Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Last Night

I am a lifelong fan of stand-up comedy. Among my earliest memories are the hours I spent listening to and all but memorizing the classic Bill Cosby albums in my uncle’s collection. When someone asked me recently what my favorite TV show of all time was, I decided it was Saturday Night Live, from the first-year episodes I watched with my dad to the stellar season that just ended. When I lived in Hollywood, I spent many a weekday night at the Comedy Store or Laugh Factory, dissecting the work of every open-mic performer, from never-seen-again nobodies to the soon-to-blow-up Dane Cook. And so, so many times over the decades, I’ve thought, I could do that … if only I could get over my terror of performing my own material in front of an audience. To me that phony brick wall behind the mic felt like the backdrop for an execution by firing squad. I never did take my shot, to my enduring shame.

Except here’s a thing you need to know about me: I freaking hate it when I find myself limited by things I’m afraid of. It eats at me. I end up daring myself, and once I’ve done that my brain never shuts up about it. So for over thirty years now, I’ve been internally chastising myself for wanting so desperately to be heard by the entertainment industry, yet never availing myself of repeated invitations, even exhortations, to overcome my stage fright and tell jokes to audiences thirsty for laughter (and, in some cases, a minimum of two feeble well drinks).

With my fiftieth birthday looming, I resolved to finally put my self-recrimination to end. When I visited Vomity, an unfortunately-named, weekly night of open-mic comedy at Le Voyeur, a club in downtown Olympia, I knew it was only a matter of time before I answered that call to belated action.

Here’s how it works. To sign up, one must first follow Vomity’s Facebook page. Every Tuesday at noon, host Colt Barton posts a message inviting each aspiring comic to sign up by commenting with his or her name. Then, around midnight, he announces who got in and who’s been relegated to the “bump list.” If you made it, you perform the following night between 9 and 11. If you’re on the bump list, that means you have to sign up again next week. By reminding them you were bumped, though, you guarantee yourself a slot the next week. And that’s how it went down for me.

My material was already written. I’d culled it, in large part, from past social-media posts, so I was confident (based on likes and retweets) the jokes were funny to someone other than myself. I memorized it two weeks ago and repeated it out loud under numerous stressful conditions. The Vomity format only gives you three minutes to fill, so long-form storytelling was out. One of my observations from previous Vomity attendance was that new comics tend to space their punch lines too far apart, so I wanted to see how many I could pack in there. I whittled the material down to only necessary words and managed to squeeze in what I hoped would be seven or eight decent laughs. I was thinking of one-liner comics like Mitch Hedberg and Steven Wright, though not thinking for even a moment I wield their genius or would emulate their success in slipping from joke to joke every couple of seconds.

I took a risk and decided to dress up for the occasion. Granted, it’s a room packed with comics and audience members less than half my age, most of whom show up looking like they were ejected by a tornado, but I donned a jacket and tie over sneakers and skinny slacks. My plan was to stream the set to Facebook, both for friends and to review later in private, and I wanted to look as good as possible. Also, this was a milestone in my life, for better or worse, and I intended to give myself every shot at remembering it fondly.

A few days before the big event, I searched the web for first-timer tips. Experienced comedians had differing advice, but they all agreed on two things: You will absolutely, positively bomb, Enola Gay, so don’t you dare record your set for posterity or even invite your closest friends. I invited my wife to both attend and stream my set, and I found out hours before that my sister and brother-in-law would also be there to witness my debut. Well, whatever. Go big or go home and never show your mug in a comedy club again, am I right?

Probably not.

Andy Kindler: “My first performance on my own … was horrifying. I remember telling the crowd it wasn’t going well. They knew that already. I will admit to quietly sobbing in the car on the way home.” So that can happen. And of course then you go home and off yourself, and you don’t even bother leaving a note because all your friends saw the Facebook stream and know exactly why it was time for you to jump off a cliff.

Except that’s not what happened to me. I’m proud to say I did face my fears. I hopped up on stage, grabbed the mic and did my three-minute set. Not, maybe, in the order I memorized it, but every joke found its way in there. I even managed to get about four or five decent laughs, a decent ratio for the room I was in. Several comics were lucky to get a few pity laughs. Others, including Sam Miller, headliner Bo Johnson and nineteen-year-old (!) Anna Eggleton, slew the room. I didn’t kill; I didn’t bomb. You can see for yourself. Try to ignore the glare off my head, okay? I know it makes me look like Reddy Killowatt in a suit, but it is what it is.

Video: Carv Does Stand-Up

I notice as I post this that the URL includes the phrase “feedback_reaction_generic,” which seems about right.

So will I do this again? Y’know … maybe. I feel I brought no shame upon myself or my tribe, and few other comics seemed to know it was my first time performing my own material. I consider that a win. Also, from my perspective, that three-minute set felt exactly like, “Thanks, Colt. Hi. I’m Christian Carvajal.” Everything else was a blur. So maybe it’d be fun to try it again when I’m calm enough to be present in my own mind and body, not floating out there in a galaxy of terror squillions of light-years away.

—–

Meanwhile, plans continue for public performances in which I’ve grown more confident and comfortable these last few years, namely author appearances. I’ll be reading from and signing my new book of short stories, called C Is for Collection. By then I might even have some new jokes! You can catch me Wednesday, June 13 (the day after my birthday) at 6:30 p.m. in Tacoma’s King’s Books, or the next night at 7 p.m. at Browsers Bookshop in Olympia. Or, thanks to the magic of the interwebs, you can simply dodge the whole process and order it now. Yes, today! It won’t arrive signed, of course, but maybe you can buy me a drink or something and I’ll throw in a free copy of Lightfall for your trouble, assuming you don’t have one already. Pretty fair, right? I know. The word heroic gets thrown around a lot these days, y’know, but every once in a while you kinda have to admit it’s justified.


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