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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
Charlie’s Standup Comedy Journal
Folks, it was a year and two days before this show that I first took the comedy stage, also right here at the Comedy Studio.
A lot has changed since then. I’ve done thirty-odd shows. I’ve written close to an hour’s worth of material —
not all of it usable ever again, mind you, but still, I wrote it. I can’t take it back now.
In that time, I’ve been heckled, largely ignored, and — all too rarely — wildly cheered.
(Whoa… suddenly, this is starting to sound like my sex life. Damn. Focus, people. Focus.)
Mostly, though, in the past twelve months and couple of days, I’ve had a lot of fun. I probably could have done
more shows, and there are a few sets that I’m pretty sure I could have done better, but it’s all just a
bunch of baby steps toward… well, shit, toward what, I’m not sure, exactly. But this show marks a years’
worth of getting there, so it deserves a mention. I guess that’s all I’m saying.
And, to commemorate the occasion, I decided to trot out some new shit I’ve been working on. Looking back over the clip, I think the stuff’s got ‘potential’… but I’m not sure I was able to get enough ‘oomph’ behind it to
really sell it to that crowd.
(Where I mean ‘crowd’ in the loosest of terms. ‘Basketball team’ might be closer, or ‘barbershop quartet’.
Still, the dozen or so people who were there seemed to have a good time. And I’ve got plenty of excuses in this case for the house not being entirely rocked. Besides it being new stuff, this was also my third show in four days, which I’ve never tried before. And apparently, you’ve gotta work up to shit like that — my ass is tired, dammit!)
Anyway, I had fun. I dig playing at the Studio, and there were a few friendly and familiar faces in the crowd,
so it was an all-around good time. Now I’ve just got to get the booker there, Rick, to have me back for the
next years’ worth of shows. Let me at ’em, baby!
Download Clip of 11/18/04 Set —
Comedy Studio, Cambridge, MA (6 minutes, 42 seconds):
(Click photo to enlarge)
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I got a spot in this show somewhat unexpectedly — I’d emailed Amanda, who runs this particular yukfest from a bar
basement in Central Square in Cambridge — but hadn’t heard back in a few days. I assumed the show was booked; in November, they’d gone from a weekly format to monthly, so I figured the demand for stage time was getting up there, and I’d been shut out. Easy come, easy go.
But — yay! — that was not the case. A couple of days before the gig, Amanda emailed to say all conditions
were go. Bring out the rubber chickens; Houston, we have hilarity.
(Or, in my case, a few old retread bits that I wanted to glom together and try again. And that counts as
hilarity, dammit. That’s some of the funniest shit you’ll see in a Central Square basement on a Monday night, I’m
pretty sure of that.
Yeah, shaddup. So I set the bar low. Eat me.)
Anyway, the show was a lot of fun. I had a bit of a personal crisis, when my coworker told me that she’d be
there, and she was bringing her daughter with her. Yeeks! And never mind that her daughter is twenty-something, either — that’s fricking pressure, people!
(So, I took out the bit that ends with ‘vagina’, and replaced it with two minutes of stuff about… well, my
penis, actually. And I substituted it in just after the other stuff about my penis. Hrm. I guess I
wasn’t all that worried about offending ‘the daughter’, after all, eh? Nice.)
In any case, give it a look — I had a good time back at the Cantab, and hopefully, you’ll get a chuckle out of
it. Not as much fun as I had, especially hanging out and drinking beer with some of the other comics — and
yes, the coworker and her daughter, too! — but the rest of that isn’t on tape anywhere, so this is all
I can offer you. Let’s both hope that it’ll do, eh? Enjoy!
Download Clip of 11/15/04 Set —
Cantab Lounge, Cambridge, MA (6 minutes, 30 seconds):
(Click photo to enlarge)
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You people have no idea what I go through to bring you this standup nonsense.
(Okay, maybe that’s a little bit dramatic. Still, I’m makin’ a point here. Don’t piss on my party, dammit.)
It’s bad enough to actually come up with the ridiculous material, and practice it, and make my wife
think I’m a fricking lunatic by using it on her. That’s no damned picnic, but I can deal with it.
And then, of course, there’s the matter of getting up in front of a bunch of strangers and making an ass of
myself for five minutes or more, just so you — and, hopefully, they — can have a couple of chuckles at my
expense. Ooh, look at your crazy little monkey do his dance. Whoo.
All of that is fine — I signed up for this shit, and I’m just perverted enough to actually enjoy it, so
no worries. Until — until! — technical difficulties start getting in the way, which is exactly what
happened at the show before this one (no link, for reasons that will become obvious in four… three… two… one…),
when my damned camcorder stopped working. Bitches!
One minute, whirring and whizzing away like a happy little gizmo. Or a computer. Or a vibrator. (How does it
always come back to the vibrators, people?)
The next minute, nada. Says it’s got ‘dew’ problems, like water just suddenly and magically condensed
somewhere in its innards. I don’t know how that can happen. Actually, I’m pretty damned sure it can’t happen.
But the bastard little machine thought it happened, and so it wouldn’t fricking work. Lousy technology —
‘HandiCam’, my ass. ‘ShittiCam is more like it. Loser.
Anyway, I didn’t want to miss two shows in a row — and heaven knows you people got nothing better on this site to look at than grainy video clips, so I had to do something fast.
(Well, okay, so technically, I didn’t have to act terribly quickly, given that there were two weeks in
between that show and this one. But since I’m a lazy, forgetful goober, I completely brain-farted on the whole
‘useless damned camera’ thing until the day of the show. So then, I had to act fast. It’s all about the
context, see.)
So, long story only marginally shorter, I checked up on the problem online and found that many other people
have suffered with the same problem. And a few were able to solve the bug with various harebrained ‘home remedies’. None of them looked particularly promising, but at that point, that’s all I had time — or the smarts — for, so I dove in. I opened every orifice on the thing and left it in a sunbeam. Nothing. I took the battery out — and
banged it on the table, just like the other guy said he did — then put it back in. Zilch. I blasted the thing all
over with compressed air. Bupkis. I took the thing to the bathroom, and — get this — blow-dried it with my
wife’s hair dryer.
And dammit… that frigging worked. Well, fuck me.
So, thanks to the power of the internet, an ingenuity borne from desperation, and the finest home salon
equipment money can buy, you now have the privilege of seeing me tell seven more minutes of dick jokes
onstage. Is that a tear-jerking damned story, or what, people?
In any case, I hope you enjoyed it. Frankly, this might be my very most favorite show — the audience was
pumped (kudos to the other comics for working them into the right kind of lather), I was comfortable onstage, and a
few people from my office were kind enough to come watch and cheer me on. This is what it’s all about, folks.
(Well, except for the whole ‘getting paid’ thing, and the ‘devoted groupies’ and ‘free beer’ perks. Really,
when you get right down to it, those are what it’s all about. But this is a good damned start, and I’ll take it. Enjoy!)
Download Clip of 11/04/04 Set —
Comedy Studio, Cambridge, MA (7 minutes, 2 seconds):
>
(Click photo to enlarge)
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This was the first time I ventured outside the greater Boston area to perform. Another comic, Flynny, runs this show on Wednesday nights in Lowell, and I hooked up with him for a spot.
Actually, to be fair, my comic friend Daniella did most of the negotiation for stage time, and was cool enough
to include me. And ride up with me to navigate the more-difficult-than-it-frigging-should-be directions to the
brewery.
(Honestly, I’ve got an extra-wide broomstick that I’d love to shove way up MapQuest’s collective ass.
Have they ever given straightforward directions to anyone, anywhere? Ever?! Bastards.)
Anyway, the brewery was a nice enough place. Three floors, good beer, bar food — my kind of place. The joint was a little bit dead that night — maybe fifteen or twenty people came out to watch — but there were a couple of groups of people up front who seemed into it, so I basically talked towards them while I was up there.
(And towards the end of my set, their food came, which distracted them pretty much completely from the next
three or four comics. Standup hath no buzzkill worse than the loudest laughers getting food during the show.
Ouchies.)
Still, it’s a fairly young show, and I’d definitely go back. Especially now that I know the fricking way around
Lowell, more or less. (Damn you, MapQuest! Damn you again!) As a matter of fact, I’ve already asked for another spot, so hopefully you’ll see a similar clip in another few weeks. Now if I can only get the bar to close down the kitchen during my set, then we’ll be talking. Woo-hah!
Download Clip of 10/06/04 Set —
Brewery Exchange, Lowell, MA (6 minutes, 34 seconds):
>
(Click photo to enlarge)
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Folks, you’re in for a treat here. This is just about as low as comedy can get. See, there are a lot of obstacles and
hazards in a comic’s job. You’ve got hecklers. There are the disinterested types, watching TV or having loud, drunken conversations during your set. And, on really special occasions, you’ve got a roomful of rowdy punk rockers. But none of those, frankly, compares to the very worst thing a standup can face:
no one at all
Actually, as it turns out, that’s the second-worst thing a comic can face. The very worst thing
is no one except the other comics who’ve come out to perform that evening, sitting in the seats and staring
glassy-eyed through each others’ sets. Comics don’t often laugh at other comics’ jokes, you see. Something about the delivery, or the premise-punchline formula, or something, but it’s particularly hard to get a rise out of
folks who are doing the same thing, night in and night out.
(I suspect it’s like that in other jobs, too — there’s a certain amount of professional courtesy, but it takes
a lot to really impress a peer, you know? Like what I think of as a bonfire, a fireman would sniff at and
dismiss. Or the stripper boobs that I’m drooling over, another dancer would go, ‘Eh. I’ve seen bigger.‘ It’s
a little like that, only without the fires and the girls taking off their clothes.
Yeah, suddenly comedy doesn’t seem nearly as exciting as it did ten minutes ago. I hate it when I do that.)
Anyway, this is truly a bottom-of-the-barrel show. I’m warning you now. There were about a dozen of us hanging around to perform, and we sat through each others’ acts, and laughed politely once or twice, but basically, there was nobody there. A couple of girls came in, stayed for a couple of sets, and left. Otherwise, it was just us and the crickets. And mostly crickets, at that.
On the plus side, I’m sure this counts as a ‘learning experience’, so I’ve got that going for me. Of course,
given that ninety percent or so of my shows are ‘learning experiences’, I think I’ve actually hit my quota for a
while. A great show with a giggly crowd and a packed house might not build ‘character’, dammit, but it sure does
boost the old ego. And after this show, I could use a little bit of that. Stat.
Download Clip of 09/27/04 Set —
Cantab Lounge, Cambridge, MA (6 minutes, 45 seconds):
>
(Click photo to enlarge)
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