Don't Shit Where You Eat! ™

A memorable gig is either really, really good, or really,
really terrible. The others just blend
into one another. I’ve had my share of
both but there have been a few that I look back on as trail markers, points
where I could mark significant change. I
had my first real turning point five years ago.

When I first started in standup, Big Ben was the only open
mic in Stockholm that I knew about. Now
the club runs three nights a week- with an English night as well- but at the
time there was no English night and, if I remember correctly, just two nights a
week. In any case, I went to every show,
asking the owner for stage time. The
answer, much more often than not, was no.
Or, “Hmm, it looks pretty full… ask me again after the break,” and then
I didn’t get on in the second half either.
But I kept going, kept asking, because sometimes he said yes and I got a
three-minute spot, or even a five-minute spot!
Meanwhile, I emailed him again and again to be put on the schedule, as
he advised me to do again and again, despite the fact that the emails went
unanswered.

Rejection, however, does wear on a person, and after months
of no after no with the occasional yes, I started to wonder why I was putting myself
through all of that. One particular
Thursday evening in June, I received the “check again later” line and I just
didn’t have the heart to stick around for the inevitable no. I left early, took a long walk along the
water, it was a beautiful evening. A
block away from Big Ben there is a fantastic vantage point and I took a picture
of Stockholm on a perfect summer night, posted it on Facebook with the comment,
“A night like this makes it hard to have a Pity Party, but I’m managing anyway.” I slunk back home with my tail between my
legs.

A few weeks later, however, I recovered. I reminded myself that it’s not supposed to
be easy, that I believed in chasing and nagging for stage time, that it was
worth it. I walked in on a Sunday night,
proudly walked up to the owner and got, “Hmm… looks pretty full, ask again
after the break.” I said sure, smiled,
and for some reason sat alone near the stage rather than hang somewhere in the
back, something I’d not done before nor since.
I was very early and the crowd hadn’t shown up yet, although there was a
large party of men sitting at the table next to me.

I noticed one of those men talk to the owner for a bit,
after which the owner walked directly to me.
“Are you ready to go on?” Turned
out, the large group was a bachelor party, and the groom-to-be didn’t speak
Swedish. The guy who’d spoken to the
owner was in charge of planning the party, thought standup would be fun, and-
oddly enough- assumed “Big Ben” would have English-speaking comics. On this particular evening, I was the only
comic in the room willing to perform in English.

I went first, it went well, I felt good. The owner suggested once again that I email
him to be on the schedule and from that day on, he actually responded to
me. When I left Big Ben that night,
another gorgeous night, I took another photo from the same point and posted, “What
a difference a few weeks makes!”

I still believe in chasing and nagging and it makes me happy
whenever I encounter a rookie doing just that, showing up, getting rejected,
and coming back anyway. Big Ben has an
online booking system these days and other open mics come and go, so I don’t see
this happen as often as I think I should.
I know, after a few years I’ve already become an old man in
standup. “Back in my day, we had to nag
and nag and nag!” So when I see these
comics I try to be as encouraging as I can, and I very, very rarely say no to
someone who asks me for time at a club I’ve run. I’m quite proud of all the comics I’ve helped
get their debut on stage, either at one of my clubs or somewhere else. I remember them all! Even the ones that have forgotten about me,
ungrateful assholes.

Kidding! Mostly.

“’Rape jokes aren’t funny!’ Bullshit. It’s all about context. If you think rape can’t be funny, imagine
Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig.”

–
George Carlin

Don’t believe in forced entry, don’t believe in rape/

But every time she passes by, wild thoughts escape

–
U2

Are rape jokes funny?
The debate comes and goes, usually on absolute terms, most often the
answer being no, they’re never funny, it’s never okay to joke about the
subject. My own answer would be,
sometimes. If we all agreed to never
make jokes about such a serious and painful subject, then the following sketch
from Inside Amy Schumer would’ve never been released. Watch it now, it’s worth three minutes of
your time. I’ll wait. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXGJGuH59qw

It’s funny, it’s smart, above all it’s important. Comedy has always been an effective way to
deal with things people would rather not think about. A spoonful of sugar and all that.

At the moment there’s a scandal in Sweden: sexual assaults were
reported at a concert festival and the police and mainstream media chose not to
release the alleged race of the alleged attackers, causing many people- many of
them far-right and racist- to lose their minds.
I noticed a post on Facebook yesterday with a link to a far-right media
outlet condemning this decision, with the ensuing comment thread including, “Political
correctness has gone too far, we deserve to know where those people come
from! I worry about my 9-year-old
daughter, she’s now a target!”

I have an 11-year-old daughter and I also worry about
her. I worry about the political climate
becoming increasingly polarized, I worry about Sweden and the rest of Europe
slipping further and further to the right, I worry about it being hip to be
openly racist. Most of all, I worry
about men. Not dark men, all men. If we threw out everyone but ethnic Swedes
(oh, that would include me, not that most people would think about tossing out
a white American) sexual assaults would still happen. I wonder if the guy mentioned earlier posted
anything with as much fervor a few years ago when a dozen rapes were reported,
ironically enough, at Sweden’s Peace and Love Festival. Those rapists were good ol’ real Swedish
boys, so probably not. Rapes were also
reported at the revamped Woodstock concerts years ago as well. Peace and love, indeed.

I remember a concert where a woman was crowdsurfing, a guy
reached up and squeezed her tit, she punched him square in the face. I laughed then, but if I could go there again
I’d also punch him in the face. Violence
may not solve anything but he had it coming.

We’re so deep in rape culture we don’t always recognize just
how bad it is. About twenty years ago, I
was hanging out with some guys in a bar after work, one of them was in a
casual, sexual relationship with one of our female co-workers. He told us about a party the weekend before,
she got so drunk she passed out, so he had anal sex with her. “Basically, I raped her,” he said with a
laugh, and we all laughed with him. I
don’t know anything else about that story, it might have been bullshit, she may
have woken up during and gone along with it, she might’ve woken up the next day
wondering why she was sore.

The worst part isn’t that I laughed along with everyone
else. The worst part isn’t that I didn’t
have the moral strength and courage to angrily reply, “Yes, you actually raped
her.” The worst part is that I didn’t even think of it as rape, not
for a long, long time. After all, they
were in a sexual relationship, maybe they’d had anal before. In any case, there didn’t seem to be any
consequences to his actions.

Have I grown in the two decades since? Yes and no.
Certainly I am much more aware of the ugliness in the world around
me. But I’m not a saint. I sometimes laugh at rape jokes that aren’t
smart, aren’t important, are just vicious and cruel. I’ve told rape jokes that are just as bad,
even one on stage that was just hideous.
I’m part of a chat thread on FB with two other guys that I hope never
goes public (my wife got a glimpse of it once and was rightfully furious about
it), a thread full of bile and hate, but in a funny way, where we try to outdo
each other at making jokes uglier and uglier and often succeeding. It’s been argued that even those private
conversations help perpetuate rape culture and I see the truth in that, yet at
forty years of age I’m not mature enough to not laugh at awful jokes. I hope that the good I do counteracts the bad and I end up on the plus side with karma.

Freud said that three things define us: Id, which is what
makes you an animal and not a plant; Ego, which is what makes you human and not
a cat; and Superego, which is what makes you you and not anyone else. We get a lot of impulses from the Id, base
animal desires, our fight-or-flight response, our natural instincts, many of
which we as humans have decided are evil and need to be suppressed. Rape certainly comes from there. That impulse to just take what you want, to
have power over someone else, it’s part of everyone, but you don’t have to
watch many shows on Animal Planet to understand that it’s an overwhelmingly
male phenomenon. Yeah, yeah, men get
raped, too. But we don’t live in fear.

It doesn’t mean that everything from the Id is inherently evil. Some of my strongest material has sprung from
the darkest corners of my mind. I just
run it through a dozen filters before it’s acceptable to say in society.

I visited Sweden at least once a year from 1995 – 2006, met
my (now ex-) in-laws many times. Nice
people, overall, but very upper class.
Frequently I was told, “Immigrants, they come to Sweden, they get free
apartments, free TV…” So when I became an
immigrant in 2006, I was psyched to get lots of free stuff! Didn’t get anything other than free Swedish
lessons. SFI: Svenska för Invandrare, or
Swedish for Immigrants.

A few months later I met one of my ex’s cousins at a garden
party and he asked me what I was up to. “Looking
for work, studying at SFI.”

“Oh, that’s good,” he said, “but.. oohh, don’t call yourself
invandrare, you are not invandrare.” I knew immediately what he meant. “You’re not an immigrant, you’re white and
speak English.” It was the last, best
piece of evidence I needed- when many Swedes say invandrare, they mean n—-r.

As much as I love living here, two things bother me more
than any other, and I often focus on them in standup (the story above has
appeared a dozen different ways). The
first is Sweden’s lack of self-esteem and patriotism- either they have no pride
in themselves, or too much (the “former” Nazi party the Swedish Democrats, for
example). The second is the massive gulf
between Swedes and invandrare, the lack of integration and us vs. them
mentality.

For my last two gigs of 2015, I thought of a way to address
this on stage. A portion of it went as
follows:

We
have to talk about immigration, but we can’t because the conversation is often
so negative and ugly. But I have a
suggestion… From now on, it is illegal for white people to say invandrare. Instead, they have to say n—-r, in a really
ugly way. I know, that might not make
much sense. The problem is, white people
are too comfortable saying ugly things about immigrants and we have to take
that comfort away from them- imagine the law is in place, you’re at a bar, you
hear some drunk white guy going off, “This country is going to Hell and I’ll
tell you what the problem is, the problem is all those goddamn… uh….”

“Yes,
go on.”

“Uh…
I don’t mean it in a bad way, it’s just too easy for, uh, them to get in here.”

“Who?”

“You
know, uh…. Okay, never mind.”

This was not an easy set for me to perform, it made me
extremely uncomfortable and I’m glad it did.
The reaction from the crowd was interesting- the 2nd night I
had a black guy to my left in the crowd staring daggers into my face- and it
wasn’t a laff riot, not that I expected it to be. There certainly were shocked giggles and
nervous laughter the moment I dropped the bomb.
What meant the most to me was getting it out on stage, because it’s one
of the most important bits (to me) I’ve ever written.

However, I won’t be doing it again, not in its current
state. That word has so much power, it
deserves a stronger bit written around it.
Taboos don’t mean much to me, I think everything should be said, there’s
no such thing as too soon, etc. But I
also know how hollow it would be for me to say it’s just a word and we should
take all its power away by removing the taboo it has. That’s all well and good, but the reality is
that it does have a lot of power, it is taboo.
And I don’t want to be the type of comic who throws it out there just to
shock the audience.

I’m also very influenced by Pryor. Pryor used the n-word throughout his career
until a trip to Africa inspired him to never say it again. One critic claims, “When Pryor stopped saying
‘n—-r’ he stopped being funny,” which is one of the most absurd things I’ve
ever heard. Listen to his studio albums
in order of release, you hear him developing away from characters and becoming
more and more personal and honest.

Paul Mooney was a writer for Pryor and one of his closest
friends and completely disagreed with him on this issue, kept using the word
himself for decades. Mooney gained fame
with a new generation through his appearances on Chappelle’s Show. Then Michael Richards had his infamous
meltdown on stage, screaming the n-word at hecklers, and Mooney saw the light,
announced that he realized just how much hate is in the word, and vowed to never use it again. “Instead I say, ‘What’s
up, my Michael Richards?’”

I hate a lot of things and one of them is when people use
the word “journey” to describe anything that isn’t an actual movement from
Point A to Point B in space and time.
Idol is notorious for this: “What a journey you’ve been on,” “Sadly,
your journey is over. Let’s take a look
back at your journey,” et al. So,
looking back on my 2015 year of comedy, I won’t be using that word in any shape
nor form.

… but what a ride it’s been!

Well, I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate, either, but
there have been some big changes for me over the year. For one, I made a point to host shows a lot
less, other than at Crossfire, of course.
I hosted a great deal of shows at other clubs in 2014, primarily at
Maffia, and I enjoyed it, but hosting (in my opinion) limits one to a certain
style. It shouldn’t be a time to test a
lot of new material or even spend much time on stage for that matter,
especially when the lineup is packed. I
wanted instead to do more regular sets, try new stuff and just be however I
wanted up there.

At some point already in 2014, I stopped keeping an absurdly
accurate account of all the gigs I’d done because the total number meant less
and less to me, and if that’s changed at all this year, it’s only to become
even more meaningless. By this point it’s
well over 600, might as well be 200 or 6000 for all I care, really. I found something more fun to count: all the
money I’m making! I say that with a bit
of twinkle in my eye, because I know the amount (which I don’t intend to reveal
here) would be pocket change to an established comic, and it isn’t enough for
me to quit my day job (again), but it was a significant increase over the
amount I made in 2014, which was a significant increase from 2013. This is a trend I’d like to see continue.

It is a wonderful feeling to get paid to perform since I
love doing it and otherwise for my own enjoyment and development and not much
more. I haven’t yet found a way to find
these gigs proactively- I don’t intend to sit down with the phone book and cold
call people, “Hi, I’m Ryan, I’m funny and sorry to interrupt your dinner, but
would you like to pay me several thousand crowns to tell you dick jokes for 15,
30 minutes? Hello?”- but they come to me at a growing pace. Sometimes it’s a booking agent for a website
at which I am a featured performer, sometimes it’s a club owner or a fellow
comic. One lovely development was
getting a gig from someone who just thought about booking an English comic in
Sweden, went to Google and found me. I
hope that continues as well.

The biggest change, of course, is that, since last Spring, I’m
not performing nearly as often as I used to.
Partly that’s due to being steadily employed again, finally, but mostly
due to moving away from Stockholm and having my daughter live with me every
other week instead of every other weekend.
For years, I’ve spent two days out of every fourteen with her, and that
was awful. It’s a much better
arrangement for everyone involved now and I make a real effort to avoid gigs
while she’s with me. Which limits my
chances for stage time. Luckily, and I
don’t know if it’s because of this or if it’s just been a coincidence, since
last summer I have been much more productive with new material, so much so that
I haven’t had enough time on stage to test it all, much less keep working on
it, refining it. This is a good problem
to have.

Socially, 2015 was a bit of a downer, at least for me. I haven’t been hanging out as much with other
comics, before, during nor after shows.
In part because I live so far away and don’t have many options for
getting home after staying late, in part because there is a growing amount of
people I don’t enjoy being around. Not
to say that’s a big number, because it isn’t, but there are a lot of nights I
just want to do my set and run out the door.
I don’t like being That Guy, however, and intend to turn that around in
2016.

Overall, 2015 was a very positive year. I released my first special, Simply
Resistible, and over two people paid to download it! No, the response was far from overwhelming,
but that’s what I expected. I did it for
me and I’m really proud of it, learned a lot, and I’m focusing on putting together
a new show for next year that will probably be called Love Refugee. I helped found a sketch group called OOi and
we released a great deal over 2015 for Season One, with Season Two debuting
early 2016 (including more sketches that I wrote). Crossfire’s Season 3 was very up and down but
the finale was an enormous success, and we’ll be back for a fourth season,
which makes it the most successful club (of the two) I’ve ever run. Not only that, Crossfire will open in a
second city in February as well. There
aren’t many who can say they have clubs running in different cities at the same
time, so I’m proud over what I’ve been able to build, primarily on my own.

Maybe 2016 will be when I get a rookie spot at Norra Brunn,
or even win an award! Either would be
nice, but neither is a focus for me.
Instead I’ll keep on keeping on, chase long sets, money, testing new
material, money, filming sketches, running clubs, and money. Did I mention money?

Oh, and I got married in 2015, but that’s not funny. However, I did use dick joke money to buy her wedding ring, so there’s that.

When I tell
someone I have a hard time in social situations, they’re surprised. Usually because it’s a person with whom I’ve
learned to have a conversation; once I reach that point, I don’t have any
problems being open with them. Or, I
could say a problem is that I’m sometimes too open. I say I view social situations like taking a kayak
out onto the ocean- it’s easy once I’m out on the open water, but getting from
the beach past those waves is a real bitch.

No one
would ever describe me as a mingler. If
there’s a way to manage it sober I’d love to learn it. “Alcohol is crutch!” some might say. Yeah, well, a guy with a broken leg needs
crutches. In my case, the crutch is
several strong cocktails and then I’m everybody’s friend.

I did a
corporate gig in Oslo recently thanks to my friend Roberto, who arranged and
hosted the event. It was at the house of
a guy who was part of a Men’s Club that met a few times a year and he wanted us
to be there all day. Food and drinks
were free, they were competing in lawn games all afternoon and thought it was
fun to have comics mingling with the guests before performing in the evening.

Roberto is
a very social guy and had no problem bouncing about and starting
conversations. For me, understanding
Norwegian is tough enough as it is, so I spent most of the afternoon standing
quietly alone, watching everything, wondering what the hell I was going to joke about
with twenty blue-collar men doing men things, and working on getting enough
beer into me that I could be social without being a slurry mess when it came
time to perform.

When the
time came, most of the guys were surprised to find out that I didn’t even speak
Norwegian, since they hadn’t heard me say a word all day. It ended up being one of the most fun gigs I’ve
ever done and my ego feasted on the feedback the guys gave me afterwards. I was referred to as “the king” several
times. Hey, their words, not mine.

Naturally,
the comments that really stick with me came from Roberto, “You were way funnier
than when I saw you last!” – thanks,
dick – and from one of the partygoers: “You
were so quiet all day, I thought you were Roberto’s retard Rain Man brother,
but now I see you were just observing everything so you’d give us a great
show!” Well, that was honestly part of
what I did that day, but mostly I just didn’t know how to talk to them.

I once
admitted to a comic that I was afraid to talk directly with anyone in the
audience at a show, which I hadn’t done at all by the point, since “I don’t
know how to talk to people in real life, let alone from stage.” He pointed out that when you have a
microphone in your hand, you’re never talking with anyone, you’re talking at
them. You have the mic, you have
control. It was a great point and now
when I see a comic that seems so natural doing crowd work, I can also see the
strings- it’s sometimes irrelevant what the person in the crowd has to say
because the comic is steering everything into a prepared joke.

That’s how
the bit I call Personal Question was born.
I ask a woman in the audience a few yes/no questions, which limits her
answers, and I have responses planned for any outcome. I steer the conversation into asking her how
she likes to receive oral sex, which embarrasses her and the crowd on her
behalf. When she and everyone else is
very quiet at the end, I say, “Can I ask you a personal question?” Punchline.
See, because I already asked her a bunch of personal questions. Yes, it’s a bit mean to put someone on the
spot, and it has caused a problem a few times, but much more often than not,
once she and everyone else sees what I was doing, the tension is gone along
with any bad feelings.

The best
part is that I’ve made great friends with a few of these women as a result of
me embarrassing them in front of total strangers. One of them has brought dozens of people-
literally dozens- to my shows the past few years. Another- who flirted back during questioning
so fast and so well she embarrassed me- has a boyfriend in video
production. His company produced my
first special and she and her sister appeared in a sketch in it.

Of course,
when I first came up with the bit and enjoyed it very much, I did it way, way
too often, so now I try to save it for special occasions. Once, after I got about halfway into it, she
said, “You asked me these questions last time I was here.” I’m so bad with faces and names and life in
general.

”Good artists copy;
great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso

“The problem isn’t
that he stole, the problem is that he stole too much.” – Willie Nelson’s
comment on Robin Thicke

In everyday life, when
we tell each other jokes, we just tell them without citing sources. We say, “A bishop, an imam and a rabbi walk
into a bar…” not, “Let me tell you this joke I read in ‘Dirty Gags for Parties
V.7 as written by Guy Laffsalott: A bishop, an imam and a rabbi walk into a bar…” Even without the citation, no one ever
responds, “Did you come up with that?”
It’s taken for granted it was heard somewhere else.

That mentality has
carried over into Twitter, where someone sees something funny and thinks, I
like that, I’m going to share that as well.
Except, often, that person types it as their own rather than retweeting
the original post. Now there’s just as
much chance that the person who typed it later will get credit for it as the
person who first posted it. And, in the
extreme, someone like the Fat Jew can turn it into fame and fortune.

There’s been a lot of
debate lately over joke theft within standup.
Is creativity owned, should we impose capital punishment on hack comics,
does anyone actually care, etc. I have
seen a lot of standup live in the last several years and I’m glad to say that
outright theft has been extremely rare.
It’s often clear which comics have influenced the comic on stage, and
jokes can sound familiar, but I haven’t personally seen very much theft.

The last time I was in
Gothenburg, however, a local comic went up and had a joke that killed. A week later, I saw Jimmy Carr in Stockholm
do the same joke, word for word, except in English. Parallel thinking, that two comics think of
the same joke on the same topic by chance?
Doubtful, this was too close, and it’s far more likely that the local
comic heard Jimmy Carr do that joke on TV.
But did he sit at home, twirling his mustache evilly and laughing
manically as he stole the joke with malice and intent, or was it something
else?

One night, just before
I took the stage to host at my club Taboo, I thought of a funny line I wanted
to do. I went up and said, “Hi, I’m
Ryan, I’m from America. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Typical immigrant, here
to steal our jobs and women.’ No, I’m not here to steal your jobs.” Got a good laugh, I was pleased. I realized not five minutes later that, not
only did that joke belong to another Stockholm comic, except in Swedish, I’d
heard him deliver it at least a dozen times.
My brain just filed it away and presented it to me like it was
mine. Bad brain.

I’m willing to bet this
is the same thing to happen to comics like Robin Williams and Dane Cook,
notorious for taking material. “Notorious,”
that is, amongst comics; the vast majority of their fans don’t know, or know
and don’t care. It sucks to be an
unknown comic with a killer line that ends up being used by a celebrity,
because the general public is going to assume it was the celebrity that thought
of it first.

I tend to be very
careful and hypersensitive about my material.
There are only so many minutes on stage and I don’t want to spend any of
it saying something that isn’t mine.
Which is a shame for my career, because I have seen so much standup in
the US in the last thirty years that no one here has ever heard, I could steal
left and right and get away with it easily.
But that’s not me.

Richard Lewis said
that once he started performing, he stopped going to clubs and listening to
other comics, because, if he thought of a new joke on a certain subject but
heard another comic talking about the same subject, not even the same joke, it
just made him abandon it. I’m not that
sensitive, but on occasion I’ve asked a comic if they mind that I do a similar,
but not identical, joke to one of theirs.
I’d rather err on the side of caution.

It’s been said that,
at any one time there are only seven stories in Hollywood. For example, Armageddon and Deep Impact came
out the same summer, as did Mission to Mars and Red Planet. It’s like standup, there are only so many
subjects that are going to be discussed. The vast majority of comics are single and
there’s not many ways to discuss single life in a unique way. Same goes for discussing married life. But there, the key can be to NOT be wildly
original. Jeff Foxworthy said, “The best
compliment I can get from someone after a show is, ‘I thought the exact same
thing!’ That’s the thing with observational comedy- people see something, react
to it, and then go about their day, a comic has the same reaction but holds
onto it, polishes it into a joke.”

As an expat comic, I
have the same fish-out-of-water view of Sweden as the rest of my peers. We react, often, in the same way to the same
things, which can lead to problems when we’re deciding what to joke about on
stage. Almost every time, if I hear
another expat joke on the same subject I have a joke for, it just makes me want
to abandon my joke. I’d rather do material
that works anywhere, not just Sweden, anyway.
Someone once suggested that we expat comics have a draft to decide who
gets to joke about which subjects: “Ok, you get to joke about ‘utfart’, I get ‘fika’,
I’ll trade you ‘slutstation’ for ‘lagom’.”

I like making comics
laugh more than making the crowd laugh.
One night, I did a harsh, topical joke about life in Sweden and a comic
laughed so hard the crowd laughed at him.
Since it was topical, I only did it four or five times within a few
weeks before it felt dated, and I abandoned it (which is why Carlin never did
topical humor). Six months later, that
comic was telling the same joke, except the topical reference had been removed
and he’d built a whole bit around it.
While not word-for-word theft, there’s no way he wasn’t influenced by my
line, even if he didn’t think, “I’m going to steal this line.” My ego screamed, FUCKING HACK STOLE MY
FUCKING JOKE! Then I relaxed. It was a joke I’d abandoned, had no intention
of using again, and he’d built on the line successfully. My ego was soothed at the thought of being
such a positive influence, though I doubt that comic even remembers my line or
would even agree that it’s the same.

I’m not as generous,
though, if I hear someone do a joke of mine that I’ve used many times and
continue to use. In one case, I noticed one of my peers had tweeted a line of
mine, except in Swedish. I asked the
comic if she planned to say it on stage, she said yes, I reminded her that she’d
heard me do that line 1000 times and would do it 1000 more, because I like
it. Irritated, she said, “Fine, take it,”
and deleted the tweet. An odd feeling to
be told you can take a line that’s already yours.

There are those who
roll their eyes at comics getting upset over theft and say, “Just write new
jokes then.” On the face of it, it’s not
bad advice, but that negates the emotional reaction to it happening. Besides, some darlings are just too precious
to kill.

I read a blog entry a
few weeks ago from a comic in L.A. bemoaning the number of standup clubs with
free entry. Free clubs hurt standup as
an art form, he argued, because they make people expect to get comedy for
free. Why not charge even just a small
amount at the door? Free clubs hurt the
paying clubs! A paying crowd is always
better than one that gets in for free!

This topic comes up
now and then and it always fascinates me.
If it’s true that free clubs hurt the art of standup, they’ve been doing
it from the start. The art seems fine to
me. Why would that be true for comedy
and not music? No one has ever argued
that U24U playing covers at some dive bar is taking away from the U2 stadium
tour. Also, it could just as easily be argued
that a small comedy club with a $5 entry is taking away from the big one in
town that charges $20 with a two drink minimum.
Paying crowd always better? Not
in my experience.

Not so long ago, one
of the biggest club owners in Stockholm pleaded to comics to stop opening free
clubs. His business was on the decline and,
clearly, all those free clubs were to blame.
Free clubs are hurting the art of standup and why would people ever pay
to get the same thing they can get for free anywhere else?

First of all, people
don’t get the same thing for free as when they pay (or at least they shouldn’t;
more on that later). Secondly, and more
importantly, PEOPLE DON’T KNOW FREE CLUBS EXIST. Time and time again, I’ve told people it’s
possible to gig at least once every night of the week in Stockholm and received
the same response of, “What?!”

It’s important to define
“people” when it comes to the makeup of a comedy crowd- let’s put them into two
groups: hardcore and casual fans.
Hardcore fans go often, know about most, if not all the clubs in town,
listen to podcasts, follow comics on Twitter, even comics with just a few years
of experience. There are a few niche
clubs around that have done an excellent job of building up a following of
hardcore fans and frequently play to sold out crowds of them.

I’ve performed nearly
exclusively in free clubs, hosted many times.
This is Hosting 101, and my experience nearly every time: “Hi
everyone! By a round of applause, how
many of you have seen standup before?”

[Nearly everyone
applauds]

“How many of you have
been here before?”

[Less than half
applaud]

I would argue that casual fans far outnumber hardcore, especially outside the niche clubs. Then there are the
mainstream paying clubs. I wish I could
remember the source, but I’ve never heard paying clubs summed up better than
this opening to a comedy album:

“Hi folks, by a round
of applause, how many of you are here to see me tonight?”

[some applause]

“How many of you came
to see whatever douchebag was on the schedule?”

[massive applause]

I would imagine the
typical conversation amongst casual (and therefore most, if you’ve bought my
argument so far) fans goes like this:

“Let’s go see standup,
that would be fun!”

“Sure! Where?”

“That one place we’ve
heard of.”

“Ok, when? Next Friday?”

“No, I’m busy that
night. How about the Friday after?”

“It’s a date!”

No thought at all of
who is on that night. I’ll take this a
step further. One night at a paying club,
the headliner a big, big name amongst comics in Sweden, at the start of the
show, the host announced, “You’re in for a treat, your headliner tonight is
So-and-So {not his real name}!!!” No
reaction from the crowd. No applause, no
cheers, just blank stares. So-and-So is
not on TV, no podcast, not a household name.
Grab people randomly on the street in Stockholm and ask them to name as
many comics in Sweden as they can and I’m willing to bet they’ll name just a
few, including comics that were on TV years ago and rarely perform today.

As for the argument
that a paying crowd is therefore more focused and invested in the show, there
is some value to the statement but it is far than always true. If it were, then comics would talk about
corporate gigs (being hired for a private show, sometimes for a shameful amount
of money) as the best kind of gig, instead of how it actually is, fodder for
war stories to scare other comics around the campfire. There’s the chance one person arranged for a
big group to come pay for the show, and that one person is the only one
interested more in standup and less in getting drunk and talking to everyone
else. Or that someone has the attitude
of, hey, I didn’t pay so I could sit quietly.
Dance, monkey, dance!

Why pay for the same
thing you get for free? You don’t, you’re
going to see a lot of rookies that may never get to the paid level. As for the pro comics, they treat the free
clubs like the gym, test new material, relax, see what works, so they can give
more focused performances for a paying crowd.
Not, of course, that casual fans always understand that. I never got to see Carlin live, but a friend
in Boston saw him at a tiny club on Cape Cod and was thoroughly disappointed. “He had some joke of, ‘Why is rock and roll
always rock and never roll?’ and kept going on and on about it!” I wanted to strangle the guy. I can see Carlin in special after special, I
never got a chance to see him working out material.

In fact, there are
some pros that never perform in free clubs and have done the same sets for
years. It’s possible to get to a point
that you don’t need to bother, it works fine for the casual fans. Not so much for the hardcore. Maybe that’s a more likely culprit for
declining business in paying clubs, when the same ten pros cycle through with
the same material year after year.

I’ve argued so far
that people don’t know free clubs exist, don’t know how many comics exist, and
don’t get the same experience for free that they pay for. Another debate is whether or not free clubs
should announce the lineup or keep it a secret, because if you know So-and-So
is going to be at one place for free you won’t pay to see him somewhere
else. You may not agree with me but you
can see why I don’t think that argument holds much water, but in any case,
running a free club myself, I always respect a comic’s decision to not be
announced on the lineup. In fact, I’ve
heard that it may not even be legal to announce someone as headlining an event
if they’re not being paid. That may be
bullshit but I’ve always erred on the side of caution.

I announce
lineups. Partly because I’ve never
minded being listed myself; no one knows who I am and if I ever hope to be a
household name, I want my name out there, and often. Partly, for what it’s worth, to do what I can
to get as many names out there as possible.
Mostly, without regret, that, yes, I do hope it’s going to help, even a
little, to get asses in seats. Most of
the comics at Crossfire are rookies and we may just get a few of their friends
and family in the room, but every little bit helps. And there’s always the hope that comics will
do a little promotion of their own.
Marketing and getting people to show up is ultimately my responsibility
but with a budget of exactly zero, I do whatever I can. Charging at the door isn’t an option since it’s
a restaurant and not everyone is there for the show, but we often get them to
watch.

There’s been a
few times I’ve needed to list someone as a secret guest, and that’s fine. There are comics that will never perform at
Crossfire for free, and that’s also fine.
I recently offered a spot to someone and she said, “Sorry, I’ve decided
not to focus on free clubs just now.” I
could’ve pointed out that we were in another free club at that moment, but it
was easier to just say, no problem, there’s always a spot if you want it.

Naturally I’m always
convinced I’m right about everything, but if I needed something to really nail
this particular point of view, it was one of the biggest comics in Sweden,
probably the one most likely to be known outside this country, agreeing to
perform at Crossfire. I may have bought
him a beer that night, otherwise he didn’t ask for money, didn’t mind being
listed as the headliner, put it on his website and Twitter. It wasn’t the theater experience; he
performed in English, did a fun, loose set for a packed room (“packed” being 20%
of his usual crowd), was the textbook example of a free gig being different
than a paid one. He understood the role
that free clubs play and I appreciate his support.

The thing about running a club, it’s a thankless job. It takes a lot of work and patience, made
worse by lack of support from the venue itself.
Time and time again I’ve heard club owners- even at established places-
tell the same story, that the venue expects the club owner to bring in the
crowd while doing little to nothing to promote the events themselves. It takes a lot of patience to push through
it. I should know, I co-founded Taboo
with a partner at one venue and five seasons later we were at a third venue and
I was running the club virtually alone. Night after night the only people in the bar
were there to see the show and when the bar came under new management, they
thanked us by giving us the opportunity to pay them so we could have another
season. We declined and Taboo was dead.

When I got a chance to open a
place on my own I took it. Now Crossfire
is in its second season and I really like the venue, but my relationship with
them is just as tenuous as ever.
Stability just doesn’t come with the territory, so it doesn’t surprise
me that clubs come and go. I’ve seen a
few rise and fall over the last few years, but there’s one I miss more than any
other: Copperfields. Get a bunch of
comics together in a room and it won’t be long until we’re swapping war stories
from that place.

_________________________________________________________________

Copperfields started not long after I did, founded by a
sweet old man that loves standup, loves performing, loves being on stage. What he lacked in ability to effectively run
a club in a good venue, he made up in enthusiasm, which created a very surreal
atmosphere. If I’m hungry for stage time
now, I was starving then, so I went every night. At first.
After the first month I started to wonder why I bothered; there was
little to no crowd (five people for the show was a good night), the place was
lit up like an operating room, there were TVs throughout showing football and
you couldn’t always count on the staff to turn them off, and there were a lot
of alcoholics there for cheap beer and the Jack Vegas slot machines at the back
of the room (one night, one of them turned around from Jack Vegas and screamed
“SHUT UP!” at the comic on stage). If I
was lucky, I’d make someone smile or maybe even get a chuckle. I stopped going so often.

Then, at another club, I bombed
for the first time. Hard. It happens to everyone, but when you first
start in standup, it’s a boogeyman. You
know it’s only a matter of time before it will happen for the first time and
you’re afraid of what it will feel like.
Spoiler alert: it sucks.

_________________________________________________________________

On a Wednesday, I told a friend after a show that I didn’t care
what the crowd thought of me. On
Thursday, I went to Solna Comedy Club (RIP).
I was so excited, my set was to be twelves minutes long. Twelve minutes! I had less than six months experience by that
point and twelve minutes was more than double the sets I was doing
elsewhere. I invited a bunch of people
and ten of them came to see me. I was up
first and the microphone was wireless, the first time I’d worked with one. It seemed that if I moved in any direction it
caused massive feedback, so I stood as still as I could. The speakers were behind and just above my
head and it sounded like I was screaming, so I held the mic by my chest. Unfortunately, everyone that had come to see
me was standing at the back of the room and couldn’t hear a word I was saying. There was no stage and I was standing
directly next to a table full of people who didn’t know there was going to be a
show and were very irritated that I was there.
Another table nearby was full of people there for comedy and they were
laughing, but I didn’t know then to focus on them and shut out everyone
else. Instead, I started sweating
buckets, delivering material while thinking, “No one’s going to laugh at this.
No one’s going to laugh at this.” After
six minutes I gave up, saying, “Well, I just bombed for the first time. My name’s Ryan Bussell.” I saw my girlfriend laugh at that.

That was the start of a four-day
holiday weekend, which I spent in a dark funk.
All I wanted to do was to stay in bed with the covers pulled over my
head. To this day my girlfriend shudders
at the memory. But it was important to
me as a comic. Certainly I’ve bombed
since then but not nearly as badly. It
still sucks, but it’s easier to deal with.
In any case, I learned a humbling lesson: I do care what the audience
thinks. Or, they don’t have to agree
with me or even like me, but they do need to pay attention to me.

__________________________________________________________________

Copperfields was my return to the stage after that debacle
and I had an epiphany- if the crowd didn’t care about me, I didn’t have to care
about them. I wasn’t getting paid, I had
absolutely no responsibility to anyone.
I could do what I liked, try new things, move around on stage more, try
new styles of delivery. I expected
little and got it and I was happy. I was
free. As a direct result, I never had a
bad time there.

Inexplicably, Copperfields added a second night every week
and I went then, too. It had earned a bad
reputation by then and a lot of the comedy community stayed away, which meant
even more stage time for those of us willing to deal with it. I learned that if a joke earned a chuckle
there, it would get an applause break at another club. For all of that and more, I am honestly
grateful that the club existed when it did.

At the time though, I don’t
think I yet appreciated it as a training ground to the extent that I do
now. Back then, I kept going out of pure
fascination, because I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. In fact, my opening line on that stage was,
“I love coming here because I always get surprised. On my way I think, ‘There’s no way it could
possibly be worse than the last time I was there,’ but somehow it is.” You might think that’s a shitty way to start
a show but it always worked because it was obvious to everyone there that this
was not quite what they’d expected a comedy club to be like.

_________________________________________________________________

There was a comic there almost
every night, let’s call her X. It seemed
like she was co-running the club, but if this was official it wasn’t
clear. What she lacked in ability to
entertain a crowd, she made up in enthusiasm, which created a very surreal
atmosphere. She was usually the first
act and joked that the reason she got so much stage time was because she was
sleeping with the host; once, a female comic asked her off stage if that was
true and X started to sob. A ukulele and
“ribald” songs were a significant part of her act, one night causing a comic
with plans for a UK tour to erupt in laughter.
The host mistook that for laughing with her, and after X was done he
introduced her to the comic. “You should
take her with you!” She beamed with
pride, he squirmed with discomfort.

_________________________________________________________________

There was the time, the only
time, a certain comic was there to headline.
He sat at the comics’ table at the back of the room with his head in his
hands, mouth and eyes wide open. When he
took the stage he addressed the six people in the crowd, “I’ve been here all
night and I have to ask- why are you here??”

_________________________________________________________________

There was the time two people
showed up, the only two people in the room other than comics. For the first time, I talked to someone from
stage, found out one of them was visiting from Gothenburg. “Let’s pretend you came all this way to see
me, okay?” I performed, essentially, to
an audience of one and we had a blast.

_________________________________________________________________

There was the time the bartender
gave me a beer on the house and said, “You’re the funniest one that shows up
here.” The same night I mocked the
Halloween decorations on the ceiling and the St. Pat’s decorations over the
bar- it was August- and he never spoke to me again.

_________________________________________________________________

There was the time a woman teaching
a comedy course brought her class to Copperfields for their first-ever
gig. I couldn’t imagine a more hellish
first time, but one of them was quite funny.
Maybe that was a good test after all.
I encouraged her and she stuck with standup for a while longer, which is
more than I can say for her classmates.

_________________________________________________________________

Since so few comics were asking to be part of the show, the
host added music to the bill. First half
comedy, second half open mic for music.
Which was fine, in theory, except the time I was up fourth and there was
a full house, a rare event, which was exciting.
Unfortunately, the first two comics still bombed. The third comic was more of a pro and
actually got the crowd going, so I was happy to follow him. Before I could, though, X walked up to
me. “There’s a band here playing in the
second half, they have drums in a car double-parked outside so they need to set
them up now.”

“Now?! But the crowd is finally warmed up!”

“They won’t take long.”

They took twenty minutes. Three college kids setting up an electronic
drum kit. The host went up and
ineffectually tried to improv and keep the crowd happy. X did the same, with the same result, playing
the same song she’d played fifteen minutes earlier. A couple of guys in the crowd doubled over
laughing, the same way that comic had done before, called her to their table
when she was done and asked if she could play that song just one more
time. She beamed with pride, went up on
stage and played it a third time. After
that, despite the kids not being done, I walked on stage. “Hi everyone!
I want to thank my backup band for taking so long, after my hour on
stage we’re going to have a huge climax.
They’re great guys but they don’t have much sense of TIMING OR KNOWING
WHEN TO GET OFF THE STAGE.” The crowd
liked seeing me vent bile on them and the kids got the point, scurrying off the
stage.

_________________________________________________________________

As time went on, the line between comedy and music vanished
and the nights got even more chaotic.
You might be third on the list to go on stage only to have the host
throw a musical act on instead. During a
season premiere, due to renovations in the main room we had to move the show to
a small corner upstairs. There was a
stage, albeit tiny, and a small crowd to match.
The host didn’t bother with a setlist for comics, leaving it up to us to
decide. Which we did, but he still threw
music acts on as he liked. Including an
opera singer who, shockingly, didn’t go over well, followed by a three-piece
band that wouldn’t leave the stage after they were done. This made the already small stage even
smaller, so we could barely move when we were up there. We could’ve sat on the snare kit. The drummer got the idea to do drum rolls for
random punchlines, which delighted a one-liner comic to no end (and by “delighted”
I mean he hated it).

When it was my turn I got heckled, which happens so rarely
that while I do hate it overall, I sort of appreciated it that night. I had mocked the crowd for having no pride in
Sweden, not knowing that the proudest woman in Sweden was there. She barked at me then and would later shout
out random words like “flag” and “Vasa Museum”.
I had fun beating her into submission.

The “comedy” portion of the show being over, we just
left. Which is kind of a shame, because
it turned out that the season premiere was also the club’s finale, and if I’d
known that then I would’ve stayed and had a few drinks in its honor. Copperfields, you were the worst of clubs and
the best of clubs. Thanks for the
memories!