On several occasions in my 20+ years of comedy,
I’ve been performing at an event in which the food was an issue! As in the people who paid for dinner, didn’t get it. Once I actally went in for the sound check a couple hours early. It was just me and the hotel staff and I asked where the banquet head table would be. The staff replied “no food tonight.” I said, “oh, I’m pretty sure there’s food. I’m speaking AFTER DINNER.” The staff came back with “no, no food being served.” After a few more minutes of this, I decided I should tell the client – I hesitated because she was pregnant at the time and I didn’t want her to deliver! But tell her I did, and we got food that night – I think it was spaghetti. . . but it was food.
That was a situation in which
we had some control or at least time to get the spaghetti in the pot. But there have been other times when the food ran out before I went on stage. Now the client obviously knows about this. . . the only question for me is – what do I do? Or as Hamlet would say — To Joke or not to Joke – that is the question.
Sure covering with comedy can
help the situation. . .but it can also hurt the situation if you’re not careful. Case in point, I once performed for 4400 people in which they ran out of dinners for 1500 people. It was plated (not a buffet) so basically someone miscounted by 1500. Math isn’t a strong suit for many people, but come on. . .that was bad. As a comedian, I wanted to get on stage, look behind the curtain behind me and say “hey, look, I found them!” I KNEW it would get a big laugh. . . BUT I also knew that several people had stormed out because they were so mad – this was the organization’s “employee appreciation dinner” AND the client was backstage crying AND there was nothing she could do about it – it was a catered event. Knowing these 3 things, made me skip my comedic instincts to joke around. . .and instead, just do my act without saying anything. One of my rules for using humor is to not use it if people are hostile – and some of the people in this group were hostile. As it turned out, that was a good choice.
At another event, several years ago,
squint and u can c Kid Rock on stage in Vegas
I was performing at the Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas, when, you guessed it, they ran out of meals. This time though, there was a cook on-site who was able to whip up something else, no one was crying, and everyone got fed. . .albeit a little later than they wanted. BUT I had a great opportunity for humor as I realized we were at the Flamingo hotel. . . “for those of you who got the dinners late, we’re sorry we ran out, but the cook was able to cook something up. Of course I noticed that the pond outside is missing some Flamingos.” It got a big laugh and acknowledged what people were going through. That was an appropriate time to joke.
