DEAD END COMEDY
Happy Monday, folx! I’ve spent the weekend in New Orleans in my capacities of Comedy Wife and Photography Wife. Kechi was booked to photograph and perform on the first-ever Toledano Street Comedy Festival put on by Sports Drink. I’ve been to a few comedy festivals in my time, both here in New Orleans, and in Austin, and I can honestly say this was my favorite. For one thing, it was localized. It involved the businesses located on or very near the intersection of Toledano and Magazine Streets in the Garden District. No need to drive across town. The entire time, we were nearby restaurants, bars, bakeries, shops, and even a grocery store. I'm sharing some photos with this post, but I don't have a lot because that's Kechi's department.
In my (relatively limited) experience of comedy festivals, book festivals, and science fiction/comic conventions, I find that an undue focus on “growth.” Is the biggest problem. Comedy festivals especially are always looking to add venues and broaden their footprint in their host cities, and much of the time, they spread themselves too thin too soon, and the details that contribute to success begin to be overlooked. Now that Kechi and I are moving to Chicago, I don’t know how often we’ll make it back to Toledano Street Festival, but I hope we do, and I hope Andrew Stephens and his crew never lose sight of what makes this festival stand out.
These days, every trip to New Orleans feels like a goodbye, which makes sense, as very soon I’ll be closing the book on an extended chapter of my life. I wouldn’t be who I am without the music, culture, food, and people of New Orleans. I wouldn’t be who I am without New Orleans comedy. This weekend, I got to watch national headliners like Shane Torres, Tom Thakkar, Abby Govind, and David Gborie. I never saw anyone who wasn’t funny, but for me, Gborie stood out the most. I first became aware of him years and years ago when we were both on Comedy Beast, way back when Andrew Polk and Cyrus Cooper were still producing and hosting that show. He was stand-out funny then, and I always enjoy seeing people I watched or shared a stage with grow their chops and their careers. These days, Gborie is “the voice of comedy central.” He does some voice acting, and he hosts a popular podcast, My Momma Told me along with another favorite of mine, Langston Kerman.
His performances this weekend struck me the most because it’s fascinating to watch someone who is already so funny get funnier. He’s constantly working, sharpening his tools, and he has distilled his perspective so well that he’s undeniable, inimitable. He takes aim at social issues like immigration, cultural assimilation, and the way American society and culture have changed over the years from an angle so specific that it makes what he’s saying broadly relatable and appealing. I think this makes such an impression on me because while I never spent enough time and energy on comedy to do that for my own act, that process of refinement is what I’ve been working on in my writing for—I’ll say the past twenty years, but it’s been longer. It’s just that selling my first story was the first real confirmation that writing was something I might be able to do for a living. Gborie is also fat and dark-skinned like me, so while I don’t know the guy, I feel like every win of his is a win for the team.
This weekend’s experience was also vital because I’m working on a novel set in the comedy scene. I knew I would have a festival in the book because it would give me an opportunity to set comedy and ghosts against each other in a familiar setting, using characters based on comics, family, and friends I know well. I began my first novel as something quick I could write well and get out to market while I focused on other work that mattered to me more, but that took over my life. When I started doing standup, my intention was never to hit it big. I just wanted to do something I enjoyed and shed the self-consciousness and will toward invisibility that had plagued me all my life. Being able to combine these two passions is supremely important to me—especially now that we’ve been through the mass death of the global pandemic and the world has been plunged into an unprecedented degree of chaos and uncertainty now that a second Trump regime has claimed the levers of power.
When I wrote The Ballad of Perilous Graves, I wanted to make sure it was the best it could possibly be. If some fatal misfortune befell me all of the sudden, I wanted to be certain that if that novel was my only chance to make a statement with my work, that I had created one I believed in and was proud of. It still amazes me that that I’ve been given a second, a third chance at this, the time and space to refine my approach. All that is to say that I love New Orleans, and I love the New Orleans comedy scene at least as much as I do the literary one. I’m glad I’ve had a chance to experience major celebrations in both this season, and that Kechi was involved in both!