There are certain things that are probably too mean. I don't particularly like fat jokes. Those kind of bother me. But I guess what I was trying to say is, if I said I would never laugh at this, you could probably dig around and find a situation where I did laugh. I try not to be a hypocrite with that one. I find when there's a controversy about someone saying something offensive, I usually take the angle of, "Well, I don't know if that was offensive; it just wasn't funny." I generally don't gasp, "Oh my God!" I think people have been getting raked over the coals lately.
I think people have this "It can't hurt to ask" mentality, which is true on some level. I get comics like, "Hey, will you look at these videos of me on MySpace?" I was like, "Well, who's gonna benefit from that? What if I don't like you?" No, I'm gonna write to a stranger and say, "Hi. You like me, and I don't like you. And now I feel bad when I didn't need to feel bad, because you put me on the spot." Or like, "Can I open for you?" Well, I've never seen you work, so no. I certainly made awkward mistakes when I was starting out, and they're just trying to have a career.
The problem with a lot of comedy clubs is not that they are a comedy club; it's just the cheesy way they're presenting themselves. That's why a lot of people have a problem with them. If you're a relatively unknown comedian, you can play at a comedy club, you might play to hundreds of people every night. But if you try to make a concert event out of it, and try to play a rock club or something, where you might play to 10 people or no people. And the flipside of that is, that's also a great thing, to play to people who are your fans. Some people are too hard on the comedy clubs.
Comedy clubs are a bit more expensive. That's the problem with some of these places. But the flipside of that is, if you do too many shows for free or $5, then people don't understand why you can't fly to Milwaukee and do a show for a $3 cover. That won't even pay for my flight.
I want a room that I can definitely pack out. I don't want to sweat that part, "Am I gonna have enough people?" So I usually pick like a hundred, a relatively small room. Also, I'm looser in a small room. I don't want to record an album in front of a thousand people, not that I could draw a thousand, but I just want a room that I can really work back to front. That's just a very comfortable place for me to be loose.
I've had shows where you think, "Is this going well? I can't tell," and then you say goodnight and you get this ovation. They're sorta like a theater audience. I've learned that much; that they're not always going to be doing backflips - but I'll never figure it out. Because sometimes you walk up there, and they're so excited, and then other times, it's just... But sometimes an audience is bad, and you can tell them they're bad, and that sort of breaks the ice a bit.
Sometimes they're all collectively thinking, "Wow, we're kinda a shitty audience," and then if you point it out, it's kinda like, "Hey, I know what's going on. We know what's going on up here. Or what's not going on. And I'm letting you know that I know. And now we can fix this."
I don't ban bloggers from my shows. I have a separate line: VIP seating for bloggers.
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