Bad Stand-Up Comedians

xpost - I've seen that guy on TV. I don't think he's what I'm talking about, if he's "bad" (which I'm not sure he is), then he knows he's bad. I'm not talking about irony here people.

I have a friend who is a comedian. She is not terrible, but through her (and other friends over the years) I've been exposed to some bad comedians, and yeah, they really do earnestly do those jokes. OK, I haven't seen any quite as bad as the Mann's "retarded people sure are different" folks, admittedly.

H., do you want an ill-fitting sportscoat? They're not that hard to get, I have a bunch that I don't use, etc., etc.

I don't think I'm bad. I think the hackiest I've gotten is my latest batch of jokes about quitting smoking. Some of them seem a little too obvious.

And at the first amateur night I did TWO guys did jokes about the recycling plant workers.

I never GOT Sinbad at all.

Since I've only mentioned two and they're both black, I must admit it could be a cultural disconnect.....then again, there surely was no disconnect with Richard Pryor, Godrey Cambridge and Eddie Murphy until he began making horrible movies. I guess my biggest problem with black comedians is that they often get laughs bringing up topics without having to actually struture humor out of it. It reminds me of how parodies of Seinfeld as standup are done "What's all this talk about (insert anything)?" And, supposedly, Senfeld got laughs regardless. Actually, I don't think so but it IS true with a lot of black comedians working black audiences. The mere mention of a stereotypical subject for humor gets laughs and often the humor never comes....."I come home late from partying and my wife is MAD...." (This brings the house down)...

Anyway, I've already said too much..

(BTW, I LOVED Dennis Miller until after 9/11 when he revealed himself to not only be a cultural snot (but funny) but also a jingoistic reactionary (not funny)..

Yes, his comedy has never really worked. I hope his Daily Show ripoff for MSNBC fails fails fails.

I would love to see your stand-up routine, Huckleberry Mann. Perhaps I'd adore your comedy routine... ? It certainly sounds like you don't stoop to the same hackneyed and decidedly unfunny routines that have thus far turned me off new stand-up. This is a good little bit of news.

We used to go to "raw comedy" open mike style comedy nites a lot a few years back, and some people were great, and some were pretty well known and did stuff to pull the crowds (Tony Martin, Jimeoin etc), but when a standup is bad, it is cringeworthy.

I have one friend (Adam Richard) already in standup and doing some TV work - he's great, but does the campy queer shtick a little too heavily/often. Another friend has dabbled in it, she's not to bad in a laid back manner, at least she doesnt lean on the "I'm female so I'll make jokes about tampons" crap.

I heard two different comics say the same lame joke within 30 minutes of each other at the same club, but no one called the second guy out on it, and it got more or less the same jolly response from the audience (in case you were wondering, the lame joke was this: "I was really drunk at a party, and I decided it would be fun to drink directly from the beer tap. But it tasted like sour milk for some reason. Turns out, it was some old lady's tit." *Pause for big laffs*)

There's only one thing that makes me more pessimistic about the state of contemporary comedy, and that's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. There's some fidgety boorish Italian dude who always shows up on there and whines about liberals and how "California hates white people". Fuck that shit. Gimme Mitch Hedberg.

you are bringing standup comedy to a whole new level.

I get really tired of women feeling like they have to mention their breasts or time of the months during every show. I mean, it's ok sometimes but some of them have to do it every time. Blah.

I've found that comedians are funnier if they aren't so suave looking. You feel like, "Hey! He/She's hilarious because he's a dork like one of us!"

So the emcee starts, and is nervous, and bombs. (It doesn't help that the room is mostly packed with other comedians who had heard her jokes a million times because they all play their sets in front of one another and try to improve and tell each other they delivered it well that time even though of course at this point they're not laughing anymore.) And the first comedian comes up, and is terrible and unfunny, and blames an unreceptive audience instead his own shitty material.

And then we go on, and we aren't even trying to be funny, I mean, we have funny songs, I guess, but they're not wokka wokka funny, they're more "I hate you" funny, and they go over great. And I make a comment like "I don't know what the other comedians were complaining about, you're a great audience" which the crowd (again, a bunch of comedians themselves) loves.

So that night went surprisingly well, and we set up some more shows with some stand-ups and a sketch comedy group. And: Ugh. My patience for hearing the same songs again and again is pretty high, but for hearing the same jokes again and again is... not so much. And although comedy audiences are great to perform music to -- they're expecting something funny to happen, so they're listening, which is wonderful (even if they do tend to laugh during, say, the merely clever parts of the serious and sad type songs) -- rock audiences are really shitty to do stand-up for (which only makes sense, because they're often shitty to play music for).

"Well, I was really looking forward to Colonel Angus; I'm not so sure how I feel about Enol Angus..."

It surprised me that someone as refreshing as Eddie Izzard resorted to a "taking a shower" sketch ("one minute it's hot, next it's cold! what's up with that?!!"), albeit in quite an original way.

Other stock standup topics:

Old children's TV shows
Going for a kebab/curry