Introduction to Stand Up Comedy, Part I

The New York Times today had a review of Sarah Silverman’s new memoir, The Bedwetter. In the book, Silverman relates her experience growing up (in New Hampshire!) as a bedwetter and how her embarrassment contributed to her work as a comedian. Dave Itzkoff, the author of the Times piece, does a nice job of drawing out the connection between personal scars and effective stand up comedy. In describing Silverman, Itzkoff summarizes the formative experiences of some of the best comedians of the last fifty years: by taking ownership of their emotional baggage they become unafraid on stage. Among the comedians that fit this description are Jerry Lewis, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Sam Kinnison, Bill Hicks d/b/a Dennis Leary, and Mitch Hedburg.

I love stand up comedy. My hero growing up was Emo Philips, who I continue to quote shamelessly (which, for my purposes, means without citation). At its best, stand up comedy makes us uncomfortable while making us laugh. It’s an art form, no less than oil painting, ballet, or jazz. However, because of its low-end practitioners – knock-knock joking hucksters sweating through bad suits in front of fake brick walls – stand up comedy frequently has a reputation somewhere between local television meteorologists and Kiwanis club guest speakers.

And to be fair, bad stand up comedians warrant that reputation. But good stand up comedians are clever, witty, and socially relevant. Emo Philips was able to merge word play with sly racial commentary: “We had a black out in my old neighborhood the other night. But the police made him get back into his car and go home.” Similarly, Mitch Hedburg – in a prescient and sad irony - combined clever one-liners with references to his drug use: “I love the FedEx guy because he’s my drug dealer and he doesn’t even know it.” And if pressed, I could come up with a hundred other examples: Steve Martin and King Tut, George Carlin and the Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV, Dennis Leary a/k/a Bill Hicks’ re-animated corpse and smoking, etc.

But when to introduce all this to Dream Weaver? It’s not like I can sit down 5-year old Dream with a DVD of Richard Pryor and say “This might be over your head now, but you’ll appreciate it when you’re thirty.”

However, this is important to me. I want our kid to appreciate the kind of laughter that comes from the biting observations and social discomfort of good stand up. My solution is to introduce Dream gradually to stand up, starting with clever, historically relevant stand up that – by today’s standards – is benign. It’s sort of like a sliding scale of age appropriate stand up comedy. Below is the list I’ve been working on:

Age Comedian

7 Abbott and Costello
8 Bill Cosby
10 Steve Martin
12 Rowan Atkinson
13 Emo Philips
14 Dennis Leary and Chris Rock

In upcoming posts, I’ll go through a quick analysis of each comedian. This excites me to a ridiculous extent. I’m actually a little embarrassed by it. If there’s a group of stand-up geeks, I would like to enlist. Call me.

Be content,
John