When stand-up comedy becomes Theatre of Casual Cruelty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNOwXkGyXPQ

There's a story behind the not-that-funny stand-up comedy video I've posted here.

Two decades ago this summer, I worked on a film called JIMMY HOLLYWOOD as a stand-in for Joe Pesci.  Carlos Kotkin, in his pre-comedy days, was a production assistant on the film; part of his duties involved being an assistant to the female lead, Victoria Abril.

I remember Carlos as being deadpan and with a bit of a sardonic edge.  He worked hard and made it through the film shoot (which, from my point of view, was uberstressful).

On one hand, I'm glad that Carlos has a show business career (in addition to doing stand-up, he has a book titled PLEASE GOD LET IT BE HERPES, for which the following is a promotional video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFUP_hGyHfo), but it seems like he's content with doing lowest-common-denominator comedy where you make people laugh in a lazy, uncreative way by merely feeding the audience's prejudices about homeless street people and dating disasters (whiff of misogyny here) back to them.

But he's making a living--even if it's derived from figurative urination on misfortune, dysfunction and poverty for audiences his age and younger.

And I'm hoping to never be part of his audience and/or be a subject of one of his routines.