Credit card fraud is a ten-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Like banking, it involves creating money out of the ether. It’s an unforgivable crime carried out by pimply dweebs who should, if our social contract is going to hold together for another year, probably be dispatched by firing squad. It’s a terrible thing, even in theory. No matter how broke your ass gets in 2012, you should never, ever even think about doing it.
If you work in a customer-service position, particularly in the bowels of retail or in a boiler-room call center, you should not keep personal records on people who treat you like shit while giving you their most personal financial information. And you definitely shouldn’t use their credit card information to buy stuff for yourself. And if you do that, you should get it shipped to your own residence (as opposed to, say, an abandoned building in a far-flung part of town), so it’s easy for the cops to bring you to justice. If you were to order, say, two-dozen butt-plugs and get them shipped to the offender’s address, that would also be really not cool.
If your neighbors give you any static for cranking UGK at 3:00 AM, you should not, under any circumstances, sift through their mail. You would probably find “pre-approved” credit card applications. And that would make it way too easy for you to fill them out, intercept the cards when they arrive, and use them for bar tabs, pay-at-the-pump gas, or other hard-to-trace purchases. If you do this, please, keep using the same card for as long as it takes the cops to find you. You are scum, and scum should be punished.
If you work in a bar, and some obnoxious tippler accidentally leaves his card in your care, you should alert the proper authorities. You should not use his card to pay for a one-hitter and a fresh tattoo on Venice Beach. If you do try to use it, use it at a grocery store – they usually ask for ID, and that’ll be the end of your little game.
Most cardholders are insured up the nose against fraud, and they’ll probably get their money back. But still, it’s just so immature. Credit card fraud: Don’t even think about it.
I don’t know if a stand-up comedian has ever committed suicide on stage. If it’s never happened, you can color me surprised.
Unlike most other artforms, stand-up comedy has almost no prodigies. Pick any “good” comedian – that person had to suck for years, and still turfs out on occasion. Think fortune and fame will save you? Seinfeld still bombs. As you launch your stand-up avocation, you’re going to eat shit. A lot.
You’re going to perform at open mic nights in basements and bowling alleys, to audiences consisting exclusively of other comedians. Most comedians are decent, respectful people who appreciate and share your steep difficulties, but you’ll also find scene-jockey jackasses who will help you fail to feel better about themselves. You’ll do shows in dive bars full of spiteful Bukowski characters who think you’re ugly, a fag or worse.
Even when you start getting booked, you’ll go on late, or on a bad night, or after some asshole has cracked that one rape joke that sucked the mirth out of the room. Some lisping frat spud will exclaim, “you’re not funny,” and as the crowd turns on him, it will turn away from you, leaving your set totaled and forgotten. As soon as it’s over, you’ll think of a dozen brilliant ways you could have annihilated the guy, but it’s over and everyone avoids eye contact.
It’s a painful avenue of expression. To love it is to hate it. I’d say it’s a “calling,” but I don’t believe in a god, sadistic or otherwise, who’d have anything to do with it.
If you taped your show, you can go home, analyze it down to the molecules, and calibrate for next time. As you’re bombing, that’s not going to help – thinking about your failure only speeds up the bombing whirlpool of death. The worse you’re doing, the less confidence you have, and the quicker the crowd will abandon you. The only way to stop it is to dissociate from it, and that’s agonizingly hard to do. Adults spend years on mountaintops trying to get a grip on that sort of wu wei.
Since you’re doing comedy, it’s safe to assume you’re, deep down, a painfully insecure soul with a bright red misanthropic streak. If that’s the case, you’ll project a lot of your hangups onto your fellow comedians and whatever civilians happen to show, and your crowd will thus strike you as cliquish and distrustful, and you’ll feel even more like one against the void. Whelp, you can always lash out. It’s not going to help, but do what you feel. This too can be elevated.
Or do something counterintuitive. Turn on the waterworks. Take a five-minute nap. Auction off the balance of your stage time. If what you’re doing isn’t working, do anything else. The stakes aren’t that high. We all die at the end. Every good show is about the same. Every bad show is different, and reveals a different, previously unexplored facet of your character. From a psychological standpoint, bombing is more interesting. Acknowledge the suffering and direct yourself gently back to the task at hand.
Alternately, you can hate yourself and give up. Doing standup is totally hack anyway.
