Trying Times in Indianapolis

This past week I spent in Indianapolis to compete in Trial By Laughter, a comedy contest (yay) between thirty-two comics from around the country.  Here are the important details:

  • The winner was to receive $1,000 cash, an Amazon Kindle, a Flip camera, a 45 minute DVD shoot at Morty’s Comedy Joint – the host club for the competition and a CD recording deal
  • Runner up was to receive $500 cash, a Flip camera, a 30 minute DVD shoot at the club and a recording deal
  • 3rd and 4th place receive automatic entry into the Laughing Skull Festival in Atlanta in Spring 2011
  • 5th-32nd place leave with varying ranges of disappointment and bitterness towards comedy and with sets to air on local Comcast (Indiana/Midwest) this December.

Guess which group I fell in?  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Here is a full recap of the week.

Night 1 – Optimism in Many Forms

So the first night of the competition I did good work.  I was the second overall comedian of the competition and I felt very good about my set.  I ended up placing first in my group and moving on to the semi finals.

After the show I was going to go to Steak N Shake with fellow comedian Nick Dopuch of Chicago via St. Louis, except for one thing – Nick’s car broke down – specifically his alternator and battery were shot.  This combined with Nick not moving on to the next round (he went after me and lost the crowd with a Chicago Cub bit) and I was feeling bad for him.  Had both of those things happened to me I probably would have lit the car on fire, but Nick was remarkably pleasant.

And he was rewarded – two women who had watched the show drove by and asked us if we needed help (isn’t it usually the other way around? – what a great feminist moment).  They ended up driving us to the dealership so Nick could leave the car there for morning repairs and then were Nick’s guest to Steak N Shake as a thank you (sure this could be the opening for a porno film, but one was married and one had a boyfriend so Nick was going to have to be content with a hamburger and milkshake).  Here is the most important part of our conversation, which, once again, took place at Steak N Shake, where we were waited on by Andrew,

who looked like a teenage Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, for the first of 4 consecutive nights:

Woman 1 – So you guys just travel around doing comedy?

Nick and J-L – Yeah

Woman 2 – So it must be crazy – is it just money and partying on the road?

Nick and J-L – Yeah, that is why you had to give a jump to my broken down Honda.  And why we are sitting in Steak N shake eating ice cream with platonic groupies – because it is fu*king crazy!

So after night 1 I was feeling optimistic of my chances in the competition and was more impressed with the resiliency of Nick.

Days 2-4 – Movies, The Rock & Al Pacino

The next two days were basically me and Nick driving from strip mall to strip mall doing impressions of The Rock, Al Pacino.  We also went to see Paranormal Activity 2 (underrated) and Due Date (overhyped).  Basically it was just a higher IQ version of Dumb and Dumber for 48 hours.  We also watched the other competitors each night, and passed judgment on most of them.

I kept telling Nick that he had me laughing way more in real life than when he was on stage.  It was like looking at my opposite.  I have been told to be nicer on stage, whereas I think Nick may make too much of an effort to be nice on stage.  That’s comedy – trying to be yourself, while making it work for other people.

Night 4 – The Death of Optimism

So every competition for me has a pattern – I have a kick ass first round,  and a very good set in the round preceding the finals that is derailed by some sort of bad timing.  A brief history:

2008 Boston Comedy Festival – Sandwiched between Bostonians Joe List and Myq Kaplan I get squashed – less crowd interactive than List and then dismissed by one of Kaplan’s patented callback quips to my set.

2009 Boston Comedy Festival – I went last in a field of 8 in the semi finals.  I had an excellent set.  Unfortunately, the audience had sort of tuned out because Dave McDonough had just obliterated them (he went on to win the whole thing).  It was like he felt like a closer and then “hey wait, don’t leave – we know you loved that last guy, but we have one more as*hole who wants to stop you from going home – J-L Cauvin!”

2010 New York Comedy Contest – only 2 rounds and I finished 2nd of 70+ comedians.  1st place won $2500.  2nd place won $0

2010 Trial By Laughter – I am seeded 2nd, but behind the #1 seed Tom Simmons, who beat me in San Francisco last year and went on to win the whole thing.  As a 17 or 57 year veteran of comedy Simmons is a very tough matchup and going last (the benefit of being the higher seed) would make it nearly impossible.  But after the set I had in the first round I am not sure why I drew the toughest matchup in the second round, but the karma-like tradition of “fu*king J-L in the semi finals/second round” is apparently set in stone at this point.

Tom and I had engaged in some spirited texting during the week.  Where he assured me that everyone was fighting for second place and made Mom-related comments and plagiarised Eminem to trash talk while I asked him if he would use any notes from his days workshopping with Elaine Boozler.  So Thursday night we were the lad off matchup with NYC’s Lance Weiss leading off followed by me, closed out by Tom Simmons.

The competition is being filmed for local Comcast airing so all sets needed to be TV clean.  Lance Weiss, 40 seconds into his joke said: “oops I fu*ked up that joke, and now I have cursed… I will be selling my DVDs after the show” – a very funny moment, but made it more obvious that it would be a showdown between the Tom and I.

I went up and had a perfect set (10 minutes this round and comedians were not allowed to repeat jokes from any preceding rounds).   I could not be angry with myself.  What I could be angry with is that the crowd was now sufficiently warmed up for Tom Simmons to finish the show.  Which he did.  I left his set 3 minutes in because every minute that went by I could hear my chances of winning diminishing with every Midwestern guffaw.  Towards the end of his set I heard a loud burst of applause and I came back into the showroom, assuming it was him getting off stage.  Nope.  Applause break.  At that moment, for the 58th time in 7 1/2 years I declared my comedy career over.  All the frustration of the highs and lows just came to an all new head.

Tom Simmons went on to finish second to Kansas City’s Mike Baldwin so thanks for doing my job for me Baldwin.  Of course I was not there because I had flown out the morning of the Finals.  Special thanks to comedian Tony Deyo, who was also a much better sport than me about losing in a very tough semi finals match (to Mike Baldwin), who gave me an early morning ride to the airport.  I guess one of the good things about the week was to see and meet comedians who were able to roll with punches a lot better than me and look to the bigger picture.

Unfortunately now is not the time for lessons because I am headed to Boston for… you guessed it – the first round of the 2010 Boston Comedy Festival.  God help us all.

Performance Anxiety

This weekend I worked a few shows in Long Island.  The crowds were typical Long Island – politically conservative (finally I got to see some Carl Paladino signs!), comedically crude (with obvious exceptions within each audience).  My clever jokes got polite laughter and any joke that I had that included the word fu*k or sex received much more positive feedback.

The real dilemma for me, however, was the late show on Saturday night.  I was sitting at the club bar pre-show watching the Knicks game and Knicks bearded forward Ronnie Turiaf was on the screen.  Here is what I got to hear from one of the caucasion bar patrons, who was waiting to go into the late show:

“Can anyone teach these guys to trim a beard!  Look at this guy – he’s like the other guy with the beard… (NY Jets receiver) Braylon Edwards – these guys can’t trim their beards! (Pointing at the screen) Maybe if this guy got another stint in jail they could teach him to trim his beard!  (mumbling with his friend) – Nigga please! (back slapping laughter)”

Now, as far as I know Ronnie Turiaf is not a criminal, but he is a black man playing basketball, which to some people is the same thing.  But I have to go perform comedy and try to entertain this obviously racist piece of sh*t?  Of course my joke about my Mom sponsoring my father for 46 cents a month got raucous laughter, which it generally does, but after many years I can start to tell when an audience is enjoying it too much.  I do not mean to make this seem like Dave Chappelle, who quit his show, in part because he felt like he was giving white people too much license to gang up in mean spirited laughter and N-word dropping on satires of black people.  But it certainly felt a little like that.

I never really considered leaving the club because it was one audience member and I am in no position to burn comedy bridges, but the fact that that man and his friends and many of his ilk sat in judgment of my comedy and may have been entertained by me makes me want to vomit.  I thought as I got older I would see less racism, but it seems the more I meet people and see different groups of people as I perform comedy, the more I see the uglyside of people.  I am in the unique position of looking fairly white to the untrained or underexposed eye and I have always been privy to hearing real racism – not the rants of wild-eyed racists who want to lynch negroes, but the prejudicial jokes and bad taste that go with the everyday, ordinary racist who thinks he or she is outside the presence of minorities.  It is still ugly in America, but this weekend was the first time where this reality infected my comedy career.

When I got on stage and told the crowd I was half-Haitian, half-Irish, a Caucasian male in the front row shook his head and said, “no way.”  And I laughed and said, “Maybe you are right – perhaps my Dad has been lying to me my whole life.  Or maybe you are just wondering if you said anything racist near me.”

The deafening silence that followed that line in the club was the best thing I heard all night.

The Real Audience of New Jersey

Last night I performed on a show in Hoboken at a bar & grill named Busker’s.  I have performed many times in Hoboken before (Pat Breslin, Jim Dodge and I ran a show for about 2 years at The Goldhawk) and have found the crowds almost always good.  Quick reference for what makes a crowd good:

1) They shut the fu*k up.

2) The get basic news and cultural references.

3) The do not want to fight the comedian.

Basic and simple requirements for a good audience.  Well, back to Busker’s…

So I take the stage and I am the third comic on stage (including the emcee) so by now a normal crowd is warmed up, or at least understands that they are at a comedy show.  I open my set with my bit about big n tall stores, which offends almost no one, is a clean bit and has been consistently (every time for the past year) working.  Well – it got some tepid applause and a few stares like I was either speaking too quickly or speaking the wrong language.

So then I go into my bit about breast cancer awareness month and as it relates to the NFL and more specifically Ben Roethlisburger, quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Some key point I make during this 90 second bit:

  1. Ben Roethlisberger is quarterback for the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers
  2. Ben Roethlisberger raped women
  3. Michael Vick served 2 years for killing dogs, but Roethlisberger, who has “rape chicks” as a bulletpoint on his resume served no time and was suspended a measly 4 games
  4. The NFL could have spent the millions of dollars they spent on outfitting players with pink wristbands and cleats on something more productive, like breast cancer research or keeping thei quarterbacks from raping people with breasts.

When the bit was finished, once again to record low laughs – though there was some – a woman, or more specifically a stupid woman, says: “Who is Ben Roethlisberger?”  Here is the exchange that followed:

JLC: I just said he is a pro football quarterback who rapes chicks!  See you can’t listen for five seconds every five minutes because you will lose things along the way like information and jokes.

Dumb Woman: But if he raped women he should be in jail.

JLC: excellent point (crowd laughing) – you are right – see I was making that exact point, but I was using something called sarcasm, which is where I state the opposite of what I mean, but in a way that is so obvious that only the dumbest person could not pick up on the fact that I mean the opposite of what I am saying,

DW: Ohhh – just keep doing sports jokes – tee hee (not her actual laugh, but that is the laugh of a dumb chick who thinks she is smarter than you).

I left her alone at that point because she was too dumb to insult effectively.  Referring to Ben Roethlisberger’s rape allegations as a “sports story” is slightly less embarrassing than someone saying they never heard of OJ Simpson because they never saw The Naked Gun.  But like much of America, when someone doesn’t understand something or know something she decided to mock me and make it like it was my comedy that was defective.   I was tempted to go after her more because it is rare in life that you get a full throttle opportunity to destroy someone who represents part of the essence of what you hate in the world, but just one night earlier a club owner told me I have to make a conscious effort not to be a dick on stage.  So I took a deep breath and moved on to my next bit.  Not one line into the next bit some older, leathery skinned woman who’s claim to fame is probably sleeping with a security guard for Skid Row in 1988 let her opinion be known as to my next premise by saying, “That’s not funny.”  Here is THAT exchange:

JLC: But I have not gotten into the joke yet

Tanned Whore: It’s Not Funny

At this point I start to lose my train of thought so I jump into a verbally clean bit, but one that is highly offensive (even I will admit that), which got some laughs from some of the crowd and the other comedians.  But TW kept yapping.

JLC: God comedy is great, sometimes you tell jokes on stage and other times you want to wrap the mic cord around someone’s neck.

TW: Bring it on!

JLC: (inner thought) Hitting women is 100% wrong, despicable, evil and totally justified in rare cases – the rare case where the woman actually and literally asks for it.

Calm down – I did not assault the woman.  I would never do that – but I am in the process of hiring a female ex con as my bodyguard and instructing her that she can assault women that I feel threaten me.  Because then it is just two women fighting and that is OK, even if one of the women is over two hundred pounds and has facial hair.

JLC: You are ruining the show for your boyfriend.

TW: He’s not my boyfriend.  We’re just friends.

JLC: Lucky man -dodged a bullet.  But I guess we’ll all be able to catch you on your new Bravo series – The Real Cu*ts of New Jersey.

And then I walked off stage.  Probably not a good start to finding the kinder, gentler J-L.  But comedian Andy Kaufman gained fame by wrestling women so maybe there’s still an avenue open to me.

Squeezing Into A Costume

A few years ago I was attending a Halloween party, but I did not have a costume.  I went to all the large stores that emerge in Manhattan like a plague in October every year to look for a costume.  There even was a section of pre-packaged costumes in the “large male” section or whatever they called it.  And everyone of the costumes in the pituitary affliction section said  -“will fit men up to 6’4″ tall.”  If you read this blog, know my jokes or have met me since I turned 19 you know that I am 6’7″.  It was that day that I had literally outgrown Halloween.

Comedy is starting to feel like a Halloween store to me.  Like a 6’4″ shooting guard in the NBA I am starting to feel like I have no position.  Sometimes I like to make political jokes, sometimes I like sharp social commentary, sometimes I like doing impressions and sometimes I like making the occasional crude joke.  But that is what you get when your favorite comedians range from Chris Rock to Jim Norton to Jerry Seinfeld to Patric O’Neal to Gary Gulman to Bill Hicks to Greg Giraldo.  I like different styles and I just like to write funny things.  Perhaps I should just get a job writing for comedians, except my ego is not ready to give up the stage or to submit my writing to potential overwhelming rejection.

Last night I received a very precise and helpful critique from a club owner regarding my set.  Without getting into specifics, it is clear that to make it in comedy I am going to have to choose a persona and style and be consistent within it.  For example after 7 minutes of jokes that are detailed, sharp, clever and clean, it was not consistent closing with a joke about Moms pimping photos of their kids on Facebook and masturbating to the photos just on principle.  The joke got a big laugh, but was slightly out of sorts with the rest of my set.

The thing that makes me sad about this is that comedy is no different than acting.  Live at Gotham had made that brutally evident to me after being passed over several seasons and then watching a show that looked like they were trying to re-cast The Hangover (sans Bradley Cooper), no matter what sacrifices had to be made occasionally in the comedy department.  Humor is still important of course, but I had always hoped that I would not have to necessarily be a niche performer – that I could just say funny things and if a few happened to be dirty or provocative, or if a few were clean and a few others were socially critical I could do it if the crowd laughed.   Basically because I hate niche comedians.  And I don’t want to be them.  For all the frustrations I have with comedy it would be unforgivable to become one of them.

One of the other critiques I got was that I sometimes come off as “a bit of a dick” on stage. 

No sh*t. 

Fu*k Halloween.

Behind The Scenes of Brett Favre’s Wrangler Commercials

One of the sad parts of being an up and coming stand up comedian, besides having to call yourself an up and coming stand up comedian for at least a decade before you can just be a “comedian,”  is that producing time-sensitive original content can be difficult since you do not do it professionally you do not have crew and actors on the ready to produce whatever you come up with.  Well, a month ago I wrote a sketch for PMSports – a new website that claims to specialize in sports-related comedy, but actually specializes in dick jokes, racial slurs and only approaches sports stories that even non sports fans are aware of.  Well, after having 11 sketches rejected by the site in a month and seeing them set comedy back several IQ points I decided to film a couple of my sketch ideas.

This one is about how Brett Favre treats rehearsals for his commercials the same way he treats pre season for football.  Sadly, 6 days after filming it, but two days before completion of editing Saturday Night Live, which tends to be funny by accident these days, produced a spoof of Favre’s Warangler commercial.  Their spoof focused solely on Favre’s texting of penis pictures (did someone sneak a PMSports sketch into the SNL writers’ room?).  Mine has a couple of references to that, but is about more than that.  Hopefully you enjoy it and can forward it around.

Unlike most of my sketches this one is a very manageable 2 minutes in length.

Booking Season

The last week I have spent doing my least favorite thing in comedy: sending e-mails for 2011 work at clubs.   To describe the feeling of this endeavor is to look into the eyes of a stripper at a strip club who keeps getting rejected by patrons.  “Do you want a dance?”  “Ugggggggh, no thanks.”  The only difference is the stripper is able to never go back to that customer and salvage whatever pride her uncle did not already take from her, whereas in comedy bookings you keep e-mailing the same person who has ignored you 20 times in a row because

a) maybe they get a lot of e-mails and you just have to be persistent (2 years and counting on several clubs without a response)

or

b) some of your friends or acquaintances have worked a certain club and you think/know you are funnier than them so at some point you will break through

or finally

c) to quote Richard Gere – “I got nowhere else to go!”

So after 45 e-mails this week I have received two responses.  One was entertaining because it would be opening for black comedian who has it in his contract that there can be no other black comedians on his show (making a half black, somewhat minority-ish looking comedian sort of a Plessy v. Ferguson test case for stand up comedy).  The bottom line is that comedy is looking less and less like a tenable option for employment.  Bookers seem to be 1/3 liars, 1/3 honest, but extremely busy and 1/3 indifferent.  Perhaps I need to book my gigs old school.  Like go to clubs in person.  With Luca Brasi.

Greg Giraldo: An Appreciation

Yesterday my favorite comedian, Greg Giraldo, died from a drug overdose.   The first time I saw Giraldo perform was at the Columbus Funny Bone.  I was in law school at the time and was visiting my then-girlfriend in Ohio.  It was only my second time to a comedy club and he delivered the goods.  The guy clearly had a great mind, but also the talent to convey his strong opinions on subjects without alienating audience members (though at this point he was big enough in comedy to bring some of his own audience).  I would start doing comedy shortly thereafter and Giraldo has been the standard I have measured myself against ever since.

 

He was an attorney before pursuing comedy, but it was not just personal parallels that I felt connected to.  It was the sharp way he took down people and institutions without once seeming like one of the lefty zealot Carlin-wannabe hacks that dominate the political discourse in comedy these days.  To borrow from politics, he thought like a liberal, but seemed to deliver from the center.

What bothers me most about the loss of Giraldo is that I wonder if the comedy climate will allow or develop another comic in the same mold as Giraldo.  More than ever I feel like comedy is about niche markets.  The more people I see getting breaks these days, the more I feel like producers are simply trying to re-create The Hangover – if you look half crazy (Alans), nerdy (Stus) or are very telegenic (Phils) you are even money.  And if you are a social critic, “truth” is acceptable as long as it is is delivered by some far left, “daring and brave” comic who preaches consistently to his own choir, but beyond that – good luck.

But Giraldo was the comic who achieved success while not fitting any mold or focus group.  He could mock the Church in one joke and then mock gay marriage in the next and never feel preachy about either.  He was just a comedian who could look on the handsome side of normal (when not disheveled), speak intelligently without being consistently left or right, and could just write the best fu*king jokes.  He was just so good as a comedian that he did not need a niche.  I hate when I read about him being pigeon-holed as an “insult comic.”  He was so much more than that.  But even Giraldo, a comedian who while alive did not need a niche to make it big, is now being shelved into a niche so he can be neatly categorized in death.

But I wonder if the direction of modern culture will restrict or constrain the next Giraldo (or the next great comedian to be inspired by Giraldo’s voice) from reaching his or her potential.  Much like I never think another Michael Jordan can be fostered because nowadays anyone with Jordan’s talent would be exalted as a superhero from the age of 14 (see LeBron James) and would thereby lack the insecurity, drive, and chip-on-shoulder syndrome that drove Jordan.  Similarly, Giraldo came up in a pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook age in comedy, where a comedian’s mind was his chat room, complete with insecurities and fears, which, for anyone who read the Psychology Today article featuring Giraldo, knows helped drive him, even if he never felt as focused as he should have been.

Now, more than ever, comedy, especially for up and comers, is a big circle jerk of artificial support and well wishing and just generally a cyber world of sycophants.  Anyone who has been to an open mic in NYC knows that there is such a cliquish and tribal nature that is utterly nauseating.    Giraldo was so deep in his own head, at least from what I read about him, that he fell into addiction.  But sometimes I feel like great comedy can only be borne from minds that go into places that most people don’t like venture into.  Instead the comedy world I live in is full of young comics with lots of friends, lots of “likes”, and lots of meaningless drivel.

My favorite compliments I have ever received as a comedian were the few times when people have told me that my comedy reminded them of Greg Giraldo.  It meant that I was funny and what I was saying actually had meaning.  One time a club manager asked me who my favorite comedians were and the first answer I had was Giraldo.  He dismissed my choice and replied that Giraldo was not making nearly the money that some other comedians were making.  And I replied that that spoke poorly of clubs and the business, not of Giraldo.

I abhor people’s inability to have feelings anymore without posting a Tweet or status update.  I felt no need to express what I felt about Giraldo yesterday because anyone who is worth anything intellectually or comedically would mourn the loss of Giraldo and his immense talent and originality.  But since I am a comedian and I had not written anything in a while I figured readers or fans of this blog would not know me as a comedian without knowing how I felt about Giraldo.

I remember when I lived on the Upper West Side a few years ago I was working out at Equinox on 92nd st and Broadway and I saw Greg Giraldo on an elliptical machine.  I had never actually met him and I was very excited.   I smiled at him and pointed as if to say “Hey – I’m a big fan.” He removed his headphones and sort of nodded a thanks and that was the only exchange.  I guess if I had known all his internal struggles I would have told him he was worth more than a drug addiction and that he meant a lot to me and to a lot of people.   He may have just written a joke about some weird, preachy douchebag at the gym.   But maybe he just didn’t hear that enough.

Primary School

Well, it was primary day in NY and six other states plus the District of Columbia yesterday.  Here are some of yesterday’s lessons that are clear about the American people (that I have harped on for so long):

1) Without a cool, young black guy there isn’t nearly as much enthusiasm for politics in America (from some groups).  Barack Obama’s double-edged sword of 2008 is coming to fruition.  He ran as a pop culture icon, which was brilliant personal strategy.  However, many of the “engaged new voters” (yes young people and black people I am talking to you most of all) who were not as much engaged in the political process as they were engaged in Facebook, Twitter and wanting to be part of history.  I waited an hour to vote in November 2008.  I waited 0 seconds yesterday, despite going at the same time of the day.   Ironically it was at the Church I attend and the demographics looked the same – me and some old women.

2) People want to matter, more than they care about issues.  The tea party has two unspoken founded principles.  One is that they are bursting with racist frustration at having a black president.  They KNOW they cannot say “Nig*er” but they can still feel it.  Joe McCarthy did not hate “socialism” as much as these people.  “Obamacare,” “socialist,” and “not born in America” are all surrogates for nig*er.  But the less insidious, but more relevant factor behind the Tea Party is the desire to matter.  The new American way is to force the world to recognize your relevance, even if you are completely irrelevant.  Some examples:

  • Reality television – failed actors and stupid people now can become stars, as long as they have an unbridled desire to be famous.  Talent, relevance or meaningful contributions are no longer needed to be famous.  All you need is the desire to be famous above all things.
  • Twitter, Facebook – we now all have important things to say
  • Political elections – The Tea Party is comprised almost entirely of angry, older white people and they were the ones who felt left behind by Obama’s election – either because of their age, the skin color or their inability to use a computer.

The Tea Party is a great example of this.  They may cost Republicans a chance at the Senate because above political gains, they value being heard and being viewed as relevant above all.  Now they get attention paid to them.  That is the end game, whether they are conscious of it or not.  They are never going to win the White House, they are never going to win a 51 seat majority in the Senate.  But they are going to be noticed.

3) America is about “Me” and about “Them” and Not about “We” or “Us.”

Every marketing campaign in the U.S., from medical books to cable television has some variation of “It’s about you,” or “The Guide to You” or “On Your Time Warner.”  This is what people want.  An increasingly superficial and secular society still has the needs that family and religion provide(d).  Obama created his election in 2008 into a moment for each person to be involved with.  He may have said “You” and “We” as a collective term, but his election presented the rare opportunity for people to feel like they were individually part of history – something that we all seem to want nowadays.  But when that “we” started to be used to ask for patience and cooperation and voting in smaller elections that are just as critical, that “we” started to feel like being an anonymous part of a group, i.e. we’re no longer special and important individually.  That is why voter turnouts are terrible on primary days and on non-awe inspiring election days.

The flip side of this is why the Tea Party candidates won in New York and Delaware.  Carl Paladino, he of the Pimp Obama  e-mail, crushed Rick Lazio in the Republican primary because the Republicans that cared the most were the black-hating, black-fearing folks (sorry a photo of The President and First Lady as a pimp and a prostitute has no humor value unless you believe the simple fact that they are black makes them pimp and prostitute material – remember when being a racist could disqualify a lot of candidates?).  They were the most fearful of being left out of the new America (seriously can someone explain to me what is so drastically new in America?).  Also in Delaware, where you have the trifecta of being old, white and from Delaware – the perfect storm of obscurity, they nominated Christine O’Donnell, politically, fiscally and intellectually the poor man’s Sarah Palin.  But now Tea Party people from Delaware get to be on the front of the New York Times.  Mission Accomplished – you matter.  These candidates have managed to to turn blacks, Democrats, immigrants and Muslims into “them.”  And that is saying something considering Rick Lazio lost, despite making opposition to the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero his signature campaign issue.  Perhaps he simply did not want the mosque located there, whereas Tea Party voters felt more sure that Paladino actually hated Muslims.

I just think America is too full of sh*t anymore.  There is a tremendous amount of racism still in this country’s fabric.  There is also an incredible amount of self-centeredness.  If Obama wants to keep Congress or at least the Senate he needs to get all his people that voted for him in 2008 (at least the ones that were not doing so to appear less racist to their peers, kids and grandkids for voting against a historic candidate) he needs to make it about US (i.e. You and ME).  We are the country that stops buying SUVs and clamors for energy independence when gas is high and then, in an almost seasonal and satirical shift – we immediately start buying SUVs when gas prices lower.  From the angry to the apathetic the majority of this country (comprised of all political stripes) just care about themselves.  Both sides of the country, left and right want to matter more than they actually do.   But we are only moved to political action when it appears that we can win (and winning does not mean winning the election – winning means mattering).  Obama voters felt like they mattered in 2008 (I remember reading posts on Facebook on Election Day from people who I knew to be politically apathetic – “Bye bye Bush – get out there and vote everybody!” – those would have actually mattered a lot more in 2004 dummies) and Tea Party members feel like it is their time to matter.

Whichever side you are on – I think we are all fu*ked.  And to paraphrase Obama, we are the ones we have been waiting to blame.  The Internet, 24 Hour politicized “news” and our decreasing attention spans are going to bury America in an interminable, political trench war.  I think America is becoming a place where the average person (i.e. obviously the people who vote in primaries are more politically involved than the average person – and yes I know people are registering more and more as independents, which fits my theory – everyone wants to be that critical swing vote in a meaningful election) don’t care about issues or candidates or America.  They care about themselves and they care about mattering.  The average voter is no different than Kim Kardashian or The Situation. They’re just uglier.

Comedy on “Shutter Island” and Long Island

Yesterday my schedule appeared to be a typical day in the life of a stand up comedian.  I started the day off splitting a pair of games with the Tampa Bay Rays in MLB The Show 10 on PS3 and finished up some comedy sketches I’ve been writing.  Then I headed to Roosevelt Island to perform comedy at a hospital and lastly to Long Island for a club audition.  It would not be typical.

Now the gig paid $30 and like prostitutes, comedians will often perform anywhere where payment  is involved, no matter how emotionally or physically painful.  It was offered to me by Brian McGuiness, who was going to host the show.  The show was to be one hour long and each comic would do 20 minutes (the third 20 minutes was to be provided by Joe Pontillo).   When you arrive on Roosevelt Island on the F train you are greeted by a man who is lying on a cot who has only a torso (unknown is it waist down or cock down, but in any case it is rather impressive).

They were warned.

When I met the other two comics we drove to the hospital, the name which escapes me, but what Joe Pontillo referred to as “Shutter Island.”  Whatever ward or wing of the hospital we were performing in seemed to only include people with severe phyiscal disabilities, coupled with slight mental disabilities and all exceeding 60 years of age.  In other words, my prime demographic.

Now I know I am supposed to feel good about bringing laughter and joy to people who do not always get entertainment, but it just did not feel that good.  Intellectually I know they probably liked to have the monotony of the day broken up by an activity, but the comedy aspect of the show was brutal.   McGuiness got up there first and got some tepid laughter and a couple of boos from patients who could barely speak.  I was unsure if it was light-hearted or if the people booing would prefer the sweet embrace of death to McGuiness’ humor.

Visually it was like performing in a Civil War infirmary.

Next was Joe Pontillo who actually had a pretty good set.  I hesitate to say “killed,” because there is a 25% chance someone actually died during the show.

Then it was my turn.  Here are some highlights:

That was it – those were my highlights (not a misprint – there’s nothing there).  One of the most awkward sets of my life.  Not the worst, because at least a couple of staff members and one or two patients laughed a couple of times.  But I did not know what silence was before this set.  It was like the hatred of Medgar Evers College for me (the worst show) was replaced with indifference of Shutter Island. (here is the link to the write up 4 years ago after the Medgar Evers show – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=140)

So after the show on The Island of Dr. Moreau I was off to Governor’s on Long Island to audition for work.  The audience was pretty good, but there were a couple of issues with the crowd.  One was that several of the Long Islanders at the club were joke echos – a term I think I invented, meaning that they have to repeat every punchline they find funny for their table.  It is incredibly irritating if it goes on for an entire routine.  The other group were the Obama boo-ers, who felt the need to boo me vigorously before getting into my Obama routine – which is completely non-political and not going to be on Saturday Night Live 🙁   As I went into the Obama it actually felt sort of like the scene in Goodfellas when Joe Pesci is yelling at his girlfriend for overly praising Sammy Davis Jr.  “I get it he’s talented, why do you keep going on about it!”

But the good news is I got passed to get work at Governor’s and I never have to go Roosevelt Island ever again.

The Shut The Fu*k Up List

Hey – I have no topic big enough to warrant an entire post, so I thought I’d just politely ask some people to simmer down:

1) Fantasy Football players – you make me ashamed to be a man.  Shut up about your league(s).  From hearing about your preposterous “draft” plans to hearing d-bags cheering against my team in a bar, simply because they need someone to make two more catches to win in their league, I hate it all.  I do not care how many people do this – you are a fu*king loser.  The inability to enjoy sports for sports’ sake should be a sad thing.  Perhaps the exponential growth of fantasy sports is one more indication of our culture being overstimulated to the point of needing more than just their favorite team to make sports interesting.  And there is just something extra grating about seeing many unathletic people participating at Fantasy Sports, giving them a long-awaited outlet to be competitive over sports.  It is the extra dose of rage I feel at losing in sports video games to a lesser athlete – it just feels doubly wrong.

2) The Comedians who are sweating Louie.  The FX show is solid.  A lot better than Lucky Louie which I thought was terrible.  But comedians can’t wait to heap praise on it.  It is hardly the best comedy I have ever seen, let alone the best on television.  30 Rock, Eastbound and Down and Community are all better right now.   Metaphorically inserting Louis C.K.’s balls into your mouth on your Facebook or Twitter updates will not make you any more meaningful a comedian by association.  I will say that – at least it is delivering a lot more than the movie Funny People did, with regard to stand up comedy.

 

3) Jay Pharoah.  Technically he has not said anything yet, but this is pre-emptive when he gets to be the Obama impersonator for the 36th Season of Saturday Night Live.

Tomorrow I am doing a show at a hospital and auditioning for a club in Long Island, so hopefully those experiences will provide some blog inspiration.