I was speaking to a friend I hadn't seen in ages, and was excited to tell him that I was still continuuing as a stand-up comedian and that I'd done over a dozen shows now and that it was going good, even though I often bombed.
His response? "Everyone's a comedian." He was serious, as if to say this is nothing out of the ordinary. I just wanted to kill him, but I'll give him the slowest and most excrutiating death of all - old age.
I have a spot on Tuesday at Shapiro's which means a night of all new content. I haven't finalised my set list yet, because I'm struggling with something.
I have lots of (new) normal material to run. But I have double or triple that amount in obscene, socially unacceptable, or just plain stupid stuff that I WANT to do but don't because I'm afraid I really want to do a couple shows based on that and see what happens, even though I'm worried about an audience revolt.
So likely my next show is going to be about butterflies and pedo's.
I've also read so much weird news lately that I really want to bring up on stage and just talk about. But I'm not sure how to make it funny, aside from reading it and letting the audience feel like, "Hey that's insane" and laugh by themselves. Maybe some one-liners? But I feel like that cheapens the real laugh, which is the story itself. (Or they might not laugh at all, cannibalism isn't to everyone's taste).
I feel like this will be the biggest crash and burn of all, but I have to do it, and I always feel like that anyway, and then come back at the end of the night and say, "I actually learned one or two bits that are funny and that I can work on." At the worst, I'll learn never to do obscene humor again. For a while.