What it's like to bomb

Bombing is a visceral cringe you can’t shake until you chase the dragon and get back on stage.

(I dedicate this piece to Adrienne Iapalucci and Dave Landau. Thanks for talking me down off the ledge. They are great friends and monster comedians. If you have the chance to go see them live—you should.)

Stand-up is a numbers game. Eventually, you’ll bomb—and I had it coming. It was bound to happen because it hasn’t happened to me in a long time. Certainly not since I started doing stand-up again after a break where I considered quitting it forever. (I’ve been documenting my return to comedy with video of my rickety-ass stand-up sets for founding members of Phetasy.com just to show people if you love something, it’s never too late to start over again.)

Photo by Nic Ferrell

Bombing is a visceral cringe you can’t shake until you chase the dragon and get back on stage.

A dear friend who is now gone, Gary Garfinkel, said to me back in 2011 after he watched me absolutely eat shit in the Main Room at the Comedy Store: “It’s not the comedians who keep going after they kill who make it—it’s the ones who get back on stage after a set like that.”

I considered quitting again after this recent bomb on my long drive home. My drive to Austin is at least 37 minutes long. Which means I have 37 minutes to either pump myself up or get in my head on my way to a show, and I have 37 minutes to beat myself up on the way home. At no point do I ever pat myself on the back. I never ruminate on the wins.

My interior monologue on the drive home went something like this:

What am I doing with my life? I’m forty-five years old. I have a toddler for crying out loud. I’m too old to be starting over again. I’m kidding myself and not in a way that’s funny or cute. I’m the joke. And I’m a fraud and an embarrassment. I left my kid and my husband behind on Father’s Day for a five minute set. They love me. Why do I need love from strangers? Maybe I should just drive into the quarry.

You get the idea. It went on like this for a while. 37 minutes to be exact. And I’m writing this because it’s better than lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying my set over and over in slow motion like a field goal kicker who missed the winning kick; breaking down everything I did wrong and beating myself up for all the rookie mistakes I made.

What’s funny about bombing is that it doesn’t matter that I killed for 15 minutes the night before. Or that I’ve recently had the humbling experience of opening for heroes of mine like the great Colin Quinn and Dave Landau. The bomb is all-consuming. It’s temporarily blinding.

Bombing makes you feel green and it was a reminder to me that in some ways, I am still green, still shaking the rust off, still not in control of the stage. It’s also a reminder that this is price of doing stand up. Public humiliation. Everyone bombs. The difference between being green and not is that I can identify most everything I did wrong, misstep by painful, humiliating misstep.

Just thinking about this set makes me want to curl up in the shower and attempt to wash off the stench of shame.

So let’s start, shall we?