I’m trying to write jokes. It’s hard. Translating something you find funny in your head to words is quite a challenge. I love to laugh. One of my favorite activities really. “Write what you know” is one of those things I’ve heard since grade school. The scary thing is finding out that I know nothing! I go to comedy shows whenever I can. I’ve been to well known clubs to hallways that doubled as a bar… if you have seen some of the tiny spaces people figure out how to turn in to a bar in the Lower East Side (eye roll emoji.)
I think I was aware of standup comedy right around 1979-ish? I liked the Rat Pack comedians. Johnny Carson, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield… but I never saw a whole comedy special until Robin Williams did his first HBO special. Soon after I snuck in to see “Caddy Shack” in the theater. It was all the cool, slightly edgy comic actors of the time. A few years later I saw Richard Pryor’s “Live on the Sunset Strip” in the theater. I had always laughed hysterically with my Grandfather at Laurel and Hardy reruns. Our favorite was any movie with Don Knotts in it.
In college, my favorite ritual, I guess you could call it, was my roommates and I would go to the new comedy club in Columbus, OH at the end of each semester before we split our separate ways on break. The big comedians we loved were Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay and sometimes Bill Hicks. It was at one of these shows that I was completely hooked with consuming comedy. There was a sad nervous looking guy taking tickets at the entrance to the performance area. The show was solid, mostly local people. The show ended and the announcer came on and told the crowd we had a bonus comedian tonight. He’s new and needs to get some stage time. We didn’t have to stay and watch but the show was technically over. It was the guy at the door taking tickets. We stayed. I don’t remember his name but to me he was awesome. His first joke didn’t do too well and everything else bombed. He was trying to go in the vein of Andrew Dice Clay, or Sam Kinison. But he was a few veins off. He broke out into the most authentic flop sweat of nervousness. I really felt for him. I could tell he was a nice person but he just didn’t have the timing or really any communication skill that would have made his jokes work. When you do racial stuff, you look so many more times worse than a regular joke that doesn’t work.
The nameless guy who bombed for us that night started a new level of comedy appreciation for me. Enjoying the very real moment of awkwardness in a performance. Sometimes planned, sometimes not, I would try to recognize those moments. Andy Kaufman. Wow, talk about someone who just lived in those moments all the time.
I continue to consume comedy and to write my own versions of jokes. The few comedians I know who I run some of them by give me nothing! And that is funny to me. Although not really nurturing. I am very content to make friends laugh and laugh with them so I don’t feel any pressure to get up on a stage to try it. I will give it a go at some point when I can prove to myself that I can actually remember my jokes without looking at them!