Comedy Late Bloomer... by Ali Hassan

It often gets said that comedy is a young person’s game.  If you believe that to be true, then I guess I screwed up.  I came in late to this party, relatively speaking. Age 34.  And the way I was treating my body at the time, I felt at least ten years older than that too. But I would argue that starting late was the best thing I’ve ever done.

There are a number of people like me, who left jobs behind in other industries to do what I’m doing. And those people, rightfully I’m sure, would have often heard the words “it’s so impressive that you would leave a successful career to start a new one in comedy.” I’m not here to lie to anyone. I didn’t leave a successful anything. I never tasted anything even resembling success until comedy. Unless you think mind-numbing consulting work the product of which you could never even be sure the client used, performed in a cubicle in a nondescript building in Deerfield, Illinois where an American colleague often flashes you his NRA card for kicks, is “success”.   

By the time I started stand-up, I had already been an amusement park employee, a stock boy, a Future Shop salesperson, a Master’s student, a junior purchaser in a steel plant, a gopher at an internet bank, a pizza deliverer, a cookie maker, an IT diploma student, a t-shirt screen printer, an aforementioned IT consultant, a bouncer….just to name a few. And I was not particularly good at any one of those jobs.  In the case of consulting, I was just plain BAD. In fact, a good argument could be made that I was maybe even the worst. To give you some insight here, there were Indians and Pakistanis at our consulting firm in Illinois who would regularly tell me that I should quit and move back to Canada. People from another country…now in a different country…telling me to go back to my country. And they’re from the same country as my parents. You ever enjoy that kind of multi-level racism? I would have been angry if I wasn’t in full agreement with them.

But, no matter what job I had or what courses I was taking, there was always one thing I knew about myself:  I had a singular passion for FOOD.  Explaining to your educated, academia-focused, pension-earning Pakistani parents that you want to be a chef, however, is extremely challenging. If you don’t have parents like that, it would be like explaining bitcoin to an elderly person. They may understand a little…but they’ll never truly get it.  So, it took a while. But finally, in my 30’s, after years of trying to chase other people’s dreams, I had become a chef, a caterer and a cooking instructor. My life was food.  And the one thing I remember most about that time is how many people regularly told me how lucky I was to be passionate about something. About anything. I can’t even count the number of people who were envious of that. 

At age 34, as someone with aspirations to entertain, I had set my sights on becoming a host of a show on the food network. It was the next “logical step”.  I watched chefs and hosts on television, and constantly found myself saying “I could do a better job than these guys!”  And with that completely faulty logic, I started looking around for ways to get on TV.  In Montreal, in English, in the mid-2000’s…the options were few and far between.  I was undeterred.  After some consideration, I came up with this plan: I could perform on comedy open-mic shows! It would be a great short-term solution to build my confidence, work on some fun food-related jokes, and treat a room full of people as though they were a studio audience.  Stand-up comedy…would be a means to an end. 

I got on stage in April of 2006 on a Monday night at the ComedyWorks in Montreal.  I delivered a 5-minute set that I had been working on for a few months at home in the mirror and with my friend Q in his music studio, to a room of about 70 people. I got great laughs, I felt like I was floating, and my knees almost gave out on me as I left the stage. My feelings about stand-up changed instantly.   

Guess which lucky asshole had TWO passions all of a sudden?

You ever meet someone who finds love in their 50s? It’s pretty intense stuff. I imagine that’s because they’re well aware that they don’t have all the time in the world left with their lover.  So they set about making the most of it.  That was kind of how I felt in comedy.  While 20-year old’s on the scene were doing tight 5’s on jerking off and video games – i.e. their life experiences – I got to work exploring my own experiences.  My first decent 5 minutes was about my experiences as a brown Muslim man in the secondary screening room at the airport. I’d missed a number of flights thanks to secondary screening, so it was personal and it was raw.  And at that time, on that scene, surrounded by a number of young comics who had probably never been to an airport, it was an original point of view. 

Once or twice a year, I’ll still have a sit-down with a production company or network with an idea for a food show.  But nothing tangible has ever come out of that.  Comedy, meanwhile, continues to provide. 

It bears mentioning that stand-up comedy is certainly not without its issues and challenges. But it’s easy to get caught up in them and forget what a gift this job is.  My peers and colleagues are wonderful human beings.  And in the few cases where they aren’t, I don’t have to spend more than a few days with them, tops.  The hours of work are very manageable. And on really good days I have heard people say to me, “You know, I’ve been going through a really hard time, and desperately needed those laughs tonight. So thank you”.  I mean, COME ON.  And as far as pay goes, it’s weird, but also wonderful. My friend Arthur Simeon’s words inevitably come to mind: “We are in a business where we can do the same set on Thursday for beer tickets, on Friday for 40 bucks, and then on Saturday for thousands of dollars.” The same set! It really is insane.

Maz Jobrani is a terrific international touring comedian. He’s very generous with himself and does meet & greets after almost every show, and lets people come into his green room to chat.  I’ve toured with Maz in the past, and these chats vary from “Maz we saw you in Sacramento and you were amazing” to “Maz you should tell some jokes in Farsi”. But at least one “chat” per show inevitably involves some dude with an unwarranted level of confidence coming in the green room and telling Maz how they also want to do stand-up comedy.  They really want to.  But, you see, the thing is…they have a car, a condo, a good job.  So, they aren’t sure if they should. 

Look - there are a 1000 better ways to humiliate yourself than making yourself vulnerable to groups of people, night after night.  Even in the world of comedy, a YouTube comedian (if you have that level of discipline) would, to use an industry term, eat a lot less shit than a stand-up.  One of my favourite athletes of recent years, Kevin Pillar said this once: Baseball owes you nothing.  The same should really be said of comedy.  It’s what you make of it.  This job literally owes you nothing.  

I may have started 10 years later than a lot of comics, but my late start gave me perspective, a point of view (having 4 kids will help with that too) and an unwavering feeling of gratitude.  When I sit in a green room and hear a performer complain about the pay or the attendance or the drink tickets – hey, the unrewarding, back-breaking 12-hour shifts are out there if you want them. In the meantime, take it from someone who has been out there, this job is a gift.  

Ali Hassan - @StandUpAli