There’s a youth hostel in L.A. where they would do shows. I went there when I was still new to stand-up and not very good, and it was dollar-beer night. Kiv and Jorm actually came with me to be sweet and we hung out. The hostel had me on last and I got hammered before I ever got on the stage. Finally, they called me up and I was just eating shit and I looked down at the audience and in my drunk mind it was like, “They don’t even understand what I’m saying! They’re all just from other countries!” I was the fucking asshole on stage like, “Does anybody speak English?” The cardinal rule of comedy is, if no one’s laughing, it’s your fault, not their fault. I was so hammered and bombing so hard th...
Related posts tagged 'Bombing'
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Related posts tagged 'Bombing'
I don't know about you [David Letterman], but I find any little thing I do, if it doesn't go well, I just carry that bomb juice on me for days. I had to do something the other night at a charity thing, and I was promised I didn't have to write any jokes, and every year I forget that when I introduce the band, it takes them two-and-a-half minutes to bring the banjos out and stuff. And so it was like, "I'm here. I have nothing." And I'm dying. And I don't even have the wherewithal to improvise anymore. I just stood there. And then for three days, I was in a bad mood because I bombed.
Of course, all the time! I have really bad anxiety and I’m an introvert, and as a comic sometimes you can’t find it up there and you lose it for a second. You’re just telling words to an audience but there’s no connection, and that’s when you bomb.
One time a guy threw a donut at me and I just opened my mouth and ate and swallowed the whole thing within one second.
I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of getting out of my comfort zone. I think that’s what you should do. I understand the temptation if you’re an alternative comic to just do alternative rooms. Or if you were a club comic to just do club rooms. Or if you’re a white comic just to do white rooms. It’s because bombing is so humiliating that you want to avoid it. But humiliation is where the growth is. This is also like why I enjoy drinking and I don’t like pot. I feel like with drinking you have to earn it. You gotta get those drinks down.
I once had half the crowd walk out on me in Seattle when I asked an obese journalist student if she was getting into food criticism.
On 3 different occasions I've had women attempt and sometimes succeed at coming on stage to show me their boobs. I know it doesn't sound like the worst thing but one woman had such a big rack that I was seriously scared I was gonna suffocate to death. Good thing she was so wasted that she almost fell of the stage and another audience member was able to catch her and pull her down. In the end when she was kicked out and I realized my life was no longer in Jeopardy it became one of the best shows I've ever had. We'd all been through so much together and were bonded.
It was the first sketch I ever did. I got confused with stage direction, and literally did not know what color I was on the cue cards, so I just froze! Hey people, it's live TV, and the experience has made me a better performer. AND took away the fear of being in sketches!
Before I did the "my creeeeepies" bit on Comedy Bang Bang, I did it onstage at UCB and it ate shit so hard. One would think I then wouldn't do it again on a podcast for a much larger audience but I couldn't resist!
It’s a tricky thing [delivering a speech]; no-one wants to come up here and bomb. It’s really, literally the stuff of nightmares. I’ve had that nightmare a lot of times, and I know you want to be entertained, so for me to calculatedly not entertain you in order to be true seems sort of selfish. So I find myself in this push-pull relationship with my opposing desires, which I think is a big part of what characters are and what characters do in real life – people in real life, characters in movies.
The thing I try to remember with hecklers is just to take my time and listen to them. I believe it was Chappelle who said, "A heckler's first punch is their best punch." They're generally not clever people. You don't see a lot of scientists going to comedy clubs and heckling. They're just drunk. And mostly women. So you just have to take your time and then eviscerate them.
This is a very common problem for most comedians. Lemme ask you this - How bad was your childhood? If it was really bad, chances are you're already comfortable with feeling like a failure. So you're actually ahead of the game!
Stand up is You vs You so tell that scared little bitch to calm down. You aren't fighting in Afghanistan or battling cancer. You're just telling shit jokes to strangers. Good luck and godspeed. Go for it!
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