On March 4, 2024 I celebrated ten years straight of performing standup comedy. I had other attempts at doing it- My first false start was in July 2000 when I was 19, the second in December 2012 when I was 31, then finally - and for good - in March ‘24 at the age of 33. This timeline and this information doesn’t matter to anyone and I guess I didn’t even actually “celebrate” my 10 year anniversary except for mentioning it on my podcast to my co-host who graciously pretended to be impressed/happy for me. (Oh, what’s my podcast?? It’s called WE HIRED A SITTER FOR THIS and we have been airing a new episode every Wednesday since January). But back to the point of this post.
I love doing standup so much. I’ve gotten to express myself and feel creatively fulfilled ever since I “switched careers” to do it (switched careers = left a stable and lucrative career in TV production to chase a childhood dream without a real plan). When I first started I was so happy to get up in rooms of 10-20 other comics doing open mics and experimenting and just trying to connect in a room. No cameras, no editing, no pre-production meetings, no post-production notes… Just me saying whatever I wanted until I finally figured out how to get laughs. Early on I knew there were people who wanted to shoot sketches and make videos and I vowed never to get involved because if I lost one more night of sleep obsessing about audio levels or coverage or dropped frames or corrupted files, I was going to walk into traffic.
Flash forward to 2024. Every standup comic is also a director, cinematographer, editor, and public relations manager. Myself included. I have been making videos of my own stuff, clips related to the podcast, but also some other stuff for other comedians. But no one really knows that I do this stuff. And I thought I was being smart by keeping it that way. But, according to my brutally honest and sage podcast co-host, Gastor Almonte, I have to share with people that I “do dope stuff.”
In the spirit of sharing more of the things I make, and also because - BIG ANNOUNCEMENT - I’m releasing my own first comedy special soon (Late July? August? Stay tuned!) I’ll use this posts like this to share comedy specials and comedy video projects I’ve edited or directed or worked on in some capacity in the last few years.
This first one is from early on in the pandemic. Jacob Williams is one of the first people who took me out on the road to open for him. We became pals and when he said he would be recording an album in the summer of 2019, I offered to shoot it. After the audio was mixed and the album was done, we decided to retroactively edit the video to match the audio. This isn’t the typical way to do things and is quite a puzzle. But it was a fun project to have in 2020 because I’m not sure if you remember but we had some down time to fill up.
Please enjoy Jacob Williams’ “UNEMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER.” It’s hilarious and I think it came out pretty good.