New York Comedy Scene Progress

I’ll get into the more personal ways in which I feel like I’m progressing soon.  But I wanted to mention that it’s Thursday, June 14.  And tonight, I’m on a show at Kabin, which is a bar in East Village, over in Manhattan.  It’s one of the better weekly shows in the city, and I’m looking forward to performing on it.  I’m nervous, too.  But I’m excited to get to be on it.

The Thursday night show at Kabin is where Lucas and I saw Mike DeStefano perform, when we first moved here over a year ago.

It’s not a set that will make me famous or anything (there is no such thing, in case you haven’t figured that out yet), but it’s a really nice gesture to be invited to be on it.  It represents that people in and around the scene up here have a certain level of respect for me, and for what I try to do onstage.

So it’s not something that should affect how I approach my comedy, or anything like that.  But it’s something that I’ll accept, say “thank you” for, and then put it in my pouch, as I continue on my journey up here.

Sorry.  I’ve been playing an RPG video game this week.  So the pouch analogy felt like it fit.  But it probably didn’t.  Unless you, too, have purchased the “Humble Indie Bundle,” and have been celebrating your shows this past weekend by exploring the art of different types of nerds as yourself.

I’m a comedy nerd.  I’m hooked.  At least I think I am.  Time will tell.  But this weekend represented something.  Things feel very different, after those shows.

I’ll try to blog about that soon.  But I’m getting to do a great show tonight, and it’s a show that felt very unrealistic a year ago.  So it’s a nice day to reflect, write a quick blog to document it, and wonder what I’ll be doing one year from now, that seems unrealistic to me, in this moment.

Going on 18 months in New York City now.  This is where I’m supposed to be.  I’m earning my spot here.

Yes. Yes, I’m going to shower before the show.

Damage Control, aka Days I’m a Piece of Shit

It’s 1:30 in the afternoon. On a Monday. Monday, March 19, 2012.

So far today, I’ve been a piece of shit.

I don’t have a job, but I woke up by around 8 or 8:30. I watched a few TED Talks, and then I had a good breakfast. I even took Adderall, which usually means that I’m going to do something productive and focused with my day. At 9:30, it looked like this was going to be a great day. The beginning of a great week.

Then it all fell apart. I started playing an app on my iPhone - a mind-numbing, repetitious video game app.

And then it was 3 hours later, before I looked up. And now it’s 1:30. I haven’t done a damn thing today.

And you can’t start a day at 1:30 in the afternoon. 9:30? Yeah! 11 in the morning? There’s still time to build momentum. But 1:30? When the day is already more than half over? When you haven’t done anything except be a lazy bum so far?

No. Come on. Who am I kidding? The dye has been cast. I’m a shitty person today. And since it’s Monday, that probably means I’m going to have an unproductive, pointless week.

And, it’s already the 19th! It feels like March just started. God damn it I’m a piece of shit. What have I done this month? I haven’t read a book, I haven’t watched a movie, I haven’t done any amazing shows, I haven’t gotten into any clubs. What have I done, in 19 days? Nothing.

And honestly, at the end of March, we’re already a quarter of the way through the year. Seriously? A quarter over? I’m still writing 2011 on my checks! Or I would, if I ever used checks.

What have I done this year? Honestly, what’s different now than my life 3 months ago? I’m not making any more money. I’m not in at any clubs. I still haven’t been on TV. I still haven’t cleaned my room, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with me?

You know what’s really messed up? I’ve never had a clean room. It’s 2012. I was born in 1984. I’m supposed to be a 28 year-old man right now. Some days, that’s too hilarious to be sad. But today, that’s too sad to be hilarious.

I can barely see my bedroom floor. There are 3 glasses next to my bed, because I bring a new one in every night and never bother to take them into the kitchen the next morning. I know that’s a little thing, but the little things add up. Flossing? I’m lucky if I remember to brush my teeth half the time.

I haven’t had an hourly-wage job in 4 years. I say I love stand-up, but how often do I write during my days? I say I work hard, but how often do I choose a girl, or a conversation, over what I claim is my life’s passion? Am I any more disciplined than I was when I finished college and was trying to do this when I was 22? The things that took up my time - watching sports, playing games, chasing women - am I any better at living my life now than I was then?

No. That was six years ago. What has changed - really - in six years? My lifestyle is almost exactly the same - I live in an apartment, I eat pizza, and I go do open-mics at night. I never work out with any consistency, so my body is almost exactly the same - right around 150 pounds, like I have been for the past decade. My work ethic is the same - I go to plenty of open-mics, but I don’t call clubs, I don’t e-mail bookers, and I don’t work off-stage to tighten my jokes.

Sure, I’m a better comic now. But not because I’m actually any different. I’ve just been doing it for longer. Is that really a reason to get excited?

I’m the same person I was six years ago. You know why? Because of today. Because I’ve had six years of days like today. Where I wake up. And have a chance to not be a piece of shit. And then I fuck it up.

I feel bad that I didn’t do anything from 9:30 to 11. And no matter what I do the rest of the day, it won’t be as much as I could have done. So I spend 11 to 12 avoiding getting started, and facing that reality. And then I feel even worse for the next hour-and-a-half, because I know that clock is ticking forward.

It’s bizarre. It’s almost like I’m thinking if I live a day shittily enough, it won’t count.

Every year, Major League Baseball has a “Home Run Derby,” where the best hitters try to hit as many home runs as they can before they get 10 outs. So somebody throws a pitch, and if they swing and don’t hit a home run, that’s an out. And you just count how many home runs each guy hits, before he has 10 swings that aren’t home runs.

The thing is, if they don’t swing at a pitch - and just wait for a better pitch next time - then it doesn’t count as an out. If they don’t think it’s a good pitch, they can just let it go by, no penalty.

That’s kind of how I live my life sometimes. It’s like every day is a new “pitch,” a new chance to hit a home run. But I’m so terrified of not hitting a home run, that most days, I just end up not swinging at all. I end up taking the pitch.

It’s so stupid. Logically, I know that. Because that’s not how life works. In real-life Home-Run Derby, we get a certain number of pitches (God damn it, I’d like to get through ONE POST on here without turning into a motivational speaker. Christ).

I don’t know what my point is. So I’ll just go back to the one I planned to make when I started this an hour ago:

That was the mentality I fell into, for most of the first half of 2011. Last year, when I first moved to New York, I just got into a funk. I didn’t go to any open-mics the first night I was in town. Or the second night. And then all of a sudden, it was the first week. Then, I’d gone out 5 nights in 3 months. It just snowballed. I avoided facing the present, because to do so, I had to admit my past.

So far this year, I’ve been doing a great job of limiting the damage. Sometimes I’ll have an unproductive day, but I don’t let it become an empty week. Today isn’t going to be as productive as it could have been, but it can still be something: I’m writing this blog, which is something. And I still have time to head out and get some open-mics in.

But I gotta get going. And keep going. I’m a fuck-up. Oh well. Part of the game.

Montreal Advice 2.0, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love That I’ll Never Make It

The weeks leading up to my 2011 and 2012 Montreal showcases have been vastly different. My 2011 showcase was in Austin, even though I had already moved to New York by then. I’d spent the past two years in Austin, and I was going to be down there for South by Southwest anyway, so both myself and the people running the Austin showcase agreed that I should just showcase there.

Unfortunately for me, that showcase was in early March. And after my career-goal-shifting Quarterlife Crisis Comedy Tour ended the previous November, I lost all my momentum. A “brief” trip home for Thanksgiving turned into a month-long stay with my family, and then I was so intimidated when I moved to New York that I barely got up at all. The result was that I went into my Montreal audition pretty damn rusty. A total of 10 or 12 sets in 3 months will do that.

I remember being torn at the time over whether or not I should remove myself from the showcase. I knew I was rusty, and I knew I wasn’t going to represent myself in the way I wanted to. I remember being tortured over which would be more insulting to the people that had helped get me onto the showcase: performing at less than 100 percent, or not bothering to perform at all.

In the end, I decided to go on. And the set itself went fine, in comedic terms. But in Montreal terms, it was an insult. Because it wasn’t a tight set. And a Montreal showcase is all about showing respect to the process by being prepared, and by being efficient. Dress well. Don’t lean on the mic stand. Be a cookie cutter - but be a fun-shaped cookie cutter. But: the industry sells cookies. So don’t disrespect them by deciding you’re going to be a loaf of bread out of the blue.

I think I came off like a comic trying to be a loaf of bread. And I know of at least a couple bridges that I burned because of it. I respect their decision, and it makes sense how they interpreted my actions. But I can also live with how I handled the situation. Sometimes, you put yourself in a crappy situation, and you have to deal with the consequences, one way or the other. I made my bed by losing the artistic momentum I had. And I deserved the results I got.

That was the story of my 2011 Montreal Showcase set, in a nutshell.

This is 2012. My showcase set is here, in New York City, and it’s this Tuesday, January 31.

Things are a lot different this year. For starters, by the time I perform on Tuesday, I’ll have gotten about 80 sets in this month. I’ll have done close to 30 in the week leading up to it. So say what you will - I won’t be rusty.

Though, in a way, I still don’t feel prepared. I haven’t performed in a club in almost a year. This was by design, because I wanted to go back to the drawing board, artistically and motivationally speaking. But now, I’m struggling to prepare a “disciplined” set-list for the showcase. I love connecting in the moment, which is not the goal of a Montreal New Faces set. We’re told specifically not to interact with the audience much, and not to bring up current events that won’t be relevant in 6 months.

That makes perfect sense, because the Festival is in July. And they can’t control the variables of a given room. So they aim to judge on you, as a comic, and not on you, in that room.

And that’s what gives me that nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach, as I try to prepare for Tuesday. I feel like I’ve been working hard to find myself, and to become better at being a comic, in that room, on that day, in this moment. I really have been working hard at that. I swear.

But I don’t know how good a comic I am, as a comic. I’ve never been great at tight sets. Maybe I was when I first started. But that’s always been my weakness. Pretty much since I got started, nine years ago.

Really, probably since about 6 years ago. Since I graduated from college and moved to DC. My years in DC were super-formative. And I just remember being so jealous of the comics that could just be funny. That weren’t tied down to their material.

I worked at the DC Improv as a host, a sound guy, and eventually as a (terrible) waiter. And I remember the first 3 months I worked there, it was great. Some of the best acts in the country would come and perform there. And for me, it was great to see them perform the same set 7 or 8 times. You got a rush of adrenaline when you knew they were about to tell a punchline that was going to crush. It felt like you could see into the future, in a way. It was a great rush. It made me feel powerful, in a way, because I felt like I knew something about everyone in the room that they didn’t know about themselves. One show Wednesday, one Thursday, two Friday...by the time Saturday rolled around, I knew the future, for 90 minutes at a time. It was great.

I started working in July. It was a great summer. I was 22. I spent every night at one of the best clubs in the country. I got to meet great comics. I got a free meal every shift! It was a dream job, for a kid fresh out of college.

Then in October, Bill Burr did a week. Then in November, Patrice did a week. And then everything was different. For a week at a time, I was on my toes. I didn’t know the future. Anything was possible, at every moment. Everything was in bounds.

We don’t have words for it, but what they were doing was a different art form. It was a different thing. What every other comic did, and what they did, were both called “stand-up comedy.” But, when you looked closely, it was something different. In one, you can predict the future. In the other, you can’t. Two things can’t be any more different than that.

In a way, I still haven’t recovered from those two weeks, during the fall of 2006. I haven’t figured out how to balance those two art forms. Bill Burr has figured it out, to a large extent. He does annual spots on Letterman now, and they’re usually quite good. But for someone who has seen him live, it remains frustrating to watch them. Because I know that not everything is possible. There’s a limit to what can happen. He’s willingly clipping his own wings.

What Bill has figured out, probably, is that since he’s putting on those chains, he can take them off, too. He can do a disciplined, limiting Letterman set on a Monday afternoon, and then go into a club that night and pour his absolute heart out, in whatever direction he wants it to go.

That’s what I haven’t figured out yet. I still stubbornly insist on not limiting any performance, ever. And that’s something I really struggle with. At what point is being stubborn “sticking to your guns” and “believing in yourself,” and at what point does it become “I guess he’s just never going to get on television.”

I don’t know. I don’t know. I guess all I know is that I definitely don’t know yet.

The past few days, I’ve been trying to go onstage and be efficient. I’ve been trying to run through the jokes I think I should do on Tuesday. And I just haven’t been able to. I just haven’t been able to mail in a set, and not be present in the room. It feels torturous to me. It feels like I’m being shackled.

haha man. This started as a blog about Montreal. Then it became a blog about my experiences the past year. Then it became about me working at the DC Improv five years ago. Then it became about Bill Burr and Patrice O’Neal, and stand-up philosophy. Then it became about Montreal again. And now it’s becoming a blog about how I probably have some serious emotional issues regarding discipline and freedom.

I gotta end this sometime, right? I can’t just keep pouring out my fears and doubts onto the screen, and expecting you to interpret it as something that’s mutually beneficial. Right?

Once again, I’m glad this helped both of us. You’re welcome.

Going to the Gym

I re-watched Patrice O’Neal’s special this week, after he passed away on Tuesday morning. And something he said really hit me. Well, a lot of things did, if I’m going to be honest. But for the purposes of this blog, let’s focus on a particular point.

It was related to this bit from his special, about not being able to type. He went on to say that if you’re 40, and you want to better yourself...don’t bother. Because you can’t change your ethic.

Your ethic. You know you should eat healthier. You should go to the gym every day. You should floss every day.

What stops you from doing that stuff? It’s not that you don’t want to. It’s not that you can’t. In fact, a lot of us will do those things. We’ll make those changes...for a little while. We’ll go to the gym for a few weeks. We’ll floss four straight days. We’ll make a change.

But then we fall off the wagon again. And then it’s two months later, and we haven’t been to the gym once. You’re eating fast food 6 nights a week. You can’t remember the last time you flossed.

Because it’s hard to change your ethic.

That’s my struggle. It is now, and honestly, it has been for as long as I can remember. I guess another word for it is discipline. I want to write every day. I want to do two or three shows, most nights. The desire is there. But the discipline isn’t.

My body is in really bad shape right now. If you go 50 push-ups into my past, I bet we’re talking 3 months ago. I haven’t worked out since the summer. Everyone who hasn’t seen me in a while mentions that I’ve lost some weight.

Maybe I’m connecting too many dots together, but I don’t think so: I think the reason I’m not healthy right now is the same reason that I’m not fully becoming the comic that I want to be: I need to change my ethic.

One thing Patrice didn’t mention in his special was how to change it. All he said was that by 40, don’t bother. Well, I may be as fatalistic by the time I’m 40. And maybe I’ll look back and realize that, even at 27, it was just too late to make core changes to who I am as a person.

But I’ve gotta at least try. ...Right?

At the beginning of this year, I did something. I decided to floss every day, for one year. I’ve never flossed much, so the idea of doing it - every day, no exceptions - for a year? It was a pretty big deal.

I started on January 27, if I remember right, and I made it a solid six weeks, without much trouble. But then I went to SXSW, and once I got out of my consistent daily routine, I fell apart. I missed a day, and as soon as I did, I fell apart. And I haven’t flossed consistently since.

You want to know what’s funny? Maybe I’m imagining it...but I’m pretty sure those were six of the most productive weeks of my life. Hold on, let me check this blog...

Ha. That was when Lucas and I decided to create this blog. And that was the only time we made stupid, dumb, super-fun videos and photo-stories for it. In the one month that I was flossing, I wrote about half as much as I’ve written in the eight months since.

Now, this blog doesn’t define how productive my life has been. But honestly? It’s probably not a bad clue.

So, what do I do? Am I destined to be a person who lives my whole life feeling shitty, because I-coulda-been-a-great-comic is the best thing I can say about myself?

Honestly? Maybe. Maybe that’s what my life is gonna be. Maybe I’ll never write a book, or a script, or record a special, or become a good enough comic for someone to think that I need to be on TV. Maybe.

But I guess all I can do is try.

Hmm. Now I’m reminded of another comic who died this past year, Mike DeStefano.

I went to a tribute show for Mike last month, and it was a solid show. Colin Quinn, Kurt Metzger, Eugene Mirman, Robert Kelly, and others. But at the end, they showed a tribute video.

The tribute video was clips of his stand-up, clips from a few TV appearances, some podcast footage, and stuff like that. And then there was footage from when he went back and performed at a recovery clinic.

I think it was a recovery clinic. Mike had been addicted to heroin for years before he got clean and got a job as a drug counselor. He only started doing comedy after groups of addicts started laughing from the shockingly honest answers he’d give to their questions. To put it simply, it was so surprising to have someone actually tell them the truth...it was hilarious.

And so his path in stand-up started. And a decade or so later, he found himself doing a set to a roomful of recovering - but more likely not recovering - addicts.

And, I can only presume, he was funny. And engaging. And good.

And then he got to the end of his set, and he just talked to them. He said that most of what people tell them about quitting is bullshit. I don’t remember everything he said, but I remember them showing shots of people in the crowd, just crying.

He basically said that in order to quit, each person had to find the belief in their own minds that they actually could quit. And once you found that actual belief, he said, you had to grab onto that belief, and let that be everything you focus on, and never let go of that thing, whatever it was.

I’m not doing it justice. But I tried to remember it, even though at the time, I thought it didn’t apply to me.

Now, I think it kind of does. I’m addicted to a certain ethic - an ethic of not writing during the day, of not writing out script ideas I have, of not eating every day (probably just mine), of not flossing.

I’m addicted to a poor ethic. So what can I do?

1) Search for the thing inside me that makes me believe I could change my ethic and become a better, more disciplined version of myself

2) Once I find it, grab hold of that belief

3) Make some changes, and then never let my eyes off of that reason. Hang on for dear life.

Step 1 starts now. Time to go search.

Love,

Bryson Turner

(Note: I took two pictures to try to better illustrate just how skinny I am right now...maybe the skinniest I’ve been in years. But instead, I think it just kind of looks like sad-me is looking longingly at happy-me. I trust you get the idea)

Searching for Clues...

One of the most shocking things about the New York experience so far is how unspectacular the gains feel. It feels like you could become King of the World here, and you wouldn’t even notice. The difference between “succeeding" and “failing” here isn’t even a difference - the two are on a sliding scale, and it’s almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

And in that way, there’s something dangerous about being up here. I’m tempted to develop a defense mechanism that just presumes anyone who says I’m crazy is the enemy. Anyone who criticizes my life choices is somebody that has given up on their dreams, somebody that doesn’t get it - somebody that is only trying to bring me down.

But if I do that, at what point am I being genuinely delusional? At what point am I crazy?

That seems like an easy distinction to make. If you get laughs, you’re not crazy. If you make money doing this, you’re not crazy. If you experience success, and receive validation, then you’re not crazy.

It’s been that easy, everywhere I’ve been before. There are ways to prove you’re not crazy. “I crushed tonight - exhibit A. All the young comics on the scene look up to me - exhibit B. People pay me to tell jokes - exhibit C. I rest my case, your honor.”

I’m not saying that evidence isn’t up here. But it’s a CSI crime scene up here, not an OJ crime scene. It’s not nearly as easy to see the evidence. And if you don’t see any evidence for a while, you start asking yourself, “Is there any evidence here? Am I going to waste my career trying to solve a crime that never happened?"

I don’t know. It’s not like there’s an easy journey to take in life. If I was at a company picnic last night instead of an open-mic, it’s not like I’d think I had everything figured out. If your whole goal is to be conscious of your own experience and existence, it’s not like there’s a short-cut to that.

It’s funny. Part of me gets to the end of these posts and wants to reward readers with a piece of advice or a nugget of wisdom. But everything I end up thinking or realizing really only applies to me, and so it’s tough to tell someone else what they should take from an experience I’m having.

So instead, I’ll just say to have a nice Tuesday. And go outside if you get a chance. Outside is nice.