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Bombing Comedy: It's been a long time since stand-up comic Butch Bradley bombed on stage. But since the dreaded day of 9/11, when he was inspired to do his part in the war on terror, he has traveled to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan on four different trips to perform for U.S. troops amid some of the most heavily-bombed areas on the planet. That same sense of comic derring-do also served fellow comic Sarah Tiana well on her recent trip to Iraq. A committed anti-war liberal before her trip, she wanted to see for herself just how bad or good the situation overseas actually was -- and returned with an almost entirely new perspective. Although they traveled separately via the organization Comics on Duty, Bradley and Tiana are representatives of the new generation of wartime comics, following the classic tradition of Bob Hope and the USO to provide laughs to America's soldiers at a time of frequent frustration and tears. Their backgrounds and comedic careers have taken distinctly different paths to success, but they have both found that war is indeed hell -- but that making troops laugh offers them a little slice of heaven. "One base I performed at had been attacked the day before by 20 terrorists, and though they killed them quickly, one soldier said he was under such duress that he realized during my show that he hadn't laughed in months and said how good it felt," says Bradley. "That's why you go. It's the first thing in my life I did that felt completely good. It's also a reality check -- on my bathroom, my shower, how I get to sleep at night. Freedom's not free; there's a cost and these people know and respect freedom so much that they're over there trying to spread it." Bradley grew up amid the casinos and comedy clubs of Atlantic City, watching master comics like Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield from the time he was 11 years old. He credits his "cool mom who worked in the casinos" with enabling him to get this early comedic education, and he never looked back as he launched a performing career which has taken him to headlining status in Vegas and his hometown and numerous appearances on Comedy Central and CBS' The Late Late Show. Tiana, meanwhile, only realized that comedy was her calling three years ago, when friends told her to give it a try just as she was about to give up her dream of being an actress. She had grown up in small-town Calhoun, Georgia, where people didn't start comedy careers but did join the military. It was her innate curiosity about the world -- and the fact that many from her hometown were dodging bullets in the desert -- that inspired her to sign up for the chance to make soldiers happy. "I would say I'm pretty liberal, but I don't believe in being partisan, I just believe in my heart and I wanted to go over there and see for myself, not to just be told what to think by either side," says Tiana, who has also played colleges nationwide as well as being a regular at the Improv and the Comedy Store. "I think that's a big problem in this country: [people] believing everything they read, taking everything they watch on the news at face value." While Bradley and Tiana both experienced the joy of bringing relief to the troops, they faced plenty of hardships and frightening moments. Bradley notes that Iraq's existing infrastructure has enabled it to make many advances despite the incessant fighting within its borders, yet he found that Afghanistan remains rife with risk despite the fact it has seemingly slipped off most Americans' radar. In fact, a Black Hawk he was on drew rocket fire that flew so close he could feel the heat as it passed by. "I did a show at a base called Salerno, where many of the troops were spending their time assisting the victims of the Pakistani earthquake, but the base had still been attacked 46 times. At night, there's no lights on at all because they're afraid of drawing enemy fire," says Bradley. "And people don't realize that when we're traveling between bases, we're risking fire while flying in Black Hawk helicopters or in convoys where being successful means that everyone made it through alive. You're taught to constantly look for cellphones that can set off insurgents' bombs, or for single-driver cars and motorcycles that can easily be suicide bombers." As one of the first female comics to travel to the Middle East, Tiana believes she was so protected by her troop guards that she was also often distracted from the dangers. While her worst moment came when "a rat peed on me while I was using a computer," she found that being a woman among thousands of men with long-term loneliness was memorable in its own way. "I've never been asked to pose for so many pictures in my life, and so many of them wanted me to pose holding their guns," she recalls. "You heard so many men say I reminded them of their wife or girlfriend, and so I went out of my way to really give them attention. I'd put on extra perfume and I'd find they'd rub their shirts against it to keep that scent with them, but at the core I was treated with so much respect for having taken the risk of being there." Thanks to armed escorts for protection, Bradley and Tiana were able to see life outside the protective isolation of the bases. Along the main highway that U.S. contractors have built through Afghanistan, Bradley started to notice signs of modern life that had never been seen in the desolate country -- such as its first fully operational Exxon station. Yet while one might cynically note that Big Oil has set up shop there, some other signs of progress are unquestionably impressive. "The more the people see that things like the highway we built are really helping them improve their lives, the more respect they have for the new construction and the less fighting there is as a result," says Bradley. "But one of the greatest things is going into Kabul and seeing that a whole new generation of women is free to work and wear real clothes of their own choice instead of being forced to wear burqas and being beaten if they want to act on their own. That kind of radical society they had with the Taliban was just a masculine society controlling women and children, and using the Koran to get what they want." Tiana witnessed the Iraqi people's newfound freedoms via the opening of the ziggurat, where it was believed that Abraham -- the only religious leader found jointly respected in the Koran, the Torah and the Bible -- was born. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, it had been blocked from all visitors outside of the dictator's inner circle, but now thousands of pilgrims a day visit and are allowed to touch the holy place. Tiana also saw the new, lush vegetation that has returned to regions of Iraq after coalition forces knocked down dams which Hussein had created along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to prevent opposing Muslim factions basic access to water. "I've always hated war and the concept of fighting and violence, but when you go there and see it yourself, you realize that there is real progress being made both in winning this war and in improving the Iraqi people's lives," says Tiana. "Besides, right or wrong, the decisions have been made to be there and our troops have to be supported like family. Good or bad, right or wrong, you always support family."
For more on Sarah
Tiana, check out
www.sarahtiana.com.
Carl Kozlowski is a regular Arriviste contributor and the co-author of the satirical
self-help guide Life: The Final Frontier. (Pick
this up!) He has also performed standup coast to coast and written
for the Chicago Tribune, New City Weekly in Chicago, Chicago
Reader and Pasadena Weekly. |
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