Nightmare Gigs: The Most Mortifying Things That Happened To Me In Comedy + Some Takeaways PART 3
This story includes Kevin Hart, Atlantic City, and chicken
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In my last post, I wrote a story about being paid in a vibrator and food poisoning, which is maybe the absolutely worst paycheck I’ve ever had, and now that I think about it, yes. It was definitely even worse than being paid nothing at all. This bad gig is about a time I did a show early on in my comedy life with Jay Oakerson, Kurt Metzger and Lil’ Kev Hart.
This was a gig that I think Kevin had somehow arranged, and he was the host of the event. There were a few immediate problems with this show.
Problem #1. It started at 1am. I think the idea was that after people got out of the casinos or whatever, they’d want to have some kind of after fun to enjoy, and this show, featuring a bunch of newish comedians, would be just the thing they’d probably want to do. This was a bad idea for many reasons, including the fact that 1am is a terrible time to try to make people laugh, because they are probably tired, drunk, and if they’re coming from a casino, they’ve probably (statistically) just lost a bunch of money, and, while they may benefit from cheering up, it may be harder to get tired, drunk, pissed off people to laugh.
Problem #2. It was an ornery crowd, which you could tell from the get go. I mingled a bit outside with the folks who were lining up to come in, and they were a large, loud, spicy crew. I had plenty of experience with spiciness from my wee hours spent with drunken audiences at The Boston Comedy Club in downtown Manhattan, but this was a new level of uh oh. I braced myself for what I knew was going to be a tough gig.
Problem #3. I was a new comedian. All comedians need stage time, and all comedians should put themselves into environments that are challenging and risky to build chops, courage and stage presence, but this situation was bordering on dangerous. Being the comedian I am now, I would have said no shitting way am I doing that show, but hey, we live and learn, and thankfully, I was granted the opportunity to do both things.
Problem #4. I was a female comedian in an environment who didn’t really seem like they wanted to hear women talk, or be funny. This was a common challenge for the time, and eventually, I have learned to over come this by being as funny as possible on stage, and also, the world has caught up a bit, which has helped.
Kevin started the show strong, but due to the above issues, the show went off the rails pretty quickly. The audience was louder than him, shouting at and heckling him with an intensity that was scary. Kevin brought up Jay and Kurt who both did as OK as anyone can do in a situation where people are yelling at you, ignoring you and laughing loudly at personal jokes that are going on at their table and not during when the laughing parts of your jokes are.
When it was my turn to take the stage, I remember getting to tell no more than one or two jokes, and then something happened that I’ve never experienced before. A piece of chicken zipped past my head—people were throwing their dinner at me! I was in disbelief. I’d heard of medieval jesters having tomatoes thrown at them, but this was a real life version of modern day bombing, with food. And the food wasn’t cheap, either, so these people were really unhappy.
Kevin went back on stage to try to quell the angry chicken throwers, and they began showering him with chicken, too. In my memory of the story, he caught a piece in mid air and took a bite, but I think that is just something my brain made up to try to come to terms with the wackiness of the evening.
I quickly got off the stage, feeling completely disheartened. There have been some nights in comedy, thankfully not one for a long time, where I shed tears after a show. This was not one of them. The situation was too bizarre and kooky for me to take it personally.
The night wasn’t a total bust. We drove home in complete stitches, laughing all the way over what a hilarious shit show it had been.
Laughs aside, it still felt like a gut punch; like, I should have been able to get them laughing. But the fact is, it was simply one of the worst nights of comedy ever in existence, on one side. On the other, it was another beautiful night of laying down the building blocks of what would, unbeknownst to me at the time, become a long, ultimately very happy stint working in comedy, and it was the first and last time I ever saw an audience suggest, in their own way, that the comedian “try the chicken.”
Daily Musings:
This is not the club I performed at | Atlantic City Comedy Club
I bet Whitney Cummings won’t get chicken thrown at her | 973espn
As a comedian, what’s been your toughest gig? | Quora
Jena Friedman and I will be in Philly 4/8, get tix here | Underground Arts
Your ad to 9k comedy lovers here; $10/day, $40/wk | jess delfino at gmail dot com
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TGIF, silly goose.