Sometimes comedy is simultaneously uplifting and fucking humbling with a capital ‘H’ although, I guess, you wouldn’t really emphasize humble.

Take tonight, for example. I go into the Comedy Connection with essentially zero expectations. Pretty close to 8 p.m. or so, there’s not really an audience, and I’m talking to a guy that is a nice man, and who gets paying work, so what do I know, but he doesn’t really hit me on the trite-o-meter scale (actually, I guess he does, he scores pretty high in trite-land. Not only have I seen him do old one-liners circa 1952, I’ve heard him do a street joke, and an incredibly unfunny, racist one at that. To be fair, he’s getting better and performing “original” stuff, in that he wrote it but it’s incredibly derivative. Kind of the comedy equivalent of “moon, June, spoon” poetry).

Anyway, he’s telling me about all the places he works and shows he does, and in the back of my head I’m sharpening the straight razor I imagine drawing across my own throat in lieu of ever getting a foothold in the stand-up world. Sometimes it seems like I couldn’t get money at a comedy show even if I handed out five dollar bills to the audience and then asked them to hand back a dollar in change. There are two things I have learned from conversations like this one (1) many comics lie, boosting their own resume and making every show sound like a packed stadium with everyone chanting their name and crying for more and (2) audiences laugh at some seriously low-brow shit, and that isn’t a play on words. You can’t imagine if you haven’t heard it how many comics refer to dump taking, fart making, sex not getting or endless chick banging HI-larity. So, basically there’s no figuring on what will bring success or whose success is legend in his own mind fantasy. Still and all, it’s pretty daunting, because you have to constantly remind yourself it’s all shit talk, and that must be like a mantra or a prayer, unceasing.

So, that’s the humility. I can’t get paid to suck dicks backstage (OK, that’s not fair, I haven’t tried that), but there are people jingling change in their pockets earned through comedy that my sensibilities as an “artiste” cannot pursue.

But, then, right before the show starts, a smallish crowd, but a legit audience wanders in seemingly together. Then, a bit later, you are on stage and the folks are listening to your own bullshit rap, and they’re with you for the ride and laughing in all the right places. And you feel like maybe communication ain’t dead and maybe it’s worth it and goddamnit you are funnier than these mooks around you, who are unplagued by self-doubt.

I came home and put the straight razor away.