to align for standup to just happen .
For me it took ten years to even start to happen. All I knew was, I wanted to go onstage and entertain the people as much as I could—either with what I had prepared or with something I made up spontaneously on the spot. All of my early humor sprang from some kind of warped truism. Sick jokes, all about my girlfriend, my parents, my youth, career self-deprecation—the usual topics for a beginning comic.
One of my first jokes was “My mother never let me go to camp as a little kid because she thought I’d get embarrassed undressing in front of little boys. But I kind of like it now . . . That’s not true, I like it a lot . . . That’s not true, I’m not a senator.”
That was the closest I came to political satire at the time. I don’t recall what senator was in trouble for being a pedophile. But the camp part was true. My mom was overly strict with me, partly because camp cost money that we didn’t have a ton of. So instead of going to camp, I stayed home and mowed lawns every summer, which also has lascivious connotations. So as absurd as my beginnings as a stand-up were, there was always truth at the root, which was an interesting thing to come to grips with, because throughout my childhood I was pretty much a serial liar.
I had been perjuring myself since I was about nine, because I didn’t want to get in trouble with my mom and other authority figures. My dad was always busy working and having weekly heart attacks, so my mom was the taskmaster at home. Again, authoritative mothers are often textbook stuff if you’re going to wind up in comedy. And textbook stuff if you’re a human being. Repression leads to rebellion. Took me thirty years to not be able to lie anymore. A’ight, forty years. Do I hear fifty?
We have all lied. Because we don’t want to disappoint. Animals lie. They learn it from us. Ask your cat if they’re the one who crapped on the carpet and they’ll try to distract you to take your mind off the fact that their cat turd is sitting in the middle of the living room. But who hasn’t done that? “Bob, did you shit in the living room?” “No, Dad, it must’ve been Mom.”
My dad would always laugh at stuff like that. He was my biggest comedy influence. He turned me on to Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, all the old radio comedians. He was also a huge fan of his own childhood heroes, the silent film comedians like Harold Lloyd. My dad liked Lloyd better than Chaplin. I would disagree with him on that. At nine years old. The only thing worse than a nine-year-old who thinks he knows everything is . . . Well, there are a lot of things worse, but a nine-year-old who thinks he knows everything is pretty fucking annoying.
I was influenced by just about anyone who was inspired and passionate about what they did, which turned out for me to be mostly filmmakers and comedians. My path as a kid was laid way before I was.
When I was about eleven, I used to send away to Blackhawk Films in Davenport, Iowa, and buy all the eight-millimeter silent films of Chaplin, Lloyd, and others. Just loved movies—didn’t matter there was no sound, I would sit and watch them with subtitles. I loved Groucho and took in every comedian I could on television. Not a lot of edginess to be had in the early sixties. Quickness of wit was the edginess of the time. The spontaneous performances of TV icons like Jack Paar, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Dean Martin. Those guys were quick-witted and classy, professional.
I also loved the same things everybody loved: Lucy, Jackie Gleason, and anything I could pick up from what I was too young to have seen when it was the number one show on television: Your Show of Shows . Later, I was obsessed with The Dick Van Dyke Show . And Get Smart . And then anything made separately or together by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.
Comedy is a highly subjective art form. There are those who would possibly prefer my comedy if it
For me it took ten years to even start to happen. All I knew was, I wanted to go onstage and entertain the people as much as I could—either with what I had prepared or with something I made up spontaneously on the spot. All of my early humor sprang from some kind of warped truism. Sick jokes, all about my girlfriend, my parents, my youth, career self-deprecation—the usual topics for a beginning comic.
One of my first jokes was “My mother never let me go to camp as a little kid because she thought I’d get embarrassed undressing in front of little boys. But I kind of like it now . . . That’s not true, I like it a lot . . . That’s not true, I’m not a senator.”
That was the closest I came to political satire at the time. I don’t recall what senator was in trouble for being a pedophile. But the camp part was true. My mom was overly strict with me, partly because camp cost money that we didn’t have a ton of. So instead of going to camp, I stayed home and mowed lawns every summer, which also has lascivious connotations. So as absurd as my beginnings as a stand-up were, there was always truth at the root, which was an interesting thing to come to grips with, because throughout my childhood I was pretty much a serial liar.
I had been perjuring myself since I was about nine, because I didn’t want to get in trouble with my mom and other authority figures. My dad was always busy working and having weekly heart attacks, so my mom was the taskmaster at home. Again, authoritative mothers are often textbook stuff if you’re going to wind up in comedy. And textbook stuff if you’re a human being. Repression leads to rebellion. Took me thirty years to not be able to lie anymore. A’ight, forty years. Do I hear fifty?
We have all lied. Because we don’t want to disappoint. Animals lie. They learn it from us. Ask your cat if they’re the one who crapped on the carpet and they’ll try to distract you to take your mind off the fact that their cat turd is sitting in the middle of the living room. But who hasn’t done that? “Bob, did you shit in the living room?” “No, Dad, it must’ve been Mom.”
My dad would always laugh at stuff like that. He was my biggest comedy influence. He turned me on to Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, all the old radio comedians. He was also a huge fan of his own childhood heroes, the silent film comedians like Harold Lloyd. My dad liked Lloyd better than Chaplin. I would disagree with him on that. At nine years old. The only thing worse than a nine-year-old who thinks he knows everything is . . . Well, there are a lot of things worse, but a nine-year-old who thinks he knows everything is pretty fucking annoying.
I was influenced by just about anyone who was inspired and passionate about what they did, which turned out for me to be mostly filmmakers and comedians. My path as a kid was laid way before I was.
When I was about eleven, I used to send away to Blackhawk Films in Davenport, Iowa, and buy all the eight-millimeter silent films of Chaplin, Lloyd, and others. Just loved movies—didn’t matter there was no sound, I would sit and watch them with subtitles. I loved Groucho and took in every comedian I could on television. Not a lot of edginess to be had in the early sixties. Quickness of wit was the edginess of the time. The spontaneous performances of TV icons like Jack Paar, Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Dean Martin. Those guys were quick-witted and classy, professional.
I also loved the same things everybody loved: Lucy, Jackie Gleason, and anything I could pick up from what I was too young to have seen when it was the number one show on television: Your Show of Shows . Later, I was obsessed with The Dick Van Dyke Show . And Get Smart . And then anything made separately or together by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.
Comedy is a highly subjective art form. There are those who would possibly prefer my comedy if it
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