It's OK, sad clown, 2015 is almost over. Photo via Flickr user Aaron Fulkerson
Was 2015 a good year? Like the first flowers bursting through a permafrost (a metaphor that will need explaining in ten years) there was actual good news this year. For the first time since 2001, the NSA's powers were limited, world leaders all finally agreed that climate change was an urgent problem and, in Canada, voters chose someone who seems like a decent person over the living avatar of death and despair. These blips did not overcome the general mood of 2015, which was that of a globe hurtling toward chaos and disaster. War continued to war, terrorism continued to terrorize, and the rich got richer while we got poorer. From Europe to India, the forces of nationalism and racism continued to grow and thrive while rationalism seemed unable to provide an alternative. And, of course, Trump. Even a good Star Wars movie will have a hard time wiping the taste of this year out of our collective mouth.
In honor of this shit year—and in the hope of wringing some grim laughs out of it—we asked some stand-up comedians what was the worst thing that happened to them all year. They responded with some 2015 appropriate lowlights including pedophilia, anxiety, addiction, unemployment, and lots of death!
JACKIE PIRICO
I was out walking one morning. The morning is when no bad stuff is supposed to happen! Turns out I was being closely trailed by a man; a CRACK man! A true crack enthusiast. He caught up with me and was all bloodied, as though someone had done a real number on his face via punching it in. He stared at me and cramped me up against the storefronts as we walked. He asked me if he looked OK, to which I replied, "Yes! Very nice!" Then he called me a whore and asked how many black men's cocks I've sucked; not in those words! I said, "Oh my gosh; I dunno! Some?!" Then I quickly ducked into David's Tea where I was conned into buying SO much tea for tons of money! "Buy even MORE tea," they said!
KRIS SIDDIQI
I was really fuckin hard on myself this year—that was the worst. I worked rather diligently trying to get some new jobs and after some disappointments I dealt with it poorly and took it out on myself pretty hard. Got sad and depressed. It kinda ended when I decided to, hilariously, go easy on myself. But yeah, that was worst!!
JESS BEAULIEU
I got laid off from my full-time job at the end of 2014 and, although at first I was a tad shocked and frightened and pissed, I quickly transitioned to celebrating and doing shots of whiskey and yelling "this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'M FREEEEE!" That lasted for about a week, and then the real depression hit. 2015 rolled into town and I realized that being unemployed isn't all sunshine and roses and being able to pay your bills via dreams. It's more "oh god" and "what's happening" and "rent is due AGAIN?" My artist friends kept telling me how "lucky" I was but I didn't see it that way. Sure. I was "free" from mundane work, but I was also "free" from a steady income and a reason to exit my bed in the morning. I suffer from anxiety, and for the first few months of this year my existence basically consisted of me curled up in the fetal position, weeping, glancing at job boards, weeping again, and posting statuses on Facebook (about weeping). If I had trusted future me to figure shit out with time (which I sort of have), I probably wouldn't have spent most of the new year indoors, staring at myself in the mirror and telling freedom to go fuck itself.
D.J. DEMERS
I was performing stand-up on the "family-friendly show" on a cruise ship, and a 12-year-old girl was on her phone in the front row. I asked her to give her phone to me. When I looked at it, she was having a romantic/erotic conversation with a man who, from his profile photo, appeared to be 35–40 years old. Before I could say anything, she jumped on the stage, snatched the phone from me, and ran out of the room. The audience laughed very hard. I didn't tell them I had just stumbled upon probable pedophilia, as it tends to kill the mood.
AMANDA BROOKE PERRIN
The worst day of 2015 for me was when Tom Cruise lip synced against Jimmy Fallon, eternally ruining "I Can't Feel My Face" for generations to come.
MARITO LOPEZ
I relapsed, and lost my job, and my egotistical ass was sure I was getting into Just For Laughs festival, so I was justifying that as a bright spot in my life, and as a reason to keep "partying," and then when I didn't get it, I was just a drunk idiot.
Hahaha.
With no job. No JFL. And a song called "Baby Dick."
STEVE PATRICK ADAMS
I call it...
That day I moved from the city and apartment I love to be with the person I love by virtue of cramming my life into a mid-size sedan and throwing out the rest. Also my lover was pregnant and I didn't have a job. (Oh, and I had to get rid of my cat.)
NICK FLANAGAN
The worst thing that happened to me this year was my father's death. Nothing comes close, although Donald Trump's campaign has come close. I have a depressing feeling I'm not the only comic—or even, dare I say, person—who has "deceased parent" as their worst point of the year. Imagine I wrote "not performing at Montreal Just For Laughs" as my low point in spite of my father dying this year? That would be not good. Yet possible in this selfish, selfish world of Trump.
DEANNE SMITH
The absolute worst thing to happen to me in 2015 was that my mom died. But around that same time, I met my girlfriend. I was the saddest I'd ever been, and also super horny. I was crying all the time, but really turned on. What I'm trying to say is that my body was in a constant state of wetness, for various reasons. Leaking. Swollen. An emotional rollercoaster. The second worst thing to happen to me in 2015 was that joke I just made. Jesus, DeAnne.
JORDAN FOISY
Aside from watching the world engage in behavior that can't help but make my fascism sense start tingling, the worst thing that happened to me was, while drinking with some friends (one from high school, one from university, and one from current comedian days), I overdid it to the point where, from 8:30 PM onward, I spent the evening wrapped around my toilet. While locked in that familiar, cold porcelain embrace, I listened as three generations of my friends reminisced about all the times they've seen me get sick from alcohol over the years. The combination of embarrassment, nausea, and that vomit-soaked trip down memory lane made this feel a lot like hitting some kind of bottom. And not the fun Drake kind, but the one that makes you realize that maybe it's more than just a small body or that bars never clean their draft lines and maybe—just maybe—you have a problem.
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