i'm reading this book right now.
it's an account of the stand-up comedy world and its evolution from the mid 60s to the mid 80s. it runs from lenny bruce to carlin/pryor and on up to seinfeld. pretty enlightening stuff so far.
mostly the book just depresses me.
when the author starts a chapter about a comic, he usually goes into their upbringing; things they used to do as a child/teenager, etc. most of them were doing some sort of entertaining to family and friends at a young age. i was the same way. i remember spending the night at a friend's house in the 3rd grade and we created a few skits using his stuffed animals as characters. we then put on a show for his parents and their friends. i'm sure it wasn't too funny, but they seemed to like it. i specifically remember telling my friend how to deliver certain lines and various things that would make it funnier. he probably thought i was a bossy asshole, but that's neither here nor there.
growing up, i was always writing some story or making poorly drawn comics. in high school, i used to torture a friend of mine by writing him into a comic strip where my other friends and i would pick on him. it sounds awful, but it was all in fun and he wasn't bothered by it.
in college i wrote a screenplay that i eventually entered in project greenlight, which was the matt damon/ben affleck contest to help unknowns. i didn't make it very far, but it was a fun process.
my point is that i've always enjoyed doing creative things. i've always been funny. i've been told countless times, starting when i was a kid, that i should be in some comedy-related field. i still hear it from corporate co-workers. in the few instances where i've had the chance to perform something for an audience, it has always been a huge rush. right out of college, i was part of a management training program. we went to a conference with members of the same program at our sister companies throughout the country. the last day, each team had to put on a skit about various shit we did during the week. we had roughly one hour to come up with something. after listening to my team's suggestions, i stepped in with my idea, which they all loved and agreed to. the skit killed and won some kind of prize for being the best one. at the end of ours, i ad libbed a bit about being richie cunningham (i have red hair if you didn't know) doing a public service announcement. people were rolling and i felt absolutely high.
even now when i'm in a large group, i tend to get rolling and making people laugh. a large portion of what i talk about is offensive, but in my particular social circles, shock value is usually the best bet. i've done karaoke a few times in front of pretty big audiences and i absolutely love it when strangers come up to compliment you. i have dreams all the time where i'm performing and i always wake up happy. well mostly. last week i dreamt i was in a boy band and didn't know the dance moves during a concert. i woke up ashamed that i was in a boy band.
the reason the book depresses me is that those people all took the leap to do something they felt they could do. i never did that. i went to college, got a degree that had some value, got a decent job, and joined the throng of those trying to scramble up the corporate ladder. for whatever reason, i'm pretty good at my particular line of work, and i do ok financially, but i've never really gotten any joy out of my profession. i mean, there is always professional pride when you get noticed for doing something right, but put simply, this is not the kind of thing i'd put in my top 100 list of things to do if i were independently wealthy. i listen to co-workers talk and they all follow the industry and talk shop and really seem to give a shit about what it is we do. i have zero desire to do that. none. never have. i don't want to talk about work unless i'm at work, and even then sometimes i only do it because i'm being paid.
now none of this is to say that i'm unhappy with my life in general. if i'd made different choices, i wouldn't have the wife, kids, and friends that i have. i wouldn't trade any of those, so it's not about that. it's more that i never took the chance and tried to branch out without a safety net.
i suppose it's a bit premature to talk in absolutes when you're only 34, but with a mortgage and two small children, the time to take that sort of financial risk has passed.
i have no idea if i could succeed as a stand-up comic. i'm funny among friends and with the corporate set, even moreso considering that i work in finance, which ranks only above engineering, clergy, and morticians in sense of humor. i think it was a jerry seinfeld quote that i read one time where he said there are three kinds of funny; (1) funny among your friends & family, (2) funny whereby other people imitate you and tell others about you, and (3) funny where people actually pay to listen to you. it could be that i top out at the first one; i just don't know. i just know that entertaining people, even if it's just my wife over dinner, is something that i get a joy unlike any other out of doing.
i'm sure these feelings are not remotely unique. everyone has something, some "talent" that they believe they could use to make a living or a career better than the one they're in. i'm sure that's pretty common. most of us are wrong in thinking that. people with the talent to be professional entertainers are rare, reality stars notwithstanding. in all likelihood, i'm not one of them.
the funny thing is that i'm not sure which i'd rather be; the guy who tried and failed or the guy who didn't try and can still entertain "i coulda been a contender" type of thoughts.
maybe by the time i'm 60, i'll have come up with my once-in-a-lifetime idea to crack into showbusiness without first losing a corporate paycheck. in the meantime, i'll just be here calculating gross margin and forecasting revenue.