Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of Dirty Briefs.
Speaker: And oh, you're going to like this one because I'm going to talk about failure.
Speaker: My worst bomb.
Speaker: Because I'm a positive comedian.
Speaker: I'm fun.
Speaker: I'm loving.
Speaker: I'm silly.
Speaker: I want everyone to walk out of that room floating on air.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
Speaker: And just like Hiroshima in 1945, you never see a bomb coming.
Speaker: That's what we call it in the comedy world.
Speaker: We call it bombing.
Speaker: Other terms in the vernacular, we say eating a bag of dicks, taking a huge shit, dying.
Speaker: No matter how you spin it, it's horribly uncomfortable for everyone involved.
Speaker: The comedian, the audience, the staff.
Speaker: Imagine just...
Speaker: Sitting on a sharp rod for about an hour while increasing amounts of weight are added to your limbs, continually pulling you toward the ground while the pole digs in deeper.
Speaker: That is an actual torture device while I saw when I was 11 years old at the torture museum in Amsterdam.
Speaker: So unless you're a total sadist, it's a horrible feeling.
Speaker: Now, this particular bomb happened in Dallas at a club called Hyenas.
Speaker: It was a club I had never played before.
Speaker: And the reason I'm telling this story is because I am about to go back.
Speaker: In fact, I had to preload this one.
Speaker: So by the time you're listening, I may have bombed there all over again.
Speaker: It was the Friday Late Show.
Speaker: Early show had been great.
Speaker: Took a little shucking and jiving, but I figured them out.
Speaker: And everyone left there wanting to take pictures, buying merch, smiles on their faces.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Now, the reason why most comedians don't like the Friday Late Show
Speaker: People have been at work all day and now they're drinking.
Speaker: It's late.
Speaker: They are getting into a rowdy mood and they're also tired.
Speaker: So they're combating that by getting more and more fucked up.
Speaker: So it's unpredictable.
Speaker: It's chaotic.
Speaker: People heckle.
Speaker: There's a lot more yelling.
Speaker: I like it because of all those reasons, that chaos is something that if I can thrive in, then I know I am doing an absolutely killer job.
Speaker: So I went into this show with great encouragement.
Speaker: I was thinking I just had a good one.
Speaker: Here we go again.
Speaker: Let's have some fun dancing up there.
Speaker: Wasn't working.
Speaker: From the second I started, I was getting very few laughs.
Speaker: And I knew it wasn't just fully the room because the feature had just gone up.
Speaker: A young comic who you may have now heard of named Ralph Barbosa, who was brilliant.
Speaker: He is exploding and he deserves every ounce of success he's getting.
Speaker: He did well up there.
Speaker: Then I got up there.
Speaker: And couldn't find them.
Speaker: Everything I was doing wasn't connecting.
Speaker: I was going from material to crowd work to self-deprecation.
Speaker: I acknowledged the fact that it wasn't going to go well, that it wasn't going well.
Speaker: But I even said, don't worry.
Speaker: I'm going to get you guys.
Speaker: I'm just waiting to find something that you feel aligned with.
Speaker: Didn't work.
Speaker: It didn't work.
Speaker: And at some point, the energy was just really bad, really bad.
Speaker: And this guy, who was definitely an alpha dog, was sitting at his table with his wife or girlfriend.
Speaker: And I did my settling joke, which always works.
Speaker: Like that is one of those fail safe bits that people respond to.
Speaker: It hits everybody because it's realistic.
Speaker: And when I said the line about you can go on vacation to the Maldives or you can jump in the pool in your apartment complex, this guy audibly goes, yeah, we don't have to go to pool in someone else's pool.
Speaker: We have our own pool at our house.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, cool.
Speaker: Do you want me to comment on that?
Speaker: And then he just goes, ugh, $100 for this shit, throws his money down, gets up, and walks out.
Speaker: Now...
Speaker: I'm a little shocked.
Speaker: I'm a little stunned.
Speaker: I don't really know what to do, but here's the thing.
Speaker: Comedy is subjective.
Speaker: And sometimes people don't, people don't research what they're about to see.
Speaker: So I don't blame this guy for not enjoying me.
Speaker: I am not going to be everyone's style.
Speaker: And I understand that, but,
Speaker: You should always look up the comedian that you're going to see because comedy is different.
Speaker: You might have just wanted some old school, here's the jokes, kids, but that's not really who I am.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So always look up who you're going to see.
Speaker: Now, finally, I get through this show.
Speaker: 53 minutes up there.
Speaker: I did everything.
Speaker: I pulled people on stage, speed roasted them.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Finally, it was over.
Speaker: And most comedians would have gone in the back in the green room and just hidden in there and not come out.
Speaker: But I remember reading something about Norm MacDonald, may he rest in peace, that he, after a bad show, he would walk outside and smile and personally thank every single person that walked out of there.
Speaker: That was my move.
Speaker: I was like, I'm going to do just that.
Speaker: And a few people told me that they really did enjoy it.
Speaker: But at that point, it was really hard to appreciate the sentiment.
Speaker: And I was so relieved when it was over.
Speaker: But that rotten feeling was just still in me.
Speaker: So I went out to a bar with the servers, poured different colored liquids down my throat, tried to forget it, bought rounds for everybody.
Speaker: One of the managers, the general manager of this club, was like, hey, man, you only walk two people.
Speaker: Sam Kinison wouldn't quit until he walked the whole room.
Speaker: Didn't really make me feel better, but I got what he was trying to do.
Speaker: But the thing is, I've been through this kind of situation before.
Speaker: When I was on America's Got Talent, I was bludgeoned.
Speaker: And I still went back.
Speaker: I knew what that negative feeling was.
Speaker: After this Dallas show, I called my wife.
Speaker: I went outside and I was walking around and I called her.
Speaker: I was like, you love me, right?
Speaker: And she was like, what the hell just happened to you?
Speaker: And I talked about the show and it made me feel better.
Speaker: And when I woke up on Saturday, I was like,
Speaker: I was pretty hungover and I wanted to just like black out the curtains and stay in my hotel room all day, but I couldn't.
Speaker: I had two more shows that night at their Fort Worth club.
Speaker: So I was like, okay, Taylor Swift, this shit, shake it off.
Speaker: So I went and had a healthy breakfast.
Speaker: I ran five miles.
Speaker: I did a breath work session.
Speaker: I meditated.
Speaker: I called my family and friends.
Speaker: I did an Instagram live talking about what happened.
Speaker: And you have to learn from bombs.
Speaker: Everyone has a bad day at work.
Speaker: And for comedians, they feel personal because we're the ones up there trying to entertain.
Speaker: And when it doesn't work, we just can feel that people don't, that they felt they wasted their money.
Speaker: They had a whole night off and this is what they did.
Speaker: They should have gone to a movie, whatever it is.
Speaker: You have to learn from this mistake.
Speaker: So not even a mistake, just a bad experience.
Speaker: And right now, I'm about, well, I've already been back to that club and I don't know what's happened yet.
Speaker: But when I record this, I'm going to that club next week.
Speaker: And I know there's going to be a visceral gut reaction when I walk back into that room.
Speaker: But here's what I'm telling myself.
Speaker: They booked me again.
Speaker: I'm going back to that same club.
Speaker: My biggest fear was that, oh, I've never played here before and they're never going to want to play me again.
Speaker: But that's not at all what's happening.
Speaker: In fact, they booked me again with an even better rate this time because my status has gone up a little bit since that last time.
Speaker: And they understand.
Speaker: That not everyone can kill every single night.
Speaker: Especially when it's not fully your audience yet.
Speaker: When I...
Speaker: When I go do my shows, I do sell a good amount of tickets.
Speaker: But then there's a lot of people who are just there because they want to see a comedy show.
Speaker: And this was a night that worked for them.
Speaker: And they might not necessarily know who I am.
Speaker: Or they might only know me from things like America's Got Talent.
Speaker: And that's not who I am when I'm on stage.
Speaker: Yes, that person is inside of me.
Speaker: And that general feeling of silliness is in there.
Speaker: But that America's Got Talent character is arrogant.
Speaker: He is just invincible.
Speaker: And I'm not.
Speaker: I have humility.
Speaker: I want to show you the deepest parts of myself.
Speaker: I'm not a character when I'm doing stand-up.
Speaker: I am me, a hyperbolized version of me because in normal conversation, I'm not talking like this and going, but it's still very much me.
Speaker: What do you do when you have a bad day at work?
Speaker: Do you quit?
Speaker: Or do you go, nope, I need money.
Speaker: I got to feed my family.
Speaker: I got to show back up the next day.
Speaker: And I need to show up again in that same place where I felt humiliated and embarrassed and weakened.
Speaker: I could have curled up into that ball, but I told myself that is not going to help anything.
Speaker: I could have ran away from America's Got Talent, but I went back in 2020, made it all the way to the live shows.
Speaker: I've proven my resilience so many times over.
Speaker: This year, I proved myself how resilient I am.
Speaker: I was at a music conference.
Speaker: festival in this past weekend in Oregon called Pickathon.
Speaker: It was in a beautiful forest and I had two great sets.
Speaker: I was headlining the comedy show at the festival.
Speaker: And then afterwards I was watching this African guitar player who hadn't been in the country for 15 years.
Speaker: His name was Vo Farkatore.
Speaker: I'm probably saying that wrong, but it was something like that.
Speaker: And I'm surrounded by these huge trees just canopying over me.
Speaker: He's playing this
Speaker: beautiful latin bluesy jazzy inspired rock and i just started crying i started crying because i thought about the year that i've had and that i am now headlining the comedy show at a music festival and
Speaker: These are things I love doing.
Speaker: I'm connecting to people on a very deep level.
Speaker: I'm finding my audience.
Speaker: I didn't just hang up and say, I'm going to trickle back in.
Speaker: I'm going head first because I feel fucking healthy as fuck right now.
Speaker: I feel incredible.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: And I want to keep that feeling going.
Speaker: So when I go into that Dallas club, when I walk into hyenas that day, you better believe I'm going to have a smile on my face, love in my heart, and be prepared to get shook all over again.
Speaker: Show your resilience.
Speaker: There is so much more to you than you ever realize.
Speaker: It's not always going to go perfectly.
Speaker: But those are the times when we learn and we get better.
Speaker: If you're not falling, you're not learning.
Speaker: Times.
Speaker: If you want to come see me possibly eat a bag of dicks, take a huge shit.
Speaker: die this week the 25th and the 26th i'm gonna be at stir crazy in glendale arizona four headlining shows the week after that september 1st and 2nd i have two headlining shows at savage henry comedy club in eureka california
Speaker: And then on September 8th, I'm going out to Palm Springs to headline Agua Caliente.
Speaker: I'm bringing Joe Carl Abusakar with me on that one.
Speaker: One of my absolute best friends, favorite openers.
Speaker: And that is going to be such a fun show.
Speaker: And then there's more coming up.
Speaker: I'm going to the Codas for the first time.
Speaker: The Codas.
Speaker: September 21st.
Speaker: September 26th in Las Vegas at 18 Bin.
Speaker: Come see me headline there.
Speaker: September 29th.
Speaker: in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, September 30th in Fargo, North Dakota.
Speaker: Will I bomb?
Speaker: Eventually, sure.
Speaker: That's part of being a comedian.
Speaker: But in those situations, I will learn a lot and I will
Speaker: If you haven't watched my new Comedy Central set, please go watch it on YouTube right now at CC Stand Up.
Speaker: Comment on it.
Speaker: Go to my Instagram page at Hooper Hair Puff.
Speaker: And if you need to know when my shows are, HooperComedy.com.
Speaker: Sign up on my email list and get that dose of positivity right down your throat.
Speaker: Because one day you're going to go, I can't believe we only paid $100 for this shit.
Speaker: See you next week, everybody.
