A Quick Story About Kenny
“You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this,” he said.
…
“Smell this,” the baker said, breaking open a dark loaf. “It’s a heavy bread, but rich.” They smelled it, then he had them taste it. It had the taste of molasses and coarse grains. They listened to him. They ate what they could. They swallowed the dark bread. It was like daylight under the fluorescent trays of light.
- Raymond Carver, “A Small, Good Thing”
Kenny used to run this show in New York City that was one of the shows you wanted to get on.
Every comedy scene has a handful of shows that the comics who you talk to when you visit go "oh you HAVE to do (insert show here)." You HAVE to do Chatterbox, it's the best show in LA and it's not even in LA. You HAVE to do this show Paper Machete, there's nothing like it. You HAVE to do Sure Thing, it's an institution. One of the last times I went to NYC pre-Covid, I HAD to do Comedy at the Knitting Factory. So I followed up on some recommendations I had from friends who said reach out to Kenny about doing the show.
I sent him a submission with a tape I was proud of, and waited. He got back to me a little while later, said to send it to the official email for the show so it could go through the proper channels. So I did. Then I never heard back. This bothered me a little bit at the time, but this was also not out of the ordinary. Trying to get booked on a show and never hearing back from the people running it is a given in comedy. I probably held onto the resentment for a minute then forgot about it throughout the rest of my time in the city.
A couple of years went by, and out of the blue, I got a Facebook message from Kenny. It began: "hey man I just wanted to apologize for this.”
To paraphrase the rest: he had relocated to LA, went to message me about doing one of the shows I booked at the time, saw this minor exchange, and not only apologized for never getting back to me, but gave me context for what happened with the show and why my submission fell through the cracks.
After his brief explanation, he said: “Anyway just want to make sure you know it wasn't personal.”
This stunned me. This kind of shit actually does not happen in comedy. I have produced and booked shows for years and even I am not enough of a saint to hit somebody back up and apologize for not getting them up. ‘
But, most importantly, nobody tries to assure you that it's not personal. In a business where rejection is frequent and taking it personally is hard to avoid, this small kindness that Kenny did for me, this assurance, spoke volumes about him and his character.
Kenny and I were not close – though one of his gifts, as I would later learn, was an ability to make you feel like you were old friends – but this exchange had an outsize impact on me. It was closure I never expected to get. A reminder that, in this often cold business, a little warmth goes a long way.
Rest easy, Kenny.