Cheese Party

or, An Existential Crisis In Ten Shows

Los Angeles, CA, February 19th, 3 PM

It's daytime, which is a weird time for live comedy to be happening. I associate daytime shows with performing at rehabs for disinterested rich people. Being able to see everyone’s faces is bad for comedy, and audiences who are feeling too tender to laugh at themselves are bad for comics like me, even as I tell self-deprecating jokes about my own alcoholic foibles.

This daytime show is at a wine bar in East Hollywood, where those who may wind up in a rehab for disinterested rich people are day drinking on a balmy holiday weekend.

I’m lamenting the fact that I haven't been able to do any "comedy maintenance" lately to Nikki, a friend and one of the hosts. I haven’t made time this month to listen back to any old sets, or put fingers to keyboard and flesh out my new material. It’s been hectic at work this month. I’ve had to put on some blinders to get over the hump. I feel like a sponge in standing water, constantly filling up, no time to get squeezed out. I’m oversaturated like a poorly edited Instagram photo. I’m so full that I feel empty, the fullness becoming the new normal, running my comedy career on cold brew and instinct alone.

I’m going up first so I can make it to improv rehearsal in time. I follow the host with jokes I’ve been working out to the barest degree, trying to stay patient enough to riff and present enough to work on what I want to work on. It’s a good set, and a productive set. These days, that feels like the sweet spot.

Pasadena, CA, February 18th, 8 PM

I’m at a dive bar next to a grocery store, bombing. The jokes have worked before, but tonight, they are not the audience’s cup of tea. We only get on the same page on the last joke. It’s not ideal, but it’s good enough given the silence I played to for most of the set.

Despite the discomfort, there's an exhilaration in the bomb. I feel loose and present, doing crowd work, riffing, testing the waters in ways I have felt afraid to lately. But as I watch more of the comics on the lineup, and hear great joke after great joke, I am reminded that I still need to actually sit down and write. I want to feel that sense of “DAMN! That’s funny!” about my own jokes again.

West Hollywood, CA, February 17th, 8:30 PM

I’m in a Russian bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. I’m hosting. I love hosting. It forces me to be present, which feels like one of my biggest issues right now. My attention span for anything comedy-related is absolute shit. Overcoming distractions while trying to get back into the routine of doing upkeep on my comedy career is tougher than it has been in months.

Over the years I have become quite thoughtful and analytical about my process. I wrestle with different versions of myself – the comic I have been, the comic I am, the comic I want to become. It can be painful, if I let it, so I try to let it be exciting instead. To be grateful for chances to evolve into something newer and more exciting than before.

I reconnect with some comics who I haven't seen or hung out with in a long time, inspired by their performances. Their jokes, and their palpable joy at telling them, fill me with a thrilling sense of possibility.

Burbank, CA, February 13th, 7:30 PM

I’m at bar next to a bank that’s the new regular home of my new passion project: a comedy show wrapped in a game show that feels like the most “me” thing I have ever created. This is my baby, and my baby is healthy and growing.

The show is fun. There’s tension, belly laughs, a bigger audience than last time. Hosting, I feel more "in the zone" than I have in weeks – pure instinct, pure improvisation. After the show, one of the comics tells me she loves the idea so much, she wishes she didn’t like me so much so she could steal it from me, guilt-free. I tell her to tell everyone she knows how much fun she had. She promises she will.

Los Angeles, CA, February 12th, 8 PM

I’m at a black box theater down the street from a pizza place owned by an aging Eagles fan. It’s Super Bowl Sunday. As I sit in my car, stress-eating chocolate cake and watching the game come to a lackluster end, I feel glad that I got my pizza before halftime.

I’m here to do improv with my team, Nuisance. I’ve been with them for four years, and our bi-monthly performances are one of the most cherished parts of my month. I think improvising is one of the most important skillsets you can develop. I don't recall a goddamn single thing we do on stage, but I do remember loving the relief I felt after. The fear I’ve felt around improvising lately has been washed away in the nonsense.

Huntington Beach, CA, February 9th, 8 PM

I’m at a comedy theater next to a dance studio. I’ve heard previously that they are feuding. During the holidays, when the kids were performing The Nutcracker, they apparently blasted the music so loud you could hear it during the show.

This is a show in the loosest sense of the word. There is one audience member and a dozen local comics waiting to follow me and the other LA comics who came down to work out new material. I don’t mind shows like this, especially right now, when I am feeling scatterbrained and tense. Every performance is another chance to get out of my head and into my material.

It’s a good set, a productive set. I’m not just going through the motions.

Los Angeles, CA, February 7th, 9 PM

I’m at a bar in Koreatown doing a loose show. We’re hoping that some real people wander in, forgetting that it’s not karaoke night.

I spend most of the time before my set fretting about how early I have to get up tomorrow, how tired I feel, how out of rhythm I am from the norm. Then a new comic sits next to me, introduces himself, and we get to talking shop. This small conversation takes me out of my head, which helps me stay in the pocket during my set. Things go well. The new premises are working, the new lines in old jokes hit, the jokes that don’t land fall flat enough for me to think it might be time to ditch them.

Los Angeles, CA, February 5th, 9 PM

I’m at a black box theater in Hollywood, down the street from the first place I ever lived in Los Angeles. This is a specialty show where the premise is twenty performers all “dumping” the same dude over and over and over. I have been asked to use my roasting skills here, so I write a bunch of roast jokes with less than an hour to go until showtime.

It’s strange to be the only person telling straight-up jokes on a lineup full of clowns, characters, and musicians, but during a month where I’m short on stage time and self-esteem, I’ll take any chance to stay sharp that I can get.

West Hollywood, CA, February 4th, 10:30 PM

I’m at a house in the hills of Los Feliz, at my girlfriend’s writing partner’s cheese-themed birthday party. I know I won’t be able to stay long since I have a spot in the Belly Room, so I make the most of it.

We’ve all been assigned a cheese to bring, and are asked to have a presentation explaining our chosen cheese. Daisygreen and I plan our presentations at home, leaning on our comedy writing skills, then head to another birthday party for one of her grad school classmates. “We need to get going,” she mentions on our way out the door, “we have to go to a cheese party!”

We arrive at the cheese party, fashionably late. We discover that, besides the host and her fiancé, we don’t know anyone else at the cheese party. There are maybe thirty people at the cheese party, ten of whom are white women wearing black pants and black sweaters. These women are freaking out about their presentations. It appears that they’re too self conscious to play the game of "cheese party" because they are too busy performing "cool Eastside girl" instead, and there is no room to make a fool of yourself in that game. I clearly have the upper hand here; my bread and butter is making a fool of myself.

I leave the cheese party right after a presentation on smoked gouda by the earnest man whose house we’re making smell like cheese, before the cool Eastside girls hem and haw over their presentations. I have to go tell jokes for five minutes.

I pick up Daisygreen around midnight. The first piece of news: the earnest man won the cheese party. This doesn’t shock me; it’s hard to beat heart.

The second piece of news: one of the cool Eastside girls asked her later about why she didn't go to support me.

"He performs all the time," she said, "I would be exhausted."

Huntington Beach, CA, February 1st, 7 PM

I’m driving to a comedy theater next to a dance studio. I’m on the phone with my therapist. We’re talking about how I’m feeling stuck in this people-pleasing mode with my approach to comedy.

"I feel like I'm spending too much time worrying about what other people want me to be instead of doing what I want to do," I tell him.

“Worrying about who? The audience?”

“No – other comics.”

We dig around in my feelings about what it’s like to be missing the sense of being true to myself right now; how I’m realizing how necessary that knowing where my true north lies. I get a gentle reminder to enjoy the journey as much as I can; that I can’t be happy with my artistic output if I am constantly looking around to see if my colleagues are nodding along in agreement.

I’m feeling good about my comedy but also bad about my comedy. I’m out of the valley but not done with the climb. It feels like work again. It feels like the edge has gotten farther away and I have been given a new opportunity to find my edge, to rediscover some of my own limits and goals. It feels nice. It feels right. It feels like there is something new and exciting just beyond the horizon.

The work is satisfying and frustrating. The work is exhilarating and devastating.

The work is the work is the work.

And the jokes? Well, those are improving too.

My set that night is good, productive. The sweet spot.