016 - The Joke's On Me
"Finding my voice" may have ultimately been simple, but it certainly wasn't easy
Before this past Friday, the last time I had performed stand-up comedy in New York City was opening for Sam Morril at one of his now legendary rooftop shows during Hot COVID Summer nearly five years ago.
A lot has happened in those five years, both for me personally and the world at large, and Friday was my first chance to share my amplified thoughts about it all with total strangers in the back of a Manhattan bar.
The show was a last minute production and one that required the confluence of three distinct motivating factors. The first: my parents’ neighbor of 27 years stopped me while I was walking my dog the other week to tell me that the three Irish pubs he owns near Grand Central have been suffering from a steady decline in Friday night business due to a combination of anti-social, teetotaling Gen Zers, reduced post-pandemic midtown office occupancy, and Fridays being the most popular “work-from-home” day despite a “return-to-in-person” push. He asked if I knew any comedy or music producers who would want to program events to attract a drinking crowd. I told him I’d have a think…
The second: as habitual readers have been made vehemently aware, this week marked the twentieth-anniversary of my debut as a stand-up comic (an evening revisited in both post and podcast form). But could I celebrate such a monumental milestone of such blatantly performative proportions simply by writing or podding about it? No, dammit! I had to put my commemoration where my mouth is! I had to put on a show…
The third: with hundreds of thousands of Angelenos still reeling from the devastation of January’s wildfires, I wanted to do more — in addition to donating all proceeds from quizdaddys.com — to fundraise for recovery efforts.
And that is how the Scott’s Stand-Up-Versary Spectacular was born. I confirmed the availability at MJ Smith’s on 45th between Madison and 5th Avenue, I booked a line-up of supporting acts reflective of my two-decade retrospective, and I chose the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank as my partner charity based on their sterling reputation for consistently addressing food insecurity in both times of crisis and relative quiet.
Setting up the stageless “stage area” in the backlit, back right corner — complete with a standless microphone and shaky PA system newly delivered by Amazon — and realizing my show would most certainly be contending with a healthy contingent of regulars soaking up the last Happy Hour of the week before stumbling to catch the 8:36 local to Stamford, a warm feeling of familiarity met with an unfamiliar feeling of calm deep within me.
Performing in an establishment sans proper staging, lighting, and audio while half the “audience” is at best oblivious (at worst, actively hostile) to the comedy being attempted in their vicinity is exactly how I started out my stand-up career at such world-renowned venues as Soho Tea & Coffee, An Beal Bocht, and Great American Pub. It was oddly comforting to be returning to my roots, surrounded by the smiling faces of faithful friends who have endured half-a-lifetime’s worth of promotional texts and email blasts about my various productions.
But what surprised me was how I was handling the less-than-ideal scenario vis-a-vis my role as impresario. I was… chill. Relaxed. Unbothered by the reality of what was, and unconcerned by the uncertainties of what may come.
Younger, stupider Scott would have let anxiety and dismay grip him like Frankenstein’s Monster and allowed that shitty, snotty voice in his head to grab the mic and blast his Broca’s area with a spiraling, self-self-flagellating rant about how worthless he is and how pathetic his efforts are and why he shouldn’t even think about producing another show ever again (because what’s the point really???).
But that Scott died.*
And if you happened to be one of the 15 or so folks who intentionally attended Friday night’s show, you unwittingly witnessed older, wiser Scott dancing on his grave.
After bringing up Marc Philippe Eskenazi (the Student Body President of my high school the year ahead of me, whose utter disregard for the gravitas of the job inspired me to make my own successful run as his successor), J-L Cauvin (one of the first and finest comics with whom I shared a bill as an initiate in Josh Filipowski’s posse), Tom McCaffrey (whose debut stand-up album I produced in 2008 and who makes me laugh harder than anyone else alive), and Anna Roisman (“The Queen of Words” who hosted on HQ and whose impressive impressions I’ve admired for over a decade), I closed out the show with five pages of meticulously scripted material I had been prepping all week.
PSYCH!
I did have five pages of my planned routine written word-for-word, typed up and printed out, as has been my deranged custom for twenty years. But something strange happened up there on this night… I looked at the paper, and I ignored it. Instead, I just… started talking. From the heart. Without fear of where I was going or if I would be greeted with laughs when I got there.
For twenty-seven minutes I led the audience on an audio walking tour of my past twenty years, from my first Brooklyn apartment deep in the heart of 2007 Bushwick — where my roommates and I weren’t the only white people in the neighborhood, but we were the only white people not “Teaching for America” — to my last serious relationship with a thrill-seeking therapist who supplemented her unlivable professional wage with a felonious “side hustle” that, if discovered by federal agents, could send her to prison for life (and for all I know, may already have! We haven’t spoken in months!)
I was “writing on stage.” It was comedy without a net. In twenty years of trying to do this stand-up thing, I had never been so bold as to simply** trust myself to be funny. And wouldn’t you know, the end result was me at my funniest. Even my kindergarten classmate — whom I hadn’t seen since my Bar Mitzvah but recently ran into at the post office in our hometown where we’re both currently living with our parents following respective break-ups and whom I of course invited to the show — thought I crushed!
I really like this new Scott, and it turns out he actually might be halfway decent at stand-up. I’m booking more shows in New York so you can come out and meet him for yourself. I think you’ll like him, too.
*Old Scott died on June 7, 2024, in Petaluma, CA, of metaphysical causes. He was 39 years old.
**Ok, let me take back that “simply,” because while self-trust sure seems like a simple concept, it took me forty years (and a 7-day, $5,000 digital detox retreat*) to figure it out. I promise I’ll be writing more about this experience soon. Stay tuned :)
Sweet! Tommy Boy!
Way to go Scott!