"I think I'm going to try vlogging."
I announce this out of the blue at 10 PM, to no one but Daisygreen and our cats, shortly before I leave for a weekend on the road.
"For you? Or for the public?"
I'm unexpectedly caught off guard. "A little bit of both?"
The next morning, I halfheartedly capture some video at the Burbank airport – a sign on the runway asking the planes to please be quiet for the 10 PM curfew. I continue at the Phoenix airport during my three-and-a-half hour layover; nothing says "production value" like a dolly shot of the mountains on a moving sidewalk. But by the time I'm in Atlanta, 11:30 PM local time, the whole idea of wanting to capture this series of moments strikes me as tedious.
I have spent the day wrestling with who this #content is actually for. It feels narcissistic. It's not for me. It's for "an audience" that I hope like it. Fans who’ll enjoy the everyday follies of being a comic, entertained by me the way they already are by the numerous vlogs and mini-documentaries my peers and colleagues are pumping out at an ever-growing rate.
Aside from a couple quick photos and short videos for my Instagram story, the camera doesn't make another appearance the entire trip.
I listen to The Recovering by Leslie Jamison as I drive through the woods of North Carolina.
As she narrates her journey through alcoholism and early sobriety, weaving in her own story with the tales of alcoholics and addicts she's met and read along the way, I have an epiphany: I am not a vlogger. I am not a "shoot first, ask questions later" type of dude. And I don't want to become one.
I have long loved writing. It's one of the handful of things I have ever actually felt an affinity towards. In fourth grade, I turned in a paper a week late because the short story assignment I was writing ballooned from the required three pages into an action-packed five. When your hero is everyone's favorite plumber/turtle-stomper Mario, on a quest for his missing hat, how can you leave that at three? I earned a B and a parent-teacher conference.
When I first moved to LA, I was fresh out of college with a major in "Media Arts and Entertainment” and a minor in creative writing. (If I hadn't shirked the lit classes, I could've double majored, no sweat.) I spent much of my first year and change writing about every single spot I did, wanting to keep a diary about my experiences before, during, and after being on stage. I knew it'd help me process my experiences. I published the posts, sure, but at the end of the day, it was for me.
I've been doing a lot more crowd work the past few years, before algorithms dictated that you're not a real comic if you don't have clips of you riffing and roasting hapless audience members on every possible social media platform. What I've come to appreciate about crowd work, especially the way it's done by masters of the form like Moshe Kasher, Rick Ingraham, and Paula Poundstone, is the same thing that draws me to shows like How To with John Wilson and The Rehearsal. It's the same thing that's surprised me about working as a writer in reality TV for the past five years, seeing and hearing stories pan out on- and off-camera. It's a simple fact: nothing is more interesting than the truth.
The everyday fantastic is so fleeting.
When I can turn those gifts from the universe into jokes, then comedy never feels easier. But the longer I do this, the more I've found myself ignoring the moments that aren't ready for primetime. Lately, I've been feeling like those moments deserve a place. A little garden of moments, pruned from this strange life I live, propagated and cultivated. The moments that don't fit neatly elsewhere but still merit saving.
Like when I learn the woods of western North Carolina are a rainforest. Woods I've driven through too many times to count, woods I've taken for granted, are rare in ways I’d never known, beautiful in ways I'd never considered.
Like sitting next to two burly, bearded bikers on the plane who, after asking me what brings me to Burbank, tell me they're on their way to repo a motorcycle before asking the lady across the aisle if they still do donkey shows in Tijuana.
Like how tough it feels to follow a comic whose impeccably-structured closer, a story about watching his son play Fortnite, earns him a rapturous applause break.
Like the two women in the crowd at Star Bar, sitting front and center, dressed for the drag show they thought they were checking out and not the stand-up show they arrived at. Their feather boas and glittery headbands are dead giveaways, and they get talked to by a lot of the comics. One of them steps outside a set or two after mine, and after telling me how much she enjoyed my set, smokes while telling me and another comic that this is the five-year anniversary of her longtime boyfriend's death. She and her sister always come out to Atlanta for it. drinking their way through Little Five Points. She seems genuinely grateful to be laughing tonight. She asks to take a selfie with me, then a group photo with the other comics who have wandered into the fresh air. We oblige before going our separate ways, some of us into the frigid Georgia night, some of us back into the bar for more.
These are the moments I worry about forgetting, losing to time that continues to creep up, and to a format that feels designed to leave them out in lieu of me talking to the camera, commenting, always a half-step-behind the actual event, wanting to set up the shot again, to "get it right" instead of playing the moment as it dies Don't get me wrong; there are great vloggers out there doing that, their work verging on documentary. But, instead of trying to learn a new skill whole cloth, why not do what always came naturally?
Here is the start of my collection. A logbook of my experiences in the uncommon life I have chosen to lead. I hope you enjoy it. But if you don't, that's fine too. It's more for me, anyway.