Laughing At Awful

Doug Stanhope's "action pose"

It's no secret to my long time listeners, all six of you, that there are three main things that help control my hatred and allow me to let the world to keep living another day. They are music, baseball, and stand up comedy. This, obviously, is about number three on the list.

Since watching George Carlin on HBO with my father when I was a kid, I have been absolutely in love with stand up comedy. Just as with music, or baseball, or heavy drinking, I dove right in and set about learning as much about this amazing art form as I possibly could. And make no mistake, friends, comedy is as pure an art form as there is today. But, ya know, with dick jokes. When I'm having a shitty day, and my brain won't shut the fuck up, I can get the same release from Doug Stanhope as I can by putting on a Hank Williams record. Comedy, like much of the music we play here at Blue Ribbon Radio, takes dark thoughts, shitty situations, mental disorders, failures, and turns them into something fantastic. You have to be able to laugh at life, or life will fucking destroy you. That's how important I think comedy is.

 

Art!

 Now, folks, I know comedy is subjective. What one finds funny, another may find offensive, or just downright incest baby retarded. I know there are a lot people out there that find Dane Cook hilarious. I'm not going to get into the joke stealing arguments, or anything like that, I'm just going to say I find him to about as funny as puppy cancer. The only place I want to see gimmicks is in professional wrestling. If your act is based around props, having your hand up a puppets ass, or inventing new and retarded ways to say "fuck you" in sign language, I couldn't give less of a fuck about you. It's the same argument that we've been making about music since day one of our terrible drunken existence. The pop country song about fucking under a tractor, and the puppet master who makes easy jokes about dead terrorists will always be more marketable to the masses, and thus will always exist. That's fine. Enjoy, masses.

What I want out of my comedy is the same thing I want from my music. I want darkness, I want to hear somebody talk about something fucked up that I can relate to so I don't feel so fucked up about being fucked up. Also, dick jokes. I can understand when Bill Burr talks about thinking of killing himself just to get out of having to bake a pie on Thanksgiving. I get how the fucked up person's mind works. When Bill Hicks ranted against mediocre bands being a good image for the children, and told wonderful stories about taking LSD and exploring one's minds, I got it. When Gallagher smashed a Watermelon, I didn't get it.

This Man Fucking HATES Watermelons

The point is, if I really have one, is that the old saying "laughter is the best medicine" isn't too far off. We live in a fucked up world that is slowly collapsing in on itself because we're absolute morons. If you can't laugh at it, it's going to be a long fucking trip.


Chris Miller is currently in Northern California drinking like his liver fucked his wife.