I made a few posts on my pandapukin IG account. As far as likes go, I can’t really be mad. It’s pretty comparable to the non-danny posts I did before, and I haven’t posted in a year. It feels incredibly ungrateful to say, but it was hollow. I don’t really know what I was expecting. I think the difference between this and the reddit posts, which did feel a little more validating, was the comments. Comments that were specific, and engaged with the content. 80 thumbs up as people walk past is incredible, when you think about it. I can’t not appreciate it. But it — I don’t know. I don’t know if I am acting entitled for being unsatisfied, if I should shed any expectation about how my art is received.
It’s the bitter, black and white thinking again. I’m still in a dopamine deficit from the show in Chicago I think. I haven’t really seen anyone talk about the show online, and I wonder if danny feels similar to the way I feel about my IG posts. Is he curious about people’s thoughts/reactions? Maybe he doesn’t really care, if he has trusted people around him who can give him expert feedback. Who knows. I feel the urge to leave a review, though, even if he’ll never see it. I can’t let go of the projection of my own need for audience connection, and also the need to process my thoughts about it.
One thing I was curious about before the show was how danny would handle vulnerability. He so rarely talks about himself- and by that I mean, who he IS, not just things that have happened to him, or media he has seen. That’s pretty antithetical to stand up, at least as I’ve experienced it. Typically, the comedian will mine a source of friction in their life, and tell anecdotes that reveal something about themselves. It was very hard for me to imagine danny doing that. When I tried to, I got a real tightness in my stomach, the way I do when my lizard brain is giving a hard No to something.
Unsurprisingly, I guess, danny just…didn’t. I think about the anecdotes and the jokes, and I ask myself, is danny a meaningful/essential character in this? For example, the spider story – that was a wild story, but what was interesting had nothing to do with him. He was more so an every-man observer, and his nervous, people pleasing reaction felt very in line with that persona. The closest we got was him talking about how young he looks. The teen pregnancy joke hit, but there was no meat there, in the way there was for the comedians that came before him. It was just a brief acknowledgement.
The nice thing about art is, rules are meant to be broken. You can pave your own way. Danny’s more detached style isn’t inherently a problem – in fact, I’m not enough of an expert on stand up to say it’s even that unusual. It gives me pause, only for this reason – if I didn’t know danny, what is the big picture impression I would take home with me? He had a lot of well crafted, well executed jokes, but what is the glue? What is going to make that experience dense and solid in my mind, instead of just a loose collection of marbles. Maybe I’m sensitive to this, because I fall victim to it – I put all these random pictures up on my IG, and it’s nice, but people are firehosed with incredible art on IG all the time. What is going to create the connection? It’s gotta be the sense of the artist behind it, right? Even if it’s just from a cohesive style or subject matter, some kind of throughline that people remember.
In talking about this show, I realize it is the equivalent of a sketch in drawing. None of what I’m saying is true critique, but rather a facet I’m interested to see him develop. After the first show, my friend Mel commented that his transitions were lacking compared to his support, but in the second show, we both thought the way he leaned into that awkwardness and made more of a joke out of it was a huge improvement. The “solution” for the artist is sometimes the exact opposite of what the critic would think. Five Nights at Freddies came from Scott leaning into how creepy and lifeless the character models in his christian kids game looked, and pivoting that into a strength.
At the risk of sounding prescriptive, it did re-enforce in my mind the thought that character comedy – particularly family oriented – would be hugely up his alley. There’s a goblin mode inside him that I’ve only really seen come out when he was playing Minecraft with the boys, and seemed to forget he was streaming, or when he was being fox szn. I don’t think it would have to replace stand up – in fact, improv might be something adjacent that works to his strengths. He can be a little shy around strangers, but I think the more familiar and confident he got with the format, the more he would shine.
I feel the need to say some of my positive thoughts, even though my bias might make it redundant. It always perks me up when I get very specific compliments from Laura, who is my biggest cheerleader, so I’ll indulge. Danny blows me away as a performer. The polish on his delivery was on another level – like the cleanest, most dynamic and perfect inkwork you’ve ever seen. The momentum is very comfortable, well done in a way you don’t consciously appreciate. The way he delivered “I’m more likely to murder you…”. BONECHILLING. It almost felt like a resting serial killer face callback. The Einstein face… look, maybe it feels like low hanging fruit, but you have to understand. When you see a painting and there is a vibrant moment of saturated color, that experience is not because the painter just took a bright color and slapped it on there. The perception of saturation is relative to the colors around it. The way the composition leads your eye to it, and makes it not feel garish or out of place. The face he makes is insane and I don’t even know how he did it, but it hits because of the entire context around it. So much of the skill that danny is using is invisible, it’s putting the audience at ease. I’m sure there was more physical comedy I missed, but embarassingly I was looking away ⅔ of the time because I was so scared of making eye contact (particularly in the late show where I was right in the eyeline.) I also thought the observations were solid, but the payoff at the end of each, when he would really demomstrate the absurdity of it — SO satisfying, so on the money, like fuck yes exactly there it is, clear as crystal, BOOM. You took it there, you NAILED IT, and they never saw it coming.
I had to follow danny on IG again, in case he announces more shows. Obviously flying to Chicago is not something I’ll be able to swing financially very often, but we’ll see. I hope if I go again I’ll be able to absorb more of it, instead of being in panic mode. It’s so frustrating to be sitting there with my conscious mind fully chill, and like “this is just a guy.”, but my amygdala is screaming at me to run. Embarrassing. But hopefully exposure therapy will be the solution, and I can’t wait for the next opportunity.
>>robyns_ramblings 