Don’t quit your day job.
I went to the Velveeta Room and the guy outside checked the performance list, and my name wasn’t on it. Despite the fact that I’m sure I signed up in time. He said “you haven’t been performing so your name’s not going to show up on the list. You have to have had been performing for a few weeks in a row to really get a spot”. To which I responded that I work a day job and cannot afford to take time off to perform. He then said, “well what’s your day job”. I’m fairly upset because that was my birthday present to myself. An amazing performance. It might seem like I’m lazy about comedy, and I am, but I remember when I first got to Austin I did a little research. I looked up the comedy contests in the city and who the top comics were. Then I googled the funniest comic in Austin. The funniest, won the contest and everything. I looked up his twitter, website, and then I checked out where he performed. His twitter had about 200 followers, his website was good, and his shows were mostly local. The tickets to his shows were about 5 dollars and from the looks of it he was performing at two venues, Cap City and The Velveeta Room. My first thoughts were:
1) That guy isn’t getting paid that much for being the so-called funniest person in the city
2) All things considered, you’re probably funnier than him
3) Don’t rely on Austin’s comedy scene to do you justice.
Seriously, the last time I performed there was another comedic musician, and he was asking about the sign in lists and performance dates and the door guy nonchalantly told him “yeah in about 13 weeks, you’ll have moved up the list”. 13 weeks! And the only thing the bar can guarantee you is that you’ll have moved up the sign up list? Will you have really been scouted by anyone serious? Do agents take the venue seriously for producing talent? If not, you’re wasting your time and the bar is just using you to make money. I wish comedy was all I did, and in 13 weeks under a good hand, both I and him probably could have produced more material than what his 13 weeks of performing there would have. That was around the same time I just started thinking it would be smarter to just go to a bigger city.
I’m amazing, I know I’m amazing. I’ve got a lot of problems in my life right now and a lot of excuses I make for why I’m not out there chasing that dream but some of them are real. It’s pretty much the only thing I’m alive for, and a lot of times I feel ready to give up, when I think about how demanding I am and how dead end my life is right now, but then in the back of my head is my intuition that says out of all the people in the world that have existed there’s that 1 in a billion chance that you’re the funniest. Even if nobody knows it, you have the capability to be the funniest person ever. And usually when I start thinking about those chances, and how blessed I am to have what I have even if it’s not much, I find it hard to not believe that it was god’s will. I want so badly to become that character, to be “Smiley” and to cash in on all that laughter. I know that even if I do have the talent from God, practical things have to be done as well as risky things. And that’s all I’m really here for, the humor.
