Comedy Nerd

When I was little, I was convinced I’d grow up and marry a stand-up comedian. Not any one comedian in particular. Just a comedian. (Well, not a prop comic. I do have standards.)

VH1 used to have a show called Stand Up Spotlight that my sister and I would stay up to watch in our shared bedroom. Few things were funnier to us than Rosie O’Donnell coming out in her brightly colored blazers and dryly introducing herself as Madonna or Cher or Sally Jesse Raphael. Being as young as I was when this aired (around seven, maybe eight if we caught reruns), I only remember bits and pieces of actual sets, but the comedians themselves left an impression. People in my family were funny, but they weren’t this kind of funny - where being odd and thoughtful and zany and sarcastic all seemed to coexist as one. I can remember laughing out loud as Marc Maron stormed back and forth on stage in a bit about “crazy people” being reluctant prophets, or being enamored by the charm of Richard Jeni, the bowties of Paula Poundstone, the cadence of Rita Rudner, and the, well, everything of Mario Cantone. 

When you’re a child, you don’t always know why the things you like speak to you. Comedy was speaking to me on a level I hadn’t yet unlocked in myself. Something a little offbeat and dark and sad, but also with a profound love of silliness and joy. Outside of quoting a few bits with my sister, I never really talked about comedy as something I liked the way I openly obsessed over, say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Baby-Sitter’s Club. Comedy, for me, was a bunch of funny adults who existed on a TV screen who seemed to be speaking to me personally, even when I didn’t always understand them. All I knew is that they made me feel normal at a time when I was starting to question what that meant. I started testing out my own sense of humor and comic timing, and reveling in the feeling of making my friends’ parents laugh (because making a fellow nine year old laugh was not nearly as satisfying to me as getting an adult to validate what I hoped was a more sophisticated wit). I became the “quiet but funny” one, an identity I was more than happy to lean into in my very large, very loud, and very funny family.

By age eleven, the new-ish cable channel, Comedy Central, got added to our cable package, gifting me with more stand-up, as well as SNL reruns from the ‘70s and ‘80s, Mel Brooks movies, and Mystery Science Theater 3000. The entire channel could have just been called “How Sarah Becomes A Nerdy Weirdo Just In Time For Junior High.” Also thanks to Comedy Central, the concept of a celebrity crush took on a new meaning. Suddenly Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Joey Lawrence were being replaced by people like Craig Kilborn (eventually replaced on The Daily Show and in my heart by Jon Stewart) and Benjamin Katz (every generation gets an H. Jon Benjamin-voiced animated character to fall in love with, and the slacker son on Dr. Katz was mine). 

This is where I’ll pause to talk about a different kind of comedy influence - and huge comedy crush - Matthew Perry. I started drafting this essay a few weeks ago and had to put it aside while I recovered from a cold, and during that time, I learned Matthew Perry had died. One of the strangest reactions I had to his death was feeling like I already cried over him because, as Sandy on Growing Pains, his character’s death was the first time I saw that happen on TV and it kind of shocked me. Then I got a little older and was every bit the anxious sarcastic mess that Chandler was. He regularly pointed out the absurdities of human existence that, unlike on Seinfeld where an entire episode would be based around that absurdity, Chandler seemed to be the only one in his group of friends who noticed, and his comments would get ignored as a result. It was hard not to relate to that, or to him, as a teenager. 

Coming into adolescence in the era of cable TV and Gen X comedy was fairly foundational for who I am today. Giggling over broad-humor gags and familiar pop culture references when I was eight morphed into an understanding of what humor was capable of and how liberating it could be. I saw my burgeoning worldview in George Carlin, my everyday attitudes and style in Janeane Garofalo, my eccentricities in Conan O’Brien, my politics in Jon Stewart.

I never entertained the idea of becoming a comic myself, god no. The idea of performing words that I wrote? In front of people??? No, thank you. But I had convinced myself my dating destiny was one of comedy club greenrooms and secretly writing my comedy boyfriend’s best jokes. Thankfully, I’ve outgrown that mentality. As many straight women will tell you, there is a unique hell in being a woman dating a man who thinks he’s funny. These tend to be the same men who like to say women with a sense of humor are sexy, but only because their definition of sense of humor is “women who find me funny.” More than once I had been told by insecure men that my sense of humor was “intimidating.” One ex even told me they found it “difficult” that I was funny because he was supposed to be the one who made me laugh. Which I guess, in retrospect, he did, just not for the reasons he wanted.

So much of this newsletter has been about finding lost joys, but comedy is something that has been a constant for me. Now it comes in the form of podcasts and Netflix specials, but that’s the only real change. Speaking of, I highly recommend checking out Mae Martin, Nicole Byer, and Chris Fleming if you want some fresh comedy faces in your lives. Though, I’ll admit the stand-ups I call my favorites are the same ones I had fifteen years ago. Storytellers like Mike Birbiglia, Chris Gethard, and Tig Notaro top my list of stand-ups, and I am happy to report that one of my first ever favorites, Marc Maron, still delivers his perfect blend of bleakness and bewilderment wrapped in laugh-out-loud wit.

The best comedians, like the best people, are the ones who let themselves evolve, don’t run from discomfort, and understand that life is simply absurd, so why not laugh?

FUN STUFF

What I'm Reading: How To Restore a Timeline by Peter Counter

What I'm Watching: Our Flag Means Death

What I'm Listening To: (the feral cats of Brooklyn, currently)

What I'm Eating: Pumpkin bread