The Gospel According to JC & JC

Tags: Saskatoon, Saskatoon comedians, Saskatoon comedy, stand-up diaries, standup diaries, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean, Trevor Dean comedian, trevor dean saskatoon

I have had a feeling of thankfulness these last few weeks with respect to my stand-up comedy, wondering in amazement how I’ve managed to still be doing this considering the road I have traveled to get to respectability.

That road hasn’t been easy.  It’s been lonely, very, very, very lonely.  At times I haven’t seen a light at the end of the tunnel because of the thought that other people wanted to keep me buried as deep in the tunnel as possible to prevent light from shining through.  Sometimes those thoughts were a fallacy, and sometimes they were legitimate, but they existed nonetheless.

But look at me now.  I have the biggest social media presence of any comedian in this province, guaranteed.  With my five Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts and blog, not to mention about a dozen videos online, who ever figured I would have a mini social media empire building with my comedy brand?  I didn’t see it coming.

But, over seven years later and here we are, still standing.

The first couple of weeks worshipping in our new church location, one thought kept coming into my mind.  My life isn’t exactly rosey at the moment and not really going my way at all, but the only thought I had wasn’t about my problems.  It was about a victory.

I stood worshipping in amazement that it’s been over seven years doing comedy, and finally starting to get better and get the recognition and respect that’s been long overdue.  Maybe the respect has been there, but it’s hard to tell when people stay silent, right?

I walk into church now being thankful that I’ve stuck it out, that I’m an inspiration to my friends, and that I have a worldwide following (for some reason lots of people in Africa and India follow me….not sure why).  I walk into church feeling like the expert, like I am a valuable commodity because I have the ability to do something the majority of people can’t do.  That involves going up on stage in front of strangers and making them laugh.  I’m not the best looking on stage, it may look a bit awkward, but I get the job done at the end of the day.

Just think, when I get my next relationship.  People will ask her what I do, and she’ll be like “he’s a comedian and he goes to church”.  In my head, I think that would be a dream man for some lucky lady.  Like I said, that thought only exists in my head (thankfully).

Going to the same church for two years has made me more accountable as well.  I remember there’s one family that has six kids, all strong in the Lord.  Anyhow, they all attend, and the mother was talking to me when we first met.  I told her that I do stand-up comedy.  She said “I know, I’ve seen your stuff”.  Wow, at that moment I can’t explain the embarrassment and shame that came over me as I quickly apologized for what she saw.

It got me thinking that maybe other people from church watch my stuff, and what conclusions would they draw if they saw my stuff and saw it wasn’t clean, let alone not bringing any glory to God?  Comics get into the business because they want to be the center of attention, because they want to be liked.  Here I am trying to work hard for that recognition, only to have it all go up in smoke if people see that I do the same type of material everyone else does (by that I mean talking about the same subjects that aren’t clean).

A pastor once gave me a prophesy telling me that everything God promised me will come to pass.  In that case, I should probably try and do my part.  That starts with the words that come out of my mouth, being accountable, responsible, transparent and authentic.

Of course, the other part of the equation is the other JC, my comedy coach.  If it wasn’t for him, I would have quit because I burnt every bridge.  I guarantee that I would have pissed off the comedy community and been on the receiving end of more threats and slander than I received previously.  When you aren’t very good, it seems to amp up the rhetoric and anger because you haven’t got a leg to stand on when you suck to begin with.  But once you get good and establish credibility with other comics and the audience, it can only help your case.

Now I am entering into the Christian comedy phase.  At least I am taking a stand for what I believe in when it comes to comedy.  Nobody else is writing Christian material at the rate I am.  Some guys have one or two bits, but I have ten pages so far, scattered over 4 different categories (Jesus, God, bible stories and Christians in general).  Plus, my material talks about characters in the bible and bible stories that you don’t hear much about.

You may think that I will be posting lots of my Christian material online, but you’d be wrong.  Aside from the audio clip already posted to my Facebook fan page, I won’t be posting anything further for a while.  The only videos I will have are the ones already on this website.  No, they aren’t completely clean (at least 3/4), and some of them aren’t showing me do really well, but that’s good.  It creates intrigue, and with my new Christian material it will leave people wondering what I talk about, and more importantly how good the material is.  I believe that element of the unknown will draw people to come watch, and see how much better I’ve become.

You have no idea what you’re missing.  My time will come on a big stage soon, and when it does, the pieces will all fall into place.

Besides, if you can’t trust a comic, who can you trust?