Some nights I’ll get a standing ovation.  And some nights I’ll go down in flames. That's nature of the game.  Most of the time it'll just be good fun, and I'll sell a few DVDs after.  I’ll find out when I get there. The unpredictability is part of the fun.

It almost feels like cheating when I’ve booked a safe, predictable week at Zanies, my home club.

You don’t have to be famous to make a living as a comic. And you don’t have to move to L.A. But it certainly helps to live in a great comedy town like Chicago. There’s a steep learning curve in standup – Jay Leno has famously remarked that it takes ten years to make a headliner – and if you’re going to get there you need to live in a city that can present you, in turn, with each of the necessary rungs on the ladder.

You want a city with intelligent, easy going audiences; audiences that will reward you for developing an act that has universal appeal. Bad audiences give you bad habits. Indiana rednecks will encourage you to write comedy that’s dirty and mean. College kids have no life experience; they’ll make you think you can’t cover standard comedy fare like mortgages and long relationships. Bible Belters will convince you that you’re the only person on the planet who has ever read a book, and those jaded New Yorkers – in their insidious way -- are even worse. New Yorkers will make you think that everybody reads.

If you’re going to develop a balanced show that will succeed wherever you go, you want to start out working in front of level-headed Midwesterners. You want a city like Chicago.

I didn’t start out performing with the professionals at landmark clubs like Zanies. Nobody does. You start out at an amateur open mike night. At any given time Chicago has dozens of them sprinkled around the city and the suburbs, and they’re where you begin your comedy education. I tried to practice at home, of course, but you don’t learn anything very useful in your living room. You need the audience and the instant feedback. What’s funny at home and what actually turns out to be funny in front of a nightclub full of strangers often turn out to be two entirely different animals. There's only one way to find out which one is which. I didn’t get paid for learning the difference – not at first, anyway -- and to this day I still learn more from the bad nights than I do from the good ones.

The Road
I didn’t expect comedy to change my life. In fact, the first time I walked on stage it was just for fun of the thing. But I loved doing it, and eventually I lashed together a set that worked as often as it didn’t. And by networking with fellow aspiring comics I started picking up little gigs here and there. A fund raiser. A fraternity party. Comedy night in a hotel lounge. It was low budget stuff, but at least it was stage time. And the audiences were generally quite friendly. Midwesterners will tolerate a certain lack of polish if the price is right.

I knew I still wasn’t ready for the big clubs. But I’d come far enough that I thought I could handle the one-nighters. The one-nighters are all in bars and most of them are hell on wheels. But it’s still stage time, and they’ll pay you in U.S. dollars. So I started sending out videos to the road bookers. And, much to my surprise, they started booking me. I wasn’t getting rich, but Chicago’s centralized location lets a beginner do a lot of road work without giving up the day job.

I paid some dues. I recall a night in Grand Haven, Michigan, when someone decided that it would be a good idea to bring in an audience of developmentally disabled, deaf adults. It pains me to admit it, but I didn’t get a standing ovation. In Marshfield, Wisconsin, they put a self-service beer keg on the stage. At various times most of the audience joined me on stage, and some of them even hung out. In Clinton, Iowa, I was the opening act for strippers. In Goshen, Indiana, the strippers opened for me. But it was all stage time, and it was all within easy driving range of the Windy City.

The one-nighters take your comedy education to another level. There will be drunk audiences. There will be audiences that didn’t know it was comedy night, and worse, don’t care. There will be nights when the weather gets ugly, or the advertising fails, or the local team is in the playoffs. Then the audience will be three or four people, and they’ll be sitting thirty feet from the stage. In the early summer months there will be bachelorette parties; loud, rude and flourishing marital aids of every description. They’ll invariably be seated at the front tables, directly in front of the microphone. (In fact, I believe there's a Federal law that mandates this arrangement.)

There will be hecklers. The redneck kid – always a redneck kid -- who feels threatened by the fact that his pudgy, tattooed date in the Metallica T-shirt is listening to another male speak. The blonde girl – always a blonde girl -- who must at all times and in every situation be the center of attention. The frat boy who is showing off for his friends. The alcoholic who is so far gone that he doesn’t even know that he’s making a scene. And time after time, in town after town, you encounter the guy who heckles because he honestly thinks he’s helping the show.

The Headliner
I didn’t see the changes happening. But a day came when I noticed that I was no longer uncomfortable when the crowd was too small, or intimidated when the crowd was very large. I discovered that in most situations I was able to keep the hecklers under some kind of control. The bachelorettes are still as loud as they ever were, but I’d found ways to work around that. I knew what to do when the cell phones rang. I knew what to do when the microphone cut out, when the cocktail waitress dropped a tray of drinks, when people came in late, when a new joke fell flat or an old one failed to get its usual reaction.

And somewhere along the way I started working at Zanies; Chicago’s most famous comedy venue. It began with a successful guest set on guest set night; and from that I was rewarded with a real booking. It was heaven on earth. The P.A. system was as clear as crystal. The microphone stand never collapsed. Everyone in the audience was seated in view of the stage. The bachelorette parties were encouraged to leave their marital aids and helium balloons in the taxicab (Federal laws notwithstanding.) And I was working with guys and gals that I’d actually seen on television at one time or another. The general arrangements certainly bore a striking resemblance to the one-nighters. There was a microphone, comedians to use it and an audience to watch them do it. But, oh, what a difference.

And one day, a few more years down the road, I was riding the L out to the airport to do a corporate party in Omaha – round trip from centrally located Chicago was only $98 because I booked it early – and I realized that half the gigs on my calendar involved reasonably priced flights or quick trips around the Tri-State area. Most of the others were located right here in Cook County. And it was all headline work.  I thought about how living in Chicago made it all fall into place, and I said to myself, “Damn. What a great comedy town.”
 

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