I started doing comedy three years ago this month after a short stint in inpatient rehab at Nyack Hospital where I was treated for alcohol and prescription drug addiction. For the first time in my adult life I was sober and full of hope. Needless to say, I am no longer sober and my hope is deteriorating faster than Mel Gibson’s hope of ever having custody of his child.
Don’t get me wrong, comedy is the best thing that ever happened to me. It has given me purpose and a creative outlet. It has led to incredible experiences and extraordinary friends. I cannot live without it and I hope I never have to. It has also led to a lot of disappointment though, which is probably my own fault because by nature I am an idealist. I think things should be a certain way and things are a certain way and I am always disappointed when they’re not. I thought comedians and relationships with comedians would be a certain way. I grew up watching shows like SNL, Laugh-In and SCTV, and I thought the kind of comedy camaraderie I saw amongst those comedians existed off stage as well as on. All the time. I thought it would be so much fun to hang out with comedians. I thought we'd all be friends, we'd be a team, we'd be making each other laugh 24/7. I thought the business of comedy would be a certain way. I thought all that was important was getting the audience to laugh. I was pretty much wrong across the board.
My experiences with friendships and relationships in comedy have varied greatly. On the one hand, I have met some amazing people who I truly believe will be lifelong friends. On the other hand, comedians in general have been the most jealous, vicious, ass-kissing, backstabbing, front-running, racist, sexist group of people I’ve ever met. They love you when they think you’re going somewhere but you damn sure won’t hear from them when you’re at a low point. They smile in your face and then talk shit about you as soon as you leave the room. They use their Facebook statuses and Twitter updates to belittle and berate other comics. They circle jerk their little cliques and literally suck cock for spots. And, if they're jealous of the spots you're getting or they think for some reason you don't deserve them, you can be sure they'll say you're sucking cock for yours. The funny thing is I see this bad behavior most in lower to mid-level comics. For the most part, the headliners I have worked with have been nothing but nice and very supportive. Maybe that’s because they’ve gotten their asses handed to them enough times throughout the years and have gained some sense of humility. It seems like the lower to mid-level people get a little taste of success or start producing some bullshit show at a bar and they think they have earned the right to publicly criticize others, to put down people who are only slightly below them on the comedy ladder, and to act as if they are part of some exclusive superior upper echelon. These are people I will enjoy seeing crash and burn, not only because it will be personally satisfying to me but because it may teach them that none of us are immune to failure. We all have a lot to learn and a long road to travel. If you don’t get your head out of your ass you’re bound to run into a wall and for some of these people I will enjoy the collision greatly.
I’ve met a lot of shady characters who have not been out for my best interests. I have had people kiss my ass and book me on their shows not because they think I’m funny but because they heard I have a paying room in Westchester and they think I will return the “favor”. I don’t work like that. I don’t do spot-swapping; I do what’s best for my room and my audience. I’m not going to book a political comedian in a dick joke room, and I’m certainly not going to book someone who has put in zero work, who doesn’t write or who just plain sucks ass just because they booked me on their show. I would rather never get booked at all than get booked because I’m going to owe someone a favor. Fuck that and fuck you. I also had one incident where a comedian acted like he was being supportive of me but actually stole my best joke (at the time) and sold it to a national headliner, then told me I was not allowed to do the joke anymore because she was doing it. The word “friend” should be used cautiously in this business. I’m not saying friendship doesn’t exist, but be very very cautious. I respect those comics who are “not here to make friends”, who are focused on their goals and not into the social end of it, but there’s a big difference between being self-motivated and being a self-centered fuckhead and unfortunately I have met more of the latter than the former.
As far as romantic relationships, I’m not going to shout out all my personal business but I will say I have done it, and I would say don’t do it. It’s only going to taint your friendship with that person and all of that person’s friends when it doesn’t work out. That’s right I said taint. I’m sure I will probably do it again because relationships are difficult in general when you’re a comedian and sometimes it seems like only other comedians understand you, but I will do it knowing I shouldn’t do it and I will caution others against it. If that makes any sense.
As far as the business of comedy I feel like I have had some real accomplishments in these first three years, even if for the most part they have been failures. I hosted a very successful open mic at Comedy Corner for about nine months that ended badly due to the actions of the owner and my innate need to confront rude cunty bitches who are trying to shit on my friends and myself. I’m no longer allowed in Comedy Corner but the mic was awesome while it lasted and I have a feeling my affiliation with that shithole would not have been my claim to fame anyway, perhaps quite the opposite.
I was on Miserable Men on Sirius XM three times, one of which was supposed to be a sort of audition for a regular spot on the show, where I learned that I’m either really bad at radio or I’m really bad at playing the role of a loud-mouthed female who is willing to scream over and argue with four men who are screaming over and arguing with each other and laughing at inside jokes, which was the role I was expected and instructed to play. I do hope to get good at radio someday, but I can’t and won’t be that person, and it was a relief to not be asked back in that capacity.
I tried my hand at improv, taking courses at UCB (101 and 201 twice). That was a lot of fun and something I would eventually like to get good at, but it was very difficult to pay that much money to try to learn something with some people in the group who were not there to learn, play the game and be a part of a team but were there to dominate every scene with some overdramatic actressy bullshit that was not curtailed by the instructors. The Harold technique is a very specific game that I respect and I really wanted to learn but it is a team effort and if everyone is not on the same page it’s not going to work. I may try again someday when I have all kinds of money to throw around but for now I am sticking with stand-up where I am in control of my own failure.
I haven't tried very hard to get into the club scene yet. I did audition for the late night shows at the Comic Strip and although I killed with the audience I was not passed because the booker said my material was predictable and unoriginal. I found this perplexing, not because I disagree so much as because my audition came after one of the longest most boring shows I have ever sat through there, and one of their regulars even told a joke on stage about Tiger Woods hitting 18 holes. My rejection at the Strip and the bewilderment with what they are actually looking for threw me into a deeper depression than I thought it would and I told myself I was not going to audition at a club again for a very long time. I do, however, like the new panel-judging process at the Strip and I will probably be in line for the next lottery. I think it will be much more useful to be judged by and given feedback from four seasoned comedians than one guy who as far as I know has never been on stage except maybe to sweep it.
I’ve produced my own show for almost a year now in New Rochelle, my home town, which has been one of the best and worst experiences I’ve had so far in comedy. Besides the spot-swapping and ass-kissing crap I mentioned above, which is the worst of it, I have also had a lot of disappointment with neighborhood friends being unsupportive. Of course, that goes back to my idealism and the fact that that has to change, but it hurts when fifty people say they’re coming to a show and five people show up. It’s also embarrassing and makes me feel like I am letting my comics down. I decided to start doing comedy in New Rochelle because so many people told me “if it wasn’t so far I’d definitely come to all of your shows!” I brought it to their fucking back yard and they still couldn’t make the effort. I’ve also had “headliners” try to charge me an exorbitant amount of money to come up here, and by “up here” I mean five miles north of the Bronx border. I had one girl with no TV credits tell me she needed $600 to headline on a Thursday night. Get fucking real. My entire budget is $200 and I probably would have given her all of that but since she tried to play me for a sucker she’s now booked on my shit list which has a budget of $0 and a bonus fuck you. I have not booked the next date for my New Rochelle show and I am thinking I probably won’t. Too much heartache for not enough fun and I haven’t made a dime off of it for myself. Definitely an experience I needed to have, but I think I may be done.
I’ve also done some road work, nothing too far yet but a lot of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and a couple of gigs in upstate New York, Delaware and Connecticut. Boy have I learned a lot with road work. I have definitely learned that road work is easier and more fun, in my opinion, than work in New York City. Crowds are more laid back for the most part. They are there to see comedy because there’s not much else to do in their small towns and they show their appreciation with easy and loud laughter. They are less critical of content and construction and a lot more willing and able to laugh at themselves. That is exhilarating of course but at the same time it can be detrimental because while it is great fun to tell a heckler “go fuck yourself” and get a three minute applause break from crowd of 500 people, it really does not help you grow as a comic to go for the easiest laugh with the crudest most simplistic material. As a female comic I have also learned that crowds outside of NYC find it perfectly acceptable to scream out “show us your tits!” while you’re in the middle of what you think is your best joke, but of course that’s the guy you can tell to go fuck himself and you’ll get a huge laugh. Then you can continue to berate him and heighten the effect. Fun for sure, but beneficial to developing your act it is not. I have also found that situations after the show can get a little rapey and scary if you’re a female traveling alone. If you’re a man and you kill, you will probably get a hearty handshake and a pat on the back when you get off the stage. If you’re a female, you’re more likely to get an “encouraging” smack on the ass. It would be nice to think that your fellow comics will protect you from such things, but your fellow comics might be a little rapey too. My advice to female comics doing road work: bring a friend you trust.
If you have made it this far I have to say you are a better person than I, I probably would have stopped after the third paragraph. So thanks for sticking around. These past three years in comedy have honestly been the best years of my life, as much as they have sucked, and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the regular everyday life I would be living now if I hadn’t gotten into it. Hopefully three years from now I will post another far too long account of my experiences and hopefully it will be more positive, juicier, and will include more details which I will be more comfortable revealing. Maybe I’ll even be sober and hopeful again too. Who knows. The only thing I know for sure is that this is the only thing I have ever failed at miserably and didn’t walk away from, and I know in my heart I can’t walk away. And that’s gotta mean something.
