I Don't Mind Being a Legend
“I don’t mind being a legend.”
I remember watching The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts with my dad as a kid. I had no idea what the men and women on TV were talking about but I knew that it was having a profound effect on my father. He would be doubled over in laughter watching the comics rag on each other. I would look at Dean on tv and he would be laughing so hard that his face would be bright purple or he would almost spit out his drink. And then I would look at my father and he would be in a similar condition with tears running down his cheeks. I was hooked. Up until that point, nothing on Earth made more sense to me. This was the most powerful force that I’d ever seen and I wanted to be a part of it.
I studied the people on Tv. Some of the greats like Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Jonathan Winters, and Foster Brooks to name a few. I was too young to get their jokes, but I could understand their deliveries. The deadpan delivery mixed with the perfect pause and then the roarus laughter that followed. The only equation that I cared about. One of the people on the show was a man named Don Rickles. He was the favorite of the show and mine and my father’s favorite. He never had any material planned out yet he destroyed each and every time leaving nothing off the table. He would never be able to get away with any of that stuff now but the threshold was different back then whether you want to accept it or not. It became a very wild and unpredictable 5 minutes when Rickles went behind the podium. I couldn’t wait for him to make Dean Martin, the King of Cool, lose his cool (in a good way).
Fast forward to present day. All of those great stars would influence the comics that influenced me to get into stand up. Guys like Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and Dana Carvey. Any time I get a laugh on stage or a roast joke I wrote hits, that dopamin shoots through my brain and brings me right back to that couch where I sat with my dad. And that same couch where I watched all the Comedy Central specials and realized that making people laugh is the most important thing in life. Period.
This blog will be about all things comedy with a focus on roasting and the art of the roast. There will be how to’s, pointers, reviews on events and also my stand up diary where I will talk about what it’s like to be in the business (at a very very low level).