Rolling Stand-Up Comedy 2012

can't really handle his podcast stuff.

you just mean Tompkast/being the chatty guest on every podcast in existence or does this exclude Beyond Belief and Cake Boss / Dame Sir ALW / Ice-T / Garry Marshall / John C Reilly having an acting-off with Jon Hamm etc etc too? ;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DahbmuF3Xw

;_;

http://flamelikeme.tumblr.com/post/28706896651/tragedy-time-comedy-but-i-dont-have-the

“Tragedy + time = comedy. But I don’t have the benefit of time. So I’m just going to tell you the tragedy and know that everything is going to be okay.”

So began Tig Notaro’s set last night at her show “Tig and friends” at the Largo.

Actually, that wasn’t the beginning of her set. It began when Ed Helms welcomed her to the stage and she crossed over, took the microphone, and said “Thank you, thank you, I have cancer, thank you, I have cancer, really, thank you.”

Applause gave way to reticent laughter as she explained how she had planned a set about bees flying alongside her car on the 405, but that she couldn’t possibly do her “silly jokes” when all this was going on. And that’s when she told us that 3 days ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, in both breasts.

But she didn’t just have cancer. She went on to explain that in some manic twist of fate, while her career is at an all-time high — she is moving to New York to work on Amy Schumer’s new television show, she was on This American Life — concurrently, all these terrible circumstances have befallen her over the past 3 months: pneumonia made way for a debilitating bacterial infection in her digestive tract for which she was hospitalized and lost 30 pounds off of her already small frame, days after being released from the hospital, her young mother died suddenly and tragically (fell, hit her head, died), then she and her girlfriend broke up, and then, now, cancer. In both breasts. (“You have a lump.” “No, doctor, that’s my breast.” — one of her most renowned bits is about someone remarking upon her small breasts)

For the first half of her set, even though she was telling the story in perfect grace and humor, I couldn’t laugh. For the second half, for the first time in my life, as far as I can recall, I genuinely laughed and cried at the exact same time, bewildered at the tragedy and the remarkably calm, clever prism through which she assessed her terrible set of circumstances.

While telling us anecdotes from these personal tragedies, all along the way, she assured the audience “it’s okay, I’m going to be okay.” At one part, when she reached a dark place wherein most of the audience could not find the will to laugh, she said “maybe I’ll just go back to telling jokes about bees. Should I do that?” there were several “NOs” and one insistent loud male voice who cried out

“NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE.”

She looked genuinely taken aback, and relieved. She’d managed to make the tragic not only palatable but overwhelmingly engaging. She’d done it.

Louis CK tweeted earlier that it was one of the three best sets he'd ever seen.

sorry, don't know why i wrote "three" there. just "the"..

Louis C.K. ‏@louisck
in 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.

<3 Tig

whoa, amy schumer got a show?

Yeah, working on Schumer's show is mostly likely a waste of Tig's talent, but you gotta eat I guess. Hope she's okay.

iirc Amy Schumer had both a CBS sitcom pilot and a Comedy Central sketch show pilot, but it looks now like the latter is the one that is going on the air. should i tell my Amy Schumer story now that people actually know who she is? we went to the same college and about 10 years ago she played my love interest in a student film.

Did Jeselnik write her lines for her then, too?

Nah, Jeselnik was at Tulane trying to fuck girls even after they said no.

hasn't he heard of multitasking?

she didn't start doing standup until a few years after i knew her (although she was a pretty funny standup a few years before she started dating that other standup who isn't as funny as her, so)

Does anyone know what happened to Dave Attell?

He's still around, reportedly all clean and sober now. Not on tv much, though.

his Showtime series was renewed for a second season

I really loved Insomniac. My brother and I even lobbied for him to come to Green Bay!! I just remember that and his stand-up disc being really popular (at least, where I lived), and then...

Dave's Old Porn is a different kind of seedy but it's still a pretty funny show

unrelated - did anyone else read that Chris Rock thing in the NYT last weekend? He brought up something that hadn't occurred to me before about how the internet/cell phones are totally fucking with standup comedy in terms of material development. Basically his contention is that no one, especially established comedians (like, say, Chappelle) can go out and develop material in front of live audiences anymore - which is traditionally how comedians fine tune bits and figure out what works and what doesn't - since everything they do will be instantly broadcast (and criticized) on ye internets.

I've heard a lot of comedians bring that up, I can't remember if it was Patton or Louie or whoever that said it's tough to do small crowds where everyone is recording you since it messes you up mentally. If your material doesn't work out, suddenly its a lot more than the 200 people in the crowd who see it. Plus there's the whole Michael Richards/Tosh thing where if you try to be edgy and wind up taking it too far, there's the chance of a major backlash now.

neither of those dudes were trying to do "edgy" material fyi. they were trying to silence hecklers.

unrelated - did anyone else read that Chris Rock thing in the NYT last weekend? He brought up something that hadn't occurred to me before about how the internet/cell phones are totally fucking with standup comedy in terms of material development. Basically his contention is that no one, especially established comedians (like, say, Chappelle) can go out and develop material in front of live audiences anymore - which is traditionally how comedians fine tune bits and figure out what works and what doesn't - since everything they do will be instantly broadcast (and criticized) on ye internets

has been true with musicians for some time, and it sucks, but what can you do? bands used to road-test the hell out of their material & by the time they got to the studio it'd be seasoned & everybody'd know their way around it; if it got bootlegged, ok, but bootlegs weren't really big sellers, strictly hardcore. Basically since 2006 if you play a new song live, anyone who has any interest in hearing it has heard a shittily-recorded version of it.

..."by morning," that last sentence should have ended.

seems like it's worse for comedy though, comedy is so much more tied up in audience reaction than music is. like, you don't know if something's actually funny until a bunch of people laugh at it. whereas you could have a killer song that just doesn't fly live for whatever reason.

(says the guy who never tours lol)

neither of those dudes were trying to do "edgy" material fyi. they were trying to silence hecklers.

Right, but you know what I mean. I don't mean to say that "edgier" = "funnier" or "better". I would think any comedian with some kind of public image (save for Doug Stanhope, I guess) probably is thinking twice about what they say which may not be a good thing overall for comedy. I wonder what Bill Hicks would think about the clip of him calling a woman a cunt for 3 minutes straight making the rounds on YouTube.

Y'all are ignoring the real problem which is that people who record stand-up comics with their phones are human trash and deserve to have drinks poured on them

I wonder what Bill Hicks would think about the clip of him calling a woman a cunt for 3 minutes straight making the rounds on YouTube.

He'd write an hourlong rant about it.

i can't imagine bootlegs of concerts or standup having much reach beyond diehard music or comedy fans - presumably the majority of the audience for both is not ever going to hear this stuff early

what about the guy randomly clicking Youtube links

diehards are basically the target market though.

Y'all are ignoring the real problem which is that people who record stand-up comics with their phones are human trash and deserve to have drinks poured on them

sometimes I just love the shit out of you, Whiney

i can't imagine bootlegs of concerts or standup having much reach beyond diehard music or comedy fans - presumably the majority of the audience for both is not ever going to hear this stuff early

― Mordy, Friday, 10 August 2012 22:05 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it depends what the concern is, though; there's one thing in which artists are protective of their work & so are sensitive to inchoate versions of it existing or circulating, lest it reflect poorly or impinge on future sales or w/e; but then there's the other which is maybe more specific to stand up comedy which is that the success of the work is contingent on it having some space to breathe? like rock says:

You can’t imagine how rough it was and how unfunny and how sexist or racist it might have seemed. “Niggas vs. Black People” probably took me six months to get that thing right. You know how racist that thing was a week in? That’s not to be seen by anybody.

& like - without getting into a whole other thing about how we need comedians to understand our times &c&c - does make it seem awkward, whether people have enough time/space to work through their process. i don't think the first thing is hugely problematic but the possibility of losing your testing grounds or holding back must be p big changes for comics.

Basically since 2006 if you play a new song live, anyone who has any interest in hearing it has heard a shittily-recorded version of it.

is this really a problem though? a studio recording is a much different object than a bootleg live recording, and most people will want to hear the 'real' version when it comes to music. i've also never heard someone say "i've heard that song before, it's ruined now."

but if you know the joke already...

Well a lot of musicians think a lot about the moment when someone listens to their new album for the first time and all the curveballs they'll encounter; when people started talking about how the new Sufjan had vocoder on it before the album was even released, I couldn't help but wonder how I would have reacted if nobody had told me. I agree it's a much smaller deal; what kind of audience goes to see a comedian, hoping for old jokes?

I guess it's more akin to a bunch of unedited first takes for a new Avengers movie hitting Youtube or whatever

what kind of audience goes to see a comedian, hoping for old jokes?

Steve Martin's old audiences

Gallagher fans

is this really a problem though? a studio recording is a much different object than a bootleg live recording, and most people will want to hear the 'real' version when it comes to music. i've also never heard someone say "i've heard that song before, it's ruined now."

it's a drag in a lot of ways, and most musicians I know now hold back new stuff now. it's not that it's "ruined" - it's that there was this crackle of excitement over an album worth of material that hardly anybody except the hardest of the hardcore would have known vs. the first time you play a new song, it goes into the news cycle. both this & the comedians' complaint is kind of double edged, since you're not getting bootlegged/youtubed unless you're already successful; this is more of a challenge than a huge downer. but at the same time, your early goes at a song that's still getting its legs under it will all be preserved on youtube forever; you don't really get room to try shit out like you used to.

idk I rankle at the idea that this is "worse" for comedians. anybody whose work used to develop in the live arena enjoyed that "I'm in Topeka, what the hell, let me just try this out for these thirty people and see how they like it" feeling - that's gone now. you're not in Topeka, ever. you're always everywhere.

The basic appreciation of music is very different than that of comedy. Laughter is often an involuntary action, and most jokes won't coax it out of a person more than once. You can listen to songs over and over, though, and find something new each time. Comedy is just like a conversation, and if the person doing the talking is saying the same things over and over again, you want to get out quick.

*Genuine laughter is always an involuntary action

yeah aero, you're on your own on this one

though people that upload shaky YouTubes of NOEN INDIAN PLAY NEW SONG NEW NEW YES FUCK are just as dogshit worthless turd people as people chilling in the back of a Gilbert Gottfried show taping it.

The basic appreciation of music is very different than that of comedy. Laughter is often an involuntary action, and most jokes won't coax it out of a person more than once. You can listen to songs over and over, though, and find something new each time.

this is true - music has a longer shelf life than comedy. still, most musicians would strongly prefer that the way most people hear a new song is a recording through a camera phone. most would strongly, strongly prefer that the first time people hear new material, it's either 1) live, where even if the house sound is shitty and your performance isn't aces, you have the benefit of the power of live performance or 2) the version they busted ass on in the studio & in mix to get exactly right. at present, if you choose to play a new song live, you're ensuring that a terrible sounding version of it will be your world premiere. the safer choice is to not play new material until it's been released, which is what almost everybody I know now does, and which didn't used to be the case.

lol

still, most musicians would strongly prefer that the way most people hear a new song isnot be a recording through a camera phone.

I'm with Johnny here; I agree that it's kind of shitty as a fan to get all excited for, say, a new Underworld album, only to see the tracklisting and realize "wait, I've heard 7 of these 9 songs before", on the other hand, it's really cool to have different versions of these tunes that often go in different directions. For the musicians, yeah realizing that anything new is going to be on YouTube does limit your flexibility a bit, but on the other hand I would imagine you're building a lot more hype this way if the new stuff is actually good.

on the other hand, it's really cool to have different versions of these tunes that often go in different directions.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dHZ-oDf4Gqk/ToXwZlr--lI/AAAAAAAAFac/i3yo_WWCqcw/s1600/trey_anastasio_001_010507.jpg

By flexibility I really mean "control over how others are consuming your work".

yeah in fairness this year we in aerosmith were like "fuck it, these new songs are better than anything we've ever written & they're what we want to play" so we just toured 'em all & gave fair warning via the internet, if you don't wanna already know the songs backwards & forwards when the album comes out then don't burn yourself out on live recordings because we feel like touring the songs. also if an audience sings along with an unreleased song, that fucking rules, but if somebody stomps on the punchline of your new joke to show you he's already heard it on YouTube, that would make you murderously angry

the element of surprise/novelty is just way more critical in comedy, especially with the dominant "just a guy talkin baout stuff" framework. no one's gonna want to hear jokes/riffs/bits they've already heard and laughed at, for the most part. pre-exposure directly impacts the audience's reaction and by extension the performer and the material's marketability.