Game:

Space Station: Silicon Valley (1998)

Duration: 0:43

29 views

0

Courtesy of Joe Rogan circa '05:

I love comedy.

Still do, after all these years. I love a good joke, and I love a different point of view that makes me laugh.

That’s why I got into stand up in the first place, because I’m a fan of the art form.

To this day, after 17 years in the business, I still get excited when a really good stand up goes on stage. It inspires me.

Whenever I see Chris Rock, or Dave Chappelle, or Dave Attell, or Doug Stanhope, or Jim Norton, or Nick DiPaolo, or any other great stand up comedian go on stage, I get happy.

I just love it. Even more now than ever before, because I really understand what goes into the craft of making good material.

The place you need to take your mind to think of something no one else has thought of before, or at least a thought that no one else has been able to put into a form that makes people laugh.

It’s an amazing skill, and it’s an incredibly under-appreciated art form.

I love when someone is really good at it, and I really, really fucking hate when someone is faking it.

That’s why I’ve been so outspoken against joke thieves. There is nothing more frustrating to me than seeing someone pretending that they came up with some genius shit that someone else worked really hard to form.

I’ve heard the ignorant arguments from non-stand ups like “Every comic steals.” Which is TOTAL bullshit.

Great comics don’t steal. They may be influenced by others, especially early in their careers, but the truly great ones pride themselves in being able to craft original thoughts for their audience.

There is nothing more satisfying than taking an idea that you have, fleshing it out, finding the funny parts, perfecting the flow of the words, and then presenting it to an audience and watching them howl with laughter.

It’s a fucking beautiful feeling.

A lot of comics, me included, got into comedy because we were fans of great comics, and we used to recite other comics lines to our friends.

With me, it was always Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison. They were the ones that really made me laugh, and I would recite their lines, verbatim to my friends. I loved the feeling of telling a really well crafted joke to someone that hadn’t heard it before, and watching them crack up.

It was what made me think that I could and wanted to get onstage in the first place. The joy of getting to the punch line, and seeing the look of recognition from the person you were telling it to when they related to the material, and then the rush of hearing them laugh out loud at the punch lines. It’s a beautiful feeling.

When you’re starting out and your doing typical, clumsy material, you dream of the days when you’re going to come up with some brilliant shit that’s going to impress your peers.

Some people, never get there, though. The urge to kill is just too strong, and their character is just too weak. They see someone else talking about a subject, and they’ll rewrite it and try to pretend it’s theirs, or they’ll just do it word for word, and hope no ones notices.

They never go through the hard parts, and they never learn how to do it right. They just become thieves. Their time onstage, whether they’re killing or not, is just hollow fakery.

The really scary thing, is that even though a lot of people are aware of what these guys are doing, some clubs still employ them because they can “get the job done” or put “asses in the seats” and these fucking frauds actually manage to carve out a career on other people’s ideas.

One of the real problems, is that very few comedians stand up for what’s right. They might talk about it privately, but very few step up and take a stand. I have before, especially on the subject of Dennis Leary stealing from one of my favorite comedians, the late, great Bill Hicks.

It’s commonly known amongst stand ups that Dennis stole a big chunk of Bills act, but amongst the general population it’s actually a surprise to a lot of people.

Why? Pretty much because no one that anyone would listen to on the subject stood up and said something about it publicly.

No one defended the integrity of this great art form. They just let a pretender and a hack steal ideas from a great mind. He pretty much got away with it too. He went on to have success in films, and unfortunately, Bill Hicks died of cancer before most people knew who he was or what he had to say.

It really killed me, because I started out a Dennis Leary fan. I remember watching him in Boston, laughing hysterically at his act, thinking it was all his. I was really impressed. For a few months, he was actually my favorite comedian. His jokes on Jim Fix dying while jogging, and how ironic that was, and about how John Lennon was dead, but Barry Manilow continued to pump out albums made me howl.

Then, I saw Hicks, and I really got confused. He was doing the same material, almost word for word that Leary was doing.
[
[[
[
[[[[
[[[ERROR
[[[[[CHARACTER LIMIT REACHED]]]
[[[[
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
[[]
[[
YOU JUST LOST THE GAME

Other Statistics