I think Palin is ridiculus. She should make a public apology to sluty flight attendants for stealing their look. I find it sad that Letterman had to apologize for joke he probably did not even write. It gets me soooo mad I am going to kick down by bottle of vitamin water. Ok…..that’s as angry as I get.

On other note I had my first show at non comedy club and had to perform in middle of dance floor to about 10 people. It was hilarious had so much fun playing oroud with crowd. Any suggestions on dealing with small crowds for future?

It’s bias you would never hear Hillary and her daughter or Obama and his wife were at the baseball game and the biggest problem was keeping A Rod off them. Oh…sorry I better leave the “ugly” jokes to you professionals.

The porn/wife/dog joke premise was great I started laughing immediately it just needs a good ending.

Russell Peters was very funny. I had never heard of him thanks for the clip.

http://www.adamcarolla.com/ACPBlog/podcasts/

Artie Lange on the Carolla podcast today. Great Interview.

I wrote a short blog about Letterman/Palin at my site if anyone cares. I agree the politicization (is that a word?) of the thing was horse shit; however, I’m glad it happened because this kind of thing always backfires, and the Republican/Palin PR people who thought this was a good idea only succeeded in making the GOP and their more rabid base look like whining, humorless cunts.

I usually don’t get into political stuff on a comedy board, but… I really think the GOP believes they still have a large solid base of elderly, conservative, easily-offended Americans who don’t use the internet and believe whatever the white dude in the suit on a major network tells them. The thing is – the ‘elderly’ who vote are now boomers. People who came of age in the 60’s are now people in their sixties. They may be more conservative now than they were then, but they aren’t their Depression/WWII era parents.

I could rant about this for pages, but I’ll stop there and get back to comedy: A baseball player walks into a bar. I forget the rest of the joke, but your daughter’s a whore.

I am working on bit where I talk about 9/11 which happenes to be my bday. I know this is one of those sensative subjects. I think that my angle will be how tough it would be to ever celebrate ever again and how people always give me an awwwwww when they find out I was born on 9/11. It was not my fault and I don’t want the terrorist to win by not celebrating.

Suggestions?

Dan….you are the man…..very funny.

Here’s my take on this whole Letterman-Palin debacle (because I have been arguing about this at work… A LOT):

I think the initial telling of the joke was more damning for Rodruigez than it was for Palin OR her daughter. The problem is when people starting throwing the “rape”-word around. I don’t know if it started from the Palin camp or from one of the news outlets. But that’s a dangerous-as-fuck word (even with the word “statutory” in front of it) and should not be used lightly.

The worst (and dumbest) argument was the “he’s making fun of rape” or “he’s glorifying rape” argument. Fuck anyone who makes that argument, because that’s not what happens. Perhaps because I do comedy, but I am always one to judge what the INTENT of a joke is. And here, the intent has nothing to do with statutory rape.

Take for example, this shitty joke, which I wrote to prove my point:

So, Dick Cheney has been doing a lot of public speaking lately. I found this out: it is $500 to have him speak. For $1,000, he will participate in a Q&A, and for $2,000, he will shoot a dude in the face.

Now jokes like that were told every day after Cheney, you know, SHOT A DUDE IN THE FACE! But (and credit must be given to Cheney or his handlers) no one ever came out saying jokes like that were pro-gun or pro-murder or pro-shooting-a-dude-in-the-face. The intent of the joke was to make fun of a guy who shot a dude in the face.

Intent is everything in comedy. And anyone jackass should realize that.

Here you go,Dominic:

So my birthday is on Sept. 11th, which sucks. But what really sucks is that my 21st birthday was Sept. 11th, 2001. The only guys I could get to party with me that night were a couple guys, I barely even knew ‘em, from the mail room at work, Abdul and Farik, but they were cool, totally in a party mood.

Tasteless?

Hey Brian, comedy fans, I have been away in Toronto doing stand up comedy in at Yuk Yuk’s and pubs have been checking up on all the topics, so I am a brand new listener.

I think what Letterman said from a stand up and comedians point of view is that this joke was funny, nothing more absurd then a baseball player taking time during a game and satisfying some fans while they are watching. It was topical and a basic joke at best, but its important to waste on time on trivial stuff like this. It was a joke, and now so they’re doing what must people do when hear a joke that is not funny, either your going to ignore it or time for Hecklefest 2009.

You can hear it in the “apology” even he was getting laughs out of this whole misunderstanding which it was, but I guess Fox news and the political side of things just needed to get their rape-lust topics out of them since they were running low on topics, like the abortion doctor being killed.

But maybe I so just go satay my Canadian bacon in maple syrup, but those are just my thoughts. Great Show B

Dominic:
Absolutely, I understand, they may not even be that funny…
Now here’s a challenge for you. If you think the joke’s objectionable (you didn’t say it was, this isn’t a personal attack but meant to stimulate thought) but thought Palin should apologize to slutty flight attendants for stealing their look, what’s the difference? The joke about Palin was FAR more personal, as it singled out specific individuals and a joke about a group is so general no one person could be as upset, since they are not being singled out.
I’m not trying to make a political statement, but analyze what makes a joke “a step too far”.

Question for all…

Do you use a specific opener? If so, is it one that you use for every room or do you have several different openers that you can use for different different situations (like weather, location, local events… etc.)

More importantly, how did you develope your opener? Was it a bit that was later on in your set that didn’t need as much of a setup yet got good laughs?

One of my goals for the next month or two is to find a great opener. I’m not into segues, but I think the opener is a great exception. Right now my openers are generally an awkward few lines that I thought up that day to bridge to my first joke as fast as possible. But I still feels it comes off like I walked on stage and said “Ok guys… this is my set.” I’ve never seen a headliner have an awkward/fake opener. If you’re not paying attention you don’t even notice that he’s begun his set.

Here’s my hangup… if you start a set and the opener doesn’t work the rest of your set is an uphill battle. If you develope your opener in the back of your set than you don’t get an accurate reading of how it’ll preform when you have no repport with the audience.

So, dear brothers, where do you find the balance?

But the A-Rod joke was about a celeb’s kid. For a joke to be made on national TV calling your child a slut (I mean, the joke doesn’t work based solely on A-Rod being a poonhound, because then it IS a rape joke)would cause very real pain, plus Palin already believes the country’s media has it in for her. Does that personal heartache deserve any consideration? If I was a Muslim and heard this 9/11 joke, I could be pissed as well…my question, strictly for the intellectual debate aspect, is what makes one OK and the other not? In the context that both are simply jokes,are they equally offensive?
Dominic, I understand the 9/11 joke doesn’t fit your persona. You seem almost enthusiastic about the Palin stuff, is there ANY CHANCE that you would find both equally offensive, but you don’t mind the Palin stuff because you just don’t like her? If that was the reason for writing an anti-muslim 9/11 joke, I just don’t like muslims, that would be pretty fucked up.

I don’t know if the Flys signed the Geneva convention or not. I can’t see things that small and I don’t read or speak Flyese.

The big problem I have is that all political figures generally use their kids in their marketing schemes in order to appear to be more like everyone else. By using your children for political gain you expose them to this type of treatment and sometimes worse, especially when when one of the kids does something that totally contradicts something you represent.

As far as I’m concerned the bottom line is Letterman is paid to be funny and, unless they juice up the audience with a laugh track, people laughed at the joke and not just once but 3x. Letterman isn’t promoting or condoning anything he’s telling a joke and he did it for the laugh, that’s it. Take it at face value, it was comedy for comedy’s sake. When we start questioning every little joke made at someone’s expense then we start questioning what is funny and that is not an answer that is readily available but more importantly you lose the point.

If it’s truly your intention to leave politics out of the discussion, I applaud that and I’ll try and do the same. In regards to the joke: Palin is a brainless tool pretending to be outraged so as to get press for the Rush Limbaugh inspired right-wing political cabal. The joke was a valid expression of humor and is the same kind of stuff that’s been going through late night monologues for years.

To say the Letterman is politically motivated is to ignore a decade of Clinton jokes that went on before, during and after his administration. He made a valid hit on a public figure, the audience laughed, and everything was fine until the right-wing decided to play victim and get their loony fringe to stand outside the studio with signs mocking outrage. All the late night hosts are moderates by definition… nobody who was a radical thinker in any way would ever be considered by the major networks to host a milk toast show designed to sell soda to the masses while they’re in the gullible stage before they fall asleep.