The following post was supposed to appear on August 22… but, for some reason or combination of reasons, it was saved as a draft and not published.

We trekked up to Doylestown last night. Our aim was to do six to eight minutes of new material… or to “re-purpose” old material or generally try out new modes and methods… and to do so in a setting that closely resembled comedy club conditions. (So we secured spots at that town’s Comedy Cabaret, on Saturday evening’s 9 PM show.)

Don’t misunderstand: In years between our respective open mike phases and the recent past, we have certainly written new material. But our method of breaking it in– of refining it and editing it and finding a place for it in our presentations– has been to simply perform it in the middle of a regular set, to introduce it somewhere in the midst of an actual combat situation, i.e., during paid gigs.

In August, however (as we posted last week), we decided to get onstage in a variety of venues and in a variety of situations– Like open mikes or weekend guest sets– and plunge head first into the writing process.

Last night, we had varying degrees of success and we learned some things. But other things still confounded us or remained a mystery. On the ride home, we kicked things around, came to some conclusions and marveled at the fact that, even with a quarter-century of writing and performing under each of our belts, it was still so difficult to conceive of a bit, write it out (in our heads or on paper), do it… and get laughs immediately.

What is it that makes the conception and delivery of new stuff so devlishly hard? So perplexing? Why doesn’t it just come out our mouths fully formed and with as much confidence as the stuff that’s already broken in?

An hour later, we were pulling into the parking lot of the Crowne Plaza (we decided to stop by Monster Mania and hang briefly with Jason Pollock) listening to a re-broadcast of The Dennis Miller Show on a local AM station when Miller recounted his experience with a recent theater gig. He said that the show was sold out, with an audience of 1,200. He said that he was keenly interested in breaking 15 to 30 minutes of new material for an upcoming HBO special. However, he said he realized, as he was doing the new material, that these 1,200 people were fans and that, though the material was doing well, they were there to see Dennis Miller and that they no doubt expected to see him kick the kind of ass they were accustomed to seeing him kick. He said that he realized that he wasn’t doing the new material with quite the same confidence that he does the more familiar stuff. So, he made an executive decision. He “called an audible,” and decided to pull out at about the fifteen minute mark and “turn on the burners” a “fire up the Millennium Falcon” and kick the proceedings up a notch or two by abandoning the experimental bits and going back to the tried and true.

We needed to hear this. So often during our recent experimental sets, we found ourselves torn between appearing competent and appearing tentative. So accustomed to mounting the stage and immediately and efficiently kickstarting an audience, it felt somehow wrong or awkward or to behave in a way that was counter. It doesn’t help to start out the exploratory set with a couple surefire jokes… that only makes the ensuing transition that much more jarring. We experienced a feeling that we hadn’t felt since those early, often gut-wrenching days of open mikes. If someone of Miller’s caliber and experience and stature gets similar feelings, then why, we wondered, were we being so hard on ourselves? Apparently, it’s the nature of the standup beast.

The Female Half turned to the Male Half and said, “It never ends, does it?” The Male Half replied, “Why should it?”

What we do is hard.

In the early days, one is both distressed– but ultimately and oddly comforted by– the expectation of suck. That is, in the early days, it is not expected that a budding standup comic will kill… quite the opposite, it is expected that he or she will eat it more often than not. It is that “nothing to lose” mindset that lends itself to experimentation, to exploration, to prodigious output. There’s plenty of latitude for suckitude. But that narrows, more and more, as the bombs thin out and the kill takes over. At least in our experience.

Some folks, seasoned professionals, have nerves of steel. They can stand up there for minutes at a time– at a “workout night,” at an open mike, maybe even during a paid gig– and polish a work in progress, risking great stretches of silence, maybe even incurring the wrath of a great portion of the audience. We are not those people. It is not in us. We are cautious. Overly so? Perhaps. We’re cautious and analytical. Eventually, we get there, it just takes us longer.