This point probably deserves its own post, but the only thing to do when someone else does well is to be magnanimous about it. Life is too short to get torn apart on the inside by petty jealousies, for one, and besides: the person who’s down today could just as easily be the person who’s up tomorrow. [↩]