Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#17- Big News After Open Mic #16

• David Walton

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Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome to Starting Stand-Up. I'm David Walton. If you're new here, I'm an actor. I've been doing TV and film for 20 years and then I got this delusional idea that I can get good at stand-up comedy and so I started and it's not going well and this whole podcast kind of tracks the slow motion car crash of what it's like to start something. That's really hard.

Speaker 1:

This is a very special episode because hours ago and I'm not lying hours ago at my 16th open mics, something very, very exciting, weird, kind of scary happened For the first time ever the hosts of this show they're actual comics. They asked me to be in their real shows, like with paying customers and everything, not open mics like actual shows. And this is a cool episode because I didn't know this was going to happen and I kind of recorded my struggles this afternoon, a little taste of my neuroses, prior to going up. I will share the actual open mic that got these guys to give me an opportunity. So you're getting it all. You're just going to get it raw and fresh, just the way you like it. So buckle up and thank you for being here. Oh man, that's rubbish. That's rubbish.

Speaker 1:

So journal entry, I'm gonna go down a bit of furtive and I do an open mic, I know what I need to do, which is just to rehearse over and over and over and over again. Profound resistance. I don't want to do it. I it's weird the the idea of memorizing something and then performing it somehow removes the joy. It's like I I want to go up there and not knowing what's going to happen and what's going to come out of my mouth and somehow just like having a whole set routine and doing it feels wrong and I I don't know if that means that I'm not, that I can't do standup, or whether that means it's just an attitude thing. I don't know what it is, but there's something about kind of having it all memorized that I am profoundly resistant to and also just practicing it over and over and over again In my office alone is like nails on a chalkboard. But I know that the better I know it. It's like the host of the Golden Globes. She did it, I don't know. She kept saying on the red carpet that she did it like 92 times. She knew it so well that she could just relax and have fun. Maybe if I was hosting the Golden Globes I could rehearse it, but in this case, I'm going to Biddeford, maine on a Wednesday before a snowstorm. So what am I trying to say here? I'm trying to say that I don't know why I have such a profound resistance to doing all this stuff and that's sort of my pregame thought. I am excited to kind of do this material. It's six o'clock, I'll leave in an hour, I'll come back, I'll share what I did and then my postgame. It's going to be a classic raw episode Pre-game performance, postgame Super Journal Vibes.

Speaker 1:

I'm at the Comedy Mill here in Biddeford, maine. I showed up at 7.31. There were already 12 names down, so I'm number 13. And there's usually about 20 comics that come to Biddeford main on a Wednesday.

Speaker 1:

It's 11 degrees outside and this is my least favorite part of the process. There's just a bunch of dudes, uh, talking aggressively to each other, just really high energy, and it's very hard for me. So I just sit in a chair. Sometimes I have some chats, but it's just exhausting. I'm exhausted. So I've got to wait about an hour and a half, maybe longer, to go up and at that point I will have forgotten everything I was working on and it will be a whole new thing because it just goes away. You get all primed up, you get jacked. You rehearse, rehearse. You get through it. Car ride down, you get ready to go, and then you wait an hour and a half and everything changes. The energy, all of it changes. So these are some of the obstacles, but I'm excited to see what we got. We're going to just rip. The intention tonight is to bring energy, like to be a high-energy guy and just be loose and connected again and not be too attached to anything, just to roll like I'm giving a wedding toast as opposed to doing precision guided missiles. Just, lucy Goose, see what happens. Trust that I know and will say a couple of the jokes. And just also not worry too much that you know we're not filming a fucking HBO special here.

Speaker 1:

I'm at the Comedy Mill in Biddeford, maine. All right, that's my pregame journal and I'll see you after. The next comic coming up is Walton. I don't know his first name. Let's go, he knows who I was talking about david walt, everybody. Thank you very much. I, uh, I'm gonna talk about some white problems.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like my dad didn't hug me, I uh. No, I ended up talking about my dad. He's 84, okay, so he's sort of putting out a three-footer, on the 18th green of life, if you will, but he's got dementia, so he's facing the wrong way. It's like, dad, the hole's over here and you're not holding a putter, dad, that's a spatula. But no, my dad actually didn't, doesn't hug he's.

Speaker 1:

He was born in 1940, right, and that was not a generation of hugger. Uh, back then, the only the only time you ever hug someone is if they survived the titanic. That was it and uh. But I don't blame him, you know what? What I mean? Like this was a generation you really got to go there. Like, if you're, you know, seven years old, your mom died. Your dad just came up to you and was like she was a good woman, son, and I know you're sad, but here's a stick. Go, poke some holes and feel better and put on your Sunday best in a couple hours, because I'll be marrying your mother's younger sister this afternoon. Truly, so I don't blame him. You know his love language is my dad's love language is firm handshakes and disappointed sighs. He's up in Boston right now, extremely disappointed about what I'm doing. I'm not lying.

Speaker 1:

The first time I ever hugged my dad was when I was going away to college and my mother forced it. He was so pissed off he preferred the head nod across the room. But she walked like a hawk and he came up to me and it was the weirdest thing to see a grown man he was 60 at the time and he just sort of spazzed out. He goes are you happy, candy? Are you happy with this? To my mom. And then he did the weirdest thing. He gave me this, uh, this advice. It's sort of the only advice he's ever given me. He said, david, I don't care what you do, just don't get caught. And I was like what the fuck does that mean? Did that hug just turn me into Jeffrey Dahmer or something? And then I thought about it. I was like that's really good advice. And I'm going to be honest, I've done a lot of illegal things in my life and I have never, ever been caught by my dad.

Speaker 1:

So I'm overcompensating right now. I'm overcompensating with the lack of hugs I got and I'm hugging the shit out of my 12 and 11-year-old. My wife and I are kind of creepy about it. We do like Oreo cookie, or I'm a cookie, she's a cookie and my son's in the middle. He's the sweet cream filling. We're just dipping ourselves into warm emotional milk. It's really weird. It's slightly disturbing.

Speaker 1:

My dad witnessed it once and I honestly think he contracted dementia intentionally to forget it, forget what he saw. But you know they say that kids there's a problem with the amount of hugging we're doing. Kids will. They'll try to mimic what they got as kids when they're grown up. So I have this fear that my daughter, who I hug so much, is going to have her senior project be like I would like to do an MDMA-assisted cuddle, puddle with the teachers of the school. The other problem with hugging so much is my kids don't have shame. There's no shame and some shame is good. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

Like the other day, my daughter. She goes Dad like I thought she was asking for like a pencil, but she was doing her normal thing after school, like eating avocado toast, watching Korean dramas, and she was like. She was like, hey, dad, can you get me a new pair of underwear? I just sharted and I was like what the fuck arearted talking about inside? I was like, first of all, why are you so relaxed? And say, why are you still eating, sweetheart?

Speaker 1:

The truth is like I came from a big family man. You had it went when I sharted back then. I didn't tell a soul. I had five siblings. I ran to the bathroom. I didn't tell a soul. I was putting underwear washing. Ran to the bathroom. I didn't tell a soul. I was putting underwear, washing it away like I was disposing a body and like, because if my siblings had found out that I'd shit myself, I would have been, you know, shirtzilla for 18 months. I would have been shart attack. I would have been like this is the Phantom of the Shardera, my brother. You, oh, don't shake my brother's hand. It's 90% feces, you know. And the truth is.

Speaker 1:

And I wanted to tell my daughter, like, sweetheart, look, I don't want you to feel shame, I don't want you to, but I would just like a little bit of embarrassment when you shake yourself. So I know you're fucking human, but do you think, grandpa, when he shits himself, continues to eat dinner? No, he lashes himself into oblivion. Damn it, candy, I gotta go change my underwear. Damn, I shot myself again. Please pause the movie. I apologize. He's gonna feel like he betrayed his ancestors and I want a little more of that from you, sweetheart.

Speaker 1:

Parenting's hard. The other day my son asked me if I'd ever done cocaine. And thank you fifth grade deer program, fuck you. And you know I don't lie to my kids and that's really the issue. So he goes Dad, have you ever done cocaine, ever know cocaine? I was like, why do you have some? No, I said. I said I said I just fucking bit the bullet. I was driving to school. And I go, yes, and I look over and he's horrified, he's truly horrified and he goes what, how many times did you do it? And I was like all the times, all the times I was like I don't know, I don't remember, I don't remember boy, and he goes, well, no, but like, is there a range, like, how many times I'm like I don't know, between one and every time it was ever offered to me. And then no, no. And then I was like, and then he goes, no, no, dad, but why do you do it? What's it like? Like, what is it like? And I said, well, first of all, if you had done it, you'd have a lot more confidence asking these questions of me. Secondly, I tried to get on his page. You know what I mean. I was like you know when you really, really, really want candy and you'd suck your best friend's dick to get it. You know that's what it's like. That was too far, it's crazy. You just never know what's too far. That was my favorite joke of the whole lot Silence. Now, the truth is it's none of your fucking business what I said to my son. Alright, that's my business. It's between me and the social worker and the DEA agent. Anyway, I think I'm getting close to my time, but the truth is I'm gonna bring it back to my dad. Dementia's really fun, actually in a weird, because you can ask your dad crazy questions. My dad's a conservative guy. You can ask him crazy questions Like Dad, have you ever smoked meth? He's like I don't think so. But I was all spiraling about the cocaine thing and I was like Dad, have you ever done cocaine? And he was like wow, do you have some? No, we actually did a bunch of blood together, but it had all this baby diuretic in it. So, to sum up, my dad, me and my daughter all need new underwear. My name's David Walton. Have a good one. Fuck yeah, give it up for David Walton everybody. Huh, cocaine, fucking cowboy over here. Hell yeah, I've never wanted to go home and hug my children so much in my fucking life, dude. I just did it. So I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to work on it to get it funnier, funnier, funnier. But like anything, if I give myself a few days and fresh ears, it I'm sure I'll have ideas. But the lesson, the takeaway for me is just focusing on something. It's so hard. For me it's much more fun to just kind of spray all these new ideas and kind of write and ramp and vamp and do these 10-minute loose 10s and just complain and getting into it and trying to tighten, tighten, tighten is what I basically forced myself to do and the rewards are obvious. You actually have a set that starts to feel like actual stand-up and there's care to it, there's shape. Even jokes that aren't that great are still, you know, fillers that keep people engaged, and so it's getting there. And it's getting there to the point where you know we're gonna perform for paying audiences in Maine. Here we go. So that was my 16th open mic lucky number 16. You know. Hopefully, with these new audiences I can, I can start to get that. You know the joy of really connecting to a room, a bigger room, you know, with more people who are fired up to laugh. You know the hardest thing with these open mics. I did basically that set in New York and it was just crickets. I didn't know it as well. I was kind of reading a lot of it but it was really precise language but it was just crickets. I didn't know it as well. I was kind of reading a lot of it but it was really precise language, but it was literally no laughs, like literally not. The only laugh I got was on the Phantom of the Chartera and it was just like one dude. Like those New York open mics are brutal. They are brutal and everyone's good. Like they are good. Everyone in New York, with the exception of like one guy tonight, is good. Like they're written material, they have an energy, they have a lot of stage time and they're getting up in these open mics and it's crickets and it's just because there's almost like a jadedness. You see, you feel and uh, next time jeremy's on he'll talk about it. I mean, we were just just sort of blown away by the brutality of the new york open mic scene. Oh so maine feels sort of like yeah, everyone's just hairy and you know, drinking beer and way looser and chiller there's a lot. Everyone just seems less upset and unhappy. They seem happier than New York. Okay, I am brain dead. It's late, it's been a long day, it's been a very nerve wracking day. I really didn't want to go do this. I was sitting there for the first hour and a half watching these comics and just really like what am I doing with my life? And then you hung in there and you do it and I was happy with the way it went. And then we've got a new chapter. We just turned the page. Chapter two Real shows, real comedy shows Coming up, coming at you, low energy podcast, but, I hope, fun to listen to. It's exciting to have a journal and even if it was just for myself coming back to it 10 years later. But to know that three of you are listening is also makes me happy. Now, it's just you listening. She's just you. There's no one else. It's just you listening to this. It's you and me. That's it, you and me. Baby, all right, go do some cocaine. I'll see you next time.