Don't Shit Where You Eat! ™

Imagine it’s 2012 and you’re at the premiere of Marvel’s first Avengers film. Exciting stuff! Several years and several films have all led up to this climax of the Earth’s mightiest heroes battling alien invaders from outer space. You’re thrilled as the Hulk smashes a massive creature in the face… and then the film stops and director JJ Abrams walks onscreen and tells you there is no Hulk, it’s all just computer generated images. Then he tells you to enjoy the rest of the movie and it resumes.

It would be very difficult to enjoy the movie from that point. After all, the whole appeal of film is losing yourself in the story and never giving a thought to the entire industry it takes to tell that story on a big screen. Now, not only had the illusion been ruined for you, it was the director of the movie who had purposefully screwed you out of your fun.

Standup is very similar. We’re selling an illusion to the crowd, that we’re just winging it on stage, just saying whatever comes to mind. We’ve never said it before and will never say it again. For the overwhelming number of comics throughout history, this is utter bullshit. Jokes are written long in advance, are told again and again until we find the best way to word them, and then again and again.

For me, Richard Pryor is the most natural storyteller I’ve ever heard. Watching Live on the Sunset Strip, his funniest but not best album (there’s a difference; his best is Here and Now but that’s a topic for another entry) I absolutely believe he was saying everything for the first time and would never say it again. Except I also know that, not only had he worked out that material over a long period of time, the album itself was recorded in two different clubs, months apart, and cut together to make it seem like one show.

Bill Maher said that standup is a double-edged sword, that the crowd is impressed that we’re just talking up there, but also not that impressed because, after all, we’re just talking up there. That the only difference between comics and civilians is that we’re not afraid of public speaking. I see his point but, at the same time, I don’t think natural storytellers suffer from a lack of respect.

Unfortunately, comics often ruin the illusion of standup for the crowds, consciously or unconsciously, like French New Wave film directors who wanted audiences to be very aware of how much effort it takes to make a movie. Some of the greatest films in history came out of that era, but those directors were also pretentious twats (and way to go French people for dispelling that stereotype). Here are some things you can avoid to not be a pretentious twat.

– Telling the crowd that what you just said was a joke. “That joke was funnier in my head,” is a standard excuse for jokes that don’t work and a cheap way to save it by getting a giggle. It’s fine to use it sparingly, but I’ve seen comics continue to do the same joke that doesn’t work, followed by the same excuse, in set after set. Believe it or not, it’s okay to tell a stinker and just move on to the next punchline, or to dump a joke that doesn’t work. Kill your darlings.

Explaining jokes is another way to shatter the illusion and I’m not above criticism here; I have a joke that’s a few weeks old at this point where the punchline doesn’t get much of a reaction, but explaining the joke gets a laugh and also leads to a new punchline, that I purposefully deliver in over-the-top, THIS IS A PUNCHLINE fashion. I enjoy doing it, probably more than the crowd does, but hey, I should be allowed to have fun sometimes, too. Still, it’s pretty lazy. If I could come up with a better initial punchline, I could cut the whole explaining part out and be better overall.

Yet another example is when comics tell a joke, then tell the crowd a story about what happened when they told that same joke at another club. I’ve been guilty of this myself- back in the day, I used to close with an admittedly sexist joke, but it always worked, except for the time a woman threatened to throw my own beer in my face. I told that story a few times, because I wanted the crowd to be just as interested in the joke as I was. The fact is, no one will ever be as interested in the mechanics of our own jokes as we are.

I once saw a comic deliver a joke and make a woman in the crowd get furious at him, so in future sets he’d tell the joke, followed by the story of it making someone mad. During one of these later sets, another woman got pissed when he told the story of a woman getting pissed at him, so in his following gigs he told the joke, the story of a woman getting pissed at him for telling the joke, then the story of a woman getting pissed at him for telling a story about a woman getting pissed at him. Damn, if that cycle had continued, he could’ve put together a whole hour from one joke.

– Not knowing your own material. If you’ve been performing for less than a year and you’ve got keywords from your set written on your hand, fine. I’ll even give a pass to experienced comics with some version of a cheat sheet if they’re about to do an hour for the first time. But if you’re about to do the same ten-minute set you’ve done a hundred times already, why the hell do you need to look at your hand several times on stage?

More times than I can count, I’ve walked off stage, feeling good about how it went, only to suddenly feel like shit as I realized I’d forgotten to do a joke or two. The reason this happens is always the same- either I didn’t prepare enough before the set, or the joke wasn’t in a place where it would flow naturally from the bit before. I don’t expect everyone to have a mind like a steel trap- I certainly don’t have one myself- but scribbling on your hand is a crutch, a way to ignore the fundamental issue.

You should also know how long your jokes are. Not down to the millisecond, of course, but a general idea. More often than not, we don’t know how long we’ll get on stage until just before the show starts, and even then, things can change. Maybe someone before you did too long and now your time got cut, because comics are assholes. Maybe you suddenly got even more time since someone else is late or didn’t show up at all, because comics are assholes. Or maybe you’re in the middle of your set and suddenly realize that a joke you hadn’t planned to do would work better than what you’d planned. Your jokes are like Lego pieces you can mix and match and move around on the fly, and you can do this to your benefit and also respect the club and other comics by not going over your time! Unfortunately, I’m giving this advice to comics and, as I said, we’re assholes.

– Trying to look cool. Surveys have shown that people are more afraid of public speaking than of death. Standup is a step beyond- not only are we not afraid to get up in front of drunk strangers, we’re trying to make them laugh. That’s pretty cool! Know what’s even cooler? Owning the stage, showing zero fear, total confidence, expertly delivering material.

Why comics, deliberately or otherwise, do things to seem cool, bugs the shit out of me. First of all, the mic stand is not your friend. The way comics cling to it often reminds me of when I played Tag as a kid- the front steps were a safe spot, if you could make it there, you couldn’t get tagged. Sorry, as much as you wish it were true, the mic stand offers no safety. And I know you feel cool when you hang on it casually, like it shows how comfortable you are up there, but trust me, you’ll look much cooler without it. Take the mic out of the stand at the start of your set, move it out of reach and don’t touch it again until you say thanks and good night.

Also, leave your notebook off stage. This applies to knowing your material as well, but I’ve seen comics use it as a prop. They know what they’re about to say but pull out a notebook anyway. Look how cool I am, I don’t even care that you see how unprepared and unprofessional I am! You do you, I suppose, but you’re cooler without it.

And for God’s sake, don’t sit down during your set. It’s called standup for a reason. The only comic I give a pass to is Bill Cosby. He would sit during his shows because he was very old and tired from all that raping.

Anyone expecting a bitter diatribe here is going to be disappointed. Full disclosure: I would love to be nominated for a standup award, would be thrilled to win. Everyone loves a good ego stroking and I’d be suspicious of anyone who claimed otherwise. To also be recognized by one’s peers, that adds an extra layer to it. Despite it not being the point, I love hearing other comics laugh at my jokes more than hearing the crowd laugh, although, nine times out of ten, I’m hearing other comics laugh because the crowd is very much not laughing.

For as long as I can remember, the club Oslipat has arranged the Standupgalan as an annual event. This is a club that has a limited number of shows each year in a few different cities, with a very limited number of comics performing. They cater to a young, hip crowd that loves standup and if they’ve ever had a bad night, I’ve not heard of it. It is very much a klubhouse for kool kidz and if you needed further proof that I am not, never have been nor ever will be cool, just look at that spelling. The triple k’s are coincidental.

At the gala they give out a few awards to nominees who would have a shot at performing at the club and/or are liked by the club owners. In other words, you have a handful of comics running the club, nominating comics from a pool that is tiny in size compared to the entire community of active comics. Inevitably, another annual event occurs: a comic who would never have a shot at performing at Oslipat complains on social media that the whole thing is unfair, and then several others in the same boat add to the noise. I imagine that far many more feel the same way but don’t say anything because see the name of this blog.

A change was made to the nomination process a few years ago, perhaps in response to comics criticizing the whole thing as a bit incestuous. Now, comics who were members of a certain Facebook forum would be able to nominate whomever they wanted… and then a jury hand-picked by the club would decide the official nominees and winners. I’d like to think they have the best of intentions here, wanting to avoid a Boaty McBoatface situation, but without seeing what everyone submitted, critics could say the process was just an illusion and nothing had really changed. To be fair, Oslipat never claimed that democracy would rule and, anyway, it’s their show to do with as they like.

Obviously, the nominees are selected on more than just laughs per minute, which just adds fuel to the grumbling. Maybe you noticed that you got more laughs than the Comic of the Year but you didn’t even get nominated, that’s not fair! Yeah, but you also might be kind of an asshole, or didn’t have as much impact in other ways. Every winner deserved their win. You can complain it’s just a popularity contest, but I’ve known several comics who are super nice and super sociable and bomb on a regular basis. Social skills get them gigs but not awards.

After taking some time off due to covid, the annual tradition resumed this year, complaints included. All of this tempest in a teacup nonsense is meaningless because, ultimately, the entire thing is meaningless, except to the nominees and winners. Even for them, that honor only goes so far. As host of a regular comedy night, if I would introduce them as, “Next on the lineup we have someone who just won Comic of the Year at this year’s Standupgalan!” that comic would murder me to death. First of all, because few in the crowd would even know what that means, and secondly because I might’ve well said, “Aren’t you lucky, the next comic is the funniest person in Sweden!” No one wants the crowd to have high expectations, especially in this country.

Standup is an artform, I love it to death, but as I’ve said before, it’s an artform where Downs Syndrome is a punchline, where we talk about our penises and vaginas and how much we hate public bathrooms. It’s extremely unserious shit we take extremely seriously and we can have one, two, thirty award shows a year where we heap praise on each other and clap each other’s backs as much as we like, but it’s not something the general public cares about. Nor should they.

Again, I’m not portraying myself as a virtuous person above being congratulated. Back when the nomination process changed, I thought my two partners and I had a real shot at Club of the Year, or a nomination at least. We’d run Power Comedy Club for a few years by that point and it was the most unique club in Stockholm at the time, if not the country. We were popular with comics and, since we’d have twenty comics on a slow night, I figured we could earn a nomination by sheer numbers alone. I was disappointed that we didn’t get nominated and not surprised by the club in Stockholm that did. Run by the koolest of kool kidz, it featured comics from a small pool performing to a hip, young audience that loved standup. It had Oslipat’s spirit and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

I can make a thousand excuses but the reality is that club had something we never had: an audience. The place was packed week after week and, meanwhile, I’d be happy if we had ten people in the room who were there to just watch the show, not waiting three hours for their spot on stage. The other club absolutely deserved the nomination. On the other hand, plenty of clubs drew crowds and didn’t get nominated, so there’s that.

I also have no idea how many of our regulars were able to take part in the nomination process or how many that could even bothered. I had the opportunity and ignored it, not even to vote for myself. I have no idea how many comics take the time to fill out the form but I’d be surprised if it’s a large number. If you don’t vote you can’t complain, right? Wrong, we can always complain. Especially in this country.

While I’ve never received an official award as a club owner (at least not yet! fingers crossed!), I did get something better. One night at Power my partners and I were surprised with a bedazzled bottle of prosecco each, along with a thank you card signed by over thirty comics. A few comics decided to organize a big thank you to us, taking donations and the time to make the bottles for us, and the money left over was handed to the bartender to cover our tab for the night. It did, barely; when you run a “proper” show that is an hour long, followed by three hours of comics doing five minutes each, you drink a lot of beer.

I still have the card and the unopened bottle, which will stay that way. They mean a tremendous amount to me. Plus, I know that many comics around today got their start at Power, not to mention friendships, podcasts, even other comedy clubs. Now, if I could just a plaque, I’ll be all set.

In my last job in America before moving to Sweden, I was a marketing supervisor for Nintendo of America (dream job). I had ten people working for me and one of several that I’d end up firing for committing fraud (it was very easy to steal from Nintendo and many could not resist temptation) was also a bass player in a bluegrass band. They played a number of festivals each year, no original music of their own but covers of classic standards.

Over lunch one day, I asked him if they ever got bored, playing other artists’ work, over and over and over again. He said no, because he wasn’t alone on stage. He wasn’t just playing to the audience, he was playing with his bandmates. Although I was a decade and a hemisphere away from my standup debut, he knew it was a passionate interest of mine, and he said he couldn’t imagine trying that himself as, after all, a comic is totally alone up there. I agreed.

Years later, I’d realize that we were both wrong. A comic may have the stage to themselves but they’re never alone. They have the audience as a partner, for better or for worse. Partners whether they like it or not.

Standup as a genre is a massive umbrella term for a whole host of styles. Damn near anything can be standup, but the best comes across as a conversation between the comic and the crowd. A conversation being talking with the crowd, not talking to them or, worse, talking at them. For example, Hannah Gadsby released a brilliant standup special called Nanette, yet many critics said it wasn’t standup, it was a TED Talk. While I don’t agree, I do understand; at times it feels that the crowd is irrelevant. She could be alone in the room and it wouldn’t affect her performance at all.

Rookies and comedians who perform as characters tend to deliver on stage the same way they practice in their apartments to no one. One of the many laws of standup is to get the audience’s attention in the first thirty seconds; I remember a night when a comic failed to do so in the first thirty, or the next, or the next… she was bombing, hard, but didn’t seem to notice, nor care. As the minutes of painful silence wore on, the club owner went from shaking his head to pacing angrily. “What is she doing up there?!” he asked no one in particular.

“She’s going through her script,” I replied. I’d seen this act before and, to her credit, she was usually far more successful. But it was clear that it didn’t matter if the crowd was booing or giving her a standing ovation. She was performing in a vacuum.

Being oblivious to the crowd’s mood is not a skill(?) most comics possess. A conversation takes two and even though we shouldn’t blame the audience for our own failures, some crowds are worse than others and they affect us. I had a clear example of contrasts this past weekend, hosting a club Friday and Saturday night. I took the stage Friday night to a large crowd, only to notice a few had already nodded off. If someone’s asleep at the start of a two-hour show, it’s not generally a good sign. I’ve certainly experienced far worse nights there, but it was one of those shows where the audience would laugh briefly at a joke they liked and then return to absolute zero until the next joke they liked. There was no ongoing energy, just occasional laughs like sporadic gunfire. It affected the comics, who took the stage with an aura of “ugh, it’s going to be one of those nights,” which became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Saturday, though, what a difference. We’d had a big crowd on Friday, but Saturday’s was nearly twice in size and ten times the energy. They were awake and ready to have a good time and every comic was excited to get on stage and everyone did very well, a self-fulfilling prophecy once again.

It’s a tired cliché when a host tells a crowd, “The energy you give is the energy you get,” but this is where it comes from. Friday night’s crowd was dull and that should make us work harder to entertain them, but ask yourself: if you’re talking with someone and they look bored, how inspired are you to continue that conversation? On the flip side, if they’re hanging on your every word, you’ll be even more animated.

The audience is our partner in crime. But sometimes they suck and make us do all the work.

I touched on pre-pandemic events in the past, but thought I’d review them again to give this week’s post a bit of context. By the end of 2019, I was put in a position where I had to take a break from it all. Standup had me out four or five nights a week, I had a full-time job that was coming to an end, and my glorified hobby was feeling more and more like a chore. My life in the clubs was negatively affecting my life outside the clubs and I had to go into self-imposed exile.

As for the job, although I’d been laid off, a headhunter had lined up a new position. During my last official week of work, I had a third interview with a CEO who all but promised that the job was mine, they just needed to call my references first. A few days later, they said that, due to Italy’s decision to impose a massive shutdown in the face of the new covid threat, they were putting a temporary hold on hiring. However, they’d call me in a month to see if I was still available.

As of this writing, nearly three years later, I’ve yet to hear from them. Sitting next to the phone is exhausting, let me tell you.

The new decade began with me out of work and out of standup. My day-to-day was, wake up late, go to the gym, go to the grocery store, park my ass on the couch until way too late, pass out. My wife had returned to school but from home, our daughter doing the same, I wondered how long this could go on before I lost my mind with cabin fever.

To my astonishment, though, the opposite happened. I was fine at home. So much so, in fact, that I found my few trips away from home exhausting. I didn’t miss standup, I didn’t even miss other people. Home had everything I could want.

I was curious what the opposite of cabin fever is called and was disappointed to see the Urban Dictionary defines it as Reverse Cabin Fever (RCF). Not very imaginative. I couldn’t throw stones, though. Barely spending any time outside my apartment, I didn’t feel very imaginative, either.

When I did feel ready to perform again, I didn’t have many options. Sweden’s restrictions don’t compare to what other countries experienced, but they still had an effect. Clubs began to shut down, one after another. In April 2020 I made my way to a gig at one of the few clubs still running, but during the hour-long trip to Stockholm, I felt my anxiety growing. By the time I exited the train, a five-minute walk to the club all that was left of the trip, I seriously considered turning around for the hour home. I was still excited to be on stage, it was the thought of having to interact with other people that was getting to me.

I forced myself to keep going. As I walked, I spotted a comic I know and like (those two don’t always go together) on the street ahead of me. He hadn’t noticed me, but a light shout of hello is all it would’ve taken to get his attention. I hadn’t seen him in several months and I can’t remember a time I didn’t enjoy his company. I was so wrapped up in feeling like shit, I just kept moving forward.

Being at the club was pretty much how I expected, or feared. Certainly there’s an element of self-fulfilling prophecy here. The other comics in attendance, I knew them but not especially well; I’m far from talkative when I’m at my best, and this time I was far from my best. I had a spot in the first half, so I nursed a beer while I stood awkwardly alone until my turn, happily had a good set despite being very rusty, then stood awkwardly alone with a second beer while the show continued. I’d planned to stay for the whole show and hang out after, but then I realized that I could just leave and go home, which I did without saying goodbye to anyone. I didn’t even finish that beer.

Over the next few months I made a few more attempts at standup and I felt the anxiety grow looser as the covid restrictions grew tighter. Restaurants were expected to have no more than fifty people with a minimum distance between them and then, suddenly, public entertainment was limited to no more than eight people. I know this was an arbitrary decision, made to appear that the government was actually doing something to protect people, but I’ll always be fascinated by the number eight. Why not ten? Or five? Or zero?

As a result, every club shut down. Except one. Since food was served they said they could have fifty people, ignoring the rule that said no more than eight could be at a performance. They got away with it, so good for them, I guess. I’m not throwing shade at them for being open, at comics who chose to perform there, or for the audience. They knew the risk they were taking and it was their choice to make. There were comics who had to tell dick jokes and small crowds who had to hear them and it was the one place open. I just felt weird about the whole thing and was perfectly comfortable in isolation to bother going there.

I was part of a chat group on Messenger for comics looking for or being offered gigs there, and if I hadn’t already realized how silly things had become, it was when a rookie from Gothenburg enthusiastically wrote her plan to take a four-hour trip to Stockholm from the other side of the country, do a seven-minute set, then return to Gothenburg immediately afterward. I didn’t chime in but didn’t have to, as another comic reminded that rookie that we were balls-deep in a pandemic and maybe this wasn’t the most responsible decision.

It did make me think of a joke that I very nearly posted on the thread, but stopped myself. I wasn’t sure how it would be received and I’ve already blacklisted myself from enough clubs. Instead, I made a general post to everyone on Facebook, which I suppose was a bit passive-aggressive. The text was, “Stockholm comics be like,” along with a picture of the band playing on the Titanic as it went down.

Turns out, I didn’t have to worry about that club owner finding the joke offensive. In fact, he thought it was very funny! So funny that he took my image as a post on his club’s page without giving me credit. (And they say Americans are the ones who don’t understand irony.) Theft in comedy is supposed to be a cardinal sin but it just made me chuckle. It wasn’t the first thing he’d stolen and certainly wouldn’t be the last. Some people, you know?

Other than my wife and my daughter, my ego was a constant companion, but not a very good one. I don’t have many close friends but I know enough people that I wondered why so few reached out to me when I went from being out all the time to not at all. I complained about that to a friend and he said standup was a job, asked me, “When you leave a company, how many of your old coworkers check in on you?” I saw his point and appreciated it.

Now that the club scene is slowly getting back to normal, my Ego wonders why unsolicited offers for gigs aren’t pouring in. After all, I’m coming up on twelve years in standup and haven’t I done a lot for other people?! I remind myself that my self-imposed exile never really ended. Sure, I feel much better about being out and there’s a club I practically live at, but as host. The bad thing about hosting is that the audience doesn’t think you’re a comic; the bad thing about only hosting is that comics forget you’re a comic. It’s rare that I just do a set, which is a shame because I have new ideas I’m excited about and want to work on.

I’m not out in the clubs and I’m barely on social media. When I post something and it gets two likes, my Ego wonders why the engagement is so low. I remind myself that I can’t expect the masses to engage with me when I’m not engaging with them. I’m not liking dozens of statuses or watching reels or even noticing everyone’s birthdays. Later today, I’ll post this blog on Facebook and likely sign out immediately, then peek in now and then to see if anyone has liked it. It’s silly because it’s my Ego that drives this and also my Ego that’s bothered by the low numbers. I remind myself that, while I have no idea how many people read this thing and I don’t imagine it’s many, it’s still more than I know, and it always feels good when someone comes up to me randomly and says they enjoy this blog. I do this for you happy few and absolutely for myself.

Why am I not offered gigs left and right? The truth is, I never was. Even when I was at my peak and doing three to six gigs a week, I’d hunted, nagged, pleaded for those spots. Which is how it should be. Whenever I see a comic make a general post of “I’m available, book me!” I shake my head and mumble that it’s not how things are supposed to work. Club owners should be so buried in requests that they don’t have time or spots left to invite anyone else.

It’s like the old joke about the man who prays to God every night that he could win the lottery, but after fifty years with no result he gets angry with God for not making it happen. God appears and says, “You have to buy a lottery ticket first!” You can’t complain about not being on anyone’s radar when you’re flying low and I’m still flying so low I can taste dirt. Also, while I’m mostly hosting these days and they might not all consider me a comic, I’m still performing to over two hundred people a week, so I can’t really complain.

That said, the next comic I hear whining that their latest post got less than 20,000 views is getting slapped.

I’ve had the ”Who are your favorite comics?” conversation a thousand times. Ask me my favorite anything, I usually struggle. Favorite color, food, even band seems to depend on my mood when asked. Movie is easy – Citizen Kane – as is comic: Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, in that order. My Holy Trinity.

One of these conversations was with a female comic, who proceeded to give me a rash of shit because I hadn’t named a woman. It’s true, I have no female comic idols. But I have a very good reason! Women aren’t funny.

I’m kidding.

I came of age during what many consider to be standup’s Golden Age. Cable TV debuted when I was a kid, overnight we went from five channels to fifty. Networks were dying for content and broadcasting blocks of standup was an easy solution. I wouldn’t be surprised if The Weather Channel had a “Half-Hour Comedy Hour” back in the day.

Mind you, most of these channels were considered basic cable, meaning they had to follow the same FCC restrictions as free TV. No swearing, no nudity. If you wanted uncensored comedy you had to pay extra for HBO. So the overwhelming majority of standup on TV was family friendly, with maybe a risqué innuendo here and there.

Before and during the advent of cable, it’s hard to point out anyone who had more of an impact on standup than Johnny Carson. Before the Internet, The Tonight Show was the most potent avenue for a comic to reach a mass audience and open a lot of doors. Getting a spot on The Tonight Show would lead to you paying off your credit card debt; getting called to the couch afterward to talk to The Man himself would mean you could pay off your house.

Carson launched a thousand careers but he was not a fan of female comics. Joan Rivers was one of the few he respected and they had a great relationship until, unfortunately, they didn’t. Carson believed that to be a comic, you had to be aggressive, and this isn’t a natural female trait. In other words, to be a female comic is literally unnatural.

It wasn’t an unusual opinion. I still hear comics today aping Hitchens, saying that men developed humor instinctually as a way to get laid, and women don’t need to be funny to have sex. That might be true but, oddly, I’ve never heard a comic about to go on stage say, “I hope I do well tonight so I can have sex!” Hey, we all want to have sex, but I don’t think it’s top of mind.

I mention Carson’s view because, despite that, women did sometimes manage to get on The Tonight Show, and several found mainstream success. I laughed often at sets from Rita Rudner, Paula Poundstone, Ellen DeGeneres and Elayne Boosler, to name just a few. However, you could count the topics of their material on one hand: dating sucks, being married sucks, my mom wants me to have kids, having kids suck. Hell, even Ellen was straight back then. I was laughing, but pre-teen me couldn’t relate. It’s the only reason women didn’t make the same impression on me.

Every now and then, I’d see a female comic who would never be accused of being a “typical female comic.” Unfortunately for them, this was before alternative comedy was a thing, so to say they enjoyed niche success would be a kind way to put it. For example, Sandra Bernhard must’ve been aware that she wasn’t what anyone would call a looker, but that didn’t stop her from being overtly sexual and dominant on stage. Carson might’ve said she was doing something unnatural in order to be successful, but I disagree- she knew what was expected and embraced it to the point of parody.

Which leads to the inspiration for this week’s post: Judy Tenuta. I read that Judy passed away a few days ago and got a flash of nostalgia; I’m sure it’s been a good thirty years since I thought of her. In an era when everyone was falling over themselves to attain mainstream success, Judy went onstage carrying an accordion. I had to look at her Wikipedia page to see what she’d been up to since the Eighties and, apparently, she stayed busy, had a career successful enough to be the envy of many would-be comics. Still, she was far from a household name, and I have to wonder how things would’ve turned out had she been peers with Margaret Cho and Janeane Garofalo instead of Ellen. In other words, if she’d sprung out of the Alternative scene instead of competing in the mainstream Eighties.

(As an aside- I once saw Janeane Garofalo bomb horribly during a Comedy Central filming and, when I saw the special on TV a month later, they’d added a laugh track. Can you imagine anything more humiliating?)

So pour one out for Judy, one of the good ones. She was a macho woman and way ahead of her time.

When I was 15, I signed up for a semester-long Cinema class in high school. I loved movies and now I had the option of spending 25% of a school year watching them. Seemed like a no-brainer.

The first thing we did was watch a short film called “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. Completely free of dialogue and set during the Civil War, it begins with a shot of a poster declaring that anyone caught by Union soldiers carrying out sabotage will be executed. Then we see a group of Union soldiers on a bridge, about to execute a prisoner, and we can assume why.

A soldier balances one end of a plank over the water and stands on the bridge end, while the prisoner is forced onto the other. As a rope is tied around his neck, we can see that he’s thinking of a woman and child, presumably his wife and son. The soldier steps off the plank and the prisoner falls, but the rope snaps and the prisoner falls harmlessly into the water. He swims to the surface, laughing with joy and relief, then swims to shore and begins running through a forest to elude his captors.

Some time later, he emerges from the forest and sees a house close by. The woman he was thinking of earlier is sitting in the garden and she looks over and sees him. We see the prisoner’s face as he begins to run towards the house, then we see the woman again. Except now she’s standing much closer to the house and wearing a different dress. Weird. We see the prisoner’s face again as he’s running, then we see the woman again, wearing yet another dress and this time a boy stands by her side, smiling. We see the prisoner reach the house…

The rope goes tight, snapping the prisoner’s neck, and he dies. Everything we had just witnessed was just a fantasy that had gone through the prisoner’s mind in the split second between falling and dying. Cool twist!

When it was done, the teacher had us watch it again, but this time pausing to highlight every flaw, and they were many. The plank, supposedly laid casually on the bridge, was clearly installed with a hinge. As the prisoner runs through the forest towards the camera, the camera was apparently on a truck driving away, as the truck’s exhaust is visible on screen. I hadn’t seen these flaws nor any of the others during the first viewing, but now I couldn’t unsee them. In fact, this one experience affected me permanently, as flaws jump out at me constantly when I’ve watched anything since.

It reminded me of a short story I had read a year prior, about an American couple in France, visiting a friend who had moved there some time before. As they walk to the pub where they’ll meet him, they walk through a street fair and enjoy the sights of a trained bear doing tricks and a beautiful young woman dancing while her father plays piano. When they meet their friend, they excitedly mention the street fair. “I know, isn’t it awful?” the man says, and the couple is confused.

He walks with them back to the fair, pointing out that the bear is half-starved and near death, while the “beautiful young woman” may not even be a teenager yet, clearly miserable under a ton of makeup, while her father is looking at her in a way that no father should look at his child. Now that the couple has seen below the lovely façade, they can’t unsee it. All enjoyment, all joy is gone for good.

This might sound like I never enjoyed watching movies ever again, but, in fact, it ignited a passion I didn’t know I had. I could still enjoy movies but on a different level, in a different way. It made me want to make movies and it’s too bad that didn’t work out as I’d planned.

This has been a long-winded prelude to talking about standup, as these things are very much related. Prior to my debut at age 36, I began to devour standup at age 11. So, for literally most of my life I was just a fan. Now that I’m a comic, I rarely watch standup outside the clubs where I’m booked, and it’s even rarer that I go to a club when I’m not booked. Despite numerous streaming subscriptions, it’s extremely uncommon that I put on a special from a comic I’ve never heard of, and when I do watch one from someone I’ve been a fan of a long time, like Bill Burr or Dave Chappelle, they don’t make the same impression on me as specials I watched while I was a civilian.

When I host, I tell the audience to laugh at jokes, not just smile. While comics perform, I get out of the audience’s sight, because I don’t want them to see how rarely I laugh. It’s not that I never laugh, but my reaction to a good joke is very often a nod and thinking, clinically, “That was a good joke.” If I ever bothered to count how often I laugh, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I laugh at good jokes as often as I do at failed jokes.

It’s like the audience is seeing the comic fly but I can see the strings. I’m so aware of the mechanics, I can’t unsee them. I’m thinking too much about how the comics holds themselves on stage, how wordy the setups are, what punchlines could be improved or missed opportunities for callbacks or on and on and on, to just switch my brain to civilian mode and enjoy it on that level. I’ve taken all the fun out of standup by doing standup.

All of this might give the impression that I’m miserable in comedy clubs and never have a good time, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Like movies, I just enjoy it differently. When a new joke or bit works – especially if I thought of it five minutes before I go on stage – it feels wonderful. If I tell a joke for the thousandth time but it still works, that feels great, too. I enjoy seeing comics do well, even if I don’t personally think they’re funny. It can even be fun to watch a comic bomb, although I’d rather not be hosting that night, since I’ll have to fill in the crater before I bring the next comic to the stage. I just sometimes miss enjoying standup for standup’s sake.

In September of 1993, I began my journey as a cinematographer as a Freshman at Boston’s Emerson College. You may be aware that I am not currently nor ever was a cinematographer, so you may have some idea how my college career panned out. I could not have gone at a worse time – film was about to die and be replaced by digital; if I’d gone a few years prior or later I would’ve been golden. Oh well.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that outside the classroom I learned far more about life than from anything in the official curriculum. My graduating class of high school was just over a hundred kids and as far as diversity was concerned, we had a few kids who were off-white. Emerson wasn’t big as US colleges go but even the Freshman class dwarfed what I was used to, was far more diverse, and people talked funny, pronouncing water “wah-taaaah” instead of my native New Jersey “wudder.”

Many of my classmates were aspiring filmmakers, actors, poets, artists of all kinds. In my then iteration- hair parted down the middle and falling below my jawline, four necklaces and six rings and long pinkie nails- I fit right in. My dorm was coed, which opened the door for adventure. During my Senior year of high school I’d gone on my first date, ending with my first (polite) kiss, and as ecstatic as I was that night, my head would’ve exploded had I been told what awaited me just a few months later when I went to college. Of course, my wild halcyon days ended in early 1994 when I met the woman who would become my first wife, but it was fun while it lasted.

While I was surrounded by weirdos and freaks who tried smoking banana peels to get high (true story), there was another large community of students who couldn’t have been more different than them. And by different I mean very, extremely normal. The overall focus of Emerson’s curriculum was Communications, so besides the artists there were aspiring journalists and newscasters and media whatnots. There were fraternities and sororities at Emerson that were indistinguishable from those at more mainstream colleges, that wouldn’t have oddballs like me even if we wanted to join. For every hippie there was at least one potential CNN intern. But we were all in the same mix, so my floor of the dormitory was a blend of nerds and geeks and preppy sorority girls and dudebro frat boys.

Most of my college friends were as broke as me, so a common destination for entertainment was browsing at Boston’s Tower Records. God, I miss that place. I imagine that we were far from the only patrons who would often browse and rarely purchase, which doesn’t lead to sustainable business. It definitely did not in Tower’s case. Now gone but never forgotten.

Besides listening to music for free, we’d wander aisle after aisle of movies, eventually reaching the absurdly large collection of porno. You see kids, there was a time when you couldn’t get porn on your phone, you had to go to special stores and either rent or purchase porn on VHS. I was going to explain that VHS was before DVD but then I’d have to explain what DVD is, so just take my word for it.

Anyway, the main draw of those aisles, other than the naked pictures on the packaging, was the names of the films. They were often clever and always funny. I still giggle at “Jungle Beaver” and “Edward Penishands.” Of course, I wasn’t really into porn in for the comedy and if you’d asked me then if I was more passionate about porn or standup I would’ve had difficulty answering. Hell, I’d have difficulty now.

Again, we often browsed, rarely purchased. Not many of us even had VCRs in our rooms anyway. So my interest was piqued when I learned that a dudebro on my floor was hosting porn viewing parties in his room every Wednesday. He called it Hump Day because of course he did. We had zero contact but I somehow managed to get myself invited one night.

I was one of five dudes sitting in a small dorm room, waiting patiently as he loaded the porn into his VCR. (I’ve always been fascinated by groups of straight men watching porn or going to strip clubs together.) I stuck out like a sore thumb, being the only one not currently pledging a frat. I don’t remember the title but I do remember the first scene being girl-girl, as were perplexed and impressed by where one girl put her fingers despite having enormous fake nails that turned her fingers into talons.

I also remember the next scene being boy-girl, as it was during that scene that I politely excused myself and never returned to another Hump Day. At the time, I’d been shocked into silence and left without speaking my mind, and in the nearly thirty years since I’ve thought about how great it would be to have a time machine and go back to that night.

This was the shocking moment- as the woman began to pleasure the man orally, our host walked to the VCR (he didn’t even have a remote) and said, “Ugh, we don’t need to see that.” The other guys beside me agreed and grunted their approval as our host fast-forwarded until that stage of the spectacle was complete.

Why had our host skipped the oral sex scene? Because seeing a penis in a woman’s mouth is gay, of course! What, you like seeing a woman service a man? What are you, quee-ah?

I was flabbergasted. I think I was around 10 or 11 when I saw porn for the first time and I’d seen a remarkable amount prior to that evening (I would not have done well if the Internet was available), but I’d never considered that only homosexuals would enjoy seeing a woman go down on a man. I also didn’t believe it, nor did I think that any of those guys, including our host, ever fast-forward those scenes when viewing alone.

If I could go back to that room, I’d ask them just one question, if they’d like to see male porn stars not hung like horses. There are probably better uses for a time machine, though. Besides, I doubt they would’ve admitted to only wanting to see men hung like a baby’s arm holding an apple. After all, porn is more than just fantasy- it’s fantasy fulfillment.

”Who’s on tonight?” asked a person considering buying tickets to a show I hosted last weekend. I get asked that from time to time and it always makes me laugh. Odds are, I’m not going to say one of the three or four names they’ve ever heard of before.

“Swedish standup sucks” is another comment I’ve heard said many times, by Swedes who don’t go to comedy clubs. I’ve always been fascinated by that; the reality is that the Swedish comedy community is enormous and diverse, yet the average Sven has no idea as the vast majority never appear on TV or have Netflix specials. There are a few superstars that have been around for decades, household names, but I’ve seen comics with less than ten years’ experience that can blow them out of the water.

With that in mind, I’ve consistently shook my head in wonder at how many comedy clubs operate in and around Stockholm. Back when I first started and told people there was at least one club open every night – and back in my heyday I was performing five or six times a week – they couldn’t believe it. The average Sven had heard of the one club that had become a Swedish institution, or maybe two, but not ten.

Bear in mind that this was pre-pandemic. Most of these clubs had no cover charge and while pure open mics were rare, it was common for a club to have eight, fifteen, thirty comics a night. Getting a spot was easy, sometimes at more than one club a night. Stockholm may be a capital city but considering the relatively small population size and the general awareness of standup, there was no reason to think there was enough interest to support that many clubs. And yet, it worked. Clubs came and went (a few of my own included) but there was always an active scene of one size or another.

Then came covid. While Sweden’s “lockdown” can’t compare with others, almost every club shut down for an extended period. One club gamed the rules and remained opened and no comic criticized them because, well, see the name of my blog. As the restrictions eased, some, but far from all, of the clubs bounced back.

While some clubs are still gone, probably for good, quite a few others have sprung up in their absence. As of this writing there are at least ten active clubs in Stockholm and nearly as many more in the suburbs. However, a major change is that almost all of them have a cover charge and more limited – even niche – lineups. There’s essentially only one where anyone can get a spot and, naturally, with a community this size the opportunities are fewer are farther between.

Gone are the days of racking up stage time, at least for most comics, including myself. I suppose I was lucky back in my early days to live close to Stockholm and to also have entered my first long period of unemployment – I could afford the time to be out five or six nights a week. Unfortunately, my alcohol consumption also increased and my addiction to snus made its debut… while I’m pleased to say I’m drinking less these days, I don’t foresee snus leaving my life anytime soon.

I’m curious to see how this will affect the development of the community at large. I’ve noticed that more comics are going on official tours than before the pandemic and that’s a good sign, plus more people are becoming aware of comics thanks to podcasts and social media, although there’s little improvement of standup on TV and mass media. Then again, TV and mass media are on the decline so maybe it’s normal to see those channels closed to us. It’s just too bad that rookies don’t have as many opportunities for growth.

It’s good to see the comedy scene coming back to life and my itch to open a club of my own is growing. I have an idea that would combine a few themes from previous clubs I’ve run into a new concept; at the very least, the club would be open to anyone looking for stage time. But with so many clubs operating already, it makes me less motivated to make the effort, like doing a podcast when everyone has a podcast. Plus, as much as comics have enjoyed rooms I’ve run before, I’ve never been great at attracting a crowd. Many was a night I pumped a fist in the air, happy that more than ten people sat in the audience. Running a club is hard work and I’ve found that just updating this blog every Monday is a chore.