The Comedy Tribune

I hope this doesn’t come across as bitter or melodramatic:

This putrid world has abandoned me and my heart is a maelstrom of untamed despair.

The sun has risen on my last day of year 40. As a mature elder statesman in comedy, I’d much rather be jotting down the parallels between getting a game of pick-up baseball together and organizing a bukkake, or musing about which Gremlin is the most fuckable (for the record it’s George from Gremlins 2), but I need to get this off my chest before the angina robs me of the power to type furiously:

Nothing you do in Canadian comedy matters one single goddamn bit so you might as well express yourself and have fun. This is something I wish I’d absorbed when I first started. You could steel chair the Just For Laughs goblin with a Yuk Yuk’s sign and use his limp corpse to sodomize the Absolute Comedy platypus and no one who can affect your career will give an Andre Arruda-sized shit about it (RIP). Whether I’ve spoken truth to power, offended vengeful tyrants of the scene or crossed gatekeepers, guess what- I still clear eight grand.

But I didn’t get to this stoic point that borders on mania overnight.

I originally got into this rigamarole called cromedy- sorry, “comedy” (my backspace button is broken) because it seemed like a fun way to make a living. As a comedian in my 20s, I chased my dreams (“I’m gonna be on Saturday Night Live!”). My 30s, pursued opportunities (“Better get my Halifax festival showcase together”). Then at 40, I decided I should focus on certainties (“Time to dump all my radio royalty money into a TFSA or I will be a burden to my family until my demise”*). I can only imagine what one’s 50s bring. Perhaps negotiating regrets; untying the tangled mess of extension cords behind the TV of life (“I should’ve left Canada in 2009 but was too afraid”)? And to make matters worse, the TV is playing one of those Crave stand-up specials.

It was an awful feeling, letting dreams die. After 22 years of slugging it out in Canadian show business, nothing had taken me to that next strata and I inadvertently became a genocidal despot, laying waste to entire civilizations of ambition. Old headshots, TV pitches and press kits that got me nowhere littered the earth; the detritus of vain attempts to grasp a better life. There’s a shame attached to each sliver of failure: every abandoned podcast, dissolved sketch troupe or marooned four pages of spec script - each a singular whisper that I was a fool for even trying. I suppose these failures piled up in my conscience, forming a psychological effigy of embarrassment that obstructs the mind’s door to risk; a door sealed tight by a vacuum of reward.

Now I’m writing this because when I turned 40, I started to worry. And not just like, “Oops, I left the baby on the hot stove-worried”. I mean “my prom date just boofed a 2L of Diet Pepsi and I’m out of Mentos-worried”. At my age and earning rate, owning a home anywhere besides the bad part of Bahrain or a 22 Minutes writer’s pool shed seemed unattainable. I wanted more for myself. I had tried really hard. But I was tired. For my 40th birthday I ate chicken wings with five other guys, then went home and watched my gums recede in the mirror until my sciatica acted up.

I contemplated getting a human job. Maybe work at a Soft Moc and put a bullet in the dream’s brain by offering consumers the best 80-dollar slippers that turn to Portuguese kindling the second they come in contact with floor. Why hang on? Sure, some comics strike oil in the back nine of their careers. There’s that cartoon of the guy who stopped digging into the earth just short of discovering a big ol’ diamond. But they never show you the cartoon of the guy digging deeper and deeper until he reaches the molten core of the planet, left to gaze at a delusional man in the magma’s reflection (someone ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson if magma reflects and while you’re at it, slip in something about how his head looks like a whole-ass cheesecake). I had so much fear of becoming the magma reflection guy.

When I started out at 19, I would see 40-somethings signing up for open mics and think, “Buddy, shouldn’t you be at home teaching your kid fractions or some shit?” I was so confident I’d have a water slide that took me from my bedroom to the kitchen and a robot made of gold that felched me at the press of a button by the time I was 40. Now here I am. At the cusp of 41. Hitting open mics. No child to teach fractions to, let alone a Felchbot 4000. Ever notice how when someone starts doing comedy when they’re already old it’s an endearing novelty (I dunno, maybe ‘cause having a pension and taking stage time away from young petrified outcasts is cute in a Pol Pot kinda way?), but if a comic starts young and just gets old and never catches a break it’s… how do I put this… the most revolting thing mankind has laid eyes on since Jon Voigt getting regurgitated by an anaconda?

The prospect of relinquishing the stage is a seductive proposal. As comics, we train our minds to constantly re-assess our performance in order to optimize our odds of survival. If you don’t alter your set, you die. Hitting 40, I felt like I was dying on a life scale. Even wanted to die a bit. My performance assessment informed me that the Canadian entertainment system doesn’t have enough slots available to carry generations of talent through their twilight years; certainly not when its M.O. is to taxidermy the still-warm carcasses of relatively successful Canadian properties with nepo-babies and make them limp through primetime with writing that couldn’t crack up a hyena on laughing gas who’s being tickled by a rubber chicken wearing Groucho Marx glasses (also the hyena has a giggling disease).

For a year, I woke up to a game of Quadragenarian 20 Questions: “Did I not work hard enough? Did I do too many drugs? Did I just not get a good roll of the dice? Did I piss too many people off? Should I have invited more festival bookers to hot wings and circle jerk night with the fellas?” I hadn’t even taken the time to pour a mickey of Blue Curaçao into my coffee and I was beating myself up for not tweeting about how equal parts hilarious and brave Run the Burbs was (RIP)! I was so disappointed with where I was in my professional life that my worries ushered in a profound sadness and I began scouring subreddits for ways to die painlessly. When an industry tells you ‘no’ repeatedly, you can become conditioned to say ‘no’ to your everyday creativity. Gone unchecked, that can go as for as saying ‘no’ to your desire to exist.

I count myself fortunate that I had the wherewithal to catch myself and urge anyone else experiencing ideation to seek professional help and invite love into your midst wherever you can get it. I started therapy and did all the things they tell you to do to improve your mental health, but I couldn’t shake the defeatism. Those who genuinely love me -like my family, (both immediate and juggalo) and my opioid customers- pleaded with me to shift my perspective. But to the toxically rational mind, asking someone to just shift their perspective sounds a lot like “Hey! Be delusional!” This is my perspective we’re talking about here, not a tectonic plate that’s controlled by the Jews - you can’t just “shift” it. The armchair psychology coming at me from the Perspective Police was maddening: “But Hunter (lolz, ‘butt-hunter’), you’re not a dismal failed pariah - try being a HAPPY dismal failed pariah!” Thanks Kant, but you’re being a real Kiwi Antelope Next Tuesday.

Nevertheless, like a hand-job from a narcoleptic, after a long time eventually it came: perspective. Sometimes, you gotta ride out that shit-spell and learn from merely putting one day in front of the other that you don’t want to die; in fact, performing and excelling in whichever strata you reside can be enough to keep you striving to hit the next. I woke up today and I didn’t have to put my perspective in a figure-four leg-lock to see the bright side, which is, “goddammit, I’m still doing this thing 22 years later”. If someone told me they’d been self-employed as an emu doula for over two decades, I’d tell them they have a lot to be proud of. And I’d ask them what emu cloaca smells like (I’m guessing Rob Bebenek’s cooking).

Maybe you’re 40 or nearing it and you’re still doing this thing called comedyyyyyy (great, now the Y key is stuck). That’s an odds-defying triumph. I urge you to cherish that, because results like that are like overcoming gravity. So you’ve got big holes in your resume? Stick your head and arms through ‘em and wear it like a shirt that has “I AIN’T DEAD YET, MOTHERFUCKERS” plastered across the front. Take every small victory as a trophy: whether your name is on a Boston Pizza roadside marquee, or on a show print-out above a urinal next to the one about how much human trafficking comes through this Esso station, that’s a win! The totality of your comedic trajectory isn’t made up of good or bad moments, but is rather a nebula of human experience unique to you and devoid of judgment - if you’ll allow yourself that kindness (you buying any of this shit?).

The difference between a valiant story and a pathetic one often lies in its ending, and I think that in this business, our stories only become pathetic if we stop trying (or switch to improv). If you fight to earn your way through life by telling jokes and eventually get rich, hey, pat yourself on the back or get your Felchbot to do it. Conversely, if you keep banging your head against the wall until you croak an unfulfilled, concussed mess, sure, that’s a story that could make a footless cobbler cry - but the head-banging IS the diamond from the cartoon. For the love of Muhammad (whom I love so much I have paintings of him all over my house), remember that it’s fun -more fun than a barrel of oiled-up spastics- to get to perform jokes for people.

I guess my dream has shifted: I’m looking forward to being the most creative artist I can be throughout my 40s and beyond, regardless of who does or doesn’t come calling. I plan to take risks. Explore my mind. Explore the audience’s minds. Laugh with you. No matter your age, try that joke. Post that clip. Overextend yourself. Make that snuff film (but be mindful of representation). In Canada, your performance doesn’t matter, so find purpose in expressing yourself, because investing your self-worth in an industry that made three seasons of The Beaverton is like trying to find artistic validation from the U of T bucket-shitter: you’re barking up the wrong pablum factory.

As the bony finger of death draws nearer, I let it remind me that one day, I’ll take that dirt nap and I’d rather die laughing and making a few bucks at it than lamenting what could have been. I was never gonna write on Kim’s Convenience anyway! Speaking of, my favourite kind of bravery is when you expose a problematic TV show after it’s been canceled and you’ve already cashed all the cheques.

*thank christ for Ben Miner at Sirius XM Comedy Club and the team at Raw Dog Radio on Sirius XM.

Hunter Collins is an oozing mess who sleeps in a tattered suitcase full of packing peanuts.

Hunter Collins: @huntercomedy