Comedy writer and Cracked video producer Teresa Lee asked some of her favorite comedian friends to describe their most embarrassing or gut-wrenching comedy experiences.
These stories are not for the comedy faint of heart. There are some doozies, everything from dressing up in a bee outfit for the "Today Show," to bombing at the NYC Beard and Mustache Championship, to literally shitting your pants on stage.
So set your face to cringe, check out a few stories and then go to Splitsider for the full story.
“My company’s Christmas party culminated with a private burlesque show at The Slipper Room in downtown New York. Once the show began, I started bragging to the CEO about how I could murder this room if they put me up. (Note that at this point, we had all been drinking and drugging for about five hours.) Sure enough, he convinced them to let me perform. I got three sentences into my first joke when almost everyone in the room started heckling me. There were about 150 people there. This eventually devolved into me repeatedly accusing them of being cokeheads and ‘big time pieces of shit.’ This went on for about 15 minutes before I took myself off stage. Surprisingly enough, this would not end up being the reason I was fired.”
—Jason Burke
“Once, after audition, the casting director stopped the camera and said, ‘Okay, thanks, Nikki. I totally see what you were trying to do there. Have a great day.’”
—Nikki Glaser
“I was asked to do an old-folks home for $50 one time. It was at one in the afternoon in the south suburbs of Chicago. All my jokes at the time were about sex and weed and party stuff because I was afraid to talk about anything else. My friend went before me and had a few great moments so I was hopeful. When I got up there, all I saw was my Grandma. Like 50 Grandmas. Just 50 sweet, old faces. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t talk about that stuff. I just kept doing set-ups and then trailing off instead of doing the punchlines. It was horrific. I did 15 minutes and the only sound I could hear was the sporadic pump of an oxygen machine here and there. After the show one of those sweet old faces walked up and said ‘Young man, we’re old. We like it dirty. We’ve seen it all and we want to hear dirty.’ I haven’t censored myself in front of old folks since.”
—Kenny DeForest
Related
Before You Go
