New Poem: BILL MAHER AND THE MARK TWAIN PRIZE

 please please please

 please please please

 gotta have the Comedian Respected Award

 goddamn it give it to me I deserve it

 please please please

 Donald I’m sorry I made you sue me

 look at me grovel across the floor

 from the doorway to the bottom of your desk

 please please please please bless me me me

The Louis C.K. Poem

    but heeees my freeeeeennndddd say the female comics

    it is hard out there if you want to be funny

    bomb away on the open mics

    eventually get paid a little bit

    others get jealous

    say you’re not all that good

   the resentment you suck up 

    gets spit out in your standup set

    those pain in the ass kids and women

    who want you to pull focus from career career career

    eventually you’re around long enough  

    people think you’re commenting on bile 

    when you’re just regurgitating it

    here, female colleague, watch me wank

    look at this as comedy fraternity hazing

    damn this #MeToo stuff

    made you shelve your movie

    costs one million dollars in lost TV

    you’ll do new act attacking correctness

    drop in unannounced

    keep the press from spoiling the set

    wait long enough, someone will write

    you’re aware of what you’ve done to be diminished 

    when you still think you’ve been screwed 

    by pious people who don’t understand 

    comedy is letting your demons wank

    onto the audience in the same way

    you once wanked on people who,

    if they stood up to you,

    would see their careers go into the tank

    but heeeees my frieeeennnnnddd

    says the male comic who used some of his

    standup special time to middle-finger your accusers

    

    comedy, as practiced by some,  is not pretty

    it’s the fastball whizzing past your head

    it’s the punch smashing your testicles

    it’s the emcee saying you’re going to get fucked with

    it’s the joke that, too many times, leaves a stain

    that can never come out, no matter how much you scrub

    

    

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.