Comedians and/vs. Strippers

Last night, I was having a conversation with an audience member after a comedy show I was featured in and found out that she was an exotic dancer.  In talking about our careers, I realized that exotic dancing/stripping may be closer to stand-up than any other entertainment career.

From a practical and business perspective, the two are very similar.  Each week, both comedians and strippers call the clubs they work at, give their availabilities for the week ("avails"), and hope to get scheduled.  Comedians and strippers also work the same hours - at night, busiest on weekends - essentially, when "normal" people are looking for entertainment - in similar environments, performing in dark rooms for patrons who are drunk or drinking.  The clubs (both comedy clubs and strip clubs) make the majority of their money through alcohol sales, so both comedians and strippers are essentially conduits for these places to sell drinks (not that there is anything wrong with that!).

From a more philosophical perspective, the two also overlap.  Both professions are about revealing yourself on stage.  In the case of comedy, you get emotionally naked; in the case of stripping, physically.  In both cases, you are exposed in a way "normal" people are not, pushing you out of the mainstream of what is acceptable in society.

You might also consider that both jobs involve doing something "normal" people do already (make others laugh, take your clothes off), which sometimes causes others to conclude that they can do what you do for a living without any of the training through which you have gone.  These people don't realize how hard it is to do what you do - not only to just do it, but to do it well.

On the face of it, I think what seems like a glaring difference might also be a commonality.  The comedian is fueled by honesty - he/she creates comedy by revealing the truth about the world and/or ourselves.  The stripper, on the other hand, often hides behind a persona: he/she uses a fake name, wears a costume, partitions his/her "stripper self" from her "real self."  I think, though, that a comedian is different onstage than offstage - the comedian is a larger version of himself on stage.  You're not "you" but "YOU" - a distilled, magnified, highly focused rendering of who you are.  I think a stripper does the same thing, highlighting the sexual and physical components of themselves in a focused reflection of their underlying selves.  In both cases, the comedian and the stripper bring to focus important components of humanity that we often hide.

What do you think?  Do you think this comparison holds?  Do you think there are any other jobs with such similarities to comedy (comedians as doctors bringing truth medicine to the masses?  comedians as firefighters saving society from the flames of self-destruction?  comedians as mimes who talk?)?

New Jokes: Swine Flu

I promised a while back to start posting new jokes as I write them, so here goes (keep in mind that this is a work in progress):

"Swine flu isn't all bad.  I haven't seen a mariachi band on the subway in two weeks."

I'm Featured on The Apiary!

The Apiary, a legendary comedy blog, just published a lengthy interview with me on their home page!  I read the blog every day, so it really means a lot to me to actually be featured by them.

Check out the whole interview here!

Art vs. Commerce Or, The Cheeseburger Theory of Comedy

I still haven't decided what the core purpose of this blog is.  Should I just update everybody on my experiences as a full-time comedian?  Or should I get a little more theoretical and try to analyze comedy a bit?  Is this blog about the comedian or the comedy?  (I'm still not sure, so please feel free to weigh in in the comment section!)

With that in mind, I have been working on something for a bit, a theoretical discourse on the art-commerce spectrum as it relates to stand-up comedy.  I think I may be in withdrawal from all of the paper writing of 12 years in public schools and 4 years at Harvard, so I apologize if the language gets a little too academic for an informal blog post, but here goes anyway:

As someone who makes his living as an artist, it's always fascinating to me to consider the relationship between art and commerce.  I think all comedians fall somewhere on a spectrum between art (comedy purely for the sake of comedy) and commerce (comedy purely for the sake of making money).

The first thing to consider in regards to this spectrum is that the audience plays an important role.  Since the commerce aspect of art is fueled by those paying for it, the commerce side of the spectrum could also be labeled "comedy dictated by the wants/needs of others" while the art side of the spectrum could be labeled "comedy dictated by the wants/needs of the artist."

I think the best analogy for conceptualizing the scale is as follows: at the far end of the commerce side of the spectrum is a fast food cheeseburger.  It's cheap, it's easy, it sells well, and is extremely popular on a large scale.  However, it's not good for you nor is it really satisfying on any level below the topmost surface.  As we move along the scale, the cheeseburger starts to get less and less manufactured and its composition is less and less dictated by what will appeal to a large, generalized population.  At the center of the scale, we have a standard cheeseburger, one you might find at a good diner.  As we start to move farther and farther down the art side, the cheeseburger starts to get more and more experimental.  Instead of cheese, you might find an avocado.  Instead of a bun, you might find lettuce.  Instead of beef, you might find tuna or turkey or vegetables.  At a certain point, however, these cheeseburgers go from pushing the limits of what a cheeseburger is to being so un-cheeseburger-like that anyone who orders it will send it back because, at this point, it's just not a cheeseburger anymore.

I think every comedian should decide where they want to be on this scale.  If comedy is a cheeseburger, what kind of cheeseburger do you want to be?  I think, ideally, you want one foot on the art side and one foot on the commerce side, in such a way that you can straddle the middle point, putting weight on one or the other foot depending on the venue, audience, etc.  If comedy is something you want to do but not something you want to do for a living, then I think you have the freedom to be farther out on the art side.  (If comedy is a cheeseburger, you don't have to worry about people sending a cheeseburger back if you're not concerned with selling a lot of them or making a profit.)  Thus, the danger in going too far out on the art side is that it diminishes your ability to make a living as an artist.  More importantly, being that far out means you're too far away from the comedy the audience wants to see or expects - of course, you have to make strong artistic choices, but since the audience is so important to stand-up comedy, you can't completely alienate all possible audiences.  If you end up performing in an empty room, you're no longer performing stand-up comedy.

Still, I think more comedians tend to go too far out on the commerce side, ignoring the art and the craft solely in order to create commerce (make money).  Stand-up comedy is an art form and should be treated as such - it's a vehicle for creativity and expression.  If you're too far on the commerce side of the scale, you're denying the very essence of comedy, which is that it is an art.  Somebody too "arty" is still an artist, but somebody too "commerce-y" has forgotten what it is or ceased to be an artist.

I describe this spectrum and my thoughts on it because I think it's useful in conceptualizing certain theories or ideas.  

For example, people struggle to define "alternative" or "alt" comedy.  Instead of trying to nail down what it is, I would argue that it might be reasonable to simply define it as comedy a significant distance away from the midpoint towards the "art" side of the art-commerce spectrum.

Using the spectrum also makes it easier to explain the difference between the comedy scenes in the U.S.  In New York, there are more comedy clubs (centers of commerce) than Boston; it's also more expensive to live in New York, so the commerce aspect has to be pushed even harder in order just to survive as an artist.  As a result, Boston comics tend to be more art/less commerce than New York comics.  (This is not to say that New York comics are not artists, only that in relative terms Boston comics on a whole are "artier"/more art-focused than New York comics.  Both might be on the art side of the scale, but Boston would probably be farther out from the center.)

Another example: stealing jokes and doing hack material is an art/commerce question.  These comics are performing in front of audiences and getting hired - this is the commerce aspect of this issue.  (Commerce is the only reason these comedians resort to this - if it didn't help them get up in front of an audience or do better when performing for them, they wouldn't steal jokes or use hack material, as it would defeat the whole purpose of them doing it in the first place.)  According to this scale, you can't get closer to the commerce side without getting farther from the art side - I think we can agree that this works well for the stealing/hack example since these comics essentially cease to be artists when they engage in this kind of behavior.  Art is about creating - one can't be an artist without generating or creating anything.

I think a strong conceptualization of this spectrum is helpful in thinking about stand-up comedy.  Such issues as joke selection, playing to an audience, developing abstract material are all really art-commerce issues, so I think a greater understanding of this scale will lead to better, more well-informed choices.

Anybody want a cheeseburger?

New Bit: Memento-ing Movies

I think it would be cool to blog new jokes that I'm working on.  Definitely check me out live and see how these jokes play in front of real audiences!

There's an easter egg on the DVD of the movie, Memento, that lets you watch the movie in reverse.  How much better would movies be if you could watch all of them backwards?

* The Godfather would be about mobsters who come back from the dead and attend a wedding.

* Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory would be about a child who owns a chocolate factory, gives it to an adult, and then becomes poor.

* The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would be about a man aging normally living in a world where everyone ages backwards.

* Superman is about a superhero who saves the world, gets the girl, and then gets on a rocket and leaves Earth for his home planet, Krypton.

* Friday the 13th is about a man in a hockey mask who, after using his magic machete to reverse people's gruesome deaths, becomes a boy again and goes to summer camp.

* Rocky would be about a fighter at the top of his game who gets worse and worse and ends up a normal guy.  In other words, The Wrestler. 

Cartoon

Here's a photo comic Craig Carmean snapped of a cartoon comic Kenny Ortega (who's also a tattoo artist, so is great at sketching) drew:

(That's me with a quote from my act.)

MAD About Comedy

I finally uploaded a .pdf of my first major article in MAD Magazine ("If Different Comedians Told the Same Joke," May 2008) to the Press page of my website.  (You can also download the article here.)

I can't tell you how much of an honor and a thrill it is to be a contributing writer for MAD.  As a kid, I used to crouch over a decaying cardboard box at my grandparent's house in Brooklyn, poring over my dad's yellowing collection of old MADs.  Fast forward to the summer of 2005 - when I participated in MAD's six-week internship program - and I was now actually helping write and put together the magazine that informed the childhoods of both my Dad and me (not to mention countless others).  That summer, the summer of my freshmen year at Harvard, I learned not only about the technical aspects of comedy writing (the editors of MAD are all brilliant comedic minds and just watching them come up with ideas is a master class in itself) but that comedy writing was what I wanted to do with my life.  Combine that desire with a desire to perform and express oneself on stage and - presto! - you have a stand-up comedian.

The bottom line: as a kid, MAD influenced and shaped my sense of humor.  As an intern, MAD influenced and shaped my life.