One night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I thought about the stand up comedian life. I came up with some brief material:

Career choice – “you get paid to make people laugh?” “no, no, it’s not like that. It isn’t nearly so glorious. They laugh AT me. I get paid in compensation for the misery I feel.”

Nature terror – having to do with the recent activity of Mt. St. Helens. In response to increased frequency and magnitude of earthquakes around the volcano, scientists raise the eruption alert to red and sit tight, peering through their binoculars. No eruption. “Stephen…should we lower the alert color?” Bush gets word of the red eruption color and makes a startling connection between the eruption and terrorist actions. He briefs the nation: “America, I have discovered troubled findings, mother nature has sided with the terrorists. Eruption and terror alert color coded systems are both red. I believe it is time we drill mother nature, we need to demonstrate our ability to destroy her and the terrorists once and for all.”

I thought about what the worst way to start a stand up comedy sequence would be. Knowing that you’re a pathetic attempt at comedy, speaking with little enthusiasm, and having poor material would certainly make for a sad performance, but I think worse would be to genuinely believe that you are doing a wonderful job, when in actuality the audience is dead silent. This latter case would make the audience very uncomfortable, because they would see how enthusiastic you are in your delivery, and your enthusiasm would highlight the “not cutting it” act. A courtesy clap would be in order, but probably wouldn’t happen because no one wants to be the first, for fear of the clap being interpreted by the rest of the audience as being a real clap as opposed to being an act of pity. Like acting, you either have stand up comedy or you don’t. The most sorry situation is when you don’t have it but think you do.