@fatpieceofcrap

ronbabcock:

TODAY IS MY 8-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF DOING STANDUP.

Well, somewhere around today. Guys, please stop clapping. I’m not successful yet, so every anniversary now is just kinda sad.

When I started in Phoenix, I was in a comedy duo with my best friend Ryan. We would tell one-liners and then manically play instruments after each punchline. For some reason, the top club in town took a shine to us. I don’t know if they spotted talent or more likely our eager desperation, but they booked us to open for a weekend.

For a guy who started losing his hair at the age of 20, I needed this. And although my hair loss was tempered by my youthful acne, I wasn’t comfortable hitting on girls. Standup gave me some much-needed confidence.

There we are, first show Friday night in front of a sold out crowd of 550 people. Ryan was dressed in a double-breasted suit that looked like he stole it off a dead car salesman. I had this brown and green striped number that was just terrible (both outfits fortunately not pictured).

Here was a slice of our act.

RYAN: When you ask a man if he’s gay, is that a query?

(I bang my drum once.)

RON: And does he give a straight answer? 

(Both manically play our instruments.)

We were killing.

This was during the 2004 Olympics in Athens, so we launched into our bit about what the Olympics would be like if all the athletes were high. Some pretty high brow shit guys, try and keep up. Ryan would ‘take a hit’ and throw an imaginary javelin and watch it fly through the air. Then all of a sudden, I would hit myself in the forehead with the mic. You know, because the javelin went through… ugh, terrible. The audience ate it up. 

But this time, I had the unfortunate accuracy of hitting the very large zit that sat squarely in the middle of my forehead.

The word pop doesn’t do justice to what happened. Neither does burst. Gush? Hmmm, let’s see. “A torrent of bodily fluids gushed out of my head.” Yeah that about nails it. This was no normal zit. This was one of those under the skin tumors that you only pop if you’re home alone with a half hour of down time. It was one of those zits where you actually have the thought, “What if this doesn’t stop? What if it just keeps coming out?”

It was like Gallagher walked out onto my forehead and smashed my watermelon zit. 

The laughter immediately stopped. 

And the worst part — I had no idea. I was so full of adrenaline from performing in front of a sold out crowd that I was impervious to pain. Ryan looked at me with the same face any of you would have if your best friend was unknowingly bleeding while miming a dick joke with an imaginary javelin (your basic terror face).

I looked back at him and thought, “So the javelin joke didn’t work, no big deal. Let’s just do the high diving bit.”

Get it, high diving? High diving? Yeah that bit bombed too.

The trouble is I have this habit of when a bit is bombing, I commit to it even harder. It stems from my belief that if I can become a good enough comic, I can turn any audience around. So there I was standing on a chair fucking committing to being a high (get it?) diver while blood and puss gushed out of my head like a Texas geyser. 

As soon as we got backstage, Ryan asked if I was ok.

I said, “Yeah. They got weird halfway through but whatever.”

“No Ron, you’re bleeding.”

I touched my face. My palm was covered in blood. It looked like I had the mark of Sauron. 

The worst part was coming back at the end of the night to thank everyone for coming. Usually this was fun because on the way out, people would pat you on the back and tell you how funny you were. But this time a group of old women rushed over to me and said, “Honey, are you okay?”

This was all embarrassing but I know it will never happen again, because at the age of 32, I have finally gotten rid of my acne.

Pretty much.