“Fuck me for building a moment.” – Patton Oswalt
Saturday, February 24th – The Kimpton Shane, Atlanta, GA
Daisygreen and I are in our hotel room in Atlanta, packing our bags so we don’t have to do it immediately before heading to the airport in the morning. We’re watching Saturday Night Live, both curious to see the Shane Gillis episode.
During his monologue, he does something that most comics – if not all – are guilty of doing: thinking he’s doing worse than he actually is. The first time he clocks people not laughing is around 2 minutes in, when he’s roasting his dad in the audience. From where we’re sitting, it sounds like it gets a big laugh, but his response says otherwise. “I thought it was funny, alright. You don’t think it’s funny to bring my dad here and make fun of him for being a volunteer girls high school basketball coach? I thought it was great. Never mind!”
This is something stand-ups have a tendency to do: worry too much about the people who they think don't like them. What Shane is doing here is the classic maneuver of they commenting on it, even if you don’t need to comment on it and sometimes they don't need to comment on it.
Daisygreen always talks about how much she hates this. "You insecure dummies," she might say, "always think we don't like you just because we're not laughing." And, yes, of course we do, because often we can't find the difference between someone who likes us and someone who doesn't.
What we try to do instead is save the show. We want to do everything we can to turn the room around or else maybe we will be forced to give up the ghost and move back in with our parents and get jobs with shitty bosses and corporate retreats and company-sponsored happy hours.
What Shane’s monologue proved to me was that we will do everything it takes to avoid those jobs, even when its obvious we will never have to come close to those jobs ever again.
Monday, February 26th – Comedy Mothership, Austin, TX
I am waiting to do a spot on Crew Show, the Mothership’s version of Potluck. The first comic is bombing hard.
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