The Comedy Animal: A Primer

Animal from The Muppets

Last night and tonight we've got a special show at Roosters, Outsourced Comedy Tour, featuring Raj Sharma, Kabir Singh, Sammy Obeid, Shanti Charan and Imran G. I don't know all the comedians on the show, but I do know Kabir (winner of the 2009 Rooster T. Feathers Comedy Competition) and Sammy (winner of the 2008 competition) well enough to know that they are both a special breed of comedian--the Comedy Animal. That got me thinking...

Homo Standupus
In any comedy community, particularly any local comedy community, you've got Pros, Newbies, Dabblers, Hobbyists, the Forever Clueless and Animals. Everybody is a Newbie, or open micer, once, at least for a little while. Pros typically start out as Animals but lose some of their wilder attributes as regular work can be quite taming! Dabblers and Hobbyists have no intention of giving up their day jobs, and The Forever Clueless, well, they will always be with us.

How to Spot a Comedy Animal in the Wild

Here's a list of behaviors and traits of what I call a Comedy Animal.

1) A Comedy Animal seemingly lives on comedy alone. She has seen every stand up comedy special since Richard Pryor: Live in Concert. He talks about comedy constantly. That is, whenever he is not listening to a comedy podcast like Marc Maron's WTF, or Jimmy Dore's Comedy and Everything Else or Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny. He can't understand people who have never heard of Bill Hicks, and he really dislikes Dane Cook fans.

2) A Comedy Animal will kill for stage time. This means he or she is out there every night of the week, or as many nights as possible, driving long distances and making no money just to get five minutes on the mic. He will start his own room, a completely thankless job, just to get more stage time. She will use her vacation days to go on a Tribble Run. (If you don't know what that is, read this.) Why? Because the Animal instinctively knows that the only way to get to the top of the stand up comedy food chain is through stage time.

3) A Comedy Animal is a risk taker. She will take those gigs opening for a band from the 1960s with one still-living original member and one half-dead original member  at 4:00pm in the parking lot of a mall. Is she a glutton for punishment, or eternally optimistic? He might quit his day job long before it seems prudent to do so. But that means he also has the nerve to call that booker, agent, promoter, radio show host, etc. when chances are he'll never hear back. A Comedy Animal knows that rejection comes with the territory, and you can't fear it or it will eat you.

4) A Comedy Animal often judges non-Animals harshly. Comedy Animals usually look down on the Dabblers and Hobbyists or, even worse, resent them for taking valuable stage time away. If you're not willing to drive three hours to a backwater town to perform in front of toothless drunks for $25 and a drink ticket, you're not "serious about your art." Once I heard one comedian ask another, "You drove here from Sacramento?" The response to this innocuous-sounding question was a snide, "Yes, and you would too if you were a real comedian." Wow. Just trying to make conversation, dude.


I haven't said anything about how funny or talented the Comedy Animal is. Kabir Singh and Sammy Obeid are both very talented, likable, good writers and great performers. They are moving up very quickly in the comedy world and we expect to see great things from them. But what happens when a Comedy Animal is not funny, talented, likable, a good writer, etc.? Eventually they morph into The Forever Clueless.

Maybe we'll talk about care and feeding of the Comedy Animal in a future post. (It is OK to feed them after midnight, but whatever you do, don't get them wet!)