The few reviews I read made it sound terrible.

Don't think he'll ever shake the story tbh. He's also got to find people brave enough to want to attach their names to his projects now.

Tell that to Roman Polanski

Louie will take a few months off. Go back to doing small clubs. His opening joke will address it, he will be even more self deprecating.

Really enjoyed the Jerry Before Seinfeld special on Netflix. Pretty much a greatest hits collection from his early stand up days. Material still holds up. I loled a lot.

If people can survive pedophilia accusations a comedian can easily survive a creepy masturbation scandal.

I really liked it as well. Well worth watching.

The fact that his material is timeless is what may make him the greatest stand-up of all-time. Guys might be funnier now but their material will not stand the test of time. Lenny Bruce was thought to be a legend who broke down walls but his stuff is so clean compared to guys like Stanhope and Boyle that it barely registers as humor.

Enjoyed Judah Friedlander's new Netflix special. That type of deadpan, Steven Wright type comedy is not usually my thing, but he is very funny and his crowd work is excellent. Loved his bit about solving the homeless problem by having the homeless live in tollbooths ("they already have experience asking for change").

Go watch the Gilbert Gottfried documentary. It was really good.

Yeah Judah's special was perfectly timed. He took us back to what it feels like to be a club. It was like the anti-special special. I thought it was excellent, like a breath of fresh air. He was very funny, to boot.

I can't wait to see Gilbert. It seems like a perfect fish out of water story, him being a family man now. I'm currently reading his auto-bio Rubber Balls and Liquor and it's hilarious.

His dirty jokes dvd is also amazing.

Has anyone seen Tom Green's new special?

My friend Tom Thakkar is on Conan tonight. He's the first person who started at my home club to do it and I'm so damn happy. You should all watch, he's great.

Finally saw Gilbert. Amazing film.

So I have questions. My fear is these questions may be too politardish for this thread, despite being exactly on topic. But I think it's a super central theme to comedy.

Related to this general theme: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...P=share_btn_fb (and specifically how comedy disguises real racism)

I've had some rather lengthy discussions I've had with people about comedy's role in society now, and what should be said on stage, and what shouldn't. So I'll let you all decide if this is a place for this convo or not. I'll do whatever the majority wants. But it's not impossible to think that 10 more years of the current trends and comedy will have to completely reinvent itself to fit with what people accept today. I'm very anti that, fwiw.

I don't think people would mind a discussion like that ITT. It's not like this thread gets tons of posts per day, but I think most people who would open a thread about stand up comedy would be inclined to have the same opinions as you and you'd be preaching to the choir for the most part. If you want a variety of views on the subject, a separate thread might draw more people with differing opinions to it.

OK, I'll bite. What current comedians do you think will be unacceptable in ten years if they don't change?

I think you're already seeing the shift on twitter BDHarrison. If you filter through a lot of comedian's social media accounts, the tone has shifted pretty strongly. 10 more years of that and it'll be more extreme.

How it shifts on stage I'm not 100% sure. I know it'll shift in movies and tv shows first though where they're more regulated. Could you make a movie like Tropic Thunder today? No way. That movie is only 7 years old now. But that was a big 7 years. So I think they'll be some form of trickle down into on-stage stuff given the existence of smart phones, a younger left-leaning audience in a lot of parts of the world, etc...

Fwiw on this site I was told by about a dozen posters (many of them long time) that if a joke offends say 40-50% of the room, it shouldn't be told. And this was a real point of contention, not just a passing comment. A comic is responsible for the makeup of his room (perhaps predicting it), so if say 50% of the room is big on religion and a religion joke offends them, it had no place being told. Naturally I object to that notion, but the conversation is interesting.

The hipster racism stuff to me is equally interesting. The notion that racial jokes on stage are part and parcel with racism is something I'm having trouble agreeing on, but I respect the dialogue to an extent. Where I find it doesn't hold water is when you consider that most of the best racial jokes are told by someone about their own race. That gets big laughs, and in turn often that stereotype might be the one retold down the line in another context. It seems impossible to deprive races of laughing at themselves. Self deprecating humor to me is part of the human existence. So the hipster racism thing just fails the sniff test for me. Too many "rules" that seem arbitrary frankly. But undeniably today, people are hurt or offended by these jokes. The question is does that matter to the rest of us?

I disagree that you shouldn't offend half the room, but I think we are moving past the point where something is funny just because it is offensive.

What about hipster racism bothers you? I think it is pretty reasonable that there are things that black people can say about blacks that white people shouldn't say. Telling white people not to engage in hipster racism does not deprive non-whites from laughing at themselves. I don't think that the rules about that which you don't like are arbitrary.

From the article:

Whether they know it or not, it's some white people who are greatly offended that black people can do something that they can't. And maybe they want to claim that they are being ironic, but the irony is that they sometimes get much more worked up about this than they do about all the things that white people can do that black people can't, like walk down the street without being afraid of being shot by cops.

There are people out there who are concerned about the effect of political correctness on comedy. I am a fan of Anthony Jeselnik. In person, I am that guy who loves making fun of the recently dead. I like his attitude towards PC and comedy:

Well the first thing that bothers me about hipster racism, is that nobody really seems to care if it's black people making jokes about white people. That right off the hop makes all of it mental to me. And the power scale thing comes into play. Black people can't make jokes about Mexicans though because of the imaginary power ladder.

The other thing is at what point is the joke offensive? If you are a woman (6/10 or better) and you go to Rome and you walk around in a little skirt, the things that will subsequently happen to you are 100% predictable. Either you've been to Rome and you know what I'm talking about, or you don't. I can make a perfectly accurate and very funny bit about what it's like to be a Canadian guy watching the Romans work. From the accent, to the mannerisms, to the content. So is that how the world IS, or is that racism?

I don't know anymore. I know that once someone is offended by it now, apparently it's racism. And in many cases apparently it's not to be performed. And I disagree with that big time.

Here is a good summary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIuPSuYSOY

Jeselnik's entire act is lazy. LOL at him calling Seinfeld lazy.

People should care if white people are making jokes about black people. People shouldn't care if black people are making jokes about white people. (in America.) There might be exceptions, but if you are a white person who doesn't understand this, anything you say is a poor candidate to be an exception.

I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with you on that. I've heard legendary white comics make incredible jokes about black people that had black people crying. There is no "rule" on this in my book until you cross a line that's pretty hard to cross. You're getting into Kramer territory.

Also RIP Patrice!

I'm not saying white people can't make fun of black people. One great joke by a white person about a black person was at the Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen when Anthony Jeselnik asked, "what can you say about Mike Tyson that hasn't already been the title of a Richard Pryor album?" Patrice O'Neal had a great reaction to that joke.

But there are people who think that "I have a black friend" gives them a license to say things that would be cringe-worthy coming from the mouth of a known racist.

I never once characterized the discussion as hiding behind "I have a black friend". I'm talking about a black and white (no pun intended) stance being declared with this hipster racism stuff, where jokes that dip into racial topics are considered completely off-limits. I think it's madness because race is a real thing in the world, and we enjoy it/struggle with it/explore it every day. Like all the things we're immersed in, laughter about it to me is positive.