BoxenBlog

Look Ma, I Set Up A Link on A Website

Tuesday afternoon, I was on Twitter.  Writing jokes.  Like many of my fellow comedians, I use Twitter as a virtual notebook to jot out zingers and pithy observations that might or might not be useful in front of an actual audience.  Because I live to delight people.  

Twitter is where I stumbled upon the news of the car accident that killed comedian Angelo Bowers and seriously injured comedian Josh Adam Meyers.   ‘nuf said.

I wasn’t particularly close with either Angelo or Josh.  But I had a lot of friendly interactions with them.  Often, I’d see them together, like Frick and Frack, at the Comedy Store, or at one of the various open mics that we stand-ups migrate to in order to work out new material and get whatever stage time we can so that we can excel in a very competitive, talent-rich comedy scene.  There’s a lot of downtime at these open mics and shows.  We use that downtime to chat, riff, complain about our careers, and bum cigarettes (me more than most, I’m afraid).  I always enjoyed hanging out with Angelo and Josh.  Many comedians can be stand-offish, or just plain socially retarded.   By contrast, Angelo and Josh were sociable and, dare I say it, kind.  And I liked watching their comedy- Angelo, with his strange white-guy afro, warm stage presence, and super-sharp one liners; Josh, with his manic delivery, filtered through a gravelly voice that sounds like Tom Waits-meets-a chain-smoking 60 year-old Jewish lady.

After hearing about the accident and reacting as if just I’d been punched in the gut, I instinctively migrated over to Facebook.  My news feed was plastered with status updates from fellow comedians expressing their shock and sadness.  I added my own status update.  But it didn’t feel like enough.  I had a gnawing feeling in my gut about the whole thing.  Let me say that I pretty much hate sports.  And I detest the positive-think pablum that comes out of pretty much every football coach’s mouth (in my case, said football coaches used to just yell obscenities at me).  But in the words of pretty much any imaginary coach you’d like to conjure up, I needed to… step up.  Take action.

I’m not sure why I felt this way.  Perhaps it was my people-pleasing nature.  Or the fact that I grew up in a family that helped those in need (cue self-congratulatory clapping).  Perhaps it was just a coping mechanism for grief- I am, after all, a stunted comic who deflects his emotions whenever possible.  Whatever the reasons, I decided to force myself out of the self-involvement cave that I live in 24/7- the one that enables me to tune out the world so that so that I can focus on churning out dick jokes- and do something.  I quickly surmised that Josh, who was hospitalized with serious injuries after surviving a horrific collision with a 21 year-old hit-and-run murderer, was going to need help.  A lot of help.  And Angelo’s family… man, I didn’t even know where to start with that one.  

Sometimes, a fully-formed idea just comes to you- usually long after it’s needed.  As a comic, I can’t count the number of times I’ve come up with a good tag for a joke that didn’t work at a show… on the way home from said show.  This idea came at precisely the right time.  It was very simple, really- start a PayPal fund, put a donation link on my comedy website, then Facebook and Tweet some donation requests.  I sweetened the deal by ponying up the first $100.  

 I figured a few grieving people in the comedy community would respond, maybe send five bucks, and that would be that.  Perhaps I could raise a grand.  Boy, was I ever wrong…  

Within the first few hours of putting up the link, I received over 100 donations.  As each donation came in, I’d get an email message from PayPal on my phone.  I was at Dave Ross’ Holy Fuck comedy show, trying to watch Eddie Pepitone, but I couldn’t, because I kept trying to keep up with the flow of donations.  I’m a great believer in saying “thank you”, so I tried to respond to each email.  But I couldn’t.  There were just too many to respond to.   What blew me away was the sheer size of some of the donations.  From comics I knew and admired. Many of whom lived 3,000 miles away.  The fire-starting power of social media had spread the word far and wide.  I had no idea so many people were so touched by what had happened.  

The next morning, things sort of exploded.  Laughspin ran a tribute article.  One of my donation request tweets was retweeted by a very famous comedian.  The girlfriend of a local comedian got Perezhilton.com to run a story on Josh and Angelo.  They were kind enough to add a link to my donation site.  The site’s traffic blew up, causing it to crash.  Frantic, I called my web host to fix the problem, while simultaneously putting up status updates and tweets re-directing donors to PayPal.  We lost a few dollars in the process, but I managed to get the site back up again.  A comedian friend started a second site directing donors to my fund, which kept the money coming.

I figured it was only a matter of time before donor fatigue would set in.  But the money kept flowing in.  That night, bookers who run comedy shows all over in L.A. collected donations from their patrons for Josh and Angelo’s family.  These donations were then sent to my little fund.  All night long, people emailed me with condolences and questions about Josh’s welfare.  And always, a donation.  Sometimes, $5. Sometimes, $500.  And everything in between.  Many of these good folks had never even met Angelo or Josh, let alone seen their comedy.  Something about this tragedy just resonated with them, and they wanted to pitch in.  I was the unwitting point man for all of this.  

Next week, several of the comedy clubs in L.A. are putting on benefits to help Josh and Angelo’s family.  Because of this, I’ve had to set up a non-profit corporation in their name.  This thing is now a going concern.  Who knows when it’ll end?  It’ll end when it does, I guess.

Inasmuch as I’d like to say I made all of this happen, I didn’t.  I just set up a link on a website. So you could all help.  And you did.  It’s very difficult to thank all of you.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  So many of the donations came from within the stand-up community.   Which blows my mind.  Because know this: stand-up comedians are a really odd lot.  In many ways, we are the loners of comedy.   Night after night, we ply our trade solo, with no sketch group or improv back line to help us (which doesn’t make us better than sketch or improv people- just more megalomaniacal). When we succeed, it’s all about us.  When we fail, we have no else to blame.  Generally, we’re into ourselves, our jokes, and our careers.  But I suppose if the events of the last few days have taught me one thing, it’s that we’re a community.  An odd little brethren- one that if need be, will come together to help a couple of our own.  

I doff my proverbial cap to you.

If you’d like to help donate to Josh Adam Meyers and Angelo Bowers’ family, please go to HERE.  If you live in L.A., Comedy Juice is doing a benefit show at the Hollywood Improv on January 11th.  Go HERE for tickets.

  1. blood0pressuremonitorreviews reblogged this from kylekinane
  2. milton-keynes-seo reblogged this from kylekinane
  3. paternity--testing reblogged this from kylekinane
  4. jimmycassidy reblogged this from scottbox and added:
    whelming reaction...accident that resulted...comedians...
  5. jimhegarty reblogged this from scottbox
  6. joestarr reblogged this from kylekinane
  7. kylekinane reblogged this from scottbox
  8. scottbox posted this