Nov 09, 2016

Decades ago, during the big stand-up comedy scare of the late 1980s, I, as stand-up comedian James R. Zingelman did a set at George McKelvey's Comedy Club in Denver, Colorado. Unbeknownst to me, there was a reporter from The Denver Post reviewing the show.

The following day I opened the newspaper and found the review, and I got a short mention!

The reporter called me both "unprepossessing" and "gifted." We'll ignore the "gifted" for the moment.

"unprepossessing" Yeah, I had to look it up too. I'll save you the trouble. From dictionary.com:

unprepossessing adjective

1. not creating a favorable impression; unattractive

Now I could have let this bother me. But I am who I am, and somehow I was making a favorable impression on my audiences in spite of being unprepossessing!

I was getting bookings and laughter. In fact, I was on the road so much I got divorced because of it.

I don't really know what I did to semi-succeed with audiences. Maybe it was that I was constantly trying to write more and better material. Maybe it was because subconsciously  I wanted to engage my audience. Probably a combination of both.

In this outward appearance matters society we live in, it's sometimes hard to not be one of the beautiful people. So, take what God or nature or you parents gave you and work with what you have, unprepossessing or not.

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