Creating a Comic

I enjoyed reading the following in a book review of the new Autobiography of Mark Twain (emphasis below is mine):

It is clear from this Autobiography, however, that Twain experienced the ups and downs of his life as a orator much more viscerally than he did the joys and pains of authorship. By all accounts, including his own, he was an electrifying and hilarious public presence, a stand-up comedian before that title existed. He worked as hard on his lectures as he did on his published writing, if not harder, and he memorized every one, no matter how long. Having his jokes produce the desired effect on an audience brought him to a pitch of pure elation, while bombing on stage seemed nearly to kill him.

It’s nice to know that some things never change.

I should have also mentioned, in my post about bombing the other night, that “I just wasn’t funny” definitely could have been a factor.

But I don’t think that was it, at least not primarily. Which isn’t to say that I’m so damn funny or awesome at stand-up or anything; I’ve certainly told my fair share of awful and just plain unfunny jokes.

In fact, I’ve done so often enough that I know, fairly intimately, what that audience reaction looks and feels like. That’s one of the benefits of stage experience: you come to understand, and can distinguish between, the different types of audience reactions.

And it’s also why I feel like I can diagnose what happened the other night with some confidence. There’s a very tangible difference, from an audience, between the hesitant, almost saddened discomfort of “we don’t think this is funny” and the distrustful peppery twang of “we’re terrified that you’re going to say something hateful.”

I’m plenty capable of being unfunny, but the reason my set went poorly the other night is that I opened with edgy material before I had the audience’s trust.

All good things come to an end, and last night my longest streak (to date) of solid performances was punctuated with a crater. I bombed it by forgetting a fundamental rule of building a set: you have to win the crowd over before doing potentially divisive material.

One of my newer bits comes from the heart, has been doing really well over the last few weeks, and is stridently anti-racist. I keep finding new stuff to add to it, and trying to work that into open mic sets, and it’s had an amazingly high hit rate.

But racial material is very difficult¹ in white politically-correct Seattle, which is incredibly uptight about even the mention of such topics. The reason I’ve done well with it, previously, is that I’ve been performing it toward the end, right before the closer; I’ve already opened strong and established that I’m funny, so they’re willing to give me the benefit of the doubt when I start to set up the racial material. Being funny builds trust.

But you don’t have that benefit of the doubt when you first step on stage. And last night I forgot this; I went up to a room that already gone cold, and started in with the really edgy stuff. TACTICAL ERROR.

It did so badly that I even managed to torpedo the proven material that I closed with, stuff that (at this point) pretty much never fails. I didn’t deliver it with nearly as much confidence as usual. But if I had simply flipped the order of the material, the whole set probably would’ve gone much better. The streak would still be alive.

It’s a lesson I’ve learned before, but apparently needed to re-learn. George Carlin can come charging out of the bullpen and start heaving fastballs at the audience’s head:

George walks straight off of the street onto the stage. A crowd of 3200 people is going apeshit. A LOT of comedians would take that in, stand there looking proud and get every last clap and holler on tape before saying “Thank you. Thanks. Alright. How we doin? This is great!” But George is SO eager to get his first thought out, he’s trying to make them shut up so that he can do the bravest, boldest opening joke ever…

Any comedian with a joke like that would bury it inside of an act full of goodwill so that they wouldn’t lose the audience. George is DYING to tell it to a primo special taping audience. He OPENS with it.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to do that, too. But I am no George Carlin, and today is not that day.

Oh well. Time to start a new streak!

UPDATE: Why I don’t think “I just wasn’t funny” was the main factor (this time).

1. Very difficult for white people, that is, or people like me who are (and look) mostly white. Visually obvious ethnic comics, on the other hand — Asian, black, Indian, etc. — can very much do racial material, especially about their own ethnicity. [↩]

I don’t really understand how fashion works, but I thoroughly support the trend of women’s boots creeping up higher and higher on the leg, lately even as tall as the knees.

A few of my friends and I have been calling them fuck-me boots, but I don’t think that’s the precise technical term.

Whatever it’s called, this is one fashion trend that receives my full endorsement.

Nerdgasm: Olivia Wilde in futuristic fuck-me boots. “THIRTEEEEEEN!“

I’ve been putting this post off for a while. But it’s time to rip the band-aid off and examine the festering sore underneath…

Giggles, my former home club, is closed; its ownership has changed hands; it has now become a strip club, renaming itself Jiggles. Yes, comics backstage did indeed joke about various rebrandings of Giggles as Jiggles, so it’s not a new or original idea. But we were joking, not trying to be fucking prescient.

I do not find this topic conducive to feelings of happiness and well-being.

The former owner has been Facebooking a sort of autobiographical retrospective of his years owning Giggles; favorite headliner, scariest moment, drunkest comedian, etc. It’s been entertaining, and if I can get permission then I’ll share some of it.

For anyone who went to Giggles during the last five years and enjoyed themselves, I’d urge you to attend the It’s Time: A Farewell to Giggles show next week at Laughs Comedy Spot. Many of the great Giggles comedians who entertained us over the last 5+ years — comics like Brian Moote, Andrew Sleighter, and Xung Lam — will be performing. So will Blake.¹

I put a lot of time and effort into Giggles. It was the site of my first open mic. It is gone.

Now let us never speak of this again.

1. LOL sorry buddy. But in the spirit of Giggles it had to be done. [↩]