Don't Shit Where You Eat! ™

The
average person starting in standup has no training, no experience on stage
whatsoever. Now and then someone starts
at a bit of an advantage; I’ve met several people in just the last year that
came from theater backgrounds, or even took courses in standup. Still, in nearly every case, we start with no
self-confidence, no feeling of security, a bit of awe and wonder about it all
and respect for the comics we meet that have been doing this for years.

Over
time, though, that awe and wonder, and even respect, fades away. We have too much confidence in ourselves and
feel like we deserve every gig we ask for, like club owners should be asking us
to perform instead of the other way around.
We grumble when other comics get the opportunities we don’t, when they
get more time on stage than us, even if they have significantly more experience
than us. Awe and wonder give way to
hubris and bitterness.

And all
of this happens in six months.

It
doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s happened around me, and yes, even to me,
so many times in just my four years in standup that I’ve noticed the
trend. It surprises me every time and
not at all. It happens for a number of
reasons:

– We’re
HUNGRY. Whatever the reason that drives
us to the stage in the first place, once we start we want to perform
everywhere, for as long as possible.
Every club is a goal and every club we don’t get gnaws at us. When we’ve done open mics for awhile we want
a place with a little more prestige, whether or not we’re actually ready for it.

– Why
not me?! I love our community and there
is a lot of support to be found amongst comics, but we’re competitive,
too. We often smile when a peer gets a
great chance that we haven’t earned yet, but we don’t smile with our eyes. We can name several reasons why that comic
succeeded where we didn’t, but, “That person is more talented than I am,” never
makes the list.

– We’re
not as good as we let on. Or, rather, we
aren’t as confident in our abilities as we express to others. We don’t ever
say, “That person is funnier than me,” but we worry, “Do people think that
person is funnier than me?”

The
only thing, besides blind luck, that opens doors everywhere is experience,
performing in as many places as possible, as often as possible. I thought that was universally accepted, but
I was disappointed recently when a high-profile comic publicly announced that
this is a myth created by white men, since only white men get that many
opportunities. I thought this was
insulting, not only to comics as a whole, but especially to the women I see
hunting and working and struggling and being rewarded for their efforts.

At
the same time, though, I can’t say I was surprised. This is a person who does very well by
performing exclusively for special events and niche clubs. It’s something I’ve noticed among other
rookies, myself included, that we can do very, very well when the crowd is
very, very good, but bomb when the crowd isn’t there for us, because we perform
the same way no matter the environment.
Maybe they just aren’t into our styles, or they don’t have much
experience going to clubs. Maybe the
venue itself isn’t the best for comedy.

The
comics I respect, I’ve seen them go into rooms where everything is wrong for
comedy, from the venue to the crowd, and turn it around. That’s a talent I respect and it comes only
with experience. When I can do that,
when I can adapt and at least survive whatever gets thrown at me, that’s when I’ll
stop referring to myself as a rookie.
Are you killing it only in special events and niche clubs? Welcome, fellow rookie! We are a wonderful community.

When it comes to counting gigs, some comics keep excellent
track, others haven’t the slightest clue how many they’ve done. I’ve seen enough updates on Facebook (“Tonight’s
my 50th gig!”) to get the feeling that more keep count than would
like to admit. I’ve met several that
kept counting for a while and then stopped.

I doubt anyone has ever been as anal at tracking their gigs
as I was. I can’t remember exactly why I
started, although I was tracking them from the first gig. Partly as a diary- I’d make a note if it was
my first time at that club, or if it went really well or very poorly. But mostly it was the number that I focused
on. Not only the total, but how many I
averaged each month. I even charted it in
Exel because, well, I could. Chasing a
high average pushed me and I was proud to see that I was doing five gigs a
month in 2011 and fifteen a month by 2013.

I think the main reason I kept such good accounting- besides
taking standup very seriously- was that I met a comic early on who told me he’d
done 300 gigs in his first three years.
That number felt absurd to me, like there was no way I’d do that many in
my first three years, but I was determined to try.

It’s important for me to note at this point that I never
thought this would impress anyone; I kept counting for no one’s benefit other than
my own. Still, when I hit my 100th
gig a few months after my one-year anniversary, I made a big deal of it. Announced it in advance on Facebook, wore a
jacket and guyliner on stage, told the crowd it was my 100th gig,
and partied afterward. Less than a year
later, I hit 200. Didn’t make a big deal
of it at all, though I mentioned it on Facebook with a self-deprecating comment
of, “I guess I don’t have an excuse to not be funny anymore.” Which was an opportunity for a FB ‘friend’
who didn’t like me very much to write, “No, you don’t.”

Months before my 3rd anniversary, I hit 300. I didn’t mention it to anyone. Certainly I was proud of it, proud that I’d
been so active, had earned so many opportunities outside the Stockholm open mic
clubs, but it didn’t make me as happy as I’d once expected. Just a few months into my third year, I hit
400. By that point, even I didn’t think
it was especially interesting, and I wasn’t so quick to update the list or make
any notes about the gigs. By last summer
I wasn’t updating the list at all.

Now I’ve had some time on my hands, so for shits and giggles
I updated the list with the gigs I’ve done and those I’ve got in my calendar,
and I saw that I will hit 500 well before my four-year anniversary in March
2015. Again, I am proud of that, to a
certain extent, proud of all the places I’ve been in such a short time, that I’ve
found gigs in eight countries, and I’ve got interesting gigs on the horizon. I know I have over 90 minutes of material
that’s been worked out on stage, that works.
90 minutes in over three years may be nothing compared to Carlin or
Louis CK writing new 60 minutes every year, but I’m nothing compared to them as
well, so I’m satisfied.

Still, I know I have a lot to learn, and I’m not convinced I’ve
found my true voice on stage yet. I’ve
said before that I set a high standard for myself and I am the first to say
that, despite coming up on four years and 500 gigs, I am a rookie comic. I know someone who doesn’t feel they’re a
rookie because they have three years of experience; I know someone else who
referred to oneself as an established comic after six months. Years, gigs, they’re just arbitrary numbers
that mean nothing in and of themselves, it’s the meaning we give them that
matters.

Every time I hear someone say they could never go on a stage
and tell jokes, they cite the same reason: they don’t have the guts to be in
front of a crowd and try to make them laugh.
Bill Maher once said that there isn’t much respect for standup- the only
thing that separates a comic from everyone else is the guts to go on
stage. Not writing, timing, working and
working, but just a lack of fear of possibly making an ass of oneself.

The fact is, you will meet few extroverts in standup. Most comics were not the funniest amongst
their group of friends. Many comics get
the same feedback from friends and family when they announce their plan to try
performing for the first time, “But… you’re not funny.”

I encourage people to try it, to keep at it, but nothing
makes my cold heart sing more than seeing the person that was funniest at the
bar, the funniest amongst their friends, the one that everyone said should be a
comic, go on stage will all of that “I know I’m funny!” confidence and then die
a slow death, literally shrinking under the lights before slinking away, never
to return. I like it because of petty
jealousy of their lives in the real world, of course, but mostly because it
proves that confidence is not what standup is all about.

And thank God for that, because if extroverts are rare, a
confident comic is a unicorn. Always
recognizing room for improvement is a powerful tool for developing, but we
usually focus on what went wrong and not at all on what went right. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen
someone go on stage, do ten jokes, nine kill, and the comic walks away miserable
about the one that didn’t work. That
desire to be perfect drives us, but it’s frustrating to not be able to
celebrate success.

As far as fear of being in front of a crowd goes, I’ve seen
many different levels of that. Most of
the comics I’ve met, it really isn’t an issue at all, but I’ve met a few that
are damn near crippled by that fear, and the closer it gets to showtime, the
more miserable they get. Good for them that
they go on anyway, they are braver than most people I know. If you’re not afraid of being in front of
people, going on stage is not brave. (By
the way, don’t ever tell a comic you think he or she is brave. Say we’re funny. Lie if you have to.)

Being nervous is also something I’ve seen in many different
degrees. One would expect someone with
little to no experience to be very nervous, but I’ve met comics with years of
experience that still pace and wring their hands before a set. Comics that have enjoyed a lot of success and
plenty of love, but still second guess themselves.

Myself, I remember being very nervous before I went on a
stage for the first time, and I notice when nerves manifest themselves while I’m
performing- talking faster, mumbling, sweating, etc- but I rarely feel nervous before
I perform. I know how that sounds, but I’m
not showing off. I’m not afraid of being in front of a group, I like everything I say (it’s getting the crowd to
like it, aye, that’s the rub), and, most importantly, 99 times out of a 100 I’ve
got nothing to lose and not much to gain, either. Success at an open mic rarely has more
benefit than bombing at an open mic.
Obviously success is better, one wants to come back, make good contacts,
maybe someone in the crowd is looking to book a comic for a corporate gig, etc,
but in the end it doesn’t really mean much more than not feeling like shit for
a couple of days. Which is a great
reward, actually.

I get more nervous before a paying gig, or when I perform
somewhere for the first time. Nothing
compares to how I feel before the show starts at my own club. First with Taboo, now with Crossfire, the
last hour before showtime I’m miserable, pacing, worrying. Not so much about my own performance, but
about how many, if any, will come to the show, will the comics have a good
time, will the venue want to keep me around.
I’ve been fortunate that most of the shows have gone well and I can feel
good about that for a little while. Then
the emptiness returns and I’m off chasing the next high.

This is one of my favorite questions to
ask other comics. There is something very special about the drive to
go onto a stage and try to make a room full of strangers laugh and
I’m always curious about what motivates comics to perform. But the main
reason I started asking early on was because I wasn’t sure how I
could define my own reasons.

Before I started performing, the most
common thing I’d heard about standup is that comics get addicted to
laughs, that the first time one goes on stage and makes someone
laugh, it’s like crack, and one has to keep going back for more. But
I never felt that way. Of course I liked making people laugh but I
couldn’t say that was my main reason for performing. At the same
time, I still couldn’t say why I was doing it at all, although I
certainly knew I had to keep doing it.

I’ve asked many people yet never heard
anyone say they were addicted to the laughs, at least not in those
words. Most people just say they perform because it’s fun, or simply
because they love it, but that makes me suspicious. Yes, performing
is fun when it works, but we’re only as good as our last gig, and a
bad gig can drive your mood into the ground for days, or until you
get a better result. Since I don’t know anyone who only kills again
and again, there must be something else that drives us to keep exposing
ourselves to that risk.

“I’ve got something I want to say,”
became my answer for a while, though that didn’t feel 100% for me,
either. Obviously I have things I want to say, but I’m not trying to
lead a revolution. I will, from time to time, espouse something I’m
passionate about, but I can be equally passionate when I mock Swedes
over the existence of banana pizza. Yes, banana pizza is a real
thing.

Comedians will often say that making
people laugh is the only true goal of standup, to be achieved by
whatever means necessary. It’s hard to argue with that, and yet I
know I’m a snob about comedy. I set a high standard for myself,
probably too high, but if I don’t like what’s coming out of my mouth,
I don’t feel good when the audience laughs. In fact, just in the
last week I wrote a joke about how women like to change men; it got
an applause break on Saturday and on Sunday, when I bombed, that was
the only joke that got a chuckle. It felt so hack, so unoriginal and
boring, I was annoyed at the crowd for liking it, which was just
projection of being annoyed at myself for saying it.

When I first started performing, within
a few months I’d come up with a solid five minutes of material that
worked every time, and I was doing that same five minutes again and
again. One night, I did my set and the crowd laughed throughout, I
got four applause breaks, they were clearly happy with me, and I
walked off stage feeling like shit, feeling like I needed to throw
out everything I’d done and start anew. Which I did. If it was
laughs I was going for, I would’ve felt great after that set, but it
was something else.

It happens now and then that I perform
in a new club and want to make a good impression, or get the feeling
that the crowd doesn’t want to hear any tough material, and I do my
safest, go-to jokes and do well and feel lousy because I did what
they wanted, not what I wanted. One of those nights, a fellow comic
saw me leave the stage with my head low and he said, “Why feel bad?
You did great, you adapted your material for the crowd!”

“I’m not here for them,” I said,
“they’re here for me.” Could be the most pretentious thing I’ve
ever said and believe me, I know it’s drenched in hubris. But that
is a goal for me, to be able to do whatever I want, wherever I want,
and have it work every time. Unrealistic? Perhaps, but a noble
goal.

Not every joke I write is meant to get
a laugh. Some things are meant to get a groan, sometimes I just want
people to like what I’ve said or give them something to think about.
When the crowd reacts the way I thought they would, I feel good, and
the longer I thought about that, I was finally able to define what
drives me.

I want to play the crowd like an
instrument. I write a set, thinking, “They’ll laugh hard at this,
chuckle at that, groan at this, applaud that,” and the audience
reacts exactly as I predicted, exactly how I want them to. That’s
the perfect gig, when the crowd loves what I’m saying as much as I
do.

I would like to share an amazing story
with all of you!

Last Thursday morning, a woman was on a
subway in Stockholm. Sitting near her was a gang of 16-year-old boys
looking at violent pornography on their cellphones. Laughing about
it. Showing porn to each other. And everyone around them was
disgusted- disgusted!- including a 14-year-old girl who looked at the
woman with sadness and longing in her eyes, as if to say, “Please,
can’t you do something? Can’t anyone please do something?”

Finally, the woman had enough, and her
head exploded! It EXPLODED! And in the last second, as she got off
the train, she grabbed the phone from the loudest boy and said, “I
am going to call your mother and tell her where she can pick up this
phone, but not before I tell her what a little bastard you are!”

…It was a long second! It was not
long enough for anyone in the gang to react to someone stealing one
of their phones, nor long enough for the phone to lock itself, and
this is good because the woman was able to find that boy’s mother!
(I’m assuming on his contact list, under “Mother”.) And she sent
his mother the links and the pictures the boys had looked at, and she called the mother to explain, and the mother began to cry, she
wailed, “NO! Not my son! I’m a Feminist!!” And the woman began
to cry, she said, “I, too, am a Feminist!” And they had a long
chat about Feminism, and the world became a slightly better place.

Then the woman went on to Facebook and
she wrote this story down EXACTLY as it happened, and within a few
hours, 55,000 people shared it! A major Swedish newspaper,
Aftonbladet, published an article about it, blog after blog after
blog praised this amazing woman, and it all makes me so happy!
Because every single day, no less than twenty to thirty times, I am
annoyed by someone near me on their phone, and now I know I can steal
a shitload of phones, and society will say, “HURRAH!”

Please join me in celebrating this
incredible woman. Her name is Johanna Sthlm… I’m not sure how you
pronounce her last name, but by an amazing coincidence, that’s also
an abbreviation for Stockholm! I mean, what are the odds? She’s
normally a very shy woman; I can tell because not only did she delete
this story after it had been shared so many times, she only has 34
friends! So please, look her up on Facebook and send her a Friend
Request, because a woman this courageous deserves more fans than
Jesus!

There’s just one problem with the
story! …It’s an enormous pile of horseshit. First of all, all of
this allegedly happened in Sweden- Swedes are not known for being
great at conflict. Second of all, the story is just too awesome.
It’s a great story, but that’s all it is. Still, Aftonbladet, 55,000
people all said, “Hmm, Johanna Sthlm, 34 friends, this story can’t
possibly be too good to be true. <Share>, I’m gonna <Share>
that.”

I am often flabbergasted by bogus
stories and articles that are shared on Facebook by people I consider
intelligent, but who didn’t think twice about checking the source or
being the least bit suspicious. It could just be that I am a cynic,
but we all need a healthy dose of cynicism, or at least skepticism.
I can’t say I blame them too much, though, because it would be nice
to believe that sort of thing happens in real life. Plus, we’ve all
been in a situation where we thought of the perfect thing to say or
do, one hour too late, and it’s worse than not thinking of anything
at all.

But that’s what Facebook is for. We
can create this fantasy world where we are all perfect and smart and
funny and fast, and it’s a beautiful world! I mean, I have nearly
700 Facebook friends! In the real world, I’m not sure how many of
them would pee on me if I was on fire, but I’m guessing, probably
less than half.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, take
what you read on Facebook with a fistful of salt. Now, if you’ll
excuse me, Hicks, Pryor and Carlin have risen from the dead and would
like me to open for their World Tour.

I once asked this of a female rookie
I’d just met. It was a clumsy thing to say and I wouldn’t say it
again, but my heart was in the right place. At least I thought it
was; I thought she had a strong personality and I wanted to see that
come through on stage, instead of what I had come to consider the
qualities of a typical female comic.

I grew up with standup, listening to
albums, watching every cable comedy program and special, short sets
on talk shows, whatever I could. I learned early on that when I’d
see a man on stage for the first time, I’d have no idea what to
expect from him (so long as he was white and between 20 and 50),
other than he’d probably mention his dick at some point. Any
variation on that, the material was dominated by it (i.e. weight,
ethnicity, etc).

By that standard, nearly all female
comics fit snugly in the niche of female comedy, sets comprised of
dating, periods, dating, mothers, dating, and dating. There were, as
always, exceptions; Sandra Bernhard was ahead of her time. And
though I thought the range was limited, it didn’t mean I didn’t
laugh. Paula Poundstone, Elayne Boosler, Ellen DeGeneres, Rita
Rudner, just to name a few that made an impression on me. But even
Ellen joked about her difficulties finding a man, the cause of which,
in retrospect, seems a bit obvious.

However, at the time I made the
request, I’d been performing for six months, not at all at the same
pace as today, and I’d performed in far fewer venues. What I’ve
learned since is that my opinion was completely outdated. Yes,
female comics do talk a lot about being women, about being female
comics, but that’s because it’s who they are and I’ve met few of them
I thought had limited themselves to that.

There are, naturally, some behaviors I
don’t like, and trying to change them is a recurring theme of this
blog. Some of them, in my experience, are overwhelmingly female, but
they are so uncommon I won’t paint an entire group as typical. In
fact, if I could do it all over again, I would’ve asked her to not be
an untypical comic.

If, for example, you don’t actively
hunt gigs at least at the rookie, open mic level, and instead wait
for, or expect, invitations from club owners, you’re being an
untypical comic. This is something you’re supposed to be aggressive
about. If it were easy, anyone could do it. You should hunt, nag,
pester, and be prepared for rejection. You won’t get every gig,
especially in the beginning, so make the best of what you do get.

If you feel threatened by and/or are
shitty to a comic just because that comic is physically attractive,
that is petty, catty and bitchy. Yes, I realize the sexist
connotation of “catty” and “bitchy” but if the shoe fits,
wear it. While I personally have not seen man-on-man action in this
regard, I imagine it could happen. Whether or not it’s an exclusively female
thing, just cut it out. You’re better than that.

Sometimes a funny woman will have an
easier time getting a gig than a funny man because she’s a funny
woman. If you are a funny woman with limited experience and you get
a great gig and claim gender has nothing to do with it, you are
insulting a funny man who had to work for years before he got the
same chance. Now, I don’t expect you to shed a tear over hurting a
man’s feelings, but if we’re ever going to move the ball forward, we
need to respect each other and get along.

If you say, “She only got that gig
because she’s a woman!” you’re wrong and you should shut the fuck
up. First of all, the primary reason she got the gig was because
she’s funny. Second of all, a funny man will have an easier time
getting a gig than a funny woman much, much more often, even when
said man is far less funny. Some club owners are more active at
levelling the playing field and this is a good thing.

I wouldn’t trade places with a woman
for anything in life and certainly not in standup. When I contact a
club owner for a gig, he (pretty much always a man) wants to know if
I’m funny, not how big my tits are. When I show up, none of the
other comics feels I’m a threat because I’m attractive (for the sake
of this story, let’s say I’m a very handsome guy). When I go on
stage, the host doesn’t say, “The next comic is a man! He’s very
cute and actually pretty funny!” No man in the audience folds his
arms and refuses to laugh at anything I say, nor give dirty looks at
his girlfriend when she laughs. No woman in the audience is more
interested in how I look than what I’m saying. When I’m done, no
female comic tells me I need to match my material with my wardrobe
(although once a guy told me not to wear a funny t-shirt). And no
woman labels me as a typical male comic…

…ok, actually that does happen. When
I joke about my dick and make sexist remarks, there are women who tsk
and write me off as just another typical male comic. I’m aware of
that, but it doesn’t always prevent me from talking about what I want to talk about.
I do what I want and I accept the consequences. Female comics have their own range of topics to watch out for, and if someone says, “Great, another typical female comic,” well, you can’t win them all.

I have this hope that someday, when I
see someone walk on stage for the first time, I won’t be able to
guess what he or she will joke about, at least not all the time.
Doesn’t mean the end of niche comedy, but it would mean the end of
comics being limited by them. It’s one reason I push fellow ex-pat
comics in Sweden to talk about more than Sweden.

In a perfect world, there will be no
funny women, no female comics, no comediennes. Just comics and
comedians, period. No pun intended.

I thought about writing on the topic of
what makes a good mc, but a) that ground has been covered to death,
and b) I’m as much a rookie mc as I am a rookie comic. Instead I
thought I’d just write about my own experience.

With Taboo Comedy Club, which I
co-founded, and now Crossfire Comedy Club, I wanted to have a place
where the focus is on the performers, where they get as much stage
time as they deserve, where they feel appreciated. It’s my club, but
it is not my show. When I host my own place or at other clubs, it is
not my job to be funny. It is my job to get the crowd warmed up and
focused and then I get the hell out of the way.

Part of the appeal of founding a club
was to try to improve on what I felt were poor aspects of other clubs
I’ve performed at, and the same thing affects how I host an evening.
I’ve experienced hosts:

– that did nothing. “Hi everyone.
Welcome to the show. Your first comic…”

– that didn’t understand their job is
to be a cheerleader. “God, I’m so miserable. Life is just
terrible. Your next comic…”

– that did too much. “Before we
bring out the next comic, I’m going to ramble for twenty minutes with
some material I’d like to work out.”

And so on. Comics will complain to
each other about the host’s skills or lack thereof- never to the host
of course; see the title of my blog- but I just see it as the price
of admission. When I choose to perform at a club, I play by the
club’s rules. I may not like it, but I adjust my set based on the
circumstances I’m presented.

If I’ve done my job as host right, the crowd is
warmed up and ready to be entertained by someone that isn’t me. If
the comic completely eats it, I’ll do my best to bring the crowd’s
spirits back up before the next person gets on stage. If the comic
was great, I get the next person up as quickly as possible to keep up
the momentum. It isn’t rocket science, although I certainly
understand the temptation to be on stage longer.

Hosting does mean I am limited in how I
present myself on stage. When someone else is hosting, I can be
goofy or angry or try completely untested material or ramble or just
do whatever I want, but I have to be a cheerleader and sharp when I
host. I’ve made the mistake about trying out something new because I
was so eager to do so and ended up driving the crowd’s mood into the
ground.

Being a cheerleader, however, doesn’t
mean I can’t be the bad guy when the situation calls for it. At no
point should a performer need to waste time yelling at someone in the
crowd to stop talking or get off the phone or otherwise being a
nuisance. That’s the host’s job. I can feel like a high school
principal at times- “Don’t make me turn the lights on and off until
you start paying attention. I can stand here all night.”- but I
can be shitty so the comics don’t have to.

It wasn’t until I’d had a year under my
belt as a comic before I dared to host for the first time, because
talking to people in the crowd was, and still is, a tough thing for
me. I have a hard time talking to people in real life, too, though I
learned, with a microphone in my hand, I have a lot more control over
the conversation.

One night in particular, early on,
shaped me more than any other, both as a host and as a comic. I was
hosting at a club, went up first, the crowd was completely silent. I
brought up the first comic, the crowd stayed silent. I went on
again, tried to be high-energy, the crowd didn’t go for it at all. I
brought the next comic up, the silence continued, and I paced
backstage, thinking, “Ok, I need to bring out my best, safest
material to turn this night around.”

The club owner came up to me, pissed as
hell, and I thought he was going to chew me out for being a bad host.
Instead, he said, “What the fuck is wrong with this crowd? You,”
poking me in the chest with his finger, “have to be hard on them.
They have a job to do and they’re not doing it.”

And that’s exactly what I did. I went
up after the second comic tried and failed to get the crowd going,
and in the nicest way possible, I told them that they were to blame
for not laughing, not giving the comics energy, because the comics
were funny. I was an asshole to them, talking like a drill sergeant,
but it turned the night around. “It’s never the crowd’s fault”
is as true as “The customer is always right.” Sometimes a crowd
sucks and needs to be whipped into shape.

As much as I’d love to say that I don’t
care at all what others think of me, it wouldn’t be the truth.
Despite my tough guy image (sarcasm intended), I’m a pretty sensitive
guy, and my reputation is very important to me, especially in a
country where it’s so difficult to make friends. I’m happy that my
reputation seems to be positive, overall, and I hope it is driven by
the way I act and the choices I make.

However, like pretty much everything
else in life, a lot of what affects my reputation is out of my
control. It’s all well and good for me to say that the jokes I tell
shouldn’t be a factor, but of course they are. Onstage and off, my
sense of humor doesn’t have any limits, and now and then, off stage,
I have apologized for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
It’s important to know one’s audience.

But I have never, nor will ever,
apologize for what I say on stage. When I say something the crowd
finds abhorrent, they let me know, and I pay the price. A favorite
bit of mine that almost never failed to kill in Sweden got me
literally booed from the stage in Berlin, for example (I say almost
never because a woman once threatened to throw my own beer in my face
after a set). If people judge me for who I really am based only on
how I am on stage, that isn’t my problem.

I’ve said before that one of the many
things I love about standup is that we can be whatever, whomever we
want up there. You can be a character completely unlike yourself if
you choose so, though just about every comic I’ve ever met is some
version of themselves on stage. Note the key phrase, some
version.

Larry David said that when he’s on
stage, he’s “Superman.” He takes certain aspects of his
personality and exaggerates them into a persona. He’s himself, but
not himself. That’s what we do, we control the image of ourselves
that others see. We tell the truth, but not all of it, sometimes we
lie outright, and we keep other parts of ourselves a secret. It’s
pretty much what everyone does all the time, really, just more
refined than Facebook.

A few people have told me
they thought I was an asshole based on how they’d seen me on stage,
and were surprised to find out that I’m not. This is completely
dependent on the fact that I’m not really myself on stage, at least
not as three-dimensional as I am in real life. It’s a double-edged
sword of standup, that the crowd loves when we bare ourselves
(figuratively) and are natural, yet the more natural we make it seem,
the less the crowd sees how much work we put into it. “I could do
that, he/she is just talking up there.”

When I get an idea for a joke, it comes
from my id (the lizard part of my brain that often spews out thoughts
that shock even me). In my head, I can see myself delivering it on
stage, and I am PERFECT. It sounds great, I’m completely confident,
the crowd loves it. So I try saying it out loud and I am as far from
perfect as I can be. I mumble the words and it doesn’t sound funny
to me at all, doesn’t flow. So I write it down, edit it, get it as
close as I can to how it felt, and then try it onstage. It’s always
too wordy, so I keep working at it until it’s polished and I’m
finally satisfied with it. Every joke, bit, routine of mine are like
songs to me, and my primary quest in standup is to be as perfect
onstage as I am in my own head. I’m me, but not me.

I’d like to have a reputation as a nice
guy, someone who takes funny business seriously, works hard at it, is
passionate about it, and supports others. I never want to act
against any of those things and I don’t think I have, but I know I
plant my foot firmly in my mouth more often than I’d like, and it’s
usually women I piss off. One in particular, a co-worker, once told
me, “You are SUCH an asshole! And the worst part is, you think
you’re a nice guy!”

That stung. Then I just accepted the
fact that I am a nice guy who can be an asshole sometimes. I can
live with that. Better than an asshole who can sometimes be nice.

In any case, one thing I’ll never be
accused of being is cool. Never been cool, never going to be cool,
and that stopped bothering me long ago. One of the bigger comics to
visit Sweden once said of me, not knowing I was in earshot, “Nice
guy but he’s whiter than Jim Gaffigan’s knee.” I want that on a
t-shirt.