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Nobody knows exactly what was going through Charlie Sheen's mind Saturday night after he bombed horribly and ugly-ly in Detroit. Nobody knows exactly how that felt to him ... except for every stand-up comic on the planet.
We stand-ups have all been through that experience of bombing horribly and then having to wait impatiently for the next show. You can't get the taste of bombing out of your mouth until you kill again, but a little bit you may feel like you'll never kill again. And maybe you've never killed before.Yup, stand-up comics have been through that more times than we care to remember.* You get booked for a show. You get excited for that show. You feel strong and good. And then you step out onstage and everything goes tits up.** The next day you walk around in a daze. Not really taking anything in. Many thousands of dollars have been wasted on movies "watched" by comics the day after bombing. The lights flicker and the sounds play but nothing goes into your brain. All you can think is, "How did that happen?" and "What could I have done differently?" And my personal favorite, "Whose idea was this???" The "this" being whatever is pissing you off most at the time, but for me the "this" is usually the idea of getting into show business in the first place.
Those hours between the shows unquestionably prove that Einstein was correct in his theory that time is relative. That time between shows is slower than the time it takes to wait for your Mac to stop going all spinning beach ball on you. It is slower than that person in front of you at the BART*** station who is seemingly trying to use the ticket machine to buy a pack of gum. It is slower than the time that you were starved and saw that the bar had a happy hour special on mozzarella sticks during the middle of the Final Four AND EVERYBODY ELSE SEEMED TO BE GETTING THEIR MOZZARELLA STICKS BEFORE YOU. EVEN THOSE PEOPLE WHO CAME IN WAAAAAAAY AFTER YOU.
That time between shows is a beast! It is probably still a beast even if you are Charlie Sheen and have the salve of goddesses and a private plane filled with sycophants.****
But I don't actually blame Charlie Sheen for bombing. He is not a live performer. READ THE REST HERE...
This episode is a classic FNGTAC podcast. It is pretty much the template for why the podcast exists in the first place. It's a freewheeling, off-roading, much encompassing conversation the type of which Kamau and Vernon reguarly had before the podcast began. Today begins with a few Twitter hashtags but doesn't limit itself to something as small as what is on the Internet. And this is probably (Kamau says hopefully.) the one and only FNGTAC mention of one Carlos Estevez AKA Charlie Sheen. Also...