Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the first annual Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival in Austin. I’m trying to get out more, and I like comedy and weird stuff. It seemed like a good fit.
I bought my badge too late to get tickets to any of the headliners. Wanda Sykes, Seth Meyers, and Aziz Ansari supposedly all killed. Jeffrey Ross made an impromptu appearance at one show, so I saw a few minutes of his act. More on that later.
Anyway, for several nights in a row, I sat through showcases of comics of varying degrees of fame. Most of them were dudes. And I gotta say, overwhelmingly, again and a-fucking-gain, they told…the same…jokes. There were standouts, but the bell curve pack seemed almost interchangeable.
Almost to a one, they had bits on getting stoned (“Yeah, so I smoke a lot of pot…”). One guy got his pot card from a sketchy doctor in LA (no shit). Another mimed taking a huge bong hit (never seen that before). For real? I mean, you got hilarious stoner stories, bring ‘em on. But news flash: It’s boring to simply say you have a weed habit. If that gets a laugh, it’s probably from people in the audience who are stoned themselves and will laugh at anything.
There was plenty of sex to go around, and what a shock, masturbation jokes (“Yeah, so I jerk off a lot…”). Whoa, guys do that? What a revelation. How edgy to get up there and admit an affinity for hairy palm-a-sutra. (BTW for the comically challenged, that was sarcasm, a form of humor).
Some stories were funny, like the one about a voyeuristic brush with bestiality, and one comic’s take on some idiotic decisions he made based on how long it’d been since he popped a nut. But mostly, it was the same old cum-stained tube socks hung out to dry: “my love life is crap, I ejaculate prematurely, and it’s so unfair that black guys have bigger dicks.” Moving on to love, we got a lot of “I can’t get laid, my girlfriend talks too much, and my exes are all batshit crazy.”
Duuude. Build a bridge and get over it. Write something we HAVEN’T heard. Grow the fuck up and stop pandering to your audience just because you know you can get the cheap “I’m a loser too” laugh.
Sex toys reared their buzzing little heads. I heard one semi-funny riff on the fleshlight, and how awkward it might be during a power outage, if someone grabbed it thinking it was, in fact, a real flashlight. It was well-told and well-timed…but…somebody already did that joke, in the movie PARENTHOOD. In 1989.
Hey man, blue comedy rocks, but step inside Babeland for once, because I tell you what, people are sick fucks, and there is waayyy more funny, wackadoo shit out there these days that we ladies actually use during our me time. (That’s right, I just admitted I masturbate. I’m edgy like that.)
I’m no feminist (ok, I am. Let’s put that aside for now). And I'm loath to make this about gender. But guys? The women—at least the ones I saw—kicked your asses. Their shit was hot, tight, sweet, and fresh (that’s right, I just made a pussy joke). They didn’t talk about PMS or their periods, they didn’t bitch about their lazy boyfriends or skinny supermodels. Gee, you’re thinking, are you sure? I’m sure. And a lot of them even got down and dirty with their lady bits. But lookit, only one in five comics here was of the double-X persuasion. Pity, that.
So guys: take it from someone who thinks sex is funny, that funny is sexy, and that drug stories can be hilarious. Stop being lazy. Stop flaunting your lonesome loser self-absorption. Stop working from 80s scripts.
And the next time you start working up new material? Yo! Give some serious thought to the fact that the dude onstage before you, and the dude right after, are probably doing the same I-beat-off-and-smoke-pot-and-women-are-crazy bits you used to do. Get out ahead of them while you can.
Oh, one last thing. Jeffrey Ross, you suck.
