"...I hacked from my boyfriend. Not on purpose, but a hack is a hack, and I hacked..."
Big Dummy, October 12th, 2004
What an awful quandary. I'm smarter than most dumb people and dumber than most smart people. Wal-Mart greeting is beneath me, and understanding French philosophers is beyond me. I want ice cream.
Sometimes I think I'm only alive because suicide would kill my parents. In fact, as soon as my last parent checks out, I will give serious thought to performing oral on a shotgun.
But enough about my bright future.
Don't take this wrong, but I would like to be dead for a month. Just floating like a fish on life support, so that for thirty sweet, drooling days, I am not plagued by indecision, insecurity and other words that connote anxiety and begin with an "i".
I've been meeting with literary agents who don't know me and are surprised to that I'm a comedian.
"Why haven't I heard of you?"
Uh, because you're a lazy shit who hasn't been to a comedy club in ten years?
"Most standups stop doing comedy when they write," one agent said. "It's too hard."
"Yes, I know it's hard. I know because I didn't stop. I worked 5 to 7 nights a week. The whole time."
He poked at his bagel, bored.
Standup comedy is really important to me, mutherfucker.
The problem is that I've only worked on one television show. (gee, so sorry!) And what have I been doing with my spare time? Where's my Conan packet, my SNL packet, my Kimmel, LateLate, Ellen, Daily Show, where's my show ideas to pitch to Comedy Central, Spike, Cartoon Network, where where where?
Well, when I look back on the last two years, I wasn't trying to get another job. I was content to become good at the one I already had.
Did I? Was I good at it? Did I get good? When do I stop wondering and when do I know, or is it false confidence that makes people cocky and vulnerable to hubris.
I hacked from my boyfriend. Not on purpose, but a hack is a hack, and I hacked. Some background for those of you who aren't me: Chris and I have both noticed something about the behavior of some of our neighbors in Harlem. Whenever we drive home, we joke about it, and because pronouns are annoying, let's say that "it" is "balloons." Well, he was the first of us to notice balloons, and rightfully claimed the topic as his own.
On Tuesday night, I was about the 100th comic up at the Strip. The crowd was sparse, and hanging on for dear life. This is not a time to jump into material. So I started chatting to a woman who, it turns out, lives right near us. In the conversation, I brought up balloons. I didn't have a joke about it, just riffed a little bit, got some laughs and then moved onto to my bits.
"Why would you drop that bit?" I said. I was astonished. I had forgotten that I even mentioned balloons. Chris had been watching in the back. "I didn't do a joke, it was just, oh, man, I'm so sorry, it was small talk to get to what I wanted to talk about."
"I know," Chris said, "but if I talk about balloons now, any comic who say you tonight is gonna think I stole from you. And you're more known than I am, so I'm dropping it. You can talk about balloons. That's fine. I'm not mad."
I was. I made him drop his whole act when he moved here, and now I killed a new bit.
"Please don't drop yours. I didn't do a joke, it was riffing, I'm so sorry, I'm so used to talking about balloons with you. I hate myself."
"That's all right, I don't want it now, and don't hate yourself."
Well, I'm never going to bring balloons up again, and he won't, so it's a dead bit. I'm a bit-killer. I'm a comic no one in the business has heard of, I'm a writer without an agent, I'm a dumb bull in a bodega full of china. And I forgot my mom's birthday.
