Out of the last 40 days, it has rained on 32 of them. It poured yesterday and it is pouring today. There is flooding in Hoboken, which means that on every block there’s about 2 feet of street-space where you do not drown when you try to cross. People line up at the bottleneck, avoiding the raging white water which begins at the corner, with the sewer grates overflowing, and spreads down the street.
Last night there was a respite. The rain stopped, leaving a cool night, with a huge wind. I went and saw a show at The New York Comedy Club. There were four fabulous comics, and one who was not so good. He’s very successful, but there was something … too angry about his delivery. Now, granted, comics in general can be an angry bunch. That’s where the comedic impulse comes from. Rejection, pain, wanting to get back at everyone who ever called them a jackass. Nathan Lane put it perfectly in an interview. He was asked, “Were you an angry child?” Lane answered, “I was a small round angry person. Nobody ever thought I would do anything, and I remember being about 5 saying to myself–” (in a tough-guy Clint Eastwood way) “Oh yeah?”
But this guy last night wasn’t all that funny and therein lies the rub. Some jag-off in the back started heckling him, and the guy, instead of turning it to his advantage, and either joining together the entire club in hostility against the heckler, which can work, or making some smart-ass remark which would shut the heckler up for good, which can also work, this guy started getting into it with the heckler, throwing insults back, and it was suddenly like a locker-room in junior high school. It was not good.
He also looked out at one point (the club is very small, they are right on top of us), looked right at me, and said, “Pretty girls like you are a pain in the ass. I would never ever trust you. I could never leave you alone at the bar for two minutes because I’d come back and you’d be surrounded by men. Pretty girls are a huge pain in the ass.”
It was mean.
But the other ones were fabulous.
One of my favorite human impulses is the pro-active impulse to make another human being laugh. To me, it is the meaning of generosity.
I love being around that energy.
Walked home from the Path station through the freezing big wind. A beautiful night.
This morning? Torrential rain on my windows.
