'Twas the Night Before Inauguration Day...

I love this Walt Whitman poem...

(I recommend reading this aloud to yourself. It's much more beautiful when you can hear the words.)

Election Day, November, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show, 

'Twould not be you, Niagara— nor you, ye limitless prairies— nor

    your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite— nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic

    geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones— nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes— nor

    Mississippi's stream:

—This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name— the still

    small voice vibrating— America's choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen— the act itself the main, the

    quadrennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous'd— sea-board and inland—

    Texas to Maine— the Prairie States— Vermont, Virginia, California, 

The final ballot-shower from East to West— the paradox and conflict, 

The countless snow-flakes falling—( a swordless conflict, 

Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the

    peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity— welcoming the darker odds, the dross: 

—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify— while the heart

    pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

Bombing & Blaming

Bombing is okay. Blaming the audience is not.

Don't say "tough crowd."
Don't say our assholes are clenched too tight.
Don't say we need to loosen up.

Lashing out at us tells us that a) you're not good at this and b) you're taking it personally. It's your job to make us laugh, Dr. Chuckles.

The audience doesn't care if you bomb. Slog through your set as you rehearsed. That's okay! We'll forget about you the second you get off stage and the next guy bombs even harder. Truly. You aren't that important.

Or call it out. But be honest about it. Just say you're bombing. We'll appreciate it. The second it's out in the open we'll relax and give you another shot. No one walks into a comedy club, shells out $50 for cover, 2 drinks, tax, and tip and says "I can't wait to be underwhelmed." Even fewer people follow up by saying "and I hope the comic blames me for their misery."

It's not the audience; it's you.

I just got back from watching two comedy shows. 4.5 hours of mostly shitty comedy. I don't use the word shitty lightly. Most of the time, I'm a "there's a comedy type for everybody" kind of guy. But tonight I watched comic after comic get up on stage, try out a shitty joke, and then blame the audience for their train wreck of a set.

A good comic understands that they're will be good and bad rooms. Good and bad audiences. Good and bad jokes. But they do their act and refine based on the audience response. If they don't laugh, don't blame them.

If I have to sit through another comic make a joke about everyone's asshole making a sucking sound when you bomb I'm going to kill myself.

So, wise Anthony. How do I remedy the situation? If the jokes I'm doing aren't working, what should I do?

First, embrace the situation. Call it out. Say you're bombing. The audience knows it before you do and the sooner you can call it out the sooner you can get back on their side. But telling them over and over that they suck ostracizes them. It makes them feel like it's their fault. And it's not. It's yours.

Comics shouldn’t blame the audience for their bombing because that turns a benign audience hostile.

If you’re not getting laughs, it’s entirely your fault.

Take responsibility for your act. One comic started out his set by asking if there were any MMA fans in the audience. No one made a sound. He made a joke about how no one was going to get this joke, but then he proceeded anyway. If no one in the audience is going to get your joke, move on to other material, or at least don’t get butthurt when they don’t laugh at your joke.

Having made his joke about no one understanding his MMA jokes, he should have immediately proceeded to his material about having kids. Half the audience had kids, and even those of us without kids can sort of understand what it’s like to have kids [which is exactly why I don’t have kids].

Another comic got up and called out the situation. He said we were a quiet audience. But then he said it was his job to make us laugh. His entire set was crowd work trying to get us laughing. And he did!

Until the next comic got up, and then it was lulls for the rest of the evening.

Comics: Take responsibility for your performance. It’s not us; it’s you.

Blaming the audience turns a benign experience to a bad one. They’re on our side to begin with. The audience wants you to succeed.

But so many fail.

And that's actually okay! As long as you fail the right way.

Failing the right way is performing your act and, upon realizing you're bombing, you call it out and pivot to another topic. One comic tonight was telling jokes about MMA and parenting to a room full of 20s something women and me. Upon realizing he wasn't connecting with the crowd, he switched to racial jokes. Those got laughs [because everyone's a little racist]. Another comic was doing some crowd work and getting good laughs and then switched to salad tossing. The audience went cold. But, he made fun of himself for losing us at that point, made a joke of it, and went back to stuff that was working.

Failing the wrong way is performing your act and, upon realizing you're tanking, you tell the audience to loosen up. You tell them that their assholes are making a giant sucking noise. [I'm not kidding, this happened with 6 separate comics tonight.]

Mission Statement

I want to leave the world a little better than I found it. I want to do that by making people laugh. 

There’s no bad laugh. 

Well there are. If you’re laughing AT people and those people aren’t doing stupid things, then those are bad laughs. 

So maybe there are some bad laughs. 

And I don’t really like loud cackles and technically those are laughs. And annoying laughs - they know who they are - are bad. 

So there are actually a lot of bad laughs. 

But as long as you’re not laughing at someone who’s not doing something stupid, and the sound, volume, and timbre of your laugh are pleasing, or in the very least not annoying to a majority or minority of people, then the laugh is good. 

I guess there are only a few good laughs.

So if I can raise the number of good laughs by one then I’ve done something good. 

Not that I can die, retire, or even make any amount of money by bringing one laugh into the world.

Maybe I should aim a little higher. For more good laughs. 

Where was I going with all this?

I want to make the bring into the world a Pareto-efficient quantity of laughs, those where we can increase the number of good laughs without increasing the number of bad laughs. I want to make more people laugh (increase positive thing) without making more people cry (while not increasing negative thing).

Unless those people are crying from laughing so hard…

All the High Fives

Congrats, you. [This is a note to myself, not you, the reader. Just didn't want you thinking you deserved any congratulating. Unless you did something congratulations worthy, in which case, Congrats!]

You wrote a To Do list item and actually completed it. No one will know the struggles you went through to check that box either. 

You had to actually write down "Write The Newsletter" on a pad of paper. That took a lot of energy. So much so that you had to wait until the following day to regain enough energy to complete the task.

And then you had to draw that distractingly warped box to the left to the todo item. That was a pretty smart move, planning for your eventual success.

And then you had to write the newsletter, organize it, setup MailChimp, subscribe to your own newsletter, and then send it out. To yourself. 

But someone read it [you/me]. And he laughed. And then he forwarded it to his wife, Lauren. And she laughed. Which gave you the boost you needed to not go back to bed. (You did write a newsletter today, after all.)

So here's to you, Me. May you continue to share your talents with the world. And if not the world, then just yourself. And if you ever want to view your prized baby, just to remind yourself how smart/funny/magnificent/glory you are, then click here. 

*pats you/me/self on the back*.