Road Runner

meep.

I have been doing stand up comedy for 4 years now.

I dont remember when I started comparing comedy to things. After my first gruesome bomb I suppose. Ive come up with many metaphors for stand up over the years. The most accurate metaphor i’ve cooked up is as follows:

Comedy is a tunnel painted on a brick wall. Just like one of the old road runner cartoons.

When you are far away from it, the light at the end of the tunnel looks so real. That first year is spent sprinting towards the light. You almost can’t believe that people told you not to run to it, you can nearly feel the warmth of the light at the end of the tunnel. As you start to get closer, you realize that this light you’re seeing is too good to be true. Something is a bit off about it, but you run and run, open mic after open mic. Until you hit the wall SPLAT.

Now you realize it, that what you’ve been running towards all this time wasn’t a tunnel at all. It was a great big wall. A great big wall that someone painted a tunnel on, just to trick you. When you see the detail put into this painting you cut yourself some slack. The tunnel is gorgeous, even up close you almost believe its a tunnel. Decades of practice must have been put into each brush stroke, the amount of effort that’s went into disguising this wall takes your breath away. You feel dumb again- until you remind yourself that even the greatest of minds have been tricked into the trap that is this tunnel. Chappelle, Attell, McDonald- you name it. Anyone who is anyone has spent time banging their head at the base of this big beautiful trick.

Not everyone sits at the base and claws at the bricks. Some people recognize this phony light and turn back before it’s too late. But some people, the ones that are forever twisted all up inside themselves… they stick around. It’s a form of self harm really, clawing at the bricks with your hands until you’re left with bloody stumps crying out “IS THIS EVEN WORKING?!”.

The base of this wall isn’t all bloody stumps and tears though. No one would continue if it were. Occasionally you show up and the comedy gods hand you a pickaxe. Something you can actually swing around and make progress with. Those nights are the nights you really believe that there could actually be a tunnel hidden behind this wall. Maybe whatever it’s protecting is worth all of the bombing and self doubt.

If however you are fortunate enough to get that pickaxe on the regular, you will start to see the real deception of the tunnel-wall. As soon as bricks start falling you notice that the creator has reinforced this gimmick with rebar. You start to panic. Rebar has to be removed from the ground up. Moving forward will require you to knock the wall down in its entirety and painstakingly wiggle the bars out from the earths crust. Most people stop here. They can’t get out of their own way, they will pull and pull on the rebar as soon as it’s visible, ignoring that the surrounding bricks anchor it from escaping. Shouting up to the sky “I AM FUNNY! I SWEAR. PLEASE BOOK ME… IM FUNNY- THIS ISNT FAIR!”.

There is more work to be done. The wall doesn’t give a fuck if you’re funny. It wants to see you bleed. It wants to kick sand in your face and watch you get up and ask for more. Your sanity is the blood sacrifice. I don’t know what lies beyond the wall. Perhaps and oasis… perhaps more walls dressed up as tunnels.