Hi one thing which it is which I often always/almost fail to do is anything with the sets which I record for myself for the purposes, ostensibly, of returning to, and learning from, them. Below, though, is a transcription of a set from maybe a few months ago from a Montreal room, Ladies & Gentlemen, which you maybe ought to consider/check out when in Montreal it is weekly.
It's in these little rooms where most comedy is. It's where comedy lives. Not at the festivals or tv or things like that. ('Give me your best (best) five/seven/fifteen.')
LADIES & GENTLEMEN
I don’t know, I’m not really one of those, like, I’m not the kind of person who, when I meet others, I see the colour of their skin. and so it’s uh, really that, uh, all the more distressing, that I’ve never, uh, liked a black person I’ve met [laugher]
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no, 'cause, you know, you get/meet all these people, you know, First Nations and African-American groups crying out, like, cultural appropriation, but then when you look at, like, Horkheimer, and Benjamin and Adorno…like, the…Jews invented critical theory, you know? [laughter] // if you can’t file, like a civil suit on your own…then [laughter]…I don’t know, like, what if I’m getting off, like what if I’m like enjoying some Nina Simone number, or something. then uh, because, like—is that wrong?, like, who, who’s, to whom—to which demographic belongs, sort of like, you know, the culture of—like, slave culture [laughter]—anyway, the problem is that race is a social construct, not a comedic one
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really the problem is that oftentimes a comic comes on and tries new material and it doesn’t work, and they’re a bad comic but when I don’t get it just right I’m like a terrible human being [laughter]
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no, what’s really difficult is that comics are, more often than not, rewarded for, our efforts not with money, but with booze. and, part of me can see the logic, like, you know, as joke tellers, we sort of, we sort of provide you with this distraction from, like, you know, a world, too difficult to, to face…and so then we get, some, uh, some sort of intoxicant, to anesthetize, uh, you know—to dull our minds, which actually is what at the root of creating these ideas and from which you take such pleasure from [laughter]…so, uhm…at the same time though...if you gave us some fucking money, and we we, you know, we wouldn’t be forced to, like, you know, barter our drink tickets with audience members every now and then, you know, to take a bus home [laughter], the humour wouldn’t be so fucking dark. I don’t know…
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I mean the thing is—I don’t know, it’s always—it’s always weird/when performing for different kinds of audiences, like um, you know, you get, like, I was performing before like, uh, an all, all-lesbian room, and I got all this flak, and I was like “really?, like, even according to, like—I don’t know, what, like, third-wave…post-…structural, you know, theory—there’s no fixed meaning and gender, identity it’s all relative, like to you like…I’m a white, heterosexual male, but to a-nother room I’m like some fag kike Jew, you know? [laughter] so like where’s the anger coming from? [laughter] have a little self-awareness, you know?
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‘cause I think comics basically are just totally amoral. you know?, like, what do I, what do I do? I…tell jokes, and I fuck, and I swim, and I drink and I have coffee. and that’s a life, you know?, there’s no greater—I care for jokes basically. and like, I don’t know, like, and things—like, this whole issue of consent, really…is very straight forward. uh, but I think what’s most sort of, alluring, is, like, sleeping with like minors, uhm [laugher], because then at least, like—legally, speaking—the consent doesn’t…doesn’t exist—there’s no possibility, you know, you are, you are without [lost word!]
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I don’t know I didn’t choose this life more than you chose yours—you know, I didn’t choose anything, you know—what I’m into and how, and so, what am I supposed to, like, do away with, with like the privileges that I have?, like, is that the best way of being respectful? no, so, when I tell, like, my, you know, able-ist..racist and misogynistic jokes, that’s really…the eth-ical joke, it’s my way of sort of giving back to the universe or god [laughter], or whatever you want to call it, and embracing, you know, like the life—you, you you would want to tell the jokes that you could tell [laugher]. anyway…
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I’m going to say one last thing. what I really don’t like about the homeless [laughter]. is when—is when they extend to me their hand [laugher], in the expectation of my, like, my taking it and my shaking it, as of like, some sort of sign of our shared membership in the community [laughter], because like I’m ok with—like, like they’re people, you know, down on their luck, whatever—but if you can’t recognize that, as someone who’s not homeless, I don’t want…to touch the filthy hand of a homeless person [laughter]…anyway, thanks very much that’s my time