MC WEEK

As I was leaving my friend's birthday party, to drive to New York and audition for Last Comic Standing, my friend Sarah Elizabeth yelled out to me "Remember Tobias Wolff." This comment was an inside joke that I have with a couple of my friends, but it means something deeper to me. I was lucky enough to meet Tobias Wolff during my senior year of high school after he gave a lecture on how life's experiences add up to something greater. I asked him if our experiences are a collection of random events from which we find patterns of order (as one could with any random set of data) or is the experience of our lives there for a reason? Basically, is there a such thing as destiny? Are our actions divinely ordained? Tobias' response was "That is the question I have spent my entire life trying to figure out."When I heard Sarah Elizabeth yell "Remember Tobias Wolff", I interpretted her comment as a sign that I was destined to do well in Last Comic Standing. You can imagine my distress, when, due to car trouble, I was unable to make it more than a mile away from Mary Washington. I had felt betrayed by what I thought was my destiny. I sat down in my car and cried. It was terrible. Then, a few hours later, Kevin, the manager of the Funnybone, called me, saying that he desperately needed an MC for the week at the Funnybone. Had I been in New York, I never would have been able to take this opportunity. The whole week went very well, and it became the foot in the door that I had been waiting for in order to get work at the Funnybone. I know I will work there again soon, and I can now see a concrete path forming for the achievement of my goal: acquiring the ability to live completely off of comedy by the time I graduate college.Here's the trippy part: after I stopped trying to go to New York, my car started working fine. Part of me wants to believe that there is a higher force that was keeping me away from New York because I was meant to capitalize on my opportunity in Richmond. 2 points for destiny.Anyway- the week went very well. I went to UVA last weekend and a couple random people approached me and complimented me on my act. It felt good to be recognized by strangers. After one of the shows, Guy Torry (who was completely hammered) started passing the microphone back and forth with me onstage. He made fun of me for being the whitest white guy in the world, and I responded by doing my best thugged out ghetto impression. The audience erupted in laughter, and Guy Torry laughed so hard that he punched me in the face. Pretty hard. My head hurt for the whole next day. The funny part is: I felt really proud of myself for being so funny that I got punched in the face. It really says something about how desperate the average comic is for approval that a punch to the face was the highlight of my week. I felt like a real part of the comic team. Punched in the face by Guy Torry... what an honor. It is the equivalent of Heidi Klum kneeing me in the crotch and me spending the rest of my life bragging about how a super model once touched my balls.Bad analogy.Long blog.Here's the moral of the story:Guy Torry taught me that in order to be completely funny you need to temper red hot arrogance with ice cold humility. Come to the stage knowing that you are the funniest mothafucka on the planet, but be humble enough to relate to the audience. I was only able to learn this lesson because my car was mysteriously out of commission. It almost seems like the "universe" wanted me to learn this lesson... unbridled confidence with humility. As my religion professor would say: humble dogmatic.Remember Tobias Wolff.