This was performed last Tuesday. Full disclosure; I have a single one-liner that was lifted from a Doug Stanhope performance. I don't consider this joke theft because of the context of the bit. The interaction with the co-worker I described really did take place and just had to tell that story on stage.
Hopefully, Stanhope understands this. I really don't want that guy coming after me.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Space Pussy! Plus;What it's like to fuck Mitt Romney.
Again, crowd response was better than it sounds in the video. There were something like fifteen people in the whole bar that night.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Fuck Sorry
As many of you may have heard, a couple days ago a goddamn, shithead stand-up comedian had the balls to go out and do a fucking stand-up comedy...THING involving the horrific shooting spree that happened at the premiere of The Dark Night Rises at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on July 20. Here's that comedian now.
Yeah, I know! Too soon, right?
Jon Stewart made those remarks a scant three days after the tragedy in Colorado.
And he wasn't the only offender. Thirty minutes after Jon Stewart made his remarks another stand-up comic got on TV and did the same fucking thing.
Right, Stephen Colbert also used the Colorado shooting in his act. What a dick, right? How dare he?
I realize that Stewart and Colbert were NOT mocking the shooting itself or the victims. No one made a joke about people who don't know how to duck. No one made a joke about how, when it comes to jokes, comic book fans are "easy targets." Stewart and Colbert were just mentioning the shooting so they could analyze, deconstruct and reveal the laughable failing of American media and our political system. But still, they did it in a comedy setting. Again, too soon, right? How dare they use that horrific incident to make people laugh. Three days is way to soon to do jokes about a tragedy of this magnitude.
I will admit that I find it odd that no one (not just "no ONE," but no giant mass of internet trolls or lifeless TMZ wannbe reporters) came out to wag their giant, throbbing rage induced hard-ons at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colberts' twitter profiles and demand that Comedy Central fire them immediately, have them hanged at dawn and see their hearts served on a plate to the hungry lynch mob.
Odd indeed considering that a few days after the Stewart\Colbert airing, Dane Cook got on stage at the Laugh Factory and said...
And then the internet went insane.
Now, again, Dane Cook isn't making fun of the deaths of innocent human beings. He's making fun of the movie itself and he's making fun the saying "just shoot me," which is a saying people throw around when they're bored like it's candy on Halloween.
But the weird thing for me is that people are really, really pissed at Dane Cook and no one said a word about Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart.
Why?
I mean, Dane Cook's joke was weak and obvious and lacking the flare and grace that Stewart and Colbert exhibited in their performances, sure, (I mean, seriously Dane, if your punch line is the name of a shitty sitcom, isn't that your first clue that you're phoning it in?) but was it really offensive to the degree that people should attack him online, forcing him to apologize?
No. Fuck off, no. Here's why.
I'm a comedian. Before I was a comedian I worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant four about seven years (4 1/2 in a hospital for the criminally insane and 3 1/2 in general medicine). I've seen people die. I haven't just seen people die, I've felt people die. Some of them died under my hands, literally.
I know what it feels like when a man's ribs break under my hands while I'm performing CPR chest compressions continuously until my arms and shoulder are so tired that I think my arms are just going to fall off.
And then I watched the doctor call time of death and realized it was for all nothing. I tried so hard to save that guy. Me and all the nurses and doctors and specialists. We tried so hard and now he's gone.
If you don't know what that feels like, allow me to clue you in.
It fucking sucks.
But that was the job and we did it every night. I did it for seven years. A lot of people do it for life.
Do you know how we got through it without going absolutely bug- fuck crazy?
We made jokes.
Here's a few we made about people who died under our care;
"Hey, were you really just giving that old man mouth-to-mouth or did you slip him the tongue?"
"Thank God, Ms. Henderson passed away. Now I don't have to strangle the bitch."
There was on diabetic who had lost both legs. After he died a nurse made the joke, "Now he'll never play third base."
We didn't wait a week out of respect for the dead to tell these jokes after some one passed. Hell, some of us didn't bother with seven seconds. In the hospital, we riffed on what we thought was funny as it popped into our heads in real time. Fuck what the rest of the world may think.
Bare in mind, these were just jokes. In the hospital I worked at, people who did a shit job taking care of their patients got ratted out by their coworkers. Any one caught physically harming their coworkers (which happened) got a punching in the head from their coworkers (which, I'm glad to say, also happened). Because at the end of the day we were there to make the world a little less shitty for people who were having a shitty day. We had no absolutely no tolerance for people who made things worse for patients.
But those among us who were still dedicated to caring for and helping the sick, well...the good guys among us, we still had our jokes.
Because it still sucks to deal with other peoples' shitty day on a regular basis and all we had were each other and you can't just not talk about it, and you can't just spend your whole night talking about how bad it sucks.
So you make jokes.
Are those jokes fucked up?
Yes!
Are we, as people who work in the medical profession, a bunch of sick motherfuckers for mocking the passing of the sick and elderly?
Yeah, obviously, you have to be to want a job dealing with human suffering, but you know what....
It's not a mental sickness that lets us make light of human suffering. It's not a failing on our part. It's not that we lack sensitivity. It's a mental wellness that drives that type of humor. Without that we could never do our jobs. This ability to laugh at the tragic and the horrible is what will see us through to the other side of the motherfucking apocalypse. Those of you who are angry at Dane Cook obviously do not possess this skill.
Comedians are the guys who are trying to teach that skill to everyone. If you work in medicine you're exposed to death all the time. And you have to see the funny in it or you'll go nuts. If you're a regular human and you just watch the news, you're still exposed to death all the time, but you only feel it when the media tells you to.
As did National Celebrity Examiner and apparent moron (moron for no reason other than that I disagree with her), Jodi Jill said;
"While it hardly seems fathomable that someone would so quickly reflect on a massacre like the situation in Colorado, it goes to show that contemporary comedians find human tragedy a place to discover a laugh. In the case of Dane Cook, it seems his apology falls short and his original words still hit home."
Nah, fuck it. She's just a moron.
What you need to remember is that on the day you die, you don't want your mom and dad crying at your funeral. You would much prefer them laughing and enjoying their lives. Just as the dead would now love to see you enjoying yours.
You need guys like Dane Cook and Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Daniel Tosh and Bill Hicks and George Carlin and countless others to take horrible shit in the world and turn it into something you can find joy in. You NEED those guys. Their job is to take all the horrible in the universe and give you another way of looking at it. Because if you only look at the Aurora, CO shooting the way the news gives it to you then the only story you're getting is, "Hey, bad shit happened. Now buy Coke, eat at McDonalds and vote like we tell you. You're FREE!!!!"
Horseshit.
We need guys and gals who can take the worst things in the universe and put a spin on them that's not directed by a pre-existing political narrative presented by the six or seven companies that control all of what we get to hear in America.
They show us what's ridiculous in our collective thinking and by doing so, they show us how we can think differently.
And that's why I think it's bullshit that Dane Cook felt the need to apologize for what he said at the Laugh Factory.
Fuck sorry.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Aurora Shootings & Gun Control | ||||
| ||||
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Partisan Speculation Over Colorado Shooter | ||||
| ||||
I realize that Stewart and Colbert were NOT mocking the shooting itself or the victims. No one made a joke about people who don't know how to duck. No one made a joke about how, when it comes to jokes, comic book fans are "easy targets." Stewart and Colbert were just mentioning the shooting so they could analyze, deconstruct and reveal the laughable failing of American media and our political system. But still, they did it in a comedy setting. Again, too soon, right? How dare they use that horrific incident to make people laugh. Three days is way to soon to do jokes about a tragedy of this magnitude.
I will admit that I find it odd that no one (not just "no ONE," but no giant mass of internet trolls or lifeless TMZ wannbe reporters) came out to wag their giant, throbbing rage induced hard-ons at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colberts' twitter profiles and demand that Comedy Central fire them immediately, have them hanged at dawn and see their hearts served on a plate to the hungry lynch mob.
Odd indeed considering that a few days after the Stewart\Colbert airing, Dane Cook got on stage at the Laugh Factory and said...
“So I heard that the guy came into the theater about 25 minutes into the movie,” said Cook. “And I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie, but the movie is pretty much a piece of crap. Yea, spoiler alert...I know that if none of that [the shooting] would have happened, pretty sure that somebody in that theater, about 25 minutes in, realizing it was a piece of crap, was probably like ‘ugh f**king shoot me."
And then the internet went insane.
Now, again, Dane Cook isn't making fun of the deaths of innocent human beings. He's making fun of the movie itself and he's making fun the saying "just shoot me," which is a saying people throw around when they're bored like it's candy on Halloween.
But the weird thing for me is that people are really, really pissed at Dane Cook and no one said a word about Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart.
Why?
I mean, Dane Cook's joke was weak and obvious and lacking the flare and grace that Stewart and Colbert exhibited in their performances, sure, (I mean, seriously Dane, if your punch line is the name of a shitty sitcom, isn't that your first clue that you're phoning it in?) but was it really offensive to the degree that people should attack him online, forcing him to apologize?
No. Fuck off, no. Here's why.
I'm a comedian. Before I was a comedian I worked in a hospital as a nursing assistant four about seven years (4 1/2 in a hospital for the criminally insane and 3 1/2 in general medicine). I've seen people die. I haven't just seen people die, I've felt people die. Some of them died under my hands, literally.
I know what it feels like when a man's ribs break under my hands while I'm performing CPR chest compressions continuously until my arms and shoulder are so tired that I think my arms are just going to fall off.
And then I watched the doctor call time of death and realized it was for all nothing. I tried so hard to save that guy. Me and all the nurses and doctors and specialists. We tried so hard and now he's gone.
If you don't know what that feels like, allow me to clue you in.
It fucking sucks.
But that was the job and we did it every night. I did it for seven years. A lot of people do it for life.
Do you know how we got through it without going absolutely bug- fuck crazy?
We made jokes.
Here's a few we made about people who died under our care;
"Hey, were you really just giving that old man mouth-to-mouth or did you slip him the tongue?"
"Thank God, Ms. Henderson passed away. Now I don't have to strangle the bitch."
There was on diabetic who had lost both legs. After he died a nurse made the joke, "Now he'll never play third base."
We didn't wait a week out of respect for the dead to tell these jokes after some one passed. Hell, some of us didn't bother with seven seconds. In the hospital, we riffed on what we thought was funny as it popped into our heads in real time. Fuck what the rest of the world may think.
Bare in mind, these were just jokes. In the hospital I worked at, people who did a shit job taking care of their patients got ratted out by their coworkers. Any one caught physically harming their coworkers (which happened) got a punching in the head from their coworkers (which, I'm glad to say, also happened). Because at the end of the day we were there to make the world a little less shitty for people who were having a shitty day. We had no absolutely no tolerance for people who made things worse for patients.
But those among us who were still dedicated to caring for and helping the sick, well...the good guys among us, we still had our jokes.
Because it still sucks to deal with other peoples' shitty day on a regular basis and all we had were each other and you can't just not talk about it, and you can't just spend your whole night talking about how bad it sucks.
So you make jokes.
Are those jokes fucked up?
Yes!
Are we, as people who work in the medical profession, a bunch of sick motherfuckers for mocking the passing of the sick and elderly?
Yeah, obviously, you have to be to want a job dealing with human suffering, but you know what....
It's not a mental sickness that lets us make light of human suffering. It's not a failing on our part. It's not that we lack sensitivity. It's a mental wellness that drives that type of humor. Without that we could never do our jobs. This ability to laugh at the tragic and the horrible is what will see us through to the other side of the motherfucking apocalypse. Those of you who are angry at Dane Cook obviously do not possess this skill.
Comedians are the guys who are trying to teach that skill to everyone. If you work in medicine you're exposed to death all the time. And you have to see the funny in it or you'll go nuts. If you're a regular human and you just watch the news, you're still exposed to death all the time, but you only feel it when the media tells you to.
As did National Celebrity Examiner and apparent moron (moron for no reason other than that I disagree with her), Jodi Jill said;
"While it hardly seems fathomable that someone would so quickly reflect on a massacre like the situation in Colorado, it goes to show that contemporary comedians find human tragedy a place to discover a laugh. In the case of Dane Cook, it seems his apology falls short and his original words still hit home."
Nah, fuck it. She's just a moron.
What you need to remember is that on the day you die, you don't want your mom and dad crying at your funeral. You would much prefer them laughing and enjoying their lives. Just as the dead would now love to see you enjoying yours.
You need guys like Dane Cook and Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Daniel Tosh and Bill Hicks and George Carlin and countless others to take horrible shit in the world and turn it into something you can find joy in. You NEED those guys. Their job is to take all the horrible in the universe and give you another way of looking at it. Because if you only look at the Aurora, CO shooting the way the news gives it to you then the only story you're getting is, "Hey, bad shit happened. Now buy Coke, eat at McDonalds and vote like we tell you. You're FREE!!!!"
Horseshit.
We need guys and gals who can take the worst things in the universe and put a spin on them that's not directed by a pre-existing political narrative presented by the six or seven companies that control all of what we get to hear in America.
They show us what's ridiculous in our collective thinking and by doing so, they show us how we can think differently.
And that's why I think it's bullshit that Dane Cook felt the need to apologize for what he said at the Laugh Factory.
Fuck sorry.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Why People Are Shitheads Part A Billion
So I saw this thing online about a “dogsickle”. Did you guys see this? Basically, a dogsickle is when you take all of your dogs favorite toys and you freeze them in a block of ice and make the dog like and chew his way into the ice block to get his toys back.
This is supposed to be a good thing to do for your pet because it hydrates them during this insane heat, but look at that picture above. You can tell what the dog's thinking is, “Oh, you unbeilevable DICK!”
And he would too because that’s a shitty thing to do to your best friend unless you’re just a complete sadist.
That’s like something you’d do to some one you were dating who cheated on you.
“Hey, honey, hope you had fun fucking my best friend without a condom on my birthday. On an unrelated note, I’m moving out. Please go fuck yourself and get cancer. Oh, and by the way, your makeup bag, your cell phone, your ipod, your favorite dildo and the teddy bear your dad bought you right before he died are now in the back yard encased in carbonite, Han Solo style. The only way you can get them out is by licking the cube until it melts. You might want to hurry because it’s trash day.”
Yeah, that’s the only time you do that to anyone. You sure as shit don’t do that to your dog. Your dog is your best friend in the world. Your dog is always going to be on your side. The only time you’d do that to you dog is if you’re just a sadistic sociopath.
"Here poochy, I put everything you love in a place where you can’t reach it just so you can get some hydration."
"Fuck you, asshole. Why not leave out a bowl of water. I’m a fucking dog. I know how to drink when I’m thirsty. I don’t care how hot it is."
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Never Miss Out On a Good Time Because of a Little Self-Respect
For me the funniest bit was when I said the first time I masturbated was May 15th at 3AM. Some one in the audience went, "Seriously?" At the time I thought she reacted to the fact that I knew the exact time and date(which I really don't).
Watching the video, I now realize she said, "seriously" because I forgot to say May 15th of what year! She probably thought I meant last May 15th. I'll either have to correct that or use it.
I hope no one judges this set on crowd response. There were maybe ten people in the bar at the time of my performance. Once upon a time, performing for a crowd that size would have made me more nervous than playing to a crowd of fifty or a hundred people.
Lately, I've been feeling the honey badger-like apathy toward getting laughs. A lot of people don't laugh at my material. A LOT! Some boo, some cringe, some scowl.
No one looks bored. No one ignores.
I'll take that.
Oh, and speaking of honey badgers. You remember when I did that set about a friend of mine who was suffering from breast cancer. Of course, you don't. No one saw that. Well, here it is again.
I would just like to say that my friend, who has been nicknamed the Honey Badger ('cause, in case you hadn't heard, the Honey Badger just don't give a FUUUUUUCK!), is no longer a breast cancer victim, but a breast cancer SURVIVOR.
She had her surgery this past Monday and is now cancer free. Two hours after her surgery she woke from her drugged-out, post-op haze just long enough to flash a crowd of friends and family a doofy two thumbs up and a big shit eating grin before passing out again.
I know people say this all the time, but after the last seven months of hell that girl has been through, watching her smile like that at that exact moment...well, you really, really just had to be there.
Thank you for getting through this, HB. The world is so much more interesting with you in it.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Why You Can't Have Babies In Porn Shops
This was one of the most satisfying sets I've done in a while. There's a perverse kind of glee in heckling the audience.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
The Pornstar Rant
Haven't been able to post for a while due to computer issues. That doesn't mean I haven't been doing stuff and stuff.
I've done the pornstar rant once before. You can't see it but this time, when I asked a random guy in the audience to stand up and mimic going down on three guys at once...he did it. It reminded me of something I read in an interview between Paul Provenza and Colin Quinn. The difference between making a comedy TV show or film and doing comedy in front of a live audience is the same as the difference between playing Call of Duty and actually being in a war. More later.
I've done the pornstar rant once before. You can't see it but this time, when I asked a random guy in the audience to stand up and mimic going down on three guys at once...he did it. It reminded me of something I read in an interview between Paul Provenza and Colin Quinn. The difference between making a comedy TV show or film and doing comedy in front of a live audience is the same as the difference between playing Call of Duty and actually being in a war. More later.
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