People often ask, "What's it like being a stand-up comedian?" This is like asking someone with a compulsive disorder, "What's it like washing your hands 93 times a day?" Like comedy, it may feel wonderful as you lather up, but in the end all you have is chapped skin and a deep sense of foreboding. I can tell you this: Stand-up is not glamorous. People are used to seeing celebrities on the red carpet, lip gloss poppin' like a backup dancer in a
Gucci Mane video. They are less accustomed to seeing celebrities in line at Starbucks with a murderous cowlick, or stumbling through the Detroit airport with a four-alarm hangover, moaning like a zombie on the hunt for brains.
Yet this is what life on the road is like: inedible room service, inoperable gym equipment, banshee infants braying next door, an interminable parade of fart-noising Morning Zoos. It is not for the faint of heart, or for those who don't find fart noises hilarious.