I did my second stand-up show ever last night at The World Famous Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd (I call bullshit on the ‘world’ part. I don’t know if people in Nigeria really know about this place, but that’s how they sell it to you when they ask you to be in a show that requires you to bring paying audience members.) It did not go as well as my first show. People stared instead of laughed. There were crickets. Many of them.
And it reminded me of a young man who used to live on my childhood street.
He was older and cool. And every day after elementary school, he would say, “Laurenne is a blobule.” I didn’t know what that meant, but still I would cry. I thought he was wise (I mean, he was at least 12), so I figured I must have been a blobule. And I hated being a blobule. I wanted nothing more than to not be one. Blobules sucked, according to this mean kid.
But after some years, I realized that blobules weren’t that bad. And, in fact, they didn’t even exist. But the kid had moved away. So, I spent lots of sixth grade recreating that situation. I could have said, ‘No, you’re a blobule” or ‘Blobule Shmobule’ or ‘Dorkface’ or I could have simply made up a story about how Debbie Gibson was my cousin (which I did later).
This was one of the first of many conversations I would rebuild throughout my life. You know the ones that you rewrite in your head over and over until you almost convince yourself that you actually did sound a thousand times more intelligent than you really did (Otherwise known as an ‘I carried a watermelon’ conversation)? I’m a professional post-conversation rewriter. At least I used to be. Until a therapist told me that if everyone’s so worried about their part of the conversation, then nobody’s really worried about your part.
Wise, those therapists are. Way wiser than that blobule who invented blobules. (Blobule isn’t even a good name. How naive I was to be insulted so uncreatively.)
Flubbing your first joke in front of a crowd of strangers at The World Famous Comedy Store can guarantee you some intense in-brain rewriting, no matter what any therapist says. It’s agonizing.
I have mentally rewritten my set about 4,352 times since I said it on stage just 24 hours ago. (If only I had added the word ‘Jesus’ more often, etc.) And before that I probably told my jokes to the invisible passenger in my car about 6,412 times. And neither made my performance any better. This whole anxiety-ridden journey has led me to some revelations:
*A surefire way to tell whether you performed badly is if the very first thing your friend says afterward is: It was not you. Totally the crowd.
*Not everyone thinks jokes about dead dads are funny.
*The ‘comedian green room’ sounds cool but really means a roachy box with stained couches and stale snacks. Still, I felt pretty cool.
*Taking anything too seriously makes it not worth doing.
This stand-up thing could be really fun (jokes are fun!) or it could be this thing I do that is stressful and hard and has to be done perfectly for fear of my bastard ego, Lawrence, showing up to tell me how I could have done better, looked better, or made more people laugh, which is no fun at all.
And, since I’m one who learns lessons, I should probably take this one and use it in as many aspects of my life as I can. I should have more fun. Always. And you should too. Because why not? Stuff without fun is so much less fun than stuff with fun.
From now on, I must remember: It’s okay to suck at something. As long as you’re having fun while sucking. Jenna Jameson agrees. That joke wasn’t at all funny. But at least I had fun while writing an unfunny joke. Man, I’m a fast learner.
