Carlos Morrison: Not that Kind of Nerd

Remem­ber the big finale scene in Flash­dance where the judges aren’t real­ly pay­ing atten­tion at first and then sud­den­ly BOOM…they’re on the edge of their seats, tap­ping their feet? This is the audi­ence (and judges) reac­tion I imagine/​remember when I watch Car­los Morrison’s 2019 Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin final­ist set. He was a mem­o­rable ​‘WHERE DID THIS GUY COME FROM?!’ stand­out that year. 

Dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion with Mor­ri­son it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to dis­cov­er that what might come off as hilar­i­ous dead-pan neu­rot­ic stage fright is actu­al­ly ground­ed in his true fear of pub­lic speak­ing. It’s the same fear that brought him to com­e­dy in the first place when he took an improv class to over­come his glos­so­pho­bia. It’s what he opened his mem­o­rable 2019 FPIA finals set with. It’s easy to think that it’s a put on, but Mor­rison’s sweet awk­ward­ness con­vinces you read­i­ly that there is a def­i­nite fear and gen­uine dis­com­fort with being on stage.

Rewind to a young teenage Mor­ri­son and you’d find a fair­ly typ­i­cal com­ic back­ground — binge lis­ten­ing to com­e­dy. With the added bonus of Mor­ri­son being raised in Austin, his favorite thing to do was lis­ten­ing to a local all com­e­dy clip sta­tion where he could hear com­e­dy as often as he could. He even got to a point where he could­n’t lis­ten to enough com­e­dy and began jour­nal­ing his thoughts. While con­fess­ing that he was a nerd, he was quick to point out that he was­n’t the kind of nerd we were think­ing of. He was a mis­chie­vous nerd (which comes through in his com­e­dy style). As he began think­ing about per­form­ing com­e­dy and the inspi­ra­tion he got from watch­ing spe­cials by Maria Bam­ford, Sarah Sil­ver­man, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis, and Pat­ton Oswalt, he start­ed get­ting excit­ed about ​“the idea of comics hang­ing out and, you know, doing shows togeth­er. and mak­ing lit­tle sketch­es. That was kind of excit­ing to me the idea of being in a van with a bunch of comedians.”

Mor­ri­son is a tall, impos­ing fig­ure, we think he’d be bet­ter served by hang­ing out with comics in a tour bus or pri­vate jet, but such is the naïveté of a young com­ic. That was evi­dent in Mor­rison’s first attempts at per­form­ing com­e­dy. Once he decid­ed to take all those jour­nal­ing thoughts to a stage, he thought the only way to per­form was to per­form at a club. In 2018, that meant per­form­ing at Cap City Com­e­dy Club, so he kept sub­mit­ting and sub­mit­ting and sub­mit­ting his name to be on the leg­endary Sun­day night Cap City Open Mic. And he kept not being added. Those in the know know that to land on the Cap City Open Mic, you have to gen­er­al­ly be known as active­ly work­ing on your sets at oth­er open mics pep­pered around the city. In 2018, the open mic offer­ings were more lim­it­ed than they are now. Until final­ly in Fall of 2018, he land­ed a spot at the Cap City Open Mic and Mor­ri­son admits, it went pret­ty well, ​“except for the last joke.”

As he talked to oth­er comics, he learned about the Austin com­e­dy scene and how it worked. He began per­form­ing more earnest­ly to get over that fear of speak­ing in pub­lic. It was­n’t long before he met pre­vi­ous guest Zain Hus­sain and the two struck up a friend­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tions togeth­er that allowed each of their strengths to shine. The two began pro­duc­ing shows togeth­er, includ­ing one mod­eled after the near-leg­endary Taos Co-op Sat­ur­day night show (which for a spell was host­ed exclu­sive­ly by comics named Andrew). The 21^st Street Coop show was titled This is a Cult and would have con­tin­ued had it not been for the glob­al inter­rup­tion that is Covid. 

Anoth­er thing inter­rupt­ed was the momen­tum Mor­ri­son was get­ting after land­ing in the 2019 FPIA finals. Hav­ing land­ed in the finals in his first ever attempt at the con­test, once the con­test was over, show book­ers around the city were call­ing on him to per­form on their shows. He liked the atten­tion, but there was still that sense of fear (and the nerd men­tal­i­ty) that made him uneasy.

Mor­ri­son admits that the glob­al pan­dem­ic reset his per­spec­tive. He real­ized that ​“there are more mean­ing­ful things than com­e­dy”. Which is a stark rev­e­la­tion for any­one read­ing this (pre­sum­ing some lev­el of com­e­dy fan­dom lead­ing you, dear read­er, here) and those who per­form, pro­duce, or oth­er­wise oper­ate in the com­e­dy uni­verse. Hav­ing pro­duced sev­er­al shows, Mor­ri­son laments that some­times the busi­ness side ​“gums up the works and ruins the fun of it.” With a mar­riage on the hori­zon, unlike many 20-some­things he knows, he real­izes that while he loves per­form­ing, hang­ing out with oth­er comics, he also real­izes that hav­ing a fam­i­ly and liv­ing in a nice house can be just as important. 

This reset has­n’t stopped him from pro­duc­ing new shows, by the way. Fre­quent­ly with the yin to his yang and fel­low com­e­dy mas­ter­mind, Zain Hus­sain. The two col­lab­o­rat­ed on a show held in a con­ve­nience store called Busi­ness Hours in 2022 and this spring we’ll see The Bud­dy Sys­tem at The Velvee­ta Room. When we dis­cussed how the part­ner­ship with Hus­sain worked, it was fas­ci­nat­ing to lis­ten to how the extro­vert­ed weird­ness of Hus­sain and the intro­vert­ed nerdi­ness of Mor­ri­son cre­ates a col­lab­o­ra­tion of give and take on ideas to cre­ate a per­fect blend of unique­ness that most any alt-com­e­dy fan can appre­ci­ate. Which is prob­a­bly why Emma Hold­er fre­quent­ly invites the duo to per­form on her What a Char­ac­ter show at Fall­out The­ater. As Mor­rison’s orig­i­nal improv teacher from Hide­out The­ater, Hold­er appre­ci­ates the char­ac­ter-based com­e­dy choic­es that the two bring to her show, which gives them a free­dom to be as sil­ly and weird as they want to be.

While the highs of being a 2019 FPIA final­ist have cer­tain­ly fad­ed a bit, Mor­ri­son has no regrets, He finds that ​“I’m ambi­tious in dif­fer­ent ways… I want per­son­al growth. That’s what I want from com­e­dy… I want to get bet­ter, because it makes me a bet­ter per­son.” Mor­rison’s thought­ful approach demon­strate a matu­ri­ty far beyond his years. To bor­row a fre­quent phrase heard dur­ing his 2019 FPIA and oth­er sets, ​“what’s the worst that could hap­pen”? Is it real­ly all that bad to read­just his com­e­dy goals? Achiev­ing the bal­ance of pur­su­ing com­e­dy while also build­ing a fam­i­ly and home, does­n’t seem like a bad out­come to us. And by all accounts, that may be Mor­rison’s ulti­mate dream. 

Fol­low Car­los Morrison

• Web­site — car​los​mor​ri​son​.com
• Link­tree — link​tr​.ee/​c​r​a​p​b​y​c​arlos
• Insta­gram — @crapbycarlos
• Youtube — youtube​.com/​@​c​a​r​l​o​s​m​o​r​rison

Car­los can be seen and heard:

• The Bud­dy Sys­tem — April 7, 2023 10pm — The Velvee­ta Room
• What a Char­ac­ter host­ed by Emma Hold­er — appears frequently
• Around Austin