Life, in comedy, is interesting to say the least. As a comic, you make the choice to get up in front of a room full of strangers, share with them your thoughts, and hope they not only agree with you but laugh in the process. It is a tall order to do both. I mean, sure you can talk about universally hated topics to get them to agree with you. Things like traffic, air travel, blind dates and children but these dead horses have been beat, and it takes a very skilled comic to get a genuine laugh while discussing them. On the other hand, you can go for the easy laughs by discussing universally funny topics like terrorism, suicide and abortion, but these are highly contested subjects and can prove difficult getting the audience to agree with you. Throw in the fact that everybody thinks they are comedy experts and will confidently, and without solicitation, give you advice on what would make your set funnier and it’s enough to make you want to quit or pick up a weapon.

Personally, I have struggled throughout my comedy career trying to decide on which side of the fence to walk. Do I go for the easy laughs, talking about subjects that are funny but unimportant to me? Things like stereotypes and the apocalypse? Or do I focus on the things I really care about but which often fall on deaf ears? Like the destruction of organized religion and Magic Johnson’s AIDS? I’m happy to announce that I’ve recently had a revelation and I will share it with you but before I do, a little back story is in order.
I used to think that I would never make it in comedy. Not with this extraordinary intelligence. Not with this biting wit. Throw in the fact that I’m tall, relatively good looking, have near perfect teeth, am not Jewish and/or black and a career in comedy seemed about as likely as Florence Henderson winning “Dancing with the Stars.” And this notion was reinforced by the masses. Since the beginning of my comedy career, every time I’ve met somebody and told them I’m a comic, I’ve received the same front-handed, bitch-slapped compliment. “You sure don’t look funny to me.” Thanks, dick. Since we’re going on first impressions, then you obviously have a flourishing career as a jizz-mopper at the Dirty Sanchez.

I would have sets that I thought were brilliant but would fall flat in the “laughs per minute” criterion.

I would have sets that I thought were unimaginative and predictable but they would kill.
I would listen to the critiques of bringer show comedy “aficionados” when they would tell me their pseudo-expert opinion on what they found funny or unfunny.

I would tell myself that they didn’t matter. It didn’t work.

I would get angry and lash out at the simple minded lemmings in one of these columns. It didn’t work.

I resided that I couldn’t always just say whatever I wanted and that the audiences’ enjoyment was paramount. That lasted about an hour.
I was conflicted.

Then last week, something happened. I was sitting in the back of a comedy club, listening to one of my friends eat shit on stage. To say he struggled would be like saying Somalia’s political system is struggling. He was in a four alarm, DEFCON 1, shit storm of a bombing. To be more accurate, they hated him. I could tell when I heard a couple behind me say, “I hate him.” Then they shouted, “We hate you!”

The thing about it was he wasn’t being offensive. He wasn’t sharing radical ideas that conflicted with the foundation of everything they held sacred. I think he was doing a bit about the difference between “cocksuckers” and “assholes.” I wanted to turn around and tell them something mean and petty like, “If you’re going to open your mouth during a comedy show, make yourself useful and let me piss in it.” But I didn’t. When I looked at them I had a vision. It was like that scene in “The Matrix” where Neo gets shot, is reborn and can see the Matrix for what it actually was. I saw these two people who were nothing more than spectators. Passive spectators. What they felt or what they said, good or bad, was completely meaningless. To a comic, they were and are an illusion.

As I said in the first paragraph, a comic makes the CHOICE to live in a world of comedy. What never occurred to me until that night was that the choice doesn’t start and stop with the stage. It is a way of life – comedy. All day. Every day. And the only obligation the comedian has is to do comedy.

His comedy.

However he sees fit. If people love it, great. If they hate it, great. It doesn’t matter either way.

People get into comedy for a myriad of reasons but the one thing every comic has in common is that they love the funny. Too many of us get caught up in what that “funny” is. As if it is one thing. The only thing that matters is our own funny. That’s the only funny worth defining.

Since that night, I’ve had lots of funny in my life. Not just on stage but everywhere.

I was walking my dogs the other night when a shirtless douche made a point to tell me not to let my dogs piss on the new plants in his apartment’s flower bed. Because, according to him, “For the first three months of a plant’s life, dog urine will throw it into shock and kill it but after the first three months, dog urine actually helps it thrive.” I looked at him and said, “Just like babies.” Then I turned and enjoyed a good laugh to myself.

The following night I met another person who made a point to tell me that I “don’t look funny.” When he told me that he was a sales manager, I replied with laughter, “You’re a manager? Like you’re responsible for other people? And they listen to you??!! Stop, you’re killing me.” I think he got the point. I found it hilarious.

As a comic, I find it fun to hold a mirror up to society. Sometimes that may offend people. Sometimes people may love it. Whatever, if it is funny to me then it plays.
If a comic makes the choice to live in a world of comedy and a person enters that world voluntarily then they must automatically succumb to the laws of that world; love it or not.