Where the hell are we?

Waking up in freezing temperatures is a bit like waking up hungover. You come-to in a heavy lidded, semi-conscious fog where every flick of the eye drags with it a blurry tracer of the room. You’re not quite sure where you are or how you got there. Flashes of the previous night eventually filter in and form a rough timeline of events. Only after recognizing the crystalline glitter of a frosted windshield did I slowly begin to piece things together. We had left Portland and ended up in Concord, New Hampshire.

Shifting uncomfortably in cocoon-like sleeping bags, our wool-capped heads and bearded faces were the only exposed bits. If anyone looked in the window, they’d think they were witnessing the pupa stage of hipster metamorphosis. You’d think having a beard would help with the cold, but it makes it worse. Puffs of steamy breath hang in viscous clouds above your face, leaving your mouth a soggy mess. It’s like receiving a nighttime visit from a sexually deviant ghost.

Mistakes were made

Owing to our flat-out lack of craftsmanship, sleeping outside probably would’ve been warmer than sleeping in the van. We spent days researching the best methods for insulation. We spent weeks studying the pros and cons of foam-board and fibrous systems. We spent months measuring, cutting out, and affixing insulation to the floor, ceiling, and individual wall panels.

As we locked the last panel into place, it was clear the insulation was an unmitigated failure. If we had done nothing, it would have been better. We somehow managed to create reverse insulation where outside temperature is sucked in and intensified. When it’s hot, the van is blistering. When it’s cold, the van is arctic.

Even homeless people sleep better than we do. When temperatures plunge beneath freezing, they stay in churches and shelters that provide warm beds. Not us. We stay in a frosty cardboard box that cost a lot, so homeless people manage money better than we do, too.

When people die outside, it’s sad. If a homeless person dies of hypothermia, people lament “Man, he got a sad lot in life. It’s terrible he didn’t get the help he needed”. But if you freeze to death in your own car, people think “Man, this guy was a friggin idiot”, and your family has to pretend you weren’t a total moron at the funeral.

If we freeze to death, we only hope that our bodies and those of our frozen homeless brethren will be put to good use; perhaps like Mt. Everest where frozen corpses serve as guideposts. “Coffee shop? Sure, walk North past Toothless Thomas, then bang a left at the Dipshit Dans and Starbucks will be on the corner between Captain Crumbjacket and Señor Catscratch”.

Time to warm up

It isn’t all bad; cold weather helps immensely in achieving weight loss goals. You can lose up to 20 pounds a week once your frozen limbs are hacked off. Why spend money on a gym membership when you can do Body by Frostbite for free? Step aside, Planet Fitness, there’s a new kid in town.

It’s amazing how quickly people find silver linings for situations they’ll never be in. Whenever we discuss how cold the van is, someone will inevitably say “that’s not so bad, at least you can burn more calories”. Yeah, because we’re so damn cold the muscles violently contract to create heat. It’s not ideal or voluntary. It’s like going up to someone who lost their legs and saying “walking with crutches isn’t so bad, you can build your upper body”.

We usually practice sets in the van to prepare for shows, but that night it was so cold we had trouble remembering our jokes. Even if we had remembered, jokes tend to lose their punch when delivered with quivering breath and chattering teeth.

We decided to go into the venue well before the mic was to start, just for the warmth. We opened the doors to a packed house and were pumped! It’s rare for regular audience (non-comics) to attend, or in this case fill the room. The whole reason we do mics is to practice for shows with a ‘real' audience, so when the opportunity presents itself, we jump on it. Thawing out at the bar, we asked around and were told the huge crowd was there for trivia night.

The mic immediately followed trivia and we held out hope thinking folks would stay and hang around for the show. How foolish. No sooner had the winning team been announced than the crowd dispersed as if a canister of tear gas exploded.

Sudden promotion

It was mildly depressing seeing the huge crowd vanish, but we had played small rooms before and figured we’d shoot the shit with other comics before the show. When we didn't spot any figures hunched over notebooks or mouthing jokes, we began to get nervous. As the ever-dwindling crowd continued their march out the door, panic slowly crept in. “There’s no way we’re the only comics here” we murmured halfheartedly, trying to allay our fear.

By gametime neither the host nor any comics at all showed up. In the most spectacular promotion of our young careers, we had gone from mic’ers to host to headliners in an instant.

The space we had to perform in was, to put delicately, bad. We were tucked in the far corner of the room, sandwiched between a piano and dart board. No stage, no lighting. The guy who had MC’ed trivia came over and handed us one of those old-timey microphones that Elvis used and basically told us to let ‘er rip. So with no context, no setup, and no explanation, it was time to start telling jokes.

The patrons couldn’t have been less interested. One guy at the bar clunked down his prehistoric laptop and began “making trades” despite the market having been closed for five hours.

A couple sitting front and center (or middle and diagonal) tapped their toes impatiently as we performed - apparently we were interrupting their romantic game of darts. Three older gentlemen sat in the far back of the room, mere specks on the horizon. Lastly, a small band of drunk regulars sat at the bar facing the opposite wall.

There were perhaps 10 people all told when Dan launched into his set. He chatted with the audience to warm them up, then hit them with jokes. Even though most didn’t want to hear comedy and some even talked through the set, Dan didn’t allow the audience to break him. He stayed in bits and ran material. It wasn’t until the end that he comically but earnestly dressed the audience down - which basically means chiding the audience for being rude or lame.

We saw a comic give a dressing down at a mic in NYC.  Seeing the sparsely occupied room of comics, this dude went in hard - saying something like “Man, fuck this. I hate this so much. I hope all of you fucking die. What are we even doing here? I don’t know what happened to me. I used to be so funny. Now I fuckin waste my time at these things and it sucks the life outta me” For comics, it’s hilarious. When someone is utterly exasperated and says real shit, it resonates because we’ve all been there. We’ve waited hours upon hours for our turn to perform, only to play an empty or disinterested room.

When you’re in a room full of people with shared experience, dressing down is hilarious because it’s relatable. But when you’re in an empty bar in small town New Hampshire, it’s jarring. When Dan hit the room with “I hope you all die in the most horrific way, hopefully a barn fire” you could feel the energy shift from indifference to anger. With that, Dan took leave and passed me the torch.

Gauging the room, I decided the best course of action was to hit them with local jokes (mocking Concord’s pronunciation, talking about ‘wicked’ vs. ‘really’, etc). If I had launched into material without connecting to the audience, it would’ve gone over like a mid-BJ fart. The crowd was with me for the Concord-specific jokes, but began to stray once the usual set began. I didn’t bring the house down, but learned for next time that if something is working, stick with it.

The cool thing about standup is even if you eat shit (and we did), you can potentially brighten at least one person’s day. After the ‘show’, a guy in his mid-50’s excitedly came up and started talking. He thanked us for coming out, saying it was the best comedy night they’d had in a long time. He began listing the comedy podcasts he listened to and naming the comedians he loved, and it was a great chat. Even though we were bummed about our performances and were ready to jump off a bridge, this guy had a great night. Small moments like that turn what would otherwise be soul-crushing experiences into worthwhile and reaffirming experiences.

The next morning we returned to Philly. Within the first three hours of the drive, the temperature increased 15 degrees. We were never so happy to get back to temperatures in the 40’s. We decompressed for a week or two in Philly before heading back on the road to Baltimore.