Wednesday, November 29, 2006  

N-Bombs, Stuffing, and the Ghost of Lenny Bruce

My Thanksgiving was spent exactly like yours, I'd reckon. Gluttony, sloth, intoxication and football. A wine buzz and gravy on my shirt while trying to wrangle the knuckleheads into bed while they spun and jittered from an eight-hour pie binge.

The only difference between you and me, I suppose, is that in all likelihood, you didn't have to have twelve iterations of a conversation that started with, "So, Tim...you're a comedian. What do you think about Michael Richards?"

What do I think about Michael Richards? The guy screamed "nigger" at black people about fifteen times. I think he's an asshole.

I'm not sure what sort of perspective people were looking for from me; I don't know what sort of comic calculus they expected me to perform or what sort of industry insight I might provide that would let them breathe a sigh of relief and go on thinking Kramer's just a wacky neighbor and not a rage-filled racist.

Yeah, racist. I mean, I don't know the guy. I don't know that he has any longstanding dislike of black people, but the way I see it, you call a guy a nigger, you gotta wear the racist jacket.

All that said, though, I have to admit that part of me hesitates to condemn the guy, because frankly, I've lost it on stage a time or two myself. Lost. It. I've written before about how I snapped on a woman (on her birthday, no less). I've also flown off the stage with every intention of punching a heckler in the face, and would have were it not for a well-timed shoulder check by the feature act. I've never gone racial, but that's about the only moral high ground I occupy. When you're rolling up there, and in that beautiful, dangerous, creative headspace, if somebody comes at you hard, a whole range of things to say pop into your head, you know? Do you blow it off? Make fun of his shirt? Call his wife fat? Call him a name? Drop the n-bomb? HOW BAD DO YOU WANT TO GO NUCLEAR ON HIM?

You can hit a point where you don't care about the show and you don't care about the funny. Stanhope's right: you pick the cruelist thing you can say, and you say it, whether you mean it or not. I've done it. More than once. The only difference is that I did it mostly before the age of the cameraphone. It's different now. You have a freakout and someone's going to try to make their YouTube bones off you.

My point, dear reader, is that I've redlined, too, and it would be hypocritical for me not to acknowledge it. Maybe that's what happened with Michael Richards. I don't know. Doesn't change the fact that he said what he said and he has to own it.

On the other hand, Jamie Masada's plan to fine comics for "hateful language" is about the dumbest response I can imagine. We've come full circle. Once again, Lenny Bruce wouldn't be able to work the Comedy Store (to say nothing of Richard Pryor). Masada wants Richards to pay $500,000 for each time he said "nigger." That's a lotta cake, and a lot of younger comics just can't swing that.

Maybe there will be a sliding scale fee structure. Less affluent comics couldn't afford to drop the n-bomb, but maybe they could find a less inflammatory, yet more affordable, racial slur that fits their act AND their budget. You could pay when you come offstage. "Let's see here...that's two jigaboos, a zipperhead, and a greaser. That'll be $92.50. Come back next week! We're having a special on "beaner!"

Comedy works best when restrictions are kept at a minimum. A comedy show's a weird thing, and what seems fine what night can seem patently offensive the next. It's alchemical. You can't possibly predict or contain it. But in Richards' case, the current system worked perfectly. He crossed a line, people left, and the club refunded their money. If Jamie Masada was really that concerned about it, he would have fired Richards and not let him work the next night (a point I just blatantly stole from "Jim Jones" over on the forums). A fine-per-word system is about the stupidest thing I ever heard. Not only does it not make any case for context (I assume Chris Rock's "Niggers and Black People" bit would suddenly become way too pricey to do), but it's an absolute insult to the legacy of guys like Bruce and Pryor and Hicks.

I guess what I'm saying is please don't restrict MY speech because Michael Richards is a racist asshole and a bad comic.

So how was your Thanksgiving?

Labels: comedy, hecklers, kramer, michael richards, race, standup

Dear Warren Ellis

(The following is the whiskey talking)

Dear Warren Ellis,

You are an extremely talented writer, you know some pretty hot chicks, and you have the worst musical taste of anyone on the planet.

That is all.

Test

Just a test post.

Karate Saved My Spirit

I try to limit my posts here to stuff that's at least halfway funny, what with me being a comic and all, but since I've written about Drag the River before, including my abortive attempt to go see them the last time they were in town, I figured I'd post this review:



There must be a word for it.

The moment you realize that a lot more people are into a band you love than you knew and that maybe you have more in common with the rest of the world than you thought you did. Where you're singing along at the top of your lungs and suddenly notice that everybody else is, too.

That was my night last night, watching two-fifths of Drag the River blow the doors off the Abbey Lounge in Somerville as the assembled riff-raff clutched their Narragansett tallboys to their bosoms and hollered with joy after every song. I gather it's customary in one of these writeups to go though the setlist song by song, but I don't fucking know. It was just Jon Snodgrass and Chad Price and they played all their best tunes. I don't remember the order, but they all hit me like a one-inch punch in the chest, man. I believe they started with Mister Crews - just Chad playing an acoustic while Jon fucked with his Telecaster, and it was deadbang awesome. Barroom Bliss was in there somewhere. They did a slowed-down version of Calloused Heart that I loved. Ditto for Get Drunk. They did lots of the slower stuff that I tend to skip over but won't anymore. Last song of the night was Beautiful and Damned. Gorgeous.

There was just something sublime about seeing puffy-faced Irish kids in shell jackets and Scally caps singing along to unabashed country music. No cowboy hats or giant belt buckles, and, surprisingly, a total lack of ironic trucker hats. Just Boston kids and a Colorado band feeding off each other. And these guys were fans. They'd all obviously seen the band before (an honor I could not claim), and most everyone seemed to be on a first name basis with them. Shots and beers flowed freely, and it just made the night that much more raw and honest.

And I know of what I speak here - there was just something so Coloradan about these dudes that it actually made me kind of homesick. I coulda gone to school with either one of them. I had a chance to talk to Jon for a second after the show, and he seemed very concerned that people would be disappointed that it was just the two of them, which was madness. They were phenomenal. I mean, my friend and I were both kinda bummed that there was no pedal steel, but personally, I forgot about the whole thing about 30 seconds into their set.

So I bought a weird red t-shirt just because I wanted to give them more money somehow just for being so awesome and made my way home for a fitful sleep, which was half Red Bull and half rock and roll.



On a side note, not only was I impressed with my first 'Gannsett, but I also gave the peanut butter hamburger at Bukowski's a whack. Fuckin' scrumptious.

Oh, and during the Dents' set (which I enjoyed tremendously), the woman who plays bass and sings pulled a muscle or something and fell down, flat on her back. They stopped the show for about fiften minutes until she could stand again. Not for nothing, but I feel that Sid Vicious would have just kept playing. Kids today.

Black Tape for a Blue America

Bush may declare martial law in half an hour, but as of right now, he and Karl Rove can chomp my hog. YOU HEAR ME, KARL? CHOMP IT!

I am positively giddy today. The only thing preventing me from drinking on my lunch break is, well, actually, nothing. I wonder if Bukowski's has wifi...

But I digress. I intended to write a long, insightful, and personal piece about the glorious wave of Democrats that broke over this country last night, but frankly, that's going to cut into my do-the-humpy-dance-of-victory-in-my-boxer-briefs time, so this will be quick.

I thought I was happy last week, when Ted Haggard got busted for being a fabulously gay meth freak, but as it turns out, Ted Haggard was just a delicious appetizer for last night's smorgasboard of whoopass. Don't get me wrong: that son of a bitch helped ruin my hometown, and I'm sure both Jesus and the Buddha would be gravely disappointed in my lack of compassion for him and his family, but while the Christian-flavored schadenfreude was scrumptious, it was but a piquant amuse-bouche for today, where I'm pretty much just drinking gravy out of the china boat and washing it down with ice-cold PBR.

GODDAMN IT FEELS GOOD TO BE A GANGSTA LIBERAL!