thisdanobrien:

thisdanobrien:

Hey Friends!

I don’t expect everyone to follow me on every little social media platform I have, so some of this might be news to you, but if you’ve been even tangentially following me on Twitter or Instagram, you’ve maybe heard a whisper or two about the following two items:

1.) I and a number of my talented coworkers are no longer working at cracked.com, a comedy website that was my professional home since 2007;
2.) I am now a shower-at-night person after years of being a shower-in-the-morning person;

Both of those things are true. I shower at night now, and then I sit around in my Parachute robe that I love so much and I go to sleep smelling and feeling great. I know that showering in the morning is a great way to wake yourself up, but honestly showering at night is just more pleasant and turns something that could seem perfunctory into some luxurious. Also, Cracked the site continues (and has my full support), but a bunch of its employees were laid off, and it was sad for a little bit. I was sad for a little bit.

Everyone processes sadness in their own way. The day after being laid off, I contacted the Westside Comedy Theater in Santa Monica and requested a slot to make a live comedy/variety show, because my instinct was to create a showcase for me and all of the other amazing people who were also laid off to create comedy and music and to say goodbye to (at least) our Los Angeles fans. I reached out to Westside to say “Everyone I know got laid off and we want to make comedy,” and they instantly responded “Sounds great. Does January 5th work?”

It does.

My instinct is to take something negative and build something positive out of it, so I’m taking advantage of the fact that a lot of my favorite comedy people suddenly have free time to make comedy and bring some magic into the world. It’s silly to think of comedy as magic, but I’ve always thought about comedy as magic, because I’m a pretty silly person. So I wanted to create a night that could only exist under very specific and unrepeatable circumstances, which makes it magic to me. It’s the only thing I know how to do.

The result is a one-night-only comedy event we’re calling:

Broked Dot Com Presents a Night of Legally Non-Disparaging Comedy

TOM REIMANN
KATIE WILLERT
CODY JOHNSTON
DAVID BELL
ADAM TOD BROWN
JACK O’BRIEN HAS PROMISED TO DO “SOMETHING”
TERESA LEE
ZORA BIKANGAGA
KATIE GOLDIN

LOTS LOTS MORE, SOME I CAN’T EVEN MENTION, IT’S GONNA BE NUTS

I’m hosting. We’ve got stand ups. We’re going to do some jokes. We’re going to do some music. We’re going to have some INSANE special guests. I will also try to arrange cupcakes or donuts or something. This isn’t going to be a bunch of jobless people sobbing or complaining; it’s going to be the funniest people I know making jokes and music for you. Whatever else, I promise that we are going to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience to celebrate an amazing website and the people who no longer work there.

(No filming will be allowed.)

Do you like Cracked? Do you want an opportunity to see some former Cracked folks and their hilarious friends make jokes and say goodbye?

Get tickets here:

http://www.westsidecomedy.com/events/event/booked-com-presents-a-night-of-legally-non-disparaging-comedy/

January 5th, 2018.

Westside Comedy Theater (Santa Monica, LA)

11:30pm-1:00am

Hahaha you beautiful babies I made a Tumblr post at night on a Wednesday and the show sold out in under ten hours hahahahaha you beautiful babies thank you..

The theater says if you didn’t get a ticket, you can get on the waitlist by getting to the theater early and hoping that people who bought tickets don’t show up.

Thank you thank you thank you.

UPDATE

The show was so much more fun and successful than I ever dreamed possible. It was the most enthusiastic crowd I’ve ever been able to perform in front of and I’m so thankful that they came out to support me and my friends while we made some magic. Also super appreciative of the Westside Theater, who let us just, like, keep going. We were running super long and Emily, the manager, told me we could keep going as long as the audience was there and happy and drinking (they were!). Emily also introduced herself to me at the beginning of the show by saying “Are you Dan? What the fuck do you need from me?” Thank you, Emily, and it probably goes without saying but I prefer ‘Daniel’ and also I’m in love with you.

And I mentioned this on Twitter, but I don’t imagine everyone follows me everywhere, but we didn’t film it and won’t release any breakdowns of it, and that was always the plan. Me and my friends have lived creatively online for free for, in my case, a decade. So I wanted to make something personal and immediate and impermanent, and I know that it alienated and bothered some people who didn’t live in LA or have the luxury to travel, but that was never my intention, I just happen to live here. I understand the internet has conditioned everyone to believe that everything should always be available and everywhere and free and forever, but that’s just not how magic works. The best musical performances I’ve ever seen have been my friends drunkenly doing karaoke in a cabin in Pennsylvania, ya know? 

Someone on Twitter said “I can’t find any links and videos to the show; just a bunch of people talking about how amazing it was after the fact.” They were frustrated. That is my favorite review of anything I’ve been a part of in my entire life.

But now that show is over! And my birthday happened right in the middle of it, and I generally hate birthdays, but this was the best I’ve ever had because I spent it with all of my funny friends making jokes and magic with an intimate group of supportive strangers.

It is, uh…. weird for me to suddenly not have anything to do. I started planning the show the day after the layoffs, talking about it every day with my former coworkers and building a slate with Cody, essentially operating in a way that was not all together different from my day-to-day at The Old Place. One day I was walking into an office saying “C’mon, Tom, I need pitches and videos to make,” and the next day I logged into our slack channel and said “C’mon, Tom, I need five minutes of stand up material.” Today is the first Monday of my adult, professional life where I didn’t wake up in pursuit of answering the question “What funny stuff can I make with this incredible group of people?”

There’s both a panic and freedom in not being responsible for answering that question anymore. I need to come up with a new question that will hopefully carry the same degree of possibility and experimentation and joy. It might be something new in the comedy space, it might not involve comedy at all. It will definitely not be more of the same. (So, sorry to anyone who has been saying “Just do a Kickstarter to make more After Hours under a different name.” The day before you first saw After Hours, you didn’t know you were an After Hours fan, you just trusted that, when given time, we would come up with something you would like. Dig into that same trust now and give me time to come up with the NEXT thing you might like.)

For now, thanks! Thanks for following and supporting, thanks for coming to the show and lining up an hour and a half before we were scheduled to start, thanks for clapping, laughing, reading, watching, thank you for caring about us enough to ask what happens next. I’ll let you know what I end up doing just as soon as I end up doing it.