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 Below is an essay that clean comedian Jimmy Brogan wrote for CBS Morning Show Host Hannah Storm's new book, Notre Dame Inspirations:
My First Laugh
By Jimmy Brogan
Last week a friend of mine, who is a juggler and fellow comedian, called me and said, “You always have a different way of looking at things. Would you take a look at my one-man show and make recommendations?” I said sure.
I watched the show. It is called Spitwads and Dodgeball and is a nostalgic look back at his childhood in school and what he learned. Watching it, I realized that the point of his show was that what came in really useful to him in his adult life was all the stuff he leaned outside the classroom. After all, he makes his living as a juggler. I suggested to him that he change the name of his show to “ Everything I Know I Learned at Recess.” Even the stuff he learned in Kindergarten wasn’t that useful.
In looking back at my days in school I realize that most of the stuff I use in my career as a comedian I also learned outside the classroom. (Certainly not at recess where I was beaten up every day…by my brother. Classmates wouldn’t even bother, so I had to bring in a family member.)
At Notre Dame I wrote humorous pieces for the campus newspaper, The Observer, I partnered with Bill Eiler on a radio show at WSND and I hosted an impression contest for An Tostal Weekend (loosely translated from Gaelic, it means The Festival).
This was an alternative weekend to the big formal prom weekend. It consisted of bed races, pie-eating contests, capturing pigs in a mud pit and in its fourth year the Bookstore Basketball Tournament. It was during the An Tostal Impersonation Contest that I made my first adlib on stage.
I had a friend in Carroll Hall named Mark Tracy who did an impression of Ed Sullivan. It always made me laugh. When I was at a meeting of the An Tostal Spring Weekend Committee I suggested we hold an impersonation contest. I figured if Mark could do an impression, there must be more kids on campus who do impressions. I had envisioned a few people standing under a tree doing impressions and then some sort of ribbon as a prize. When they asked who would run it, for every event needed one of the committee members to be in charge of it, I volunteered.
We decided to hold the contest on the Main Quad right in front of Alumni Hall. When the day arrived, the committee had somehow gotten a hold of a four-foot tall portable stage and a huge speaker system. And there were 500 students sitting on the lawn waiting for the contest. I was scared to death, but I had told the committee I would emcee the event and they held me to my word.
About half way through the event, Father Hesburgh walked by. A rare sighting in those days. I pointed him out and he waved to the crowd. As the ovation quieted down, I said, “ Actually that is not Father Hesburgh, it’s Father Joyce doing an impression of Father Hesburgh.” I realize that it is not the funniest adlib of all time, far from it actually, but it was in the moment and quite a departure from the stilted introductions that I was reading off of cards and the stolen impressions I was attempting on stage. It was off the top of my head, it was original and it got a laugh. This set me on the path to thinking that I could actually try stand-up comedy. With all this experience, how could I fail.
Well, quite easily, it turned out. My first time on stage in NYC was at a club called Catch a Rising Star, I did an impression of my old friend and now legendary rector of Keenan Hall, Fr. Robert Griffin. What was amusing to a few people at Notre Dame get-togethers was completely lost on the hard-bitten New York City crowd. Plus of course they had no idea who he was. The impression could have been dead on and still they would have been puzzled. But I was so sure they were wrong that the next night I tried it again at another club. After all I was an expert at comedy. I had once gotten a laugh on an adlib at Notre Dame.
Same result. The MC, coming back to the stage to stunned silence, could think of nothing positive to say. All he could think of was, “That’s the tallest white comedian I’ve ever seen.” Sure that might not have been the biggest compliment, in fact he was actually making fun of me and that might have crushed some people, but not me. He actually called me a “comedian.” I had arrived. Minutes before I wasn’t even a comedian.
Sometimes to get though life, you have to have a different way of looking at things.
This is the official clean comedy site for the clean comedian, Jimmy Brogan. |
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