And other things as well...

Tonight I was barking for a comedy show on the corner of 34th Street and 2nd Avenue. The comedy show for which I was attempting to draw a crowd was at a Caribbean restaurant called the Pine Tree Lodge. I can't believe that I forgot, during my set, to ask how many pine trees there are in the Caribbean. I don't think I was put on a good corner to bark. It was directly in front of a building which must have some sort of high end gym in it, because the majority of people passing me by were absolutely miserable looking yuppies. I know you have to dress the part when you go to the gym--t-shirt, shorts, sneakers, maybe a headband if you're feeling saucy--but there's something about these people that just exuded misery. They weren't going to the gym because they enjoyed working out, or because they wanted to be healthy, or happy, or because they wanted to be in good shape--no, for them, I think, it was a type of penance. A self punishment. Remember in Da Vinci code when the pale supermonk would self-flagellate as part of some absurd purification ritual? I think it's like that for these people. That it's about punishing yourself for not being good enough. Strong enough. Not making enough money, maybe. For needing to go to the gym, for not having a come back when the office clown was picking on you, for not fucking that girl, or sleeping with that guy when you had the chance, or maybe, for doing it. I don't know what they're punishing themselves for, but I do know that afterwards, they are in absolutely no mood to go to a stand-up comedy show. I don't know who IS in the mood for them. I only do bar shows, really. Which means, hardly anyone is actually there to see the shows. I have no idea what kind of audience a real comedy club has.

My friends and I would go to comedy clubs occasionally before we were 21 and could drink. Comedy clubs don't care, they let you in, so you can pay the cover plus the two drink.

My girlfriend said a lot of stand-up comedy is dudes talking about their dicks and other irrelevant things. I must have been feeling particularly meta that day because I immediately wrote a joke about it. But I can't tell you what it is. You have to come to one of my shows for that.

If I ever do another one that is. The last "real" show I did was, I think, in 2007. It was a bringer show, which means I had to convince 5 friends to pay the full cover plus the two drink minimum to see me, some other dumb schmuck and Black Guy from Chappelle's Show Who Isn't Dave Chappelle or Charlie Murphy do stand-up on a Tuesday night. Before the show began, the owner or the club came and dressed me down in front of everyone for having my notes open. Then, this giant condescending prick monger clapped me on the shoulder and said "have a good show." What I actually had was the worst show I've ever done. That whole night, there was a miasma of misunderstandings and bitterness around anything I said or did. The host of the show referenced looking like Screech from Saved by the Bell. I went on stage and referenced that as well. He later, gave me a very serious talk, about how HE could say he looked like Screech, but I shouldn't do it. Right. Because comics NEVER talk shit about each other. Some other night I could have pulled it off, but on this night, everything from my mouth was cursed. He got very angry at me.

I stopped doing stand-up comedy after that, until last year. Now, I'm back, and I'm getting myself mentally psyched to do my next "real" show. Still, it's hard to know how to act. Hanging out with comedians is not like hanging out with regular people. In a regular group of people, some people are funny, some aren't, some are hams, some are reserved, some are laid-back, some are energetic. Maybe it's also like that with comics but I've been assuming they're different so it's a self fulfilling prophecy? I wish I knew. There's some secret to negotiating relationships and interactions when I'm around other comics that I haven't figured out yet. Maybe it's just be natural and be yourself. That's the advice I can imagine people giving me. But how I act around people is based on what I expect from them, I think. Obviously, I expect something from other comedians, and so I trip all over myself. Subconsciously, whatever it is I am expecting must make me very nervous. I think I can defeat it however.

I like being a stand-up comedian though. That is, I like doing it. I like being on a stage and I like when my jokes work and I like when I feel like I'm doing what I always said I was going to do. Who remembers when I said it in high school? I'm sort of, mostly, doing it now. Of course, I have to work a lot harder. The stand ups I know do a show every night, or almost every night. Seeing their facebook profiles makes me queasy: Schmucky Schmuckerson is doing a show this night and this night and this night and this night. Boris Zilberman is fucking reading about it. They all have pictures of themselves with microphones. The microphone is more associated with stand-up comedy than any other genre of performance, I believe, except maybe rap music. The two aren't unrelated. Which is a pretentious way of saying they're related. Rap music, especially rap battles, are won by wit. What can you say that no one would have thought of, but that is glaringly obvious? This is what makes good comedy funny as well. Then there's Akon and Dane Cook.

I'm not sure where I'm ending this. I recently lost my job. I may or may not receive unemployment. If I don't, I honestly don't know what I'll do. Maybe write some jokes about it?

As per usual, so no one thinks I'm too grumpy, here's a Macho Man Randy Savage promo:



Your mustache is crooked.

Here are some cool things.

So this is going out to facebook land, huh? Hello facebook. Hello friends I'm indirectly talking to. Hello high school connections that get annoyed to see my name pop up in their stream because they never really talk to me and they find my picture vaguely annoying. (Everyone has people like this. Just de-friend me, son. I defriended you.)

But why are we talking about losing friends? Why not talk about gaining them? Why not talk about accomplishing things. Why not talk about everything that's changed in a year. Let's talk about married friends, and friends with investment accounts. Let's talk about friends that work hard at being stand-up comedians. Let's talk about friends that build engines for submarines or airplanes or both. Let's talk about people in marketing. Why are there so many of us? What did we think we were going to find. You remember when you were a kid and you were learning all the options for what someone could be when they grew up, and some of them made sense: lawyer, doctor, fireman. Their was a uniform and everything. But then others of them didn't make sense: Businessman. Ok, he wore a suit. But what's a business man except he's busy all the time? I know now: A businessman is in marketing. Marketing is, at it's core, selling ideas. Maybe your own maybe not your own. But that's what you do. Because the whole point is the idea, not the one selling it. So we're marginal by default.

Also, did anyone ever notice that in every romantic comedy the default career is "ad executive." Why the hell is that considered the standard? Because it's shiny and fluffy, and because most moviegoers can imagine that if their lives had taken a different track, they to could be high power ad execs. If you made the protagonist a goddamn Nuclear Physicist, the audience couldn't relate. You're sitting in the audience feeling bad about yourself because no matter how the dice fell there is zero chance your ass would've become a nuclear physicist. But ad exec. Maybe. So you begin to fantasize, which probably producing endorphins or whatever, and so you take the rest of the movie in stride. "Feel good" movie, yes?

But what am I doing. Conan said not to be cynical. I believed him. He seemed like a genuine guy. Cynicism gets you nowhere. Amen. But there was a guy who was valecdictorian of his high school and the head of the Harvard Lampoon. That's not a joe nobody. That's an intelligent, capable guy who went ahead and did it. He wrote the Simpsons monorail episode for pete's sake. Tom Hanks mentioned that he used to work with Robert Smeigel and Bob Odenkirk and I felt all inside because I knew who both of those guys were.

Do you think my last name is suitable for show business? Zilberman? You know what I realized recently...if you say my first name and my last name, you have to noticeably pause between the "s" in Boris and the "z" in Zilberman otherwise you get this slytherin parseltongue thing going on.

You know how a little while ago I wrote about fantasizing about pro wrestling? Well then I went to a WWE Raw show and met a girl whose training to be a pro wrestler. And met a bunch of pro wrestlers. And I didn't sign up for their school did I? Nope. Talk does not equal action.

It's funny: I'm often impressed with my self for knowing about the latest music, but there's a whole slew of shows that have been ridiculously popular for years that I've never watched: 24, Lost, Heroes, Entourage, Dexter, Mad Men. Makes you think how people can fill their time.

I love doing improv and I feel like I'm just on the very brink of being an improv guy. I'm almost right on the edge. That's why I get sort of sad whenever i get the feeling someone I meet in an improv class doesn't like me. It makes me feel just a bit farther from being a part of or finding my thing that's going to be my thing. Although I've met some awesome people doing improv.

Love love love love love love.