Rolling Stand-Up Comedy 2012

I don't know how I missed this all these years, but Maria Bamford and Jim Gaffigan have an almost identical delivery.

Louis C.K. is making the Tig Notaro set from Largo available on his site: http://buy.louisck.net/news/about-tig-notaro

Greetings to the people and parts of people that are reading this. Hi. This is Louis. I'm a comedian and you bought a thing from me. Well, I'm writing to tell You that there is a new thing you can buy on my website louisck.com. It's an audio standup set by not me but another comedian named Tig Notaro. Why am I selling someone else's comedy on my website?

Well, Tig is a friend of mine and she is very funny. I love her voice on stage. One night I was performing at a club in LA called Largo. Tig was there. She was about to go on stage. I hadn't seen Tig in about a year and I said how are you? She replied "well I found out today that I have cancer in both breasts and that it has likely spread to my lymph nodes. My doctor says it looks real bad. ". She wasn't kidding. I said "uh. Jesus. Tig. Well. Do you... Have your family... Helping?". She said "well my mom was with me but a few weeks ago she fell down, hit her head and she died". She still wasn't kidding.

Now, I'm pretty stupid to begin with, and I sure didn't know what to say now. I opened my mouth and this came out. "jeez, Tig. I. Really value you. Highly.". She said "I value you highly too, Louie.". Then she held up a wad of note-paper in her hand and said "I'm gonna talk about all of it on stage now. It's probably going to be a mess". I said "wow". And with that, she went on stage.

I stood in the wings behind a leg of curtain, about 8 feet from her, and watched her tell a stunned audience "hi. I have cancer. Just found out today. I'm going to die soon". What followed was one of the greatest standup performances I ever saw. I can't really describe it but I was crying and laughing and listening like never in my life. Here was this small woman standing alone against death and simply reporting where her mind had been and what had happened and employing her gorgeously acute standup voice to her own death.

The show was an amazing example of what comedy can be. A way to visit your worst fears and laugh at them. Tig took us to a scary place and made us laugh there. Not by distracting us from the terror but by looking right at it and just turning to us and saying "wow. Right?". She proved that everything is funny. And has to be. And she could only do this by giving us her own death as an example. So generous.

After her set, I asked Mark Flanagan, the owner of Largo (great club, by the way) if he recorded the set. Largo is set up for excellent recordings. He said that he did.
A few days later, I wrote Tig and asked her if I could release this set on my site. I wanted people to hear what I saw. What we all saw that night. She agreed. The show is on sale for the same 5 dollars I charge for my stuff. I'm only keeping 1. She gets the other 4. Tig has decided to give some of that to cancer research.

Tig, by the way, has since undergone a double mastectomy. She is doing well. Her doctors say her chances of survival are excellent. So she went there and came back. Her report from the frontlines of life and death are here for you to... Enjoy.

Please go to my site louisck.com and buy her show. You can buy it HERE.
Thank you. Have a terrific afternoon.

Louis C.K.

Just bought it, but I don't know how much of a rush I'm in to hear it. I'll save it for later, when I'm in a more somber, reflective place.

The show is on sale for the same 5 dollars I charge for my stuff. I'm only keeping 1.

Such generosity, only skimming 20% from someone else's work while they're fighting cancer.

To be fair, I assume there are hosting costs involved?

Notaro has a really awful crazy stalk3r (who apparently has a google alert set up on Ms. N and the word I just googleproofed) who likes to post as many different people saying very bad things. Mods to the ready, please.

it's onimo?

No. Googling will find this stuff quickly, if you like staring at car wrecks.

I'll save it for later, when I'm in a more somber, reflective place Not nec. necessary, judging by the excerpt I just heard on This American Life. Their segment on her Taylor Dane saga showed what Louie meant by employing her gorgeously acute standup voice, and now she's...well, it has to be heard.

To be fair, I assume there are hosting costs involved?

It's awful that multi-millionaire Louis CK has to pay for the bandwidth involved in cashing in on someone else's illness.

i dunno, she'd get less than 80% of the profits if it were put out by pretty much any label, and this will probably get it a higher profile than any label would. louie didn't have to say whether he was taking a cut or how much, but he did, for no other reason than for the sake of transparency, and to open himself up to criticism from concern trolls who don't think it's tig's call to make whether the deal she consented to was a fair one.

The entire thing is great right up until the point he decides he wants a dollar a download. Can't he just, you know, give her the money? I'm not concern trolling for her, just pointing out he's a dick for taking money for this.

ay, this isn't some benefit to help Tig pay for medical bills, its someone releasing a record as a business transaction

Dischord is great up until they point where they want 50% for this Nation of Ulysses record!

tbh from what I have heard she seems like the kind of person that wouldn't be super comfortable with a recording of one of her performances being treated like a charity case

of course absolutely zero people in this discussion including me have any idea what the fuck they're talking about as they have no actual information about the situation whatsoever

Fair enough, I still think it sounds off when he's talking of her generosity and that she's donating part of her earnings to cancer research. You'd think he'd waive his fee and show a little generosity of his own idk. Maybe if I was him I'd rather sit and count all those single dollars from someone else's recording of someone else's work.

xxp

true, nick, no idea at all but that's never stopped us

what information is actually needed beyond "he offered this deal to her, she accepted it, and he told us how the money is being split"? (xpost)

CULTURE IS FREE MAAAAAN

holy shit onimo wtf is wrong with you

i am listening to this right now

i kinda want to send it to a bunch of people, it's really nice

xpost

Seriously. Why do you work at a job when you could be spending that time volunteering at a cancer charity? So selfish.

just listen to her ffs

itunes started playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw-BqZHOh_g immediately after her set finished, i thought it was her exit music at first, all "laying it on a lil thick, tig"

holy shit onimo wtf is wrong with you

― Author ~ Coach ~ Goddess (s1ocki), Saturday, 6 October 2012 21:59 (31 minutes ago) Permalink

for real times one million

also this is real good, yeah. the angels watching god.

lol this purchase shows up as a $5.00 payment to "Pig Newton Inc."

2/3 of the way through this isn't funny though.

holy shit onimo wtf is wrong with you

Seriously. Why do you work at a job when you could be spending that time volunteering at a cancer charity? So selfish.

I work at a job to feed and clothe my children and to keep a roof over them. It's not always easy. I do my bit to raise money for the nurses who have helped (too) many of my family members to die in slightly less pain and in slightly more dignity over the last few years. I could probably do more. Maybe Louis CK does as well idk. I'm sure his use of his profile to raise awareness of Tig's set here is a net good regardless of whether or not he makes money.

I was merely voicing my initial reaction that the "I'm taking a buck" bit of his long article about a touching and generous performance seemed jarring to me in that context. Sorry if that makes me appear to have a million things wrong with me.

opinion noted

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/videos/louis-ck-on-late-night/

FTR, onimo, I wasn't trying to legit shame you. It's just...there are probably 300 other comics who, if you were to suggest that they were trying to make a cynical buck off of a tragedy, I'd concede that you might have a point. But you're talking about one of the hardest working dudes in showbiz who I think is maybe a lot less rich than you think he is and who puts a great deal of the money he does make into new projects rather than diamond-encrusted mansions. Calling Louis C.K. in particular out because he was needlessly transparent about the fact that he's going to make a little money off of this thing (that he was largely doing for the benefit of an ailing friend) is just kinda depressingly cynical.

plus if you actually listen to the set (which i just did for the second time), you realize that getting righteous about how wrong and bad louis ck is for...distributing it? for a buck? just totally misses the point. obv fuck cancer and money-grubbing, sure. but i've already spent $20 on this thing; i sent it as a gift to three friends, and will likely send it to my mom (who does not have cancer, but is going blind, and whose family---mine---is riddled with Terrible Medical Problems). if that means that Tig just made 16 bucks and louis 4, then i'm ok with that. i think we will all sleep just fine tonight. also nb this will be on itunes and cd and w/e in a few weeks, and i can guarantee that ms notaro will not be taking home 80% of the proceeds of those particular sales.

uh what, is AST doing a CD? tbh that could have used some transparency from Louis

AST?

A Special Thing

turns out Secretly Canadian did Good One actually

their website says it's exclusive from Louis though - who's doing the CD, gbx?

...and the pdf booklet in the download says

[Secretly Canadian logo]
© & ℗ SECRETLY CANADIAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WWW.SECRETLYCANADIAN.COM

To interrupt the Louis CK debates,

Reggie Watts did a brilliantly meta Ted Talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc

As you were.

that's really great, fukkin love reggie watts

I kinda wanted to hate Reggie Watts but the motherfucker keeps making me laugh and seems like a nice guy, so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvDHOW9gp3c

Man, this Tig Notaro set is BRUTAL. I mean, I knew all the info about her terrible few months, but hearing her make it public for the first time—the night everyone learned about it—is fucking rough.

i'm watching this "mash up" show on comedy central, and hannibal burress is funny but why do these things keep finding it appropriate to stick in either animations or live action scenes depicting the story the standup is telling? does anyone like that? it makes everything notably less funny

the internet loves videos like that. there's some comedians where a video like that is their no. 1 YouTube hit. i personally think they're fucking terrible and distracting

They are terrible, but they do seem to be popular.

i think your attention span has to be total dogshit if you like those

Comedy Central has done SO MANY shows animating standup routines over the years, can't believe they just started another in 2012 and it's called Mash Up. can't be as bad as Shorties Watchin' Shorties i guess. that stuff could be fun on Dr. Katz, at least.

i think the elevator pitch for Shorties Watchin' Shorties ended with dude putting a gun in his mouth and the network executive promising to put the show on the air if he just calms down and promises not to kill himself

it's pretty amazing how well patrice o'neal's rep as a standup recovered from his 'foulmouthed animated baby' phase by the time he died

i saw myq kaplan recently (only live standup i've ever seen, funny enough) and he was really really good.

definitely on the nerd humor tip but way better than that sounds. very very fast, dense, punny wordplay stuff.

yeah, he's pretty good