Jeremy Greenberg: War is Hell…and Occasionally So is a Stand-up Show
Jan 22 2010
I’ve done about a half-dozen overseas tours, and it’s never failed that at least one show during a tour is a complete nightmare. But up ‘till yesterday, every show had gone so well that I was beginning to fear that I might not have anything to write/complain about on this tour. Well, not to worry: let me tell you about the noontime show at Camp Sather.
For starters, noon shows are rarely great. People just aren’t quite in comedy mode ‘till the sun goes down. That and most attendees are sluggish from having just eaten (and if you’ve ever had lunch at a DFAC you know what I mean). Plus, it’s hard to kick your feet up, if you know that in fifty minutes you have to put them back down and walk back to work.
But we contend with noontime shows frequently. If the fact that the sun’s out is a comedian’s only challenge, the show should still be fun. But yesterday’s show also featured a sound system that was so poor, my entire show sounded like I was a McDonald’s drive-thru employee trying to read the audience back their order. Plus, the venue was in a tent about the size of an airport hangar. Comedians love, small, tight, intimate rooms—it helps with the audience connection. And if it wasn’t hard enough to hear us with all that, there was an air conditioning system in the background that made if feel as if we were saying our jokes into a swamp cooler.
Oh yeah, and an F-16 flew over during the middle of my set as well.
Needless to say, although the audience did have fun, they did so because many of them hadn’t been to a real show stateside in a while, and had no comparison for how bad it was.
But they still had fun. That’s the most important thing. I, however, was so angry at the end of the show I could’ve shot something. And that’s exactly what I did! Our next show was for Special Ops, and when we went to their base, they had a shooting range. I had never even fired so much as a pellet gun. Wow, it was orgasmic! What a rush. After firing the M-4 machine gun, and the M-8 Beretta I felt cleansed and refreshed. I put about six bullets square in the head of my target, and forgot all about the earlier day’s disaster.
We’ve got one more day downrange. Tomorrow we head out in Blackhawks to do shows in both Ramadi and Camp Korean Village.
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Jeremy Greenberg has written for Geek Monthly, Pregnancy Magazine and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes (Alpha/Penguin). He is the author of Relative Discomfort: The Family Survival Guide (Andrews McMeel). When Jeremy’s not writing, he’s managing the development of his twin, toddler sons, agreeing with his overworked and underappreciated wife, or dodging phone calls from his weird and obnoxious relatives. Learn more at www.relativediscomfort.com
