Men of Comedy: Guest Blogger Aaron Berg

My comedic decision between mediocrity

and whatever else is out there

I have achieved some success in Canadian comedy.  By success, I mean I own a home with a mortgage on it, I get to vacation twice a year north of Kingston and like most assholes, I’ve taken up golf.  But it’s not enough to fulfill my insatiable ambition.  So I’m moving to NYC to follow my dream.  That means selling my loft, my car and separating from my fiancé in pursuit of uncertainty.  It seems like most comics don’t become great because they are unwilling to sacrifice.  I am willing to sacrifice everything for our craft even though it may not necessarily pay off the way I dreamt.  That’s a great deal of what comedy is, embracing uncertainty.

I never got into this to make a living.  I wanted to pursue greatness.  Here’s where it started.  The beginning.  I started doing comedy because of guys like Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison.  Their careers may have been somewhat magnified because of their deaths.  And in assuming that I’m striving for similar comedic results, in no way means that I’m attempting to emulate their lives because it’d suck to catch on fire while smoking crack and then succumb to multiple sclerosis and have black and white photos of my overdose all over TMZ after I’m killed by a drunk driver in a Trans Am (some of Kinison’s bits held up with time but his automobile choices did not).  Point is, to be “funny” used to require soul, innovation and the never-ending quest for the road to excess.  

Now it’s how many social networking friends do you have, how many youtube clips are up, what meaningless drivel about fair trade coffee can you fit into your vegan podcast and then how can you translate who you ‘really are’ to a blog on your super duper ultra fresh website with lotsa photos of you and celebrities you accidentally bumped into at the hotel bar in Montreal.  

So let’s go throwback.  Real comedy is meant to shock, to offend, to educate about the road less traveled.  To have strokes that are equal parts Kerouacian, Ginsbergy, Bukowski-esque and a little bit of schtick on the side. Unfortunately due to unnamed comedy festivals and the push of Warhol’s notion of 15 minutes of fame, more and more people do stand-up just to get on TV.  As a result, the comedic system the world over revolves not around innovation and possessing a unique voice but rather emulating ‘successful’ comics and striving to please the system and to move on up as though this was a factory job.  But comedy is not for the kind, not for the genteel.   Ours is the point of view of an outsider, making our peripheral views as universally understood as possible.

The next time you think about doing comedy or supporting comedy that the meat grinder system approves of, slap yourself.  Instead of writing a bit about how Montrealers love to smoke and movie trailers are dumb and how horrible your flight was….live a little.  Do something that you would never usually think of doing.  Fuck someone you would never think of fucking.  Get drunk alone and walk through your city.  Get a story and then tell it.  Go out of your house, stop writing spec scripts for Little Mosque and remember that comics of the past paved the way for us all to be great.  We won’t all do it, but we can sure as hell go down swinging.

Aaron Berg