Follow Your Dream: (Unless Your Dream Is Stupid)

By Steve Hofstetter

Steve Hofstetter has been doing stand-up comedy almost twenty years. Without spoiling the end of the book for you, he hasn't died, he hasn't quit, and he hasn't become a household name. Instead, he has achieved a level of success somewhere in between. That success was built on a large amount of failure, and this book is the story of the roller coaster of Hofstetter's first six years as a stand-up comic.

The experiences Hofstetter went through shaped him and allowed him to learn that his stupid dream wasn't so stupid after all. But how do you know whether or not your dream is stupid? How do you know you're not wasting your time trying to become a comedian or a singer or an accountant or a florist or whatever it is you want to be? Most of the time, there's no way to know if your dream is valid unless you try to follow it.

The most common question any comedian gets is "how did you start?"

Hofstetter started as a comic in 2002, before the existence of social media, podcasts, and YouTube. The avenues he eventually used to become successful weren't invented yet. If you're starting now, that might be the case for you, too. Maybe your hologram will be a huge hit. Maybe you'll fail on earth but be a big draw on the moon. Or maybe you'll crush it on the successful re-boot of MySpace. That last example may be far-fetched.

How Hofstetter started and how you'll start are two completely different things. The reason Hofstetter wrote this book is not so you can see how he started, but so you can see how he pivoted. Hofstetter wrote this book because people struggling, regardless of their field, shouldn't feel like they're alone.

If you've already started your journey, a lot of these stories will be relatable, especially when things went wrong. But if you're scared by the failure, that is the best way to know your dream is stupid. Everyone who has ever made it to the light at the end of the tunnel had to get through the tunnel first. And if you're too scared to start crawling, you'll never make it to the part where you get to stand up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667833682

Book preview

CHANGE WILL COME

THE TOUGH THING ABOUT BEING a student is there is always other work to do.

My freshman year of college, I thought about doing an open mic. I more than thought about it – I planned it. I even wrote a set-list (although it’s being generous to call that a set-list). I wrote a haphazard group of hacky premises, like why does Starbucks call their medium size a grande when grande means large. I’d grown up watching Cnoomic Strip Live in the early 90s, and my premises would have fit in perfectly in that decade. With original material like that, I was doing the world a favor by not performing.

I had the desire to do improv knocked out of me right after high school. I went out for Columbia’s principal improv group the first week of class and auditioned well. I wasn’t doing any groundbreaking material like commenting on Starbucks’ nomenclature, but I was getting solid laughs throughout. Most of the other auditioners were new to the form, and were either buddies with the people already in the group or had picked up a flyer at the club fair. Meanwhile, I had been president of my high school’s improv club and came to that audition with years of actual improv training. And when the list of first cuts was posted, that improv training paid off because I had to pretend I wasn’t sad.

How the hell did I not even make the first cut? I read the list of who did. It was all people already friends with the members in the group.

I couldn’t really blame them. This was college – for the first time in our lives, we could hang out with who we wanted and do what we wanted. This group didn’t need to be a meritocracy – it could just be a group of people mildly interested in improv who wanted to hang out with each other.

There was nothing to stop me from doing the same and starting my own improv group where I hung out with my friends. Other than not having friends.

It was the first week of class – I had one friend. And while he absolutely would have started an improv group with me, neither one of us knew how. And more so, I didn’t have the courage. As much as I’d gone from the shy, quiet kid in high school to the kid who tries out for an improv group the first week of college, I was still far away from being the kid who starts his own improv group. I would have needed some grande-sized courage.

I put my improv hopes aside, but I still thought about stand-up. I kept that list of premises on my desk, to the left of my computer and the right of my jar of change, as its importance was somewhere between the two. I brought that dumb list home with me each summer and brought it back to school each fall. But there was always other work to do. I joined a fraternity. I wrote for the newspaper. I failed at many intramural sports. I immersed myself in campus life. But I kept looking at that list of premises.

My junior year, I finally did something about my desire to try comedy – though not stand-up quite yet. I wrote five jokes about college life, called it the first edition of Observational Humor, and emailed it to a few friends. By the time I was a junior, I had enough friends that I could probably have started an improv group, but instead I just sent them emails.

I put a subscribe link at the bottom of each email, and sent it out weekly. Word spread quickly, and, within a few months, I’d amassed more subscribers than I ever thought possible: sixty-two. It was such a staggering reach, it was almost as long as the line at Starbucks.

My favorite writer, Dave Barry, had a newspaper column that was syndicated around the world. I figured if I could reach sixty-two people just by email, I could try to get my column syndicated and maybe even reach seventy-three. I Googled the words college and humor and found about a dozen websites that might share my column. The only one that replied was a site just a few months old that was mainly a storehouse for funny-ish videos, like sheep running into walls. This was before YouTube, when it became super easy to find videos of sheep running into walls.

The email back came from someone named Rick Van Veen, and the website was CollegeHumor.com. They ran my column and as their website grew, so did I. And by my senior year, I was getting well more than sixty-two readers a week.

Just before winter break, I went to a bar with a few of my fraternity brothers. My friend Justin was celebrating his twenty-first birthday, so we thought we would do what we did when any of us turned twenty-one: go to a bar that had been letting us in since we were nineteen and let the newly legal birthday boy show just how fake his fake ID had been.

Four of us went to The Underground Lounge on 107th and West End for a relatively quiet night. I’m not sure why Justin chose that bar on that night, as we didn’t often venture south of 110th. But that is where Justin wanted to go and it was his birthday so that is where we went.

The Underground Lounge was a bar with a front area that sat roughly two dozen people, and a back room that sat another forty to sixty, depending on how scared the management was of the fire marshal.

My friends Justin, Ari, Dave, and I were drinking in the front room when a very enthusiastic man approached us and asked if we were there to see the show or the petting zoo. Having no idea what the show was and assuming he was kidding about the petting zoo, we quickly tried to brush off Mr. Enthusiasm, but Justin asked what the show was. We were told it was stand-up comedy, the tickets were eight bucks, and that Dave Attell might be coming in.

Going to college in Manhattan had its advantages, and one of them was access to stand-up comedy. Freshman year I’d bought a pack of tickets from a street barker, and every semester my fraternity brothers would have an event at Stand-Up New York. At one of those Stand-Up New York shows, a drunk guy was ruining everyone’s set and the club wasn’t kicking him out because he was spending a fortune. Comic after comic was losing their mind but failing to handle the guy. But Attell was closing the show and handled him perfectly.

I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here, Attell told the guy, in front of a confused crowd. Attell then pointed to an attractive woman and said, Because it’s guys like you that make women like that wanna sleep with guys like me.

The guy shut up and Attell absolutely murdered.

On Justin’s birthday, for eight bucks, we had the chance to see Dave Attell with thirty-six to fifty-six other people. Well, $8 and two drinks each, but we were in college so we were going to have more than two anyway. Sold.

While Attell never showed, we had fun – a mix of decent newbies, two awkward short sets, and some comedians I’d seen on a late-night show or Comedy Central, but whose names I didn’t know. The enthusiastic guy’s name was Dale Bennett, and he was on the show, too. Dale had some funny bits that were extremely physical, including a bit about how New York apartments were so small that when you tell someone that you’re living on your friend’s couch, they say good, you found a place!

After the show, my friends and I talked about who we enjoyed and who we didn’t, and I thought about the set-list sitting on my desk. On the way out, I saw Dale alone at the bar. I approached him, intending to ask how I could be one of the newbies. Instead I gushed about my column and how I’d been writing for years and how I’d thought about doing stand-up but never did and how college improv is more about the politics and blah blah blahbeddy blah blah.

We don’t have an open mic, Dale said, significantly less enthusiastic than when he was selling us the tickets. It’s pro shows only.

I asked him how one becomes a pro, thinking of the awkward short sets, and wondering at what they would be considered professionals. Dale got a bit more enthusiastic in his reply.

You know, I teach lessons, if you’re looking to get started, he said. Thirty an hour, minimum of three hours.

That would be great if I had $90 I could spend on comedy lessons, but I didn’t so my dreams died there. I told Dale I couldn’t afford it, and he replied that I’d find the money if it was a priority, and he handed me his number.

I got back to my room that night feeling mixed emotions. Justin had a great birthday, but we didn’t get to see Dave Attell. I enjoyed the show, but, due to lack of funds, my dream of trying stand-up was crushed like I was a freshman trying out for an improv group.

I took Dale’s number out of my pocket and put it on my desk, on top of my set-list and next to my jar of change.

My jar of change. The next morning, I went to a Coinstar and called Dale. I had work to do.

YELLING TO NO ONE

I MET WITH DALE BENNETT three times over the holidays. He lived a few blocks from The Underground in a studio apartment about the size of my dorm room.

Good, I thought when I first saw it. You found a place.

Years later, I read an interview with Doug Stanhope where he said he never gives comedy advice. According to Stanhope, when a comedian gives advice, they’re just telling the person to do comedy more like them. Dale was definitely, albeit subconsciously, doing just that.

By the end of the third lesson, I’d written a set that had multiple act-outs, an impression, and a prop. It all felt a bit performative for me, but I’d never done stand-up before and I was too excited to really stop and analyze it. Not counting the time Dave Attell talked to someone three tables from me, Dale was the only comic I knew.

I knew of lots of comedians. My father raised me on albums from George Carlin and Dick Gregory. I watched re-runs of Mork & Mindy, fascinated by Robin Williams’ ability to be funny no matter how cheesy the rest of the show was. I stayed up late to watch Saturday Night Live, and my father would often repeat Garret Morris’ beisbol been beddy beddy good to me. In high school, I worshipped Bill Hicks – who is still my all-time favorite. And in college, watching Mitch Hedberg’s Comedy Central Presents special made me an instant fan.

Can you do Saturday, January 5th?, Dale asked.

As I started to tell him that I was out of change and couldn’t afford a fourth lesson, Dale explained he was asking if I’d be ready to perform at The Underground then.

That surprised me. I figured I’d have some sort of chance to perform what we were working on, but I never thought about a Saturday night in front of forty to sixty people.

The show was only a few weeks away, so I worked at memorizing everything. I didn’t do anything embarrassing like recite the material in front of a mirror. I recited it while pacing and staring at the floor.

Sooner than I’d have liked, it was January 5th. I’d told all my friends – I was getting a prime-time slot on a Saturday. Dale must have thought I was really good. Justin, Ari, Dave, and several other friends bought tickets – and, looking back, that is exactly why Dale had me perform on a Saturday night. I didn’t learn the term bringer until a year later, but that is what I was.

A bringer is an aspiring comic given a spot on a show because the producer knows that comic will bring their friends. Dale may have thought I had potential, or he may not have. But he knew I was a hopeful twenty-two-year-old who went to college half a mile from The Underground with eight thousand other students. Dale wasn’t stupid, and he knew I was going to sell tickets.

I don’t agree with Doug Stanhope’s advice about not ever giving comedy advice, as there’s plenty about comedy that applies to every comic. For example, don’t invite a whole bunch of your friends to your first show. If you invited all your friends to watch you take your first driver’s lesson, they’d probably laugh at you. And if you invite them to see your first stand-up performance, they probably won’t.

The host asked for my credits before introducing me. What I should have said was I don’t have any and he would have said something nice and encouraging. Instead, I told him to say, You can see this next comic begging for change on 108th Street. Yikes. My set started hacky before I even got on stage.

It got hackier. I wore my ill-fitting, very cheap leather jacket because I wanted to look like every New York comic (who were already trying to look like Bill Hicks). I spent my first seven seconds just untangling the mic cord. And then I opened by doing an impression of every upstairs neighbor I’ve ever had while I jumped up and down and yelled at the floor.

I did the rest of my set exactly as I practiced – mainly staring down. And somehow, I got some laughs. The somehow was because I had a lot of supportive friends in the crowd. Their laughter was 10% at the material and 90% at the idea that I was trying it in the first place.

After the show, we celebrated. My friends ate and drank and laughed. They laughed way more than people did during my set. I laughed too, but I didn’t eat or drink as it took an hour for my stomach to stop somersaulting. The set was a blur, and I was thrilled it happened but even more thrilled it was over. Set-list to showtime was almost four years, but I accomplished my goal. I’d performed a real-life stand-up set at a real-life venue and I never needed to do stand-up again. My bucket list was one item shorter.

I kept writing for College Humor, and convinced Rick to turn my column into a book. I am using the word book as a synonym for self-published poorly designed collection of pages with an uncomfortable amount of typos. I used the same name I’d been using for my campus newspaper column (Student Body Shots) and organized the book as a collection of shots – bite-sized jokes about college life. Indicative of the times, one eventual review said that the book read like a collection of AOL IM away messages. I took that as a compliment.

I tried to get the book published by a legit publisher first, which is super easy to do when you’re a twenty-one-year-old college student with no knowledge of the publishing industry and your manuscript reads like a collection of AOL IM away messages. I had an I’ll show them! attitude towards the publishers and agents that sent me rejection letters. They were actually being way kinder than they needed to be. When hospitals are looking for a new chief of surgery, they don’t need to reply to every application from a high school student who can carve a turkey. I was a college student who knew what went into sangria, but I was not an author who knew what went into a book.

By graduation, I was almost done writing the book and over two dozen rejection letters deep. My friends were moving all over the country and I wanted a change. I got it in my head that I would finish the book somewhere else and I picked Boston – partially because it had a public transit system and I was a New Yorker with no driver’s license, and partially because it sounded romantic to move to New England and write the great American novel. Or the great America Online away message.

Also, there was Darcy Lane, and I will not lie to you and say she had nothing to do with it. Darcy was the first person to ever slide into my DMs, before there were DMs. She’d been reading my column on College Humor, and sent me a sweet message about how it made her laugh during a rough time in her life. Which was nice, because I was also making her laugh during a rough time in my life, too.

As Darcy and I started talking, I learned she was a Junior at Boston College and the rough time was because her brother was back home in Michigan, where he was dying of cancer. Email turned into instant messaging, where she thankfully was not using one of my jokes as her away message. Messaging turned into texting and phone calls, which turned into a trip to Boston to see if it was viable. It was – I was able to get a part-time job at the front desk of a bed and breakfast. The job gave me tons of time to write but barely enough money to cover some R&R: rent and ramen.

I had a job, a plan, and a potential girlfriend. I’d also applied for a job as a high school history teacher in New York, but hadn’t heard back. So I moved to Boston, and it was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made.

Working at the front desk was a small portion of my responsibilities, with the rest of those responsibilities conveniently left unmentioned during my initial interview. Yes, I had to do standard front desk work, like sign guests in (and sign the guest folios each night) but I also had to do some housekeeping, turn down service, and make fruit salad. There was so…much…fruit salad. This wasn’t a Bed & Breakfast. This was a Bed & Fruit Salad.

I didn’t know anyone else in Boston so my lack of social life allowed me to finish writing the book before and after work. My routine was to go to Boston Common and write until my laptop’s battery died. I would walk around the park, occasionally splurge for a Dunkin donut, and stare at the marquee of the Wilbur Theatre. Those mornings in Boston Common were some of the only joy I had while there.

Darcy and I started dating almost immediately and there were problems just as fast. A few weeks in, I went to a party at her apartment hoping to make friends. I did what I could to be a good boyfriend – even making sangria. If I was going to spend half my life cutting up fruit salad, I could at least do something productive with the leftovers.

I’d liked all her friends but one: Jeff. Darcy worked with Jeff at the Boston College paper, and any man who has ever dated a woman has met her friend Jeff. His name may change, but he is ALWAYS the same guy. He swears that everything is platonic and that he would never ever be interested in anything else, but it is painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that he’s just waiting for a hint of interest on her part. Jeff ’s waiting game was painfully obvious to everyone except for Darcy – so suggesting that he was trying to get with her made me look like a jealous crazy person. Jeffs are the worst.

I thought I got along well with everyone at the party (except for Jeff), but the next day Darcy told me that her roommates didn’t like me. She told me they thought I was trying too hard to impress