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February 5, 2009
The Anatomy of a Joke
Comedy is hard work. I know it looks like comedians have it easy; it seems like we’re all riding around on golden chariots, surrounded by Kardashian sisters, eating diamonds dipped in honey and chasing them with flagons of warm babies’ tears, cackling like toddlers on Lithium and giving everyone the superfinger (all credit to Mr. Cook), but nothing could be further from the truth. In order to make it look like we’re making it all up when we’re up on stage, we do an incredible amount of grinding down in the trenches. And some bits can take months, even years, to take shape. Comedy is dirty, dirty work. Thankless, miserable, underpaid, urine-smelling work. Am I overselling it?
Anyway, I get a lot of people who write me asking about comedy and how to break in, and when they’re going to get a million dollars for that government cheese joke they swear up and down they “wrote” all on their own. They want to know “the secret.” And I’ll admit, I wanted to know “the secret” when I was a baby comedian. How do you get people to take you seriously? How do you break in? How do you get discovered? “Why does that club owner always treat me like a cockeyed busboy he just fired for stealing when I’m clearly the funniest muthafucka in twelve counties?” These are mysteries, my friend, part of the complex global hazing system that is “paying your dues.” There is no way around it, and sadly, there is no secret, no matter what Oprah tells you. The only way to break into comedy, the only way to progress, is to get up on stage. And keep going up. Over and over again, for years and years, until you want to take your own life, or chuck it all and get a more creatively satisfying and far more lucrative job, say, wearing plastic bags on your hands at Subway, or selling oranges by a freeway off-ramp. Comedy is like the Olympic high-dive: you can talk all you want about that monster double pike you plan on doing. Until you split the water with no splash, and do it over and over again without choking in the semifinals, no one gives really gives a flying shite.
Anyway, I thought I’d put together a little video to illustrate just how long some jokes can spend getting polished to a fare-thee-well. The subject is one of my favorite jokes, and a classic that will, unfortunately, be retired soon. But it’s been in my repertoire since I was a young‘un, and as you can see here, it only got better and better (IMHO, anyway). Did it get perfect? No freaking way. Perfection is for God and Brian Regan. But it got the job done, and it was a fan favorite.
And it was true. Well, mostly.
Do comedy because you love it. Because for a long time, that’s the only affection you’re gonna get.
Again, am I overselling it?
www.myspace.com/aishatyler
