What Happened to the Best Black and White Cookie? Blog

What Happened to the Best Black and White Cookie?

Growing up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one of the best things I recall from my youth (and early adulthood) were the black and white cookies from Mother’s Bakery. No matter what day of the week, there was always a chance they would not have them when my father would go for an evening walk to buy them. On those disappointing nights he would often return with cupcakes from Mother’s, which although consisting of the same ingredients as the black and white cookies, lacked both the cake-to-icing ratio of the cookie and the diversity, equity and inclusion that I preferred in my desserts.

The Mother’s black and white cookie was simply put the best black and white cookie I’ve ever had (Producer Jack Woltz’ voice) and I’ve had them all over the world!  They were made fresh daily and sold out daily.  I would always begin with the vanilla side, which was a sweeter icing, at times with a vague hint of lemon (this was a change about halfway in my decades of experience with Mother’s). I always began with vanilla because the cold glass of milk I always had waiting to chug, was a much better chaser to the chocolate side.  After meticulously finishing the vanilla side, I got to my favorite part of the cookie: the bi-racial overlap (you are what you eat).   I would eat this part horizontally, usually 2.5 bites worth of chocolate missionary-on-top-of-vanilla icing/frosting (not really sure – sort of a hybrid, midpoint between the two states of dessert matter) and then crush the chocolate side. Then with mouth mouth sufficiently caked and satisfied would chug the glass of milk with a deep sigh of satisfaction that signaled that my day was over.

I have had black and whites from many independent bakeries and chain bakeries and I have never had a black and white cookie that came anywhere close to Mother’s.  Like Secretariat at Belmont level distance.  And then one day, maybe a decade ago, Mother’s Bakery closed.  They had vanquished rival bakeries in the area, but after decades (I was aware of them for about 20 years but they had been open before then) they closed.  I have heard that the landlord that owns many commercial properties near where I grew up is one of those “I have enough money that I don’t care if my properties stay vacant” types.  Beyond the closing of a neighborhood institution that seemed to do a thriving business, the existential question I had ever since was, what happened to the Mother’s black and white cookies?  It seems they just no longer exist, but in the memory banks of my tastebuds.

You may be wondering, J-L, are you really just writing a blog about the loss of a cookie?  No, of course not.  When my special, Half Blackface came out (reminder – it is free on Amazon Prime and only has 61 ratings and reviews – I have 200K+ followers on social media, so needless to say that is disappointing) the producers decided, based on my NYC and bi-racial roots, to make the cover a black and white cookie.  I had no input on choosing it, but enthusiastically approved of the concept.  But as I reach a real crossroads in my comedy career and life, it has me contemplating mortality. Not of my own life, but of the work I have made.  But unlike the black and white cookies of my youth whose disappearance shocked me and has stayed with me, I am witnessing the increasing irrelevance of my work as it is happening.  Like the difference between being hit by a car and wasting away with a terminal illness.

I told my girlfriend in 2021 as I was experiencing career firsts and career highs left and right that I never wanted to tread water again with my comedy career. That if the surge in interest in my work and the quality and volume of my work were not self-sustaining economically and emotionally that I would not go back to the life of spending 50% of my time working a day job, 45% of my time doing comedy and 5% trying to cram in life. If after 20 years, hundreds of thousands of followers and 3 comedy careers worth of output I could not be a full time comedian  then I couldn’t do it anymore. And yet, nearly 5 years later that is exactly where I am.  Producing videos, podcasts, prepping a new special and living month to month ( I try very hard not to touch the money I made in 2020-21 because that now feels more like prize winnings than a validation of my work and dedication as a comedian – the fruits born of algorithm fertilizer more than artful tilling of comedic fields. So don’t take the “month to month” as literal and desperate as some others may mean it). With a little over a month before I make a potentially life-altering career decision, it has forced me to reckon with the state of entertainment and the state of my comedy career in a very sobering way.  My fear at this point, as it has often been is not the idea of stopping my pursuit of comedy success and work, but whether my work has left any sort of legacy, big or small.  Will any of my work outlive me?  Not only is the answer no, but it seems that the exact opposite is true: I will outlive my art.

Even as I write this, an irony is present: my word press blog site is informing me through an obnoxious red dot that my blog is failing on its “readability” metrics (shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, shorter overall, etc.).  So, at the risk of losing the few of you who made it this far based on predictive attention span, I will continue.  When I began comedy the goals were to write jokes, practice/perform those jokes, refine those jokes, film those jokes for booking (not content) purposes and become a good comedian because that was the key to working as a comedian.  Then podcasts and YouTube and social media arrived, and while I have diligently worked on all those platforms, when Tik Tok came along it seemed to announce, with no ambiguity or respect for the old ways, that there was now only one path to success (for those not grandfathered in with success and fans before around 2015 or granted membership into the club/entourage of a legit comedy star): feed the content machine with what its algorithms want.

So the job of a comedian, especially one unrepresented by an agent, manager or other form of power broker, is to feed the algorithm. Like an art version of the machines feeding on comatose human bodies in The Matrix.  This would be bad enough if it was just affecting what percentage of artists became shameless, click hunting hacks, but it has affected the audience as well, and it is not fellow artists who eventually decide the worth and legacy of your work; it’s the audience.

Over the last 4 years I have seen everything from sketch videos to comedy specials to my appearance on Showtime’s Billions suppressed by algorithms.  Oddly enough it was a video filmed in Canada that exploded for me a couple of weeks ago, which raises the question: if I sell more tickets on a Wednesday to fans (not just regular club attendees, but fans) in a Canadian city than I can in any city in America on any night of the week, despite 85% of my fans being American, is the algorithm simply suppressing me where I live?  And before you get on your annoying partisan high horse, this began almost 2 years before Elon Musk bought Twitter.  Condemning Trump in 2021 meant condemning my work as well.  Social media wise, Trump and I shared 97% of the same DNA – like a chimp and human, respectively.

But it’s not just the algorithm, but the way social media has conditioned audience to consume.  I have had too many people write in my comments “where have you been?”, “where did you go?”, “I thought you quit”, “welcome back!” and many more comments like this that tell me my work is largely “out of sight, out of mind” for most of my fans followers.  This may seem like an odd complaint, but, to paraphrase Brian McKnight, “do I ever cross your mind… then go click on my page, my website, my YouTube page, anything!!!… anytime.”  Despite our near universal negative opinion of social media, we still seem to trust it to curate exactly what we want.  But if fans of mine think about my work, but then cannot take the 5 seconds to find me, often on the same site they are thinking of my work, then my comedy is no longer art, and is now mere distraction. Art is worth suffering for, hoping for and fighting for.  But distraction is not.  As more and more comedians, new and old, are content to bend the knee to the whims of algorithms and more audience treat comedy like a modern day joke-a-day desk calendar, it becomes a real question of whether it is worth it.  Because it is understandable if my work dies with me one day, but to watch it die while I am still making it is a much more difficult thing to accept.

Perhaps this is just something unique to me, but I don’t think it is. I see more successful comedians able to sell out huge theaters, not just small clubs with which I struggle.  I see comedians with smaller followings getting more gigs than me. Perhaps I simply rose during the pandemic because people were bored and receptive to politically-tinged comedy to get them through a day, but nothing more.  But it is little comfort when you want to keep making art and every common sense fiber is telling you that it is no longer with the effort, physically or mentally.

Whether it’s a greedy landlord pricing out Mother’s bakery, or algorithms exhausting the patience and desire of artists, the lesson seems to be that good things cannot last anymore.  But I will never have any doubts of the greatness and value of a Mother’s black and white cookie.  But if your entire success hinges not on the quality of your work, but the beneficence of algorithms and the increasingly addled minds they are cultivating, it forces you to wonder, like a tiny seed of doubt in a field of confidence you’ve spent your whole life working and perfecting, was it ever a good thing in the first place?

Road Comedy Recap: Queen City Celebration Blog

Road Comedy Recap: Queen City Celebration

Two decades in stand-up comedy have provided me with plenty of joy, plenty of pain and plenty of interesting experiences travelling the United States.  Late last week was my first trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, the “Queen City” (are Cincinnati and Charlotte ever going to have a WWE-style cage match to determine who is the sole Queen City?).  I was opening for the live show of The Black Guy Who Tips podcast and everything from the show to the fans to the city gave me all the positives that make me realize why I put up with all the frustrations of being in comedy.  But my train trip home from Charlotte to New Jersey was exactly the kind of experience I love getting from travelling to different parts of the country. Ok – let’s get to the recap!

The Black Guy Who Tips – a brief history

I do not know the first time I appeared on TBGWT, but I do know that my comedy career was at a low point (legitimately, not just the way I speak of it on a monthly basis), but once I was a guest on the show I realized that Rod & Karen had a different type of fan base.  An appearance on their show would yield the same amount of feedback and new followers as a good appearance on podcasts with fan bases twenty times larger.  And when I was doing road work as a feature, post TBGT, there would be fans of TBGWT showing up. The point is that, along with Pete Dominick’s podcast community, TBGWT gave me a new supply of high quality fans and kept me going in comedy until I could grow my own independent fan base (to then learn that most of them were just bored liberals who would simply check in to tell me they couldn’t make shows, subscribe to podcasts, watch YouTube, sign up my for my newsletter, etc. – apparently my fans are all the veteran from the Metallica video “One.”).  They run a great show and have one of the best high value fan bases in the comedy world.  And they are great people.

So when asked to open for their live show in Charlotte I said yes.

Amtrak to Charlotte

I got on the Carolinian at 7:20am in Newark, NJ for the 13 hour trip to Charlotte.  I had to sit next to someone for 10 of the 13 hours (two separate people) and it was generally uncomfortable. I am well known for my nationwide train travel and have been on trains as long as 45 hours (Chicago-Seattle). On those trains, however, I usually have my own small room, versus 13 hours in a single seat next to someone whose space I am trying to respect (if I were more like Trump I would simply ooze over into their seating area and say “buy me snacks and maybe I will give you your territory back”).

A little after Durham, NC (about 2.5 hours from Charlotte on the train) I thought, “I guess this train is going to get me there on time” (I had to record a live podcast at 930pm from my hotel room, so I only had 30 minutes of late time to spare).  And then the J-L Jinx struck (which tragically began when Patrice O’Neal asked me to emcee for him and passed away sixth months after I worked with him for the second time. Now my career feels like a combination of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Final Destination). Our train had to stop for over an hour because a truck crashed into a bridge on our route and engineers had to go to the bridge and assess the integrity of the bridge before we could cross over it.  We got the OK, but by then I had already canceled the podcast taping.

I got to my downtown Charlotte hotel and was charged $11 for a 20 oz water bottle and a snickers ice cream bar. Queen City indeed!  I did not realize royal city could invoke prima nocta to charge NYC airport prices!  I then went to bed prepared for a busy Friday.

The Beige Guy Who Interviews and The Black Guy Who Tips

When I went downstairs for my continental breakfast (eating enough to make my money back from the Snickers-Water robbery) I was greeted by Morgan Wallen playing on the radio, Fox News on the TV and burly white guys in camouflage  eating. It felt like I was in a safe house/panic room for Trump loving whites in a left-leaning Black city.

After breakfast I got on a zoom interview for a job at a law firm (found out today that I did not get a second interview – a disturbing event in my life because it is showing that my charm and interview skills can no longer mask my lack of employability). After the interview I went for lunch at the Capital Grille 10 minutes away because I eat lunch for the job I think I am going to get, not the job I am not going to get 3 days later.  I was struck by how nice downtown Charlotte is and how much construction is going up. Sadly, by me even observing this, I may have cursed the city with tragedy at a near future date.

I then went back to my hotel and read a book and prepped my set for the night.  After a nice shower it was time for the meet & greet at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

The Show

Seeing Rod for the first time in person in two years and Karen for the first time in around a decade was a wonderful reminder that I do not just live in cyber space and then we greeted all of their fans.  And each time Karen would ask “would you like J-L and Justin (a regular on TBGWT and I believe Rod’s best friend), in a picture as well?”  It was nice to be included and most people clearly wanted me included, but I was always close to feeling like a tip screen at a coffee shop “fine! *taps reluctantly on ‘J-L in picture also’ option*”

Crushing it in Charlotte

I opened the show and did quite well.  When I get the video in a week or two I will post the set to my Patreon (fans leave blog immediately at mention of pay platform). I then remained as a guest on the episode. After helping Karen and Rod with some of the clean up/break down we ate a delicious meal at a restaurant nearby called Sea Level.   It was a great honor and pleasure to do the show and to see the work and fanbase that Rod and Karen have built through their talent, work and kindness. I then went to bed that night with the following thought: “I will never have that kind of fan base, but at least I am in line to get that law firm job. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz”

T-Rex arms aside, I can reach high things. I bring jokes and part-time roadie skills

Jimmy Crack Corn and the Ride Home

I woke up at 5am to make sure I did not miss my 645am train home.  I went to the Starbucks across the street from the

train station and must say – people in the South are just nicer.  After a pleasant, early morning Starbucks session I walked across the street to the train. I boarded the business class car and sat next to a very polite, and more importantly, very petite, young Black woman. And then a man who I will call Jimmy Crack Corn got on the train. He looked like a typical late 30s white guy with a factory or construction job. He got on the train with a man I assumed was his friend, but then determined was just someone he struck up a conversation.  And by struck up a conversation I mean went on a three hour monologue.

I knew it was trouble because from the beginning Jimmy was too excited to explain every feature of the train and the (almost non-existent) perks of being in business class.  But once the conversation began it became clear that Jimmy had a lot to say.  I actually left to read for an hour in the snack car and when I returned it was like he had not stopped speaking. I knew this because the Black man sitting in front of me trying to read had a wide-eyed look that I had had an hour ago that said, “I can’t believe this guy is talking so much and so loudly” (perhaps “Black reader reacts to white talker” will be the next Tik Tok trend).  But as the largely one-sided conversation continued it hit various notes and I just leaned back and listened.

  • Phase 1 was a TMI confessional that included discussions of substance abuse – “smoked crack just to get his former wife off his back” (this is when I gave him the nickname of Crack-Eyed Joe, but Jimmy Crack Corn feels better now), “had drunk drove 300 or 400 times”, his daughter has not seen his ex for 7 years because she is such an addict who doesn’t care, and he said the phrase “long story short” multiple times while telling incredibly long stories with the energy of a former addict whose new addiction was talking
  • Phase 2 (return from reading in the snack car) was a discussion of fishing (his favorite activity) and how he doesn’t need to officially marry his current lady because Kurt Russell did just fine without it
  • Phase 3 – this is when I start to realize that Jimmy Crack Corn might be the typical American white male voter and perhaps I am lucky to be forced to listen to him talk. He told his neighbor (who I realized through their conversation had been helped to the station by Jimmy, despite being strangers) that: he doesn’t like politics (though he spent 30 minutes talking about politics), thinks Trump is a scumbag, but that Tim Walz is crazy for putting tampons in the boys’ bathroom, that if you can’t rent a car as a kid you shouldn’t be able to change genders as a kid (with a token “I don’t understand it – educate me on it then”), thinks millionaires don’t care about us, thinks the Left is too sensitive, men shouldn’t play women’s sports and that he heard a true story about a kid that identified as a cat
  • Phase 4 – toward the end of his seatmate’s ride Jimmy said, “it’s been a pleasure sitting with you. you made three hours feel like 30 minutes. I spend a lot of time alone up here (presumably lives in NC but works north of DC) and I like talking and meeting new people.

I felt like this guy was exactly who politicians on the Left should speak to because he seems to be all of the things with American white males that trouble the Left, but with a desire and willingness to engage.  Why not you J-L?  Because I was still pissed at how little I was able to read for the first part of the trip. But I will admit that I felt like I got a very full picture of someone who represents something important to understanding this country. And if I had talked at all and not been forced to listen, I would not have learned what I learned. That some of these dudes might be reachable, maybe. if you can get men like him to listen for even half as long as he likes to talk.

So this trip gave me everything I like out of comedy – a nice city, a great show, good fans and learning from different people in different places. Thank you to The Black Guy Who Tips and The White Guy Who Wouldn’t Shut Up.

Road Comedy Recap: Thirty Thursday in Philadelphia Blog

Road Comedy Recap: Thirty Thursday in Philadelphia

On Thursday I had my show in Philadelphia, at what I hope will become my new Philadelphia home for stand-up, Punchline Comedy Club.  I have performed in Philadelphia for 13 years, with over a dozen appearances featuring, headlining, recording 2 albums and doing a corporate event for Comcast (now Xfininty?) at Helium, then a nearly packed show at City Winery last year (but my paltry ticket sales at their Pittsburgh venue a few months later appeared to bury me for future shows with the chain – but thank you to my fans who wrote after that they should have gone…).  So I then went to the other club in Philly (thanks to comedian Chip Chantry for making the introduction).  Last week I was told that I had sold 14 tickets.  Not that day last week. In total.  So I proceeded to make every social media post I could in the remaining 6 days before the show and turned to God, the only agent I need (or apparently can get).  So here is how my one-nighter played out in Philadelphia.

Rise n Grind n Stress

I woke up at 5:30am because I have not slept well in over a decade.  That combined with being 6’7″, overweight and filled with an ever-present rage should make the next 5-40 years a real Russian Roulette for survival.  I ate breakfast, read the New York Times and then began my day job work (when you sell 45 tickets WITH a co-headliner in Pittsburgh leading to a $37 cut after City Winery’s costs are taken out, you need another stream of income.  I took a break to have an intense workout in my building gym during my lunch break (every workout tends to be intense when you are 65 lbs overweight – who needs deadlifts when you need to get up from the couch?) and then caught the 2:10 NJ transit to Newark Broad Street.

in pants and a long sleeve shirt I trudged through downtown Newark to Penn Station with a brief stop at Starbucks for tea, a cookie and an AC break.  I then arrived at Newark Penn Station (its motto is “we’re here to make New York Penn Station look safe and clean by comparison”) and went to Track 3 for my Amtrak to Philly. I discovered for the first time that the platform for Amtrak has an air conditioned seating area which helped dry the Patrick Ewing-at-the-foul-line amount of sweat pouring from me. Then my train arrived and I headed for the business class car (I have so many upgrades that I am going to be using them on every trip for the next year). Me below entering the car:

My seat was next to a nice looking woman who appeared in her late 50s (sadly, despite that being my prime demo from YouTube, she did not seem to recognize me.  When I arrived in Philly I had 3 hours before showtime so I decided to head to the Cheesecake Factory, a mile away. Begin sweaty walk 2.

I finalized my set list over a salmon dinner and then, to calm my nerves which were frayed to say the least (new club always stresses me and 14 tickets sales were making me stressed and embarrassed – a place I did not expect or want to be in at 45 years old), I dug into a coconut cream piece cheesecake slice.  As the cheesecake high washed over me I felt calm and prepared for my set so I headed to the train to make my way to the Punchline.

I got on the Market-Frankford line and I had 7 stops to go. I quickly noticed that the Philly subway is very different than New York’s. New York’s subway has plenty of unsavory types on it, but usually they are outnumbered 40 to 1 in a typical NYC subway.  As I looked around the Philly train car I was in I thought, “hey, where are all the normal people?” I arrived at my station safe and walked about 7 minutes to the club, which for a while I thought was a trick, like Tommy DeVito getting made in Goodfellas, because it seemed to be an abandoned area of Philadelphia, until like a gentrification oasis in the Philly desert, a collection of new, hip buildings emerged in view.

You Can Find Me in The Club (Can you find my fans?)

I made my way into the club about 40 minutes before showtime and saw less than ten people in the crowd.  Anxiety level 10.  I chatted with the emcee and the feature before the show where we discussed how terrible the stand up world is and how I should definitely not ride the subway back to 30th street station after dark.  The staff at the club treated me really well and that was nice – so what if you draw worse than a 4 year old in art class, you are the headliner and will be accorded that respect.  But then a miracle happened about 20 minutes before I went on stage. The manager, who told me “Welcome to Live Nation” (the club is a live nation venue), which made me feel like Sean Connery has just said “Welcome to the Rock!” asked me if I did any media the day of the show. I said no (despite me begging every club I work to go on the radio). He said, “well you sold 30 tickets today, which is a bump that usually only happens with a media appearance.”  Anxiety level 5.

Now to be clear, I have given myself the nickname “league minimum,” because no matter how good my comedy and how large my social media following, most venues I perform at end up paying me the minimum agreed upon terms and the Punchline would be no different (if I had sold 3 more tickets I would have moved into the additional payment level, but I think it would have been more embarrassing to have to be paid an additional 13 dollars on my check).  In fact the last time I did an August weekday show in Philadelphia it was 2018 and I sold 70 tickets at the venue (with 30 additional comps) for a very respectable Wednesday showing.  But after multiplying my following by 40x since then I was not able to reach that number.  Seems to defy logic that a comedian could become 40x more popular and sell fewer tickets, but here we are.

                                It was a long, anxiety-inducing journey to this show, but it was worth it

That said, those thirty clutch purchasers (which is at least as much the work of the Punchline who do a commendable job promoting shows, which I cannot say for all venues) bolstered an audience that were great laughers and good merchandise purchasers.  I left The Punchline exhausted, sweaty and satisfied (and hope The Punchline at least gives my stage and box office results a passing grade).  I opted to take a Lyft to 30th street station, which got me there with minutes to spare. I got on the train, sat in my leather business class seat and exhaled.

Heading and Sweating Home

We arrived at Newark Penn 8 minutes early (I could tell the Amtrak was going “opening scene of Unbreakable” level fast but I exited the train before I had my superhero powers put to the test.  But with no light rail headed to Newark Broad and no bus leaving until midnight I decided to walk the 25 minutes through Newark at 11:30 pm.  The last time I did this walk was leaving an Elton John concert at Prudential and it did not feel safe (if you recall that blog – the lack of police presence was clear from the drug users and homeless in the street (not sidewalk, the street) and the fights over drugs we witnessed, until we saw two police cars guarding… a film set.  This time I felt safe and like I had finally burned off half of the coconut cheesecake.

I got home at 12:15 am and ate a piece of my girlfriend’s Fudgie The Whale birthday cake (she’s in her 40s, but is 8 in cake choice years) to make sure I added those walk and sweat calories back.  I took a quick shower to get the day’s work off of me and crawled into bed thankful for a good show and those 30 late comers who helped make it so.

For a fun clip from the show (and a lot more bonus material) head to www.Patreon.com/JLCauvin (or the tab above).

Comedians Are No Longer Artists. We Are Content Mercenaries. Blog

Comedians Are No Longer Artists. We Are Content Mercenaries.

When I began doing stand-up in 2003 I had no idea whether I would be good, whether I would enjoy it and how long I would do it.  It has now been 21 years since my first open mic and I am proud of what I have produced and how good I have become.  However, I am somewhat regretful of having spent so much of my adult life working, striving and stressing over an art form that has changed so much over that time that I’m not sure it’s an art anymore.  I actually believe getting into comedy when I did was the worst possible time – just enough exposure to how comedy used to be to somewhat resist the marketplace of content mercenaries it has become.

I have lamented with some comedians in my generation about how bad our timing was.  To sum it up, we emerged when stand up was the only form of comedic expression for stand-up comedians, Comedy Central played tons of stand-up comedy, podcasts and social media did not exist and YouTube was in its embryonic stage.  The only advice a veteran comedian would give to a new comedian would be, “write a lot and get on stage as much as you can.” And that was good advice because the assumption was that you wanted to become good at stand-up comedy, to then become a successful stand-up comedian.  But every generation that entered after us was born into a new framework that did not require them to de-program themselves of the romantic notion that being good at stand-up was not only the priority, but the sole focus of a stand-up comedian.  YouTube, Podcasts, Social Media and then Tik Tok (the Apollo Moon Landing to YouTube’s Wright Brothers) have grounded aspiring comedians content creators in more useful ways to gain success, but decreasing the means and motivations to become good. And if the desire, focus and talent of each successive comedy generation becomes more attached to algorithms and less attached to the art, eventually the art will cease to progress and will eventually become nothing but an app on people’s phone to distract them (i.e. I think we might already be there).

Friends and fans of mine know that I am a huge Bo Burnham fan.  Like Eddie Murphy I think Burnham is a singular, generational talent and the best argument for the Internet launching great artists.  But I think Bo Bunham is not just an immense talent, I think he is also an aberration or an anomaly.  I think he began so young on YouTube (the term wunderkind certainly applies) because he had work he wanted to share, not because he had unlocked some code guaranteeing success.  And all his future work from his early YouTube days, has shown an artist critiquing, rather than embcracing, the degradation of art and culture in society (In 2015, during a special, he said of Celebrity Lip Sync, “So I guess culture is dead.”  And yet that dead horse is being kicked for immense profit to this day.

Even someone like Dane Cook, who occupies that same space as Amy Schumer where, because of his immense success, was an acceptable target of many comedians and comedy fans’ groupthink of unjustified personal and artistic hate (whereas mocking Louis CK in 2013 was a very divisive choice), was much more of an original than what we see today.  Cook used social media, not as a lemming, but as a pioneer. In the desire to expose his art to more people he used the tool of MySpace in ways no one else had.  In other words, he used the tools of the Internet to share his original (you don’t have to like it, but Dane Cook was an original) work. He did not shape his work to fit the tools of the Internet.

Keeping the Boston theme going, one of my favorite comedians, and someone I consider a friend, is Gary Gulman.  Before Sirius XM got wise to it and required a minimum length for tracks, there was a period recently when comedians were creating albums with 30+ tracks for an album under an hour to get more streams (and money) from satellite radio.  As someone who is sometimes prone to longer tracks (not to sound like a pretentious jazz artist, but the tracks are as long as the tracks are – I have some tracks that barely reach a minute and I have a track on an album that exceeded 15 minutes).  But I wrote years ago that I was thankful that a comedian like Gary Gulman would continue to write Homeric poems (or Jim Steinman-Meat Loaf epics if you prefer rock analogies to English Lit ones) on fruit, cookies, mental health, abbreviating states and whatever popped into his head because he was enough of an artist (and perhaps secure and safe in his career – this cannot be entirely discounted and must be at least acknowledged as something that does vex us lesser known and less successful comedians) to continue to make his art.

But we are in a different era now, pretty much unrecognizable from when I got into stand-up comedy.  People used to say “it takes ten years to find your voice” as a comedian.  Today they might as well say “who gives a shit about your voice – if you haven’t got 100K Tik Tok followers by year 3 it might be time to get out.”  Crowd work videos, from comedians who still can’t put together a strong feature set, are becoming Internet superstars (not who you are thinking of – calm down).  Comedians who should be solid features are selling out arenas (exactly who you are thinking of).  Rather than give a list of all the individual injustices occurring in stand-up, I will give an example that truly shows the core of how algorithms define stand-up comedy content creation today.

Everyone puts captions on their videos now.  This began as a way to help hearing impaired people appreciate the work (though I did have to tell someone one time that reading the dialogue of my impersonations really was borderline useless, no matter how funny my dialogue is).  But it was “the algorithm likes the flashing and changing of text to engage eyeballs” that made text in videos omnipresent.  In other words, it has nothing to do with its original purpose anymore (who cares about the hearing impaired!?).  If Tik Tok’s algorithm wanted comedians content creators to kick old ladies down stairwells for content/channel engagement, probably 1/3 of comedians would invite their grandmothers over to their homes that afternoon.

But comedians are not the only ones at fault.  Comedy audiences have gotten dumber. As younger generations grow up in informational and content silos of their own (sometimes unintentional) making, general knowledge seems to be diminishing, as are cultural references, which people used to know collectively.  I had a younger club employee tell me last year that I was like Dennis Miller.  That says a lot more about us then me and Dennis Miller.  Dennis Miller used to confuse me with references to things that only my philosophy major friends in college could reference.  Me discussing The Godfather and Mary Magdalene should not evoke similar bouts of confusion among the general population.  But alas here we are.

So comedians obey the algorithm as their master, micro-target their material for that algorithm and sell tickets to at best, a charismatic, empty performance, and at worse to an hour of desecrating what a comedy club used to stand for.  And soulless content creators and a navel gazing, cell phone zombie audience are only 2/3 of the equation.  Clubs have become sanctuaries for the Trojan Horse that is the content creator who does not care about stand up comedy.  I used to post jokes when I would be performing at a club and see a pro wrestler or a Real Housewife performing appearing the next week. But now it’s every week, everywhere.  At this point, I see the direction we are in and I understand the need to sell tickets, but then we should just start calling comedy clubs “event spaces.”

Some reading this may be saying, “but J-L, you made it big on social media so what gives?”  That is true. I was doing impersonations since before I got into stand-up.  As my stand up skills matured and I found my voice and became a prolific writer I put my impressions into sketches and kept my stand-up mostly free of them.  And the parallel paths served me well. But during the pandemic, it was my Trump impersonation, which had been toiling in obscurity, with the rest of my catalogue, that brought me more money and prominence than the previous 16 years of my comedy career combined.  But in my naive belief, born in 2003 when I began doing stand-up, I thought that if they like the humor behind my impressions then they will really enjoy my stand-up, which is overdue for a mainstream discovery. And now these millions who’ve seen my impressions and hundreds of thousands who have chosen to follow me, will certainly care about this great and funny catalogue of mine.

Not really.

I remember a somewhat recent conversation I had with a comedian who was much more successful than me. And I said. “it’s like nobody cares about the art.” And he said, “We do.”  Without doubting the sincerity of what he said, when you are in a position where you’ve built up your fan base pre-social media and especially pre-Tik Tok, you are sort of grandfathered in. Real comedy fans will appreciate and newer, fairweather fans will at least respect your clout and reach as a major player.  But the art of stand-up comedy will not continue if younger comedians and younger generations don’t put originality and the art on at least an equal footing as the algorithm (baby steps). The business of comedy is booming. The art feels like it’s dying.  I have always said stand up could never have a guild or a union because the default mindset of a comedian is already that of a scab.  And I said that well before Tik Tok opened up the gates of virality-chasing Hell.

I do not know how much longer I can do stand-up. The writing on the wall appears to be clear that my talent and work is really best described as a pleasant distraction to the vast majority of my fans.  I am now 45, but sometimes I feel physically and mentally like I am 65, and I might as well be with my antiquated wishes for the art of stand-up comedy.  I often ask myself a question my mother used ask me during the darkest days of my comedy career.  “Who are you doing this for?”  I was spending half of my very low pay at the time on video edits and making sketches all while trying to get booked as a middle act and self-producing my albums, not to get famous or to win over an algorithm or because streaming and YouTube were lucrative (which at the time I was making $0 from both), but because I had lots of funny stuff to share and held out belief that something would catch on, leading people to a vast library of comedy work.  And that was what I told my Mom at the time.  And I am of the belief that if that is not your motivation for being in comedy, then you shouldn’t do it.

Last year, after sales of my album Tall Boy were far less than even my measured/pessimistic expectations (in 2020 my 2nd album as Trump debuted at 34 on the entire iTunes charts, right behind the Frozen II soundtrack and sat atop the comedy charts of iTunes and Amazon for two weeks) it was a rude awakening.  I then decided for the final year of my podcast as Trump (Making Podcasts Great Again) I would charge $1 a month for access to full audio and video of weekly episodes.  Many fans (though only about 5% of our audience) signed up.  But at least a dozen fans chose this time to vent hostility at me with comments like “See ya!” and “Welp, won’t be listening anymore” despite the singular nature of the show that I had put out for free since 2018 with my partner Jay.  I see the irony of complaining about the art, but feeling disrespected for fans not paying for it, but unless the Medici show up to patronize me, the only way to make good art at the volume I do is for some folks to pay for it. There are some realities I cannot avoid, not matter how many realities I try to avoid in this blog.

So to answer, my Mom’s question, at this point I still “do this” for me, hoping that the audience I need finds me.  But that audience may no longer exist.

Comedy Mortality Blog

Comedy Mortality

One of the resolutions I made on Twitter/X (so it is legally binding) on the eve of 2024 was to get back to blogging once a week.  Though Saturday is not a business day (“every day is a business day” said the random bro influencer on Tik Tok with a million followers and an equally large number of aggressive, unverifiable platitudes), it is the last day of week 1 of 2024 so here I am maintaining one of my resolutions for at least a week.  I think the reason I singled out my blog, amidst all of the things I do (or try to do) in comedy was because in a time when I was truly a nothing in comedy (versus a significant has been currently) was that the blog had a bigger reach than I did.  Because I wrote honestly, and fairly well about many things, but most significantly, the struggles, hypocrisies, idiosyncrasies and (occasional) joys of stand-up comedy, the blog would sometimes generate broader mention than my early stand-up work.  So after a nearly 4 year period that saw my comedy career resurrected like Lazarus and euthanized like Old Yeller (early in my unexpected rise in 2020 I presciently suggested that my comedy career might have a similar arc as the patients in the film Awakenings), I thought, why not get back to my basics, if  only for comedic self-care.  Or at this point, it might just be comedic palliative care.

This week, after a 26 month ordeal that has been the worst experience of my 20 years doing stand-up comedy, my special Half-Blackface, was released.  I think, along with the companion album, which was released in August and differs in material by about 25 minutes, it is my finest work.  After the stresses of 2020, as related to my comedy career (inability to get a manager or agent to even call me back or set up a meeting, seeing a brief resurgent respect for lip sync as an art form, fearing the loss of my day job as I tried to pull 15 hour days in my apartment balancing a law firm workload and the unexpected need to produce comedy work for a career that had seemed comatose at best), I wanted to expose all the people who had become fans of mine from my impressions to my voluminous stand up work and sketch video library. With SNL not calling, I believed that stand up comedy was still my future and with approximately 200,000 new fans across social media, I wanted to convert those people into fans of my stand up. After all, if stand up clubs have been the all purpose venue spaces that managers and agents dump their “influencers” on to get a paycheck, then certainly a viral social media entertainer with 20 years of actual stand up experience should be a cake walk, right?

It turned out that none of the daydreams I had, logical though they may have been, came to pass. In fact, the biggest break I received post 2020 had nothing to do with the stand up world or anything I was expecting. I was asked to audition for a role on Billions in 2021, got the part and had a nice guest role in an episode of season 6.  It turned out that even without an agent, my social media reach was enough to create opportunities on its own.

But 2021 turned out to be the end of the ride up. After Donald Trump was kicked off of Twitter, my growth went from 10,000 followers a month for 7 straight months to zero. Not a few hundred a month. Zero.  Mind you, this was 2 years before Elon Musk took over.  And not only that, but engagement with the followers I had plummeted. I still get messages from followers telling me “I haven’t seen your stuff in months/years” (we will return to this point later).

But having learned hard lessons from a career of isolated successes that never snowballed into anything, I decided mid 2021, with Billions on the horizon and a great new hour of stand up that I had put together that perhaps, I could create one last gasp of social media buzz to turn my career from “what happened to that Trump guy?” to “Wow this guy was on Billions and has a killer new hour!”  I will not bore you with the details, but when a special takes two tapings and over two years to come out, things have not gone well.  In fact, the process was so long, that I wrote, filmed and (SELF-)produced a new album/special in the interim (Tall Boy on my YouTube channel and music streaming services).

But as I sit here typing today, in early 2024, I need to confront a sad truth.  Barring a miracle, my comedy career has likely peaked.  Every career has a peak. But you don’t know what your peak is until you start to fall from it and cannot regain it. I recently had to ask 3 MAJOR national headliners to write me recommendation letters to a booker. They all kindly did and it was a rare moment of feeling respected, or at least being treated kindly, in this business.  But even with my credits, skills and those recommendations, I am still not as hopeful for bookings as many might assume I should be.  At 44 I am not yet old enough to compete for the Lewis Black curmudgeon bookings, but I am certainly well outside the desired age range for Tik Tok Crowd Work Influencer-do you actually have any material? slots.  Is this how actresses used to feel when they turned 30, before porn made it OK to be hot and in your 30s?

Then there is the hopelessness of my social media platforms, especially Twitter/X.  Before 2020, when I had 4000 followers I would have one or two tweets a year that would explode and garner me some new followers.  I now have 125K followers, but have not had one tweet in 3 years reach the level of explosion.  In 2020, almost all my tweets and videos reached hundreds of thousands of people. But for the last 3 years, when trying to sell tickets, promote specials and other things of major significance to both a comedian, and presumable, a comedian’s fans, they get under 10% of that engagement, almost without exception.  Several people will probably respond to this by doing the progressive, reflexive response of “Elon ruined it!” but the truth is, in an effort to purge right wing misinformation (or right wing view points), my account was destroyed.

So if you are still reading this, you might be wondering, what is your point J-L?  My point, is that, even with all these things working against me, I still have a combined 90 thousand subscribers on YouTube and 125 thousand followers on X. These are people who chose to follow me based off of my comedic output.  So even if social media is not showing them my stuff, certainly they will search me out for shows and new content, right?  Wrong.

The harshest lesson from my rise in 2020 to where I am now (with a great new special that no one is seeing and a still prolific YouTube channel that has not lost subscribers, but has seen a 90% drop in views) is that the vast majority of people just want to be distracted.  Mediocre crowd work clips do the job just as well as brilliantly crafted material.  Most people, even self-proclaimed “fans” are willing to trust that the social media algorithms will show them what they want to see to an alarming degree (I had a fan tell me last year that “I haven’t seen your stuff in so long, I just assumed you quit” – which raises the concern that if having 6 social media accounts and a website are not convenient enough for a fan to look up if they don’t see your stuff, what the hell would be?).  Clearly most comedy fans have put on mental autopilot and assume social media will curate what they have asked for and will just assume the comedian is retired or dead before going to their page to see.

I also observed that many friends, co-workers, comedy colleagues etc. expressed unending amazement and support once 2020 hit and in my exuberance I was too clouded with a feeling of “Finally!” to realize that so many acquaintances from various times and places in my life were simply excited about proximity to someone with some heat, and nothing more.   Needless to say the only thing that has dropped off worse than my social media engagement is the emails and texts of impressed recognition.  I was funny and talented before March 2020, but good experiences feel better when shared, so my normal cynicism was in snooze mode. A career in comedy has limited my social circles (I joke that if I get married my wedding party will be my brother, my best friend and three podcasts) so sometimes Johnny Come Lately still feels like good company when you want any company to celebrate with you.

When I first recorded Half-Blackface I said two things to my girlfriend, who has had to endure almost 4 years of mood swings as my comedy has put me through the ringer. I said to her, my worst nightmare, related to comedy, is that I will make something truly great and it will never be heard or seen.  I also told her that if I could combine my best work (Half-Blackface) with my best entertainment opportunity (Billions) into one publicity chance then I could see if my career could continue.  Because if my best did not do anything, then it was no longer worth enduring if it would make me miserable to the people who actually care about me.  Ineptitude made the latter a moot point.  Social media algorithms and indifference seem to have made the former a reality.

The last time I felt close to this in comedy was 2013. I quit a stand up troupe I was part of and really did not think there was much hope for my comedy career. I then made a video called Louis CK Tells The Classics, which went viral and recorded my best stand up album (until the aforementioned Half-Blackface).    Both had more success than anything I have put out in the last 2 years, despite having a fan base 95% smaller.  As down as I was at the time about my career, there was still a glimmer of hope. Even if small, I did not feel barred from the game. Social media still could blow up (which it did for me with that video) and the industry did not feel shut off from me (I had meetings with 2 reputable managers in 2013, zero in 2020-21). But now, based on being shut off from my fans and their collective indifference (I am surely not unique in this respect – it is simply how we are now conditioned), I think there is little hope for a breakout moment again. Without representation and without a way to correct or appeal social media throttling my accounts, all I can do is make good stuff for the few that see it.  I promise that the blogs this year won’t be this morbid, but I have gone through the other 4 stages of grief (anger, denial bargaining, depression), so this is my attempt at acceptance.

Blog

20 Moments for 20 Years

Twenty years ago today I went to an open mic at a Jazz club in Washington, D.C. to do an open mic.  I had been mulling trying my hand at stand-up comedy for almost an entire year based on encouragement from some friends in college and a need for a hobby to deal what was undoubtedly a bout of depression during my second year of law school.  Had the crowd at the jazz club been less forgiving for what was most likely mediocre jokes then maybe I would have avoided two decades of sado-masochistic torture, but thankfully, for several dozen people spread across the globe, the audience at the Takoma Station Tavern that Monday were kind and encouraging to a tall, law student trying his hand at comedy.  So to commemorate this I put together the list of my top 20 moments/experiences from my 20 years in comedy.

20. Banned from Two Clubs in San Antonio, TX

The last time I performed in San Antonio, TX was Summer of 2013. There were two clubs – LOL, which was a wonderful place with great accommodations. The other was a dump called Rivercenter, which housed comics in a room with so many roaches I thought it was a tribute to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  You can read more about it HERE, but the bottom line is I was banned from both clubs (they were owned by the same people) for writing a humorous blog about the experience. But shortly thereafter Rivercenter stopped using the condo and years after that the club closed. So to the roach pimps who ran Rivercenter I have this:

19. Won a Contest at the DC Improv

In my 3rd year of law school I won “D.C.’s Funniest College Student” – so like a 7th year senior I ended up too much for all the young folk. This won me my first paid week of comedy work, emceeing for Gary Owen in August of 2004.  And the rest is mediocrity.

18. Trump Easter Video

“But J-L, why isn’t this higher on the list?? It’s how I discovered you!”  Well, this video has to be on the list of course for the positive impacts (money, hundreds of thousands of passive fans, hanging out with Richard Marx and David Frum to name a couple of people who’ve gone out of their way to show me appreciation – Bradley Whitford and Jane Lynch deserve special mention as well, though I have not met them in person).  But this video has too many negatives to go higher. First of all, the vocals were not even close to my best at the time, let alone the future improvements I have made.  Secondly, I was sort of settled into a mentally stable, semi-retirement from comedy.  Without mentioning any specifics as they related to other artists, the industry, fans the Internet, I have not had a good night sleep since this video went up (with the exception of various oxy-induced slumbers following multiple surgeries).

17. The Goldhawk Show in Hoboken, NJ

For a few years early in my career I helped run a show with my friends Jim and Pat. It was a nice bar, in a nice town and we usually had good comedians on their way to stardom.  Nothing more to say about it. It is just one of the fonder memories of my time in comedy.

16. Dave Chappelle’s Noirnette

This video was simply a continuation of something I have done for a little more than half my career and that is mocking celebrity comedians whose act and, more importantly, their fans, become parodies of cult leader and cult members.  This was me pointing out early that Chappelle was using the stage to pontificate more than tell jokes. I felt the critiques launched at Hannah Gadsby equally applied to Chappelle (but don’t say that to a Chappelle fan) so I made a Black Nanette AKA Noirnette (the impression got better but this is my favorite):

15. Diamond Maker

Even though I am still happy with my first album, Racial Chameleon, which I always expect to be crappier than it is when I listen because of how relatively new I was, Diamond Maker, my sophomore effort, gets the place here.  The main reason is I spent about 6 months transforming vulgar screeds at open mic regarding a deeply troubling relationship into good material for everyone to enjoy.  I was able to use comedy to deal with some things, but also developed the skill to make unfortunate things into good comedy.  Now, the real solution would have been to seek a therapist at this point, but then I would have possibly been a happier person and you would have been denied all this comedy.

14. Trumpgotz on The Dan Lebatard Show

This would be higher on the list, if not for the way I was eventually dismissed by the show, but as a complete nobody going nowhere in comedy by 2016, the fact is that this show was the launch pad for my Trump impersonation. I basically submitted word for word re-enactments of the show’s co-host, Stugotz, but in Trump’s voice, to highlight the similarity of their thinking.  When the show host put up a Twitter poll in 2018 asking “Is Trumpgotz the funniest thing ever?” Over 11,000 fans voted and over 8300 clicked “yes.”  Like several things on the list it was, at the time, validation of my work and talent because there was no connection or inside scoop for me. My videos and concept spoke for themselves.

13. The Black Guy Who Tips & Stand Up with Pete Dominick

The two podcasts (and three people) responsible for even getting me to this point, other than myself are Rod and Karen of The Black Guy Who Tips and Pete Dominick of his eponymous show.  Their open doors to having me on their shows, as well as their warm and engaged fan bases sustained my comedy career and increased my fanbase when I was without any shows (kind of like now if you look at my calendar).  Being part of their respective podcasts worlds has been as much of a blessing as one can receive in the comedy world.

12. Thots & Prayers

I had one take to do this album in Philadelphia in 2018 and had decided that it was going to be my last album.  What I ended up doing was a 100 minute double album that when finished performing I just gave my friend and opener for the show, Chris Lamberth an exhausted hug.  I am not sure I have ever had a “leave it all on the floor” type performance in my comedy career that matches this one.  Here’s one of the opening jokes:

11. My Blog

You are reading it right now.  For almost two decades I have been writing my thoughts and experiences as a comedian in over 1000 pieces.  Some are super funny. Some are super thoughtful. Many are both.  But if an anthropologist ever wanted to cover comedy in the 21st century in America (why the fu*k would he/she/they want to do that?) I would like to think there is no better resource than the perpetually struggling, supremely talent and foolishly honest writings I have compiled on this site. I have been a writing tear recently, but for the greatest hits spend a day or two HERE

10. The Adam Carolla Show

Even though I drifted away from the show as it drifted more stridently and uncomfortably right, ACS was the first big opportunity that I got on my own (a bigger, better and more meaningful version of the Lebatard experience, minus the disrespectful dismissal).  I was a guest 10 times on the show and it never got old looking on iTunes and seeing my name as the title of the episodes.  Despite political differences and my increasing discomfort with some of his audience, Carolla gave me a shot to be on his show simply because he thought my impression of him, which he saw on Twitter, was funny.  Very few people in this business ever do something like that and I will always be grateful. (The below video features a very early (not good), fast talking Trump (he did speak faster in his first campaign) impression along with Carolla)

9. Billions on Showtime

Of course this was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Having a solid guest role on a hit TV show!  But the reason it is not higher is that it felt more like I got lucky.  And don’t get me wrong, with all the bad luck my career seems to careen into, I am grateful for good luck!

From Thousands to Billions!

8. Making Podcasts Great Again

Doing over 400 podcast episodes (between the feed and Patreon) and probably 50 paywall videos as Trump is both disgusting and one of the things I am most proud of.  I cannot wait to end the show, but am still proud that I can still make it funny. It is basically it’s own alternate Trump universe that more often than not, collides with, or predicts, real life.  And probably the most popular podcast in the history of Idaho Militia Christian Bible Tech State College.

7. Half Blackface Tall Boy

With no agents even having meetings with me from March 2020-present, with Twitter shadowbanning me in early 2021, which conservatively has cost me $50K since, and with a killer hour of material that I could finally perform for people, I decided 2021 was the year I had to make my first special.  I had self-produced 6 albums in my career, but believed that with an appearance forthcoming on Billions, I could really create a new narrative and a new set of fans (and even more importantly, trigger a different algorithm)  that could elevate my stand up career. So I decided to work with the industry and give up some up front money for a bigger impact for the special.  As of this typing, I recorded Half Blackface twice (587 days ago and 380 days ago, respectively) and I still have no idea of its future.

But rather than just complain and be depressed over losing the single best opportunity in my career, I complained, was depressed AND worked on a new hour.  So my second first special, TALL BOY, is now available on my patreon and will be available for wide release and in album form by the end of June.  So when comedy tries to choke you to death on lemons, you make lemonade.

6. Patrice O’Neal Asks Me to Emcee Again

There have been two comedians who have specifically asked for me at a comedy club. My friend Rob Maher let me feature for him years ago during one of my worst stretches of no work. The other was Patrice O’Neal, who asked me to emcee for him on his next visit to the DC Improv after being lucky enough to emcee for him the previous year (I am the man introducing him (and getting roasted by him) on his albums Mr. P and Unreleased.  I think the best way to tell this is with the tribute I wrote for him after his passing in 2011, which ends up being oddly prescient about my own career.

5. The Late Late Show

My network debut and apparently my network finale:

4. Louis CK Tells The Classics

I had always been a Rock-Giraldo-Burr-Gulman guy at this point in my career, but Louis CK was the undisputed champ at the height of his powers and scandal free.  Tired of being told that I was a “hater” by all my friends, simply because I was not a big fan, I decided to do what I always do – make my case through comedy.  People are more universally praising of the video now, but when I put it out, almost as much a challenge to the blind devotion of his fans as a showcase of my comedy skills, I received probably about 35% viciously negative comments.  It was played on Rogan and other big shows and even got me two meetings with managers (the last two meetings with talent reps I would have in my career (just over 10 years ago)). I’ve done a lot of great sketch videos and a lot of good impressions, but this one was basically a comedy David vs Goliath (metaphorically as I am actually closer to a goliath) and for 5 minutes, David won here as well.

3. Keep My Enemies Closer

Until Half Blackface this was the album I cited as my best work.  There are some bits (and some titles of tracks) that I would modify or just simply not do today, but it still stands as probably my most hard hitting and funniest work until Half Blackface.  What made it extra special to me was that there were only about 29 people in attendance in a small room in Long Island City.  But I was so desperate to get what I knew was A+ material out that I performed like I had 29,000 in attendance.  As Rich Vos said on his podcast years ago, “the guy who did the Louis video – he’s got some funny stuff. I heard him on Sirius. It sounded like no one was there, but it was funny.”

2. Rejecting an “Offer” from a Comedy Content Company

Podcast listeners of mine know this story, but to put it succinctly – a company wanted to partner with me to promote my albums as part of their catalogue. I had worked with them previously in a talent-management capacity so it struck me as odd that they wanted a piece of my IP, despite flat out rejecting me.  Despite being broke and desperate for any industry connection I said no.  Until Half Blackface, I have owned 100% of my work (my instincts told me not to trust) and that 100% ownership has been worth over $150K since 2014.

1. The Warden Signs a Headshot for my Uncle’s birthday

Knowing how often comedy makes me feel unhappy and disrespected, number one was a very easy choice.  Thanks to the Trump Easter video one of the many celebrities who began following me in 2020 was actor Bob Gunton, best known as the warden in The Shawshank Redemption.  My uncle was a big fan of his work and I asked Mr. Gunton if he would mail my Uncle a signed headshot for his birthday. He did. It arrived on my Uncle’s birthday, which happened to be… June 2nd. My uncle was genuinely thrilled.  He passed away 3 months later. So that is the last gift I gave my Uncle and it was probably the best one I have given him, even though all it cost me was a DM on Twitter.  So if and when I finally abandon the Titanic that is my comedy career, this will definitely be the top of the list of things I’ve gotten from it.

Thanks to all of you who have helped make this 20 year run bearable in the bad times and more fun during the good times.

Road Comedy Recap – 22 Hours in San Jose Blog

Road Comedy Recap – 22 Hours in San Jose

I sit in my hotel writing this latest road recap from Hotel de Anza, a hotel in the shadow of Zoom’s headquarters (I think – or just a large building with Zoom all over it – if you do a live corporate gig at Zoom, is it still a Zoom show?) after a mostly fun night in San Jose and a 21 hour day.  I hung out with some friends, met some of my most die hard fans, had some merch stolen at the show and accidentally fooled my Mom about the stains on my Greyhound bus seats. So without further adieu, and before I have to check out of my hotel let’s do this!

On Wednesday I woke up at 4am to get my 515am bus. Fortunately I had not yet modified my sleep schedule to the west coast so it was not as difficult to wake up at that hour (went to be at 10pm), but my buddy Nick, who is letting me crash with him in LA, apparently just pulled an all-nighter to take me to the bus.  As my home away from home for almost a decade, Nick has been the unsung hero of all of my west coast trips.  He got me to the station which at 445am was an interesting mix of exhausted immigrant families and Black dudes talking about YouTube fight videos.  I hopped on my bus (silver lining to taking the early Greyhound – you don’t get shot on a Greyhound later that day in California) and grabbed the handicapped seat which provided more leg room than any first class flight accommodations.  The bus never got too crowded – I had my own seat the entire 9 hour trip and the ride was absolutely beautiful. California really is a beautiful state, even when travelling on seats that looked like they are covered in semen.

When i wasn’t reading I enjoyed just staring out the window on the Greyhound to San Jose
The genius of Greyhound seat design – you don’t know where the fashion ends and the ejaculate begins! (this is the joke that fooled my Mom)

Now as the bus got more crowded, a few people started coming on without masks. And in a weird move, the guy next to me had a KN95 mask that he wore on his chin for most of the ride.  As I joked on stage in San Jose, “so you upgraded your mask, to protect your chin?”  But I opted to fume silently at the selfish, rule breaking and I think I made the prudent decision (see article about deadly fight on bus above).

I arrived in San Jose, which was beautiful and sunny and windy AF.  Northern California always seems super sneaky with the weather: “Oh look it’s beautiful… and 62 degrees and… holy shit that wind is making me cold AF!”  My hotel was a quick 10 minute walk from the train/bus station. After checking in and mapping out my set I met up with my friend Hank from law school who made the drive from San Francisco and Brandon (no, not Joe Biden – a man actually named Brandon), a friend through my bff who went to college with him. We had dinner at a local food hall and then made out way to the Improv.

The club was great – it is sort of an old theater type space and thanks to some good fans (and good efforts by the club to fill seats) I ended with up with a pretty good crowd.  In addition to bits from my (cursed) special – please go to the podcast tab and listen to the new bonus episode of Righteous Pk if you don’t know – I dropped some brand new, off the dome bits on Clarence Thomas, masks on Greyhound, how me and my Uncle looked like a Law & Order casting in the Bronx (this was just something I said to someone who worked at the Improv and then he said “do you do that on stage?” – WELL I WILL NOW!), the single best Trump impression I’ve ever done and some other shit I have already forgotten (but thankfully have on tape) that did well.

I did not make the marquee at the San Jose Improv, but from what I hear “Open Mic” is a beast of a comedian

After the show I met some fans who are almost as well known to me as I am to them because of their strong engagement with me. It always feels good to meet fans like that (so that your comedy feels less like a distraction and more like *pretentious voice* appreciated art).  But there was a blemish on an otherwise socially and comedically enjoyable night.  A fan walked up to buy one of my USB cards (the $40 cards have all 6 of my stand up albums so it is a good deal). He asked if I took credit cards. I said that I did and I pulled out the square addition for my phone to swipe his credit card, but then realized I had left my phone in the showroom.  I asked him to wait and ran, got my phone and made it back to the table within 15 seconds.  When I returned he was gone and so was one of my album cards.  Now the crazy thing about this is based on the interaction (he was ready to pay and could not have known I did not have my phone on me) he made the spur of the moment decision to steal from me.  I hope he enjoys the albums.

Hank, Brandon and I went to a local pub for a beer with a fan who was effusive in his praise for my comedy and even more effusive in his praise for his Ivy League PhD and claim of having a large penis.  After that was done, we made a run to the local Insomnia Cookies, which claimed to be open until midnight, but was already closed when we arrived at 1135pm.  Instead we went to an ice cream shoppe and then said our goodbyes (PhDick had already made his way back home).

So today’s agenda is: do a Mike Lindell pillow review from my hotel before checkout, record a cameo for someone and then get on an Amtrak bus/train trip back to LA (9.5 hours for reading and watching some movies), and, if on time, perform around 1030pm at the Hollywood Improv.  Every day in my comedy career is basically like an awful season of 24.

Thank you San Jose!  You were great, except for the theft!

Joking While Half-Black Blog

Joking While Half-Black

When I first started doing stand-up comedy I relied heavily on impressions (contrary to how many of you reading may have come to know me, impressions have largely been absent from my stand-act from 2007-present day). One impression I had (shocker) was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger impressions belong with Trump, DeNiro and DMX in the “not this again” impressions hall of fame.  But I still had one and it was better than most.  One of the frustrating things about impressions if one like an Arnold or a Trump become so ubiquitous, it almost does not matter if yours is great, accurate, etc.  But I was new at stand up and had more voices than minutes of material.

One of my first bits that started doing really well for me in my first year in comedy in Washington D.C. (June 2003-June 2004) was an Arnold Schwarzenegger family reunion bit.  But due to the length of the name, the family had an abbreviation for members of the family: “negger.”  So Arnold would ask his son if he “wanted to be a big strong negger like his Dad or a lazy ass negger like Uncle Frank.”  The bit almost always did really well because the impression was good and the concept was a little risque (like callbacks, being a little “naughty” is easy points with a comedy club audience). In fact, when Dave Chappelle debuted “The Niggar Family” sketch on Chappelle’s Show several months after I had been doing the bit around DC, three different comedians texted me their condolences, not because they thought it was stolen but because my station in comedy would make me look like a copycat if I ever did the bit again.

Now this is not totally a story about how even 17 years ago our comedy tastes were so much broader and less sensitive than they are today, though that is somewhat true (real comedy fans are no more sensitive, but the broader swath of society that consumes comedy through cell phones and the Internet is surely much larger and as I repeatedly say, if you are going to take the increased wealth that can come from increased exposure you need to accept some of the broader taste and sensitivity that come with it).  The reason that the negger family also worked (and why this is not just a PC sucks screed) is because I built disclaimers about my racial background into my material.  I had a bit in the beginning of every set where I planned to do “Negger Family Reunion” about being half Black.  Therefore I had offered my proof of membership in the club where I could take more liberties with racially sensitive material.  I was not saying the N word, but I was dancing on a line gleefully and realized that given my face and the city of my comedy birth, Washington D.C., I needed to offer some bona fides.

Several years later in my career, long after I had relegated my impressions to YouTube sketches and begun developing lots of stuff to say on stage in my own voice, I would encounter a different issue.  Often when I spoke on racial issues, or made jokes about race I would make some audience members (not limited to one race of gender) uncomfortable if I did not offer my racial bona fides early on.  To say nothing of white guys wanting to discuss my dick after shows or Black women (on much rarer occasions) wanting body hair proof of my half-Blackness, it seemed that I had to offer proof of my Blackness to joke about race. However, even after offering my biography and ethnicity CV in joke form, more frequently than I like, I am still not afforded basic respect for who I am.  It is a small percentage of audience members, but it happens at most shows (perhaps being more well known will reduce awkward skepticism, but then it will just be transferred to the next Rashida Jones looking comedian down the road so that doesn’t really spell comedy progress)  So as my comedy became more centered on my thoughts and experiences in life I became much more hostile to proving anything.  The Schwarzenegger joke is really the only time, other than one bit on my first album, where I ever uttered something close to the N word in life or on stage.  So I felt like I was not taking any liberties that a comedian should not be entitled to, let alone one with a Black father.  And as my friend Josh Homer commented one night many years ago (and on a few social media posts during the years), if a crowd did not respect my jokes on their own merits, I would often not bail them out with an “hey folks, it’s ok – I am half-Black” permission slip to enjoy the material they were already anxious about.

Without divulging anything beyond the title, my next album (or hopefully first special) is tentatively called Half Black Face.  We are in this annoying time in comedy where so many of the free speech warriors in comedy veer into “offensive bigots just using comedy as a shield to protect indecency” and people who are so concerned with policing comedy appear to be people who don’t seem to either enjoy comedy or know anything about it.  So if you want to be a decent person with free reign to be somewhat indecent in an art that is built partly on indecency then your creative space feels like it is shrinking.  But what annoys me on a personal level is that too many people want to judge me by rules that I don’t think should apply to any comedians, but still have force because they are about “protecting” certain groups of people.

Over the last year I have picked up an exponentially larger following than I have ever had in my career and I am grateful for it.  But I have also had too many “fans” (often, but not exclusively white progressives) inform me that because I am white (to their eyes… and let’s be honest for half of the year almost all eyes) my comedy did not hit as hard as someone who is not ostensibly white.  While people fawn over clapter comedy or the latest Pet Rock of humor, I found myself forced to defend my material as both original and valid, despite appearing to come from a white person.

Beyond that I have been lectured about my own jokes.  One joke I wrote said that London Breed, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Lori Lightfoot (all Black women mayors who were appearing jointly during Covid news appearances) sounded like the names of superheroes or porn stars.  Multiple people informed me that mocking Black women names was problematic.  I am fairly certain if I looked Black I would not have been lectured by a white progressive (because then they would likely view that as “violence towards me”) but I also believed the joke stood on its own, like I feel about most jokes.  Other than “Keisha” there is nothing about those three names that screams “Black woman.”  Follow that with me making a joke about Timothy Chalamet and JB Smoove looking like Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and someone calling it racist (mind you, the Ossoff doppelganger was not racist, just the Warnock doppelganger). And then this morning, a joke I made a few months ago about Cornel West looking like an old Don Lemon (the joke was about the verbosity of West, not their appearances being similar, and was promptly met with some progressives denouncing my terrible comedy).

I am of the opinion that offensive comedians should be allowed more space because like speech in general, it is the ugly stuff that needs to be protected.  No one is required to laugh, but condemning jokes seems to be happening too often, especially from people who don’t seem to know or enjoy most comedy.  I am not a jazz fan (musically, we all know I love the basketball team) so I won’t buy tickets to a jazz concert, but I would never deign to lecture someone on what good jazz is or what jazz they should support.  But everyone appears to want to be funny or be seen as having a great sense of humor, which seems to be the only qualification for dictating the terms and taste of comedy.  This would not annoy me as much as it does (though it would annoy me), but for the racial angle, which I take personally.  Some folks seem to think that even including a Black person in a joke as a white (looking) person is off limits.

It reminds me of the time a nice fan complimented me after a show, but told me I should stay away from jokes about trans people (the joke had been about wanting more diversity among serial killers – all the docs were about white killers, but what about women, POC and trans serial killers – the joke was literally about diversity, not attacking trans people, but the new wave of comedy fans truly seem to be triggered by words before they even interpret the context). That would be bad enough, but that sensitivity is coupled with an outspoken boldness. So in many cases you have people too sensitive to enjoy or understand comedy, but simultaneously emboldened enough to condemn it. This particular fan was nice and almost inquisitive so it was not a time for an argument but just an exchange of words, but many people come much more forcefully, despite being equally ignorant.

 

So when it comes to my own material I want to remain uncompromising, though I do believe I have probably missed out on some opportunities during my recent run because I am a comedian and not an actor or PR creation cosplaying as a comedian.  I don’t need people to know my race and would prefer audiences that embrace the quality of my comedy on its merits without needing a demographic cosign.  I am not comfortable being a spokesperson or representing something other than a true stand up comedian. That is because I am honest about my experiences in life. When I visited Ireland as a child many kids asked if I was North African. But as I grew older many people thought I was Italian, Jewish or occasionally Egyptian. I understand I have had in some ways the whitest (or at least lightest) of privilege – being a large, angry looking beige guy has not drawn the scrutiny that someone my size and disposition might have gotten if I had a different role of the genetic lottery between my parents. I respect that experience when compared to other POC, but it doesn’t fully strip me of my identity and my right to be who I am without having to constantly prove it.

I still think Billy Crystal’s Sammy Davis Jr is a great impression that poses no problem.  Can I say this as a half-Black man who looks white or non-Black to most people?  Who determines if I can say or feel that way?  I am not trying to speak for others, but is my opinion not at least somewhat valid?  I would love to live in a world where all jokes are ok if they are truly meant as jokes, but for every 50 audience members that are triggered, there is a comedian who probably uses comedy more as a weapon to vent hate than to explore ideas.  But I think we need to protect that person as comedians and comedy fans, even if we don’t like it.  But I don’t want to have to protect my own audiences from jokes anymore.

A Bunch of Non Trump Stuff Blog

A Bunch of Non Trump Stuff

The most frustrating thing of the last month or so has been constant accusations of stealing my impression of Donald Trump. For the record, I have been impersonating Donald Trump since 2015 and my current crop of Twitter videos were started March 11th of this year. On April 23rd comedian Sarah Cooper began posting her lip sync videos of Trump and to her credit, the world seems  to have redefined what the default assumption of what an impression is. Now instead of people being impressed with my impression many assume mine is also a lip sync (which is a compliment to its accuracy and plausibility, except when it comes with “stop stealing from Sarah” and the occasional, incorrect comment about my race, almost always from a progressive white woman, desperately guarding their new cyber connection to a black woman and viewing my work as an attack on her (once again – I was first, it’s an impression, not a lip sync and I am half-Haitian, half-Irish).  But to be fair a conservative sent me a private racist message because he thought I was Mexican.

I never understood why so many got money making opportunities off of Trump during his first term and I couldn’t, but to blow up on the strength of my impression and then have the very definition of impression changed on me is a level of #JLJinx I could not have seen coming.  But as a 17 year stand up comedian (June 2, 2003 being my first open mic), with hundreds of sketch and stand up videos, dozens of impressions and 8 albums (6 stand up and 2 as Trump) I would rather someone consume that content and then assess and compare what level of comedian I am.   So here are some albums, impressions and sketches that I think will make you a real fan of mine (though if you are reading my blog perhaps I am already preaching to the choir) because when Trump is done I want and need real comedy fans in my corner to have the career that has eluded me for 17 years.  The sooner I get out of the developing nation that is “Trump comedy” the better I think we will all be (but to be clear I am, or at least should be, the dictator running that nation 🙂 )

The Two Albums to Judge Me By: Keep My Enemies Closer (2013), Thots & Prayers (2018 – double album)

You can stream or buy these albums anywhere you listen to music.  They are my two best and I think each should have made me a headliner. Neither did, but the best way to judge if you want to come see me do stand up when the pandemic passes is to listen to these.  I have 6 in total and stand by all as quality works that also provide a sort of chronology of my life if you listen to them in order, but I know asking you to buy or listen to six stand up albums is probably a tall order (but feel free to do so).

The 10 Sketches of Mine That You Should Watch

These sketches are all written by me and feature me in some capacity, many as impressions. So watch, enjoy and share your favorite(s).

Biggie (2013) – a spoof on the Movie Big

Joel Osteen’s Early Sermon (2015)

Adam Carolla Show with Trump, Bernie and Matt Achity (2016) – my Carolla impression got me on the Adam Carolla Show as a repeat guest – the Trump was still in its infancy and many of you will not know that the Matt Achity is strong – Carolla Show fans the most likely to get this one to its core

This is Trump (2018) – my Trump centered parody of This Is Us (yes it is a Trump sketch, but more as a sample of parody writing of a popular show)

Ken Burns Comedy pt 1 (2015) – As a fan of Ken Burns’ documentaries I decided to do a 2 part series on stand up comedy as a send up of both comedy and Ken Burns.  Trumpet, JB Smoove and narration by me.

Booty (2011) – a send up of the Kardashian Craze

The Punisher at Home (Jon Bernthal) ep 1 (2018) – An impression a lot of people like from me, just need Bernthal to become a certified A-lister so I can capitalize

Adam Sandler and Tyler Perry Make a Movie Together (2014)

If Bad Boy TV Heroes Were Black (2014) – the most relevant sketch I made that sadly stays relevant

Tout Bagay: A Half-Haitian Comedy Saga (2018) – a sample of my stand up that tells about my upbringing. The main part is not on any album, but this should entice you to check out the albums I hope

So if you made it through some or all of this thank you and hopefully you will continue to check out my stand up albums and my many other videos.  When Trump is done there will be more and more content for you to still laugh at and hopefully fewer annoying comparisons and comments.

Never Call Me a Thief Blog

Never Call Me a Thief

In a few weeks I will “celebrate” 17 years performing stand up comedy. After my second year at Georgetown University Law Center, a year that found me deeply depressed, so much so that my then-girlfriend called a priest from Georgetown to counsel me.  Basically he showed up to my apartment like Father Merrin in The Exorcist, we had Chinese food and subsequently had a few months of therapeutic lunches. At the end of that I realized I needed a hobby and went to my first open mic in DC in June of 2003.  And if law school was my heroin, for many years it seemed that stand up comedy became my methadone.  It stopped me from being depressed about law school and later, about being a lawyer but then it became its own dependency.  After a good show in 2006 I might feel high for three days.  Six years later the buzz from even a great set would wear off by the time I descended the stairs of the stage.  This is not some exaggeration – I remember the show at NYC’s Gotham Comedy Club in October 2012 when it happened.

            Is there a giant law student here?

Part of the problem was that my career, after a solid trajectory for a few years started to feel like treading water.  One or two things might happen to give me hope that a career in comedy was in the offing only to realize that it was just a tease.  In 2007 I made my national TV debut on The Late Late Show (a great debut set that I find hard to watch simply because I was in such great shape), but months later, when looking to make another appearance on TLLS two things happened: my manager (nothing in writing, but he was helping me immensely with an eye to the future) was let go and I made the rookie mistake of trying to stay with the agency. They officially dumped me months later after the heat of my appearance had died down and this occurred around the time of a writers’ strike in Hollywood. By the time things came back TLLS did not return emails from my manger-less ass.

I was then laid off from my law firm in 2009, but with savings and the money from a returned (snatched) engagement ring I felt like I was good enough to make that money last until I became a star.  I ended up featuring around the country (one memorable gig in Detroit paid $300 for 5 shows – I took a train to Detroit… from NYC and a Greyhound back. Found a cheap hotel and managed to make $13 profit, which I considered a major accomplishment and why I have not stopped complaining about stagnant feature pay for years, despite the fact that the industry and almost no headliner care.  I kept taking gigs that did not make financial sense because I though if I could keep writing and performing and rubbing elbows with headliners a combination of skill, luck and relationships would take me where I wanted to go.

Most headliners seemed to enjoy my presence and my material but none extended a hand other to say good job.  And that’s OK. I think maybe my combination of NBA/NFL size, the “side gig” as an attorney and the fact that I was in my early 30s did not lend itself to a conventional mentoring relationship. I was not some young kid in need of guidance. I was a smart, grown ass man in need of work and a manager, not someone to “teach me the ropes.” But in 2010 I worked with a comedian who would be able to see me in a different light, because he seemed to think of almost every comedian as beneath him: Patrice O’Neal.

I only worked with Patrice twice, but you can hear me introducing him on his two big albums. I emceed for him the first time by luck. I did not take emcee work, not because I was above it but I refused to lose money on road gigs (e.g. you could have me for $13 profit). But my brother and his family lived in DC at the time that I was offered an emcee spot at the DC Improv so I would not have to pay for my own hotel if I took the emcee spot.  So I took it. It was a few months before Patrice would record Elephant in the Room and it is one of the three biggest killer weeks of shows I have ever been part of. In terms of pure killing (strong audience reaction) the three guys who have destroyed crowds harder than anyone else I’ve worked with are Patrice, Sebastian Maniscalco in 2013 (another emcee shot I jumped at in DC) and Gary Owen.  I watched every one of Patrice’s shows.  Patrice did two things that week that made me think that perhaps I had made a potential friend. The first was that he told me one of the nights that he liked my Rocky bit (a bit I never performed in front of him, but that he had seen looking up my stuff – here is the updated version from Thots and Prayers) and the second was that he ripped me for about 10 minutes in front of the local comedians after the last show. It was more friendly roast and felt basically like he “fu*ked with me” as a comedian.

The great compliment came maybe 6 months or so later when he asked the DC Improv to have me emcee his next set of shows.  I still feel like it is the single best compliment I have ever received in stand up.  He valued the emcee spot, which he told me when I was trying to impress him that I “usually featured” (this is what he ripped me for in front of the comics the previous year).  Now I have never asked a comedian “if I could open for them.”  I am not super pushy to begin with, but I feel like that is like asking someone if you are invited to their wedding – let them invite you and if they don’t then you just keep working for the next opportunity. But once Patrice invited me back personally I thought that I might ask him if his feature could not make a gig, would he keep me in mind.  Like I said, I only would have done this because I felt like he had asked for me first.  But a few months later, Patrice would have the stroke that would take his life. I remember being 99% sad that a giant of stand up was gone, just a couple of years into me really delving into his work, but admittedly 1% of me was sad for me because the only headliner who had the physical and mental stature to see me as an inferior (in a good way) and might help me was now gone.

But I kept plugging away. In 2013, after ending a relationship in 2012 that had to suffer through the most disappointing stretch of my career I drank a lot, but also created my best work. In April 2013 I released a video that would be my first viral video – Louis CK Tells the Classics, where I mocked Louis CK’s writing and delivery style through knock knock jokes. This was CK at the height of his powers within and outside of the stand up world.  Many people called me a hater, but most thought the impression and the content were A+. It got me a few meetings with managers that went nowhere.  But in September of 2013 I released Keep My Enemies Closer, the best album of my career.  I wrote and worked the 75 minutes of material in only 16 months (as I had released a very solid album Too Big To Fail in the beginning of 2012).  It sold modestly, but almost every fan I have acknowledges that it is a superb stand up album (performed in front of about 30 people, because 10 years into your career your friends abandon your career because they have families and little of the “oh man you do comedy!” enthusiasm that overflowed when you were new and terrible.  But you have not developed a large enough fan base of strangers because you are not very successful by the measure of the lay person who often assumes that 10 years without headlining or being on TV regularly means you are probably not that good. It is a terrible place to be in your comedy career, but I had dropped the two best pieces of content in my career at this nadir.

But, predictably, 2013 yielded nothing except all my money had run out, I was a feature of great skill, but little renown and I had put on 50 lbs since my Late Late Show debut.  So I started doing part time legal work. Living month to month for the next 5 years.  Dependent more on the godsend of Sound Exchange, which paid out streaming and satellite radio royalties (one of the fortunate moves of mine in not believing in the shady comedy labels that dominate the stand up album world and believing in myself, no matter how foolhardy, was that I owned the rights to every stand up album I self produced. So from 2015-2018 the vast majority of my comedy earnings came from those albums, not the 1988 wages clubs were/are still paying middle acts (features, if I did not explain earlier)).

So I went from being a prosecutor and a big firm associate to a meagerly-paid document reviewing attorney, simply to have the flexibility to do road gigs that would most of the time net me less money than clicking on emails for large corporations as a “contract attorney.”  I had fun runs on The Adam Carolla Show as a resident impersonator and video maker (videos that cost me as much to make as a weekend of feature work), flying myself to LA on my own dime just trying to boost my Twitter and YouTube numbers by appearing on a big podcast (see how much my Trump has improved by watching a sample video below – which will mostly only make sense to Carolla Show fans).  I made around 15 appearances on ESPN radio as a Trump impersonator, but could never convince the show to make a guest, despite being a huge sports fan and a popular segment on the show.

In 2018 I recorded Thots and Prayers, for me the only album of mine at the level of Keep My Enemies Closer, at Helium in Philly. I remember when the set was done I felt a complete exhaustion and sense of relief.  I had cranked out 6 stand up albums, all an hour or more in 15 years (at the time) as a stand up. I was proud of every one. I had produced every one. I had been a road warrior. I had cost myself relationships, financial stability, physical health and happiness in pursuit of making myself a real stand up comedian. I had made podcasts and videos and was proud of that work too, but a headlining stand up comedian was the goal for me. A real popular headliner. Special event on my poster outside the clubs level comedian.  And I had maintained an elite headliner level of output, all while only featuring and doing bar shows in NYC because no club had yet passed me after all that time and all those seemingly important accomplishments.  But after that 2018 recording I felt done. I felt like I had done all that I could, had become a great stand up, but the career wasn’t going to happen for me.

On a related note from 2016 to today I believed I had the best Trump impression (though it clearly has improved “tremendously” since my early assumptions about its quality), but I was seeing everyone from comedians to sketch guys to famous actors getting paid well to play Trump and I couldn’t even propel ESPN radio and Adam Carolla appearances into anything even decent as far as a payday. So combined with exhaustion from stand up I felt like, “If my best pitch (Trump) is not getting me a sniff then it really is not going to happen.”

The final straw was 2019 – I had only received 3 gigs after March – a headlining gig in Ann Arbor (lots of fun) and two feature spots in Baltimore (fun) and Long Island (some fun and an awkward racial conversation after one show). That was it.  So when I received a call out of the blue from a legal staffing agency offering me a position at a big firm I took it. I also moved to NJ, away from the hustle and convenience of NYC, because I figured if I was not working as a comedian and work was no longer coming to me, why not get 2 bedrooms for the price of the studio I was living in. When I left my apartment in midtown in August 2019 it was a happy day for many reasons, but it also felt like the saddest day of my life. I was leaving the only home I’d really had as a non-student since my childhood home. It also felt like my stand up career was staying there while I went to start a new life.

I have messed up relationships. I have hurt people. I have been hurt. I have not been the perfect Catholic I sought to be in my youth and adulthood and I am not the Daniel Caffey/Atticus Finch lawyer I thought I could be when I enrolled in law school. But comedy was the thing that I had done perfectly. Not successfully, but perfectly.  I worked hard at it. I had multi-faceted talents within it. I had received unsolicited praise from big time comedians. I had achieved some rewards and opportunities, with the exception of The Late Late Show, all on my own.  I have a track record of videos and albums to prove I was here and I produced. And I did it the right way. I stuck true to my voice. I didn’t violate any personal rules I had set for myself in my personal or professional conduct. I wanted my comedy career to be pure, in the sense that if and when I reached where I wanted to get it would be an unassailable journey that others could look at with admiration and for which I could feel an unblemished pride. I did all of that and it did not happen. Until March 2020.

The Covid-to-Riches story of my career is probably the best known thing about me because it what I have discussed on TV and podcasts for the last month.  The Covid hit and thanks to a text from a friend I decided to make a selfie video as Trump.  It was my 4th or 5th video in the last week and a half, but this one went off like a fire.  Within a week I was already Twitter famous.  All of my social media metrics skyrocketed and the irony is that I am now famous and have fans with nowhere to perform. And the undeniable flip side of this is that if the world was not in a health and economic crisis I would have been in an office and not posting an off the cuff Trump impression video on March 24th.  And my career would likely have been done.

But as I was enjoying recognition and increased opportunities to entertain, a comedian posted a video lip syncing Trump that caught fire in a way that literally doubled, if not tripled the viral impact of my big video a month after mine. I remember laughing at the video and thinking “wow that is blowing up.”  But unlike most comedians who will not acknowledge their competitiveness I will admit that I did not feel threatened because I thought, “That is not even my lane. I am free styling A+ material in the best Trump voice people have heard. Hers is a fun Tik Tok.”  But then people began @-ing me telling me she was better and/or that we should collaborate.  I would be lying if I said it did not bother me on an artistic level to have what I do compared, or equated to a lip sync, but these are tough times and anyone who can make people laugh (including myself) deserve respect and positive vibes.  So I just liked the comments or ignored them.  Lot of people just want to laugh and equate big belly laughs with big belly laughs no matter how they get them.

But over the last few days I have gotten several messages accusing me of stealing this comedian’s successful act.  Never mind that I predated the comedian’s video by a month or that I am improvising a great impression that has been 5 years in the making.  They are not merely dismissing that. They are accusing me of theft of something that I take the highest pride in (ironically it is because they think my impression is a lip sync, which is an accidental compliment, but I truly don’t care).  For many years, all I had in comedy was pride in that I was doing it the right way because I did not have any other marker of success or progress. To quote Scarface, “All I ha[d] [wa]s my word and my ballssss.” It was like being on a hamster wheel and having to tell yourself, “well I haven’t gone anywhere, but I am really running with good form.”  But accusing me of stealing will not be tolerated.  I don’t know if you are ignorant of comedy, stupid or just an aggressive on-line presence. I do not give a shit.  You put that out there I will stomp it.  And if you among the people questioning why I have reacted so strongly to those accusations it is simple.  I am not a Twitter comedian. I am a stand up comedian and impersonator that you discovered on Twitter. Please, enjoy my work, but do not confuse my work as a quirky diversion. It is born of many years of hard work and sacrifice.  I will not surrender pride in my work and how I got here to be more palatable for Twitter.  I hope you understand that. I am not diminishing others.  I am defending what I am doing, which I did not think would be necessary.  My blog and my podcast were often places where I would write and speak truths (and a lot of humor) about life, politics, art and most of all, stand up. The things I wrote, in some cases, could have been detrimental to my career, but they were always honest words from a frustrated comedian who wanted to see the business work better for himself and others similarly situated.  So forgive me if you did not expect this level of honesty from someone you may know as a “Twitter” comedian. Diminish my work and I may be able to bite my tongue. But call me a thief, after all this and how I have tried to pursue it in as pure a way as possible, then all I can say to you is fuck you.