Okay so I want to say that in the year since I’ve been writing this blog I’ve tried not to do too much of anything negative. When I have, it’s been a mistake. I’m in a place in my life where I truly do love the art and craft of stand-up comedy. I love what it is, where it sits in the world, love where it came from, and where I feel it’s going. I love doing it again and enjoy chronicling it. I can’t go much further though just writing only about what’s working to me.

I have to be honest about what I see that is hitting, and what isn’t hitting and why from my point of view it isn’t firing. What I learn from it, and what it means to me. What I think I can explain to you about it.

A RARE OPPORTUNITY

This last week offered a rare opportunity to for me to do that in the delivery of two unique stand-up specials on two polar opposite platforms with two incredibly talented performers with drastically disparate results. Marc Maron released BLEAK TO DARK on HBO MAX and Roseanne Barr premiered CANCEL THIS on FOX NATION.

THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS

The biggest takeaways to watching both of these specials, very closely, is that there are no shortcuts to being great in stand-up comedy. Probably in anything. Shortcuts only get you a spot at the back of the line anytime, but in stand-up, it’s merciless. It doesn’t matter how rich or famous or infamous or how big a platform you have, you can’t skip the line in terms of the hard work it takes to build a first class hour. It can’t be done. You can’t jump time. You can’t cheat the hours. You can shorten them with the years of experience, you can hire writers to help. You can get more stage time at clubs to jump up and hone the act, to whittle, to grind, to dig, to polish, then dig and grind some more, but the work has to be done. There is no way around it. None. Not to be great.

Anyone that is great will agree with that.

Roseanne

Has been great. In the past. She’s not great here. She’s flat. She’s dull. She’s got no wind at her back here. She has no jokes here. None to speak of. Maybe three or four at the most. It’s all attitude and brass and silly faces. Anger and posture. I’m sorry to write this because there’s a lot I respect about Roseanne. About her journey. For the record I think the people at ABC shit on her and treated her badly. Overreacted when she made a mistake a few years back.  Susan Rice and her friends at ABC should have shown more humanity. They didn’t. She made a hit show and brought them an audience they didn’t really want which was silly, and they killed her character rather than using it as a ‘teaching moment’.

That being said, Roseanne blew her chance to craft a smart, reasoned, heartfelt comeback special here. To teach everyone a lesson in comedy, unity, valor, love, and understanding, in a time when we badly need that lesson. instead she showed a whiny, childish, lazy, immature, amatuer version of herself that validated the rancor that was dumped on her.

I don’t care what she says, she didn’t work hard on this special. Not like she did in her heyday. No way. She didn’t hit the clubs. Not night after night. Not for six months to a year. She didn’t record late night sets or drop in sets. Hundreds of them. No way. She didn’t watch them back  for hours at a time with confidants or writing partners or comic cohorts. Didn’t play comedy clubs doing the hour every night for six weeks in a row every single night week after week until the night of the taping. I guarantee she didn’t. She may have worked out a few times. Not a lot. No way in hell. Not nearly what I laid out here. Not nearly how she used to lay out her early specials or her early Tonight show shots.

Not nearly as hard as Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle have worked out all of their last specials. As thoroughly as Whitney Cummings, and Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, and Bill Burr worked out theirs. Not a chance in hell.

She had a good-ish joke finally about ten minutes in. After a lot of sass and attitude. A lot of crowd pleasing ‘I’m gonna get everyone back tonight’ stuff. A bit about growing up in Salt Lake City and her mom being Jewish and unlike the other Mormon wives she was the only wife in the house and had to do all the work. Yet it didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t worked out. She didn’t take it anywhere. She took three minutes of chat to set it up and then threw the one-liner out and it was done and she was back to flapping her gums to silence. She wasn’t there. She didn’t bring it.

“The world has changed a lot since I was alive”

She had great notions and ideas. She has a great comics mind. She didn’t work them out at the Store or the Cellar or on the road in clubs, or on tour. ‘The world has changed a lot since I was alive.’ is followed by a lot of nothing. Funny notions about not having any ass  “being ass-less in an ass based economy” were never fleshed out. They weren’t given the months and months of repetition where night after night a new tag or idea would be added or replace something else so an idea would become a bit and a bit would become a hunk and a hunk would become a piece. That’s how a set is built. Slowly and methodically. Like putting a very tough puzzle together. You can’t get deep on a short dig. You can only get dirty. Messy.

Old people talking about their maladies.

Another notion that went nowhere that could have been something special was a routine about old people talking about their maladies. Instead of becoming something funny and raw, real and revealing about aging and dying, it just became ‘Oh just die already.’ and then it was done. The same with a nice idea about writing suicide notes to her loved ones and what she’d say. Unfocused. Scattered. Repetitive. Read off the paper and truly first draft stuff. This was a comeback special is all I’m saying. She’s a legend. Put some back ache into it.

The elephant in the room

The biggest problem was how she dealt with the elephant in the room. The tweets about Susan Rice. It was, again, all atitude. No jokes. Not a worked out routine. Just a lot of ‘they fucked me. They suck. It sucks. Not fair.’ Then moved on. She didn’t find the great comedy in the calamity. In the injustice. She didn’t use it. Didn’t take the high road or the low road. Just spit it all out in a way that a pissed off neighbor would be about a cop that arrested them unfairly a year later. You expect more from a great humorist. When you don’t get it you walk away empty.

I’ve made these mistakes/ I’ve watched others not make them.

I wasn’t a legend. But I had my shots and I used to get yelled at a lot by Leno and other friends, and for a lot of reasons, in my late twenties when I was doing stand-up the first time on a big stage, I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t put the sweat in. It came too easy. I didn’t understand the ‘craft’ part. I didn’t understand how hard the great ones were working. I only understood how much I wanted the rewards.

Back doing it again, watching the masters of today, older, soberer, a little wiser, I understand it better. You can’t skip the process. You either love it or you don’t. You’re either willing to do it or you aren’t. You can’t fool yourself that you’ll get over. You certainly can’t fool the audience. If Roseanne had done the work, had crafted a masterwork, which she could have, even if it was on Fox Nation, she could have turned some heads. She won’t. It makes me sad.

It also was poorly produced. I have to say that as well. It wasn’t all Roseanne’s fault, although this is her domain to be sure as well. The audience was overlit. Too many audience shots. It looked like a game show shoot sometimes. It had no sense of her status, or gave her none.

She did herself no favors. Comics should watch this. There’s a lot to be learned in the dead air and the attitudinal crutch- like moments. The anger that doesn’t feel even real, let alone funny. Not like the days of the domestic goddess. It’s a good lesson. I remember back when you had to wait to do the first Tonight show. You have to wait now to put out a special. Get it right. Get it tight. Have something to say.

Maron / The other side of the coin

I’m sorry again, because I have to kiss this guys ass. I’m a good friend but I can’t say I’ve ever been a huge fan of his stand-up. I’ve enjoyed his stuff. Always thought he was good. Smart. Talented. A good podcast guy. That’s for sure. This special though is another thing altogether. This is next level. Also something all comics need to watch. Very important. It’s a killer. It’s just opposite. The other side of the coin. A master class. This is an hour that was worked, pushed, pulled, tested, rolled, tried, written, rewritten, lived, re-lived, sweated, and formed from angst and emotion over a couple years. Marc didn’t tell me this, I didn’t read it an article. I understand it watching this show. It’s baked into the work. It’s as close to perfect as an hour special is going to be. Deep, dark, real, and funny as hell. Jokes. Jokes, and more jokes. Funny jokes. Real emotion, then more jokes. It doesn’t stop.

More importantly, it feels like you’re seeing something that someone put his soul into. His heart. His time. Someone worked really hard to get it to this point. It mattered to this person. He needed to get it a level that it would mean something to you, because it meant so much to him. There is air, but it’s not dead air. There is anger, but it’s not misplaced. You may not agree with the anger, but you understand his reasons for it. When he attacks Christians I’m not with him, but it’s clever, and funny, and I know what he’s saying and he makes me laugh. His opening piece about his ‘voices from the future’ one-man play is bleak and dark, as the title of the special implies, but it’s crisp, funny, unique and well thought out. He’s a great performer, yes, but he’s put his footwork into it get this to you.

Great jokes

Wrapped inside some heavy stuff are some great one-liners that I bet Woody Allen would even wish he’d have written.

“I believe there was some hilarious people in Auschwitz . I mean c’mon it was all Jews.’

On abortion;

“I can’t believe guys are silent on this.  Considering if they had any game at all they paid for at least one or two of them”

On Priests

“There’s a lot of priest around with a lot of free time and historically that’s not a good thing.”

By the way, in contrast to what I was saying about Roseanne, these one-liners all lead to, or are part of a much larger notion or routine. It’s all been flushed out. He never leaves the audience wishing he had gone down a road he had pointed to and didn’t go down.  He deals so poignantly  and brilliantly and yes, hilariously with the loss of Lynn Shelton, his elephant in the room, that it almost feels like a magic trick. Then he ends with a physical comedy routine which he acts out to precision, of attempting suicide with a baseball bat. It’s all so well done. So well conceived, without feeling manufactured. With so much real emotion.

Also much kudos to director Steve Feinhartz, and his production crew, and HBO MAX. The production here is so good and so cinematic. The flip side of the coin. The audience isn’t lit. Hardly at all. The stage is majestic. It’s really wonderful.

Again, every comic needs to watch both of these specials. I’m sorry to shit on Roseanne. I am. I wanted to champion her. It’s what I want to do here. Then I thought, if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything. That’s not my mission statement for this platform though. I think we need to look sometimes at the data in the black box after the accidents at the same time we’re looking at the wins. Especially at the time when the form is going so well, growing so strong

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A few weeks back I wrote a list of, in my opinion, the top ten comics who are making an impact on culture. On my list was Ricky Gervais, Dave Chapelle, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, Whitney Cummings, Bill Maher, Kevin Hart, Taylor Tomlinson, and Louis C.K.

The last spot I left open because as I said, it was someone who is maybe the single most influential on culture and politics today. For this reason alone, I surmised they deserved a separate column, and I was wrong. It’s going to take two.

JOE ROGAN- PART ONE

Joe Rogan is hands down the most important Stand-up today in terms of his work affecting how this country and his listeners feel about their lives and our world.

 

There are a few reasons for this, but the first is that no one trusts anyone anymore—especially not politicians and journalists. There’s no doubt that most politicians have lost the pitch these days and the media won’t expose this fact. Just the opposite, they’re every bit as inept. When it comes to today’s ‘journalists,’ to quote the great Prof. Irwin Corey. ‘Deep, deep, deep, down, they’re incredibly shallow.’

Celebrities, too for the most part have driven their credibility off of the side of the road. When the triple hyphenates you crave went from Actor-writer-producer to Actor-writer-activist, show business had officially closed down and re-opened as another run-of-the-mill clown shop. Sports stars don’t fare much better. Selling their souls and their soles to China and the corporations that China bought to get to them. Flying private planes around the planet telling us what not to drive, say, read, look at, or think about, while they paint giant BLM banners on the floors of their games as if it was garlic on their door late at night to ward off the werewolves.

Does anyone feel a damn thing real coming from modern art right now? There’s a Jeff Koons factory in every city. Same millionaire/billionaire mansion filling bait and tackle shop in every major town, different phony mass-produced ‘artist’. No one has a shred of organic rhyme or rhythm to their work anymore. Everyone on every pedestal is only giving off loud shrill feedback and we’re all covering our ears. We truly have come to a point where the most reliabe flow of authentic voices we hear are from Stand-up comics.

Joe Rogan is infuriating to so many people because of his authenticity. Yes, there could be a dozen things not to like about Joe Rogan at any given time. None of them, though, overshadow the one thing that you can’t help but admire; He’s desperately trying to ferret out the truth.

Try and think back to when you were a kid in the family kitchen, or yard with your siblings and your parents, to a time when you were putting your whole body into shutting someone up, from stopping them from spitting something out that you didn’t want the room to know? Think about how hard you tried to shut that sister, brother, neighbor, or cousin up? How important it was to you? Now try and remember if they were about to blurt out the truth, or just some careless made-up story?

I’ll bet good money (Not U.S. Dollars) it was the truth. Even back then, you knew a lie wasn’t worth a lot of effort because it would eventually be shown to be nothing but fluff. You wouldn’t have wasted the huffing and the puffing. It was the truth that scared the bejesus out of you.

Now try to think how hard the mainstream media and the far left are trying to shut people like Joe Rogan up? Do you think it’s because they’re worried he’s going to be telling you fairy tales you’ll just swallow then hop somewhere into a river of sharks? Dive off of a cliff into a canyon because of something you heard on JRE? Hell no. They’re petrified Joe and all of his Stand-up potty-mouthed podcast pals are going to feed you the straight-up truth on about a half dozen issues that the big league reporters have looked the other way or bought another line.

The Joe Rogan Experience is basically always about a comedian looking for an answer to something. Often with a gaggle of funny friends, a lot of weed, cigars, liquor and jokes. How could the zeitgeist of the moment not want to kill it? It’s way too much fun, way too retro, and definitely too much testosterone.

The question though isn’t why doesn’t anyone want the same answers?

The question is how did we get to the point that everyone is so damn afraid? This is America?

It took a Stand-up comic to get Covid and take Ivermectin and live through all the ridicule of the pharmaceutical companies’ press corps, and the Biden administration. Put up with them publicly rapping his knuckles with PR fed Horse Paste jokes and moron memes to finally shed some light on it all.

(*Which of the above looks closer to death? The emaciated older rich lady in the wig on the left, or the guy on the right that just built the log cabin in the yard for the kids, then skinned a couple of cows?)

The point is it took Rogan, along with some serious Dr.’s like Robert Morton and Naomi Wolf, and the author Bobby Kennedy, Jr. to force our establishment to get serious about treatments that work alongside of the important vaccines.

Don’t kid yourself. A comedian did that. Saved a lot of lives. While the rest of the media and the ideology drunkards like Howard Stern who are still to this day making Trump-told everyone-to-swallow -bleach jokes, not as jokes, Joe Rogan and his gang of misfit podcasters were begging us to think for ourselves. They opened our ears even though Youtube or someone else yanked them down every time the discussions pried them open.

Thanks to Rogan, then Bobby Kennedy, Jr, and Dr. Wolf, people now think about protocols and treatments the minute they get Covid. We don’t only think of ‘rubbers’ and ‘the pill’ when the term prophylactic comes to mind.

We can get Ivermectin and Hydrochlorquin from pharmacies now, and, yes, in early stages they do work great, and yes again, I did learn this thanks to Joe Rogan, who, no, is not a doctor, thank you very little, neither are half the people you’re tripping over to put your life’s hands into. (?) Back to Joe; Think what you want about him, and full disclosure, I’ve had some personal skirmishes with him myself, but I happen to respect the hell out of the guy’s work. As far as you, in your heart, you damn well knew he was too smart to take ‘horse paste’. You grabbed the talking points and went along with it, even though you knew he was too well-read, too rich, and too connected. Had access to the good doctors.

You and I just let them bully us. He didn’t. That’s why he fills arenas and has millions of downloads and we don’t. When he was doing interviews that weren’t Stand-up, you knew he was scraping for answers. For a kernel. ‘Why does this thing fly.?’ Digging. Pestering. ‘How many of us would be left if one of these exploded?’ Everyone else was too scared to do those type of shows. ‘Hey, listen to this, Dr. Morton here, he says the government is full of it. Let’s hear him out. Worse comes to worse, if he’s a deadbeat, Ari Shaffir and I’ll roast the hell out of him.’

Why else would people like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and The Rock get browbeat into jumping up and down shutting some podcast-comic up from yelling in the kitchen? He was telling the truth! We’ve been getting lied to a lot these last few years, and the old rock stars and has-been radio hacks that have sold their catalogs and consciences are pissed off that no one finds them colorable anymore, so they’re easily lit up by the younger media -twitter-wads that tell them to jump, and they, of course, ask, ‘How high?’

If you ever want to know the right side of any issue to be on going forward? Find out where, Cher, Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Howard Stern, and Neil Young are on it, then pick the other side. Find out where Joe Rogan, Tim Dillon, Whitney Cummings, Bill Burr, Adam Corolla, Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock, Earthquake, Yannis Pappis, and about ten other comics are cracking wise on the subject, and deep in that pile of comedy dung is your next little diamond of fact.

Stand-ups, who have to do that, Stand-up, face an audience, and be real, are the true north of entertainment and free speech in this era. I’m sorry. Bob Dylan isn’t going to get you anywhere near honesty today. The only thing blowing in the wind is his buddy Neil’s hot air.

No. It’s the comics. Rogan and his horde. Chappelle and his. Chris Rock. Bill Burr and his gaggle of working men Stand-ups. The new class coming up. Shane Gillis. Dan Soder. Big Jay Oakerson. Women too. Michelle Wolf, Jessica Kirson, Yamenkia Saunders, Eleanor Kerrigan. Each doing material that they’re ‘really not supposed to be doing.’ All products of a new world that Rogan, Burr, Maron, and Brian Redban kick-started back in the 2009 era.

When my friend Bobby Kennedy, Jr. wrote a brilliant book loaded down with the truth about the whole Covid story, called The Real Anthony Fauci, I tweeted, emailed and called out to ask everyone I knew to have him on their platforms. No one answered. Only Whitney Cummings and Bert Kreisher. Two comics. *Rogan was taking a pummeling at that moment over his Dr. Morton interview. The journalists were all calling up his old laundry mats in Boston from thirty years ago to see if by chance he left any old underwear lying around. Anything other than actually reading the book and looking into some of the claims as a real reporter might do.

So Stand-ups and a few others are what we have right now in terms of any blunt instruments of veracity. Do you know why? They don’t have an agenda other than being funny. The funniest stuff just happens to be the most real, that or the stuff you’re not supposed to say yet we all think. Some comics still get away with hiding behind the same old jokes, same old persona. Night after night, silly one-liners and puns. Or even comic spins on race relations and how horrible America, is with clever punchlines. The audience is going to be done with that though. Real soon. They want something that smells like it’s giving something up, tilling new soil. Comics can’t afford to put on much of a mask nowadays, (especially when we know the only thing it’s truly good for is so we don’t have to worry about bad breath.)

When everyone else in power has lost their trust, maybe even purposely made them all good and stupid, the audience will give you the gold ring if they know you’re going to push for them to get smarter while they’re laughing. The good ones like Rogan, Burr, Chappelle, Rock, Gervais, Cummings, etc.. know the only thing that works consistently is finding the humor in our absurd world, and in these times, if you’re a really honest Stand-up, trying not to get taken out for doing so.

COMING NEXT; JOE ROGAN – PART TWO

The new world of Stand-up he’s unleashed.