Comediology: Be More Effective and Fulfilled in Business With Comedy by Matthews Kurtis & Tabish Chris & Tabish Chris

Author:Matthews, Kurtis & Tabish, Chris & Tabish, Chris [Matthews, Kurtis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Behind every man is a great woman rolling her eyes.

—Jim Carrey

Competition versus Creation

When I started out doing stand-up comedy, I would watch the other comedians. They fell into three categories: (1) they were funny, (2) they were really funny, or (3) they made me look like I was about to get my own comedy special. The last was super-hard to do, by the way. Bless those newbies. I would categorize them because I was evaluating them. I would observe their set and listen intently for the audience’s reaction. I wasn’t “enjoying” the other comedian’s acts, mind you. I was “judging” them and specifically assessing their merits as compared to my act.

You see, at the time, I was being what the Village People called an “idiot.” More specifically, I was living under the delusion that I and my fellow comedians were in a competition. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I stood too close to the microwave during my “Lynn Wilson Burrito” phase. Note that some of you born after the invention of the wheel may refer to it as the “Cup O’ Noodles” phase. Regardless, for me it was a competition, but only in my mind. I mean, no one was ever announced a winner. No one got a trophy. Hell, no one even got a Family Feud Board Game as a consolation prize. Ah, but one can still dream.

When I was judging the other comedian’s acts, my evaluation criteria were simple. If I could make the audience laugh more than the other comedians who were also on stage that night, I was (in my best Borat) great success! Otherwise, I was a total and complete failure. I would use this barometer to compare myself to every other comedian who performed that night. It didn’t matter if the other comedian was a fellow beginner or twenty-year veteran of comedy. If they got more laughs, they were decidedly, at least in my mind, the winner. And I was the comedic loser. And just like Don Music from Sesame Street , I would bang my head against the microphone, screaming, “I’ll nevah make them laugh! NEVAH!!!” If this continued, I feared I would be shunned from the community and destined to live as a boring professional. I would need to change my name to Donald J. Herberrocker, Accounting. I would drown myself in Excel spreadsheets, wear sweater vests in July, and carry around a partially hydrated handkerchief at all times.

It was painful. I wasn’t enjoying myself. And I wasn’t enjoying any of the acts, including mine. I wasn’t even recognizing and giving myself credit for being courageous enough to do what I was doing, much less acknowledging that it was a process and took time to cultivate. Consequently, I was defensive. After all, in my mind, I sucked. I wasn’t happy with myself. How could I be sincerely happy for others who succeeded, when, at least by my gorilla math, it was at my own expense? I would even do really dumb stuff like not laugh at their jokes, just to influence the outcome.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.