Originally posted by Incandenza
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I did pay to go see Gary Gulman in Pittsburgh in February 2020, but the morning I was supposed to go, I didn't feel well and was having some dizziness issues, but I didn't know that's what it was. I thought it was the flu. Driving to Pittsburgh and sitting in a crowd felt risky. Too bad. I'm sure it was great. I relate to him very well and he's a really nice guy.
Most stand-up isn't that funny, really. And some of it is actually really awful - just assholes saying dumb shit that the drunks will agree with. That's not comedy at all.
Maybe 10-15% is really worthwhile and it usually takes comics five to ten years to be any good and those five to ten years involve a lot of travel, bombing, terrible venues, terrible crowds, terrible bookers, terrible fellow comics, etc. And then, even if they get good, it's a lot of travel and hassles.
Pete Holmes show on HBO, Crashing, covers that very well. His book is good too. I'm a huge fan of his podcasts. Steve Martin's book is great too although obviously about a totally different era.
There are also some shows that are only semicomedy, but really good. Like Hannah Gadsby's shows. Mike Birbiglia, Neal Brennan and Chris Gethard have done some fantastic things that have comedy but also have so much personal non-funny stuff that it doesn't really count as a stand-up set per se. More of a one person show, but that makes it sound more pretentious and crap than it is.
Some critics have said that's the future of comedy. I hope not, because it's really hard to do that well. A crap version of somebody trying to do Hannah Gadsby would be way worse than a hack just telling jokes about airports or whatever.
* It's getting harder and harder to convince me to willingly be in a crowd indoors for obvious reasons.
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