Dying Is Easy. Comedy Is Hard.

Ain’t that the truth, brudda.  Recently, after a comedy showcase (One of those gigs where you have to be invited), a comic from Dayton told me it took him five years to come up with a solid ten minutes.  Of course, a lot of this is probably due to writing.  If you don’t have time to do it very often, it’s going to take longer for that 90/10 rule to sift out the crap.  It’s taken almost a year to get a solid five minutes, and part of it comes from my original set.

Dying?  You just drop dead.  Step off a building.  Step in front of a bus.  Be the paranoid Republican sitting next to me on a plane panicking about the swarthy guy with a mustache in the next row.  (For the good of air travelers everywhere, I’d have to jam a pen in your carotid artery.  Your estate will be paying the dry-cleaning bill.)  Or just wait for nature to do it.  We’re all headed there eventually, one way or another.

It is death that brings us to this week’s final post about George Carlin.  Today, I want to bring your attention to Jerry Seinfeld’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.  (Unlike Bill Kristol’s, I did not read this while sitting on the john.  Nor did I need to.)  One of Carlin’s comments just days before he died was a joke about the recently deceased Tim Russert and Bo Diddley.

“I feel safe for a while,” Carlin told Seinfeld.  ”There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they’ve had a crash. It improves your odds.”

Of course, George forgot about the rule of three, and ironically, he was #3.  Or maybe he knew there was a bit in it whether he died or not.  You’d expect nothing less from a 71-year-old man whose last gig was only a week before he died.  Not only that, he had a whole tour planned.

My Dad went like that.  He came home from work to start his vacation.  Apparently, he’d be vacationing with Mom, who died two years earlier.  Now that’s timing, ladies and gentlemen.

Carlin’s work ethic, though, shows what it takes to make it in an incredibly tough business.  Seinfeld writes:

You could certainly say that George downright invented modern American stand-up comedy in many ways. Every comedian does a little George. I couldn’t even count the number of times I’ve been standing around with some comedians and someone talks about some idea for a joke and another comedian would say, “Carlin does it.” I’ve heard it my whole career: “Carlin does it,” “Carlin already did it,” “Carlin did it eight years ago.”

And he didn’t just “do” it. He worked over an idea like a diamond cutter with facets and angles and refractions of light. He made you sorry you ever thought you wanted to be a comedian. He was like a train hobo with a chicken bone. When he was done there was nothing left for anybody.

Of course, there is nothing new under the sun.  If every comic had to worry about a premise being used before, Bob Hope would have been a shoe salesman at Higbee’s in downtown Cleveland, and Jack Benny would have been a footnote in jazz history.  The trick is to make the audience see things the way you see things.  This is why people didn’t notice for a long time that Dennis Miller was conservative or why Fox News can have its people on The Daily Show.

Of course, you do have to worry about copying someone else, even unintentionally.  My stepson thinks Dane Cook is hysterical, and his repeating one bit everytime I wear my bathrobe around the house led me to take that premise and write a radically different bit about it.  I don’t think its Dane Cook, but I had to beat the hell out of it to make sure.

Which leads us to every comic’s last bit:  Death.  We’re all going to have to do that joke sooner or later, even if we leave standup comedy.  On that, Seinfeld says:

Like death, they were just more comedy premises. And it just makes me even sadder to think that when I reach my own end, whatever tumbling cataclysmic vortex of existence I’m spinning through, in that moment I will still have to think, “Carlin already did it.”

Nothing you can really do about that.  Maybe I’ll just have “Maybe it’s…  MEATCAKE!” etched on my tombstone.

Just giving credit where credit is due.

 

An Open Letter To Bill Kristol…

Dear Mr. Kristol:

Recently, in the Paper of Record, you wrote a piece that I may be late to the bandwagon in rebutting.  However, I finally did run across your column in June 23 New York Times while in the restroom at work yesterday.

It was a good thing I was already sitting down considering what it made me do.  Your column decried MoveOn.org’s most recent ad about a woman worried her toddler son may have to serve in Iraq because of President McCain’s policies.  Here’s what got my blood boiling and bowels moving:

I’m not persuaded. Having slandered a distinguished general officer, MoveOn has now moved on to express contempt for all who might choose to serve their country in uniform.

So if a parent worries that their son will be involved in an endless war, which, you must admit, your candidate is not doing a good job persuading us we won’t be, it’s contempt for those who serve in uniform.

Mr. Kristol, you are so full of what I was leaving in the toilet when I read your column that it’s a wonder you’re not wearing diapers.  Frankly, I resent your comment.  I am a new stepdad.  And while my wife and I doubt AJ will serve in the military (He’s probably better informed about the war than you are.), we (and likely AJ’s father) would be proud if he chose to do so.  It represents an opportunity I myself was denied when I was younger.

But I am scared that, if he has to pursue that option, he might very well die by a roadside bomb in a never-ending war.  Sure, John McCain says it would be more like our presence in Germany or Japan.  Any thinking person, however, knows that the culture of that part of the world would never tolerate such a presence.  Any parent with a child old enough to serve as part of that presence (meaning even some parents who haven’t been born yet) has a damned good reason to worry.  We’re not safer for this war.  My day job has me moving from between two major federal buildings to this city’s tallest building by 2011.  All this war has done is paint a Manhattan-sized target on my back.

So tell me, Mr. Kristol.  Is being a good parent unpatriotic?  If so, I’ll put my patriotism up against yours any day.

See, I love my country enough to criticize it, even if people like you can’t handle that.  You merely love your party enough to keep your nose planted in its backside.

That’s not patriotism.  That’s crass ideology.

The Mt. Rushmore Of Standup

In the wake of George Carlin’s death, a lot of people have pondered who the greatest comedians of all time were/are.  Jerry Seinfeld referred to it as the Mt. Rushmore of standup.  So, if we were to recarve George, Tom, Abe, and Teddy’s faces for standup, who would be up there?

Bob Hope
Lenny Bruce
George Carlin
Richard Pryor

And if I could carve out a fifth head up there, Dave Chapelle.

Comments are open.  Let the flame wars begin.

Shoot, Pass, Cont, Frack, Corksoaker, Motherfracker, And Tits…

One of the greatest comedians ever, if not THE greatest, has passed away.  George Carlin died this past weekend of heart failure at age 71.

One of my fondest memories of Carlin came in the late 1980′s.  Jim Chenault, a DJ for Akron’s WONE, used to play comedy bits between songs on his afternoon drive show.  One day, while out driving around, I heard George Carlin’s voice saying, “Join the Book Club!  As an introductory offer, we’ll send you the following books absolutely free…”  Though the bit was edited for radio, I still damn near wrecked the car laughing so hard.  The bit’s actually not one of Carlin’s best, but Carlin had a delivery that made you think you’d fallen down the rabbit hole or accidentally drank a Deadhead’s 7-Up.

We’ll miss you, George.

The Bride Of Winter On Her Wedding Day…

Helluva Pink Slip

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

From Goodreads.com/Facebook

rating: 3 of 5 stars
The latest in a loose series that started with THE WHEEL MAN, Duane Swierczynski continues peeling off the layers of the secret organization known as “CI6.”

Jamie DeBroux reports to work at the end of paternity leave for a “management meeting.” There, his boss reveals that they are the front company for a super-secret intelligence agency. The company is being shut down, and to protect national security, everyone in the room is to be killed. They have two choices. If they try to escape, the elevators have been rigged to ignore their floor, and the fire towers have have rigged with sarin gas. Or they can mix themselves a mimosa that’s been laced with a painless poison.

And then sweet, corn-fed secretary Molly Lewis shoots her boss in the head.

What follows is sort of a combination of DIE HARD and THE TERMINATOR, done up as a strange hybrid of conventional novel and comic book. No surprise to the format. Swierczynski has been getting work with Marvel on the CABLE and PUNISHER series of late.

The book is laced with places Swierzy has been in real life: Madison, Wisconsin, Scotland, and, of course, his beloved Philadelphia. However, whereas THE WHEELMAN and THE BLONDE were very strong novels, SEVERANCE PACKAGE comes in as the weak sister of the series. Part of it is the format, using comic book illustrations every few pages and writing almost as though each page were a series of panels. On the downside, Swierczynski’s usual skillful plotting suffers as the story becomes a thin plot punctuated by violent scenes. On the upside, he gets points for trying this format out. It does make the story move faster, and eventually ramps up the suspense.

While I was a little disappointed with this one, it did do the one thing a series novel should do.

Made me ask what happens next.

View all my reviews.

The Interviews That Writers Give

A belated announcement: I interview author Dave White for The Rap Sheet.

Reader Request: The New Mrs. Winter

Nita says, “I think you should write about how wonderful your wonderful wife to be is.”

By the time you read this, she will be starting her third day as my wife. We met through my standup comedy earlier this year, and tried to hook up for drinks. No agenda, just being social. Frankly, I wasn’t ready to date again, and even if I was, I didn’t want to commit to anyone for at least a year or two. My divorce, while amicable, was still hard to deal with. I wanted time to curl up in the fetal position and sulk.

However, the only day we could hook up for drinks was Valentine’s Day. Since we were both unattached, I asked Nita if she’d like a man to spoil her on Valentine’s Day. Just because.

By the end of the date, it was clear there’d be no sulky time for J.  Nor did I want any.  She is beautiful and incredible.

And now we’re married. She’s beautiful, funny, and very caring. And I can’t imagine my life without her.

I love you, Sweet Rose.

Reader Request: What Am I Writing At The Moment?

Graham Powell asks, “what have you been writing lately?”

Mostly my standup set, which evolves almost daily.

I am also working on novel with the working title “Monticello,” about a fictional Lake Erie city.  Road Rules is still making rounds, but Monticello is going to be going in a new direction for me.  In the meantime, I keep working here and there on a related novel called Holland Bay, which I descrive as 87th Precinct meets The Wire.

Reader Request: Comedic Influences

Gerald So says, “I’d like to know who your comedic influences are.”

Anyone who’s seen my first set will realize my act is very much a work in progress.  I don’t really have a “character” yet, and my style is still very much in flux.  The truth is it takes YEARS to develop all that.  I’ll list four comedic influences, two well known, two unknown.

First, there’s Ron White.  White is a bundle of drunken rage that laughs at himself while he’s losing it.  Like Ron White, I don’t suffer fools gladly, but I’ll sure make fun of them.

Dane Cook.  There’s a lot of complaining about Dane Cook, and I’ve noticed much of it comes from lesser comics.  There are two things I’ve picked up from Cook – a very physical presentation and inserting a short joke inside a longer one to get a laugh faster.

Those are the well-known comics.

Jeff Jena is a frequent commenter, a regional comic, and a name some people around here know.  I took a class from Jeff, who taught me how to write comedy. 

Rich Alcorn – Rich is an up-and-coming talent who is just now getting paying gigs.  Rich and I perform together frequently, and he pulled me aside one night to point out one thing about my current set.  I have too long of a setup for most of my jokes.  Long setups lose the audience.  So the focus of my writing has been to shorten the time I setup a joke before I get to the punchline.

Off-topic:  Four hours after this posts, I will have married Nita.