My Advice for Stand-Up Comedians
Most people aren’t funny.
By this, I mean people who are not professional stand-up comedians. In other words, unless you are paid frequently to tell jokes and entertain total strangers while standing beneath a bright spotlight, then zip it, okay? While there’s a real comedian onstage talking, please keep your thoughts to yourself. Don’t interrupt the performer. Got that?
Here, let me try and make myself a little more clear:
SHUT THE FUCK UP.
You know the ghastly scene I’m talking about. You’ve been there. You’ve all witnessed it. The paid comedian on a national tour is onstage rollicking through his/her act. Everyone seems to be enjoying the show and having a good time. Then, without warning, some ass joker sitting in the audience starved for attention decides to become part of the routine. In the trade, they’re called hecklers. That’s the wrong word. They’re ass hats.
Hey jerk, we each paid $39 for a ticket. We’re forking over $7 (plus tip) for a lukewarm Heineken poured into a plastic glass to listen to someone who’s likely invested hundreds of hours of their life to create a 30-minute comedy routine. We didn’t show up here to witness your half-drunken improvisational intrusion. In the gallery of comedy, you’re graffiti.
Sorry, to break this news to you. Maybe your off-color joke at the bar last night made a few people laugh — especially if you’re lucky enough to be the boss and those are your servile flatterers employees, completely captive to your comedic whims. It’s funny how our socioeconomic hierarchy works. When’s the last time you met a funny fry cook? Perhaps a Twitter post to your 23 followers tagged a few likes. That doesn’t suddenly make you Sarah Silverman. Comprende? Comprenez-vous? Verstehen Sie mich?
Fact is, lots of people are boring as shit. Being around them for any length of time is like some sort of insurance marketing seminar that never ends. They think they’re funny after they’ve downed a few beers. Trust me, they’re not. They’re insurance salesmen who had a few beers.
Indeed, this is why we mortals pay comedians to do our creative thinking for us. This is the reason we hire stand-up acts to amuse us. Even shock us, sometimes. We like that. It’s why we’re willing to waiting in long lines to sit in crowded, poorly-lit showrooms with uncomfortable seats to listen to someone’s personal troubles and pent-up frustrations swaddled sometimes in ceaseless profanity. Comedy is society’s safety valve on a pressure cooker.
Last weekend, my wife and I went out to a local “comedy club” here in Las Vegas. At least that’s what the sign on the wall said that was hanging outside near the entrance. Instead, it seemed to turn into a taping of The Maury Povich Show. It became a carnival of humanity. The only thing missing was the pregnant trailer trash dating a black Ku Klux Klansman.
Unfortunately, all three comedians included heavy doses of audience interaction in their acts. Instead of delivering their tried and true proven half-hour comedy routines, each performer ventured off into the dull deluge of questions geared to people in the audience. At least a third of the acts were unrehearsed chit-chat. You’ve heard it before.
Where are you from?
What do you do for a living?
Do you have any kids?
Listening to these superficial exchanges was like being trapped at the dining table on a cruise ship. Rule #1: Whatever you do, don’t ask a stranger about their pets.
For a comedian, blending one’s act with a bunch of strangers produces one of two results — boredom or annoyance. Sometimes both. Fact is, the nice lady from Barstow who does payroll for a trucking company just isn’t that entertaining. Let me put it this another way — Chris Rock, she’s not.
Sadly, this is the hottest trend in comedy, nowadays. Engaging in nomadic dialogue with an audience is increasingly subjugating meticulously-crafted routines which often draws from the deepest and most private experiences of the performers’ personal lives — which is what we really long to hear about. Those experiences and thoughts usually mirror our own — which is why comedy works both as entertainment as social commentary.
Yet it’s far more convenient instigating free-style banter, in a sense bungee jumping off a bridge into the abyss of the awkward unknown, instead of perpetually fine-tuning one’s act. Call this diversion what it really is — outsourcing. Hoping that lady from Barstow who works with the truckers says something funny. And once she becomes a bore as she inevitably will within minutes if not seconds, then pivot over to the insurance salesman. Maybe he’s had enough beers by now to accidentally blurt out something that’s gut-busting funny.
Now that I think about it, maybe I should start heckling comedians the next time one tries to outsource the humor. Maybe I should turn into the ass joker in the back of the room who shouts out something rude in the middle of the show. If I ever get to that point, I know precisely what I’ll scream.
I want my money back!
