The Long Drive Home

Boy, do I look like I'm having fun!

In Philadelphia I got very comfortable doing longer sets where I could stretch my act out and build a rapport with the crowd over time. For some reason, it felt better to build to a crescendo than to go out and kick the audience in the teeth from the first joke. In some embarrassing way, I felt like I was beyond the point where I really needed a strong opening joke. Pride goes before a fall.

As you can guess, this entry was written in the wake of a bad set. My early set last Saturday at Red Bar was a little rough for me. Honestly, one of the most frustrating sets that I’ve ever had. As much as I wanted to blame the crowd for my failure, I knew that the bad set was entirely my fault. I lost them on my first joke and didn’t get them back until my closer.

That’s the thing – I have a great closer. I have a couple, actually. I know how to build to a finish. But I don’t have a single great joke that truly gives the audience a full view of the type of show they’re about to get. And I need one, badly.

My friend Steve Gerben has an excellent opener. Check out this video.

This is a great opener for several reasons. First of all, it’s funny. But a lot of jokes are funny; this joke goes further. It sets the tone for the rest of Steve’s act. Just from watching this joke, you could guess that Steve is going to tell a series of jokes about awkward social interactions that usually involve some sort of huge embarrassment for him. Which is, in fact, exactly what Steve does. ¹

Also, the joke quickly makes a joke out of someone’s first impression of Steve, a nice trick that cleverly mimics every audience’s initial perception. Lots of veteran comedians tell jokes about their looks. The theory is that you want to acknowledge your appearance so that the crowd a) sees you as self-aware and vulnerable and b) stops being distracted by trying to place which celebrity or movie character you look like. Hence, a lot of hacky jokes about how I look like _____ and _____ had an ugly baby. Honestly, I feel like most of these jokes are a little lazy. But Steve gets to comment on his appearance naturally through the context of a conversation he actually had, which makes it feel more honest and interesting.

Anyway, enough about Steve. My point is, I fought the law and the law won. I tried to forego the opener, and I fell on my face. So I need to find one.

It’s almost certainly not going to be a joke about my appearance. Aside from my misgivings about this type of joke, I am an exceedingly normal looking person. I am the epitome of the average white guy. I’m not handsome or ugly. I am not skinny enough or fat enough to make note of my size. In a science experiment about looks, I would be the sugar pill. My fiancee’s attraction to me is based on the placebo effect. ²

Instead, I need to find a joke that gives the audience a clue as to the tone and content of my jokes. I used to open with a joke about a Vitruvian Man tattoo, which was equal parts highbrow and dick joke. That worked for my very early act, but now I’ve gotten a lot more personal and autobiographical. I need a joke that represents that persona.

So I’m off to hunt for that great white whale, I’ll be back in a decade or so.

Ok, so it’s not like my comedy trajectory has really changed that much since moving to Chicago. I mean, how far along was I really? I was getting work twice a year at Helium (which I can still do) and I had the ability to go up to New York to do shows (which I barely ever did). Other than that, I was basically just doing open mics and the occasional showcase, which is what I’m doing in Chicago.

But the difference is, I’m no longer comfortable. I miss my friends, but in some ways they shielded me from the realization that I wasn’t really pushing myself as hard as I could. Now, as I sit in these bars, waiting ninety minutes for four, I feel unsettled. Like I’m just treading water when I should be aiming for shore.

So I’ve decided to start being annoying. I hate bugging people for spots, but I don’t know how else to get them. It’s not like I’m one of the guys anymore. I’m barely even a guy here. Being aloof seems to have worked for Zach Galifianakis, but it doesn’t work for me. I’m not blazingly original; I’m just trying to do a traditional form of comedy, better. So I gotta get in people’s faces until they book me.

Here’s my magic plan for how to get booked: I email bookers. And if they ignore me, I wait 3 weeks and email them again. If a club doesn’t list an email, I’m calling and asking for a manager. Or at least, I did that once. See, this is hard for me. I don’t even know why, it’s not really taxing at all. You write a nice, polite, three sentence email and you wait three weeks.

Anyway, if you run a show I’m probably going to bother you at some point. But if you run a show, you’re probably used to that.

After a long (and ongoing) transitional month, I feel that I can finally lay claim to being a resident of Chicago. I have taken a 3:15am Blue Line train to my apartment, I have logged 8 consecutive nights on an air mattress, and I have awkwardly inserted myself into the conversations of innumerable comedians. In short, I’m living the dream.

It’s a tough gig, starting over. Thank God I have my notebook, or else I would have nothing to pretend to read on a barstool for three hours in a row. Every time I try to talk with a comic, I place myself on the other end of that conversation, politely nodding while I wait to go talk to my actual friends. I miss Philadelphia, where the time in the Helium green room often outshone the time I had onstage.  Now that all I have is the stage time, those five minutes feel shorter and the preceding hours feel longer.

I shouldn’t complain. I already have gotten booked on a few showcases, which would never have happened if I were starting fresh. I know that this takes time. And I also know that comedians want to hang out with funny people. In Philly, I was excited to see a new comic who was good, and I can only assume that the guys in Chicago feel similarly.

I also feel, for the first time, like a true introvert. I don’t know when this happened, but sometime between college and now I stopped trying to be the funniest guy in the room. I think stand-up is a release valve for my ego, and I’m glad that I don’t need to commandeer parties anymore to get my fix of attention. On the other hand, my newfound shyness is not helping me make friends in town.

I guess the answer, as always, is to keep being funny and the rest will follow. I love comedy, but it isn’t any fun right now, and probably won’t be for a while. But hey, I don’t have a job or any prospects on the horizon, so comedy is what I got. To arms!

I’m leaving Philadelphia for Chicago in a month or so, and the impending relocation has made me reflect on my time in Philly, so pardon the nostalgic tone of the next couple of posts.

Since moving to Philadelphia, I’ve met or exceeded almost every comedy goal I’ve set for myself. And yet, I’m no happier or more satisfied now that I was in 2007, when I was crossing my fingers to make the Helium list once a month.

I think this is because the goalposts keep moving in my mind. As soon as I got a hosting spot at Helium, I wanted to feature. Now that I’m featuring at Helium, I’m annoyed that I can’t get into other clubs just as easily. The second I get a joke to work, I want to write the next one. I hope to God I can make a living from comedy, but I’m sure that even if I was touring theaters I’d be dissatisfied about not having a TV show or an HBO special or something.

This is why you have to love the process. The shitty, gritty get-up-every-night process of turning a thought into a joke, a joke into a bit, a bit into an act, an act into a career. This is one reason why all my friends are comedians. I love talking about a new joke, or a tweak to an old one, or how maybe I could thread these two ideas together into my piece on being a teacher.

I have little patience for people who don’t enjoy the process. These people are essentially stand-up tourists, just looking for comedy shortcuts. Shortcuts to what? The struggle is what makes this rewarding. The struggle is why I do comedy. The accomplishments are just signposts that I use to justify to myself (and my family) that I’m not a total waste of space. I got on TV once. Congratulations me. But this new bit I’ve been working on…

I don’t like comedy songs.

To me, the fundamental problem with comedy songs is structural. Jokes are meant to be surprising, to constantly shift and develop into new areas. Great songs, however, are based on familiarity. The best pop songs all have that one great hook in the chorus that you just can’t wait to hear again. When that chorus contains a repeated joke, the humor turns to tedium and I check out.

This issue has been rattling around in my head for a while, and recently I got the perfect opportunity to expand on it. I performed in a contest for the Philly Improv Theater. Five comedians were given a constraint (puppet, impressions, topical) and given an hour to compose a 3 minute act. I got a guitar, so I wrote a song about how I hate funny songs. It’s called, naturally, The Second Chorus Problem.