Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

Ep1-Start Here (The Why)

• David Walton • Season 1 • Episode 1

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The quest for standup glory begins NOW.  Please join me on this exciting and humiliating ride. 

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Speaker 1:

Hello, I'm whispering because I'm in a house and I don't want anyone to hear me. Welcome to Starting Stand-Up. I'm going to begin this very first episode with a confessional Some context. I will be playing both characters in the following three-minute segment.

Speaker 1:

I used to read a book series called Boxcar Children to my son and daughter about four orphans who just go on absolute adventures and don't seem to need any of the coddling that our current children of this modern age need all the time. And the youngest is named Benny and he's like a seven year old and I came up with a voice. He's got a little. He can't pronounce his arm, ours, and so, weirdly, as I've been prepping this podcast and about to launch it, a tremendous amount of fear and resistance has been kicking in and Benny has become my higher self. I sort of confessed to Benny and then Benny makes me feel better. Higher self, I sort of confess to Benny and then Benny makes me feel better. So I thought it would be appropriate to start the podcast with this short confessional. Please enjoy, benny.

Speaker 1:

I've got a problem. What's the problem, dave? Well, the problem is that it's getting time to publish this podcast and I'm flipping out because it's one thing to, you know, humiliate yourself in front of a live audience. But then this whole digital thing where it's like I'm going to share the bombing with anybody and to complete strangers and I don't. It's so antithetical, it's so unnatural to. It's like I have to get used to this digital thing where the just unlimited distribution Now I don't know how many people are going to actually be interested in listening, because who wants to listen to bombing or consistent bombing or consistent bombing? But still, it's a really, really terrifying, scary feeling here for me to actually publish a podcast with all this unfinished work. Well, that makes sense. I mean, I'm living in 1922, and so I don't understand this distribution thing 1922 and so I don't understand this distribution thing. But I do understand a fear of a lot of strangers making fun of you and trying to kick you and scream that you're a loser. Yeah, I am. I feel like everyone's gonna think I'm a loser, and I don't. I don't want people to think I'm a loser, because if I think I'm a loser, then I'll lose, because I want to be a winner. You want to? Yeah, I want to be a winner, and I don't know how to win in this situation. Well, I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 1:

I think that you said you were going to do it. You had an instinct and an impulse that this was a good idea, and my sense is that you're a fear, you're being a giant pussy and you're going to use that as an excuse to not do something that you committed to. Yeah, you're right, I got to just do it right, even if it ruins my life. It's not going gonna ruin your life. You're not doing anything crazy. No one's gonna give a shit. Remember, no one gives a fuck about you. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Isn't that called the spotlight effect? Yeah, the spotlight effect. You think everybody cares about you, but you gotta remember everyone's just tethered to a phone. They give you about a half a second and then they're going to move on to the next thing. No one gives two fucks about you. That's actually quite freeing. That's right. You just do it, and no one. Who gives a fuck? Yeah, who gives a fuck, benny? I'm all jacked up. Thanks for this. I'm going to publish this podcast. Fuck you, benny and fuck you Dave. Go get them. Oh man, that's rubbish. That's rubbish. Benny's got a real potty mouth. I hope you enjoyed that. That was a confessional Probably be a recurring theme on the show Confessionals, and speaking to some 10-year-old prepubescent boys with speech impediments has always been extremely helpful for getting my shit together.

Speaker 1:

Moving on, we're going to get into the next big question, which is why am I doing this? Now, whys are usually incomplete. We as human beings, I found, like to come up with all sorts of reasons and we like to be sure about why we're doing something. But I've always found that it's a lot more mystery and we don't really know. We can get some idea, and this was my attempt. This was my attempt to answer the why. And it's true, I recorded it a long time ago, but it still feels very prevalent and it's helpful for me to listen to again because it really helps me remember what the heck I'm doing. So I hope you'll learn what the heck I'm doing. So I hope you'll learn what the heck I'm doing.

Speaker 1:

And it's about a I don't know seven minute story. It's about my ninth grade year at my first co-ed school, so please enjoy. So I got voted class clown in ninth grade in Boston around 1992 or three, I don't actually remember, but I wanted to let you know, the listener, that I am ashamed of that title, class Clown. Okay, because I went to an all-boys school for nine years. Right, this was a coat-and-tie kind of place. Jfk went there, neil Armstrong very prestigious school, single file nothing, no girls, nothing. Now I had four sisters so I'd been around girls, but they were very different than the girls that I met in my first co-ed experience. So my mom didn't let me go to boarding school. We're all. That was sort of the path in Boston boarding school. It wasn't because we were bad children, it wasn't because we were in trouble, it was just a beautifully privileged path in life, private school all the way, baby.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, I went to the park school, which is across the street from my original school, dexter, and when I arrived at the park school I saw girls in my everyday classes for the first time and it was truly mesmerizing. I mean not to be perverted at all, but I can say this that in ninth grade, as a boy who is just starting to have his pituitary gland drop incredible hormones that it's getting him so jacked up for life to see these girls, these 14-year-old girls, just exploding was really, really, really exciting for me. Exploding was really, really, really exciting for me, and in that sort of hyper prepubescent excitement about being around girls for the first time in my life, some personality kind of emerged. I mean, I'd always been a bit of a joker. I like to make my friends laugh, but that first year with girls I was out of control. I turned into an absolute maniac.

Speaker 1:

Everything was about making girls laugh. I was getting in trouble in class, getting sent out to the hallway, and I was having this weird kind of premonition that I was making them laugh, but none of them were really interested in me in a boyfriend-girlfriend kind of way and I was. No, I was pretty pubescent so that could have had something to do with it. But it doesn't really matter for this story because ultimately what I ended up doing was realizing by the end of the year, when I got voted class clown, that the guys that had gotten the girls that I had crushes on in ninth grade were just kind of like cooler. They were just like more chill and they would. Everyone would laugh at me. But then they would go back to like spooning and like putting their crotch in the butt of the girl in front of them and just like necking by the locker. And I would look at them, these girls with these, like you know, beautiful, just bursting bodies, and I remember being like this sucks, I'm this like free entertainment for these people and I'm not getting shit, god damn it.

Speaker 1:

So I went away that summer and actually hit puberty so I like my voice dropped or whatever grew like six inches, you know, probably became a little more attractive to the opposite sex. But regardless, I went to a new high school this boarding school and I sort of vowed that the class clown, I killed the clown. In short, I just said, fuck it, I'm going to be kind of a cool guy. Now there's probably classmates at my high school who disagree and think I was a raging clown dork. But you have to understand that there was a lot of my impulses that I would mute or that I would just, yeah, I would suppress them and I'm sort of sad to report to you that it worked. I had a good run in high school. Girls started liking me. I found myself with quite a bit of attention. It wasn't crazy, but there was a surplus of attention and a lot of flirtation with older attractive girls at the high school, you know. And a good run, you know, I had a good run, man. I had a great run there in high school.

Speaker 1:

So flash forward I'm 45 now. I'm happily married with two kids, an 11 and 10-year-old. A girl's 11, boy's 10. My daughter's starting to think I'm a bit of a dork. A girl's 11, boy's 10. My daughter's starting to think I'm a bit of a dork.

Speaker 1:

But I'm having this sort of realization, a midlife crisis, if you will. I'm asking those deeper questions like what is this meat suit and personality you have, david, where did it come from? Is it just God-given? What is your true nature and what are some of the beliefs you have about yourself that are either untrue or just limiting? And I ask these questions a lot and I've started to figure out an answer, which is that I'm way weirder, way more dorky let's say Way more clowny than I let on, and I'm fucking done with that shit. Who gives a fuck? So that's sort of the spirit of this podcast.

Speaker 1:

I don't know where this thing's going, but stand-up comedy, which I've never done I haven't done it for a minute. It's incredibly terrifying and as you get to middle age, you realize that you got to seek out those really terrifying things. So I'm going to go for it and I'm going to sort of journal the process on this podcast. Now, you could think of the podcast as sort of like a private midlife crisis journal that I share with the public and my clown is going to be in charge, and the clown could get me in a whole deal of trouble. We could get arrested, we could get our kids kicked out of school for what the clown says, of school, for what the clown says.

Speaker 1:

But I am hoping that, just by being as authentic and as fearless as I can, that something good. I trust that something good will happen and I trust that it will be worthwhile for a certain amount of you to listen along, because I think that together we can go on this sort of ride, like we can lift the hood on how stand-up works, and it's incredibly challenging, sort of amorphous, amazing art form where you can plumb the depths, all your demons and angels and all your experience and your worldview, and if you find the absurdity of it all and it is absurd, life is absurd. If we can't laugh at it, what the fuck are we doing? So if I can find the absurdity of all these layers of my experience and what the world around me is showing and I can successfully relay that absurdity to an audience and make them laugh and think and re-examine things they've taken for granted. I mean, what a joy that would be, what a dream that would be. And we do it together, because I really do miss live.

Speaker 1:

You know, one of the things that sucks about shooting television and film is that no one's allowed to laugh on set. They're not allowed to laugh. It's crazy, because they ruin the take, they ruin the sound, and I love that connection with a live audience. So I'm hoping, when I do my first open mic unless it's complete crickets, which it very well may be and may be horrifying, but you got to do it, you got to go and I think 20 reps, 20 open mics, is when I'll finally get enough experience to where I'll start to learn some things. So I'm going to record all those open mics and you're going to hear them right here.

Speaker 1:

Right here I'm starting to end up with Dave Walton, but anyway, my point is let's fucking go. Let's do this together, all right, all right, my clown's in charge. Let's get fucked up together. Let's go on a ride together. Let's strive and fail together. Let's see how far. Just some good old-fashioned open-mindedness. Some good old-fashioned open-mindedness, some good old-fashioned honesty, vulnerability and, most probably importantly, creative discipline. Let's see how far it can take us, and maybe we can all find our clown, because we all have one. All right, enough sermonizing, let's fucking go, start stand up. Music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music.