Don't Shit Where You Eat! ™

The title today is a little misleading
because there really aren’t any official rules for an audience at a
comedy show, especially one with no cover charge. Think of these
instead as a way for you, the civilian, to make the night fun for
yourself, the crowd, and the comics.

1. Don’t Talk. Should be obvious, but
isn’t. If you absolutely must say something to someone in your
group, use your <inside voice> and keep it brief. If you’d
like to have long conversations with your friends, there are hundreds
of other, better places to do so.

2. Don’t Use Your Phone. Should also
be obvious, but isn’t. Buddhists have it all wrong; if we were truly
One we wouldn’t be so desperate to be connected at all times. Try
living off the grid for a couple of hours. At least put it on silent
and check it during the breaks, not the show.

3. If You Hear a Joke You Found Funny,
Laugh Out Loud. A guy once told me after a show, “I feel bad
because when I’m in the club and I like a joke, I don’t laugh, I just
smile.” He should feel bad. No comic ever went home thinking,
“What a great set I had! Everyone was smiling!” If you like the
joke, express yourself audibly. If you are Swedish or otherwise
naturally afraid of being an individual, alcohol helps.

4. Don’t Heckle. Ever. Any questions?

– “What do I do if I don’t like the
comic?”

Don’t laugh. Take a little break, go
get a drink, step outside for a smoke or some fresh air, maybe
you’ll like the next comic. Just because you don’t like the comic,
it doesn’t mean the comic is bad. I hate Pop Country, for example,
but it’s called Pop Country for a reason.

– “But heckling is popular in the
UK!”

So is boiling everything. They
certainly do love to heckle. They heckle in Parliament, for
Christ’s sake. But if you’re not sitting in a Soho club then this
argument isn’t valid, now is it?

– “Standup is supposed to be
give-and-take with the crowd! Heckling adds to the night!”

It never adds, only subtracts. If a
comic gets 6-8 min of stage time, the comic plans 6-8 min of
material. The comic might be good and fast enough to turn your
inane comment into Comedy Gold, but whatever time is spent on you
is time removed from the planned material.

Bottom line: If you want to
participate in a show, write three minutes of material and ask club
owners for stage time. Otherwise, limit your involvement to
laughing and applauding.

5. If You Have a Chance to Tell a Comic
After a Show That You Enjoyed Yourself, Do So! Comics may be broken
people but we’re still people. We won’t bite, we appreciate a clap
on the back. Go right up and say, “I had a great time, thanks, I
thought you were very funny!”

Then- this is extremely important- if
you are not going to offer money and/or sex, just walk away. I don’t
want to sound ungrateful, you did a wonderful thing, and I know you
have the best of intentions, but chances are you’re going to screw it
up.

Example: Guy walks up to me after a
show, says, “I thought you were really funny!” Great so far!
But he continued, “I loved your joke about porcupines!” I don’t
have a joke about porcupines.

To recap: laugh and don’t talk too
much. By following these simple rules, you’ll not only ensure a
wonderful evening for all, you might just save a life!

Two years ago I went to see standup with a group of
civilians (read: non-comics/comedians).
The headliner was a comedian I’d not heard of before nor since, but
apparently a warm-up act for Letterman.
He was funny, did impressions, some of which were quite good, some of
which bordered on theft- an impression of Jim Carrey, sure, but doing Carrey’s
Fire Marshall Bill character, not so much.

I laughed, but he didn’t grab my attention until midway
throughout his set, when he began joking about his relationship with his
father. It was clear to me that, under
the jokes, there was some real pain there, but he moved on quickly and resumed
his impressions. That’s one of the
reasons few comedians have ever really affected me the way so many comics have,
because, with comedians, it’s all about the laughs.

Afterwards, one of the civilians asked me if I dreamed of
turning standup into a career. “I’d love
to, but it’s scary,” I said, “because so many comedy careers end in tragedy.”

“Oh, you’re just generalizing,”
another said. “Yeah, I am,” I replied,
and moved on. Some people just need to
believe the magic is real.

———————————————

When I was seven years old, I moved to a new town. Being socially awkward and poor at sports
(some things never change), I made no friends and instead became a target. That was Second Grade and I was one of around
twenty students. I hoped things would
change in Seventh Grade when I began at Middle School and they did, but for the
worse. I went to a small school, but
being in a class of around a hundred brought me more tormentors and still no
friends.

By this point, though, I’d discovered standup. I learned that if I could laugh at myself,
insult myself worse than anyone else could, it took away all their power. I never did learn any method of defending
myself other than hoping, if I just ignored them, they’d get bored and leave me
alone. They finally did, in Tenth Grade. From ages 15 – 16 I was completely ignored
and I’d never been happier. I still had
no friends at school but I didn’t have enemies, either.

Having that break of a year gave me enough self-confidence
to begin running Cross Country and Track in my Junior Year. I was, by far, the slowest on the team, so I
didn’t matter, but I didn’t care. All I
cared about was getting better, doing better with each race. When I continued participating in my Senior
Year I made my first friends, all of them surprised to find that, after all
those years, I actually was a somewhat interesting person.

After high school and moving away to Boston for college, I
grew apart from and/or fell out with every single friend I’d made that
year. Thanks to Facebook I’ve managed to
stay in touch with a few people from those days, but I’d stayed in Boston after
college before making the move to Sweden, so close relationships are difficult
at best.

All of which makes reunions unattractive to me. I’ve been to a few and they are awkward
affairs; a room full of people, most of whom had nothing to do with me for
those years, some of whom were nasty to me throughout, and none of whom I’ve
had anything to do with in the years since, it’s worse than going to a party
full of strangers. Not to say I haven’t
had any interesting conversations or reconnected with anyone during them, but
still. We don’t have anything to reminisce
about, no fun War Stories, and I have no nostalgia. How can I have even the slightest longing for
the past when I’m happiest now?

“Jeez, let it go,” maybe you’re thinking. For the most part, I have, but spare a
thought for the fact that I was very, very unhappy and bullied during ten of my
most formative years. On the other hand,
that pain drove me, inevitably, to the stage.

So maybe I should go to my
30-year reunion and say, “Thanks! Today
I am, in large part, what you all made me!”
And then I’ll laugh, because that’s what I’ve always done, and I hope I
never stop laughing.

———————————————

I don’t know when Robin Williams stopped laughing. I mentioned earlier that few comedians have
ever meant anything to me; he was, is, The Comedian to me. All the energy I could never approach, quick
on his feet, and never failed to be personal on stage. Sadly, it is much more shocking to me when a comic
or comedian dies happy of old age in his or her bed, surrounded by family and
loved ones. His end is all too common.

Comics and comedians have always been the most interesting
people to me and it is my honor and pleasure to know so many, both rookies and
pros. They are the most creative,
gifted, and giving people I have ever known.
They, we, are also the most self-destructive people I’ve ever known, in
the most pain, the most likely to keep repeating mistakes and spiral downwards. But if we’re doing our jobs right, you never
know this, because we keep smiling, keep laughing, until we don’t.

We’re broken people, in many ways. Of course everyone wants to be loved, but it
takes a special kind of broken to drive someone to the stage, to seek that
acceptance from total strangers. Even
when we get their love, we don’t believe it; a common pitfall in comedy is that
the performer begins to hate the audience.
“They love me, can’t they see I’m worthless? How fucking stupid are they?” one might
think.

Sometimes, when I host a show, I’m confronted with an
audience that doesn’t want to give us much energy. When that happens, I say, “I’m going to let
you all in on a dark little secret about comedy: Every single person that comes up
on this stage has really low self-esteem and a big hole in their chest where a
soul should be, so we need you to give us much love as you can fake for two
hours. Okay?!”

I’m kidding! Comedy
really is magic. Pay no attention to
that man behind the curtain, Oz is Great and Powerful.

I imagine the standup scene in Stockholm is much like any
other, like a pyramid with a large base of rookies at the bottom and far fewer
pros at the top. Gigs look the same way,
lots of open mic-level clubs at the bottom, easy to get, and far fewer, more
lucrative opportunities at the top for us to compete over.

Usually, getting a gig at the top takes a lot of time and perseverance,
but now and then a rookie with very little experience has the good fortune to
be suddenly accelerated to a good one.
Now, there is a nice community spirit amongst rookies and you might
think this would make the rest of us happy, that one of us made it! You would be wrong. We encourage each other but we are also competitive,
angry, and bitter. We say, “That rookie
is not ready for that gig,” and, “The only reason that rookie got that gig is
because a Superstar got it for hen*.”

We’re probably right, on both counts. There’s a good chance that rookie won’t do
well, which will just hurt hen in the long run. But why did the Superstar promote hen in the
first place? Did the Superstar say, “I
am going to use my power and influence to give a great gig to a completely
random rookie hen is not ready for”? No,
the rookie was impressive in some way.
Funny, or unique, or perhaps a bribe was offered, who knows?

Perhaps we’ve also had a gig with that Superstar, who did
not choose to be a patron for us. That’s
the root cause for the jealousy- what does that rookie have that we don’t?

Instead of worrying what that one person thinks or doesn’t
think of us, we should WORK HARDER.
Note- if all you want to do is make people laugh, then stick to your
6-min set that you know works and enjoy your hobby. But if you want the good gigs, then take more
advantage of the time you have on the rookie stages. If you’ve got a year of experience and you
know you can make people laugh, then just doing the same thing again and again
is not going to make you better any more than going to the gym seven days a
week and doing six pushups is going to make you Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Take risks.
Think about what scares you, like crowd work, and do that. Learn your material, practice at home, know
how long your bits are before you go on stage.
Move around on stage. Ask for
feedback. Change the order of your bits,
try not to do the same set twice. Seek
out new venues, new contacts. “Be so
good they can’t ignore you,” as Steve Martin said. If you have a passion for standup, then let
others see it, feel it.

No one gets every opportunity, so use your
God-given ability as a comic to just think about yourself and don’t worry about
the others. Eventually you’ll be in
right place at the right time. Or you
won’t. Who said it’s all about talent?

A final note to those rookies that luck
into great gigs- stay humble. You’re
still rookies.

*hen = Swedish, gender-neutral pronoun

One aspect of standup everyone seems to have an opinion on
is, when can one refer to oneself as a comic?
I’ve heard all sorts of answers:

–
After 100 gigs

–
After 500 gigs

–
After 5 years

–
After the first paying gig

–
Only when comedy pays the bills

And so on and so on.
Not surprisingly, it’s those with the most experience that usually have
the toughest criteria to fill.

Jerry Seinfeld wrote that one is a comic after the first
performance, since the audience doesn’t care if it’s one’s first gig or 1000th
gig. I like the spirit of that belief,
but a) to do your first gig and then go backstage and say to everyone “Now I’m
a comic!” is not a good way to make friends; and b) since all of my heroes are
comics, I have a hard time applying that title on just anyone. Especially myself.

I’ve got three years and over 400 gigs in several countries
under my belt, but I am a rookie comic.
I’ll be a rookie comic until I’m not.
I don’t have a clearer answer to this question either.

To my
knowledge, there’s just one word in Swedish for someone that stands on stage
and tells jokes: komiker. I had a
conversation with a Swede several months ago and he asked in English if I
preferred to be called a comic or a comedian.
I hadn’t really thought about that before, so I Googled it later and
wasn’t surprised to see there is a difference.
There’s an old saying about it, in fact:

“Comics say
funny things, comedians say things funny.”

Although
that makes it appear that being a comic is better, I don’t think one is better
than the other. For me, it comes down to
this: what’s more important to you, the material or the performance? A comic can go on stage and do material he
(in this case, it’s almost always a man) knows the audience will hate, and they
do, and he bounces off the stage with glee.
For comedians it’s laugh or die.

The saying
continues:

“A comic can
be a comedian but a comedian can never be a comic.”

In other
words, an angry comic can make silly faces in between rants, but a silly
comedian is not going to suddenly go on a rant about Israel.

9 out of 10
rookies I meet are comics, but I don’t think that’s necessarily their
choice. In the beginning we’re scared
and nervous and focused on getting the words out right and just plain surviving
the experience; the only thought of “performance” that might cross our minds is
holding the mic correctly and keeping our eyes off the floor. I think being a comedian takes time and
evolution.

Comedians
get a lot more attention than comics.
More likely to headline, more likely to receive glowing reviews. People go to a standup club to laugh and have
fun and drink, and comedians seem to care more about what the crowd wants than
comics. On that note, I add my own
saying:

“Comedians
think they are there for the crowd; comics think the crowd is there for them.”

I laugh at
comedians but my heroes are all comics, and being a comic is something I aspire
to. I always assumed that I would evolve
into an angry, ranting guy on stage and I’m surprised to see that this hasn’t
been the case, so far. I have rants and
my favorite thing to do on stage is to call everyone in the crowd assholes (and
have them applaud me for it), but I learned early on that I get much bigger
reactions when I’m high-energy and smile now and then.

When I
started my material was much darker because I really enjoyed making the crowd
groan and be uncomfortable. I had a joke
about Down’s syndrome that evolved into a bit and finally an entire routine and
it pissed one guy off so bad he wrote a well-received blog entry denouncing it. After a short while, I decided that, as much
as I like making the crowd groan, I like making them laugh more.

I also
believed once that I didn’t care at all what the crowd thought of me. But after I bombed, really bombed for the
first time, I learned I absolutely do care about it. And I know that if I don’t think about
entertaining the crowd at all I won’t get many opportunities to perform. So
they want to have fun and that’s on my to-do list, but it’s at the bottom of my
list.

As an American living in Sweden and performing standup, I’m
part of a small and diverse community of funny, smart, and creative ex-pat
comics. But we have a problem: we’re
stuck doing the same three types of jokes.
Being stuck like this defines us as a group.

The first type is commentary on the Swedish language,
specifically words that sound dirty in English:

“’Masterkock’ means something normal in Swedish but in
English it’s COMPLETELY different and naughty!!”

The second type is shallow, mundane observations of Swedish
culture:

“Boy, you people sure love coffee! What do you take, like 40 coffee breaks a
day? And it’s so STRONG!”

The third type isn’t even a joke; we just say Swedish words
repeatedly:

“My kid’s favorite show on TV is Bolibompa! Bolibompa!
BOLI BOLI BOLIBOMPA!!”

We’re stuck like this for one reason and one reason only:
Swedes love it. Swedish audiences eat
this shit up with a spoon. That’s why-
believe it or not- I do not judge any of my peers that performs this kind of
material. I might sigh and roll my eyes,
but I know these jokes are not meant for me, they’re meant for the room full of
Swedes that are pissing themselves with laughter. Also, I do not believe that my brilliant bit
about pills that make semen taste like chocolate makes me more the next
Bill Hicks than someone who has a slutstation routine.

This problem became very apparent to me when Big Ben Comedy
Club began having all-English nights. (Yes, I know… it is odd to have a club called
“Big Ben” making an effort to have all-English nights.) Swedish comics translate their acts into English,
meaning the crowd hears all types of comedy and topics from them. We ex-pat comics go up with exactly the same
sets we perform at any other Swedish club, with one topic: Sweden. Often, THE ONLY COMICS SPEAKING SWEDISH ON
ALL-ENGLISH NIGHTS ARE ENGLISH COMICS.
Granted, the crowd is usually 98-100% Swedish, but still. If there’s one night we should try to cater
to tourists, that’s the one.

My personal ambition is to perform material in Sweden that I
can perform in any country. To perform,
in other words, material with the same scope and variety of my Swedish peers. But I am not a saint; it can be half, if not
most, of my act on any given night that would not work anywhere other than
Sweden. That isn’t so surprising though,
because I live in Sweden. This is my
life. I am an American living in Sweden
and I can’t not address that on stage, just like someone with crazy hair or
being a Serb or having one leg or whatever characteristic is obvious to the
crowd. In fact, I say specifically at
the start of my act that I’m from the US because I have heard people in the
audience wondering aloud where I’m from when I don’t say anything.

To my ex-pat peers, a request: please bring more to the
table. Your life is in Sweden but that
isn’t the only interesting thing about you.
There must be other things worth talking about, so why not talk about
them? As an English-speaking comic you
already have the crowd’s attention; we don’t even have to work as hard as our
Swedish peers for that. Or don’t. One of the reasons I love standup is that we
can do whatever we want up there, be whatever we want. If you want to giggle about “fart” for seven
minutes, have a ball! Personally I think
you’re worth more than that, but I’m not your Guidance Counselor.

To my Swedish peers- I know a lot of you roll your eyes at the
ex-pat style of jokes and I can’t say I blame you. You think it’s an easy way to get laughs and
you’re right. But we like making them
laugh, so give us a break. We may even
make a living off making them laugh.
It’s not going to change until Swedes say, “You know what? When a non-Swede says a Swedish word that
really doesn’t qualify as a joke.”

Until then, slutspurt!