Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#35 Listen to me put together my next standup set

• David Walton • Season 1 • Episode 35

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After receiving brutally honest feedback from a high school friend about my last episode being "boring and no laughs," I've rekindled my creative fire and am preparing for my first stage performance in weeks. This episode walks through my process of mining previous conversations for comedic material, sharing the awkward, honest moments of parenthood that make perfect stand-up fodder.

• Responding to criticism with renewed commitment to quality content
• My 11-year-old asking if I masturbate while watching golf, demonstrating today's kids' startling directness
• The generational divide between shame-filled adolescence and modern kids' openness
• Workshopping potential bits about Z Cavaricci pants, existential capitalism, and prison sexuality
• Reflections on boys' sensitivity and how they change during puberty
• The contrast between my admission of fear as a child versus my son's comfort with vulnerability

Next week I'll be performing on stage and recording my reactions immediately after – stay tuned for that adventure.


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Speaker 1:

Good evening everybody. Happy Juneteenth. I got some feedback from one of my close high school friends for the last episode. He wrote, and I quote I did not like your last episode very much. Kind of boring and no laughs. End quote. That came in at 3.48 pm. Usually when he gets a little grumpy and I said the drug one and he goes yes, you can do better. End quote. There's nothing like a high school friend to go straight at you and the beautiful thing is he's right Now.

Speaker 1:

This isn't taken away if you did enjoy the drug episode, but from my own confessional it was a bit half-assed. It was half-assed. Sometimes I sit down and I don't have the energy and I just say fuck it. But that's not today. This is a very different episode.

Speaker 1:

I've got the fire back. I've got a little bit of the zhuzh. I've made a commitment to an accountability group I meet with on Mondays that I'm going to get back up on stage next week and there's nothing like fear as a motivator. So I've started working again and what's cool is reviewing all the material I did in the last four podcast episodes. Reviewing all the material I did in the last four podcast episodes. There's some topics that I'm going to mine. It wasn't all for naught and that was the plan is to. Why I love you so much is that when I talk to you, things come up. We now have a relationship. I imagine you and we chat like friends, and so this is what the topics are that I'm going to pull out and mine Ready. Here we go. Oh man, that's rubbish. That's rubbish. So I'm trying to work on the Z Cavaricci thing. There's something there. I already have a good four or five minutes about my son asking me to do cocaine and what my response was. If you've listened to the podcast, you know that bit. It's actually my strongest material as far as audience reaction. And now, to gear up for this 20-minute set, I need to add to it.

Speaker 1:

Something happened the other day. That's perfect. We were watching the US Open golf and my son's getting into golf, which is so exciting. He's 11 and I'm like teaching him from the pros, like look at Scotty Scheffler's head, look how still it is, as he absolutely hammers the ball 320 yards. And my son looks, pauses and goes Dad, have you ever masturbated? Looks, pauses and goes dad, have you ever masturbated? And I just I'm like it's, it's so weird. It's like what, how, what, what is going on with this kid? There's always this feeling that you know, these kids these days are so different than us that they feel like alien creatures. Anyway, my mom, my mom, oh good lord, freudian slip.

Speaker 1:

My wife, uh, starts laughing in the kitchen and goes everybody masturbates, louis, and I am laughing too. But I'm like, yeah. I'm like, yeah, louis, I do. And he's like, why? I'm like because it feels good, it mimics sex. And he goes, ew, does the shmegma come out? And I'm like, yeah, and the whole thing. And then that was it. It was just sort of over. He just kind of like, moved on. It just made me thinking about like, who are these kids? What's happening?

Speaker 1:

What happened to some good old fashioned shame about asking your parent that or not being grossed out, about asking, I mean he was grossed out. But I remember as a kid, like the idea of my parents having sex was like bone shatteringly disgusting to me. And my kids are just like what they seem. I mean he's imagining me beating off. He's 11. I gotta stop watching Deadpool and 21 Jump Street with him. I think that's the problem. But anyway, it's a good little world, you know, and it had me thinking about my Z Cavaricci story from the fingering episode I did a couple weeks ago. And how, really, when I asked my mom for Z Cavaricci's, what I was really asking her was, or what I was really saying was mom, I want to finger a girl to like Brian Johnson, and of course I never would say that to her she just thought I wanted cool pants to fit in pants to fit in, but I I hand on the bible.

Speaker 1:

Think that when my son gets to that age, you know where his classmates are fingering and he's interested in it. He's just gonna come home and be like mom and dad. I need to get a new sports jersey and a better gold chain because I want to finger a girl and there's something beautiful about that, it's's honest, it's freeing, but it's so weird and it's just so foreign to me. I think I'm going to be in a lot of trouble when my kids start really getting into the stuff that I still am into. Okay, so there's something there, right, I think there's something there. I just got to figure out. You know the setup Again, stand up is so hard Cause you know, on a podcast it's Lucy Goose and like you're like running or driving and you're just kinda like you know You're tuning in and out and but on stage man, it's just gotta be so tight.

Speaker 1:

So I'm gonna be working on that and hopefully, when I share Like sort of the final set, you'll see what I came up with. Yeah, some more things. Like I, I want to make a joke about my existential sort of baby capitalism thing, like staring into a baby's eyes and being like you know, the point of your life is going to be to make widgets, is to just is to make money so that you don't die. That's, that's literally why you're here, and it got me thinking about just wishing that I was like a french aristocrat in the 1600s. It could just like play tennis and go to cocktail parties. You know, just like I don't need I I don't need to grind like the grind culture. Like I don't understand this. Why is everyone pretending that work is great? And this was another rant I had.

Speaker 1:

It's like that question if you had 100 million dollars, what would you do? And so many people like it's to discover your purpose on earth, and so many people were like I would work in x or I would like. I'm like that question does nothing for me. I would, literally, if I had 100, like I would work in X or I would like I'm like the question does nothing for me. I would, literally, if I had a hundred million dollars, I would rent a power yacht, invite all my friends and go on like a three month ATP tennis tour, play tennis and watch tennis and explore the world using tennis as the daily activity. And I would get like a full-blown Djokovic physio, like I'd have a team for my like shitty middle-aged tennis skills. But I would like try to be basically a sad ATP tour professional that was having so much fun. And then I would just like go off and do like a three week silent meditation retreat in like Miramar Miramar, no, myanmar, I always get Top Gun references. Miramar, you two characters, yeah, miramar.

Speaker 1:

And then, yeah, the stuff about like the hyper honest greetings. You know like just imagining what the world would be like if everybody was just super honest and small talk. You know, hey, what's going on? Yeah, my dad just died. How are you? Yeah, good, my mom just died too. All right, $1.46. There's your change. Um, I like that. I think I'll try that.

Speaker 1:

And then, oh, yeah, like the communal shower. I think there's something there. I think I'll try that. And then, oh yeah, like the communal shower, I think there's something there, I think, maybe in framing it and just how weird the past was. You know how I just don't understand kids. I don't understand my own kids, their bluntness and honesty and just lack of shame, like I, just so foreign, they're like aliens to me and that you know, maybe I can parlay like I'm of the generation that you know you thought nothing of it. To shower in fifth grade with your teacher who, after football practice, would just like roll in with his nine inch python and like soap his dong while asking you about practice. I think there's stuff there aren't you, don't you? Yeah, I can feel, yeah, I can. I can sense your encouragement and I think I want to touch on like maybe a little bit of the drug, like hypocrisy. You know, you know everybody gets their skirt in a bunch about heroin. But if you've ever pressed the button for a morphine drip in a hospital, you've had heroin. So just relax. You just pipe down with your judgments and let me snort my heroin.

Speaker 1:

I got to figure out a way to make Gouda fun Gouda. I got to get Gouda in the act. Gouda is a cheese. It's a very funny word. On one of the podcast episodes I just confessed about the food I'd eaten and the paradox or the irony that I felt terrific just eating terrible food. There's something about eating terrible food that feels good, yeah. And then the prison section, just like the, maybe a quick little joke about the fluidity, just my confusion about sexuality, like it's just so incredible to me that you can get in prison for murder and just start enjoying pounding guys' asses, like pretty quickly, as a quote unquoteunquote hetero, once you're in jail. I'm not sure what's going on there. You know what I mean. So those are some of the things that starting standees will appreciate if you end up seeing the final act, see how these things pop up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this sort of overarching themes of adolescence I've always loved, and adolescence is where my memory comes back, like I don't remember really anything before the age of 13. And then everything I remember is really just a level of, you know, a level of single-minded focus on girls and just just wanting girls. It's all really I remember. And wanting to hang. It wasn't just girls, it wasn't like I wanted to be in love. You know, I was so wanting love that I would see, you know, kids in high school in love and I was like, oh my God, that looks amazing Because basically, as I mentioned, in boarding school, you could just, if you were in love, you know, and you're 60, both 16, like you want to bone probably, yes, six, seven times a day, and some of them were managing to do it, you know, all over campus and I I never had that in high school and it was a, it was a bummer. I had to wait until, like really, sophomore year of college before that came about, but it was like I pined for that about, but it was like I pined for that.

Speaker 1:

I'm digressing, but you know there's a larger thing here about boys. You know there's a lot of research about boys and boys are having raised one and seeing all the other boys. You know this sort of tough guy boy thing is so wrong. You know they're just these sensitive little souls. I don't know. I think something happens at puberty. What's up, dude? But a prepubescent boy is very, very wimpy. Another thing yeah, my son's just so. He's so open and okay with admitting that he's scared. I couldn't admit I was scared when I was younger. Are you kidding?

Speaker 1:

I think there's a joke about, you know, sexuality. Just everyone confused. You know, I don't think people should get sex changes at a young age. I just think you're so confused at that age. I mean, my daughter in fourth grade said she was a lesbian. Now she's not. Of course, labels are for jars, not people. You people, you know. I mean, if I was raised now, I remember, you know, stick a finger up your ass, beating off when you're 16. I do that in the in the early 90s. I don't think anything of it now. I'd wonder if I was supposed to be a woman, probably. I hope my son doesn't ask me if I've ever stuck my finger up my ass next time we're watching golf.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I hope you liked that. One more, arthur. I hope you weren't bored by that. I hope you thought it was better man Now. I appreciate your directness, your honesty and I thank you for that feedback. So yeah, wind in the Sails, I thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1:

We're keeping things tight. Ted Talks are supposed to be 13 minutes. I'm a little over that. That's a good number here. Tighten things up. You've got things to do. If you enjoyed this episode, you can support this podcast by sharing it, texting it to a friend, you can hit the subscribe and the like button. You know, just do those things and if you're feeling it, go ahead and leave a comment or send me a text, or send me an email at startingstanduppod at gmail and say that was a shitty episode. I was bored out of my skull. You can do better. I like being lashed. Hey, we'll see you next week. Um, it's a big one. I'm gonna get up on stage. I don't know, I'll probably. Yeah, I guess I'll have to do it wednesday night. So that'll be one of those episodes where I come back and I record right after. That'll be fun. All right, all the best, have an incredible week and we'll see you then. Bye, thank you.