Are you folks ready to laugh??!?!?!

Man, last night I went to see some stand up comedy. It’s the first time I ever did such a thing. Really. I went with my wife, who’s nine months pregnant. The ‘event’ had to do with her job and was somehow tied into axe body spray, (which I get as much of as I can use, by the way. Every morning, I crack open a can of axe body spray, pour it into a bowl and ritualistically dip my penis and testicles into it until the whole thing is coated in a fine, glossy sheen) and everyone from her office was there. There were jokes going on the whole time, so thankfully people couldn’t bullshit with each other. It was great to not have to talk to people and say things like “oh, what am I doing right now? Funny you should ask. I’m unemployed! Yeah…no, no, no. It’s cool. Seriously, don’t worry about it. Yeah, she IS ready to pop any time, isn’t she? Yeah. Due date is next week. So, uh…spare any change?”

Instead we just watched jokes get told. We got there while a hot girl talked about getting fucked in various ways and then a sloppy jew came out and vacillated between saying just (gasp!) outrageous things! and doing jokes about how (for example) cats are always putting their butts in [one’s] face. He was funny. The girl was funny too. At some point I turned to my wife and said “you’re not gonna like what this is inspiring me to do” which is, of course, attempt stand up comedy.

What? Yeah I could! Suck a dick, naysayer! Nah, discount that dumb joke about the bowl of axe body spray then. It’s seven in the fucking morning! Oh, okay. You be funny then. Go on.

I thought so.

Yeah. I’m fixin’ to dive face first into stand up like greg louganis into an Olympic length dong. What? Still no good? Well, I’ll have you know that I’m saving my A material for the fucking giggle barn. And hey! Back the fuck off me, huh? Remember my whole thing? Failing=trying? There’s no success without putting yourself out there? Remember that shit? Jesus. You people can get so fucking aggressive the second I decide that this next one isn’t gonna be a fast punk rock song. You’d think I was suggesting doing a hip hop record or making a new religion or something…

Now, let’s make no mistake, stand up comedy is brutal and I’ve never heard of anyone EVER talk about their success in stand up without talking about how many times they’ve bombed and bombed and bombed and been humiliated and on and on like that. It seems like something you just HAVE to do in order to get the feeling of what it’s like to tell jokes in front of a room of people. Sean Nader, my good buddy and number one merch master texted me recently and asked “on a scale of 1 to 10 how hard do you think it is to do stand up?” and I said 8. I say that because I think it’s probably just as hard as, say doing heart surgery, in that first and foremost you’ve just gotta be the right kind of person or you’re NEVER EVER gonna be able to do it and then you need years of practice and careful instruction (and listen, save me the bullshit about pre med and med school and all that. If ALL you had to do was one kind of heart surgery, you could learn it [provided you’ve got the constitution and a steady hand] without all that bullshit. It’s basically carpentry and needlepoint, as far as my understanding goes. Sure it is. Hey! Quit with all the fucking skepticism this morning. That shit will age you before your time), but it’s not as hard as, say, building the pyramids in ancient times before toilets or cranes (a 9) or uh…I don’t know what a 10 would be…I’m sure there’s something out there that’s harder than that. Uh, space travel and contact with aliens on their planet on our terms (which means no probes) How’s that? Yeah. That’s a ten for sure. Nice.

Okay, firstly, don’t judge me. I’ll probably never really do stand up. I’m too scared of it. The people that do it are crazy and it seems like a very painful and disgusting way to make a living. Comics are always alone, touring in their cars, and then they get old and you just hear how fucking sad and broken they become. I think you could do a very good movie, not unlike the Wrestler about a past-his-prime stand up that was fleetingly kind of huge but is now, you know, Jake LaMotta-ing around the midwest. Eh, that idea is free today folks. Go for it. Make me proud.

Here’s the thing though: I’ve already been on stages telling jokes in front of tons of people for years and years and I’ve bombed, but I don’t really bomb anymore. Maybe I’ve secretly paid my dues, like the way Danny Laruso thought he was just waxing cars but secretly he was learning karate. Maybe I’ve been honing my standup skills without knowing it this whole time! And, I’ve already got some folks who would come see me, right? Sure I do. That should make up for the fact that I’d be starting (yet another) new endeavor in my thirties, right? Again, sure. AND when you start doing stand up, don’t you do like, 2 minutes? Sheeeeeit, man, I could comb through this fucking blog and have two minutes of solid gold, man. AND, the standards are low. You don’t have to sweat, you can look at a notebook. The rooms have tables and shit in them, so they look sold out even if it’s just a couple of assholes in there. I guess they make everything else easy because getting up there and saying “white guys fuck like this but black guys fuck like this” is so tough in the first place. Man. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. I’m in. that’s it! See you turds at the laugh factory!