What Am I Doing? A Long Rant-y Blog Post About Comedy
While I am thrilled that my comedy album will be out in December (available on iTunes, see post below), it would be disingenuous to act like I know what I’m doing in comedy (or life.) One can not plan a career in comedy. I can’t even plan a meal. The road to my album had no roadmap, it wasn’t even a goal of mine. (It was the amazing Kyle Clark’s idea). My album came out of one ant-eyelash sized spark of inspiration at a time to write a joke or attend an open mic. Over the course of seven years (I did comedy for four years in my twenties, but don’t even count it because I was so young) to create one thirty minute album. (Chris Rock says it takes a year to get five minutes of material, so I am right on schedule…I just need to tell my jokes more slowly.)
These days I measure my success more by my willingness to get in my car and drive somewhere. Comedy is about perseverance, stamina and longevity. Over several decades, I have seen careers rise, fall, go extinct, and come back again with humble joy. I have quit, started again, taken breaks, danced salsa and learned at last that the real glory comes from sticking around. These day each set feels like a victory over atrophy, cynicism, and general shut-in-ness. But still, I have to earn a living, exercise and have a semblance of a normal life. Comedy takes reams of time and energy, hustle, gas, and the hardest part is not listening to misogyny, racism, but the non-existent standards of comedy. I’m going to play the old-lady Elder Stateswoman card here because I don’t have the restraint not to. Keeping in mind that I go to a lot of open mics because I don’t book enough shows to sustain my skills (and if nothing else, I do work hard), and so am witness to a lot of new and inexperienced comics, I really do feel that COMEDY KIND OF SUCKS RIGHT NOW.
Maybe I was young and impressionable when I started in the 90s, but I don’t remember that it was always this way. For one thing, comedy was so unpopular that everyone at the open mic seemed like a professional with a genuine passion for the art. But mostly, I find audiences much more forgiving than when I first began and people routinely let me know that they “did not find me funny” or forced me to tell them a joke. Nobody has said that to me since 2000. Now if you say you are a standup, all you need is a profile picture of yourself with a microphone. (And, yes, I have one).
Sometimes I will sit in a show or mic and think that it seems actually quite easy to make people laugh in 2018. Maybe it’s the underlying hysteria of our pre-apocalyptic times, but you have to be pretty alienating to make an audience quiet or simply not have jokes (which is really what constitutes most failed sets). Audiences understand the rhythm of the setup/punchline structure really well, and a knock knock joke will illicit a response of laughter simply out of politeness or habit.
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I take it all very seriously. This might be because I have spent the majority of my comedy career not feeling worthy of the stage, and while that speaks more to my self-esteem, I think it’s a healthy quality in someone who is daring to stand in a front of room full of people and command the attention of others. I have seen comics driven to new levels of genius by that sense of inadequacy. I have conversely seen many comics seem extremely satisfied with their porn/masturbation/WNBA material. Here comes the old lady voice, in my day, if you didn’t have original material the host would shame you. Fear of the shame of failure is not a healthy way to live life, but it’s a pretty good way to create great art. Fitzgerald didn’t write The Great Gatsby out of sense of inner-peace and well being.
These days, I am not as interested in what makes audiences laugh. People laugh for different reasons, sometimes it’s agreement, drunkenness, or familiarity. What interests me more is what I can say out loud, or get away with. How much can I divulge or share, or passively protest, and still have people with me? And when I say “people” I often mean “men.” I can’t believe the feminist things I can say in comedy, that get laughs from men who I would not even speak to in the rest of my life. I do believe, despite lots of proof to the contrary, that many audiences want something, if not challenging, then different.
It’s hard for me not to have opinions and theories, so THANK GOD FOR THIS BLOG. But at the end of the set, I really just want to have fun. And not hear white males talk about porn and sex robots. But also have fun, too.
