Have you ever gone to a comedy club expecting to see some comedy, but instead witnessed a train wreck of a show with absolutely no laughable moments? It's the worst, right? You know what's even worse? Being the "comedian" during this excruciating moment. Here's the story of just how unfunny I can be in front of a roomful of people expecting to laugh.
My younger brother Brad, a very talented comedian, put together a comedy show last week. 8 PM show on a Thursday night, talented lineup, lots of people showing up to drink and laugh. What could go wrong? Brad, serving as MC and headliner, starts the evening off with a few jokes to get the crowd going before introducing a super funny comedian. Brad's jokes worked - the crowd was into it - the first comic goes up and kills. Then the next guy goes up to a great response. Then the next guy, then the next, etc. with Brad keeping the energy going with some quick bits in between. The audience is laughing and enjoying themselves. These poor bastards had no idea what was in store for them when it was my turn.
After five comics, it was my turn to take the stage. The rest of the comedians had done their job and kept the audience going. As a comedian, there are two horrible things that can happen before you go on. One is the comic right before you absolutely destroys. There is always a grizzled old comic at every club that re-tells the story of how he/she was about to perform for network execs/agents/managers/Lorne Michaels/future ex-wives, but they had to follow Richard Pryor. For some reason, it's always Richard Pryor and for some reason that comedian never got over it. The other devastating thing that can happen is you follow someone who is TERRIBLE. There is a grizzled old comedian at every club who tells the story about how they had the entire industry filling up the showroom to witness them become the next Jerry Seinfeld, but then they had to follow Carlos Mencia.
As I stated above, every comedian before me (and after me) had a done a great job. There was nobody that had bombed so I wasn't walking into a war zone. The audience was relaxed and excited to see every act. Now, I wasn't doing a traditional set. I decided I was going to do a more sketch oriented act. It would start as a regular stand up set and then within a minute, it would turn into something else. I had my older brother Jeff, who is super duper funny and had performed his own set earlier in the evening to tons of laughter, planted in the audience to "heckle" my performance. I had written out the bit and rehearsed it earlier with Jeff. It sounded good and seemed like it would've been a fun change of pace from the evening of stand-up. Throw in a little good-hearted, staged, audience ribbing for a couple minutes and then the others could perform their well crafted, genuinely funny wordplay.
I don't want to bore you with the details or transcript of the set I was performing. The only thing worse than watching bad comedy is reading bad comedy. The only thing worse than watching or reading bad comedy is performing bad comedy. The only thing worse than performing bad comedy is watching Carlos Mencia.
Again, I'm not going to write the entire act here because I'm afraid you might read it and poke your eyes out or hang yourself or light yourself on fire or jump out of your 17th floor office window or eat three cups of rat poison or snort eight grams of carpet deodorizer or hijack a plane and crash it into an ocean close to Malaysia or stick your head in an oven or put a plastic bag over your head and tie a rubber band around it at your neck or jump into the lions den at the zoo and attempt to molest a cub or perform magic tricks in Vegas with a white tiger or date an ex football player/sometime actor in Naked Gun movies and then start seeing a Jewish waiter or become Jett Travolta.
The only thing I can do is to offer advice to anyone wanting to perform and not wanting to ruin the show. If you're going to do a set that is funny, engaging and makes people laugh and think, you might want to make sure the writing is strong, the performing is top notch and you remember your lines. Oh, and you also want to make sure it's not about the Holocaust and Holocaust Remembrance Day and you shouting horribly offensive things about Jews, Mexicans and African-Americans.
I apologize to whoever had to follow me. To him I will always be Carlos Mencia which makes me wish I were Jett Travolta.
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