MMA

As much as I work to live the life of a good pacifist a.k.a “pu$$y” a.k.a “environmentalist” (to quote "Thank You For Smoking"), there’s a part of me that will always nurture an irrational love of contact sports. Friends and family know better than to call me on Sundays in the fall, and I watch late-night ESPN classic reruns of old boxing matches with a glee normally reserved for the arrival of warm brownies and the conjuring of a clever facebook status.

Needless to say, mixed martial arts holds a special place in my heart. Something about watching a large, borderline psychotic beast of a man get kicked in the head by another large, borderline psychotic beast of a man… it’s rarely poetry in motion, but the world definitely does seem a little more right after every fight. Ever the hypocrite, I personally don’t subscribe to violence as a means or an end. Used to train for boxing back in college; the idea of wailing on the body of another mother’s child as hard as I can or giving somebody else a chance to wail on my mama’s baby makes me want to throw up. That being said, if two numbskulls voluntarily climb into a ring and agree to wail on each other as hard as they can for no other reason than pride, money and the chance to sleep with shallow indiscriminate women… well that’s the kind of entertainment that made America great.

I love me some UFC. I don’t even know who any of the fighters are, except maybe Kimbo Slice (little over-hyped), Randy Couture (little over-old), Ken Shamrock (also over-old, and pretty much always gets his ass beat but has the crowd on his side anyway because he used to be on WWF) and that big dude from A-Team (don’t tell me his name, I can’t spare the neurons). Still doesn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of the fights. Fighting’s not like my other passion, classical music; you don’t need much background or time in the conservatory to enjoy a good arm bar or roundhouse kick.

My boy G. always orders the fights on pay-per-view and organizes has these awesome fight parties at his apartment. Girls show up and then promptly wonder why they showed up. Guys show up and don’t care what the girls are annoyed about because we’re all to busy acting like we’re not closing in on 30 and should be too grown for this stuff by now. Whatever maturity was left in us gets weeded out by the impromptu re-enactment that invariably takes place in G.’s garage immediately after the fight, followed by no less than twelve rounds of beer pong, followed by forty-minutes of wondering where all the girls went and why nobody got any phone numbers tonight.

Sad to say I grew out of UFC earlier this year. Still love seeing how many times somebody can bury his elbow in another guys face before the ref decides that’s enough, but I couldn’t stomach the sight of the loser’s facial expression anymore. That’s the most brutal part of the evening. Not when he’s getting knocked out. That paralyzed look of surprise is always funny. If some part of you doesn’t appreciate the sublime beauty, the bone-crushing irony of someone voluntarily agreeing to a down payment on future brain damage then having the nerve to look surprised when that down payment is due then you’re dead inside, and have been for a long time. The brutal part of mixed martial arts is after the fight is over. When old boy gets up, dazed, and sees Joe Rogan interviewing the OTHER guy. Forget what you’ve seen at the Superbowl, Presidential Elections or the World Cup. You haven’t truly seen devastated disappointment until you’ve seen the face of a man who just lost a televised fist fight.

It doesn’t get much more emotional than to see somebody who worked as hard as he knew how, who literally gave everything he had until he lost consciousness or a third party intervened, only to find out it wasn’t enough. Some nights it’s not even close, even the loser’s mama bet on the other guy. But the last six to ten weeks he’s been telling himself, he’s the best. That he’s coming to the ring to do business. That he’s going to be the victor, and this is but one stop on the road to the championship and his inevitable glory. Never mind the sacrifices, never mind the pain. It’ll all be worth it after tonight, when he raises his hands as the victor. Three weeks from now he’ll have his own flavor of Gatorade and be doing lines of coke off preacher’s wives’ asses. But tonight old boy is not the victor. Tonight he is the forgotten. Now he’s the one who has to be a sportsman, who has to tell Joe Rogan what went wrong and where things went out of control. He has to go back to the quiet, subdued locker room, where everyone tries to put on a happy face while making as little eye contact as possible. He has to find the strength not to let his swollen lip quiver, not to cry like the pu$$ he always feared he was in front of his trainer, all while the other joker with the fantastic elbow smash no one warned him about gets to enjoy being loud, gets to enjoy talking trash about not caring who the next opponent is while “giving glory to God”. He gets to enjoy the pride, he gets to enjoy the money, and he gets to enjoy the chance to sleep with those ever-coveted shallow, indiscriminate women, the ones who make America great.

How does one process losing with that much at stake? It started tearing me up inside to watch, so much so that I couldn’t enjoy the fights, knowing somebody would have to lose. Better to not watch than to watch a loser, better to not play than risking losing like that, right? At least that’s what I thought.

Went out to Vegas a week and a half ago for the World Series of Comedy. Didn’t get my clock cleaned, but I didn’t advance either. Which pretty much left me with the same thing as if I had gotten my clock cleaned: next to nothing. But it turns out next to nothing is still better than nothing. So what did my next to nothing come with? I know where I am in the food chain for starters. I’m “pretty good” with room to get better. “Great” is not as far off as I feared it would be when I first started. Even better, there are avenues for me to further hone my craft, people I can learn from, and people willing to give me opportunities. But more important than the knowledge of where I am in the food chain, more important than the opportunities, perhaps the most important bit of knowledge from my time in Vegas: the clock is ticking for me to make this happen.

Most comics who become headliners and really start to make waves seem to do so between about five and ten years into their career. You can live off doing this for a long time, maybe forever, but “most” of the famous comedians people have heard of appear to have started getting their breaks between five and ten years in. Same with non-famous headliners who can at least live off of comedy without a day job. After 5-10 years, looks like you have to really really bust your hump, create your own breaks to keep your trajectory on the upslope and avoid that tragic comic’s descent; the one that starts with you doing REALLY terrible gigs (comedy & karaoke anyone?) because they’re the only things you can get your hands on, to not getting any gigs at all, to selling drill bits at a Sears, to one day trying out a drill bit on your own forehead, but not before first driving a few countersunk wood screws into your floor manager’s temporal lobe (so much for that “non-violent” thing I was talking about earlier…).

Since high school I’ve been playing it pretty safe in life. Only applying to schools I knew I could get in. Picking a major that would ensure I would always be employable if and when my other pie-in-the-sky ideas didn’t work out. Not changing lanes in traffic jams until twelve other cars have passed me by. Could write a book on not taking chances, but being risk-averse I’d never have the courage to pitch it to any publishers.

I love comedy because it’s one of the only parts of my life where I feel comfortable taking chances. Not only feel comfortable, HAVE to take chances. If you aren’t taking chances and saying slightly messed-up stuff in comedy, chances are you aren’t that funny. Not to anyone but your grandma anyway, who let’s face it, doesn’t really have any idea what you’re talking about or who you are in the first place.

My roommate and I were discussing an old bit I’ve been tweaking earlier this evening. If I do it right there’s a good chance people might still remember my name by the time they get home. If I do it REALLY right, there’s a chance I could get beat up like Ken Shamrock as soon as I get offstage. You already know how I have to do the joke now, don’t you? If you see me in a full-body cast looking slightly sodomized, you’ll know there where Africans in the audience and they did NOT like the joke.

As an aside, heavens-to-betsy I hope I never meet Ken Shamrock. I really hope he doesn’t read or have friends who read. I’m 175 pounds of VERY casually toned muscle; with my luck I’ll be the one guy who CAN’T get him in a submission hold… did I mention I’m an “environmentalist”? I love trees, non-predatory woodland animals, and how lovely my jawbone and ribs look in x-rays from never having been broken before. And yes, I did start this paragraph with the expression “heavens-to-betsy”. Been waiting for two weeks to drop that one, hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

So back to my main point, if comedy thrives on taking chances, how long can an ambitious comic get by without taking risks? How long can a comic limit the risk-taking to the material and not apply that same adventurousness to his or her life? Isn’t it hypocritical not to? Probably. Of all the people I don’t want to have calling me an “environmentalist” every time they see me, “Me”, “Myself” and “I” are all at the top of the list. On top of being super-wordy and slightly obnoxious, they’re the only ones I can’t get to shut up or avoid.

What about losing? You might lose homie. Bad. Might get your emotional nose bloodied pretty good. Might get embarrassed in front of your friends and loved ones. Parents might stop making eye contact with you at Thanksgiving and Christmas. They might not invite you, because no one likes to see poor people on the holidays, especially at their dinner table. Might regret ever leaving your comfort zone homie. Might end up on the street, cooking up drugs under a bridge somewhere, working as a mule for some irascible Panamanians, who are still sore about what went down with Noriega. Might get beat up by some Africans who found the quality of your drugs AND your jokes to be irreconcilably inferior. You don’t want to end up like one of those UFC losers, do you? DO you? …do you??? You stupid stupid bastard… you do, don’t you? Maybe. Maybe the noses with the most character are the ones that have been bloodied a bit. Maybe seeing what I saw in Vegas put the taste of blood in my mouth and I’m hungry for more. Maybe I’ll lose every event I participate in and come to great financial and emotional ruin with some of the moves I’m contemplating. But maybe I won’t.

Only have to hit once, and even if I don’t hit, time at the plate is still better than time in the dugout. Even those MMA losers can take solace in having taken their shot, so they’re not really losers at all. Especially compared to clowns like me, who've spent too many Saturday nights watching. Those guys who fight and lose might not be remembered as the best, they might not be remembered at all. But once upon a time they stepped in the ring and now know where they stand. A bruised body or a bruised ego is a small price to pay for the luxury of not wondering what could’ve been. I started doing stand-up comedy at Soho Tea & Coffee House on December 19, 2005. Will hit the five year mark this December and then the clock starts ticking for real, getting tired of not knowing. Stay tuned…