Hack!

My biggest fear is being a hack. Unoriginal. Phony. Unauthentic. To me, a hack comic is someone that uses tired premises, and unoriginal thinking. I watch so much comedy now, both good and bad. And if I can guess the punchline in one or two guesses, you wrote a shitty joke. If I can see where you’re going with the joke, you wrote a shitty joke. It’s lazy writing. What I can’t stomach though, is that hack comedians get laughs. But that’s on the audience. Why are they putting up with shitty comedy? I just shake my head when I see hack comics onstage. I never want to be one of those guys. But here’s the thing, I’m never gonna say anything to them. I’m just gonna let them continue being hacks. I don’t want to see them get better. I doubt if even they have any ambition to get better. I mean, they’re already doing lazy comedy. It’s like a shortcut. How do they live with themselves? I could never do it.

One of the ways I avoid becoming a hack is by being true to myself, by being honest with my thoughts and words. And not worrying (anymore) what the audience thinks of me. I think they can tell that I’m being truthful.

Lately I’ve been testing my own material using the ‘bleh’ factor. I don’t know how to spell it, but picture someone putting their finger down their own throat pretending to gag themselves or vomiting. I imagine myself at the Comedy Cellar in New York City and at the back table there is Patrice O’Neal, Rich Vos, Jim Norton, and crew. I respect these guys, and their opinions. And if I got up there and told a joke and they went ‘bleh’, then I would toss the joke. If they saw you doing hack material, they’d let you know. If they liked you, as a person. Because they want to see you improve.

In the past, I’ve written and told jokes that even made me sick, but they got laughs so I continued to tell them. Not anymore. I want to feel good about myself onstage because I'm saying what I truly feel rather than feeling good because I made a few people laugh at something stupid I said.

There’s a quote that goes something like this - “I’d rather be hated for who I am, rather than being loved for something I’m not.” I think it was Kurt Cobain, all my research suggests it is, but who knows. But it sums up how I feel. I’ve told jokes before that made me unpopular with audiences, I could feel their hate, but I didn’t care. I loved it. I was truly expressing myself. I’d much rather tell jokes that truly represent me rather than silly jokes that get laughs.

I did an interview with comedian Darryl Lenox on an old radio show I hosted. And he watched me do 5 minutes of stand-up comedy at a restaurant and had this to say, “You seem to be doing a lot of ‘I-hope-they-like-me jokes’.” Maybe I was, but not anymore.

I can actually pinpoint when my comedy changed and when my attitude about writing changed. It’s a joke I call ‘Good Woman’. You’ll hear it on one of the new EPs I have coming up soon. I tell people all the time that that joke represents me better than any joke I’ve ever written. I say, “It’s more ‘Me’ than anything I’ve ever written. And then all I did was write more jokes just like that.

This one time, I think it was during an interview, someone asked me to tell them about myself. And I said, just watch me onstage, you’ll find out all you need to know. And more. You’ll learn things about me you didn’t wanna know. ‘Oversharing’ is a good description. I actually considered naming my upcoming CD ‘TMI: Too Much Information’. I’ve heard this type of comedy being described as “confessional”. That’s seems pretty accurate. If after seeing me perform you still have questions for me, other than “Is everything you talk about onstage true?”, than I haven’t done my job. And Yes, everything I talk about onstage is true. Do you know how hard it is to think of a joke out of thin air? It’s hard.

This might be another unsubstantiated quote, but David Lee Roth (singer for Van Halen) once said, “All art is autobiographical, whether you want it to be or not.” I might have the quote wrong, or the source wrong, but that’s not the point. I like the quote. And yes, I know it’s pretentious to call my little jokey-jokes ‘art’. I prefer to think of it as a craft. I’m crafting jokes. But my ‘art’ is very autobiographical, by design. I like to think I’m telling my story. In fact, my Haida name (I’m Haida/Cree) is Kil Gan K’aas, which means Funny Storyteller. There is no word for ‘comedian’ in Haida. And that’s what I do, I tell my story, in a funny way. This is another way I try to avoid being a hack, by telling my own story in my own unique way. What could be more original than that?

As I’m typing this, I keep thinking of an album I bought many years ago. It was Steve Martin’s record ‘Comedy Is Not Pretty’. If you’ve ever seen Chris Rock’s special ‘Bring the Pain’, then you might’ve seen it fly by at the beginning of the special. He’s in drag on the cover. He doesn’t look pretty. Here’s the thing, I know my comedy makes some people uncomfortable. It’s because I’m telling the truth. My truth. And no one wants to hear the truth. So you gotta sweeten it, with jokes.

When I first started writing and telling jokes that were truthful, it was uncomfortable. I was always worried what the audience thought of me. I wanted them to like me. But it made me uncomfortable telling these jokes. I wasn’t confident enough. But the jokes were getting laughs. And as time went on and I wrote more jokes in a similar vein, it got easier. Remember how I said that one joke was more me than anything I’ve written, well, as I wrote more of those jokes, I became me onstage. That’s who I was. You know how people always say, “Just be yourself.”? Do you know how fucken hard that is? It’s probably one of the hardest things ever. But the more I told jokes that were “Me”, the easier it was for me to be myself. Now it’s fun. It’s fun to make audiences uncomfortable.

I remember this one time I told a joke, and it got very few laughs (it was a very small audience, in my defense), but this one guy pointed at me and said, “Yes! Exactly.” That’s who that joke was for. Not all my jokes are for everyone. But when the people that it’s meant for, get it, that’s perfect. I just need an entire audience of those people, then I’d be set. It made me happier knowing that that one guy loved that joke, rather than all the other people that didn’t find it funny. Fuck them. Who needs them?

This entry is kinda all over the place, but I have a good reason. I’m tired. I was celebrating the Pittsburgh Penguins winning their fifth Stanley Cup, this one was back-to-back, baby!