The time I paid to perform in Miami

I don’t think I will return to comedy when things settle into whatever the new world will be. This would mean more if I had not threatened to walk away a dozen times before. A lot of people think me not wanting to return to comedy is some form of giving up. Those people can go fuck themselves. That is the furthest thing from the truth. Nobody loves comedy as much as I do. But the acceptance of Zoom shows and drive-in comedy, where a comic tells jokes to people sitting in their car, comes off as desperate to me. Being back out in the world surrounded by people is something I can’t wrap my head around just yet. 

 I wasn’t ever obsessed with being on stage to the point of sleeping in the back of the comedy club, living down the street from one, or needing to perform every night. When I first started, I would try to get up on stage three to four times in one night. In New York, going on stage that many times in one night was common. But to do that in Los Angeles was unheard of in the early 2000s. At one time in my life, I did carry a microphone everywhere I went, as a reminder to stay focused. I would eventually ditch carrying the mic when it started to become the subject of ridicule by some friends and a talking point on a couple of dates that I went on. 

 When I first started out, I would make money featuring at clubs. A good portion of the people I worked with already knew me before they hired me to feature for them. The feature comic is the guy that comes out after the host and before the person you paid to see. The club’s hope, as well as the crowd’s and headliner’s, is that the show will progressively get better as the night goes on.

 I had a system. I would go to every comedy club website to see who was headlining and then contact the headliner if I knew them to see if I could work with them. If I didn’t know them, then I would reach out to somebody who did that could vouch for me. If that wasn’t an option, I would simply reach out to the club to find out if I could feature.

 Sidebar

“What no one will tell you is that headliners are dicks and assholes for the most part. It’s their show. But what they also won’t tell you is that headliners are fucking divas. Headliners are insecure. For example, some Black headliners will ask for a White comic or somebody of a different ethnicity to open up for them in order to avoid covering the same material. I don’t agree with it, but I get it. Some White headliners don’t want a Black act to go up before them. They especially don’t want a Black male coming to perform in front of them. I can only speak for myself and other Black male comics that I know. When we get a chance to perform at a club, we have to prove we belong in that club. And when we are given the chance to get on that stage, we perform in a way that will make you want to book us or you’ll regret letting us perform before your overpriced mediocre headliner you are so desperate to showcase. I’ve dealt with everything, from a female headliner withholding work that she promised me after she found out that I wouldn’t sleep with her to the story I’m about to share. Back to the blog.”

For the sake of legal issues and not wanting to deal with the backlash, I have to change some of the names in this story. Around 2004, I was working at a DVD quality control company. My job was to make sure DVDs played properly in different DVD players. The highlight of my job was knowing that I was able to see movies before they were released on DVD. Now the downside of the job was having to watch that early release about twenty times over a two- or three-week stretch. I was so sick of watching The Matrix Reloaded that when it finally came to DVD, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. 

A friend at the time was a headliner and touring a lot of the major comedy clubs after his recent success on a TV show comedy competition. He also happened to be managed by a company that owned a huge comedy club franchise. This made it easier for him to work as well. While on the Internet hunting for club dates, I discovered that this friend was going to be headlining a club in Miami. I quickly notified him that I was interested in featuring for him. The earlier I found out, the better. As a featured comic, the comedy club does not pay for your airfare or hotel. They used to cover lodging, but clubs are larger nowadays, and the headliners that they book often don’t fill the rooms, so they end up giving away tickets.

Giving away tickets sounds like a bad business strategy, but the clubs make their money off of food and beverage. It’s rare a comedian can sell enough hard tickets for a club to profit off of. And because clubs have a hard time selling tickets, they have to cut costs in certain areas. One of those cost cutting measures is not paying for the headliner’s host and feature to have a place to sleep for the week. Luckily, at the time this story took place, clubs had not started this practice just yet. But it wouldn’t have mattered with this club. This club had a comedy condo for comics. The comedy condo is a place that’s owned by the club. It’s rare to find a comedy condo that you don’t want to leave. Most of the comedy condos look like shit. That’s where they stick the host, the feature, and sometimes even the headliner. If you’re not a high-ticket selling comic, they will stick you in the comedy condo with the support if they don’t think you’re worth better accommodations.

It was also in my best interest to find out as soon as possible if a headliner was going to allow me to feature for them or not so that I could find an affordable plane ticket that wouldn’t make me taking this gig pointless. 

Sidebar 

“The average featuring comedian gets paid one hundred dollars per show. An average weekend of shows is about six, depending on the headliner and the city you are performing in. So, if I pay three hundred to fly, let’s say to Cleveland, and I am only doing six shows, I’m only making three hundred dollars. And that’s if I don’t have to come out of my pocket to feed myself or pay for my ride to the hotel from the airport and back. Most times I would have to take care of myself, unless I met someone in that city who liked me or felt sorry for me. Back to the blog.”

I asked my headlining friend two months in advance. When I asked him, he said he would look into it. I had never been to Miami, and I was excited to visit. A few weeks went by, and I asked him again as a reminder. He told me he had forgotten but would check on it immediately. Now I make it a rule: I’ll ask you one time and do a follow-up; after that you can go fuck yourself. I broke that rule by asking him again two weeks before the gig, just to let him know I was still interested. When he told me it had slipped his mind again, I just took it as if he didn’t want to work with me and left it alone.

The Tuesday before the shows were scheduled to start, I got a phone call while I was at work from this friend, asking me if I still wanted to feature for him and if I did, it was available to me. I just had to get myself to Miami. 

I was so excited to perform in Miami that I didn’t take time to think about what I was getting myself into. It was Memorial Day weekend. I wasn’t familiar with travel in 2004 to know that this was a hectic time to travel. I also wasn’t familiar with how big of a deal Memorial Day weekend was going to be in Miami. For those of you who are not up to speed, Memorial Day is huge in Miami. It was so huge that people had purchased their tickets a year in advance because they knew how expensive it would be to fly into Miami on Memorial Day weekend. 

I didn’t care, because I didn’t know. My only goal was finding me a ticket so I could go to Miami and perform. I used my usual suspect, Priceline, to find a ticket. I jumped off my DVD station and ran to the computer so I could find me a flight. I typed into the search engine “Miami, Florida” and the dates that I needed a ticket, and Priceline basically told me I could go fuck myself.

To fly into Miami on Memorial Day weekend in 2004 was going to cost me nine hundred ninety-five dollars. That ticket wasn’t in first class or economy plus. Economy plus is where they treat you slightly better in hopes of encouraging you to work harder to fly first class the next time you travel. Hell, for that price, it wasn’t even an aisle seat or a window seat. My goofy ass was going to be sitting in the middle for two legs of a flight. Somebody kill me now. I would rather miss a flight than sit in the middle. I feel like a hitchhiker when I have to sit in the middle seat. 

I felt defeated. I couldn’t afford a nine hundred ninety-five dollar plane ticket. I don’t even think I had nine hundred ninety-five dollar at any time in 2004. I wasn’t going to give up. Not being familiar with the geography of Florida, I decided to search for flights into Fort Lauderdale. The best I could do was a plane ticket leaving LAX and arriving in Fort Lauderdale with two hours to spare before I would have to be on stage for my first show. That ticket cost me six hundred eight-five dollars. I had eight hundred dollars to my name. I bought the ticket. There was no way I was going to call this guy back and tell him I couldn’t afford to buy a ticket. It would have been seen as if I didn’t really want the success I claimed I wanted. Thank God we were doing seven shows. If I played my cards right, I could leave Miami with a whole fifteen dollars.

When I arrived in Florida, the comedy club was nice enough to send a car to come pick me up from Fort Lauderdale, or so I thought it was a nice gesture. I arrived at a hotel that had condos for certain guests. The club owned two of the condos, and I was lucky enough to get one on this trip. 

 Sidebar

“I’ve had to share the comedy condo with the manager of the comedy club before. It was the fucking worse thing ever. Back to the blog” 

I won’t lie; I was extremely nervous. The fan base of the headliner I was featuring for was not the crowd I’m accustomed to performing in front of. This headliner drew an aggressively ghetto crowd. When I say aggressive, I mean you-could-end-up-getting-into-a-confrontation-with-an-audience-member-if-they-don’t-find-you-funny type of aggressive. 

We did a total of seven shows. I didn’t enjoy one show I did, except for the Thursday night show. The rest of the shows could fuck off. The crowds were so rude and disrespectful that I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to do this for the rest of their lives. I wanted to fight every individual in the crowd one by one. Every. Single. One.

The only good that came from my trip to Miami was the sheer coincidence of my college sweetheart, whom I was dating before I moved to Los Angeles, being in town at the same time as me. She was excited to know I was in town. We managed to find each other amongst all of chaos and spent the night together. She made the trip worth it.

When Sunday morning came, I was ready go back home. I just needed to get through the last show so I could get out of Miami. When I stepped off stage, I went directly to the manager of the club so I could get paid. I wanted to get as far away from the city of Miami as fast as I could.  The manager was a young guy who dressed like the son of a mob boss. He handed me my check, told me I was funny, and said that he would love to have me back. Every word that came out of his mouth was a fucking lie. I was terrible the entire week. I wouldn’t have had me back. I thanked him nonetheless. But when I looked down at my check, I thought I was going to have to make the young mob boss sleep with the fishes.

“I thought I was going to get seven hundred for the week?” I asked the manager. The check was for six hundred dollars. “I’m sorry, buddy. We had to charge you for the town car we sent to pick you up,” he said to me. I told him that I didn’t ask for them to send the car to pick me up. “You guys sent the car.” I didn’t realize Miami was so far from Fort Lauderdale. Had I known they were going to charge me, I would have walked to Miami. I had to explain to the guy that I had spent six hundred eighty-five dollars to get to Miami. He told me he had his hands tied.

 I wanted to cry so badly. I did everything I was supposed to do to make sure I could get a cheap ticket and still failed. All I wanted to do was perform. He could see how defeated I felt. He ended up making the check out for six hundred fifty dollars and told me that was the best he could do.

 I accepted the check. There was nothing I could have done. I was a feature comic. Nobody gave a fuck about me. On top of being a feature, I’m Black. They really couldn’t care less about me. I came back to Los Angeles broker than I was when I had left. I didn’t let it discourage me. I was back on stage a few days later.

 So, when I say I may be done with stand-up comedy, and people say, “So you’re giving up?” I tell those people they can go fuck themselves. I’m in no way giving up. I’ve had enough, though. Once the world settles down and things settle in, I’ll decide if I want to spend some money for someone to allow me to live my dream. Fuck Miami.

-EAT

 I write as a form of healing for myself and others. If you enjoyed what you read, “tip the writer” by donating to Venmo or zelle @maronziovance or Cashapp $Gift2MaronzioVance