The Urban Erma

Stand-up comedians aren’t normally on the list of folks who work for tips but it happens. It’s a nice, unexpected bonus considering that we don’t always get paid for performing. In fact, early on, it is often we who have to pay for the privilege. Getting a cash tip then is actually a step up.

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On March 31 I celebrated my stand-up comedy anniversary. I won’t give you a year, but let’s just say, it’s been a minute. And so to commemorate the event, I am reposting a piece I wrote back in 2009.

I received an email from two gentlemen who were teaching a stand-up comedy class to high school students. They asked me for some advice to share with their aspiring young comics. I asked if it was too late to urge them to choose a different career, something safer, like a fireman; easier like a brain surgeon; or more stable, like a mortgage banker.

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(*In honor of spring, I’ve reaching into The Urban Erma archives and updated an article that I first posted on the blog in March 2007.  And by updated I mean removed the references to my Palm Pilot, BlackBerry, and MySpace.)

Weighing in at over 4,000 personal and business contacts, my address book is officially out of control. It’s the electronic equivalent of the mafia: once you get in, you never get out. I’m reasonably friendly and outgoing, but I don’t think it’s humanly possible to personally know 4,004 people. In real space that’s a 22-pound Rolodex. One shouldn’t have a phone book the size of the phone book.  So, it’s time to do a little spring cleaning.

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Rob Base is not dead. But I thought he was. Here’s what happened. After doing a joke about old-school rap, an audience member came up to me after the show and said, “Did you know that Rob Base died?” What? I was flabbergasted. Joy & Pain Rob Base? It Takes Two Rob Base? No. I didn’t know.  To be honest I really haven’t been right since we lost Heavy D.

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I recently performed in a one-night only production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues! The play was first done Off Broadway in 1996 and aired on HBO in 1998. This collection of monologues covers various aspects of the female experience including “sex, love, rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, and orgasm” not necessarily in that order. This play has been performed worldwide as part of V-Day events that have helped raise over $75 million dollars for women’s anti-violence groups. It was an honor to be invited to join such a prestigious sisterhood. Quite frankly, they had me at Vagina.

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They say getting old is a privilege because not everybody gets to do it. Well, not everybody gets herpes either. Where’s the privilege in that? In our youth-obsessed culture, growing older is the true Original Sin that if you’re healthy and lucky you can’t help but commit. Most of us despise getting older given the loss of agility, mental acuity, freedom... Yeah, I’m so not seeing the upside. We realize getting older is not all it’s cracked up to be at around the same time we stop counting half birthdays. Remember being nine and a half? Yeah well, nobody says they’re 39 and a half now do they?

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