Ten Years In Comedy Isn’t That Long
I just realized the first time I did stand-up was 10 years ago today. I got booked on an #InternationalWomensDay event co-sponsored by the United Nations, that well-known training ground for hot new comedy talent. It’s like UCB but for sociopaths with access to chemical weapons.
I did it because somebody in my night school class asked me to do it and I knew I’d have time that day after student-teaching English at The Bronx High School of Science all day. Mostly I said yes because I’d watched a ton of Margaret Cho, John Leguizamo and Dave Chappelle when I was depressed teaching high school earning $11,000 a year (before taxes) in the desert the previous year.
I’d also bought every single episode of Strangers With Candy at Borders (RIP baby girl) and I thought Amy Sedaris, Sarah Thyre, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello and Maria Thayer were extraordinary. I still think that, and I will happily watch or read anything they put out into the world. That whole cast was insane. Anyway, this stand-up thing seemed vaguely adjacent to that. I also had some weird crush on Neal Brennan based exclusively on DVD commentary. Admitting this in public in 2016 is at least as significant as making my First Holy Communion in 1989.
I knew my friend Oren Brimer knew a lot about stand-up. He almost choked to death when I said I’d never seen Mr. Show or watched any Bill Hicks stuff and I’m not sure he has recovered, but he is co-producing a new Judd Apatow series on HBO soon so at least his career has progressed and he has healed.
Anyway, at the International Women’s Day Comedy Show, I opened and fucking CRUUUUUUSHED with 15 minutes of hot 2006 material about yoga and Brazilian waxing. I made $40! I thought everybody got paid every time they did comedy and it turns out that’s not true. But as the years went by, I found more ways to make people give me money for comedy. Later that year, I started blogging and making weird videos for Nerve.com and this sweet kid Lena Dunham was making stuff for them too and I was like, “Damn Lena, you’re so young and so hardworking! God, I’m so old. I mean I’m 25, uggggh, so late to start comedy.” This year I showed my tits on her small cable access television program, and also my dog Morley Safer was there. Life is beautiful.
Thanks to everybody who still talks to me or ever came to a show in a basement or a big theater or a padded room somewhere to see me make jokes. There was once an outdoor fair in Richmond, VA with Helen Hong and Maria Shehata and Benjamin Walker and Duncan Jay and none of us has yet recovered, I’m fairly certain. The police were involved. As was a crack deal. We didn’t do crack. It’s fine. We’re fine.
The best part about comedy is getting to work with people vastly more talented and charismatic than myself. For example, my friend Heather Fink directed a short film, The Focus Group, that I wrote and that I’m in. It was funded by a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of 9000 bucks and instead we made 20000 bucks, which is really like 18000 bucks once you pay their fees, but seriously, whoa. She’s a wonderful filmmaker and I’m gonna brag that I knew her when. Next week I get to work with Jim Gaffigan and while I am a far, far worse Catholic than he and his gorgeous family are, I would happily say the rosary on camera if that were something he needed me to do, for art.
If you’re doing stand-up and it is fun sometimes and you love comedy but you’re not getting into festivals (which are mostly a scam so industry can go finger each other, a noble endeavor to be sure but not one you should have to pay to subsidize) and you’re not getting passed at the Store or the Improv or the Chucklefuck or whatever and something inside you is like, “Do I REALLY want to do this anymore?” know that it’s okay to change your path, and that you may just figure out that what you really love is writing, or acting, or producing, or animation. At a certain point I realized I was alright at stand-up, in that I was better than the average random person on the street, but I didn’t have the inherent talent, true grit, or deep love to make it my career. To this day I will always use my friend Judah Friedlander as an example of a “true stand-up” — someone who at least gives the appearance of loving it so much that they will do it, night in and night out, over and over again, even and especially when they don’t have to.
My true love is writing. And thus today’s the day, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I finish the first draft of a screenplay for a wacky high school comedy. The crazy shit is that somebody paid me to write it. I get health insurance because I make shit up. Isn’t that fucking insane? Who came up with that idea? (Answer: organized labor. UNION!!!!!!) When I got up onstage ten years ago tonight, I didn’t think I’d ever write a script of any kind for anything.
Okay, wrapping up with some self-promotion because I learned a long time ago that being coy is for folks who don’t need to pay the bills: my fourth book, Real Artists Have Day Jobs, comes out next month from William Morrow. If you preorder it I’d be so grateful because then it makes me look good to the stores and suppliers and whatever, and they market it more because they believe folks are interested, and that means more folks get interested, etc. I’ve had a lot of day jobs in the past ten years and this book is about work and other stuff like art and getting rid of shitty friends and dealing with it when somebody you love hits you in the face and believing in yourself and setting boundaries and going to the dentist. It’s good for anybody who is an artist of any kind, or anybody who wants to understand their weird kid who would rather read and draw than play hockey (although hockey fucking rules, don’t get it twisted.)
And finally, in the words of my role model, the late, great Texan-American Molly Ivins, “So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
It’s been a hell of a lot of fun. I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
Thanks for reading.
