44 Thoughtful, Strange, Crass, Funny Thoughts on Stand Up Comedy

October 30th I turn 44 years old. I started doing comedy at 33 years old, like Jesus. Here are 44 thoughts about stand up comedy ranging from the clearly hyperbolic to the insanely truthful. Enjoy!  

​1. You shouldn't pay people in exposure, unless that means the booker will show you their boobs. Since most bookers are men, I'll pass. 

2.  Flappers' real marketing strategy is hoping every movie at the AMC is sold out, and people have to walk down to their club. 

3.The greatest double standard in comedy is that women get shit for telling dirty jokes way more than men do. Mostly because men have a lower standard of being human than women do. 

4. Don't try to sleep with the waitress/waiter or bartender after the show. They're a bigger headcase than you most likely. And they probably do Improv.

5. Podcasts pay way more than newsletters, but my newsletters prove I can write and think about my thoughts. 

6. Republican crowds used to be fun, but now they are just racist. 

7. Liberal crowds were never fun, but at least they just walk out quietly. 

8. Kill Tony is the only comedy show where awfulness is expected and adored. Like an average eHarmony date. 

9. A comedy show should be 90 minutes long. Anything longer is just asking for a tired group of overstimulated patrons who won't return for five years.

10. Your host should be be better in ten minutes than your feature is in 25 minutes - because if the host bombs, it's over. If the feature bombs, no one cares. Because the host can come up and get a pop off a joke that gives the headliner a fresh start.  

11. Bookers should pay for travel instead of requiring comics to use credit card points to fly - the irony of getting into debt to fly to their low paying gig is mind boggling and makes me want to use the R word like it's 1999.

12. Swearing on stage is fucking fun, and clean comics know that and cry at night because they can't say shit. 

13. Telling jokes about God and religion is a one way ticket to hell for most of you heathens.

14. Comics with one trick, whether it's crowd work or comedy catch phrases, don't last long. "Get'er done!" anyone was the "So you two dating?" in 2005.

15. Your parents will never be proud to tell people you've done comedy for more than a year. After a year, they'll just pity you and keep you out of the will. 

16. If you're single and want to do road work, stay single. If you're in a relationship, break up. If you're married get divorced. And if you have kids, put them up or adoption. And if you're pregnant, and in Texas...just drive to California. (too dark? lol)  

17. Fat comics are funnier than skinny comics. It's science. 

18. A bucket mic is rigged - just go home if they ask you to put your name in the bucket. Or just put the bucket on your head and do a Homer Simpson voice saying, "Look at me, I'm the magical man..." so you'll never be allowed back. 

19. It's okay to punch comics who have assaulted women. In fact, Jesus would be proud.    

20. If the comic before you bombs, just walk on stage and say, "I'm sorry for the last comic, but I'm really upset at him too - he stole all my jokes!" 

21. The Comedy Store is clearly haunted by the ghost of bringers past and Pauley Shore's career. 

22. Male comics who try to sleep with lady comics are sad, sad, delusional incels. 

23. No one will ever read your script. Even people who read your script were doing 15 other things at once and will just write, "loved it!" in a text four weeks later.

24. Never ask your friends to come see your show in the rain. Most venues in your bringing days don't have good ceilings. 

25. If comedy doesn't work out, try going to the gym. Preferably early in the morning. You'll be too tired to stay up late and you'll feel too good during the day to write cynical jokes.

26. The greatest comedy special of all time is Bill Cosby Himself and it should never be enjoyed again by anyone. Except maybe the Amish who have no idea what horrors he's responsible for. 

27. The most awful sound in the world is dead silence in a 200 seat theater after a joke bombs. Don't ask me how I know this. 

28. Until you've driven over 10 hours in a day for a gig and driven home the next day, you're not a comic. You're just a normal person. 

29. The San Diego Comedy Scene sucks. Because audiences are made up of people not cool enough to go to weekend beach house parties. 

30. Never wear a funny shirt on stage, unless your persona is Hacky McHack.   

31. If you aren't listening to pro-wrestling podcasts about the 1980's and 1990's wrestling scene, you're depriving yourself of great marketing and performance ideas, as well as the cathartic experience of being so cracked out on coke you are willing to sell your family. 

32. If a booker has a list of do's and dont's that is longer than a few lines, just politely decline the gig. No reason to have a person tell you that Big Bird joke was too phallic. 

33. Don't worry about becoming a working headliner for another 15 years. The current ones are only 60 and won't get out until they're 75 because they still think girls find them cute. 

34. The best bookers in LA were Dave McNary and Jan Smith at The Ice House. Both are dead now. So is LA comedy. 

35. You should drive a 15 year old clunker to gigs. It might make the booker feel sorry for you and give you an extra $25. Nobody gives a bonus to a feature or host driving a Tesla. 

36. I performed better sober. Choose sugarless caffeine over booze every time. Your heart might stop a few times on Celsius, but your liver will shut down completely on Jack Daniels.     

37. Joe Rogan and Theo Von aren't real. In ten years years they'll be just another victim of the Mandela Effect. 

38. The hot girls in the second row don't want to have sex with you. You just made them laugh, like you were paid to do. They came to the show because their tall boyfriends aren't funny and you're warming them up to have sex with them later. 

39. There is obvious bias in booking women in comedy. The truth: Once a booker or headliner doesn't
think they can sleep with a woman, they forget about them. These men also have tiny dicks and bad breath. 

40. No one over 55 should start a comedy career and believe they'll become famous. Just enjoy the ambience of it all and maybe you'll meet a famous comic and they'll say good set, even though we all know they never saw the set. 

41. Be "optimistically cynical" if you want to survive in this business. That means, believe you will succeed knowing full well no one like you ever has. Now that's a deeply wonderfully disturbing thought. 

42. Most comedians get a good ten years before they become sad shadows of their once relevant self. So start your clock once you're asked to headline anything worth posting about. Which means I'm about a year away from becoming an rodeo act at the county fair.

43. Whitney Cummings will never learn your name. But she will always cash checks from governments who chop up journalists.

​44. Never ask to go up early in the lineup. You aren't that important and the next show isn't that big of a deal. Because if it was, you would have canceled the earlier gig.