You know when you're at a party and you strike up a conversation with someone who starts telling you some sob story about a terrible thing that once happened to them? When they've finished you feel compelled to fire back with an even more tragic tale of woe from your own life to try and top their story and do what you can to curry some sympathy for your hapless existence.
I think that a comedian is the guy at the party with the story of grief that tops all the others.
I also believe that we are due a certain amount of good Karma because a lot of what comedians are able to do is to allow audiences a brief period of respite from their occasionally miserable lives. A lot of people endure lives of desperation and sadness and at the end of the week they go to a club and listen to a comic for an hour and then say to themselves, "Wow. I thought I had problems. At least I'm not THAT guy!"
The Germans have a word known as schadenfreude. It means
taking pleasure at a fellow human's misfortune, (I think it's perfectly
fitting that of all the people of the world, the ones that came up with
a name for that concept are the Germans.)
When people hear a comedian talk about the laughably tragic occurrences
of his or her life, it makes them feel better about their own.
Audiences come into the club, pay a cover and buy a minimum of two
drinks and for the price of it all, they are allowed to sort of rent
the dignity of a comedian for an hour.
Sometimes though, it gets taken too far. Some people in an audience
are so frustrated by their existence that they feel the need to lash
out at a comic before the anesthetic can be administered, (or perhaps
after too much has been given.)
I give last Friday night in Houston, Texas as a case in point.
It was before the 8:00 show began and there was a large, obviously
drunk man in a cowboy hat. The other comics and I were wary. You never
can predict whether something like that will be good or bad.
Sure enough, no sooner than the first comic's set had begun, he was
already loud and confrontational. By the time the second comedian's set
was underway, management was asking the man to leave. On his way out he
screamed obscenities at the crowd and the comic, while threatening the
management with violence.
He left and the audience erupted with applause.
He was thankfully out of the building when I was introduced and I began
by letting the audience know that the drunk guy had just been ejected
from the Chuck E. Cheese next door for savagely beating an animatronic
mouse.
Meanwhile, that very same night in another part of the country, a
comedy buddy of mine was standing in an audience, waiting to be
introduced.
The comedian that was to introduce him was onstage wrapping up his set.
His final joke was about his mother. Apparently she was always asking
when he was going to give her some grandchildren and he didn't have the
heart to tell her that the women he dates usually wind up swallowing
her grandchildren.
A woman seated at a table near my buddy leaned over to her husband and
says that she doesn't get it. My buddy happily, (and perhaps a little
unwisely) tried to help explain it to her.
Comedian: It's a jism-swallowing joke, Ma'am.
Husband: Hey! Don't talk to my wife like that .
Comedian: I wasn't trying to be rude, I was just trying to expl-
Husband: You need to get out of here. Now.
(He apparently didn't realize that he was talking to the evening's entertainer.)
Comedian: I wish I could, Buddy. But they're about to introduce me.
Thankfully, security intervened and the show went on but it was a weird way to start.
I sometimes forget that I have chosen to pursue a profession that
carries with it the very real possibility that drunk people will try to
hit you. Not a lot of jobs have that caveat. Cops and bouncers come to
mind, but people with those jobs have the ability to hit back harder.
We just have to suffer through it and hope they buy a CD after the show.
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