I have way too much to do to be writing this blentry, but I also have a lot to talk about, so I will consider this a "mind clearing" exercise necessary to complete my actual work. You know, the stuff I get paid tens-of-hundreds-of-dollars-per-year to do.
This past weekend, my friend Heather and I, comedy nerds since our college days, went to go see TJ Miller, a comedian Heather really likes. She bought the tickets, I picked up the bar tab. We had a great time. We thought the crowd was mostly pretty good and we marveled at how hard it is to do the job of telling jokes. And it is a job. More on that later.
Heather is a Miller devotee. I confess, I had only a basic knowledge of him going in to this show. She was all excited to meet him. In fact, she had invited him out for beers a few weeks before the show through his Facebook page. He responded that he would like that, but in the end, it didn't happen. I was personally relieved because I don't consider myself interesting enough to host an entertainer who is, from my vantage point, significantly richer and famous-er than my normal circle of friends, who are mostly ordinary, average guys - like from the Joe Walsh song.
We sat at a table next to where the comics stood to go on stage. Miller did not know we were the people who had asked him for beers. He leaned over to Heather and said, "Everyone here thinks this show is for them... it's for you two." He then went on stage and did his thing.
We learned later he does this every show, but he means it. He picks people out of the crowd, and if nothing else plays to them. Lucky for him we didn't make him work too hard.
Heather, spurred on by Miller's gesture, grabbed my arm at the end of the show and said with all seriousness, "We are going to be the last two people out of here, got it?" It was clear there would be no argument, as Heather, not usually a heavy drinker, was brandishing her 5th bottle of beer at me whilst saying this. Did I mention she is a blackbelt in tae-kwon-do? My elastic belt in fried- fat-dough is no match. And I didn't have a gun. And she was scaring me a little.
So we waited, casually at first, and then a little weirdly, I thought, though I did not dare to say it. Heather, already basically albino, was growing almost translucently white as we got closer. TJ was meeting his adoring fans one-by-one and taking pictures and sharing smiles. I got out my phone so I could take a picture of Heather with TJ Miller and she looked at me and said, "We're not gonna do that." Okay, then, suave and sophisticated it is.
Finally our turn, Heather introduces herself as the stalker-fan who invited him for beers and we loved the show and... and...
I jumped in and admitted I was so glad he stopped, because his closer was so funny, I was literally in pain. I didn't think I would live if I kept laughing. This netted me a hug from TJ Miller.
"So, let's go have some beers! Can you guys wait a minute for me?" And so, now we were having beers and chillin' with Miller. Thankfully, he did not perform for us. He was real. We talked. he shared experience. he opened up. He was not phony, not pretentious. He was cool.
Of course I am sure we asked him all the same questions that all the local rubes ask. I am sure we didn't have any insight, nor were we particularly memorable in the final analysis, but one of the prices of fame is that you are expected to be the giver. All the time. He was kind enough to respond back to my tweet thanking him for a great night.
Heather and I were sad to learn out of 5 shows, our audience was only the 3rd best. Just below average. I was not at all surprised that this performer could quantify that. True professionals measure everything, go over everything, try to improve constantly... and are very hard on themselves.
Then there is the matter of occasionally reducing yourself to doing material you don't want to do to placate an audience that is not as sophisticated or open-minded as you would like them to be. TJ Miller did not put down his Grand Rapids audiences - In fact, he had praise for the city and the people who came to see him. But, somewhere in there was a whisp of a wish that he could have let it all air out and really go for the moon with his material and he felt the crowd was not ready for it.
This was too bad as I like to think that for a little, mid-western city, we are a pretty intelligent and sophisticated group. But, maybe we aren't.
I used to think that being a comedian was my dream. I see life very comically. I see good in bad, and bad in good. I hear dirty jokes and entendre in every sermon or lecture. I see joy in pain and sadness in success. These things make a good comedian, or at least a good writer of humor. Miller puts it best when he says, "You have to be willing to get up there and access those feelings and be vulnerable. We are all up there because we see joy and hate and we need to turn it all around to make sense of it." Admittedly, I should not have put quotes around that because I wasn't taping the conversation and that's not exactly what he said. If you want journalism, look elsewhere, this is my blog, remember!
The gist of it is, that these comics may start out doing this because they crave the attention and they need to find the funny. But at the end of the day, it is work. It is a job they go to and do, sometimes when they don't want to. They do it on the road, often alone and often lonely. They do it in shady rooms rotten with the smell of beer and fetid with the stench of bad attitude. They are forced to manage people who think their ticket says "Comedian TJ Miller with special guest Drunk Ignorant Guy Shouting Shit From the Audience". And when they "make it", they are often derided by their fans for selling out, as Miller has been for his involvement in Yogi Bear 3D.
By contrast, I get to feel funny sometimes, write it down and am lucky enough to have people placate me and tell me they enjoyed what I wrote. I can be the funny guy at the party and not feel like it is work. I leave feeling great and go home with my wife and sleep in our bed, in our house, with our cats, and I say a prayer of thanks each night for my wonderful life.
For me, it is the best of both worlds. I confess that I do hope TJ Miller's path is a happy one for him. further, I hope that, assuming we never again speak or meet, he enjoyed his time in our fair city just a little more for having us a company for a short time.
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