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.”