andypitz.com

I’ve been performing standup comedy for about twenty years. I’m thankful to still be around working, but some shows are so painful and demoralizing that I have to laugh about them. If I didn’t, I’d either die or kill myself. Probably die by killing myself. This is an account of one of those days. Normally comics work nights obviously but not for this show. 8pm would have been way too late.

I got a Facebook message from a fellow comic asking if anyone (anyone at ALL) was free the next Thursday at 3pm to do a half-hour set at an assisted living facility which at the time I thought was in New Jersey. My immediate reaction was “fuck that…” and I searched my head for an actual reason not to go other than it was in New Jersey and probably going to massively suck. Ah! Another friend had asked me to be on his podcast which he was recording on Thursday afternoon, so I didn’t respond to the message. Also, I had a weekend gig in Hartford, Connecticut that started on Thursday night and with Jersey/Connecticut traffic I didn’t want to risk being caught up and miss the first show of the weekend.

Three or four days passed and I’d completely forgotten about the old folks. An easy thing to do. Then my podcast friend texted that the session needed to be moved to another day. Sadly, my first thought was, “I wonder if that nursing home show’s been filled?” Who would subject themselves to that? I’m an artist and I have certain standards. But as I looked into my wallet which contained six dollars (a five and a single, so it didn’t even look as bulky as six ones) I thought, “Well maybe I’ll get lucky with the traffic.” But there’s no way that gig was still available. Hungry comics really mimic wildlife when even semi-edible sustenance is available in our ecosystem. I dug out the message and replied, asking if the gig was still open. Within minutes a response came “It’s all yours!” Oh shit what have I gotten myself into?

One positive thing was that the home (can’t believe I’m putting “the home”) was not in NJ, but 15 minutes from where I live in Westchester County, NY and actually on my way to Connecticut. I had apparently confused some correspondences from the same friend about another gig. So this is great! I’ll zip in, bang out 30 minutes for the elderly, and refill my wallet without having to use my ATM card, then head up to my weekend gig. Plus I was just opening this afternoon show for my friend who posted the gig, so they won’t remember me anyway. That wasn’t a joke about their advanced age, most audiences don’t remember the opening act.

I showed up at the prescribed time, went on and the picture below is worth more than a thousand words so I will not be writing much more. I will say that most of the folks were nice. None of them laughed, but some were downright mean and angry (look inside the yellow circle on photo.) After about twenty minutes I was bombing like I’d never bombed before. Not only were these people sitting there completely laughless, they would start talking about any topic I brought up. I have a joke about being a pizza delivery guy and when I started it, a woman in the front row yelled, “They used to give us pizza here, but they took it away!! Remember??!?!?!?” And everyone started reminiscing very bitterly about the good old days when pizza was served for lunch at 10:30 am.

Normally I record the audio of my sets to listen to later on, which I hate doing because I can’t stand the sound of my own voice. But since I was going down in flames here, I reached into my pocket with my sweaty palm to get my cell phone to shut off the voice recorder. I was not going to cull anything new or inspiring from this show. When I grabbed my phone I realized that I really should get photographic evidence of this situation because people would never believe me if I tried to simply tell them about it. I almost said fuck it and didn’t. But then I said fuck it again and did it anyway. I’m really glad I did because posting the photo on Facebook resulted in a glut of hilarious comments and a lot of laughs. So what did I learn that day? Even in the worst situation there can be something redeeming if I’m willing to look hard enough.