Friday, July 21, 2006

Set to set

They say every comedian lives set to set. By "they" I mean Jacob They and the They Foundation (saying what's what for 100 years). By "Set to set" I mean you have a great set and you feel great until you have a shitty set which makes you feel shitty until you have a great set. I've gotten better and better at accepting when I have horrible sets. I can just tell by the mood and the audience when that's gonna happen. Most comedians will say the good/bad set relationship happens in movements. They'll be a time where you're just having bad set after bad set: the slump. Suddenly all the sets are good. Sometimes that even happens when you're doing the exact same material.

This week for me has been a set to set week. I'm 2 and 2. The best set of the week comes with an interesting story. I made my premiere on the infamous show Invite Them Up on Wednesday night when who shows up 5 minutes before the show? Why the one and only Louis CK. i was nervous to follow him cuz once I had to follow Chris Rock and that wasn't pleasant. People looked at me and were like "the fact you exist means you're trying to copy him," and i didn't have a good time. But now I'm a better comedian and I know what I'm doing. I had a great set and felt good about everything in the world.

Then thursday came, back to the drawing board. And by "drawing board" I mean floating razor blades above my wrists.

Hmm, even I'm uncomfortable with that joke.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

of course you're a better comedian...I still haven't forgiven Chris Rock for "Down to Earth" - come to think about it, maybe Mel Gibson's tirade was just latent frustration at the execs who greelighted the movie. Food for thought

-Trevor

7:36 PM
Giulia said...

I once had an old bitter comic in LA complain to me that he "bombed" when in fact, the crowd was laughing loudly during his set. With a huge genuine smile I said to him "you did great!" to which he replied "unless I make everyone in the room laugh harder than they ever laughed before I have failed. FAILED!" At the time, I had only been doing stand-up for five months and as a newbie began to doubt my more positive attitude toward comedy but luckily I remembered why I do stand-up and said to him "but it should be about if you had fun, if you have fun, the audience will have fun. Good comedy is the abilty to speak the a universal lanquage, and people who don't laugh just don't speak your language, no biggie" he then told me "You are way too happy, don't worry kiddo ( I HATE being called kiddo) the biz will bring you down someday."
That is the kind of guy who should slit his wrists. We are the kind who do our thing, do it as best we can, and move on.

12:27 PM

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