Don't Shit Where You Eat! ™

Ah, January. It’s a welcome calm after a very busy holiday season. Scientists say the days are getting longer but how we feel is more important than fact and the days still feel damned short. Still, the lousy weather and handful of gray daylight hours ease the guilt of marathon sessions on the couch. Since I bought myself a PS5 for Christmas, the hours fly by.

Several years ago, I designated January as a month of sobriety and I’m glad to say it’s a tradition I’ve stuck with. The only time I’ve made an exception was when, two weeks into the month, I lost a job and several other things went to shit. I decided to call an end to Dry January… and everything got better. I don’t mean that I felt better, I mean they actually got better- within two days I had an interview for a new job and started a week later. I don’t want to say it was thanks to alcohol but you couldn’t fault me if I did.

Another semi-annual tradition in January is depression. Maybe it’s the lack of sunlight, or the after-effects of two solid months of eating too much food, or (but hopefully not) the sudden lack of alcohol in my bloodstream, but all too often I’ll encounter at least a full week in January feeling like absolute garbage. Fortunately it didn’t happen last year and, so far, 2023 is looking good, so fingers crossed!

I also decided a few years ago to designate January as month when I only speak Swedish at home. I figure that, if I do that for a month, I can spend the rest of the year speaking as much English as I want, guilt-free. It’s the same reason I’m sober for a month, in fact.

What I’m trying to say is that January is the most boring month of the year.

Not to glorify booze, and not that I’m usually hammered on a daily basis, or even ever, but I certainly enjoy a glass of wine or two or a few cocktails now and then. Unfortunately, “now and then” became “every day” too long ago. Before standup, I rarely drank at home, but when I was grinding and out five nights a week, drinking more often became the norm. I’m not much of a beer guy and it’s rare that I drink it at home, but it’s even more rare that I drink anything other than beer when I’m out in the clubs, primarily due to the high price of booze in Sweden. I honestly don’t know how anyone can afford to be an alcoholic in this country and I’m perplexed by how many succeed anyway.

Besides cutting out the expense of alcohol this month – a welcome savings after holiday spending – it’s also reassuring to me how easy it is to not drink every day. It’s just a bit dull, especially when I’m doing standup. I don’t like to perform with even a buzz on as I’ve had a few disastrous sets after drinking too many beers beforehand, but I have noticed that, the times I’ve made a point to not drink even one beer before a set, I didn’t do well. It’s not sobriety to blame, it’s taking it too seriously. I simply do better when I’m more relaxed. Unfortunately, I’m also a superstitious person, so now I have to drink a beer before I go on stage. On the bright side, alcohol-free beer seems to work just fine.

It used to be the norm for most clubs, if not all, to be closed in January, because everyone was burned out from the holidays and attendance was too light to make the shows worth it. That, of course, made it even easier to take a month’s vacation from the bottle. While some clubs still take the month off, more are open now and attendance is surprisingly high. It’s nice as a comic to not have to take an enforced break from the stage, but this past weekend I spent two nights on stage, sober, in front of a few hundred people all enjoying too many drinks. That’s less fun for me. Not that I’m a big fan of being around drunks, I’m even less so when I’m sober.

I wish I could tell you that I feel sharper on stage without beer or that I feel better every day because I’m not drinking, but I don’t enjoy any benefits beyond my wallet and state of mind. Scientists have even proven that a dry month has zero health benefits, although I have to believe that the far fewer calories I’m imbibing is good for my waistline. Still, I’m glad to keep this annual tradition and it will make the gin and tonic I’ll drink on the first of February all the sweeter. And no, I won’t be drinking it at midnight.

“But Ryan,” I hear you ask, “why not make February sober? It’s a shorter month!” That is a rookie mistake. If there’s just one month in Sweden we need booze the most, it’s February. Besides, Valentine’s Day is also when I get naked on stage each year and I’ll be sure to need a little liquid confidence.

Well, it certainly has been an interesting year.

Looking back at 2022, I have mixed feelings. It was a return to form and not at all, a year of improvement and yet not at all. Rejoining the comedy community and standing on the sidelines.

Maybe I’m starting this year in review with a negative connotation but it’s not my intention. I mean it when I say it’s been an interesting year. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, I’m looking back at the year’s events like a dog being shown a card trick.

For context, let’s look back at 2020. I started the year in self-imposed exile and, just when I was ready to dare step foot in the clubs again, covid came around and shut almost everything down. My few appearances on stage were plagued by anxiety, mostly for personal reasons, but also by me wondering why I was bothering to tell dick jokes in the middle of a pandemic. On top of that, I was unemployed and surprisingly all too happy to be stuck at home doing absolutely nothing.

2021 was off to a slow start as the covid and personal pandemic continued, but things began to improve slowly. I got a full-time job that sadly didn’t last long, but it paid my bills and reset my unemployment benefits, so that was great. Just as important, though, was that it shook me out of my routine of doing nothing. As the restrictions eased I was back doing standup, albeit with a frequency that paled in comparison to its former self. What was most important to me, though, was that the knot in my stomach I’d get by the thought of appearing in a club had loosened.

Another event at the end of 2021 was the beginning of my part-time employment as a game show host at On Air. I’d host private parties in English, mostly for companies but the occasional birthday or bachelor/bachelorette party, giving the illusion of being on a TV game show. Critically, it would mean actually talking to people. Crowd work, my old nemesis. Never one of my strong suits, I’d also just spent nearly two years in my apartment talking to no one but my wife and little at that.

2022 began with some covid restrictions still in place – again, “restrictions” is a strong word in Sweden when compared to other countries – but all at once they went away and covid became a distant memory, despite the fact that people still get it. Hell, I got the damn thing twice so far myself. Standup clubs began to reopen and many new ones were created, although a massive change had occurred. Pre-pandemic, most of the entirely too many clubs (see an earlier blog post) were free to audiences with large lineups. Now, nearly all charge at the door with small, select lineups. Some comics find many opportunities while most – including Yours Truly – find many closed doors.

I’ve noted many times in previous entries that I’ve really had only one ambition when it comes to standup- to perform as often as possible in as many rooms as possible. In 2022, I performed in eight rooms. That’s seven more rooms than many other comics, especially the rookies who had the misfortune of starting in the middle of the pandemic. Naturally, though, I can’t help but compare myself to my peers who easily tripled or quadrupled that figure, not to mention my number of gigs.

Which is not to come across as, “Woe is me, no one will book me.” The simple fact is that I don’t have the same drive as before, I don’t enjoy being in the clubs as I once did, and that’s mostly on me. As an example- the one club that really is open to just about anyone is Big Ben. When I started it was open two nights a week and I went to every show, trying to get on, and the more I tried the more I succeeded. It helped that, not only was I just as unemployed as I am now, I lived much closer to Stockholm. I also had that rookie drive then, though.

Now Big Ben is open every day of the week. Ten years ago, I would’ve been there at least five if not every damned night and thrilled about it. Not to say that I could get on every night these days, but certainly I could be there a lot, and yet I believe I went four times. Four gigs there in all of 2022. I’m willing to bet there are comics who chalked up fifty appearances and wouldn’t be surprised at all if someone claimed a hundred. That’s entirely on me.

I believe that’s contributed to me becoming almost militant against other comics complaining (see earlier post re: whinging) that one, two, or even three clubs won’t book them while appearing in thirty other rooms. Complaining is a common trait amongst comics and all too natural for Swedes, but goddamn, people could use a dose of perspective. Not that I was ever a shining star in the community, but I became totally invisible a few years ago and I’m barely visible today.

Which, again, is on me. I’ve been very active as a host for a club that most comics don’t get booked for, that nearly as many ever even go to check out. I can’t complain that many of the comics who even know who I am anymore only know me as a host, even though I did. Hey, I’m not perfect.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people of low ability overestimate their own worth while people of high ability tend to underestimate their own worth. My Ego says I’m towards the end of the scale while my insecurity says I’m still at the beginning but, to be fair, that insecurity kind of proves I’m at the end, right? I damn well should be, anyway. I’m coming up on twelve years as a comic, I’ve performed in every major Swedish city (all three!) and too many towns to count. Although I can worry I’ve become stagnant, a comic recently told me, “I’ve always thought you were underrated and should get booked more often!” and that’s been a soothing balm. I thanked him and said I’ll be appreciated when I’m dead.

I’ve also been thinking more and more about opening a new club, as I’ve written about. I think that would do more for my visibility than grinding at Big Ben. On the other hand, I’d run it alone and I know how I am as a club owner, too focused on the show to enjoy myself and appear cold as a result to the booked comics, the last people I want to think I’m unfriendly. That, of course, is just yet another reason for not doing it, but we’ll see what happens in 2023.

I’m happy with 2022 and see some definite wins, even if it wasn’t year of massive growth and success. I’m happy with my hosting gigs and while I wonder if I’ve improved as a host, I was already pretty good at it, thank you very much. I’m happy that, while my anxiety over just being out in a club hasn’t gone away entirely, it’s eased considerably. I’m happy with this blog, that I finally got into a rhythm and write on a regular basis. You faithful readers are few but proud and I appreciate you taking the time to look into my head now and then.

I should also mention my continued employment at On Air as game show host. While it hasn’t made me more open to doing crowd work as a comic, I have noticed definite improvement in my conversations with guests at On Air. A few months ago I began to host shows in Swedish and while it certainly feels more like work to me – and probably for the guests as well – it’s been a fun challenge.

This week I’ll be sharing a story about Bill Hicks. As he is my favorite comic of all time, I could write volumes about him and what he means to me. However, I just bought myself a PS5 as an early Xmas present and that Demon Souls remake isn’t going to play itself, so I’ll keep it short.

Even before making his debut in a comedy club as a teenager, Hicks dreamed of being on The Tonight Show. When he became friends with Jay Leno – who was a frequent guest host on The Tonight Show at the time – that dream seemed a few short steps away from reality. Leno didn’t think Hicks was a good fit for the show, though, and recommended him to Letterman. Letterman had The Late Show on the same network and it was true that Hicks was much better suited to that program. The two hit it off and Hicks would appear on The Late Show eleven times.

In preparation for his twelfth appearance, Hicks submitted his set to the network in advance for approval. This was standard practice as the network was terrified of offending the FTC and incurring fines. By this point, Leno had taken over The Tonight Show, Letterman had moved to a different network, and the Late Night War was in full swing. The set was approved, Hicks taped a very successful appearance, only to receive a phone call several hours later that the show was cutting his entire segment.

The exact reason this happened is a bit unclear. The show’s producer would claim that the network said it was unsuitable for broadcast, despite the fact that the network that had pre-approved the material in advance. The producer also claimed he had fought tooth and nail to keep the segment included, but would later say it was actually his decision to cut it. For his part, Letterman would blame the network at the time, but later say it was his call and he’d made it out of jealousy.

The prevailing theory – the one Hicks believed – was that, as his set included a lengthy attack on the Pro-Life Movement, the show and the network were both afraid of losing advertisers. Hicks was furious. He vented to everyone and anyone about what he felt was censorship and an absolute betrayal. This caught the eye of several newspapers, who began to run articles about the whole thing.

A sad bit of irony here is that this gave Hicks more heat in the US than he’d ever experienced before. He’d managed to make a great name for himself in the UK, where he’d found a much more willing audience, but didn’t have a tenth of Denis Leary’s popularity in the US, despite Leary having stolen from Hicks left and right. Finally, people were starting to pay attention.

People like Jay Leno, in fact. Leno had recently scored a massive win in the Late Night War, having Hugh Grant on just after Grant had been busted with a prostitute. That appearance led to Leno beating Letterman in the ratings for the first time and, from that point onwards, Leno’s Tonight Show would always be Number One. When Leno heard about the Hicks debacle, he smelled blood in the water, and he invited Hicks to perform his cut set on The Tonight Show.

Hicks was thrilled by the offer, of course. He’d finally be able to realize a childhood dream. There was a catch however: Hicks would need to submit the set to Leno’s network for pre-approval. Standards and practice, you know.

Hicks politely told them to go fuck themselves. He’d successfully completed the pre-approval process for Letterman, only for the set to be cut anyway, and he wasn’t going to go through that again. He would appear on The Tonight Show with set unseen or not at all. The network chose not at all. Hicks would be dead from pancreatic cancer a few months later, a condition he’d managed to keep secret from all but a select few.

That level of integrity astounds me and I must admit I’m quite torn about his position. As an artist, naturally it was the best possible decision. Never compromise, never surrender. As a career comic, what a miss. Leno was so competitive, it’s hard to imagine he would allow the network to say no or even censor the material in any way, but Hicks was unwilling to play along. That stubbornness kept him from not only a massive mainstream audience but also from standing on a stage he’d dreamed about most of his life. In any case, it’s hard to imagine anyone else ever making the same take it or leave it ultimatum. Certainly not Leary.

To his credit, albeit far too late, Letterman would invite Hicks’s parents to the show and interview them about the whole thing. While they were on, he aired Hicks’s final set in its entirety, and apologized for his part in the debacle. This was fifteen years later, but it wasn’t something Letterman had to do. The whole thing was long forgotten by the general public, if they’d ever heard about it.

I’m writing this during a turkey hangover. My wife and I hosted an over-apartment-full number of guests last night for our annual Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving is not a Swedish holiday, of course, but it should be. Getting together with family and friends, eating the same food dishes year after year and too much of it, drinking… it’s pretty much the definition of every Swedish holiday.

Thanksgiving means a lot to me for a number of reasons, primarily since it’s the one time of year I’m guaranteed to feel homesick. Sweden is my home, of course, but so is the US. When I hear from family about their plans and see pictures of all of them together, I get the lovely mix of wishing I was there and guilt that I’m not.

Growing up, Mom did all the cooking, and I don’t mean only for Thanksgiving. We never had mashed potatoes because she made so many other things, she didn’t feel like putting in all the extra work for them. Sometimes we’d host family at our place, sometimes we’d go to someone else’s dinner, but after a year hosted by my stepfather’s mom – where chicken was served instead of turkey – Mom insisted on hosting every year. She had three sisters and four brothers, so as the years went on and the families grew, it was a very full house.

I brought the woman who would become my first wife to Thanksgiving dinner and it was the first time she met my extended family. After dinner, she told me she didn’t think they liked her very much. “Your uncle reached past me to get food and nearly elbowed me in the face!” I laughed and told her that she just happened to be in the way of food. Wasn’t personal, just business. Many years later, I brought the woman who would become my second wife to Thanksgiving dinner, the first time she met everyone. I guess this is my thing.

Having never learned to cook growing up, I got married at 21 to a woman who did all the cooking. (Paging Dr. Freud…) As a result, when I got divorced at 32, it was the first time I lived alone and my cooking ability was limited to boiling water and baking chicken. I ate so much baked chicken that I can barely eat it today; in fact, my stomach is doing a roll as I write this.

I’ve since learned to make quite a few dishes, although I tend to make things that involve me being in the kitchen for eight hours. That may sound like I’m making super complex meals, but someone with even slightly better skills would only need an hour. I haven’t quite grasped multitasking yet.

Which all leads to another reason Thanksgiving means so much to me. My wife and I are a great team, getting an apartment ready to host more people than the Fire Marshall would approve, and she makes some popular dishes herself. I make the bulk of the food, including two whole birds, and the last thing I want is help. I’m my mother’s son – if we’ve invited 30, I cook for 60. Means a lot to me, not only that I’ve learned to cook, but that I can make so many different things. Yeah, it takes me all week, but it’s worth it.

Speaking of worth, turkey isn’t common here. At least one large supermarket chain realized they can sell turkeys at this time of year, but they aren’t cheap. Nor are the completely foreign ingredients I have to buy at The American Store in Stockholm. As a result, we spend a tremendous amount of money just before Christmas.

All that time and effort and money and I usually get to sit down maybe five minutes at the table during dinner. I spend 95% of the evening in the kitchen and I can hear our guests in the other room having a great time and I love it all. When Mom would host Thanksgiving or some other party she’d often say afterwards, “Sounded like everyone had a good time, wish I was there.” I can relate, although I do make a shitload of mashed potatoes.

I have much to be thankful for but, as this is a blog about standup, I suppose I should mention it sometime. The only real ambition I’ve had in standup is to be able to perform as many times as possible in as many venues as possible, and while I may be long from that today, I’m thankful that I practically have a residency in one of Stockholm’s largest clubs. Maybe 2023 will be the year I step it up, maybe not. In the meantime, I’m thankful that a few hundred people just about every week get to hear jokes about my penis.

One of the sweet little lies we like to tell ourselves in the comedy community is that standup is a meritocracy. If you work hard, develop your talent, grind away for years in club after club, more doors will open up to you. The best opportunities are only made available to the funniest, most experienced comics. When you start you might be 100th in line, but if you’re very patient, at some point it’ll be your turn.

In reality, however, there are many ways to skip the line, or at least move up the line faster. A simple example of this is people trying standup for the first time, but have a background in performing, such as theater or music. Your material might be mediocre, but you’ve got an advantage over fellow rookies who are just as mediocre but are also learning how to stand on a stage and hold a microphone.

Another way to skip the line is to have social skills and be likeable off stage. I’ve mentioned before that most comics, including myself, are (and I say this with love) socially retarded. If you’re personable and see mingling as an opportunity and not something to be avoided at all costs, you’ll stand out.

I’m opening myself up to hate here but I don’t mean to be controversial, just pointing out reality- women often get to skip the line. Club owners looking to make their lineups more diverse will offer opportunities to female rookies that they would never offer to male rookies of the same calibur. And it’s fine! Lineups should be more diverse, there should be more women in standup, the few that are around should get more stage time. If it means that a club owner should deny the hundred men who email requests daily for stage time and instead offer spots to women who had never asked themselves, so be it. I hope the scene develops to the point that all feel comfortable and welcome in standup and women hunt and grind and nag club owners as much as men do. In the meantime, we just have to make the best of it.

The best way to skip the line is to start doing standup after you’ve already built up a fanbase doing something else. The way the standup process is “supposed” to work is that you start as a total unknown, but after years of grinding in any and every club and posting content online, you build up a fanbase. At the start of your career, you have to win the crowd over, but with time and dedication, the crowd will be on the edge of their seats before you even say a word. You won them over before you stepped on stage. You still have to be funny, but you don’t need to put in half the effort of a rookie doing five minutes three hours and twenty comics into a night.

However, if you’ve built up a fanbase because of a podcast or TikTok or YouTube, if you’ve got a million Instagram followers and then decide to give standup a go, that’s a shortcut to success! I say shortcut but that’s not true. It just means you did the same amount of work in a different field. Not everyone can be a YouTube sensation. You may not have built up a fanbase thanks to standup, but you still built up a fanbase. You’ve been rewarded for hard work and no one should look down their noses at you for that.

The problem is that it must be difficult to judge your own ability when everyone in the room is excited to see you and applauds every word out of your mouth. If the crowd is pissing themselves laughing while you’re on stage, doesn’t that mean you’re a great comic? Certainly not, at least not to the so-called true comics at the back of the room judging every aspect of your set mercilessly.

Self-awareness, being self-critical, these are very important to our development. How can it not go to your head, though, if doors are being opened to you left and right? Do you say, “I got this spot at this great club because it checked a diversity box,” or do you say, “I got this spot at this great club because I’m a great comic”? Do you say, “Eveyone loved me tonight because they know me from YouTube,” or do you say, “Everyone loved me tonight because I’m super talented at standup”?

Over the years I’ve met comics from all over the spectrum (and I don’t only mean autism). Everyone from comics who are too humble and self-critical to comics who are completely ignorant of their talent or lack thereof. It takes all kinds, I guess. I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine my place on that scale.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Standup Gala. A Swedish comic who recently sold out a massive arena in Stockholm has been complaining on podcasts that she wasn’t nominated for any awards at the Gala. Complaining that her peers don’t see her as a real comic because she built up a following through YouTube before making her standup debut and got to do big spots at big clubs without grinding five minutes at a time in shitty basements first.

Selling out an arena but whinging that you didn’t get nominated for an award that means nothing from a Gala no one’s ever heard of? If that doesn’t prove that you’re a comic, I don’t know what would.

Standing in line for a roller coaster on the Jersey Shore, I noticed the following sign: “WARNING! You may not ride this ride if you are pregnant, have back issues, or have an extreme body type.” I chuckled at “extreme body type.” Extremely skinny is an extreme body type, yet no heroin-chic model would be turned away from the Great Sea Serpent.

It reminded me of a recent trip I’d made to another US theme park. I had just sat down on a train set in an enclosed loop- the only thing the ride did was go upside down over and over, the only thing securing passengers being seat belts. A very large man near me was unable to lock his seatbelt and he called the ride attendant – a girl of 17, 18, tops – over for assistance. She brought a belt extension, still no success, and he asked her, “So, what do I do now?”

I guess he was hoping she’d say, “Well, just hold on real tight,” but was disappointed. Clearly uncomfortable by the awkwardness of the situation, she told him he would have to leave the ride.

It gave me an idea for a joke that became, “I think the sign should be more direct. ‘CAUTION! This ride goes high in the air, turns upside down, and spins really fast… you might be too fucking fat for this ride. If you weigh 300 kilos, there is no metal on Earth that will hold you in place- you will be thrown from the ride and take out have the park with you. Finally, if you are out of breath just from reading this sign, you really don’t need more excitement in your life.”

Trying it out on stage, I was very pleased with the response, and that gave me an idea: what if I add several more examples to that list? Make the list so long that the crowd laughs less and less as it goes on, only to start laughing again because the list keeps continuing? I added six or seven more examples and gave it try! Once. I got the first part right, the crowd did indeed laugh less as it went on, but that was it. I preferred the reaction to the leaner, meaner version and decided to keep the original.

A few months later, a comic came up to me and told me he loved the joke – love when that happens – and said it had potential, that I could add a lot more examples to the list. I pooh-poohed that part of his feedback. He hadn’t seen me try that one time to do exactly that.

Long, long after – this is an old joke at this point – I decided to add one more thing to the list. Before the final line, I added, “No, food will not be served on this ride,” inspired by the many people I’d seen in lines shoving fried food, ice cream, or fried ice cream into their faces while standing in lines. That one line elevated the bit to a new level and the response wasn’t just stronger, but more consistent.

I’m writing all this not to show what a brilliant writer I am nor my bravery in targeting the morbidly obese (although, as 41 US states have adult obesity rates over 35%, one could argue that I’m kicking up), but to illustrate a point. I get an idea for a joke, try it out on stage, rewrite it, try it again, keep doing that until I find the perfect version. When it’s complete, like a song on a setlist, I can move it around, or have it on reserve in my head in case I feel it would make sense to add it on the fly. Other comics have a similar process, to the point that I can lip sync along to someone else’s material that I’ve heard so often, worded and performed the exact same way every time.

Except a joke is never complete. Da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” As pompous and inane as it is to call dick jokes art, it’s still true that there’s no such thing as a completed work. We can always keep tweaking them, adding, subtracting, but I think most of us are, by our very nature, lazy. Which is not to say that we should be dissatisfied with a joke that gets applause as well as laughter, just that the only thing standing in the way of improvement is ourselves.

I mentioned that the one time I tried making that list even longer, I added six or seven more examples. I think it’s telling that I don’t remember what they were. Maybe the problem wasn’t making the list longer, maybe I just wasn’t funny enough. Maybe I’ll never be funny enough to make a long list work the way I hoped it would. Or maybe this is my Jeff Foxworthy moment and I could ride this ride (no pun intended) to fame and fortune!

“If you haven’t seen your penis in ten years… you might be too fucking fat to ride this ride!”

I figured it was classier to have “Self-Pleasure” in the title instead of “Masturbation.”

On the eve of my fortieth birthday, I decided to produce my first special. Some guys grow a ponytail and buy a convertible, I did a special. I’d been performing for four years, I was booked to headline a club on a Friday and Saturday, I had friends in film production, I figured the time was right.

Growing up, the HBO Comedy Hour specials had made quite an impact on me, and I wanted my special to follow the same format. I wrote a sketch for the start and cast a bunch of other comics and friends. I walked around the block from the venue, speaking to the camera about myself and the show, then came the standup. I wore the same outfit both nights so we could edit the footage together, making it look like one set.

Looking back, a mistake I made was preparing two different 35-min sets, one for each night. I figured I’d take the best from both shows and edit them together into one show, but what I should’ve done was one set, twice. I can only name hubris as my motivation here; I wanted to show off to other comics – who were used to seeing me do 5–10 min of material at a time – that I had that much material. Well, I know what to do differently if there’s ever a next time.

Friday night went off without a hitch. Although the venue was only half-full, the crowd was very giving. I was excited to headline, excited to film, and I knew Saturday night was sold out. It was a fun night!

Saturday night ended up being oversold, standing-room only for late arrivals. The place was absolutely packed and the energy in the room was fantastic. I went into my set, different from the night before, but cocksure…

…. and began to bomb.

I think I knew already then what I’d done wrong, besides deciding to film a special as an unknown comic with four years’ experience. While Swedes love being made fun of, this set, unlike the night before, had me bashing Swedes from the start and then again and again. I started strong but the law of diminishing returns was in full effect. As the laughter died down, people in the crowd started talking to each other instead. I can’t blame them for looking for entertainment elsewhere since they weren’t getting it from me.

While one part of my brain handled my performance outwardly, another handled things inwardly. I thought, “Holy Fuck I’m bombing AND I’m headlining AND I’m filming!” My back was dripping wet with flop sweat. Despite our best efforts, everyone bombs at some point or another, but this was the worst possible time. At this point in my “career,” I had a tried-and-true strategy for dealing with this exact situation: leave the stage early. Hey, if they didn’t like me, why waste their time and my own?

However, this wasn’t the time for that. I was ten minutes into a headline set, cameras were rolling, I was determined to pull out of the nosedive. I rearranged the planned material, cutting most of it in favor of repeating jokes from Friday night’s set that were more crowd-friendly, and I’m happy and proud to say that I got them back on my side. While a lot of dead air did not make it into the finished special, the conclusion is from Saturday night.

I’d rather not say how much money I spent on the damned thing. Honestly, I don’t even remember. It was an expensive present I bought myself. I put it out on Vimeo for $5 to see what would happen and I believe I sold two, maybe three copies. Not that I was expecting it to sell like gangbusters, but it was a little disappointing. I thought that maybe all the people I knew on Facebook who had only seen me perform a few times, if at all, might be interested, but I think their interest could’ve measured by the fact that they’d only seen me perform a few times, if at all.

Several months later, I decided to just post it on YouTube and, to date, it’s generated 431 views! Oh, you kids today, complaining that your TikToks and whatnots only get 10K views.

I’m cool with it, though, because I knew going into it that the target audience was me. I had no more business putting out a special then than I do now, nearly eight years later. But it was fun to do and I’m glad I did it. If nothing else, it’s a time-capsule, capturing a moment when I was performing five to ten times a week and thought that number would only increase from there, when I was much closer to the start of the Dunning-Kruger bell curve than I am now (Google that if you’re not familiar).

If you’re so inclined, you can find my special here. Titled, appropriately enough, Simply Resistible.
https://youtu.be/kXwZ33t8SAE

I saw a recent discussion on a Swedish comics’ forum a few days ago. It was started by a comic commenting on the fact that some club owners ask comics to do more than just sets. Help with chairs, check tickets, throw out unruly crowd members, etc. Is it okay for club owners to do this?

Well, I call it a “discussion” but that’s a pretty lofty word in this case. There were a few responses that ranged from, it’s okay for a club owner to ask, but not demand, work in exchange for stage time, to, it’s not okay at all. Color me shocked!

In reality, doing grunt work in exchange for stage time is a not-so-proud tradition in standup. I’ve heard it said that it’s for “comics who hate money but love opportunity.” Club owners have every right to ask comics for help. They can, in fact, demand it. As much as we’d like it to not be true, club owners don’t have to book us just because we ask. But here’s the good news: if a club owner offers a gig in exchange for grunt work, we don’t have to say yes!

Working the door – checking tickets, acting as bouncers – at LA’s The Comedy Store was and is a standard way for up-and-comers to get stage time and loose change in their pockets. Here’s a quick list of comics who did thankless work that was beneath them as artists:
David Letterman
Sam Kinison
Jim Carrey
Michael Keaton
Eddie Griffin
Marc Maron

It’s too bad those poor people didn’t have a Swedish comic to educate them that they were being taken advantage of!

It all comes down to choice. I do grunt work on a regular basis and while I’m all too aware of how that looks to other comics, I don’t mind it. Oddly enough, in some ways I enjoy it. I also see it as a way to help out a club owner that I like and show appreciation for the club. I’ve also seen a lot of comics grow out of helping. One in particular used to get stage time in exchange for helping, then decided to stop helping and not perform again until the club owner would book him without asking anything in return. It took a few years but it finally happened, so good for him! It has to be a great feeling as an artist. On the other hand, I can’t help but think of the years of stage time missed, at least at that club. On the other, other hand, who’s to say who’d he be now if he’d continued to trade work for gigs?

When I’ve run clubs in the past, I’ve met comics who were willing to help out, and of course that lead to me giving them special treatment. More gigs, longer sets, better spots in the lineup. On the flipside, I’ve met comics who never mentioned the club on social media, would come a few minutes before their spots and leave immediately afterwards, all but expect someone to throw rose pedals on the floor as they ascended regally to the stage… which would, of course, lead to me not wanting to book them.

To sum up, pride and self-respect are good things, but so is perspective. You don’t have to accept stage time in exchange for grunt work and club owners don’t have to book you just because you want to be booked. It’s up to you to decide how much effort is worth each opportunity, how much value you have. But if pride is the only reason to turn down a gig, it probably isn’t a good move.