Too Big To Fail on iTunes – Help Wanted

This is a very simple post.  My new album has been available for free for a month on my website – you can download it here (still for free for another couple of weeks):

https://jlcauvin.com/?page_id=3578

But of more importance today is that my album is now available on iTunes right here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/too-big-to-fail/id523993775

If you have the free copy of the album, if you don’t have it or if you feel like being generous and buying it through iTunes please do me a favor as a reader of this site and presumably a friend or fan of what I do – go to the iTunes link and give the CD 5 stars (and if feeling generous with your time please write a nice sentence or two about the album or my comedy).  Please do this as soon as you are able to and ask friends and family to do the same in this time period through Facebook, Twitter or e-mail.  It costs nothing (unless you want to be nice and buy the album) except a few seconds and will really help me out.

That’s it.  Thanks very much. And I hope you enjoy the album.

 

The Elephant In The Room at the Comedy Awards

This weekend, the 2nd Annual Comedy Awards took place. These are the awards where comedians do what every other industry does for itself, while maintaining enough of a distance so as to still plausibly mock the idea of awards shows.

As I followed some of the results via Twitter the name Louis CK kept coming up.  No big surprise there.  He has established himself as the man of the moment in comedy.  A sort of infallible figure of fallibility for comedy fans.  His show “Louie” won best show, in the alternative show category, helping it avoid a showdown with comedy series winner “Parks and Recreation.”

But as a stand up comic I was most interested in seeing who won best stand up special. The nominees were Louis CK, Daniel Tosh, Colin Quinn, Patton Oswalt and Norm MacDonald.  First I will offer my opinion that of the nominees (for their specials, not their bodies of work) I would have CK no higher than third. MacDonald’s special was better and Colin Quinn’s Broadway show was absolutely terrific.

But CK’s special represented a game changer, or so I was repeatedly told.  He bucked the industry by self-producing his own special.  Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari copied his model.  Now, thanks to Louis’ example, at least a dozen comedians can do this. Maybe even two dozen. And after that, I don’t think it will have any effect on the careers of individual comedians. The widespread distribution and opportunities offered by television are still needed by almost all comedians to get to the next level.  Did CK change the game? Or did he just demonstrate that after decades of climbing within the ranks of the business he now has the clout to reject it?  And before continuing I must say, because, as I have learned, when people read my posts with their own pre-dispositions, they read what they want out of my words, that this is still a compliment to CK.  He made a brilliant decision for HIS career.  My only qualm is the extrapolation that fans have made from his career to the rest of the industry. If he has changed the game then he is bigger than just a comedian and therefore worthy of cultural icon status, which may have already occurred.  But if, as I would contend, he has not changed the game, but merely his own game, then some of the praise heaped on him is overblown and is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of greatness around all that he produces, regardless of whether it is actually always great or not.

The last time I remember a comedian becoming as big (and CK is now bigger) as this was Dane Cook.  Dane Cook had a methodical, social media-driven, hard work climb over 10+ years to become the biggest name in comedy.  But the backlash against Cook was swift and furious.  Probably because the comedy community and the public at large had no real qualms about bashing a young, fit, charismatic performer, regardless of how well he did for stand up comedy as a business. Louis seems to be bulletproof.  Some of his invincibility comes from his soft underbelly, literally:   his words are harsh and honest, but his delivery device is humble and not intimidating.  Almost all friends of mine who are CK devotees acknowledge to me that they did not think that the Beacon Theater special was his best work and that there were more worthy specials this year.  But because of the “game changing” aspect of the special it was worthy.  But as I already indicated, I don’t really think it changed the game.  The same way George Carlin claimed voting was just the illusion of power, at this point, only those entertainers who already have power, can wield enough power to buck the system.  So if it was not the best special of the year (or at least not definitively) and not truly game changing, what is the justification?

My biggest disappointment in seeing the nominees and the eventual winner though, was the absence of the late, great Patrice O’Neal.  In a twist of sad irony to this post, Louis actually dedicated the Beacon Theater special to the memory of O’Neal.  O’Neal passed away late last year, but not before leaving the comedy community with Elephant In The Room, which is really just a notch below Chris Rock’s Bring the Pain for me on my all time favorite comedy specials, and Mr. P, his hilarious album, released posthumously.  I remember watching Elephant In The Room and thinking “this is going to get Patrice the next-level recognition he deserves.”  I thought it was hands down the best special of the year. No distribution gimmicks, no hype, just great stand up.  The silver lining to his tragic death should have been an increased visibility and respect for his work.  But then, late last year I noticed a poll on a comedy website that had eleven or so comedians up for “Favorite Comedian of the Year” and he was not even on the list.  And then the Comedy Awards did not even NOMINATE Elephant in The Room

Now people reading this who are already pre-disposed to embrace all that is Louis CK will probably just call me a hater.  I’ll admit there are a ton of comedians whose comedy I like more than Louis CK (if you want to know, Bill Burr and Chris Rock are my favorite living comedians).  But I also greatly respect CK’s dedication, his work ethic and and the prominence that he has brought to stand up.  If you are not quite at the “fu*k you J-L you hater” level, then maybe you would like to say “Hey J-L, I respect your opinion, but why is it so wrong for Louis to have won this? He is a great comic and it is all subjective anyway, right? How is your opinion ‘better’ than mine?”  Go watch Elephant in The Room and the Beacon Theater special and tell me there is not a difference.  And it is also just the notion that CK was crowned the way Adele was at the Grammies.  I don’t like a comedy world where we sort of have a coronation.  Even Carlin’s second to last special sucked and it was reviewed as such. But he came back and did a great one for what would be his last special.  That is how comedy should work.  You are only as good as your last show. Sure fans will give you a break because they are your fans, but should an entire industry be giving the same blind loyalty to a performer? That is largely what makes it difficult, especially when you reach that upper echelon.  You have to produce new material regularly and it has to meet the high standards you have established for yourself.  Dane Cook tapered off after his hard-earned climb to the top and he was crucified for it.  For Louis CK, however,  it seems that there is no objectivity even allowed because the comedy community is so enamored with him (“Did you think his last special was an A+ or an A++? A B+? Well fu*k you you jealous hater!”).  There is a lot to appreciate and respect about CK and I have laughed at plenty of his material.  But every so often, the avalanche of adoration impedes a deserved and justified opportunity for someone else.  I think the Comedy Awards, for whatever they are worth, did Patrice O’Neal and stand up comedy a great disservice by not awarding, let alone failing to nominate, Elephant In The Room.

Sticker Stupidity: My Made Up, But Plausible History of…

I am not a fashionable person. I was wearing flannel before, during and twenty years after the grunge movement of the early 1990s.  I wear New Balance sneakers and sweatpants a majority of the week.  I buy my suits at Jos. A Bank (how can you beat “buy 1, get 47” free sales?).  But sometimes things are so awful that even my primitive fashion sense is offended.  One thing that has been number for many years on my “fashion items I hate” are babydoll dresses, or as I refer to them “FUPA” covering dresses.   The most misleading item in fashion basically begin at the end of a woman’s breasts and then finish at the conclusion of the woman’s flaws or bloating, depending on whether she is on a permanent or 4 day expansion, respectively.   For several years this Trojan Horse of fashion has been my least favorite item of clothing, but over the last couple years it has been bumped out of the #1 spot buy New Era baseball caps with stickers on the brims.

I own a New Era baseball cap.  It is a Yankee fitted (the game version, not one of the 477 varieties of Yankee caps that have been released – you know so that you have a specific Yankee fitted hat for every holiday from 4th of July to St Patrick’s Day to Arbor Day) and I have owned it for several years.  It is broken in and lacks any price tags or stickers because I am not a fu*king moron.

I do not know the day the trend of leaving stickers on a cap began but I know it has emerged in the last couple of years.  Here are the many different explanations I have seen on-line:

  • Emulating athletes who receive brand new caps on draft day
  • Maintaining a “fresh” cap to symbolize the freshness of the person wearing it
  • Wearing the sticker to pretend that you have so much money that you don’t care

One explanation that a friend of mine had offered, not by way of knowledge, but just hypothesis, was that maybe it started as an act of civil disobedience.  Since it is a trend that began among black people, the idea was that with mall security and store employees discriminating against black youth in stores (questioning, following around suspiciously, etc.) keeping the sticker on after purchasing would act as a deterrent to being questioned, or would at least make people who are eyeing young black men suspiciously could be made to look foolish.  I thought this would be a great reason… if it were at all true.  However, I could find no evidence that this fashion AIDS has any root in civil disobedience.  Sorry, but when you look at Martin Luther King Jr.’s brim in any old photos you will not see a tag or sticker still on it.

Another explanation that I have pondered, (and at the risk of accidentally stealing material, I think comedian Yannis Pappas may have said this before I did in my presence at his show in Brooklyn), is that black people were simply doing the dumbest thing they could think of and seeing if white people would still steal/copy it. (If Yannis tells me he did not say this, consider it a new joke of mine).

But assuming none of these are true, all I can think is that this trend started out of sheer stupidity.  It is this generation’s pet rock.  But it is also evidence of the power black people have on influencing our culture.  Enough talk about “Girls” on HBO, black people can take some (non-compensated) comfort that they still disproportionately influence the culture (and in most cases is good, but not in this one).  Here’s is my brief, informal history of the sticker-on-brim phenomenon across racial lines:

  • Black youth start wearing stickers on their brims for some unexplained or unjustifiable reason
  • Latinos, as with the N word, quickly begin using it  as well to get grandfathered in when the race war begins
  • White people resist and mock
  • White people begin to actually market stickers and the hats now have bigger and more ornate stickers KNOWING that people will not leave the sticker on the hat (perhaps googly eyes or scratch n sniff are next)
  • Dumb white teens begin doing it, as evidenced by J-L Cauvin seeing no less than 7 white youths wearing stickered brims at the Yankee Game on April 27, 2012 (and only 2 were Guido-types!)

There you have it – white people stole blacks from Africa, stole their music for Elvis and stole golf back from Tiger Woods.  But now they have tipped their hand too much.  It is now clear that white people will try to copy any trend from black people no matter how dumb.  Just three years after a black man got the Presidency, a white dude is trying to take it back, despite clearly being an awful job.  But the brim sticker phenomenon is inexcusable.  No one can offer a legitimate explanation for why people do it and the people who do it refuse to acknowledge that it is absurdly dumb looking.  So shame on you black people for starting a stupid trend and shame on you Latinos and white for copying it.

But thank you Jeremy Lin for not doing it. Yet.

Jeff Dunham Announces New Puppets For 2012!

Great news for the millions of Jeff Dunham fans – he has announced a new roster of puppets to satisfy his followers who thirst for new and cutting edge material.  Known for turning all white crowds into def jam audiences with his hilarious puppets like “Crotchety Old Guy,” “Purple Dude,” “Mexican Pepper,” and everyone’s favorite “Terrorist Skeleton,” (admittedly I have seen Dunham’s work, but have not paid much attention to the names) Dunham has decided to create five new characters for his 2012 tour.  Based on the core of Dunham’s wild success, which is producing mild humor through blandly prejudiced or stereotypical puppets, his new characters will continue his brand.  He will offer fresh material through his new voices that can only be categorized as “Diet Mencia.”  So look out in 2012 for the Dunham Fab Five:

 

Santorum – Dressed in his traditional sweater vest, Santorum is everyone’s favorite woman hating puppet.  He has been getting big laughs by telling crowds that he only performs comedy for the purposes of conception and that no one should go to college (applause line).  And nothing gets the crowd laughing more than when he throws tiny stones at Dunham during arguments.

Bachmann – After complaints from various comedy lobbying groups about Dunham only having one female puppet, Dunham has added a another female to the lineup. She wins the crowd over by asking if any men want objects in their butt because “that’s how we do it in the Bachmann home.” She also mocks Dunham for his belief that science is responsible for the microphone producing sound, much to the delight of the crowd.

Herman Cain – Wearing a pimp hat, Herman Cain is the Dunham puppet that can’t stop chatting it up with all the ladies in Dunham’s audiences.  He always kills crowds with his Dunham-penned catchphrases of “I loves white womens,” and “I got 9 inches for 9 ladies starting at 9 tonight!”

Nuge – armed with a guitar that fires bullets, Nuge is Dunham’s highest energy puppet since “Purple Dude.”  When Dunham insists that President Obama is not a Muslim, Nuge proudly declares that he will “leave the stage in a laundry hamper” if Dunham doesn’t recant. When Dunham gives in it usually gets a standing ovation.

The Ghost of Trayvon Martin – giving Terrorist Skeleton a run for his money as Dunham’s new closer, this puppet comes dressed in his traditional hoodie, holding a pack of skittles and iced-tea, both of which he tosses to a lucky fan during the set.  The Trayvon puppet gets Dunham’s crowds howling with laughter with lines like “The New Black Panthers are going to get you,” and “The last time I killed this bad I was running from neighborhood watch!”

So get those tickets now – as they will undoubtedly sell out.

To The Defense of “Girls” – It’s Not Its…

This past Sunday I watched HBO’s new show Girls.  It featured a perfect storm for me to potentially unleash new levels of hate and criticism. It was produced by Judd Apatow, who I think is the most overrated person in the comedy business not named Louis.  His movies always manage to take a 90 minute comedy premise and produce a 2 hour and 10 minute epic of inconsistency.  Then there is the critical acclaim for the show.  Nothing primes me more to hate something than universal acclaim.  My philosophy is simple – that many people can absolutely be wrong.  And lastly, the premise of the show: 4 white girls of varying levels of privilege trying to “make it” through life and love all with wit and and a few tears.  My assumption is that it would simply further influence the youthful dregs of Manhattan the way Sex and the City did (a classic that led to life imitating art) for young women.  In other words I just assumed that at the end of the pilot of Girls I would be saying, “They should have named this crap Cu*ts!”

Well I think I was wrong. I watched the first episode and I enjoyed it.  I thought it was fairly witty, thankfully lacking the Carrie Bradshaw puns, and because of the 30 minute length, Judd Apatow’s “More is More, which turns out to be less” style was impossible.  So after the pilot I thought, “Hey this show is worth a real look.”

But then I saw an immediate backlash among friends and comedians.  I felt like the main complaints I heard and read were misguided.

Four white girls of privilege in Manhattan do not speak for a generation or a city’s 20-somethings!

Why were there no meaningful people of color in the show?

Those two questions are good questions and they have a simple answer – rich, white people segregate. I went to, what is now, the most expensive private school in the country. I then went to an elite college and a top 20 law school. And I have been to a fair share of weddings where I have been the only person of (any) color or close to the only person of color. That includes guests, wedding party and plus 1s.  Walk into any bar in Manhattan and I guarantee you will see multiple groups of white girls only.  I have always maintained that racist white women have always gotten a pass for passive racism that racist white men, because of the threat of physical retribution that men have to deal with if they run their mouth with racist garbage, cannot (one of the reasons I liked the movie The Help – racist white WOMEN were the villains).  Now let me be clear, I am not accusing white people in white circles as automatically racist, but there is a segregation present all over America that people seem to ignore.  As Patrice O’Neal said, “White people now have that racism that black people can’t prove.”

The point of mentioning that is that there is nothing wrong or inaccurate about Girls. So they don’t appear to have friends of color? So what (acquaintances do not count)? The show has been written by a woman based on her experiences.  Those experiences, at least from my perspective growing up in NYC, seem entirely plausible.  Inserting a meaningful person of color, if not true to the creator of the show, would be the racist (or at least patronizing) thing, if only done to satisfy a quota (the way boy bands try add a beige member- I am talking to you Menudo!).  And Sex and the City was four white women of affluence.  Wealth just as easily insulates from societal changes as it drives change.  I think that is why Friends got more heat than SATC for its lack of minorities because Friends featured working class white people, who would be less likely to live in an all-white world.  I believe SATC represented life imitating art, given how women responded to it, but Girls feels more like art imitating life – an accurate reflection of a visible segment of the NYC population.

I won’t lie – I see a lot of diversity in various groups of my friends, especially in comedy, but to pretend like there is not de facto segregation all over this country, even in great melting pots like NYC is absurd.  The show is written from that background (would be my guess).  So be mad at society, but being angry at a show that comes from that truth seems misguided to me.

More offensive to me is be the casting of a show like The Walking Dead (my podcast interview with comedian Dan Soder about TWD is linked here – http://righteouspk.podomatic.com/entry/2012-02-06T21_59_09-08_00). The wildly popular show on AMC takes place outside of Atlanta and for two seasons has had… 1 regular black character.  1 black guy in Atlanta??!!!  Of course, imagine if The Walking Dead had 6 black and 6 white characters in its ensemble instead of the 11:1 ratio they have?  America would not tune in, because a large part of the population would no longer look at it as a “zombie show” and would look at it as a “black show.”

 

HBO is not at fault.  They have provided minority-driven shows like The Wire for full series runs, despite bad ratings.  But as long as the market favors certain perspectives and certain narratives they will continue to provide those shows as well.

My point with Girls is that it is reflective of our culture, a culture we all seem to think we are better than or don’t exist in.  America is still segregated, maybe not in the work place or in the athletic field or in our Facebook friends, but in the places we keep closest it sure is. And that segregation is almost always exacerbated by wealth.  So don’t blame Girls, blame the market for which Girls is produced. It is the Girls’ world and we are just living in it.

Comedy At a Law School in Indiana

This Saturday I made an exhausting trip back and forth to Valparaiso, Indiana to perform comedy with Comedians At Law (it was a two person show with me and CAL member Kevin Israel).  I wrote the recap on CAL’s website so here it is for you if you visit my site:

http://comediansatlaw.com/2012/04/16/comedians-at-law-rain-comedy-down-on-the-valparaiso-law-school-picnic/

That’s all for today.

Top 10 Working Titles For My Feature Act Comedy…

Everyone clamors for a book by star comedians who reflect on their rise to success. They usually sell well because they are funny and they give readers a latter-day Horatio Alger story: comedians always seem to start poor or at least unhappy and then rise to a position of fame and wealth and slightly less unhappiness.  But what about feature comedians – the stop on the way to headliner success for some, or the purgatory of comedy for many?  As a national feature act (meaning underpaid, underbooked and under the radar) I have thought about writing a book on the experience of travelling America and seeing the country through the lens of comedy’s middle class.  As I have written before, I think the feature act is an unexplored bellwether for (or at least a microcosm of) the disappearance of America’s middle class:

https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2304

So as I explore ideas for a memoir here are the ten titles I am considering (I am far too lazy to follow through on an entire book). Keep in mind these are based on my own experiences.  Some comedians may feel the same, some may not.  I applaud those of you that feel the same because you are right. And a message to my civilian readers – I know I can sound bitter – think of my posts (sometimes) as a darkly humorous look at how the comedy sausage is made:

1) 25% Off a $4 Order of Mozzarella Sticks – Nothing feels quite like a kick to the balls than the food discount, especially when the food item is dirt cheap to begin with (not to mention seeing the headliner eat that $7 hamburger free of charge – why don’t you blow your nose with $100 bills while you are at it!).  $1 off a $4 order is not so much about savings as it is about sending a message. The message? “You ain’t sh*t” (another possible title). That is why I now travel with homemade coupons for free back rubs.  If I have to pay for appetizers then the club is going to have to earn my money… the hard way (Rodney Dangerfield blog voice).

2) Trying Not To Get Hit By A Car While Walking On The Side Of A Highway – For every four day trip on the road, I spend about 5 hours on stage and 20 hours walking around towns where the lack of sidewalks help to explain the high levels of obesity.  I am 6’7″ and anywhere between 240 and 290 pounds, depending on how despondent I am over my “career,” but even at my fittest I have this fear that a murder will occur in any number of the towns I perform in and witnesses will say “we saw a real big unhappy sombitch just walking along the highway. And we ain’t never seen him before.” And my only alibi will be “Google Maps told me there was an IHOP two miles down the road.”  Either that or a car will simply hit me as I dart across a highway to get to a Starbucks with WiFi. Headline the next day: “Tall Stranger Killed Trying to Check Facebook. No One Had Any Idea Why He Was Here Or Who He Was.”

3) Why Do All These White People Find This Mediocre Black Comic Hilarious? – If anyone wants to know why large pockets of America think President Obama is a Muslim, just go to a comedy club across America.  This country, for all its progress and love of Denzel Washington, is still an incredibly segregated place, where people of color still possess an exotic aura for many white people.  And no job is easier in comedy, in my estimation, than to be a mediocre opener of color (the darker the better) in front of a white audience.  The white audience in America is often times self-selected (my native Bronx is by no means the only place that has experienced white flight) so no line ever does better (or is more repeated by black comics) than “I must be in the wrong club!”  The goobers in the audience are simultaneously thinking “That’s a funny joke!” and  “That’s true!!”  I was emceeing shows recently and a feature, who was black, told me after a show while we were chatting, “Every time I talk with white people from here after a show, they always want to tell me some ‘black sh*t,’ like some story about a black guy they met or a black person they hooked up with.  Maybe I just want to talk about some other sh*t!”  This is not even necessarily a mean thing (ignorance is not necessarily evil), but it does explain a high tolerance for bad comics of color in America (the gentleman I am speaking of was not in this category).  Now there are terrible comics of every race working out there, but the large parts of this segregated country that still think American black people only exist in prisons, rap videos and sporting arenas (because our president is Kenyan) are giving refuge to a lot of terrible comics of color.  I don’t know which came first, the sheltered/ignorant white crowd or the black comic with way too high a swagger-to-talent ratio, but both need to stop.

4) Why Do All These Black People Love This Asian/White Comic – The pendulum swings both ways and if there is something that annoys me it is when a member of a group gets respect from an audience comprised of a different group, simply having the guts to show up.  I have seen this in black rooms almost as often as I see it in white rooms. Now this is not to denigrate comics with real skill and talent who happen to be different. Rather it’s the ones who coast on their appearance as if that alone is a “voice” or “perspective” (often times these guys DON’T have a voice or perspective, which might make their job more difficult if they are not truly skilled). Of course #3 and #4 are just a prelude to my personal gripe…

5) Why Do White and Black People Judge My Biracial Ass For Making Humorous Commentary On Race – If you can tell from #3 and#4 this is personal.  I have the comedic misfortune of being opinionated and sharp on race in my material while looking like an Italian in the winter and an Egyptian in the Summer (my Dad is black and my mother is white). In other words, black rooms (not necessarily black people individually, but rather comedy clubs with a classic urban sensibility) require me to be more forceful in asserting my blackness before I am “allowed” to speak on it, while many whites don’t like being lectured to on race by some guy who looks mostly like them. In conclusion I hate you both.

6) Please Let It Be a Hotel… Dammit It’s a Comedy Condo – I would lick a Las Vegas Holiday Inn comforter with more mental peace than I have when I get into a comedy condo bed.  “Hey, I like your choice to go with a white comforter in the comedy condo – really brightens the room!”  “Huh, that comforter is navy blue.” Cue Jim Carrey crying in the shower in Ace Ventura.

7) Jack and Jill and Other Things I Am Ashamed Of On The Road – I love going to the movies, but it can reach the point on the road where I am seeing a movie just to avoid staring at a wall or becoming Jack Nicholson in The Shining.  That is my official explanation for why I saw Bucky Larson last year.

8 ) Why Am I Getting Paid The Same As A Feature in 1985?  From several accounts I hear the actual dollar amount is less (especially when considering that travel was sometimes included during the comedy boom), but the fact is that in adjusted dollars features are making far less than their counterparts 20+ years ago.  Any other profession work that way?  Is a partner at a law firm in NYC going home to his family saying, “I just made partner!  How does $50,000 a year sound? What? That is how much our daughter’s private school costs?  OK, well, let me get back to my managerial position at Best Buy where I can make some real cash.”

9) Dear Booker, It’s Me J-L, Please Read My E-Mail – Being a comedian without management is sort of like being Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. You are just sending messages out into space with the faint hope of receiving a reply. (My June and July are open – call me!)

10) Yes, I can Explain That 4 Year Gap on My Resume… I Was In Jail.  This is the excuse I have come up with if employers start asking me about my tweets or YouTube videos. “No, that is not me – my accounts were hacked. I was actually in prison for those four years, but in no way, shape or form was I performing stand up comedy.”

 

J-L’s New Stand-Up Album “Too Big To Fail” is Available at www.JLCauvin.com for FREE until April 30th. His weekly podcast “Righteous P***k” is available for free on iTunes with a new episode every Tuesday.

Starving Kids, Depressed Kittens & My Former Career as…

I will be writing a new post Wednesday, but I wanted to share two new videos from last week’s killer show at Gotham Comedy Club as Comedians At Law concluded our Lawmageddon Tour.  Enjoy (really one of my best sets – thanks to all who were there)

My Career as an ADA

Starving Kids vs. Depressed Kittens

Hope you enjoy and please share.  Don’t forget – my new CD is FREE on my store page for the month of April and a new episode of my podcast goes up tomorrow (all this before a new blog on Wednesday). Thanks for the support.

 

 

Too Big To Fail. Maybe.

I am in the middle of a media blitz promoting my brand new stand up album “Too Big To Fail” which was released today at 12:01 am – how dramatic!  And by media blitz I mean a Facebook invite, an e-newsletter, and some tweets.  The biggest decision for me was to make it free to download for the month of April.  I did this for several reasons.  One, Louis CK charged $5 for his last special and I’ll be damned if he is going to get the “nice to his fans” credit over me.  The main reason is that I have sort of given up.  I am literally doing everything I can to build a brand, to get my name out, to share as much comedic content as I can and nothing seems to have broken through.

For example – my YouTube videos.  Most are really good, well-written and have a strong production value.  None has gone “viral.” My Tax Masters spoof is the closest at around 19,000 views, but other videos have just not blown up. I have no idea how to make that happen (www.YouTube.com/JLCauvin if you want some laughs).

My blog and podcast are small successes (the blog more so) and I am hoping an opportunity to share my comedy blogs with the Huffington Post will yield more traffic, etc. but I still don’t know the logistics of doing this or if the opportunity is still open (a few days before my website went down for 6 weeks I was asked to share my comedy writings with the Huffington Post – great timing by me to have my site down).

For the first time in five years it appears that I will have fewer bookings than the previous year.  For anyone not in the comedy business allow me to explain what that means: my career is now going backwards – at least as far as the traditional comedy trajectory is concerned.

So that brings us to the ironically titled “Too Big To Fail.” When I was organizing and writing my material for the CD I wanted one of the themes of the CD to be a snapshot of a struggling comedian before he either quits or makes it big.  So the idea of Too Big To Fail, even though it is not explicitly stated on the album, is that I am at the point where something has to hit to make me big or I am going to have to figure out how to live a life without comedy as my future (or at least the driving force of my future).  So I thought, what the hell? If I have nothing to lose, why not just make the CD free for everyone?  I have already gotten some great feedback so maybe it will work.  Work for what do you ask? I have no idea. I don’t know what my goals as a comedian in 2012 should even be.  The path to success that I want to exist seems to not exist anymore. So maybe some guy or gal will hear this CD and forward it to someone who will forward it to someone, etc.

But now that I have the blog back, the podcast humming along and the CD out I feel like I have given it my best shot.  So now it is time to look for a day job.  If you are so inclined to listen to a free comedy CD (and forward it along to friends and colleagues) here is the link:

https://jlcauvin.com/?page_id=3807

I have done all I can to put my material out there so I guess now I need your help in getting more ears listening to it.  I am writing to all 8 of you that read this.

How To Get Along With A Struggling Comedian

Hello everyone.  It has been eight weeks since I last posted and I have been itching to write.  My new site is finally up and I am very proud of it (www.JLCauvin.com). I have been touring cities at a relatively exhausting pace (by the end of the month it will be 11 cities and 10 states in under 40 days – consider it my Lenten wandering in the desert of comedy), reaping little financial benefit and even less comedy industry credit. To give you a glimpse of my current comedy pessimism, two nights ago I dropped a pitch perfect George Lopez impression on stage for the first time and all I could think was, “Well there is another thing I can do that will go to the grave with me.”

I usually spend a lot of time, when I do write about comedy, complaining or critiquing aspects of the business, whether it is bookers, managers, clubs, or monolithic groups of comedians.  But I realized it is not just them making comedy more difficult, it is regular people and everyday individual comedians who make this such an annoying journey at times, even if they don’t intend to.  So, inspired by the “Broken Windows” theory of crime prevention, which theorizes that swarming and fixing little problems will lower overall crime, I present the “Broken Compliments and Questions About Comedy” theory on making comedians, who are struggling in the increasingly weakening middle class of comedy, happier day-to-day.  Obviously these are my own personal theories, but I doubt I am the only one for whom these will resonate.  Some of these apply to fellow comedians and some apply to regular folk.  Enjoy:

1) Re-Tweet, don’t Favorite. And don’t email or direct message me that I am funny.  I am a reluctant abuser of social media.  If I did something else I would avoid it, but it is a part of entertainment so I try to immerse myself in it.  But the reward is very simple – if someone likes something, share it. That is how I can advance my reach and audience.  Treating my material like a black guy that a white girl secretly dated in college is helpful to no one.  I am sure there is some benefit to favoriting. I just don’t care.

2) Don’t ask me about how my comedy is going. And definitely don’t refer to it as “my comedy thing/skits/sketch/hobby.” If you think it is so trivial then don’t ask about it. But if you are actually curious then speak of it like it is a career or a job.  No one ever asked me how the “legal thing” was going when I was a practicing lawyer.

Want to see me smile about comedy? It's unlikely, but these guidelines give it a chance.

3) Don’t tell me about your friend who is hilarious unless they are a comedian. Otherwise you are insulting and degrading what I have sacrificed to be skilled at what I do. I was the funny asshole at the cafeteria table and have been since I was 10. But now I make strangers laugh and have done so with an economically crushing, relationship harming, career risking, trial and error process.  So your friend can go fu*k himself.

4) Don’t say you want to go to a show or to let you know when I am in town unless you mean it.  You owe me nothing.  I mean it. I am doing comedy whether you support it or not.  It is like a story I shared from a couple of years ago. A decently connected manager was very interested in working with me to find a way to publicize my Obama impression. We met several times over several months and then he told me that he decided not to commit to it.  The lesson – don’t say anything unless you’ve made the decision to act, not just because you think you might act.  That way expectations are not raised. Simple and thoughtful.  If I don’t know, then I can’t care.

5) If a joke goes up on Facebook, “Like” it – don’t piggyback on the joke. There are a few egregious offenders of this – the person that never acknowledges a good joke, but then just takes the 95% of thought that the writer created and then simply attempts to add to it. If you like a joke, like it. If you don’t ignore it. But if someone beat you to a concept, don’t try to pull yourself up by their bootstrap.

6) Try to make famous people work for it on social media. Comedians and civilians alike – try not to kiss too much ass, especially of funny people, unless they are actually being funny.  They do not care about you or how many times you suck their twitter di*k.

7) Don’t ask me why I don’t have an agent or a manager.  It is not by choice.  I don’t want to be a struggling freelance unknown, unappreciated comedian.  And to answer your follow up, yes, my career would be easier if I had people booking me for shows and auditions and gigs.  Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

8 ) If you do nothing do not ask me to follow you on Twitter. I will follow friends and fellow comedians that I like either personally (which pains me because sometimes I feel like I am giving positive reinforcement to a mediocre product) or professionally, but every so often a person from a show will ask for a “follow back.”  Why? Did you just travel 100o miles to entertain me with your writing and performance and I will receive more of that?  OR are you just someone who tweets random personal thoughts and opinions with way too many pronouns, which make even your mundane thoughts hard to process (“This book is great!” – what fu*king book?!!!).  But thank you for equating my career of making people laugh and trying to build a fan base that will purchase tickets to see me and raise my minuscule profile with your desire to brag to your friends about how many people checked our your twitpic of your salad at Panera Bread.

Ahhhhh, feels good to be back.