An Old Bit

12/06/2008 -- I stopped doing comedy for 10 months after writing this.

It hasn’t gotten any easier, but it has gotten better.

The heart that says, "I'll never get over this," speaks from inexperience. I didn't know that at the time, so I left Austin. I found myself in Jersey not knowing what it meant, at the time, to be there. Some people travel the world to find spiritual peace, and they traverse mountains in Ecuador, or Nepal, and fish in silver ponds hidden deep in Montana Mountains.

I found myself in Jersey ruminating over lost loves, drinking daily, eating mushrooms, eating food cooked over fire pits, playing with fireworks, working at CNN, appearing on television twice, seeing the Yankees play a game in their last season at Yankee Stadium, meeting new love, getting caught in a New York summer downpour while taxis drove by, seeing the hole where the towers once stood, eating from a hot dog cart parked next to piles of trash, walking alone for hours in central park, searching for the Dakota apartments, passing the quiet and solitary afternoon hours playing fetch with Twitch while the Manhattan skyline sparkled away under the setting sun.

No comedy. And of my life I would say this was the best summer ever. I found myself in Jersey not wanting to ever do comedy again. Don't get me wrong, I wrote furiously, nothing funny, just story after story. Some people force themselves to stand on stage and plug away until the funk is over. But I just sat in that jersey house and worked and wrote and ignored comedy.

I wasn't afraid of performing in NY or finding out I was not good enough to make it, I just didn't have my heart in it. That's scarier than any stage you'll find yourself on.  Comedy is the only thing I've ever been good at, and it wasn't good enough anymore. "What's next then?" I asked myself.  I mean, I can't live paycheck to paycheck forever, at some point I'm going to have to choose to do something and stick with it, and better now while I still have options. I found myself in Jersey 8 months later deciding to come back to Austin, find a job, save up for a car, and lay low. I needed what I'd been lacking for so long. Stability. I once paid a phone bill with the money I got from the insurance agency when a guy backed into my car. How is that luck?

Back to Austin. I looked up jobs online during the day but I still had no intention of getting onstage.  I saw my friends out and about. I thought about getting on stage, but then I realized I didn't remember my jokes, something about bald eagles, conjoined twins, drug testing? Four years in this and that's all I got? I can't even remember my shit.

I got my job at Macy's on a Wednesday. I drove my mom's mini van to work. I kept my head down and did my work. The work is thankless but I expected that going into it. I mean, it's retail, if I expect it to be anything other than that, then I only have myself to blame. The 'tour' with NACA paid me 800 dollars to do 30 minutes in front of 18-something college students who may or may not have been required to be there. I did one of those shows in June. I don't know where that money went. Probably bought booze with it.

I lifted boxes all day that Wednesday and made maybe 1/11th of that money. And when I got off work I sat down in front of my old Pentium II IBM and wrote a short story about my boss being an asshole and how I could sympathize with him. After writing the story I reread what I wrote. That sounds like something someone would say on stage, I thought to myself. The next day I stood on stage for the first time in several months. I think I was last, or second to last. I got laughs, more than I expected. What surprised me most about that set is that not only did I not feel rusty, I felt better than I had at any point in the past 15 months or so. And since that night I've developed a ass pocket full of new material. I can't say if the material is any better than it's been in the past, but the material I'm doing now is more honest to me, and therefore more rewarding.

The other night I was in San Antonio at a shit hole karoake bar called Jiggers. I walked in and took a deep breath. Some sort of smell, that smoke and spilled whiskey smell, to me that's as comforting as the smell of grandma's kitchen on christmas day. Jake Flores looked at me and said, "I'm surprised to see you here man, I figured you were past these kinds of shows." Truth is: I've been working the past four years just to get to these kinds of shows. If comedy isn't good enough, then I need to make it better.