My Brother Died. Please Buy My Comedy Album.
This is a post about loss and grief and comedy and crass commercialism.
Today is the release of my first comedy album (Yes, Really) that I recorded about two weeks before my younger brother Mark died in a car crash.
A big part of releasing an album is promotion, but a big part of having your brother die in a car crash is being incredibly sad all the time and not wanting to get out of bed let alone jump on the internet to tell people to buy your album. (Please buy my album)
I have a history of depression, which can be triggered by things like stress, environment, and the pointless early death of a person I love. The past few months have been hard for a number of reasons, but mostly the dead brother thing.
When I started performing comedy in 2009 it was a particularly low point for me emotionally. I was a few years out of college, and the release of my independent feature film Several Ways to Die Trying failed to lead to any real career prospects (but you can get it on Netflix if you get discs in the mail.) I was waiting tables and doing depressing freelance video work like editing those photo montages you see at funerals.
When someone died, the funeral home would call me to come pick up a box of photos that I would then scan and set to “Through the Years” by Kenny Rogers. There were other songs on the list I could pull from, but most of the time people wanted Kenny Rogers.
While editing or driving to funeral homes I would mostly listen to comedy albums or podcasts. It helped. Therapy and medication helped too, but listening to comedy was a part of it.
When I graduated from college, I lost access to the school’s film equipment which had been my creative outlet for years. Losing that, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was still writing, but couldn’t get anything produced, and funeral videos weren’t going to pay for another independent film.
I felt stuck. I would apply for writing jobs and not get them. I would submit scripts and get rejected. I started to think that things weren’t going to get better.
Then I started seeing signs for open mics and considered giving it a shot. A friend invited me to come see him perform at one, so I went and decided to come back the next week and try it myself. I did. It went fine. I won’t say I killed or anything, but I don’t like doing things I’m bad at, and I did well enough to enjoy it. More importantly, it was an outlet.
The thing I love most about doing stand up is the immediacy. I’m hosting a show tonight for the release of my album (Yes, Really) which is avaiable to buy right now, and I could think of a joke on the drive to the venue, or up on stage, and almost immediately know whether other people like it. It’s addicting.
I’ve stuck with performing stand up longer than I’ve ever held any other job, and it’s been going well enough that a few months ago I was able to record my first comedy album.
Then my brother died.
Growing up, Mark and I didn’t have a lot in common, but as adults we were getting closer. We had more common interests as grown men than we did as children. We would talk about clothes, whiskey, Trailer Park Boys, and other things. We weren’t particularly close, but we were working on it. He would come to shows when I performed near his apartment or in New York City, and we would hang out and talk.
The last conversation I ever had with my brother was at a comedy show. I invited him to a show because I thought it was near his apartment. It wasn’t. It was about an hour away, but he was passing by on his way home from a baseball game. I told him I felt bad for making him go out of his way, but he said he didn’t mind. He said he liked coming to see me perform.
The other comics made fun of him for being too handsome. He was. Afterwards we talked to some of the comics and they joked that he was the funnier brother. He was. “I just don’t feel the need to get on stage to do it,” he said.
Mark gravitated to team efforts like sports more than solo pursuits like standing in front of a crowd to tell jokes, but he could effortlessly drop a killer line into a conversation. I carefully write and overthink my material, but Mark (and my three other siblings for that matter) just spit hot jokey fire.
For me to be half as funny as Mark, I have to work hard at it. I spend most of my time thinking about jokes, or ways to make a story funnier. It’s useful, but as a result, I end up thinking of jokes on the subject of whatever I’m thinking about. In the last few years, this has earned me the reputation as “The guy who talks about his daughter” because I spend most of time thinking and worrying about my three-year-old daughter Amelia (who tells a joke on my album that you can buy right now on iTunes) so she winds up being the focus of most of my material.
The downside to this is that lately I’ve been thinking about my brother and how much I hate that he’s dead. (0 out of 10, would not recommend.) It’s difficult to talk about, or write about, let alone joke about, but I can’t stop myself.
Another comic found out Mark died because he saw me do a set where I spent the whole time talking about it. “Sorry to hear about your brother, but it seems like you’re handling it well,” he said after the show.
I am not handling it well. I’m really depressed. Every day is a challenge for me and for my family. But I have a comedy album to promote. I know there’s no “right way” to grieve, but it can’t be going up on stage in front of strangers and saying, “My little brother died, but I come from a big family… so I have spares.”
I wrote that joke the day Mark died, just hours after I got the call. It’s the first thing I did after crying in bed for hours unable to move. I sat up. Had that thought, and typed it into my phone because I couldn’t help it. Not only did I have that thought, but I wanted to save it because I knew it would get a laugh. I am broken.
It took two weeks for me to be get back on stage after losing Mark. I think it should have been longer. I went to a show at an art gallery I perform at regularly with friends. I knew they’d be supportive. I spent ten minutes talking about all the things I had thought of but couldn’t really say in the two weeks since my brother died. Some of it worked as comedy. Some of it I just needed to say out loud to people who weren’t already almost crying.
As of today, the release of my comedy album (Yes, Really), it has been a little over two months since Mark’s accident, and losing my brother is all I want to talk about. When people ask me how I’m doing I want to set up a PA system six inches from their face and shout that I am doing very badly. But this comedy album was expensive to produce and it’s not going to promote itself, so I say I’m, “Doing about as well as can be expected,” and try to carry on a normal conversation.
I won’t say that this is what Mark would have wanted. I know he liked my comedy, because I was fortunate to have him tell me as much before he died. In my dysfunctional comedian heart I genuinely believe he would have liked the jokes I’ve written about his death, but I’m not talking about it on stage for him. I’m doing it for me because I have to.
Talking to people is hard, but talking at an audience is easy, and I need to talk about it. I also need to talk about my comedy album.
Mark was the popular sibling (I was the unpopular sibling, which is why I do comedy now) and he left a big hole in the world. At his viewing, the line was out the door. Standing by the casket to greet mourners is intense, so at one point I stepped outside for some air.
The line wasn’t just out the door, you couldn’t see the end of it from the funeral home. It went on for blocks. I walked down to find the end and I looked back at the hundreds of people in line. They would total more than 1,000 by the end of the night.
I was so moved by seeing all those people that my brother touched in his too-short life standing for hours in the heat just to say goodbye one last time that I teared up and thought, “If just half this many people… buy my comedy album...”
I dedicated the album that you can buy right now to Mark. On the inside cover it says, “This album is dedicated to Mark who was funnier than I am, but not as good at juggling.” You can see it for yourself when you buy the album.
