Death Becomes Him
I want to talk about bombing.
Don’t fret. Mentioning “bombing” isn’t the same as being in the acting game and mentioning “MacBeth”. That name describes a very old play by William Shakespeare, which is nothing to do with what I’m talking about. I’m surprised I have to point this out. Different words have different meanings, people. Let’s move ahead.
“Bombing”, “dying in the arse”, “being shit and having shit jokes” are all terms to describe the act of failing at stand up. This is something I assume many people reading this has experienced at some stage. If not, screw you.
“Bombing” (OK, I’m going to stop putting parentheseses around that word, starting…now) kinda sounds like it has an association with terrorism, which is fair in a way. The act of “bombing” (shit! OK…now!) is similar to terrorism in that a stand up can enter a venue packed with people and inflict pain upon all within a twenty metre radius. There is no security device that can detect a bad reality TV joke.
I think it’s natural for your first bombing to be the most traumatic. It was certainly my experience. I had a couple of good spots to start with, as a lot of people do. Then: Ground Zero. The laughs didn’t follow my opener. “That’s fine, they probably didn’t hear me,” I thought. “I can’t hold their mistake against them, I’ll just dish up my second joke (or as I called it at the time, “ol’ secondsy”)”. Still nothing. Time to pull out the big gun. My best material. The third joke (or as I called it at the time “ol’ secondsy”. That was probably unnecessarily confusing.) And when that never-fail gag fell to the floor in need of some Ventolin, I realised that there were only worse jokes to come. I immediately thought “there’s something fishy in Denmark” (for “fishy” read “shit”, and for “Denmark” read “the Exford”).
“What’s wrong?” I wondered. “I KNOW these jokes work. They did last week, and the week before. I mean, sure, that was in front of all my mates in a big crowd in a Raw Comedy heat, but surely all comedy venues aren’t that different?” For the first time in my life, I was forced to care about the comedic tastes of crazed drunks and assorted vagrants. My emotional state and my stomach’s well-being rested in the fancy of a couple of hobos. And all I had in my arsenal were some half-baked puns and a bunch of situation-reversals (I now understand the industry term is “switcheroo”).
Obviously it’s not good if the room is talking through your act. If people aren’t listening, they’re not going to hear your material, and they’ll hardly be tickled any colour, let alone pink. But what’s worse is if you’re bombing, and the whole room is silent, listening to you, watching you die. Thoughts were racing through my head: “Maybe the word “fuck” will pump some of these jokes up? How many times per sentence is too many? Three? Four? And how about if I say all these jokes louder? Maybe I need to connect with my audience more…do I have any material about sleeping in the park and having no teeth?”
But after all that, I decided to go with Plan B: Letting my confidence drop visibly, speaking softer and less coherently into the mic, and getting confused and muddling punchlines. And damn it if that didn’t work either. Nobody wants to know you after you’ve bombed. Even comics. I’ve had good friends pretend not to know me after I’ve stunk up a room. I’ve even shown them I.D. and they still pretended to be German backpackers who couldn’t speak English.
Making eye contact with anyone becomes difficult. There is genuine shame in looking into the eyes of the room’s booker, or ordering a drink from the barstaff. That night was the first time I’d tried to use my eyebrows to convey “it usually goes much better than that”.
I found the worst was yet to come. The time spent by myself immediately after the spot was full of self-loathing and confusion. As I walked out the door, I realised that horrible set was going to sit in my gut a while. The walk to the car posed the same questions over and over: “Should I ever do that room again?”, “Should I ever do those jokes again?” and and “How much crying is too much crying?”
Then it turned to resentment and jealousy when thinking about a bluer, more successful comic that followed me: “You know what? If I have to do dick jokes to get laughs in that room, I’m GLAD that I didn’t do well. I’m GLAD that people turned their backs on me. I’m GLAD the biggest laugh I got for the night was when I tried to book another spot. I’m GLAD I “bombed” (SHIT!!! OK, starting from… next column).”
For more info on this comic go to Karl Chandler or visit his myspace