Making them laugh, laugh, laugh
Young Chang
Joe Sullivan can’t remember verbatim all the maxims he’s heard
about the power of laughter.
But there’s the one about how laughing separates human beings from
other kinds of beings. There’s the saying about laughter keeping the
sane from going insane when things get rough. There’s even that story
about the guy who laughed his way to getting cured of cancer.
“I just want to make people laugh,” said Sullivan, the 36-year-old
producer and emcee of a weekly comedy show at the Blue Beet Cafe.
Every Sunday, his show rounds up local comedians, as well as a
national headliner with significant television or film credits.
Recent guests have included Brian Keith Etheridge and James P.
Connelley. Sullivan joins the funny guys and does his stand-up
routine on the Blue Beet stage too.
His spiel is that he’s a nice guy.
“I do a lot of jokes about my life, especially about my life in
Newport Beach, growing up Catholic, and I try and use these examples
of what a good guy I am and then I turn around and prove I’m not a
good guy,” said Sullivan, who has been influenced most by comedian
Rodney Dangerfield.
Sullivan’s jaded and cynical stage persona contradicts his
pleasant enough past.
He and his six siblings grew up in Newport Beach and went to
Catholic school. Their father was the deacon of the school. Their
mother and father jointly started Casa Theresa, a shelter for
homeless pregnant women. Dad eventually also served as a minister at
a Santa Ana jail.
All this becomes fodder for Sullivan’s routines.
About his father being a deacon, he’ll say, “I was raised by a
deacon, which is like a priest, except he likes girls.”
About the homeless shelter, he’ll say: “They called it Casa
Theresa. I called it pre-approved dates.”
About growing up in Newport Beach, he goes with: “All the other
kids in private school wore polo shirts with an athlete on a horse. I
wore Pablo shirts with a Mexican guy on a burro.”
“He’s like one of those people in social circles that can say
certain things and get away with it, whereas someone else ..., “ said
wife Valerie Sullivan, who is quite often the subject of her
husband’s jokes. “It’s kind of shock humor. That’s his personality.”
And it works for his Blue Beet crowd.
On a really good night, the comedian said he’ll feel a connection
happening between himself and his audience, one that helps him
control whether his viewers will laugh and how they will feel.
When the laughs don’t come, Sullivan does one of two things. He’ll
acknowledge the silence (“By the way, there’s a couple ways we can do
this show. We can do it with laughter, or we can do it like this.”)
or he’ll try to involve the audience by throwing out a question.
“If you’re going to keep the audience, you have to acknowledge
when things aren’t going well or you lose their trust,” said
Sullivan, who works in sales by day. “If things are not going well
and you keep telling jokes, it won’t get better.”
He remembers being nothing short of petrified the first time he
did stand-up two years ago.
But the fear soon became an addiction.
“They say that doing stand-up gives you the same rush as jumping
out of a plane,” Sullivan said. “Now I couldn’t quit if I wanted to.”
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