Tennis, Anyone?

When people find out that I'm a comedy writer they often ask me, "do you do standup?" No, I don't. The reason: I have self esteem and do not need your love! Also, I live in constant fear of people.

But many other comedy writers are standups. Most are basically writers, who occasionally get up on stage. However, some are real, honest to goodness working standups who decided to see how the other half lives by getting a job.

This often does not go well.

Standup comedians usually don't understand what working at a job means. And they really don't understand what "your joke isn't funny" means. They are shocked when their jokes don't make it in, cause they've never not used their jokes in their entire lives. That's how they've made their living, a one man operation. It doesn't work that way on a TV show.

Anyway, many years ago I was working on a show. The 3rd season was starting up and we hired a few new writers to bring some "freshness" to the table. One of the new writers was a standup named Kirk.

A nice guy. Very funny. Had been doing standup and only standup for a long time.

I remember the third day in, me, Kirk, and another guy were working on a bit together. The other guy asked me what I thought Morty would think of the bit. I explained how Morty was, what he liked, and how he operated. About 5 minutes into this conversation, Kirk looks at me and goes "who the hell is Morty?"

"Um, Morty is the Executive Producer, he runs the show".

He didn't know who his boss was. Again, standups are not used to having a boss. Well, okay...

The next day we were driving back from lunch. Kirk turns to me and says "What time do you think we'll be getting out of here today?"

I said the usual time, probably 7 or 8. He said, "Hmmm, you think I could get out at 2?"

I said, "I don't know, if it's important or something. What do you need to do?"

Kirk: "I have a really important tennis match at 2:30".

He wasn't kidding. A week later, Kirk got fired. And today, this was announced. 

I wish him luck, and hope this doesn't get in the way of his tennis.