24-Karat Hand Restraints

Zack Klion @ Secret Service 11/11/11 from E. Ashton-Gonzalez on Vimeo.

Thank you for still giving a shit, let’s get into it:

I didn’t do bipolar stories this time because I wanted to avoid a hardcore bomb at a show hosted by a friend of mine, Eugene Ashton-Gonzalez. He was gracious enough to have me perform at his mic in Williamsburg, so I wanted to do my best. Unfortunately my best was kind of mediocre, and mediocre just doesn’t really cut it in front of 15 people. Also, this was the longest I’ve ever done ~10:30, and I wanted at least some of it to be good. Is that enough justification to hide my pathetic fear of self for you?

Please be nice in the comments – I can’t handle the brutality at this juncture. It’s just that I’ve been inflicting enough of it on myself as is… and I have limits.

In case you were wondering why I haven’t uploaded anything for an entire month, check out last week’s post. Also, I think you should know that I am close to moving into the city. I’m looking at apartments tomorrow and I may be in by this weekend.

Finally, Bill – because you have been a loyal follower of this sad excuse for a blog, I gave you a shout out during the ‘High on Life’ joke. Also I thought ‘Bill’ was a good name for that character, but the joke didn’t go over so well, so in future tellings he may remain nameless (I’m not saying that your name was the reason it tanked, I actually think I just didn’t give the audience enough time to get the joke).

OH AND BEFORE ANYONE SAYS A GODDAMN WORD: I KNOW. I FUCKED UP THE DOUG TUNE.

300-500%!!!

Uh yeah… about that. Remember when I said I got a job? Well… the day after that, I got another job… And about a week after that, a third one came along.

Why did I do this to myself, you ask? Well that depends, did you actually ask?  No?  Why not?  Do you not care about me? Well forget it then, I won’t answer the question. What’s that? You say you did ask a question, but not that exact one? Well what’d you ask then? You asked, “How big are you erect?”  Interestingly irrelevant question you’ve got there…  Fine, 576428.57…. hope you brought your conversion tables, I used an ancient chinese unit of measurement called the Dong.  It’s not real, don’t bother googling it.

Anyway, in case you did ask the initial quesiton, here’s the answer: It felt good saying, “Yes! I’ll take the job.” It also felt good saying, “Mom, remember when I did nothing for five months and you were afraid I’d do nothing forever? Well now I have three jobs!”

Am I making enough money to move into the city? Certainly. Have I done any stand up? Written any jokes? Been funny at all in the past three weeks? Certainly not (see: whacked out dong joke above).

I know things will change eventually, but unfortunately that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I am letting myself down in a very significant way.

Anxiety. Exhaustion. Masturbation. Eating. (In that order? No, it’s been more of a grab bag).

I committed to performing this Friday. It will be alongside some friends that I did sketch with. If you’d like to come to the show, please join us at the Cove in Williamsburg. The show starts at 8pm and admission is free. I will bomb. I will bomb. It’s been too long… I will bomb.

Things like this just need to be seen:

… And one giant leap for mankind

Friends, I have a job now, and I start on Monday.

The good part? It pays.
The better part? It’s in the city.
The best part? My posting on this site should increase at a rate of 300-500%!!!

Sorry, that was a nerdy (and probably incorrect) way of saying that because I’ll be in the city M-F, I’m hoping to do a mic three to five times a week. If someone can phrase it correctly with percentages, please do so in the comment section.

Jesus those six lines took me 40 minutes to write. I’m now exhausted and thoroughly judging myself.

Today was the first day I did two open mics – one at 4pm (Comedy? at 4pm? NEVER AGAIN!) and one at 6pm (Comedy? at 6pm? PROBABLY AGAIN!). I met up with Chuck (Dover, DE dude from previous post) and we rocked into the land of supreme bombing side by side. Is it important for me to say that he’s black? I know it doesn’t matter, but I wouldn’t feel right if the mental picture I’m giving you is of me and a white Chuck. Look, it’s not like I need you to know that I made a black friend… It’s just that… fuck it, you know what, picture a white Chuck I don’t give a shit. Honestly, as long as the Chuck you’re picturing isn’t a Vietnamese transvestite Chuck, I think we should be good. And it’s not that I have anything against Vietnamese transvestites, it’s just that that is SO not Chuck. He has way too much facial hair. Not that I want you to think he has a full beard or anything, it’s really just a goatee and some stubble… Anyway…..

Below is the video clip from 4pm. Beneath that is a sound bite of me slowly prying open the rusted hinges of my soul two hours later. FYI these two things are SO obviously flawed, so although I usually love the brutal critiques, if you could muster up some trite words of encouragement, they’d probably go a long way.

6pm show:

In case you actually listened to the audio — I decided on the spot to try and tell jokes about mental illness. It was a shitty decision, but it presented me with the challenge of bringing way more of myself on stage. Of course I soon retreated behind my irrelevant jokes, but still… I definitely value being myself, and still being funny. Not unlike two of my favorite comedians, Marc Maron and Mike Birbiglia… check em out.

Awwww here it goes!

OK, so maybe I like 90s nickelodeon too much. And maybe I wrote a couple jokes about some shows I used to watch. And maybe – JUST maybe – I told one of those jokes tonight…

Look, the crowd was young, I knew they’d appreciate it, so I just did it – I wanted them to like me. This was probably the single best crowd I’ve ever seen at an open mic – 20 people who listened and laughed and didn’t leave after they performed – I felt obligated not to bomb with a few new jokes about childproof Advil caps (expect that joke in the next post… to suck). Also, I met a cool dude after the show who had just come up from Dover, DE, broke as hell, and ready to sleep on the streets if it meant being able to do what he loved (yes, comedy). Fortunately for him, he did very well. Fortunately for me, I made my first NYC comedy friend.

Side note: The girl who went up before me literally titty-fucked the mic, and then told everyone to go online and look up the porno she did (for the curious). So that should explain my opening line.

Other-side note: I apologize because this post is a tad overdue. I wish I could blame it on the Jewish holidays but I didn’t quite make it to temple this year. I did, however, bake a challah. Do you give a shit? Of course not. Here you go, and thanks in advance for the feedback:

This is the story of a joke….

That once got laughs but then seemed to choke. And though it looks so funny on the page, it absolutely bombs… when I dont prepare. When I don’t prepare!!!!!!

Ok so thats my musicless Nine Days parody, sorry.

Below you’ll find a small miserable clip from a longer miserable set at an AMAZING open mic. Why was it amazing? Maybe because the host was a crazy Argentinian woman of silly physical proportions. Or perhaps it was because a sad guy with a really bad gambling habit used the group as free therapy. No, no, it was probably because a performer who looked like Gallagher on acid acted out his mother’s violent emergence from his asshole… in a totally serious way. All I know is, I didn’t do such a great job – which was sad, because not only were these three human gemstones in the audience, but Jordan Malter, a top shelf friend, was in attendance as well.

Honestly, the set was pretty so-so, and because it wasn’t great/it was a variety mic *not just comedy, I decided to read a poem as well.

Here’s how I got called up by the fiery Argentinian:

Here’s the cookie jar joke (you know the beginning, so this clip starts in the middle aka the beginning sort of blows). Also, please take note of the space – a rehearsal studio on the 11th floor of a building on w. 54th – above the korean grocery. I didn’t manage to stay in the desk-lamp spotlight throughout the set:

And here’s the short poem:

(Note: I want NO feedback on the poem, it will probably hurt my feelings. Reserve your evil criticism for the jokes)

Until next time, friends.

Whatever goes down….

If you play golf you’ll quickly realize why so many people spend so much time sucking at it. The second you hit one nice shot, all of the failure you’ve experienced up to that point suddenly seems worth it. Had you walked off the course after the 3rd hole because you took a swing and your club went farther than the ball, you would have never hit that perfect shot from behind a big rock to within six feet of the pin on 14. And it’s that one shot that imbues you with a wonderful amount of false hope and delusion – at least enough to get you through your next host of beatings. Sorry if you don’t like golf… or if this analogy is lost on you. I’m not saying the performance below was as good as leaving a rock shot 6 feet from the hole on 14 (everybody knows 14 is a killer), I’m just saying that I was happy, and that suddenly, I feel ready to – as Chris Rock would title a special – bring the pain.

Special thanks to Ben, Cody, and their group Just the Tip for hosting an amazing event at Yale.

Bar 82: Open Mic

If there’s one thing that I greatly respect about Louis C.K. (in fact there are many) it’s his philosophy in regard to creating new material. If you tell the same jokes, people will lose interest and stop coming to watch you perform live. True. That being said, for an entire year, Louis CK tells the same jokes over and over again in order to usher them to their final state of near-perfection. The process is like taking a piece of coal, and through sheer might and perseverance, transforming it into a piece of gold. Exactly, you fuck with that coal so much you change its basic elemental composition, and turn it into gold.

SO, on this blog, I will often post the SAME material (with minor alterations) so that (hopefully) you can see the evolution of (what may become) a good joke (over much time). That being said, I’ll also put up shitty new shit as well. Please give some feedback that makes me cry in my dreams.

This first clip is a new idea… It’s about something that I think happens with some degree of frequency to men worldwide. The ending goes nowhere because the last half of the joke was improvised when I realized my punchline sucked (it didn’t get much better). A mistake? Fine. Were there 6 people in the audience? Yes. Can you only see the lower have of my face? Well, I lined up my camera based on the guy who went before me, but didn’t account for the fact that he was 5’5″.

And this clip is the sex dreams joke, which I told after the previous joke that had ended very poorly (I included the very end of that failure)… You’ll notice this version of the sex dreams joke has a different ending than the audio recording from 2 months ago. When it came time to tell the ending, I figured I wanted to keep going… so this was the result. I think next time I’ll go a little further. Again, please comment to sadden my dreams and fill them with tears.

My First Movie!

At least that’s what iMovie wanted me to call it. As you probably don’t know, I’m obsessed with animation – especially the crude flip-book kind. So here was my first attempt at it – please enjoy. My cousin Mike and I made this over our 2006 Winter break after becoming deeply inspired by the short movie Tony vs. Paul. It was up on Youtube but got muted for copyright infringement (specifically due to my use of C&C Dance Company’s “Everybody Dance Now”). I just put it back up, so we’ll see how long it lasts with sound.

Also, those are our real grandparents, and we really drove to Florida with them. If you ever need to find them for a big league road trip, just look behind their couches and chairs.

Also, also, I realize this isn’t stand-up. But it’s supposed to be funny, and I made it, so it’s up. There will be real, new, updated stand-up very soon. Ok? Watch this now, for the (at least) second time, because I know you’ve seen it before.

Beginnings are difficult…

HEY! First Post! WOOOO!!! Ok. This is the only video I have of myself doing stand up.  It was the third time I had ever performed.  The club was called Nick’s Comedy Stop.  I was participating in a Rooftop Comedy college competition in Boston that held performers to 5 minutes. I think it took place some time in Fall 2008.

These next two recordings come from open mic performances. The first is a short clip from my most recent open mic at Eastville Comedy Club, which was sadly two months ago on 7/21/11. I picked Eastville because Louis CK filmed a short set on their stage for the season one finale of his show Louie on FX. When I showed up, the bar of the club was littered with ads for Louie, and I overheard some guy ask the bartender if Louis CK performed at the club often. “No, just that once for the filming of his show.” The guy was crushed. Anyway, I was the second-to-last performer that night, so what was once a 30 person audience had been whittled down to 9 by the time it was my chance to really wow em. Ha. I also remember some nasty traffic on the FDR that day. Irrelevant? Definitely.

This clip is from 3/23/11 and was performed at Joker’s Wild Comedy Club in New Haven, CT. JW has a weekly Wednesday night open mic during which amateur comics get to pay $10 to compete with the bar-side TVs for attention. Also, sorry, the recording has an annoying click sound throughout it – that’s the metronome on Garageband. Rookie mistake.