Second Guessing My Stand-Up Comedy Dreams
The very first piece I wrote for Medium dealt with my passion for comedy and my cautious optimism for the direction I feel stand-up is moving. I recognize it’s a far-fetched dream to pay the bills making people laugh, much less live comfortably, but others have already succeeded at it, so I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try. As I move down this path, I need to reflect on why I want to do this, as well as if I really want to do this.
Stand-up has been a presence in my life since I was a prepubescent contrarian trying to piss my parents off by listening to stuff with naughty words. I think the first comedian I ever listened to a whole hour special was (shamefully) Dane Cook.
Side note: can you believe this embarrassing douche had the fucking gall to charge $20 to watch his first standup special in over a decade, available on his own website, which he performed in his own mansion, and then proceeded to deliver B-tier material about how he’s become a creepy Hollywood wannabe-DiCaprio dating a girl half his age? Wild. I listened to chunks of it on Spotify, but Christ, what a load of cringe that was. I was going to include a screengrab or promotional poster from this latest special but chances are he’d try to sue me for using that, so the Wikipedia image will have to do.
On the subject of 2022 comedy specials, Ari Shaffir and Stavros Halkias put out one-hour specials of 24k gold comedy on YouTube that you can watch for free, and those’ll probably generate more revenue in the long run.
Performing comedy myself didn’t even really occur to me until a few years into college, and even then, I still didn’t attempt it, just sort of rattled the idea around my head like idea-pinball. It snowballed into this fantasy, but then I would think about getting up in front of that many people and turn my stomach into knots. My hands and voice would start trembling just from the consideration. I attended a few open mic things hosted on campus but I felt so uncomfortable and anxious, I had to excuse myself before they were over. And that was just being in the audience, with no intention of even getting on stage.
My crippling stage fright has been the primary hold-up, and while it’s gotten significantly better, I know this hardly constitutes a good excuse, since many highly regarded comedians openly struggle with anxiety, but it’s the best explanation I have. Bo Burnham explained in his most recent Netflix special Inside that he took a break from live performances as a result of recurrent panic attacks taking place while he was on stage. Inside, being entirely shot, edited, composed, and written by Bo himself, is a comedic masterpiece, despite having no live audience.
That being said, there are certainly other factors which play into my reticence. Supposing I do find some marginal success in comedy — there’s apparently an abundance of creepy, manipulative, sexually abusive troglodytes running rampant through the ranks of stand-up comedians. In the fallout of the #MeToo revolution, some of my all-time favorites were outed as being deplorable, conscienceless fiends. Plenty of comedians have made it their entire brand to tell abhorrent stories on stage, peppered with the worst takes conceivable, and then defend it with the old-head comedian adage: “They’re just jokes,” which is as weak rhetorically as it is spineless.
Even those who haven’t been exposed for being despicable behind closed doors and off-camera have been tremendously disappointing in their passivity and complicity with the behavior of their “close friends”. At best, they condemn it after the fact, knowing damn well what they were up to the whole time. At worst, they remain utterly silent and just quietly distance themselves from their radioactive acquaintances.
In mentioning this, I do think it’s only fair to commend Aziz Ansari’s addressing of his own controversial conduct in his 2019 stand-up special “Right Now”. To be absolutely clear, I’m not absolving Aziz of his actions, nor would it be my place to do so, but I do think it represents a HUGE step in the right direction. To address something so personal and potentially career damaging, in a stand-up special no less, in the vulnerable way that he did, is admirable in my opinion:
“There’s times I felt scared. There’s times I felt humiliated. There’s times I felt embarrassed. And ultimately, I just felt terrible that this person felt this way. And after a year or so, I just hope it was a step forward. It moved things forward for me and made me think about a lot. I hope I’ve become a better person. And I always think about a conversation I had with one of my friends where he was like, “You know what, man? That whole thing made me think about every date I’ve ever been on.” And I thought, “Wow. Well, that’s pretty incredible. It’s made not just me, but other people be more thoughtful, and that’s a good thing.” And that’s how I feel about it. And I know… this isn’t the most hilarious way to begin a comedy show. But it’s important to me that you know how I feel about that whole thing before we share this night together.”
-Aziz Ansari
Of course, if he had been as obviously “guilty” as Louis C. K. or Chris D’Elia, that might not have worked so well. (I only put guilty in quotations as no criminal charges were ever brought against them. Louis has since admitted to serially masturbating in front of women against their will, with a pretty underwhelming apology, to the accusations made against him, while Chris has joked that he “can’t be cancelled twice” and vehemently denies the predatory claims made about him.) Truth be told, as much as I loved Louis C. K.’s stand-up in his heyday, I can’t appreciate him the same anymore. The old idea of “separating the art from the artist” has allowed for too many monsters to be propped up as idols.
“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
-Maya Angelou
So why, for the love of all that is good and pure in this world, would I want to cast myself into the toxic cesspool that is the American entertainment industry? Besides being self-aware that I can be a bit of a piece of shit myself, despite thinking myself a misanthrope for years, I’ve come to find that I actually love people. I’m not quite as introverted as I always told myself I was, but I do need to recharge my “social battery” more than an extrovert. Making people laugh really does make me happy, and I somewhat agree with something Chris Rock said: “Stand-up comedians are the last philosophers. Everybody talking now is reading from a pre-approved script. Even our ‘alleged’ smart people, y’know?” If I could make people laugh, put good ideas out into the zeitgeist, make some nice money for my family, and put myself in a position to get cross-country road head while doing it? Shit, like I said, I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try.
