If I’ve learned anything from my career in magazine journalism, it’s that people love lists, amiright? Of course I am. That’s why we do them. Let’s be honest: The best time for a list is at the end of the year to help us put a bow on the past 12 months and prepare us psychically to move forward for the year ahead. So to follow in that august tradition, I will be publishing my own set of year-end lists. First up, a little number on my year pursuing my hobby of following the world of stand-up comedy. You know what’s funny? I probably could have done 20 of these.

Top 11 ways I intersected awkwardly with the comedy world in 2010: 

11. Attended a RooftopComedy college competition event at the Comic Strip, and before the show, while watching the monitors play stand-up clips I may have seen performed live when I was in college in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I turn to the college kid next to me and said, “These jokes were born before you were.”

10. Saw Chelsea Peretti and Todd Barry (separately) in my neighborhood in NYC. Opted to look at both in a way that hopefully indicated that I know who they are but of course said nothing even though I am a fan of both. 

9. Bailed on a number of shows that I publicly said I’d be attending because work got in the way. I must hold the record at UCB-NY for calling to cancel a previously made reservation. 

8. Watched Marc Maron, Ryan Singer, and perhaps a couple of other comics whose names I don’t recall pop up in the back during my panel on the state of online comedy at the RooftopComedy festival. Just as quickly, they leave the room. 

7. Had a chat with Brendon Walsh after my panel discussion, and during it, I forgot that I had just heard him on both WTF and Doug Loves Movies podcasts, which made me feel like an asshole. 

6. Had my item on Never Not Funny in Fast Company magazine mentioned during an episode, along with an aside from Jimmy Pardo that intimated he was a bit piqued at the feature being about Adam Carolla and NNF being in the sidebar. 

5. I am currently financially supporting seven comedy podcasts. 

4. Marc Maron signed one of his Live WTF posters “You stalkin’ me? WTF!” after I told him that I had seen him two nights earlier at Union Hall. When I wrote on this board about seeing Maron that week, I mistakenly identified the young woman running the merch table as his girlfriend and Maron took to ASpecialThing.com to castigate me for my error.

Quote: Originally Posted by davidlidsky

Marc’s young girlfriend came along for the trip and was there last night (as she was on Monday at Marc’s standup show). It adds a special brand of awkward funny when he talks about her during the show and you know she’s in the room. She helmed Marc’s merch table after the show, and it’s a good thing I already have all of Marc’s CDs, because I don’t think I could have handled that encounter without more awkwardness.

Marc Maron: FYI that was not my ‘young girlfriend’ at the merch table. That was my manager’s really young intern. My girlfriend was there but not there.

Just wanted to clear that up. I’m not a predator. Young I can live with (until it goes bad because I am crazy). Really young, not so much.

Maron

3. Impulsively decided to send Greg Behrendt and Dave Anthony, hosts of the Walking the Room podcast, a Halloween gift box of candy, spent way too much money and time on it (including getting one of the art directors at my job to help me change the Haribo Clown Fish candy bag to read “Clown from the Neck Down” candy). Got discussed on three consecutive podcasts in a very sweet way, but I still felt a bit foolish.

2. Attended Patton Oswalt concert in Atlanta, Georgia while home visiting my Mom. In the ramp-up to Patton discussing KFC, he mentions that the CEO was interviewed in Fast Company magazine.

Comedian Patton Oswalt has been all over late-night TV calling Famous Bowls “a failure pile in a sadness bowl.” Any comment?

[Chuckles.] He doesn’t see all the smiles that people have when they eat our food—that’s a talked-about product that people love. I actually like it because it’s got the gravy. But I don’t like potatoes without the gravy. I hate it when I go to a really nice restaurant and they put my chicken on a pile of potatoes. When I was a kid, I actually ran away from home for about half a block because my dad tried to make me eat the potatoes.

Because I work at Fast Company magazine, after a couple of other people let out a small whoop at the mention, I did as well. Patton shut it down with a very quick, “Eh, it’s a magazine for rich douchebags.” Ouch. (We’re not. Really.) I flash to the fact that beneath my chair is the copy of Fast Company featuring the Q&A with the CEO of KFC’s parent company (Yum Brands) that I have brought from NYC to Atlanta, for Patton to sign after the show, because I was the one who commissioned the interview and put up the interviewer to ask how he felt about Patton’s “failure pile in a sadness bowl” bit. All I can think about for the last 15 or so minutes of the show is how awkward it’s going to be if I meet Patton afterwards and yet I still kind of wanted it to happen. Alas, there was no meet-and-greet, and after pathetically hanging around outside for awhile, I headed home to wonder why I feel the need to insert myself into the comedy world I so enjoy.

1. Organized Paul F. Tompkins’ 300 show in NYC, PFT booked it for when I was going to be out of town, I expressed my disappointment to Paul about this because I had given him notice of my schedule, and Paul turned it into a bit that he did both on stage that night and on The Best Show on WFMU two nights later. While funny, it really depicted me as particularly pathetic and whiny. Fascinating to see my life run through the comedic mind. Did I mention that I am a grown adult? I have a wife and two dogs and a demanding, fulfilling job. And yet I do this to myself. 

My Year in Comedy, everyone! Thank you.