Sibling Rivalry
My parents are pretty supportive of my job as a comedian. I think. They’re supportive in the “Nothing you ever do will be good enough” way. They’re always trying to get involved. My dad keeps telling me I should talk more about my childhood on stage. Talk about my experiences growing up. Which I think is his way of wondering out loud where it all went wrong. He probably cries himself to sleep at night secretly. “My son’s a comedian. What happened?” – The thing is, my brother is married, and started his own company and makes lots of money. and I’m single. and … I’m here. So that tells you about MY financial situation.
It’s really weird to see your brother become successful. Because you grew up with that person. You know what I mean? That’s my brother. I remember when he used to crap his pants! I was also crapping my pants at the time but still. This guy? Really? I think it’s part of that sibling rivalry. You’re always competing you never want to be the one that lost. He’s not shy about rubbing it in either. He’ll take me out to lunch… because I’m poor. And he’ll pull out his Iphone and be like “Hey look, bro. This email just confirms my deposit of $1000 was successful.” I’m just sitting there like… I hate technology. I want to slap the phone out of his hand. I can’t compete with that. What am I gonna do? “Oh yeah? Well. This email confirms I’m booked to appear in the Tri Cities! Take That! It ALSO confirms I have to pick up the headliner from the airport.” Take your 600 grand a year and shove it.
My brother is 2 years older than me. So he was always better at me in lots of things like sports and stuff. But he was also better at girls. I don’t know where I was at during this training course. But I remember so many times I’d be at school and a cute girl would come up to me and be like “oh hey. You’re Andrew right? Keith’s Brother?” Damn. He was first to get a girlfriend. He was first to actually do something with a girlfriend. He was also first to get a restraining order against him. So I feel like I’ve got a small victory in that category at least.
While I’m making fun of him I guess I should at least give him a shout out. His website is http://keithriversfilms.com/ and even I’m impressed by some of the work he’s done. He deserves every penny he’s made and he’s worked really hard to get to that point. He took some giant risks along the way that could have easily left him unemployed and struggling to survive just like me. I’ll leave him to tell his own story, because this is MY blog. He often set great examples as an older brother that showed me both the right and wrong ways (can you say restraining order?) to do things. Whether he knows it or not, I always used to joke that I was taking notes on his failures so I could turn them in to my success. Too bad he was never a failure at women.
Editors Note: My brother wants me to mention (and I forgot this part of the story) that he never officially had a restraining order against him. The girl tried to get one, and he hid out from getting served for a few months because the notice expires every two weeks or something. Then when he finally realized they weren’t going to give up, he turned himself in and went to court, the judge threw the case out in a matter of minutes. The fun part of the story is the girl was my age. I was still in high school. It was my senior year. So I had classes with this girl and she was always trying to be nice to me. I could never bring myself to call her out on it because I think if I remember it was mostly a result of her crazy mom and the girl still called the house using a fake name (he had a different girl every week anyway. So we fell for it). So yes, the story is an example of something based on truth but exaggerated.
