These Jokes Helped Launch My Comedy Career
Looking back at the start of a 45-year-long adventure
I can personally guarantee you that every comedian you’ve ever seen feels they don’t have as much good material as they wish they had.
The biggest comedians you can name still go onstage with a little worry in the back of their head, that whatever they have might not be good enough tonight. We always want more.
I deeply love the endless, somewhat torturous struggle of never quite feeling that you’ve got your act where you want it. Because I don’t want it to ever end. And when a new bit breaks through and gets a real laugh, that’s when you feel like you’re at the beginning of the journey all over again. You feel like you’re just starting out. And maybe you do have what it takes.
I love hearing a laugh that’s never existed in the world before. Because every laugh is slightly different. Unique even.
The notebook pages these jokes were written in, way back in the 1970s when I was a kid starting out, form the map of the forty-five-year-long road I’ve been on to become this odd, unusual thing. It is the only thing I ever really wanted to be. I wish I could recommend it to you as an experience you should have. But it’s like recommending that someone become an iguana. If you don’t have…
