Brendan Fitzgibbons

Today I am interviewing Brendan Fitzgibbons, a comedian born in Palatine, IL who has been doing comedy for two and a half years. To find out more about Brendan, please visit his website.

Why did you start doing stand-up comedy?

When I was a senior in college, me and my buddy Pat were both going through some pretty intense breakups with our girlfriends, so we spent a lot of time watching comedy. Then the pain of the breakups just kind of started becoming funny because we were always joking about getting our hearts broken and what kind of dudes they were probably dating now. Comedy can be incredibly cathartic and I know a lot of people like myself, deal with pain by laughing at it. Kurt Vonnegut said that you can either deal with pain by laughing or crying and he preferred crying because there's less cleanup.

So I always loved comedy, my friends and I obsessed about it growing up and we still do. Eventually Pat told me I should try comedy. After I graduated, I moved out to New York City for an internship and about three months after being here, I gave it at shot at an open mic in Brooklyn called Caddyshack. I did my set, it went moderately well and afterward I told my friend Stephanie that I did comedy at Caddyshack and shes like, "Oh the lesbian bar?" And I was like, "No. Caddyshack, like the movie" Then she told me to look it up and sure enough it was a lesbian bar. I had no idea. It is funny now looking back on it.

I think comedy is the greatest thing in the world. Comedians are bullshit detectors. One of my favorite things Jon Stewart ever said was when someone asked him what the political stance is of The Daily Show and he said, "We're passionately opposed to bullshit, is that liberal or conservative?" I LOVE that idea. That comedy really is telling the truth in the most upfront way possible. I would rather get a comedian's perspective on world events, love and life than from any "expert." I would rather hear Dave Chappelle talk about racism more than a college professor or even someone who's heavily involved in civil rights today.

Comedy is also incredibly challenging and that's what really makes it enticing. Jerry Seinfeld said it's the one thing you cant fake and I think that's so true. Every night its just you, the audience doesn't care where you came from or what you did five minutes ago, its your job to be funny. End of story. Some nights it goes great, others not so much. Its also combines the very best things about American life, you can say anything you want and be center stage in a room full of people who just want to have fun.

Can you tell me one weird thing about yourself?

I am a hardcore cereal monster. I sometimes eat entire boxes of cereal in one day. A lot of times, I just stand in my kitchen, pounding cereal, and my roommate Emily studied abroad in Samoa, so there is all these pictures of topless Samoan women in my kitchen. And one pretty big picture of a Samoan mother breastfeeding her baby. So it is weird eating all this cereal and milk while I stare at this picture of a mom breast feeding her kid. Its makes me want to switch to toast.

How do you deal with rejection?

Rejection is hard but its a necessity in comedy. When I was about a year into comedy, my buddy put on a show in Easton Maryland packed the entire house with 400 people. He invited me and a couple of other comics down to do the show. Four of us went down there, and I was the only one to bomb, and I bombed hard. You know you're bombing bad when your mouth starts to go dry and you feel trapped like in this death spiral and there's no way out. Ohhhh, it was bad. I had like nightmares about that night for a couple of days afterward.

But, I learned a lot. Up until that point, I wasnt really getting in front of audiences and I didn't really understand the idea of having a set, proven material that you know works. I remember I did that show with like five or six new jokes I wanted to try and it was ridiculous. I would never do that now. So I learned. I got up in front of audiences and now every day, I'm trying to hammer out a better set with solid material.

Rejection happens all the time in life, its just that in comedy its more immediate. You know right away. So just like in life when you get rejected from a job, a lady or whatever, the real test is how you respond. Because you have to respond. I mean honestly when something horrible happens to you, and most likely we have all faced crap in our lives, you have really ultimately two choices, live or die. So most of us choose to live on and so that's the same thing with comedy. You bomb one night, ok, but you have a show in five minutes and the audience you are facing now could care less how last night went. So you have to move on. I think its great practice for life.

Don't get me wrong, rejection is really hard and its something I still struggle with today because I am insanely hard on myself. But I feel like as long as you are getting better at whatever it is youre doing, you just stay on path and good things will happen to you.