You know that feeling of regret, when you come up with the perfect comeback twenty minutes after the conversation is over?1 Multiply that frustration by a hundred, and that’s a comic’s agony when we’re interacting with the audience and come up with a comeback later, off stage.
Last night I was practicing my crowd work, and at one point got a cheeky response from the audience. I sort of rolled with it, and the rest of the set went pretty well, but I was dissatisfied at not coming up with anything better at the time.
Sand is awful; it gets everywhere.
Like Darth Vader’s vagina.
About half an hour later I was biking home when a devastating rejoinder suddenly came to me. It was so perfect that it actually shocked me for a second. Then, as regret over the missed opportunity poured into my soul, I belted out a Darth Vader-esque “NOOOO!!!” at the top of my lungs.
My comeback would have called back an earlier part of the on-stage conversation, and I have absolutely no doubt that if I had used it, the room would have exploded… if only I had thought of it at the time. Argh! Oh well. It’s in my back pocket now, so I won’t miss the chance next time that happens.
And my sincere apologies to the North Seattle community that was subjected to an anguished serenade at 1am last night.
- How is it that we have names for deja vu and schadenfreude, but we don’t have a name for that? Surely some other language has a word that we can steal? [↩]
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