Ethics

Confessions of a Failed Standup Comic

By Ed Brayton

That is the title of an article I wrote for Paul Krassner's The Realist around 1994 or so (he paid me for it but ended up not publishing it for some reason). I was reminded of that last night while watching a show on the History Channel about stand up comedy. During the show they had comics talking about their worst shows ever and it brought back many memories. If my 4 1/2 years doing comedy did nothing else, it left me with some really great storie, of which this is one...

This was actually one of the last shows I did as a comic. I had reached the point where I was really frustrated with the business, mostly as the result of having turned into the dreaded "comic's comic" without intending to do so. The better I got at comedy, the more I started putting in the kind of material I really wanted to do and then the worse I did with the audiences. And I was really considering just getting out when I got a phone call from a buddy named Terry.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).