I'd Like to Play Alone, Please

by Tom Segura

In November of 2013, I shot Completely Normal, my first one-hour special. I chose to shoot it in Minneapolis because it had always been a great comedy city to me in the times that I had been there before. A couple months later—after the horrific process of watching myself, and editing, and color correcting, and mixing—I got a phone call while I was driving up La Cienega and I pulled over. My manager at the time told me, “You have an offer.” I got excited. Comedy Central must have seen the special and realized they should have made it. I braced myself for a triumphant moment. “Comedy Central passed.” Fuck. Really? I said, “Dude, they already said no.” “I know, but this time we sent them the special and they passed again.” You know how that girl said she didn’t like you? I called her for you and she said she still doesn’t like you. “Why are you telling me? I only knew that they had said ‘no’ once and that was enough. You’re double confirming the ‘no’?” Then he said, “HBO passed.” “We sent it to HBO?” “Yeah, we sent it to everyone.” I was legitimately excited that someone at HBO had even seen it. “Well, you have an offer.” My heart was racing, my breath got short. I needed to compose myself. “Where?” “Netflix.” “Netflix?” It might sound crazy as you read this, but it was not the same as getting that phone call now. Netflix had just started coming out of their business of mailing DVDs to consumers and was trying this new “streaming” thing. It was definitely a letdown. My manag...