another rant? no way!
Aug. 6th, 2024 10:40 ami got my first job in 2004 at age 18. it was a medical records clerk job at crusader clinic. i'll write more about that specifically some other time as it ties in heavily to the chain of events that lead me to getting diagnosed in 2007. i bring it up for this post because it was during this period that i first started giving thought to doing stand-up comedy.
i started the job as a temp but got hired in after a few months once a dental records clerk position opened up. i would spend the morning doing dental records and go up to medical in the afternoon and help out. i essentially had my own office where the dental records were kept and i would get to listen to whatever i wanted. after i got burned out on listening to shit like kelly clarkson, chevelle and john mayer on repeat i decided to listen to something arguably as bland and radio friendly which was the bob & tom show.
i was fully aware the humor on bob & tom was very low hanging fruit. i'd only caught a little bit here and there on my way to school or work throughout my life and had never listened to a full episode. i never paid much attention when there were guests i didn't recognize. after i became conscious of the fact that i was going out of my way to turn bob & tom when i got into work and didn't like the bummer feeling of the show ending a couple hours after i clocked in i decided to join their vip club so i could download the previous day's episode in mp3 format and put it on my creative zen touch mp3 player. it was during this time that i really started to pay attention to the world of stand-up comedy beyond what was featured on jay leno or conan or on stuff like premium blend, comedy central presents and whatever comedy showcases were on fox at the time.
not long after this, i started downloading any full album i could find. my girlfriend at the time started telling me how funny dane cook was. his comedy central presents episode always stuck out to me big time because my best friend in high school's name was dane and he also had spikey hair and wore mostly all black. so seeing another dane who fit that description blew my mind at the time. i decided to check out the album she was talking about because i'd noticed it was gaining a lot of attention and i was a little surprised that dane cook was randomly blowing up.
a lot of times i've left out dane cook as an inspiration and went straight to someone more "respectable" like doug stanhope or anthony jeselnik. both i consider to my 2 absolute favorites but that dane cook album was unlike anything else i'd ever heard at that time. it wasn't that the material was groundbreaking. it was basically the pop version of a stand-up comedy album. it was the first comedy album i sought out and listened to repeatedly. i analyzed what made his material funny aside from the immature subject matter. his voice inflection, the way he didn't take himself seriously but would go in and out from being arrogant to self deprecating and it still being somewhat believable to the stage character. i was hooked.
i heard doug stanhope on an episode of bob and tom and i remember almost just not listening to the entire episode because i thought he and joe rogan were horrible on the man show. i was never a huge fan of the man show but i remember when the switch happened and i remember never liking joe rogan. not even a little bit. yet i could still understand his appeal over stanhope. i legit thought doug stanhope was the most unfunny motherfucker i'd ever seen when i watched the man show. i'd be lying if the girls gone wild commercial he was in where he said "show us where babies feed" wasn't the beginning of me softening my stance toward him but this episode of bob and tom turned me into a full-on stanhope stan. the two big takeaways from this episode for me was the quote of him saying madonna's vagina looked like "someone kicked a hole in the side of a rotting hog carcass" which sent my 19 year old edgelord brain into a tailspin of praise for his vulgarity. he'd also go on to talk about how joe rogan is kind of an airheaded dipshit who gets fucked up and pretends he's a philosopher. he said it in a way that was like "yeah he's my friend but he's a moron" and that always resonated with me and what ultimately made me decide i had to check out stanhope's stand-up.
it was equal parts the best and worst thing i could have done. doug stanhope's material spoke to me in ways nobody else ever had. here was this bitter balding white guy who was angry as shit but no matter how far he'd lose you from the point he was trying to make he'd get you back in the end. he'd say things that would strike you as shocking upon first hearing only to leave you thinking "well i can't argue with it" and i've always loved that about his material. even as i get older and find less topics funny or worth joking about, stanhope still manages to pull it off. because of his ability to deliver his material like he's having a drunken meltdown despite it being a carefully written and thought out bit disguised as a rant i automatically thought i'd never be able to do comedy. "i'll never be that good, i'll never be like stanhope" and so i never tried.
i left crusader clinic in mid 2006. i was experiencing symptoms of mania but wouldn't end up in the hospital til the last part of the year in 2007. i didn't give much thought to doing comedy after leaving crusader. i still checked out albums here and there but my interest drifted from it as my mental issues began increasing. around this time i was also running my friend's bands website and helping them book shows through myspace. a couple of them would tell me i should try comedy and mentioned me opening for them sometime doing comedy. i hadn't written any material and wasn't even trying to hear this as a possibility.
i went to disney world in late 2010. this will also be a post by itself one day. throughout the car ride i kept going back to the replacements and the black lips. listening to them on repeat during that time made this feeling fester inside of me. i couldn't put my finger on it but i knew within 6 months i was going to be on stage. doing something. at the time i was picturing myself in a replacements style alt rock band. needless to say i did not start a band nor did i kick my practicing into high gear to even entertain the idea of starting a band. my gut feeling was right though.
the disney world trip would end up being the beginning of the end of the relationship i was in from 2006-2010. i started talking to someone not long after the break-up. i didn't realize it at the time but this relationship would end up being the catalyst for me to finally give comedy a shot.
at some point after the breakup i was trying to keep my mind busy by checking out an overwhelming amount of artists i hadn't heard, both music and comedy. i stumbled across anthony jeselnik and his album shakespeare was a game changer for me. i'd never heard a comedian that inspired me like him because i looked up to his style but also realized i could emulate it easily. i'm not sure if i'd consider myself a complete rip off mostly because i seem to be the only one who makes the connections in our material. i get compared more to mitch hedberg, steven wright or emo philips than anyone. the comparisons i've gotten to doug stanhope have been mostly in how i'd hold a beer bottle on stage or some of my opinions about comedy in general. that's not a shocker to me because my material isn't like stanhope's at all unless you count his "titfuck joke" or some of the other purposely hacky one liners he lobs out in between bits. i don't have the guts to write a well structured rant bit the way he does. the most stanhope-esque part of my act was making the white trash bar crowds think i'm one of them before lobbing out pro-abortion one liners or whatever else. not that i did it in any type of groundbreaking way.
i went the easy route. writing one-liners and jokes that purposely misdirect the listener. i'm not saying it's an easy thing to do but it came a lot more naturally to me than trying to write something that is actually thought provoking. i've lost countless hours of my life rambling and analyzing my mental health and yet i still have 0 material on my diagnosis or experiences that i feel proud of or that i feel doesn't just take some easy route. "it was a different time" is stale and generic. everyone brings this up before the inevitable "but it's true" and unfortunately it is. shock value humor was very much in and even if it wasn't everyone's cup of tea it was very much widespread. i don't think this was a "golden era" for comedy or anything like that. i'm not one of those people who believes every subject is free reign for joking. but i sure as fuck used to.
during childhood and going into middle school years i was bullied by randos and my friends alike. getting picked on for my glasses. having any and every little mistake i made amplified or turned into a running gag. i got to where i didn't even feel comfortable asking my best friend questions for fear he'd just roast the shit out of me. by 7th grade i was ready to make new friends and stop trying to please others. by 8th grade i had started getting a little more vocal and would basically become a full blown edgelord.
being an edgelord either requires you to be legitimately cruel or requires you to dissociate heavily. maybe a bit of both. i just remember any time i'd prep myself to say something that even i was against morally there'd be a certain feeling that would gloss over me. i'd joke that it felt like i was losing a part of my soul. there seems to be truth to that though because here i am decades later and my brain is conditioned to default to the negative. conditioned to seek out stereotypical behavior in anyone regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion. the only saving grace is that it has helped me recognize my own shitty behavior and do better. i used to heavily subscribe to the idea that "anything is for entertainment" and in a way, i still do.
however, it's hard for me to defend whiny ass (predominantly) cis white dudes that are mad they get shit on for making jokes about someone getting sexually assaulted. i don't care if you're mad at the "woke massses" because your "joke" that relied on the word "tranny" as the punchline didn't land like you thought so now the problem is everyone else. forget the fact that you failed to even write a real joke you just hoped 1 or 2 buzzwords would be enough to get a laugh. there's no message or real thought behind the joke, they just think "oh what's a hot topic, how can i offend?" and then lob out some uninspired shit and get mad when audiences or their peers don't find it funny. this leads to them finding an entire new group of made-up adversaries to target just because they're lazy ass writers.
my philosophy on "offensive" material is that if you decide you are going to talk about something that you know is sensitive to others on stage then you'd better have a damn good reason for bringing it up. the punchline better be amazingly clever. if it's not then you've just (possibly/probably) triggered at least one person in the crowd. was it worth it? who were you "sticking it to" when you walked a table of people because 1 person got upset you said "rape" and it ruined the night for an entire table. i'm not telling you what you specifically "can" or "can't" joke about but for fuck's sake use your head a little. think of the audience, or your peers.
most people who have this issue would stop my end of the debate there. say "why should i care what one person thinks" or some bullshit like that. if you can't respect your own audience enough to realize that your words could have dire consequences on their mental health then did you give any thought to the fact that there could be another comedian on the bill who gets triggered by this? or that their set/mental health can suffer because you want to be an edgy dipshit and lose the crowd? oh but it's the crowd's fault right? did you ever stop to think that another performer's partner could have came along with them to be supportive only to be triggered into depression? yes i am projecting big time with this but it's a huge reason why i don't go to comedy shows anymore. i've heard enough white dudes punch downward with lackluster material for too long. i've been one for too long.
here's a comedy tip for those of you like timone weiner who still think it's hilarious to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. i'm not just picking on him because there are 100s of performers like this in the midwest scene alone. you're not a draw by name only and probably never will be. people are there because the flyer says "comedy night" and it's probably free or cheap and there's nothing else to do. nobody is filling a bar, comedy club or even a broom closet just to see you perform. you don't have free reign to say whatever the fuck you please. celebrities with real platforms are losing this privilege because they don't think before they speak. going against this does not give you more power. you are not standing up to censorship by driving people away from live comedy. posting about bothering a hick bar for months until they let you run an open mic just to have it get cancelled isn't helping anyone. bitching about the crowd at the place because nobody wanted to hear your "jokes" isn't helping anyone. you're making it harder for people who give a fuck to keep doing comedy. bars and venues think all local comedy is like what you're doing and they lose interest. you're legitimately ruining people's night out. blaming a crowd for not laughing at your material is the most hack shit someone can do. hopping on social media to blame an entire crowd because you assume they didn't agree with you politically or thought you weren't funny isn't an issue of the audience. you suck at writing jokes and performing your own material, suck it up and get better.
it's not the audience's fault you can't separate your chronically online behavior from what people who touch grass find funny. it's also not the fault of the audience if they are mostly comprised of small town white folk and they don't laugh at some weird ass joke you wrote and are super proud of because it references some shit like a random eric b and rakim lyric and links it to an obscure dc comic book character. your job as a performer is to relate to the audience. the bigger the difference, the harder your job is and the more rewarding it is when you find common ground and get them to laugh. that's the entire point of stand-up comedy. it's not a competition for who can offend the most people or clear the most tables in a venue.
this doesn't just drive away audience/customers or look poorly on the bar. it doesn't just cause bar owners to think negatively about locally produced stand-up comedy. because of the networking nature of comedy, a lot of people don't speak up especially when it is a producer who's in the wrong. i was made aware of a post by someone who stopped doing comedy because of this type of behavior. in her post she mentioned saying something anti-porn on stage and then had a phone screen with porn on it shoved in her face when she got off stage by the idiot i name dropped 2 paragraphs ago. good job sexually harassing someone out of comedy. the same type of behavior that got his ass banned from irish rose. keep in mind there are many more like him that continue to be enabled.
however if you wanna keep doing your shitty brand of "entertainment" please feel free to slap another label on it besides stand-up comedy. then you can brag about how you're finally good at something for once in your life.
i can't express how badass this little set-up felt to me in 2004-05
i started the job as a temp but got hired in after a few months once a dental records clerk position opened up. i would spend the morning doing dental records and go up to medical in the afternoon and help out. i essentially had my own office where the dental records were kept and i would get to listen to whatever i wanted. after i got burned out on listening to shit like kelly clarkson, chevelle and john mayer on repeat i decided to listen to something arguably as bland and radio friendly which was the bob & tom show.
i was fully aware the humor on bob & tom was very low hanging fruit. i'd only caught a little bit here and there on my way to school or work throughout my life and had never listened to a full episode. i never paid much attention when there were guests i didn't recognize. after i became conscious of the fact that i was going out of my way to turn bob & tom when i got into work and didn't like the bummer feeling of the show ending a couple hours after i clocked in i decided to join their vip club so i could download the previous day's episode in mp3 format and put it on my creative zen touch mp3 player. it was during this time that i really started to pay attention to the world of stand-up comedy beyond what was featured on jay leno or conan or on stuff like premium blend, comedy central presents and whatever comedy showcases were on fox at the time.
not long after this, i started downloading any full album i could find. my girlfriend at the time started telling me how funny dane cook was. his comedy central presents episode always stuck out to me big time because my best friend in high school's name was dane and he also had spikey hair and wore mostly all black. so seeing another dane who fit that description blew my mind at the time. i decided to check out the album she was talking about because i'd noticed it was gaining a lot of attention and i was a little surprised that dane cook was randomly blowing up.
a lot of times i've left out dane cook as an inspiration and went straight to someone more "respectable" like doug stanhope or anthony jeselnik. both i consider to my 2 absolute favorites but that dane cook album was unlike anything else i'd ever heard at that time. it wasn't that the material was groundbreaking. it was basically the pop version of a stand-up comedy album. it was the first comedy album i sought out and listened to repeatedly. i analyzed what made his material funny aside from the immature subject matter. his voice inflection, the way he didn't take himself seriously but would go in and out from being arrogant to self deprecating and it still being somewhat believable to the stage character. i was hooked.
i heard doug stanhope on an episode of bob and tom and i remember almost just not listening to the entire episode because i thought he and joe rogan were horrible on the man show. i was never a huge fan of the man show but i remember when the switch happened and i remember never liking joe rogan. not even a little bit. yet i could still understand his appeal over stanhope. i legit thought doug stanhope was the most unfunny motherfucker i'd ever seen when i watched the man show. i'd be lying if the girls gone wild commercial he was in where he said "show us where babies feed" wasn't the beginning of me softening my stance toward him but this episode of bob and tom turned me into a full-on stanhope stan. the two big takeaways from this episode for me was the quote of him saying madonna's vagina looked like "someone kicked a hole in the side of a rotting hog carcass" which sent my 19 year old edgelord brain into a tailspin of praise for his vulgarity. he'd also go on to talk about how joe rogan is kind of an airheaded dipshit who gets fucked up and pretends he's a philosopher. he said it in a way that was like "yeah he's my friend but he's a moron" and that always resonated with me and what ultimately made me decide i had to check out stanhope's stand-up.
it was equal parts the best and worst thing i could have done. doug stanhope's material spoke to me in ways nobody else ever had. here was this bitter balding white guy who was angry as shit but no matter how far he'd lose you from the point he was trying to make he'd get you back in the end. he'd say things that would strike you as shocking upon first hearing only to leave you thinking "well i can't argue with it" and i've always loved that about his material. even as i get older and find less topics funny or worth joking about, stanhope still manages to pull it off. because of his ability to deliver his material like he's having a drunken meltdown despite it being a carefully written and thought out bit disguised as a rant i automatically thought i'd never be able to do comedy. "i'll never be that good, i'll never be like stanhope" and so i never tried.
i left crusader clinic in mid 2006. i was experiencing symptoms of mania but wouldn't end up in the hospital til the last part of the year in 2007. i didn't give much thought to doing comedy after leaving crusader. i still checked out albums here and there but my interest drifted from it as my mental issues began increasing. around this time i was also running my friend's bands website and helping them book shows through myspace. a couple of them would tell me i should try comedy and mentioned me opening for them sometime doing comedy. i hadn't written any material and wasn't even trying to hear this as a possibility.
i went to disney world in late 2010. this will also be a post by itself one day. throughout the car ride i kept going back to the replacements and the black lips. listening to them on repeat during that time made this feeling fester inside of me. i couldn't put my finger on it but i knew within 6 months i was going to be on stage. doing something. at the time i was picturing myself in a replacements style alt rock band. needless to say i did not start a band nor did i kick my practicing into high gear to even entertain the idea of starting a band. my gut feeling was right though.
the disney world trip would end up being the beginning of the end of the relationship i was in from 2006-2010. i started talking to someone not long after the break-up. i didn't realize it at the time but this relationship would end up being the catalyst for me to finally give comedy a shot.
at some point after the breakup i was trying to keep my mind busy by checking out an overwhelming amount of artists i hadn't heard, both music and comedy. i stumbled across anthony jeselnik and his album shakespeare was a game changer for me. i'd never heard a comedian that inspired me like him because i looked up to his style but also realized i could emulate it easily. i'm not sure if i'd consider myself a complete rip off mostly because i seem to be the only one who makes the connections in our material. i get compared more to mitch hedberg, steven wright or emo philips than anyone. the comparisons i've gotten to doug stanhope have been mostly in how i'd hold a beer bottle on stage or some of my opinions about comedy in general. that's not a shocker to me because my material isn't like stanhope's at all unless you count his "titfuck joke" or some of the other purposely hacky one liners he lobs out in between bits. i don't have the guts to write a well structured rant bit the way he does. the most stanhope-esque part of my act was making the white trash bar crowds think i'm one of them before lobbing out pro-abortion one liners or whatever else. not that i did it in any type of groundbreaking way.
i went the easy route. writing one-liners and jokes that purposely misdirect the listener. i'm not saying it's an easy thing to do but it came a lot more naturally to me than trying to write something that is actually thought provoking. i've lost countless hours of my life rambling and analyzing my mental health and yet i still have 0 material on my diagnosis or experiences that i feel proud of or that i feel doesn't just take some easy route. "it was a different time" is stale and generic. everyone brings this up before the inevitable "but it's true" and unfortunately it is. shock value humor was very much in and even if it wasn't everyone's cup of tea it was very much widespread. i don't think this was a "golden era" for comedy or anything like that. i'm not one of those people who believes every subject is free reign for joking. but i sure as fuck used to.
during childhood and going into middle school years i was bullied by randos and my friends alike. getting picked on for my glasses. having any and every little mistake i made amplified or turned into a running gag. i got to where i didn't even feel comfortable asking my best friend questions for fear he'd just roast the shit out of me. by 7th grade i was ready to make new friends and stop trying to please others. by 8th grade i had started getting a little more vocal and would basically become a full blown edgelord.
being an edgelord either requires you to be legitimately cruel or requires you to dissociate heavily. maybe a bit of both. i just remember any time i'd prep myself to say something that even i was against morally there'd be a certain feeling that would gloss over me. i'd joke that it felt like i was losing a part of my soul. there seems to be truth to that though because here i am decades later and my brain is conditioned to default to the negative. conditioned to seek out stereotypical behavior in anyone regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion. the only saving grace is that it has helped me recognize my own shitty behavior and do better. i used to heavily subscribe to the idea that "anything is for entertainment" and in a way, i still do.
however, it's hard for me to defend whiny ass (predominantly) cis white dudes that are mad they get shit on for making jokes about someone getting sexually assaulted. i don't care if you're mad at the "woke massses" because your "joke" that relied on the word "tranny" as the punchline didn't land like you thought so now the problem is everyone else. forget the fact that you failed to even write a real joke you just hoped 1 or 2 buzzwords would be enough to get a laugh. there's no message or real thought behind the joke, they just think "oh what's a hot topic, how can i offend?" and then lob out some uninspired shit and get mad when audiences or their peers don't find it funny. this leads to them finding an entire new group of made-up adversaries to target just because they're lazy ass writers.
my philosophy on "offensive" material is that if you decide you are going to talk about something that you know is sensitive to others on stage then you'd better have a damn good reason for bringing it up. the punchline better be amazingly clever. if it's not then you've just (possibly/probably) triggered at least one person in the crowd. was it worth it? who were you "sticking it to" when you walked a table of people because 1 person got upset you said "rape" and it ruined the night for an entire table. i'm not telling you what you specifically "can" or "can't" joke about but for fuck's sake use your head a little. think of the audience, or your peers.
most people who have this issue would stop my end of the debate there. say "why should i care what one person thinks" or some bullshit like that. if you can't respect your own audience enough to realize that your words could have dire consequences on their mental health then did you give any thought to the fact that there could be another comedian on the bill who gets triggered by this? or that their set/mental health can suffer because you want to be an edgy dipshit and lose the crowd? oh but it's the crowd's fault right? did you ever stop to think that another performer's partner could have came along with them to be supportive only to be triggered into depression? yes i am projecting big time with this but it's a huge reason why i don't go to comedy shows anymore. i've heard enough white dudes punch downward with lackluster material for too long. i've been one for too long.
here's a comedy tip for those of you like timone weiner who still think it's hilarious to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. i'm not just picking on him because there are 100s of performers like this in the midwest scene alone. you're not a draw by name only and probably never will be. people are there because the flyer says "comedy night" and it's probably free or cheap and there's nothing else to do. nobody is filling a bar, comedy club or even a broom closet just to see you perform. you don't have free reign to say whatever the fuck you please. celebrities with real platforms are losing this privilege because they don't think before they speak. going against this does not give you more power. you are not standing up to censorship by driving people away from live comedy. posting about bothering a hick bar for months until they let you run an open mic just to have it get cancelled isn't helping anyone. bitching about the crowd at the place because nobody wanted to hear your "jokes" isn't helping anyone. you're making it harder for people who give a fuck to keep doing comedy. bars and venues think all local comedy is like what you're doing and they lose interest. you're legitimately ruining people's night out. blaming a crowd for not laughing at your material is the most hack shit someone can do. hopping on social media to blame an entire crowd because you assume they didn't agree with you politically or thought you weren't funny isn't an issue of the audience. you suck at writing jokes and performing your own material, suck it up and get better.
it's not the audience's fault you can't separate your chronically online behavior from what people who touch grass find funny. it's also not the fault of the audience if they are mostly comprised of small town white folk and they don't laugh at some weird ass joke you wrote and are super proud of because it references some shit like a random eric b and rakim lyric and links it to an obscure dc comic book character. your job as a performer is to relate to the audience. the bigger the difference, the harder your job is and the more rewarding it is when you find common ground and get them to laugh. that's the entire point of stand-up comedy. it's not a competition for who can offend the most people or clear the most tables in a venue.
this doesn't just drive away audience/customers or look poorly on the bar. it doesn't just cause bar owners to think negatively about locally produced stand-up comedy. because of the networking nature of comedy, a lot of people don't speak up especially when it is a producer who's in the wrong. i was made aware of a post by someone who stopped doing comedy because of this type of behavior. in her post she mentioned saying something anti-porn on stage and then had a phone screen with porn on it shoved in her face when she got off stage by the idiot i name dropped 2 paragraphs ago. good job sexually harassing someone out of comedy. the same type of behavior that got his ass banned from irish rose. keep in mind there are many more like him that continue to be enabled.
however if you wanna keep doing your shitty brand of "entertainment" please feel free to slap another label on it besides stand-up comedy. then you can brag about how you're finally good at something for once in your life.
i can't express how badass this little set-up felt to me in 2004-05
