I've been in some very dark places over the past couple months.
I've been in comedy clubs.
Comedy clubs are dark, dark places.
You only ever walk into one well after the sun's gone down and the majority of the working world's gone to bed.
Down into a basement or a back room where no cheeky little beam of bounced light could seep in and spoil this cultivated atmosphere of counter culture, impotent rage and desperation screamed into the darkness.
I've been spending the better part of a month skulking around these clubs... getting bits up on their feet... bouncing ideas off a live audience... and mostly sitting idly with surly people.
Comedy writers.... comedians.... 'funny men'(and women); I assure you, though we may think of them as mirth makers and laughter craftsmen, this back room is not a back door to Wonka's colorfully vibrant and wondrously technicolor Candy Factory.
Spend a day on a comedy writer's retreat.. in a comedy show writer's room.. in a back corner booth at the local "Ha Ha Hut" sandwiched betwixt fidgeting comedians.... you are likely to meet some of the most miserable and morose individuals you ever did encounter.
It's a grind, to be sure, doing comedy for a living and the majority of these folks will remind you of this.
It's the angry chicken and the rage-filled unhatched egg. Are you a frustrated, angry comic because you haven't been 'discovered' and rescued from this purgatory... or, are you exactly where you are meant to be, honing and hawing until you run out of breath, because that's the life you chose... that's the life you gravitated to because that's who you always were, lighting rig and microphone notwithstanding?
Marc Maron has his theories about integrity and why he wasn't 'one of the popcorn kernels who popped'... but, his voice and his act are now so inextricably tied into this identity, he couldn't go shiny and happy if he tried.
Paul F. Tompkins talks about frustrations like not having the right 'tv teeth'. Still, a perfect set of chompers and my bet is his comedy is less incisive and biting.
The 'good ones' channel it into the work... better writing, more cutting comedy and an identity that says they are exactly where they're supposed to be, as they rail against the cruelty of the business... their shouts fogging the glass, as they press their snot bubbling noses to the window.
Comedians are not happy folk.
They're closer to snark merchants(... or maybe, tragedy tradesmen?). They manufacture sneers and jeers and use their wits, and every tool in their bag, to chip away at everything they couldn't knock down in one swing.
Most often, they become so good at this that they can't help but pollute their own heads.
So... I'm left to ask myself this question; is hope and optimism at odds with humor? Can good people with good intentions, be funny?
In case you hadn't noticed, most good people aren't funny.
Genuinely good people... caring, considerate, compassionate, empathetic people... are not funny.
Nick Hornby (of "High Fidelity" and "About A Boy" fame) wrote a book called How to Be Good and openly asked this same question therein.
Sure they can be funny in that self-deprecating, 'lamp-shade-on-their-head' sense of the world but, a truly good person isn't ever going to be a sharp, caustic wit... they can't and won't risk saying something that might be hurtful.
Can a good person be funny? Not really, no.
The voice inside their head curbs their wicked impulses. Their little angel wields a bullhorn to shout down the little devil whispering in their ear.
The comedians who've lived their lives on the road.... lived their lives in obscurity... have no qualms about releasing all their evils, their neurosis on an expectant crowd. That's where you get Pryor 'Live On The Sunset Strip' and its meaty mouthfuls of material. That's where a genius transitions to a transcendent comedy god.
You give me a room full of guys toiling away for ten or twenty years... a room full of Lewis Black's... I'll deliver you a "Daily Show".
I've been trying to reconcile this balancing act in my show, "The Future Is Awesome!"... and, in my own life.
I said I'd been in some dark places... and, I'm not sure that darkness isn't worming it's way into my heart(... if it wasn't always there).
How to balance the much needed notion of a hopeful, inspiring, future for a younger generation so wracked with anxiety and angst, against the irreverence and the humour that make this a fun and relevant show to those same young people.
The better angel on my shoulder might be our live in-studio host.... and, the devil his cartoon monkey counterpart.
Or, maybe the more realistic and nuanced view has each of those two hosts with a little man or monkey devil and angel of their own.
Light is the enemy of comedy, as it is in a comedy club.
I was never really afraid of the dark as a kid... I knew it was just all the same stuf in a well lit room made more mysterious for the fact that it was obscured in shadow. As far as this show goes..... I am afraid of the snark.
No more than I am frightened of the unfunny society of hugs and snuggles that the good people seem to occupy; that 'I'd like to buy the world a coke' attitude, I'm so distrustful of, so bored and unengaged by.
I mean for shit's sake, we (... and, by 'we', I mean Nobel laureate scientists having nothing to do with me) just discovered and isolated the Protein Behind Immortality.
Fuckin' immortality!
You listening, all you twee little Twilight, vampire fanatics?
(By the way, can you think of a group of human beings you'd less like to see walking the earth for all eternity, than Anne Rice fans and assorted vampire paraphernalia drones in their frilly-sleeved chemises and blank, bored stares..? Bring on the afterlife... it's gotta be better than spending the afternoon in the mega-mall food court with Azrael picking over a sbarro pizza slice and bemoaning the pointlessness of pepperoni.)
Mind you, it should be noted... this 'immortality gene' also happens to make to make great gobs of cancer as a side effect.
That's right, immortal little monkeys, we've figured out how to give you cancer... forever.
Score one for our side.
As with every inspiring and exciting idea and innovation I want to highlight... I don't think I can bathe in the glowing light and still find the funny.
The light side might be a beacon of hope... but, it always needs to be turned over 'cause the laughter is on the dark, unexposed underbelly.
Question is.... do you want to commit yourself to living there for the long haul?
Show me an immortal comedian.... I'll show you a guy who has all the time in the world to complain.
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