Are you a Wordist?

For me, Facebook serves as a decent medium for pure joke writing.  It's not a performance medium, the joke has to work from a written standpoint. For better or worse, I am like a lot of the Social Media Society today and gage my interaction with others by responses.  So, instead of hoping for laughs, as in stand up, I'm looking for "likes" or comments.

Social media is a restrictive format that forces the joke writer into the short form.  Attention spans and a 140-character limit on Twitter don't help.  At any rate, I have found if I throw enough material up there someone eventually might think its funny and hopefully it brightens their day.  Less often, I even think its funny.

Every once in a while you write a joke that is provocative for one reason or another.  This past week, I wrote such a joke and it seemed to have struck a nerve of social correctness (or incorrectness).  SInce most of my Facebook friends are comics, I enjoy a good back and forth as long as it doesn't get too serious.  

In this case, I tried valiantly to 'humor' those that were offended by the joke, but at some point (*sigh*), I felt it was time to do the long form of the subtext of the joke.  I can hit the pseudo-intellectual bullshit switch with the best of 'em, but typically like to let a joke stand for itself.  Still I couldn't resist at one point in the conversation mostly because someone mistook the point so dramatically as to pointedly say I was shitting on the disabled. Me.

So, as an exercise in joke writing, explanations and reactions, I've decided to archive this one in a blog post. Enjoy ... or not.

[For the record: I don't think this is a great joke.  It's not badly constructed and the social commentary imbedded in it is powerful (obviously).  But I have written better.  This one did make me laugh out loud after I wrote it, so it worked for me.]

The Joke:

"Paula Dean should know better. The only people who don't care if you use the 'N' word anymore are retards."

I captured the joke and comments in sections below but if they are too small to read here, I have also included a link.

Here is the Link to the Joke and Comments

My Response:

For all of you who are slow (retarded), I guess I'll have to explain this joke. *sigh*

If I can claim a word offends me, even if it wasn't meant to offend me, then I am co-opting language for my own selfish use. I am declaring your intentions in the use of the word as well as determining an exact single definition when there may be many. For example, as a disabled person, I could choose to decide that every time a person used the words "lame", "crippled", "handicapped", I should be offended even if it wasn't intended to hurt me.  "That's really lame, dude." "The inaction of Congress has crippled the economy.", "You golf? What's your handicap?".  You can't possibly know how deep my feelings are about the use of this language in casual conversation.   You can't know how being called a 'cripple' hurts when someone means to put you down with the word.  But, do disabled people have the right to insist that all these words be stricken from everyone's vocabulary because we choose to be offended by them?  I don't think so. Just because a person happens to use one of those words, doesn't mean they intended to harm me or any other person who is disabled. If someone says a word (any word) with the intent to harm, subjugate, or belittle another, then they are fair game to be taken to task.  

The 'N' word has enjoyed a special place in this regard because it is hard to make the case that any non-black person who uses it, can do so without it carrying the baggage and history of slavery and the inference that black people are less than equal to the user. As a comedian, Chris Rock made the point (as others have), that black people can choose to use the 'N' word among themselves (or the variation Nigga) because they are not using it to put down their own race. Non-blacks don't have the right to determine how deep that word cuts. Non-blacks, especially white people, use it at their own risk. Paula Dean found this out. So did Michael Richards. 

As an aside, artistic form allows use of certain, even offensive, words as commentary. Quentin Tarantino can write and direct a movie with the 'N' word all over it because it is reflective of the use of the word in real life. Comedy can have exceptional creative leeway. In a sketch on Saturday Night Live in the 70's, Chevy chase said "Nigger" and Richard Pryor answered "Dead Honky".

As far as the joke in question goes, the use of the word 'retards' was calculated.  It was intended to be provocative. While we are all ganging up on Paula Dean for using the 'n' word, the actor in the joke (me), uses the word "retard".  What did this word mean in this context? Slow and stupid, not developmentally disabled.

In the english language, retarded sometimes just means "slow".  When you slow a passage in music, you retard it.  Gary Baker pointed out: "They have a 'Jacobs Brake' (or Jake Brake) on trucks that retard the engine as it goes down a hill".  Subsequently, Mentally Retarded, simply meant mentally slow.  Calling a person a "Retard" in a mean way in order to hurt them (who would do that?), is wrong.  But people use the word all the time in casual conversation to describe someone who is a little behind. It is a colloquialism for slow and/or stupid. People use it in much the same way they might use the word "lame" or "gay'.  Its use is not intended to harm populations of people and those who insist that it is are word nazis who are putting intentions in the minds of people where it doesn't belong.  And before you argue effect instead of intent -- as in, "well, it's the effect the word has on these people" -- the effect is decidedly heightened by the attention the word now has when no ill intention ever existed.  Mothers, caretakers and friends of the developmentally disabled have decided to be offended on behalf of them.  They have done more harm to the developmentally disabled by teaching them to be offended when no offense was intended. That's just retarded. And, from an evolutionary standpoint, I mean developmentally challenged.

One defense for my joke might go like this: I am disabled and so are the developmentally disabled.  What we call each other is our business.  I can call another handicap person a gimp if I want. They understand I am not putting them down anymore than I would put down myself.  If you're not disabled, shut the fuck up. Just like as a white person you can't tell black people not to use the 'N' word when talking to each other, you can't tell disabled people what to call each other either.

But that's not my defense.  Instead, the joke stands as irony and commentary of words, their meaning and the people who get offended by imagined intentions they put in other people minds.  Using the word "retards" next to Paula Dean's gaff is irony (Thanks: Teddy Bearskovich).  

For future reference, if I say "Dude, that was lame!", I'm not intending to offend (other) disabled people. If I say, "Tom Sims is a fag", I just mean he puts his penis in another man's bumhole (in a good way).  If I say, "Ann Coulter is a cunt" (wait, that last one is just true. No offense to other cunts).

So, Danny Vega, The joke was not me "shitting on" on anybody. The fact that you took it that way is what the joke was actually about. It was actually bait for those people who choose to be offended by the word 'retarded' even though it wasn't directed at the developmentally disabled.  Your inference that my joke was intended to put down those people is patently offensive to me. In short, you a "wordist". This is a word that I just made up that means; a person who attempts to police other people's use of the language according to their own sensibilities and definitions of particular words. (And everyone should be offended that I just made up a word because that's just presumptive, self-indulgent and arrogant).

Lastly, if you think I used the word "retards" like a new comic uses a dick joke -- just to get a laugh -- you don't know me or my comedy. You're gonna need to step back, about an inch, maybe an inch and quarter.

P.S. Thanks to Myke Dehu for the input.

A New Frontier in Joke Writing - A Book Review of "Social Comedia"

I am still working on my research for definitions of stand up and a brief history of stand-up comedy, but I wanted to take a break and tell you about a book I recommend which was written by a comedian friend of mine from Seattle, Dartanion London. (Note: Each link in this blog entry is to a different one of each of his social media outlets.)

Social media has created new opportunities for humor to be expressed. The short form of Facebook and Twitter updates combined with a multitasking and distracted society call for a new approach. Though this short form actually owes to the old one-liner style of comedy, the immediate and ever present world of the internet delivers it us with ease and frequency. From our fingertips we can now have delivered a pie in the face.

With Social Comedia, Dartanion London has written a new kind of joke book. From his almost once-a-day delivery of slightly slanted observations of today's world on his social media profiles (Facebook and Twitter), he gives you something to think about -- although just for a second. Then another joke moves in.

This book may not grant all your comedy wishes. But hell, the damn thing has robots! Take it into the bathroom, take it one joke at a time, take two and call me in the morning. It'll keep you entertained for minutes at a stretch!

I've seen Dartanion's stand-up act a number of times live. Each time I was struck by his original approach. Leave no doubt, he is funny. But he pushes boundaries too, which is what I like to see in any comedian I follow. He has a background in sketch and improv and he takes this with him to the stage. He is intelligent, composed and unpredictable. He also has a quality I like to see in comics -- it's as if he doesn't really care if you laugh or not (even though you do). If you need comedic touchstones to help you get a handle on what he's like, I would suggest that Dartanion London is as if Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman had a love child -- with Aspberger Syndrome. Just take a look at the promotional video for his book below. It alone is worth the price you pay for the book.

Social Comedia - A Book That Can Change Your Life from Dartanion London on Vimeo.

Find "Social Comedia" at Amazon

Even my cat Oreo likes "Social Comedia"!

History of Stand Up: The Prologue

In my last blog entry, I indicated I'm reading a lot of books on the history of Stand-Up. My intention was to write a "Brief History of Stand-Up". But as I made my way through the volumes of material on the subject I also encountered a problem; not everyone agrees on just what stand-up comedy is. So, as "First Things First" things go, I'm backing up once again and tackling this by asking several comic how they define Stand-Up.

Certainly, the dictionary offers a starting point: Merriam-Webster 2: performed in, performing in, or requiring a standing position; especially : of, relating to, performing, or being a monologue of jokes, gags, or satirical comments delivered usually while standing alone on a stage or in front of a camera (stand–up comedy) (stand-up comedian) . Wikipedia: Stand-up comedy is a style of comedy where a comedian performs for a live audience, usually speaking indirectly to them. It is usually performed by a comedian with the aid of a microphone, either hand-held or mounted. Google: "Stand Up Comedy" is a song by rock band U2. It is the seventh track on their 2009 album No Line on the Horizon.

It seems to me that each comic has a definition that relates to their particular style of comedy. That's why I decided to ask several comics -- famous and infamous -- and see who responds. I'll post these responses and a few more thoughts soon.

Getting Somewhere from Nowhere

I was never very good at "first things first". I always just sort of jumped in, got messy and tried to clean up afterwards. Maybe it's because I am somewhat ADD, but doing things in a linear fashion just doesn't appeal to me. I have seen people who approach tasks much more methodically and it just seems mostly boring to me. A lot of time is wasted where you could actually be getting messy and having fun.

Just so you know, I'm eventually going to get to a point here, so stay with me.

My finest example of how I can't do things in order is that I don't read product manuals. I push buttons and turn knobs until things work. The gamble is whether or not I can figure things out in less time than it would take to read the instructions. I usually figure it out. Besides, I don't know how many times in the past I did read the manual and things didn't work like they said they would. I remember I spent a couple of hours looking through the manual for a new cell phone to try to figure out how to set it to vibrate. After much searching, swearing, and more searching and swearing, I couldn't find it. I finally just started pushing buttons on the phone until I got it to do what I wanted. Later, I discovered that the manual for the phone calls vibrate: "Polite Mode". Screw you Verizon! Not calling it "vibrate" wasn't polite at all. It was pretty rude, actually.

Learning something the way someone thinks we should learn it doesn't always work. When we learn something new, we all come to the table with some background knowledge. So the problem with getting to a goal by way of advice or instruction from others is that the path is often presented as a "one size fits all" scenario. Plus, not only are we all different in terms of our past experience and basic abilities, we also each learn differently. Some people are visual learners, some learn better by listening. Some people learn by modeling and learn by trial and error. I seem to learn better in a barely controlled mashup. (That's right spellcheck. I said "mashup." Even you are learning something today.)

As with other performing arts, when learning comedy, some of us turn to teachers. In most areas of the country, there are a number of comics or former comics running stand up comedy classes. But some people take the position that you can't teach "funny". Aside from having some narrow, provincial, and mystical definition of what "funny" is, I think this is exclusionary nonsense. One person may come to the table with better abilities (most likely learned from others), but everyone can improve the abilities they have. I've found the most important factor in any art form that will make one unique and more likely successful is passion. If you're passionate about what you do, are persistent and are willing to take chances, you'll improve. If you don't have a passion for comedy, you're probably going to have trouble succeeding. Also, don't come see me perform ... please.

There is the problem of the perspective of the teacher. Many teachers make the mistake of teaching only from their own subjective experience. The comics in their classes tend to pick up on this perspective and a shared style develops. Instead of teaching the comic how to discover their own voice, they Inadvertently or deliberately teach their own style to their students. So, the problem of a foundation from one comic is compounded by this projection of all the teachers own misconceptions and limitations.

The best learning platform for stand up is just doing it. Go up a lot. Along with writing all you can, performing will be the most important thing you can do to get better. Performing will teach you 10,000 different subtleties to stand up. Writing will keep your mind working in fresh ways and give the audience something new to laugh at. But both writing and performing can be helped by some fresh perspective.

Lately, I've discovered a glaring hole in my haphazard approach to learning stand up. What is challenging to me is that this hole requires stepping back and learning something I probably should have learned before. I have to pay attention to "first things first". I'm talking about studying the history of stand up comedy. I'm talking about knowing how we got to where we are; about those that have gone before us and laid the groundwork -- or did groundbreaking things -- that shaped the art form so many of us are striving within and to whom we all owe some debt. It occurred to me that in order to get "somewhere fro nowhere" it might help to know how others did it. Plus, I'm learning from truly great comics and not from just one former comic trying to teach from some failed perspective.

So, I have about a dozen books I'm working through these days and I have to say I am fascinated. Lucky for me that I have a passion for it because I was going to do it anyway. As soon as I finish one book that I can't hardly put down, I pick up the next one and can't put it down either. From learning about theories that the art form emerged from court jesters and minstrels, through vaudeville and the borsht belt comics of the catskills, through the television era, the challenge of the 60's anti-establishment comics, the 70's revolution and revolt, the 80's explosion, the 90's crash, into today.

So, I'm sort of reading the product manual on stand up comedy. And I've somehow learned how to set things to vibrate. Soon, I'm going to consolidate some of this history in another blog entry. As with other blog entries I've made, if few people actually read it, it still gives me a place to put things together in some kind of linear fashion. God help me.

Cheeseburger Update

This blog was originally started to chronicle my travels through stand up. I started it when the Cheeseburgers of Comedy Tour was forming. But when that didn’t come together like we planned, I stopped making entries here. My progress is pretty much recorded on my Facebook Twitter pages, but I find myself drawn back to this blog so I can make some comments that are longer than 140 characters.

I got an email the other day from someone who wanted to know whatever happened to that tour, so I decided to make a quick entry here to update that.

We only ended up booking three weeks for the tour. One of the weeks got cancelled because of logistic problems. Though three of had regular communication, we couldn’t all seem to get on the same page. We knew we wouldn’t make much money and would have trouble being booked because we weren’t well known, but I think things began to fall apart when we realized how much of a financial commitment it would actually take to get out there.

Three of us (me, Myke and Chet) did do two weeks – one in the Phoenix area where we performed for six straight nights. The other week, we went to The Comedy Club in Rochester for three nights which Chet booked for us. Both weeks were successful and exactly what we wanted to do for a six to eight week period for the tour. So, from all the effort we put out, we essentially accomplished about 25% of what we set out to do. We agreed that we might pick it up again later.

Chet, Myke and I still talk regularly. Myke and I perform together all the time. We will most likely do something with Chet again sometime I’m sure. Hallie is doing very well for himself and even put out a CD.

Though the experiment of three or four unknown comics crisscrossing the nation didn’t come to pass, three guys did go from one end to the other, so it wasn’t a complete failure.

Thanks for reading. More on me soon.

What’s in a Name?

The official launch of the Cheeseburgers of Comedy Tour has begun. We put a video promo together and now have a website. The first leg of the tour won’t officially start until June in Phoenix, but all four of us will be getting together for a trial run at the end of this month. We start in LA for a show at the Ice House with fellow Bootcampers Jimmy Shaw and Roy Brewster, then we head up to Oregon and Washington. After that, we return to LA to do a show at the Comedy Store. For the two LA shows, will be just be doing short sets and the shows do not feature the Cheeseburgers of Comedy.

So far, the name of tour has begun to do its job. People remember it. With few exceptions, it has been received in the spirit it is intended. It’s not a big thinker. We’re touring the country, telling jokes and eating cheeseburgers. In fact, we will be looking for the best cheeseburgers in town and putting up YouTube videos of our experiences visiting them. So the name not only references our shared food choice, but also a secondary activity – a quest for the perfect cheeseburger!

The name also lends itself to an easy and relatable design for t-shirts and other merchandise. Eventually, we also hope to put a DVD together of our stand up exploits and our cheeseburger critiques. The money we make along the way from the bookings alone will most probably not be enough to sustain us. Selling a few t-shirts and other items along the way will help us keep gas in our tank and food and lodging on our days off.

Also, if you hear we’re coming to town and you know of any great places to get a really good cheeseburger, let us know. Hell, let us know even if we're not coming to town, it might be on the way and I'm sure we'll be hungry.

Schedule for March/April

3/28 Ice House Comedy Club (Annex Room), Pasadena, CA

3/31 Wildcard Bar, Wenatchee, WA

4/01 Wildhorse Resort, Pendleton, OR

4/02 Quality Inn, Ellensburg, WA

4/05 The Comedy Store (Belly Room), Los Angeles, CA

Cheeseburger of Comedy Website

Cheeseburgers of Comedy Promo Video

Stand up -- On making it the performance of your life

A smile once again comes over your face. You're still waiting for the day where this gets old for you, but it hasn't happened yet. You're still as fresh as when you first started this glorious work. As you lean into the mic and say the first words that start the ball rolling, you imagine the thrill of those people on the receiving end of your latest hilarious musing. You pause before you speak, knowing the joy your slanted view of reality will stir within their souls.

"Can I take your order please?"

You know you delivered! You know you nailed it! Sometimes the temptation to talk during the silence is strong, but you know the seasoned vet will wait. You gotta say it like you mean it or they don't believe in you, they won't have confidence in you and you might as well pack it in. You've lost the battle. You wait for the reaction with professional confidence -- and then it comes.

"Yeah. I'll have a number 3 combo with a coke."

Yes! There it is! You've hooked 'em now. Now they are yours! This is going to be one of those performances that they'll remember their whole lives. You know they'll be telling their friends to come see you as they try to imitate you around the water cooler the next day in an attempt to vicariously be like you. Now that you have then right where you want them, you deliver the next punch.

"Would that be medium or large?"

You know you're just baiting them now. This is one of those sure lines that get them every time. Never fails. You know what's coming next.

"Large"

Now you bring them home. They're actually depending on you now. You've brought them to the desert, and they need you to take them to the promised land. They have come to you, laying down their hard earned money, wanting you to take them away from their troubles, their daily, dreary lives for a moment. You don't disappoint them. You now show them why they have come to trust you time after time to be their savior.

"We'll have your total at the window. Please pull around."

It's time for the afterglow. They want to meet you now. See you up close. They may not ask for your autograph or to have a picture taken with you because they are sometimes in awe of you or they're too shy. But you know they want to be near you. You are gracious and charming. You try to make them feel comfortable and give them a moment they will tell their grandchildren about. You make yourself available to pose for pictures if they ask. You know they will one day realize they saw the performance of your life. Little do they know that you have put it upon yourself to never give them anything less.