Comedy has consequences

An angry attendee furiously confronts me after my set

I’m da Jokah, baby

I felt a bit more on edge than usual last night, because the set I had conceived for the comedy open mic show was a bit edgier than usual. It would require nerve to see it through. I knew that I possessed a considerable storehouse of nerve, but I am also well-aware, from bitter experience, that nerve is an easy capacity to overestimate in oneself, especially in moments of solitary bravado.

I rehearsed my lines several times out loud in my car, made a decision to omit one particular section for brevity’s sake. When I finally stepped out of the August swelter and into the cool environs of the basement bar, it was still early. Only a few denizens were about. I stepped into the pool hall that adjoins the bar/stage area, and I heard a high-pitched voice say, “I like your shirt!”

I looked down, to recall that I was wearing my now faded “Duran Duran” T, then looked up at the speaker. He was a tall, gaunt young man with long, straight, shoulder-length hair that recalled Crystal Gayle or Karen Carpenter. He grinned, and I thanked him for the compliment.

I probably wouldn’t even have remembered him at all, if not for the events which later transpired.

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I signed up for an early spot, and when it was my turn, the substitute MC introduced me as “someone who’ll remind you of your creepy uncle.” It was a good-natured jibe from someone I knew to be a good-hearted curmudgeon, and I took it in stride, knowing that it would only enhance my stage presence, which is already somewhat offputtingly eccentric, if not downright sinister.

In fact, it was this very man, whom I didn’t know until that night was subbing for the regular open mic host, had given me the idea for how I was going to proceed on this night. A sort of local comedic legend and generous mentor to callow comedy aspirers, he had shared with me that while he appreciated my vocal acuity and presentation style, my repertoire could in truth use more actual jokes.

I took his counsel, but put my own spin on it. I thought of jokes where, a la Arthur Fleck, the punch line would leave the listener more shocked than amused. These two beauties immediately sprang to mind:

Q: What’s the difference between an American politician, a Hollywood executive, and a pedophile?

A: Nothing! It’s just three different ways of describing the same person!

and

Q: How many vaccinated people does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: We don’t know, because they keep dying!

What tickled me was the notion of having a “jokey” set consisting of “punch lines” like these, all the while self-consciously behaving as if there is nothing terribly different or unusual about conducting allegedly comedic proceedings in such a manner.

Here is an audio recording of the set, if you are interested:

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Some time later, I was standing near the back of the bar near the vintage pinball machines, chatting with another participant who was preparing to leave. He had quite considerately asked me about how I was doing in my grieving process with my mother’s death earlier this year, and he shared that he had lost his own brother recently, and was enduring similar struggles.

We said our goodbyes, and as he walked up the stairs to the exit, I became aware of a presence which had apparently been lurking in my peripherals for some time: it was the Geddy Lee-haired young man who had complimented my T-shirt earlier, only now, he was scowling like an aggravated fishwife.

Before I even knew what was happening, he started angrily upbraiding me for my “Nazi jokes” and for having the gall to talk about the “Dancing Israelis” in front of his “Palestinian wife,” all while the bombing of Gaza was happening. Nothing he was raving about was making any sense, but that didn’t seem to faze him in the least, or temper his conviction of aggrieved injustice.

It was difficult for me to believe that this barely-recognizable-as-masculine character was actually married to a woman, Palestinian or otherwise (then again, I didn’t know what either his or his alleged wife’s “pronouns” were); yet his utterly estrogenized fury was frightful and a bit fearsome. Hell hath no fury like a soyboy scorned.

Still, I wanted a record of his presence and his personality, so I whipped out my camera and asked him to explain himself.

He didn’t like my edgy jokes…

During our tense dialogue, he at one point threatened to spit on me, then began raving that I was an “asshole conspiracy theorist” and “one of those fucking Agartha nuts.” (I had no idea what Agartha was, but I have since looked it up, and it does seem kind of interesting…) You can watch the video of our exchange here.

At one point, I thought the chance of him actually hawk tuah-ing on me, and things possibly escalating from there, was better than even money. Thankfully, someone affiliated with the establishment, sensing trouble, began to engage him in a mollifying manner and successfully kept him engaged.

Later, he walked past me, and announced with a smirk, in the triumphant tone of a hall monitor, that the people at the bar would soon be calling me over to “talk to me,” as if we were in middle school and I was about to get called to the principal’s officer. My hapless interlocutor actually seemed to think that he had convinced the staff to get me thrown out. Needless to say, I never got called to the bar to discuss my behavior, and I was never compelled by anyone to leave the premises.

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What did I learn from this amusing and harrowing experience?

I am at present stuck between two possible conclusions:

1) Comedy has consequences. You make edgy jokes, and someone’s going to get offended. It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise. Edges cut, after all.

And, conversely:

2) There are people who are extremely mentally unstable, and there’s simply no telling what will set them off. If they aren’t angrily screaming in your face that you’re a Nazi Agartha cultist, they’ll be angrily screaming other accusations in someone else’s face. Whether you or someone else becomes the brunt of their estrogenized, soy-soaked fury is really just a matter of chance.

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Q: Could the answer, perhaps, be both 1… AND 2?

A: Nah, that would just be totally gay and retarded.

Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath. Visit his YouTube channel.