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Working with my anger, I wrote a rebuke of an outrageously expensive restaurant I'd just gone to. Here's a choice snippet:"Rule No. 1: If a restaurant has a sommelier, you can't afford it. After my meal I realized that if a restaurant serves food on a plate rather than in Styrofoam, I can't afford that either. The restaurant is a converted barn. So when our stable boy hitched us up to our trough. ..."
"What are you talking about?" D. interrupted during the second class. "No one knows what a sommelier is."
"A sommelier is ..."
"Yeah, I know what a sommelier is. But no one else does. And if this is a nice restaurant, why are you hitched to a trough?"
"Because it's funny?"
The following came at me as if shot from a Gatling gun: "Too detailed ... overwritten ... not clear what's going on ... too fast ... not funny ... no ... throw out ..."
"It's all about the joke," D. implored. "Get in and get out. Whatever you don't need, cut. Rework this bit. Try making it more relatable."
"We're not still at the restaurant, are we?" D. asked when I took the stage the next class.
"I'm afraid so," I said. Poor D. I could see his spirit leave the room.
The previous week I'd gotten rid of any mention of sommeliers and feeding troughs. Instead, I worked on making the skit relatable. So I opened with "Who here eats food?" Silence.
I soldiered on. I'd given my expensive restaurant a name: Le Second Mortgage. I then went on to say, "I ordered the octopus. Or to quote the menu, 'An inkling of octopus served with a rumor of shiitake mushroom, bathed in a notion of seaweed and a suspicion of asparagus.' In other words, I ordered an empty plate.' "
This class went better than the first. "Le Second Mortgage" was a keeper, the octopus gag was chum.
D. found another problem. "What's with your delivery?" he asked. "You sound like Alan King."
He was right! I had an old-timey way of telling jokes, like some vaudevillian opening for a trained seal act. D. wanted me to be myself. One problem -- I didn't know what that was.
So I went home to practice my material in front of a mirror. Maybe I'd find myself there.
"A pal of mine got pulled over for DUI," I said to my appreciative audience. "Yeah, he's a multitasker. He can drink, drive and crash all at the same time."
Working in front of a mirror didn't help. All I could think was, I have Grandpa's nose hairs! I spent the next 15 minutes trimming nose hairs before phoning Eddie Brill. If I wanted to be a comic, I needed to know what all the great ones had in common. Eddie -- the guy who warms up Letterman's audience -- was the man to tell me.
"There are three things great comics share," he said. "They're honest, vulnerable, and they're not looking for approval."
I had the vulnerability part down in spades. As for honesty, to paraphrase George Burns, I can fake that.
"But what about the audience?" I whined. "I crave their approval."
"If you have fun, they'll have fun," Eddie said. "And if they talk during your set, do what I do. Lean over and say, 'Don't you hate it when you come here for a chat and they build a comedy club around you?' "
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