Not A Typical Post

Hey fans,

I'm going to be taking a break over the holidays, so unless I feel the urge there won't be much content on here until some time in January.

For one of my final assignments, I had to write a personal essay. I'm going to post it here because, frankly, I'm proud of it and I hope it's at least a little bit funny.

Enjoy!

Life is a Roll of Quarters

                 

Have you ever seen a Nintendo 64 controller? More importantly, have you ever held one? The Nintendo 64 was a video game console that came out in 1996. It sold over 33 million units worldwide and has what many consider to be the worst controller in modern gaming history. It’s shaped like a letter “M” – with three prongs touting the various buttons required to play the game.

I was five years old and sitting in the back seat of my parents’ forest green Ford Explorer holding onto the large box on my lap. I remember its bright yellow and red colour scheme, and I remember reading every word on the box over and over for the entire hour-long drive home. My dad set it up on the small TV in the basement once we got home and I played my very first video game. Endorphins and dopamine flooded my central nervous system as the motion and colour overloaded my impressionable senses. Mario Kart 64 was my first taste of this new high – the one the dealer gives you for free. The only problem was the controller. My tiny hands couldn’t support the controller the way it was meant to be held, so I placed it on the ground and gripped the joystick with a clawed hand, the way my Pac-Man-playing proto-nerd ancestors had before me. I was adapting. Jurassic Park had been out for three years, and though I didn’t know it, life was finding a way.

We drove to B.C. for a family trip when I was six. As we neared the majestic Rockies, my dad would periodically make a comment like, “Look out the window, Jas. Quite something, huh?” I would reply by peeling my attention off my Game Boy’s screen for as little time as my young brain would allow before returning to Ash’s adventures in Pokémon Blue. Here was Ash, a 10-year-old boy who decided he was going to be the very best, the best there ever was. He caught and trained the best Pokémon. He always defeated his snobby rival, Gary. He even brought down a national crime syndicate. When I was 10, what sort of globetrotting adventure would I set out on? I had four whole years to plan and decide what I would be the world champion at.

Junior high was not a fun time in my life. I was a late bloomer and no kid who’s five feet tall with the voice of an Italian soprano is king of the school. My parents were very supportive and didn’t resort to helicopter parenting, but they gave me the advice to try to find common ground with the lead bully, a Biff Tannen-type named B.J.  I don’t even remember how it came up but B.J. and I shared an affinity for a relatively obscure Xbox game called Ninja Gaiden. It’s not like the clouds parted, inspirational music kicked on, and we strolled off into best-friendship, but knowing about a video game had saved me from relentless bullying.

I’d started identifying myself as a gamer since middle school. Video games still carry a stigma of being a thing that only losers do. But video games have given me more powerful emotional reactions than any other medium. I laughed out loud when the alien doctor Mordin Solus revealed he had played the lead in an interspecies production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” in Mass Effect. I sat awestruck when Andrew Ryan told me “a man chooses; a slave obeys” in BioShock. And I choked back tears when John Marston took a final stand against the evil that had ruined his life in Red Dead Redemption. I’ve sat by myself in front of the TV for an entire weekend, drawn into some grand adventure. I’ve sat with 11 of my friends; bathed in the glow of 12 TVs, drenched in the sweat of an unventilated basement, rank with the fumes of Monster energy drinks.

I spent a free period in high school playing Tetris on my Nintendo DS, as was my custom, when the thought struck me. When I do things right, they blink and disappear but when I make a mistake and don’t act to rectify it quickly, it leads to a chain reaction of more and more problems. People, like Tetris are messy and sometimes your mistakes lead to unwinnable situations.

I don’t experience empathy very easily. Feeling what other people feel does not come naturally to me.  I’ve read books, watched movies, and lived my life with an understanding that people are capable of experiencing a spectrum of emotions that I could observe, but not necessarily share in. There’s this thing I do when I meet someone new. In many video games, characters’ abilities are determined by their attributes – things like strength, intelligence, charisma, and wisdom are assigned a numerical value. These values allow you to compare what different characters are capable of accomplishing. When I meet someone for the first time, I break them down in terms of these attributes in my head. Some people score very high in intelligence, but low in charisma. Others start with a high score in strength but get low points in wisdom. When I work out, study, or practice something, I visualize the experience points I would be gaining to a particular stat. This has become so habitual that I don’t notice it anymore unless I stop to think about it.

My mom has told me she always thought video games were just part of a phase I was going through. She never thought that her decision to buy Mario Kart 64 all those years ago would become such a fundamental part of my worldview. Some people read great authors and the great questions they pose. Others watch great cinema and try to understand the world through a camera’s lens. Everyone wants to understand how the world works, what the rules are. I’m content to keep dropping quarters into my life to see what’s next.

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Tackling Hard Topics In Comedy

I am not a stand-up comedian.

But I love comedy. When a story comes into the news about some comedian making a potentially tasteless joke somewhere people are often quick to burn them at the stake.

There are always comedians like Daniel Tosh, Jeff Ross, or Anthony Jeselnik who people want to get mad at for something. I will go to my grave defending how important good comedy is to a functioning society.

Please note that I said "good" comedy.

There are no shortage of bad comics making suicide/rape/pedophila jokes that are bad. Poorly written attempts at cashing in on the use of awful buzz topics.

So is there such thing as a "good" joke about rape?

Though I have opinions, I'm not qualified to answer this from any angle.

Patton Oswalt, an incredibly intelligent and experienced comedian wrote a "closed" letter himself a while back discussing the topics of joke stealing, heckling, and rape jokes. It is incredibly long and can be found in its entirety here.

I will end this post not with the answer to the question of "Is it right to joke about these terrible topics?", but with his wisdom and experience asking more important questions.



DISCLAIMER: If you only read part of this, it disqualifies your chance to talk about it. Be informed or don't but don't add to the problem



3. Rape Jokes

In 1992 I was in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.  Out of a field of 40 competitors, I think I came in 38.  Maybe. 

One of the comedians I competed against was named Vince Champ.  Handsome, friendly, 100% clean material.  He would gently – but not in a shrill or scolding way – chide some of the other comedians about their “blue” language, or “angry” subject material, or general, dark demeanor.  But nice to hang out with.  Polite.

Later that same year Vince won Star Search.  $100,000 grand prize.  A career launched.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

He’s now sitting in prison in Nebraska, serving a 55 to 70 year sentence for a string of rapes he committed at college campuses where he toured as a comedian.  College bookers loved him because his material was squeaky-clean and non-controversial.  I guess the Star Searchproducers agreed.

Vince is one example – there are others, believe me – where some of the friendliest, most harmless-seeming, and non-offensive comedians carry around some pretty horrific mental plumbing.  The comedians I’ve known who joke about rape – and genocide, racism, serial killers, drug addiction and everything else in the Dark Subjects Suitcase – tend to be, internally and in action, anti-violence, anti-bigotry, and decidedly anti-rape.  It’s their way – at least, it’s definitelymy way – of dealing with the fact that all of this shittiness exists in the world.  It’s one of the ways I try to reduce the power and horror those subjects hold for me.  And since I’ve been a comedian longer than any of the people who blogged or wrote essays or argued about this, I was secure in thinking my point of view was right.  That “rape culture” was an illusion, that the examples of comedians telling “rape jokes” in which the victim was the punchline were exceptions that proved the rule.  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.  No one I know has ever expressed a desire to rape anyone.  My viewpoint must be right.  Right?

I had that same knee-jerk reaction when the whole Daniel Tosh incident went down.  Again, onlylooking at it from my experience.  And my experience, as a comedian, made me instantly defend him.  I still do, up to a point.  Here’s why: he was at an open mike.  Trying out a new joke.  A joke about rape.  A horrible subject but, like with all horrible subjects, the first thing a comedian will subconsciously think is, “Does a funny approach exist with which to approach this topic?”  He tried, and it didn’t go well.  I’ve done the same thing, with all sorts of topics.  Can I examine something that horrifies me and reduce the horror of it with humor?  It’s a foolish reflex and all comedians have it. 

And, again, it was at an open mike.  Which created another knee-jerk reaction in me.  Open mikes are where, as a comedian, you’re supposed to be allowed to fuck up.  Like a flight simulator where you can create the sensation of spiking the nose of the plane into the tarmac without killing anyone (or yourself).  Open mikes are crucial for any working comedian who wants to keep developing new material, stretching what he or she does, and keeping themselves from burrowing into a creative rut.

Even Daniel admitted, in his apology, that the joke wasn’t going well, that when the girl interrupted him (well, heckled, really) he reacted badly.  The same way I reacted badly when an audience member started taping one of my newer, more nebulous bits with her camera phone a few months earlier.  Daniel’s bad reaction I don’t defend.  His attempting to find humor in the subject of rape – again, a horrifying reality that, like other horrifying realities, can sometimes be attacked with humor?  I defend that.  Still defend.  Will always defend. 

What it came down to, for me, was this: let a comedian get to the end of his joke.  If it’s not funny then?  Fine.  Blast away.  In person, on the internet, anywhere.  It’s an open mike.  Comedians can take it.  We bomb all the time.  We go too far all the time.  It’s in our nature.

And don’t interrupt a comedian during the set-up.  A lot of times, a set-up is deliberately meant to shock, to reverse your normal valences, to kick you a few points off your axis.  If you heard the beginning of Lenny Bruce’s joke where he blurts out, “How many niggers do we have here tonight?”, and then stood up and motherfucked him into silence and stormed out?  You’d be correct – based solely on what you saw and heard – that Lenny was a virulent racist.  But if you rode the shockwave, and listened until the end of the bit, you’d see he was attacking something – racism – that he found abhorrent and was, in fact, so horrified by it that he was willing to risk alienating an audience to make his point. 

So that’s how I saw the whole “rape joke” controversy.  And, again, my view was based on my experience as a comedian.  25 years experience, you know?  This was about censorship, and the limits of comedy, and the freedom to create and fuck up while you hone what you create. 

But remember what I was talking about, in the first two sections of this?  In the “Thievery” section and then the “Heckling” section?  About how people only bring their own perceptions and experiences to bear when reacting to something?  And, since they’re speaking honestly from their experience, they truly think they’re correct?  Dismissive, even?  See if any of these sound familiar:

There’s no “evidence” of a “rape culture” in this country.  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone, so why am I being lumped in as the enemy?  If these bloggers and feminists make “rape jokes” taboo, or “rape” as a subject off-limits no matter what the approach, then it’ll just lead to more censorship.  

They sure sound familiar to me because I, at various points, was saying them.  Either out loud, or to myself, or to other comedian and non-comedian friends when we would argue about this.  I had my viewpoint, and it was based on solid experience, and it…was…fucking…wrong.

Let’s go backwards through those bullshit conclusions, shall we?  First off: no one is trying to make rape, as a subject, off-limits.  No one is talking about censorship.  In this past week of re-reading the blogs, going through the comment threads, and re-scrolling the Twitter arguments, I haven’t once found a single statement, feminist or otherwise, saying that rape shouldn’t be joked under any circumstance, regardless of context.  Not one example of this.

In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim.

Why, after all of my years of striving to write original material (and, at times, becoming annoyingly self-righteous about it) and struggling find new viewpoints or untried approaches to any subject, did I suddenly balk and protest when an articulate, intelligent and, at times, angry contingent of people were asking my to apply the same principles to the subject of rape?  Any edgy or taboo subject can become just as hackneyed as an acceptable or non-controversial one if the exact same approach is made every time.  But I wasn’t willing to hear that.

And let’s go back even further.  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.  Never had the impulse.  So why was I feeling like I was being lumped in with those who were, or who took a cavalier attitude about rape, or even made rape jokes to begin with?  Why did I feel some massive, undeserved sense of injustice about my place in this whole controversy?

The answer to that is in the first incorrect assumption.  The one that says there’s no a “rape culture” in this country.  How can there be?  I’ve never wanted to rape anyone.

Do you see the illogic in that leap?  I didn’t at first.  Missed it completely.  So let’s look at some similar examples:

Just because you 100% believe that comedians don’t write their own jokes doesn’t make it so.  And making the leap from your evidence-free belief to dismissing comedians who complain about joke theft is willful ignorance on your part, invoked for your own comfort.  Same way with heckling.  Just because you 100% feel that a show wherein a heckler disrupted the evening was better than one that didn’t have that disruption does not make it the truth.  And to make the leap from your own personal memory to insisting that comedians feel the same way that you do is indefensible horseshit.

And just because I find rape disgusting, and have never had that impulse, doesn’t mean I can make a leap into the minds of women and dismiss how they feel day to day, moment to moment, in ways both blatant and subtle, from other men, and the way the media represents the world they live in, and from what they hear in songs, see in movies, and witness on stage in a comedy club.

There is a collective consciousness that can detect the presence (and approach) of something good or bad, in society or the world, before any hard “evidence” exists.  It’s happening now with the concept of “rape culture.”  Which, by the way, isn’t a concept.  It’s a reality.  I’m just not the one who’s going to bring it into focus.  But I’ve read enough viewpoints, and spoken to enough of my female friends (comedians and non-comedians) to know it isn’t some vaporous hysteria, some false meme or convenient catch-phrase.

I’m a comedian.  I value and love what I do.  And I value and love the fact that this sort of furious debate is going on about the art form I’ve decided to spend my life pursuing.  If it wasn’t, it would mean all of the joke thief defenders and heckler supporters are right, that stand-up comedy is some low, disposable form of carnival distraction, a party trick anyone can do.  It’s obviously not.  This debate proves it.  And I don’t want to be on the side of the debate that only argues from its own limited experience.  And I don’t need the sense memory of an actor, or a degree from Columbia, or a moody, desert god to tell me that.

I’m a man.  I get to be wrong.  And I get to change.

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Musical Comedy: The Chocolate-Covered Ribeye Steak of Art

Wait!

Come back!


I promise, this isn't going to be a list of grainy iPhone video of "this hilarious guy from Rumours" singing "Excuse me while I kiss this guy!" in a bad Hendrix impression.

Good comedy in music is a much different beast than either comedy or music.
If you're Bruce Springsteen and you don't play Born To Run in concert, the E Street Band starts getting threatening phone calls.
But people overwhelmingly don't like to hear jokes they've already heard from their favourite comedian. Sure, some great comics will end their show with a classic bit, like Jim Gaffigan's Hot Pockets, but if you saw Lewis Black and he did Old Yeller straight off the page, you'd be more pissed than Ron White.

There are a few comedians who will have a small musical part of their act, but there's usually something else going on there.

Mechanism of Comedy: People playing guitar/piano while telling short jokes

(see Dimitri Martin) 

People like my mom (not pictured) get really annoyed when comedians do this. Why do they?

When people who aren't Louis C.K., Jim Gaffigan, or Aziz Ansari make a stand-up special, they don't own it. They work with a production company like Comedy Central who shoots, edits, and owns it. Most of the time they edit it as close to the way it was performed as possible, but when the show is 60 minutes and they need to edit it to 47-ish minutes some stuff has to go.

Also, specials are shot over 2 performances, so in case a joke fails or something weird happens, they can get it on the next one. 

SO, when a comedian plays an instrument over a series of jokes, what they are actually doing is ensuring that those jokes are not edited out of order.
The music means that not even Michael Bay's editor could cut quickly or cleanly enough to take a joke and put it somewhere else.


Here are a few comedians you've heard of and some you almost certainly haven't who keep the bar high for musical comedians:

Tom Lehrer

He is the Mel Blanc, the Alan Turing, the Rosa Parks of comedy in music. A Harvard-trained mathmetician, Lehrer was smarter than everyone in the room with his witty, musically diverse, and his edgy-for-the-time tongue-in-cheek social commentary. 

Garfunkel and Oates (NSFW)

This duo juxtaposes their upbeat, ukelele-driven pop songs with some of the dirtiest, funniest observational humour that I've heard. WARNING: they do get pretty dirty, so tread carefully if you're easily offended.

"Weird Al" Yankovic

If Tom Lehrer is Beethoven, Weird Al is Barry Manilow. He's not for everyone, but he's remained relevant for decades and still fills stadiums with his dedicated fan base. I the grabbed newer stuff from across his 20+ year career, but I'll start with one showing the level of commitment he puts into his work, love him or hate him he is very good at what he does.

If you want more check out more musical comedians, check out Paul and Storm, Hard and Phirm, The Lonely Island, or Flight of the Conchords

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Chelsea Peretti: One of the Greats

Chelsea Peretti released her brand-spankin' new comedy special "One of the Greats" last Friday and you should be watching it.

Filmed live at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Peretti manages to turn her hour of stand-up into something much closer to a one-woman show.

One of the Greats does a few things that I've never seen in any other comedy special before. Every special will cut to the crowd between jokes for a few seconds, you know, get the audience reacting.

But in One of the Greats, 90% of the cuts to the crowd are these shots of people - still in the audience - but doing really strange things that are jokes in themselves.

A man pouring salt on a hard-boiled egg, a couple making out aggressively, a cute dog looking off-camera adorably, they are never referenced directly but it shows the amount of effort put into the production of the show.


Some comedians (like John Mulaney) take great pains to write material that is funny regardless of delivery and then tweak the delivery to get the most out of it.

There are a few comedians (Maria Bamford comes to mind) who write material that isn't necessarily funny on paper, but is so soaked in their persona and voice that it's still hilarious.

I don't want to talk to too much about the special, because I really suggest that you watch it. In place of further detail, take some .gifs of Peretti.

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Royal Canadian House of Cards

I love live theatre! The immediacy. The energy. The heavy breathing of that big guy taking up the arm rest next to me. All of it.

And last night I had the chance to see Proud by Michael Healey, put on by Theatre Projects Manitoba.

It takes place in a fictional future where Stephen Harper's party has won a colossal majority government in Canada. Harper, along with his chief of staff, Cary Baines, attempt to game the system with the help of a new, feisty MP named Jisbella Lyth.


As my title suggests, this Parliamentary parody was a something of a cross between the CBC's well-regarded but mostly-forgotten Royal Canadian Air Farce and the recent Netflix political drama House of Cards.

It is NOT easy to make Canadian politics interesting. I loved Air Farce and The Rick Mercer Report but it was their chemistry and sarcasm that interested me, not the MPs or MLAs.



All that being said, Proud, was a hilarious look into the 'what-might-have-been' of Canadian politics.

The Prime Minister, imitated exceptionally by Ross McMillan, becomes a parody of himself. Over the course of the play, he reveals that he really doesn't care about the things he says he cares about. In reality, every step he's taken to getting where he is has really been about making the country just a little bit more self-sufficient.
He's the Frank Underwood in this story, without the chilling soliloquies or southern drawl. Or the handsome features. Or the intimidating thousand-yard stare.

OK, maybe he's more like like if Frank Underwood were played my Mike Meyers.

The congressional conundrum causes a catastrophe for the Conservative cabinet captain. Cue Jisbella Lyth, played to the rafters by Daria Puttaert.

She has run and won in her riding by being nothing more than a warm body, and her entrance to the play (busting into the Prime Minister's Office asking if anyone has a condom) sets her character up for the rest of the night.

Much of Proud's comedy comes from Lyth's lack of filter, her sex drive, or the combination of the two. My only real gripe with the performance was that too many of her moments were overly excited for the space she was working in. Imagine watching Chris Farley do King Lear.

“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

I had a great experience this last summer at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. I went to as many shows as I was able, all-in-all about a dozen.
I am always drawn to comedic plays over drama, so Proud had me a bit nervous. That being said, I think Proud did as good a job as I've seen balancing the "drama" of the political backdrop, with the absurdity of the personalities involved in the plot.

I can't say this play had any sort of profound impact on me. It was certainly a fun look at a form of politics that I'm sure don't make up a huge percentage of the real life political landscape.

Something that added to my experience was the talkback session after. The director and actors hung out for 20 minutes and answered questions from the audience. Being a huge comedy nerd, it was a nice change to hear the actors discuss mechanics of dramatic acting opposed to comedic performance.

If for some reason I wanted to sum up all my feelings about the night in one concise .gif it would be:

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Books! (They're Not Just For Nerds Anymore)

It has become a popular trend in recent years for comedians to write memoirs. I love reading a comedian's memoirs! I like to know the details of their lives, how they were shaped into who they are, how they got their break etc. 

Today is another compact post all about some great books by great comedians you should check out.

Bossypants by Tina Fey (or as I hastily typed it into Amazon, "boosyplants")

Yes Please by Amy Poehler 

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin

(I would highly recommend the audiobook version of this, as Steve narrates it himself)

Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living by Nick Offerman

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham

(don't concern yourself with the fake controversy that some bloggers tried to start about it, Dunham has blasted away roadblocks for women in comedy)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

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Dial "P" For Podcasts

Before I started college, I worked as a delivery driver. It was a good gig because I got to drive around Winnipeg all day and listen to podcasts. On average, I listened to between 8 and 20 hours a week of podcasts of all different types.

Now that I'm at school, my intake has dropped significantly, but I listen whenever I can. When I mention my love of them, people often ask me what exactly I'm actually listening to.

Here are my Top 3 podcast preferences:

The Nerdist Podcast

Comedian and host extraordinaire, Chris Hardwick, began Nerdist after he got tired of playing the Hollywood game. Hardwick is a recovered alcoholic and The Nerdist Way was his way of telling his fellow nerds about tapping into their nerdiness to benefit their own lives. He's created a media empire including a number of excellent podcasts like...

Chris Hardwick, along with his pals Matt Mira and Jonah Ray, have hour-long chats with people of note from all parts of culture. Notable examples include Tom Hanks, Mike Birbiglia, and Hardwick's dad, professional bowler, Billy Hardwick.

WTF with Marc Maron

Marc Maron is an angry, angry man but a fantastic interviewer. Maron takes a more investigative slant than the Nerdist, but he also gets spectacular, honest, and raw interviews. If you don't like harsh language avoid this one.

Notable episodes include Todd Glass, Mel Brooks, and Gallagher.

Laser Time Network

 Chris Antista started his own podcast network and most of the podcasts under his brand are great. The flagship show is probably my favourite.

Laser Time is a low energy, hilarious, weekly-themed show that exists primarily to make fun of pop culture. It's Antista and a rotating cast of his friends making jokes and loosely following a theme like shame songs, functional immortality, or fear.

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