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  The course was called Sandi Shore’s Sandbox. In general, I’m disgusted by sand and was turned off by the name. Sand is awkward to walk on, and gets in between your toes, up your ass crack, and into other places you need a Q-tip to clean. And the price gave me pause. It cost $400 for eight classes, a workbook, and videotapes of all your performances. I’d have to work four extra shifts at the Four Seasons to cover it, but the expense would be an investment. If I did well in the class, maybe Sandi would introduce me to her mother, and I’d get a shortcut to the Original Room.

  First day of the class, me and about twenty other people sat at the two- and four-top tables in front of the stage. Sandi, an attractive brunette, walked onto the stage, looked out over the class, and said, “I want to start by saying that my mom and I aren’t getting along right now. So if you took this class thinking that I would introduce you to her and you’d have an ‘in’ at the Comedy Store, you were wrong.”

  I thought, There goes four shifts.

  I decided to continue the course with earnest intention, to give it my best shot, and hopefully learn something. Since I knew nothing about building a ten-minute act from start to finish, my skill set could only grow.

  From what I understand now, having met many professional comedians, taking a course is not a typical way to break in. When I tell people about it, they laugh at me and say, “What? You took a class?”

  I sure as hell did, and you know what? It was a supportive environment with a lot of bighearted people who were just trying to get better at making people laugh, too. I was happy to spend my Sundays with them.

  Every week, each one of us would get on that stage and perform jokes we’d come up with in the interim, like a mini set, and then we’d have a group discussion about it. Not a critique per se, just a conversation about what worked and what didn’t. I would describe the tone as encouraging but honest. Even if a guy bombed week after week, we would find something positive to say about his act. I don’t know how seriously all the other students were about a career in comedy or whether they would have preferred harsher critiques. For me, it was all about practice and positive feedback. In the real world, doing open mics at bowling alleys, you’d get plenty of criticism and negativity. But in the Sandbox, it was all about building confidence.

  At the end of the class, Sandi gave us homework assignments from her workbook called Secrets to Standup Success. It was a manual about generating material, inventing a stage persona, and writing premise-segue-punch-line combos, “one-line visuals,” and “call backs.” In the first chapter, we were to plumb the depths of our personal histories for topics by answering questions like:

  “What was the worst experience you ever had with your mom?”

  “What was the worst experience you ever had with your dad?”

  “Do you have any phobias?”

  “What are your three biggest fears?”

  “What was your worst nightmare?”

  “What do you feel guilty about?”

  I remember thinking, Is this a comedy class or a therapy session? I didn’t like to think about any of this stuff at all, much less talk about it in front of strangers. As I developed my act over the years and figured things out about myself, I would touch on a lot of this same subject matter. But at the time, I wouldn’t go near it. I skipped the dark questions and stuck with the softer ones, like “If you could be anything in the world right now, what would you be?” Easy: A comedian who performs at your mother’s club.

  Another exercise was to figure out what “type” of comedian I would be. The choices were:

  Sarcastic (like Lewis Black)

  Egocentric (Andrew Dice Clay)

  Underdog (Rodney Dangerfield)

  Victim (Larry David, Garry Shandling)

  Shy/Reserved (Ellen DeGeneres, Steven Wright)

  Opinionated (Bill Maher)

  Observational (George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld)

  I didn’t do politics (still don’t). You have to know your shit inside and out for that, and I wasn’t even close. I was opinionated, and an observer, so I decided to be an opinionated observer. Already breaking new ground and inventing my own type, and it was only week two!

  I pored over the assignments and prepared for class. It was the only homework I enjoyed doing, ever. I read things I wrote and would go, “Wow! Where did that come from?” I’d get an idea, which would jog a memory, and I’d think, I can branch off and take that further. My mind was off and running (or at least jogging) around the block doing these assignments.

  The best part was watching my set on video each week. I’d watch the other students’ performances once, and then I’d just fast-forward past those, and would study mine over and over again to judge for myself how I did. I wasn’t going to get raw, brutal honesty from the other students, so I’d have to be my own harshest critic to figure out what went wrong and right.

  I had two measures of success for a new bit:

  Laughter = working.

  No laughter = not working.

  I kept detailed records of every laugh I got on the videos, expanded on the good stuff, and cut everything else mercilessly.

  Nowadays, I have a more finely calibrated measure of a set’s success, which can seem mysterious to other people. I’m looking for a feeling from the people in the audience, an energy that passes from me to them and from them back to me. That feeling is the true measure of a joke’s worth. A laugh is kind of cheap. It’s what audiences want to do, what they expect to do. But if I feel an inaudible emotional locking-in, that tells me my set is working. It’s almost like music, like a rhythm I can speed up or slow down, and if the audience is right there with me, I can take them anywhere I want. I feel in control—no nerves, no worries, just a synchronized flow. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.

  Now something not working is a feeling of disconnect. I might be making the audience laugh, people might be doubled over, but as a performer, if I don’t feel the energy linking me and the people, I think, Something’s off here. What goes wrong can be subtle, but the effect is obvious to me, and it sucks. It feels like I’m completely alone up there.

  Back in my Sandi’s Sandbox days, though, I had no idea about the energy, the flow, interacting on an invisible level with the audience. I was just trying to crack people up—and I was succeeding. As the weeks went by, I started to notice that when I went up to do my set, people were laughing more than when the others did theirs. Sometimes, you don’t know how good you are until you’re holding yourself up in comparison to other people at your level. Unlike the “just for fun” students, I was dead serious about comedy as a career. I wasn’t doing this class for nothing, and I worked a lot harder on my set than most of the others. The effort showed. I started to feel the same “I have it” confidence I’d gotten in fourth grade doing my book report, ripping one another with my friends, and at the kitchen table at home. Something good was happening here.

  The last day of the course was our big showcase where we would perform our best material for a room full of family, friends, and a committee of professional comedians that Sandi brought in. I invited some people from the Four Seasons to cheer me on, and I was grateful they came (and would continue to come to open mics and gigs for the next seven years).

  I killed. I got the biggest laughs by far, and I mingled in the crowd afterward with serious swag. And then the bubble burst. A comedian friend of Sandi’s came up to me after and said, “I was turned off by the anger. It was forced and unnatural. You need to work on finding your authentic voice.”

  I was open to this constructive criticism. When I went home, I studied the tapes with this new perspective, and realized she was right. I noticed the anger was masking my insecurities and that I needed to dig deeper, find the truth within myself, and be real instead of putting on a façade.

  Yeah. Comedy is like therapy after all.

  I’d watched myself on those weekly tapes a hundred times, and I hadn’t picked up on what this comedian noticed in two seconds
. So much for being my own harshest critic.

  A LOT OF comedians say that their sense of humor comes from pain, that standups are generally troubled souls, and they, we, are a breed apart with a different mindset than most people.

  I relate to always feeling like I see things about the world that others don’t. But I can’t say where my skewed perspective came from. Not pain and suffering. My family was solidly middle class. My parents were loving, healthy people. No addictions, no abuse, no depression, no jail time. We all have our ups and downs in life, but I’m generally a stable guy. There are days that I might not be as happy as others, but my comedy has always been inspired by a love of making people laugh. That drive comes straight from all those happy nights around the kitchen table growing up.

  When I face painful things, like my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s or my parents’ divorce after thirty-eight years of marriage, I don’t talk about it—on stage or off—for a while. I let it settle. My first gut reaction is “I don’t think this is funny at all.” Then, a year or two down the road, I talk about it more and more, I open up about how I really feel, and the jokes just pop out. Like recently, my newly single seventy-year-old mom told me she’s gone on ItalianMeet.com. I said, “Mom, I hope that’s spelled M-E-E-T.” Suddenly, what was once upsetting is funny again, and then it goes into the act.

  Someone once said that comedy is tragedy plus time. I think for me, comedy is agony plus time. I agonized as a kid, but there was no tragedy to speak of. When I started out, I directed my angst outward. I had a “look at this guy” point of view, reacting with disgust and disdain at the bad behavior of others. I did have to deal with a lot of crap at work—rude, offensive, obnoxious customers—but I didn’t talk about the Windows Lounge on stage. I thought I’d come off like a whiney waiter, which is not funny to anyone. I didn’t realize for years to come that the topics I didn’t talk about on stage then were the very ones that truly upset and disturbed me.

  So what disturbed me the most about the Four Seasons? Nuts. In a golden caddy with three sections. As a rule, I brought a full nut caddy to each table. And then I’d have to replenish it on demand, over and over again. People would come in, order a seltzer or a hot water with lemon, take up a table in my section, and polish off seven trays of the nuts. We were required to refill the olive dish, too. They’d slurp down a trough’s worth of black olives, litter the pits like spitballs, drip the juice all over the tablecloth, and ask me to go fetch more. They’d always call it some stupid name, like “Can I have some snackies?” They thought the three snacks were an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. No, they were just something salty to make them thirsty for drinks, not an all-you-can-eat buffet. This nuisance really got under my skin. These people would signal me with hand gestures from across the room, pointing at their nut dish, twirling a finger like “another round” of freebies. I’d say, “Of course,” while keeping what I wanted to say in my head: “Sir, not sure if you’re aware but there are eight hundred calories per snackie, so you may want to get a larger size of pants or take this pair to the alterations lady because your button is about to snap off.”

  Sometimes, people asked for the ingredients in the dish. I’d have to smile and say, “Nuts and salt.” I can’t stand it when I’m having dinner out, and someone at my table asks the waiter to list every ingredient in a dish and where each one came from. I never ask. I just eat. My wife is one of those people (she also orders off menu, which drives me crazy), and if the waiter doesn’t know, he’s got to go back to the kitchen and find out. It holds up the whole ordering process. When I was at the Four Seasons and someone asked me about the ingredients in the dressing of, say, the heirloom tomato salad, and I didn’t know the answer, I’d lean forward slightly and say, “It’s not very good.” I’d bypass the entire discussion.

  Free snacks didn’t add to their bill, so my tip would be nothing, but I’d have to run back and forth, refilling the caddy, pouring their hot water, changing their soiled tablecloths, for nothing. And these cheap bastards looked down on me because I was a server. How was I supposed to pay my rent if all these lookie-loos parked themselves at a table to stare at celebs and didn’t order anything? Wow, I was angry. Could this be the anger that was rearing its head during my Sandi Showcase?

  I was frustrated that I wasn’t on the other side of the table, or behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz. But this emotion inspired me to be in that position one day. I learned to turn the frustration into motivation or else it would eat me away. You have to find it where you can. I’ve always loved to discover motivational people. Now I blast Dr. Eric Thomas, the hip-hop preacher, to get my day started out right. Back then I’d watch documentaries about success stories on TV. I knew I’d get where I wanted to go one day, and when I got there, I would not stuff my face with free nuts. And if I did, I’d leave a generous tip for the waiter.

  A COMMON MISCONCEPTION about standup: It’s the same thing as hanging out in a bar with your friends, telling stories, and trash talking each other. The truth is, standup is nothing at all like that. You’re not on a barstool with your buddies. You’re on a stage in front of a number of strangers. They don’t know you, your history, or who you really are—and you don’t reveal your true self to them. You are not yourself up there. You’re a comedian doing an act.

  A lot of comics create shtick, a gimmick, or a persona to do on stage. For me, the Angry Guy was a persona I tried on. I didn’t want to be that guy in real life, but it came out on stage anyway. I was uncomfortable with it, and, in turn, it made the audience (or at least that one comedian at my graduation showcase) uncomfortable, too.

  For many comedians, it takes years of peeling away their early fake personas to begin to be a real person on stage. It’s terrifying to expose yourself like that, which is why it takes a while. But you have to do it in order to really connect with people.

  When I roll the Angry Guy tapes now, I can’t even watch. They make me cringe. One bit I did then was to arrange for one of my classmates’ phones to go off in the middle of my performance and then pretend like he had answered the call and proceeded to have a conversation. Then my joke was to become enraged, rush into the audience, and take it away, yelling and going ballistic. Terrible. It’s hard to watch, and so not me. I’m not a rage guy. I’m the guy who spritzes himself with cologne every morning. I’m the guy who irons his underwear. Why was I acting like a baboon on steroids? It’s so hard in the beginning of standup to just be as authentic as possible. You’re uncomfortable under the lights; everybody is looking at you. You don’t know if people are going to take your act the right or wrong way. It wasn’t until five or six years ago when I started talking about my family that I noticed a huge change in how the audience responded to me. People liked the raw honesty far more than anger or outrage. I could never have opened up like that in the beginning.

  As I said, I was angry when I took the course (those fucking almonds), but I am not an Angry Guy. I had to learn to see the distinction. Anger is a loud emotion; my act then was high volume. I was living with quieter emotions, too, like insecurity, doubt, loneliness, frustration, vulnerability—things that, at the time, were way too private to share.

  I was only twenty-four years old, and as I’ve said, I didn’t know jack shit about anything. I wanted to come off as mysterious, the guy who made people wonder, “Who is he? What isn’t he telling us? What’s he thinking?” In hindsight, their guess was as good as mine.

  I SIGNED UP for another eight-week comedy course. And another. I played in Sandi’s Sandbox every weekend for six months. Performing was practice. I was like, “Okay, sign me up for another class, because I have to keep myself writing and stay motivated.”

  You’re probably wondering if my half a year in comedy school translated into any real-world gigs. Did I ever meet Mitzi Shore?

  I did meet Mitzi, but that’s another story.

  And no, I didn’t get one single gig as a direct result of the course. Neither did any of my classmates. To my knowl
edge, no one I took the course with has gone on to be a professional comedian. The one guy I thought was the funniest in the class gave it a good shot, but he quit after a few years. I recently ran into him managing a perfume counter at Barneys Beverly Hills. Come to think of it, I’m due for a new scent. I think I’ll go see him.

  I had no regrets about the time and money investment, though. Technically, I had been doing standup at the Comedy Store for six months. My marketing mind kicked in. I took the VHS of my final showcase set (not as angry as the first), had a bunch of copies made, and put the Comedy Store logo on the clamshell box it came in. I added a headline: “Sebastian Maniscalco . . . Live at the Comedy Store!” along with my phone number. I now had a nicely packaged tape to send to agents, casting directors, and club owners—and I did.

  One of the places I sent it to was the Ice House Comedy Club in Pasadena. I got a letter back, which I’ve since framed. It said I wasn’t ready or seasoned enough to play the venue. If you get a letter like that, you can either get discouraged and quit, or you can stay motivated and believe that one day you’ll make it. So I kept it and used it to spur me on and never give up.

  Fast-forward seventeen years. In 2015, I performed five shows at the Ice House. The owner—not the letter writer—came up on stage and said, “I’ve only done this with a few other comedians. This guy is really talented. He’s special.” Then he gave me a bottle of Dom for selling out all those shows. Nice touch. It was a real moment of validation for me. I knew that I’d come full circle at that performance.

  So can comedy be taught?