Contested Development

I did something this past weekend that I said I would never do again. I allowed myself to be recruited into another comedy contest. After the last one, for a national TV show, I told myself 'no mas!' (yes, I occasionally talk to myself in Spanish.)

Nerve wracking and stomach churning, competitions are so not me. I never liked competitions of any kind. I prefer to compete with myself and not fellow human beings in anything...sport, card games, anything. Other than the occasional death match in Scrabble, I"m just not into it. I don't get the point. Especially in something so non-quantifiable as comedy. It's hard to judge comedy because of the variety of styles. You can't really compare apples to apples or in the case of comedians, nuts to nuts. At least not to say one is better than another. More accomplished maybe, but not necessarily better, or best. And for this particular competition, with judges from a trendy magazine and a radio station that is not exactly my demographic, I had a pretty good idea before I left where I would end up in this exercise. I even predicted who the winner was going to be. And I was right. (Not to take anything away from the winner, he is a very good comic.)

But the dangling carrot of a five thousand dollar prize was too tempting to pass up. So against all logic and better judgement I travelled to the west coast of Oz, took a ferry to a holiday island, and found myself the lone female comic among a field of nine competitors. I knew many of the guys so it was at the very least a nice way to catch up with comics from other cities across the country, trade horror stories and lie about our various projects, and inevitably, make fun of the comics and comedy promoters we don't like. (Now that was fun.)

The night of the competition, the hall was packed. There was a high profile and extremely highly paid MC (our collective jaws dropped when we heard the price tag), and lots of alcohol for both the comics (not me, since I don't drink) and the audience. The line up was decided by lots, and I was first up in the second bracket, a pretty good place in a three hour show. One advantage to being the lone woman, they tend to want to sandwich you in the middle. (Insert joke here.)

We only had 10-15 minute sets so I made sure all my stuff was edited down to the biggest laughs in the best bits and I blitzed it. I have to say, I enjoyed the audience and my set rocked. I know comics always say that, but mine was an homage to the great Dave Grant...bang, bang, bang, they barely had time to breathe between punchlines. It killed. I had to pause at spots for applause breaks. I loved it.

In my heart, I knew I wasn't going to win this contest, but it was still a disappointment when they announced the winner. And I really got mad...at myself for being so stupid and buying into the competition side of things. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking CASH, actually. But who needs this kind of bummer? And self inflicted too. Jeez.

The thing with competitions is that there is a winner and there are lots of losers. And who wants to feel like a loser? Comics are already their worst critics. We beat ourselves up enough when a joke dies or you and the audience don't match and your entire set is one flush away from the crapper. You would think that's enough. But no, we can be gluttons for punishment.

So, I've learned another hard lesson. And even if I didn't win this contest I made a few more fans who vowed to come to see me next time I'm in their city - not counting the drunk girls who had to have a photo taken with me and who will probably see it later and think 'who is this and where were we?'; - I bonded with a few more comics and did a bit of networking and really did have a great show. So that's all great.

But, never again. Of course, that's what I said the last time.