Editor's Notes
written by Ken Carlson
The life of the comedian runs contrary to the weekday, 9-to-5 life that the rest of the world comes to expect.
At many businesses that are open on weekends, the weekend staff is made up of the dregs of the professional pool so the stars of the show can have their weekends free, like on your local news program.
Do you ever watch the local evening news on weekends? The weekend anchor is either a washed up drunk who shot his mouth off at the Christmas party eight years ago and is riding the retirement rails, boring his uncaring staff about the old days when news was news; or it’s some overly perky ridiculously inexperienced model/journalism major (man or woman) who just needs to blow one more station manager (man or woman) to get out of this podunk town and go national. It’s best when these two parties are co-anchoring the disastrous smugfest, jealously seething over every line of text or cup of coffee or sexual play toy intern (boy or boy with a secret) used to mark territory.
Every weekend news broadcast typically can promise one thing – No news! Nothing is happening in your town over the weekend except sports, and nobody’s waited for the evening news to see how the Bears, Aggies, or Wombats fared in the afternoon since the earth cooled and formed ESPN thirty years ago. I suppose the high school football scores could be considered informative, but since every childhood activity is televised nowadays, from little league baseball to spelling bees, maybe you’re just better off waiting from some stranger bring you a crisply printed, professionally designed, solidly written account of the game the next morning to peruse with your morning coffee for about a buck. You remember newspapers, right?
The weekend television production staff is just as hacky/miserable as the weekend anchor team and seems to go out of their way to lower the viewer’s already nonexistent expectations or respect. They show clips of those lovable pandas from a far away zoo when the report describes a four alarm fire on Landsdowne Street. They provide numerous typos to the on screen tag line, such as ‘Psychological Authority, Michael Blanks – The Rapist’, instead of Therapist.
And the reporters at the scene will shriek, moan, do anything but strip, to make you care about the maddeningly innocuous scene behind them. I recall a report about a city driver whose car jumped the curb causing him to lose control and drive cross the sidewalk and damage somebody’s front porch. Nobody was hurt.
The woman reporting that evening went on and on about all the things that could have happened at the scene. What if the driver had been killed? He wasn’t. What if somebody had been home? They weren’t. What does this say about today’s drivers or our society? Not much.
On and on she went. Finally, I called to my wife, “Honey, come here and look at this!”
“What, the car that bumped into the house on Chapel Street?”
“No, the reporter! I’m worried about her. Get your coat...”
City hospitals are a place you don’t want to visit on the weekend.
If you’ve watched an episode of ER, which I think stood for Eternally Running because it was on for so freakin’ long, you’ve come to imagine the crack staff of caring, intelligent, good-looking professionals who wait by the door, poised to pounce on every unhealthy individual, sacrificing every ounce of sweat and pain to they have to heal them!
I remember being rushed to an emergency room in Queens, screaming in pain, half crazed with fear. When my gurney was shoved through the door, the caring professionals snapped into action and halfheartedly gave me the glance most people save for leafing through their evening mail; ‘Bills, junk, patient, oh - a catalog from LL Bean...’ Fortunately, they calmed my fears by leaving me screaming for several hours surrounded by shackled inmates from a local prison, orange jumpsuits and all, who apparently had been enjoying that evening’s Sadie Hawkins dance/stabbing.
City hospital workers see more shit than you, I, and Stephen King can dream up, so unless your bleeding out like a Riverside Park fountain, which somebody else is cleaning up this time, they don’t even get up from their seat to acknowledge you’re alive for fear they’ll forget to put the 5 of hearts on the 6 of clubs.
And if you’ve had to stay in a hospital for a while, have you ever tried to get discharged by your doctor on the weekend? Heaven forbid, the doctor (Cue the angels singing on high! Higher!), should be bothered on the weekend or pass on any instructions regarding your condition. You could be the picture of health; ready to run a marathon, swim the channel, and lift a Volkswagen... all on skates, but if you don’t get a signature from some schmuck with a hospital parking pass on a clipboard on Friday by 4:30, you are stuck in that den of germs for 48 more crappy hours, if you live that long.
But in comedy clubs, it’s a different story. It’s a matter of tradition and accepted society practice, that weekend nights are when you can expect the best in live comedy. Jonathan Katz on his Caffeinated album recounts his turning down a role on Saturday Night Live from Lorne Michaels, ‘Lorne, if it were any other night, but Saturday’s my bread and butter!’
More regular people go out on the weekends which means bigger crowds, particularly Friday & Saturday nights, than during the week, so they can sleep off the previous evening’s celebration. Nobody wants to show up at the office or machine shop with bloodshot eyes and a mouth that may SAY no-no-no, it doesn’t want to throw up on your boss’s Timberland’s or open toed pumps, but it MEANS yes-yes-yes, and during a brief respite in the production meeting, does so with gusto!
So, it stands to reason that the best comedians get slots on Friday or Saturday nights. Primetime money means primetime entertainment. Of course, there are other times during the week when you can catch something funny, yet distinctive. One recent Wednesday night comes to mind. I stopped by Gotham Comedy Club with a reporter from The Onion to catch Paul F Tompkins. Tompkins came out with notes, explaining that he was preparing for his upcoming DVD taping in Atlanta. He made some small talk with the well behaved crowd and dove into his material. Typically, I’m not a fan of the vague and conspiratorial message, ‘You had to be there!’ in describing a performance, but in this case, you did. I’m curious to see how it works on the small screen, because on that muggy Wednesday evening in New York, Tompkins presented something original.
The same can be said for much of the work of comedian Reggie Watts. Reggie’s energy and eclectic incantations are made for small clubs, not small screens. But it was fun to see him, one recent weekday morning, on HBO’s The Yes Men Fix the World. For those not familiar with the Yes Men, visit hbo.com/docs/docuseries/yesmen to see what they’re all about. In short, they, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, call out corporate and government groups for their greed in a most absurd way, by pretending to be them and falsely make speeches promising reparations they could easily do themselves.
Watts appears in one of their mock presentations. I asked YesMan Mike Bonanno why Reggie? “Why did we recruit Reggie to play the deceased Exxon Janitor who was turned into their new biofuel?” said Bonanno. “First of all, he is super-funny and very smart. We thought that would add some edge to the ‘tribute video that we were showing the oilmen after his ‘death.’ Secondly, he can improvise and direct himself. We needed that to make it all seem that much more real. Third: he is generous and willing to help. Also, he has a distinctive look, which was just right for turning into a little figurine (the audience were holding lit candles made of “him” when they learned about the new biofuel.) Last but not least: How many people do you know that you can phone up and say, ‘We need you to die so that Exxon can make you into Vivoleum’ and somehow know that they won’t get offended?”
Clips of The Yes Men are also available on YouTube, including one with Watts. For those who know his work, just hearing him sing, ‘You Light Up My Life’ is enough. For those who don’t, there are more clips of him on YouTube to check out his non-broom-pushing work.
If you’re about to get married, like my oldest brother did recently, you wouldn’t think watching Joe DeRosa’s Comedy Central Presents special would be the positive pick-me-up you need to get you to the altar. But that’s what we did, one recent morning. And when you see someone as funny as DeRosa is, who hates everyone, it makes saying ‘I do’ to the woman you love seem pretty easy. Certainly it’s easier than DeRosa’s story of being driven to his worst gig ever, opening for the Insane Clown Posse in the woods of Illinois in a van that had no seats in it.
“Do you know how terrifying it is to climb into the back of a seatless van in the middle of the goddamn woods? It only needs one thing: preparing to be raped by a goddamn clown!”
I think we can assume the Clown Posse show was held on a weekend night. Simply put, if you’re the kind of guy, or maybe couple, who gets dressed up in a clown suit to hear music in woods, could you imagine any Monday afternoon where you call to your spouse, ‘Honey, it’s almost 4:15! Aren’t you dressed like an evil clown yet?
Ken Carlson is the editor of the Comedians Magazine. editor@thecomedians.org