Comedy

I had quite an animal tour yesterday when walking up the side of the crag in my subdivision. First I encountered a huge rabbit as I ascended and reached the top and looked up I was face to face with two huge deer. They looked at me and I at them. But they did not run. I sat down and watched them graze there for about 10 minutes. It's odd those wild deer ignored me (maybe they were observing a weird human). As I left and descended I stepped almost on top of a (harmless) grass snake. The creatures were out.

That comedy club was nice last night because the featured comic was hysterical. After the two "warm-up" comics didn't make me laugh much, the featured one (can't remember his name) was terrific. He did some great celebrity impressions and dialects in his act, including a funny bit where Arnold Schwarzennegar debates Sylvester Stallone. Just the concept of those to debating is odd. They are almost unintelligible when they say anything.

I think being a comedian must be a difficult life. Most of them struggle on stage and get little attention, making little money trying to make people laugh. Professional comics are a bred to themselves. I have read that most are very shy off stage, socially inept, that they are on average highly intelligent (quick ad- libs are part of their act so they have to think fast on their feet). Supposedly, they have a high rate for alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide. It's ironic that the comic is often so unhappy. But I think they are driven people who must be "on stage" in order to relate better to the world than they do when off it.

It is said that many comedians are never able to be "themselves" because they lose their identity to their stage act. They can't be themselves with others. If a person is the type who feels compelled to get on-stage and bare his or her soul to a room full of strangers night after night, chances are that mind doesn't work in what society would consider a traditional way.

Depression, compulsive behaviors or severe anxiety is probably motivating them to be on-stage.
But stand-up comedians are, in general, much more sensitive and have more access to their emotions than the rest of us. They are like other painters, musicians and artists in that their world is somehow different from that of the mainstream. I notice that most comics really do thrive or wither based on whether the audience like their performance. The fact that the feedback they get is instantaneous and clear cut must be brutal when they fail to make the audience laugh