Every night, knights armed with spiral notebooks and corded microphones do battle against an unrelenting beast. The beast is a hydra of sorts - cut its head off and more heads pop up, wanting more. A comedy audience wants to laugh, but more than to laugh, a comedy audience wants you to give them a deep belly laugh; a laugh they have never experienced. In that way, fighting and truly slaying a comedy club audience is harder than any other job. Laughter is an experience that most people enjoy and with some degree of success, can replicate on their own.
Why go to a comedy show when you can laugh at a movie or at a bar with friends? A comedy show produces raw emotion, filtered through sadness, dejection, failure, humiliation, joy, pain, drugs, booze and the genitals of waitresses. The laughter at a comedy club is honed and refined - this isn’t your funny friend in a bar (he isn’t that funny by the way, stop hanging out with him [everybody hates that asshole]). A comedian has an innate ability to take an individual through a series of emotions and experiences (both familiar and absurd) to make you forget your shitty day, and laugh at a grown man shitting his pants (for the 6th time in his adult life [probably]).
But still, why would I go to a comedy show? Because a familiar funny experience (a movie or a funny friend) doesn’t walk a tightrope; a proven funny movie can’t fail. But a comedian can, and will. Comedians fail all the time, and part of the joy of going to a comedy club is watching a comedian bomb and going “Oh fuck, is he going to pull this off?” Sometimes a comic doesn’t pull it off; sometimes a comic gets so pulled into his head or his own universe or his notebook that he can’t communicate to an audience. Sometimes a comedian is so terrible, your gut reaction is to laugh, but this guy has no idea what to do with the laughter he is getting, so his unconscious reaction is to keep doing what he is doing - bombing, hilariously.
We watch comedians like we watch the first week of American Idol: To laugh at something “artistic.” Watching someone on American Idol sing your favorite song badly is a unique experience, just like watching someone (whose only real job is to make you laugh) say “this is what you expect and I am going to do it poorly!” To watch a comedian take subject matter you find hilarious, and render it an unfunny cacophonous mess is a visceral joy. But when you see goodcomedy, really good comedy you react to it in an orgasmic way, you keep coming and coming and coming. And unlike with orgasms, laughter doesn’tproduce any negative tangible leftovers (you don’t need a towel after).
What I am saying is you need to go see more live comedy. You might be funny (you aren’t) but until you have experienced the visceral and emotional laughter brought forth by a laughter expert, you have not truly laughed. Until you can let your guard down and laugh at topics both sacred and mundane, you haven’t truly run the gauntlet of the human humor experience. Unless you’velaughed until the sides of your face hurt, in my opinion you haven’t laughed and thus are not a person.
As a comedian, I don’t consider a show a success until someone from the audience walks up to me and tells me that I caused a physical reaction in them. “I had to leave or else I was going to piss on myself” or “I spit my drink out when you said XYZ,” these compliments mean more than any “You were funny!” ever could. A comedian lives for more than the laughter; we live for the physical experience. We live for the ability to say “I changed someone’s life tonight, and I did it with something I created (or bought [or stole from Frank]).”
Brandon!
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