Stand-up comic

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Have you ever noticed that stand-up comics are always standing in front of a brick wall? Do club owners agonize over the statement they make in their choice of brickwork?

“Now, it seems thar wuz this one tahm up in Why-yoming....”

~ John Wayne on being a stand up comic

I mean, what’s the deal with these stand up comedians? What do they really do? They stand up in front of people and complain about the smallest details of their own lives. Is this really what we want to hear to during our free time? Have our lives gotten so bad that our only satisfaction comes from listening to other people complain? Hey, there's usually a stool up there on the stage. Maybe if the comedians sat down once and a while, they wouldn't complain so much.

So I was wondering on the way here…

How do you decide which comic to go see? Well this guy is going to complain about his girlfriend’s nagging for half an hour, but this guy over here will tell me about how his parents used to hit him. This I have to see.

So I go to see one of these guys, you know, give him my money just to see him talk. You'd think he'd just be happy you're supporting his strange occupation but I guess that's not enough for him. He starts making all this demands. “Be sure to tip the waitress,” he has the nerve to tell me. Oh, really? Tip the waitress, wouldn’t have thought of that. I’ve lived in this country for 32 years and I still don’t understand our basic system of gratuities, thank you very much. How does he know know if the waitresses deserves a tip? For all he knows, they're smelly, rude and never refill your water.

I'm just saying…

And then there's these black people comics. They come out all loose like they just got laid or something and talk all about how they are different from white people. Yes, I think that by now, we all know that black people are treated differently than white people and can't call a cab. Oh, and they get to say nigger, but when I say nigger, all of a sudden I'm a racist and O.J. Simpson gets acquitted. I see you you in the audience starting to get uncomfortable. "That guy just said the N-word. Oh no! He's not black he can't say the N-word. He can't really be white, he not that crazy is he? What if he's a black guy that looks white, like that Jason Kidd guy, he looks white, but he's really black. If he were a white guy, he couldn't have said that, it would ruin his career." Don't worry about me though, my career was ruined long before I said that N-word.

That's no lady, that's a commedianne.

And what's the deal with these women comics? "Men suck, I hate men, men don't like commitment." OK, that's nice, would you please say something funny now? That would be much appreciated.

So where do they get these guys?

And how exactly does one become a stand-up comic? They're sitting in the airplane, complaining about the food and suddenly the thought strikes them, “You know what? I think I could make a career out of this.” There were a lot of stand-up comics on TV in the 1980s, I don't see so many on TV anymore. When's the last time you got a meal service on a flight? I only get a little bag of pretzels. "Excuse me stewardess, I requested the kosher snackpack." It doesn't matter; have you tried opening those packages? Maybe if the stewardess tossed those guys an extra bag of peanuts once and a while, stand-up comics would be twice as funny.