Last night I went to my minister's standup comedy debut at a dive bar in Dorchester.
That sentence probably sums up why I am a Unitarian Universalist as well as any I could possibly come up with.
Let me begin by saying that the Reverend Terry Burke put on a very good set--I liked the fact that the jokes came as part of a little narrative, and I liked the fact that a lot of the punch lines were snuck in so dryly that it took the audience a beat or so to catch up. All in all, a fine debut.
Now for the rest of the evening. First of all, to call this place, The Emerald Isle, a dive is really a disservice to many fine dives I've been to in my life. Having been a punk rock fan and a friend of musicians, I have had good times in many dives and found them to be strangely joyful, homey places despite, or possibly because of, their run-down nature.
This place was not like that. It was the single shittiest bar I have ever set foot in in my entire life. Once, in 1989, I went into a pub in Uig, Scotland, a dismal fishing village on the Isle of Skye, with my friends Hugh and Jamie, who now goes by Walker, la-dee-da. The taciturn fisher folk eyed us with hostility as they played pool, clearly trying to decide whether to use their pool cues to finish their game or bash our heads in just to teach us a lesson for being studenty pansies. That was the scariest situation I've ever been in in a bar, but even that place was nicer than the Emerald Isle.
Okay, so drop ceiling, the occasional stool, the worst service I've ever gotten at a bar (and, I mean, I'm male, so I'm used to bad service at bars), and, oh yeah, did I mention they're closing the place down because it doesn't have a sprinkler system? So the night was kind of a wake for this apparently venerable open mike comedy night.
And it was definitely a weird scene--most of the people were regulars, and were comedians, or aspiring comedians. Now, I had the idea from seeing that Jerry Seinfeld movie (no, not Bee Movie, the other one) and various other behind the scenes things that comedians offstage are bitter, grumpy, vaguely scary people. Hanging out with a bunch of them for an hour and a half did absolutely nothing to dispel this impression.
Person after person got up and did 2- to 5- minute sets, and most had at least one funny thing to say. Talk about your tough crowds, though. I got why they all went to this thing. Because it's an incredibly tough comedy training ground--it can't be easy trying to make a room full of comedians laugh. (The alcohol just seemed to bring out extra bitterness and make them less likely to laugh rather than more). It's fiercely competitive, so, as the guy who named his boy Sue observed, you have to get tough or die. So, on the one hand, it's a vicious trial by fire. On the other hand, it's completely low stakes, because you're on a makeshift stage in the shittiest bar on earth, and everyone in the audience is a fellow comic who's never going to pay to see you perform anyway, so it's not like bombing would have any big negative impact on your career.
So, like I say, I got why this was a beloved scene, even though the bar was a hellhole.
It should be said, though, that I didn't share the love, and the weird combination of weepy nostalgia and hate in the room made it uncomfortable.
And then the fat guy got naked. Well, no, he wore a tube sock on his genitals, a la Red Hot Chili Peppers. But it's one thing to see those chiseled funk-punkers dressed only in a cotton codpiece, and quite another to see a morbidly obese comedian similarly attired. My friend Alex didn't actually know about the sock because the belly was obscuring the sock anyway.
I couldn't decide if this was a really brave or really desperate thing to do. On the one hand, it was pretty funny--the guy had this vaguely hostile persona and just kept doing his act without really acknowledging that he was nearly naked, and it is kind of brave for someone with a body like that to get naked in front of a room full of people. On the other hand, it was disturbing and gross and seemed somewhat pathetic. Alex looked at me and said, "I think it's time to leave." I agreed, and we heard one of the other comics saying, "well, that's one way to clear out a room" as we left.
We went next door to the clean, nice yuppie bar with decent beer on tap and a female bartender who gave us good service, thinking she could use her feminine wiles to weasel a good tip out of us. Sucker!
