"King of Comedy"
Michael Adams
Qualifications: Fleet of mouth, impulsive of foot, and very, very smart. Having failed at everything else conventional in his 23 years, he has been swept up to the gutter grating of where all the other losers eventually end up-- THE IMPROV! Like a hamburger wrapper fluttering in the rain water, he floats up to your feet and begs to be held in your outrageous clutches. Irony and "high camp" is his stock & trade, and in the great words of Diogenes the ancient Grecian cynic, "I HAVE COME TO DEBASE THE COINAGE!". Let him share his gift with the howling mob, and everyone will be carried off on the shoulders of Olympian triumph!
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It only went downhill from there. . . . .
A great deal of comedy requires the man with the mic not being held back by one's cerebral tendencies that become overly abstracted from the hoots of the rude, crude, and indifferent world that wants a punch-line, upfront and meaty. . . . . and uncomplicated. Many sheltered idealists, overly lost in the liberal or performing arts like a young stork fancifully reciting Shakespeare never quite get the hard truth of spitting on your hands and chopping a cord of wood out there in the wilds of brutal experience. . . . . when they were not necessarily "perfectly fitted" for this whimsical world of role-playing that either does or does not add up "to a hill of beans" and there's only one way to find out. . . . . open casting with varying degrees of risk and public rejection.
Why someone would get involved in this business is usually some misguided,
hopeful miscreant wishing that a magical solution would be lowered by cables
down on to the stage and whisk them off into a cut-rate "happily ever after"
that's either not possible or realistic as they grub around on an uglier and
uglier level, convinced "Cloud 9" will dip that low and lift them up on a host
of angels of the audience's raucous laughter. And in
a room full of addled, drunk, lost, dazed, and limping brains washed up in the
sluice gutters of an open-mic comedy night, you bet that you should know the
realities of the field.
For one is an attitude of a frat-house carnival that shows little mercy to those "who can't hold their own" out there in the cell-block with a level of violence and brutality that grows crazier with your hellish level of shakiness and desperation. The business tends not to bring in stable, kind-hearted people and the minions who staff the comedy clubs oftentimes tends to be sharp-eyed alcoholics whose souls are empty like crunched, broken glass and their voices empty and dead like ashes.
This is a world of "pretenders", where types are drawn to this scene for a reason-- to make up for a sense of fixity and importance that they definitely don't feel, and must be drawn to in order to generate everything outward "in one fantastic starburst" of expression when you "walk in the valley of the shadow" and come back, while others take part in the public ceremony of laughter-tension. The greatest asset to comedy-- that everyone needs to know when starting off on shaky, colt-like legs is timing, suspense, saying things with conviction, standing there like a rock yet playing freely with "the philosopher's stone"-- the secret behind movement and change that is the key to eternal life, when you apprehend yourself to be a swiftly-running river or a dancing, playful flame. Everyone has to learn to speak a little slower and less nervously, finding the solidness within and expanding outward like hard, flexible rubber.
Knock 'em dead, kid.
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Here, Here!
A special trailer for a mini-series about the independent comedy scene in San Francisco, including a lovely young lady I used to know, Janine Brito.
Here's a clip of Miss Janine performing on stage.
"Lawless
forgives all!"
"To
a Comedienne". . . . .
You have a real way about you which is admirable. Perhaps "stand-up" is thy
format which is a challenge that makes "a strong man weak" & "a heathen pray".
When I think of "some rather tragicomic" verities about the nature "of
performance art", I zone my mind over to the general vicinity of a character
such as Rush Limbaugh who, like "The Wizard of Oz", works his magic like a
trickster "behind a curtain" in a booth somewhere with a microphone. Radio--
like the written medium, via digital or print-- is a far more intimate form of
communication because as "THE WIZARD" you absolutely control what the audience
"sees & hears" through the power of the imagination.
Say you have an uncle-- of the general trope of Rush-- standing around in a Hawaiian shirt and trying to act "like way more of a BIG SHOT than he is", especially when he's out entertaining the kids by the camp fire, telling stories with his palms extended with a note of egregious caution in his voice as everyone is having an uproarious good time. The fact that "they dig what he's saying", naive and gullible to love every word as he shrugs with the absurdity of existence-- pretending as if "that's really just the way it is". . . . .
They laugh, and say that he should tour with this act "AROUND THE WORLD".
"Sure", he says.
But our uncle in the Hawaiian
shirt pauses, perhaps chilled to the marrow with a cold bone of morbidity that pokes at the
base of his neck-- an empty, rattling can "of misgiving" that is yet aware of
some things.
How "his spell" only works at certain times, in some places, with "the right crowd". How he wouldn't necessarily go into a jaded bar, or even "a prison yard"-- where stray cats n' roughnecks would eye him over with a seasoned wink and apprise him "for his essential unfitness", jabbing at his soft belly or even "roughing him up a bit". He would know "to keep quiet", hang his head-- lest he get it "even worse".
The gulf between courage vs. futility, and then again-- "quietly slinking off" with the philosophy of the defeated and the Medieval solace "of the damned" with the pricked quill "of our scholar of sorrows". . . . .
And how so much hip, irreverent culture-- "that secret cachet"-- ultimately comes from a subculture living a very hidden life, trading in a compartmentalized language in which "the in-joke" are references that only they would understand amongst themselves as grungy, unwanted, marginalized outsiders reveling in THE GLORIOUS ABSURDITY OF IT ALL. . . . . whose spell only "half-works", and not before a surly, indifferent, or even a hostile crowd "throwing rocks n' bottles".
Which is why
so many stay close "to warm familiars" until they increase the power of their
appeal to a transcending, universal charisma "and don't particularly care what
others think". . . . . which makes them even more popular because THEY'RE REAL
and not just "a silly puppet-show" as tinhorn as it is incomprehensible for a dazed
crowd "that can barely keep its eyes open as it is" in rooms billowing with
smoke and the clink of ice cubes and sleep deprivation, if not the hint of
prostitution and drug activity on the ass-end of perky liberal social freedoms
"GONE BAD" in cynicism, puke, overdose, and despair: of "lizard-brains" and
"one-two punch-lines" that hits them quick n' hard "right between the eyes" like
a hurled pool-ball of limbic reactions and crude, primitive humor.
(But dying ain't much of "a living", and you got to start somewhere)
Your "Father Confessor" listens. . . . .
Follow Janine Brito on Twitter here
An interesting article here analyzes very carefully WHAT CHARLIE SHEEN IS DOING WRONG. His style presumes to have someone "to bounce ideas off of", as he grows bigger and more powerful with impetuosity-- but otherwise, the guy is going out there "with no formulated plan", and not much of a structure to work with in his head. You must HAVE A BASE OF POWER "on which to build a solo", and memorize "a bit from free-flowing rote" before you can just "freely improvise" as a man alone by himself on the stage. Otherwise, you're putting up capital you might not afford to loose, "plus looking slovenly & unprepared" before a jeering, anemic showing-- much less, WHEN THE ROOM IS PACKED "before your frazzled, shaky self".
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
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