Moshe Kasher explains it all for you

This is delightful. In a way that is both respectful and completely not so, Moshe Kasher responds to a critic. Basically: she thought he was vulgar.

Betsy Hart has every right to not enjoy or appreciate the performance, but directing it at Kasher by stating that he is "not funny" when the evidence of laughter from the thousands of other people directly contradicts her is misguided. She could direct her anger towards Miami University for booking a comic with an (established) reputation for profanity, if she insists (and maybe she did). But as Kasher points out, 

“ a great disease of people in today’s society is that they feel their subjective opinion can be held up to be an empirical fact. What you should have said was, “You weren’t funny, to me” and to that I would have replied, “That’s because my comedy is not for you.””

Last week, in a Q and A for the University Press of Mississippi's blog, I touched on this same issue, 

“We speak according to the mores and norms of our group: we use different language in front of strangers from what we use in front of our families and our peers, and we are aware of those cues. And we use different language in times of play and leisure than we do at times of work. So comedians use the language appropriate to the group. If you do not like vulgarity in your day-to-day life you probably won’t like it much in your entertainment. Both the language and the content of stand-up is not what we would expect to hear in serious talk, in talk that is meant to be constructive or instrumental. It is play, and part of the comedian’s art is testing the limits of what is considered appropriate as part of that play, and he or she allowed to do so because the audience also frames it as play.”

Moshe Kasher don't take shit from no one.

Chris Rock interview

Mo Rocca interviews Chris Rock: of note is his discussion of preachers and the influence on his stand-up. Preaching as a riffing style is part of it, but the ethnopoetics are also a factor, especially among black comedians. Bruce A. Rosenberg's The Art of the American Folk Preacher was a big influence on my understanding of stand-up, and one day I need to develop the oral-formulaic theory as it relates to the routines. Meanwhile, ethnopoetic transcription is the only way to make the stand-up's words live on the page.

Special thanks to bestie Andrea Kitta (@andreakitta), who not only wrote the definitive book on the anti-vaccination movement but also watches CBS Sunday Morning as if her life depended on it.

Mitch Hedberg's best joke

Mark Peters has a wonderful column at McSweeney's Internet Tendency on the "Best Joke Ever." Today's is on Mitch Hedberg, and it crystallizes one of his unique points, over and above his creativity. Hedberg's delivery and countenance - his eye-contact avoiding shades and hair, how his body almost folded into itself - allowed for "joke" telling, as opposed to a routine. He made the audience forgive his embrace of the joke, a seeming holdover from another time, as there was almost a sense that he might leave the stage at any time. He spoke in a drone, but it was an A chord that resolved back to the E. 

Peters might be right that the broken escalator is his best joke, as much as it wholly integral and can be removed from his performance context to be retold by virtually anyone, but I don't know if it's the best thing he ever said. I'm partial to his ethnographic description of the stand-up performance (it's prefaces my chapter on the stage in A Vulgar Art):

“Some people think I’m high on stage
I would never get high before a show
because when I’m high
I don’t wanna stand in front of a bunch of people I don’t know [L]
that does not sound comfortable [L]
like when you’re high and a joke doesn’t work it’s extra scary
it’s like | whoa what the hell happened there [L]
I am retreating within myself [L]
why have all these people gathered [L]
and why am I elevated [L]
why am I not facing the same way as everyone else [L]
and what is this electric stick in my hand | [L]
I like the way
this is situated here
it seems like you guys were chasing me
closing in
and then said | fuck it let’s sit down |”

Watch it here: he closes with it but the entire routine is worth watching. And it's only five minutes: like you're such hot shit you can't spare five minutes?