My brother has been a comedy club owner for over 25 years.
I've been running into the same handful of comics who also act at auditions for years. The one thing I can say unreservedly is they are some of the unhappiest people in the world.
Odd isn't it? All that laughter. Night after night.
With Greg Giraldo's overdose and Arte Lange's suicide attempt, I thought about two comics I admired who weren't so lucky,
Rich Jeni and Tony Hancock.
I'd met and seen Rich many times at my brother's club.
He was a master at working the audience and riding the crest of the laughter like a champion surfer.
He always left me sore in the sides and crying with laughter.
But he couldn't escape the undertow.
I still listen to and laugh at Hancock Half Hour all the time and Tony shuffled off this mortal coil when he decided "not to be" 42 years ago.
I used to look at the glum faces of the comics I knew from audition waiting rooms and think that that misery came from waiting to be "Tim Allened" but realistically looking at years of going from the Chuckle Hut in Bumhole Iowa to the Whacky Shack in Whogivesashit Minnesota and sitting in a Holiday Inn after the show watching the $19 movie single handedly.
Now I think it something simpler and deeper. Like an fat opera singer who feels empty after all that outpouring and has to stuff food back in the same hole, the void left after all that laughter and happiness that a great comic gives needs to be filled.
I wouldn't begrudge them if they kept some for themselves.
Get well soon Greg.*
* It appears he was worse off than we thought.
Rest in peace.
Rest in peace.
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