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I remember when I first made this website. I was about 14, thinking my career as a 14-year-old children's book author would work out, with my breakout novel, "Lefty Crumpet and the Walnut Woods Monster". I wrote a blog post every once in a while and shared my 14-year old opinions with the world. I got so excited for the world to see what I wrote. My entire fanbase of 4 people was very proud of me.
Today the only thing that survives from that era is the name of the main character of the book, "Lefty Crumpet." I kept the name because "Lefty Crumpet" is way more google-able than "Justin Johnson". and google-ability is important for marketing purposes. This is the part of being a comedian that I find tedious: the marketing and promotion. GAHD, it's annoying. It distracts me from writing quality material. I understand why professional comedians have publicists and social media people now. I dunno. Life changes and nothing makes sense. Stop procrastinating and do your laundry.
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I haven't posted in a year and a half. I would like to apologize to my many eager and restless fans for keeping you in limbo. I know enduring my silence is an irksome affair, but hopefully you survived without knowing any intricate, insignificant details of the life of your favorite comedy icon, me.
I'm going to post something every week from now on. Hopefully it's funny. Usually it will be short. Here's this week's message: I've been thinking a lot about Daryl Davis. Daryl Davis is a black man who attends KKK rallies and befriends Klan members. He knows that every person there believes he is inferior because of the color of his skin. He knows that the organization with whose members he is fraternizing is responsible for countless atrocities towards members of his race. He obviously does not agree with what they stand for. Yet he shows up, he exchanges niceties, he shows empathy towards all, regardless of whether they deserve it. He actively seeks understanding, and he changes people's minds, not by yelling at them, but by listening to them. He became one of their own, and when you are in the inner circle, people are more receptive to your ideas. That little bit of diversity is peacefully dismantling hate from the inside out. What Daryl Davis does takes true strength. That is how I aspire to be. He is my hero. To my gargantuan, eager, impressionable fan base, I say this: Try to show empathy towards people you think don't deserve it. Especially on social media. That's it for the week. Let's not be assholes. Then the assholes win :) I performed a 22-minute comedy show today.
I was really excited when I first got the email saying I had a 30 minute slot. That was really intimidating. For the next month and a half I freaked out. I practiced constantly, I changed things around, I added new things, and I created what I thought was a masterpiece. Then they told me that it was actually 25 minutes. I didn't care. I was just happy I had more than five. I rehearsed a 24-minute-45-second comedy show over and over again alone in an empty room with no mic stand and did it perfectly almost every time. Then I got onstage with a weird mic stand in a small theater full of people three minutes later than I planned, and I performed a 22-minute set with a lot of mistakes. I messed up the intro to my first song which requires a lot of context to be funny, I forgot my lines twice, I played the wrong chord or the wrong rhythm a couple times, I had to cut the second-funniest part of the show because of time, I had a LOT of trouble adjusting the weird ass mic stand, and every time I sat down I tried to scoot the chair towards the microphone and it didn't move so I just looked like a nerdy long-haired college weirdo forward-thrusting his butt so hard that the chair had to rock onto two legs. And the whole time in the back of my mind I was thinking about my grandparents and my parents watching the live-stream, seeing me make an ass of myself in real time. I found out that my first two two bits that I expected to get pretty good audience reactions turned out to be just mediocre. They were crude and not much else. They worked with college audiences, who tend to be drawn to shock-factor comedy, but not so much with experienced adults whose comedic styles have become more clever and witty. But I am often my own worst critic. I expected maybe 10 people to be in the audience. There were about 60. The audience was full of my friends, dedicated comedy aficionados whose friends performed before or after me, and people who were volunteering their time to the organization. I expected maybe 3 of my friends to be there. It's far for college students (who don't have cars). But nine of my friends showed up, and a few more told me later that they watched on the live-stream. My closing song was the cleanest one. I didn't think it was the best one, but I put it at the end it because it was slow and had a sentimental feel to it. It turned out to get the best audience reaction of anything I had done. The rest of the performers all seemed to know each other. They were all a family. I was the weird kid sitting in a corner of the empty blue room facing the door playing an ukulele, staring awkwardly at those who entered, and looking away as soon as we made eye contact. And yet after I left the stage, they told me I did a good job. It wasn't perfect. I've got a long way to go before I can do a show perfectly. I have to put in the work. And I'm willing to do that. My expectations were incredibly high and I came up a bit short. But it was a good show. I know what I need to work on. I needed to see myself make mistakes on a stage because it's different up there than it is alone in an empty room. I am happy. And whatever else I do next, I'm probably not gonna crush it. But I'll crush some of it, and those parts will be awesome. II can't figure out how to delete stuff on here, so these are just words
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