Wanna hear a dirty joke?
A boy jumps into a mud puddle.
Wanna hear a clean joke?
A boy takes a bath.
I don't know when I heard that joke for the first time but the clean joke was always my favorite. Last night I think I was sandbagged. I did an open mic in the Richmond District in San Francisco. I was going up number twelve. Number eleven got on stage and managed to destroy any innocence left in the room. There was puppy killing jokes, quips about molesting his nieces and nephews, throat sex punchlines, abortion material, you name it. The crowd was clearly displeased with this comic aside from the occasional belly laugh from an equally deranged comic in the back. It was horrible. I usually keep my thoughts to myself when it comes to bad comedy. I understand bad comedy has to happen, especially at open mics for people to grow and get better. But this was different. This guy delivered his jokes as if he had been doing comedy for 20 years. Clearly, he has been working on his craft. The only problem is it just wasn't funny. And I'm confident if he didn't ruin this show he has ruined them in the past. I had to go up after him. Yipeee. I did a 6 minute story I am working on about getting bumped to first class on a plane, dealing with unintelligible homeless people, and wanting to be more like Bruce Willis when it comes to crazy people on a train. Not filthy. Not even dirty. Pretty clean, actually. It didn't go well. Was it my material? Maybe. Either way, it felt like another wasted night of comedy.
(And I am not trying to "start beef" or whatever. If you are friends with this guy, fine. But just know, he is ruining what would otherwise be good audiences for everybody.)
I am a clean comic. A lot of fellow comedians don't believe me when I tell them that. This is my attempt at an explanation. And let's also be clear that I am not an advocate for clean comedy. I like the dirty. I grew up listening to Jim Norton. Louis CK is a huge influence for me. I just don't tend to get too dirty in my act.
Language:
First I think it's important to understand the language in clean comedy. Clean comedy does not mean no profanity. There are a ton of "clean" comics that curse. Of course the language to stay away from are certain words like "Cunt" or "Nigger". Using those words will immediately get you thrown into the dirty category, or thrown into a river. But when a comic says "Who the fuck is this guy?" or another variation I would still consider it clean. I think moderation is the key when it comes to specific words. Don't use fuck too much. But try to fuck as much as you can.
Content:
I heard a comedian from Chicago say this on stage once: "Here is the difference between a clean joke and a dirty joke. A clean joke is 'I had sex last night.' A dirty joke is 'I had sex last night..with a child..who was dead'" Obviously this crosses the line into dirty but I think this comic was absolutely correct. I rarely hear jokes about sex with children that are clean. But jokes about sex in general can be clean. A long time ago I used to do a joke about telling my child that when a man and woman care about each other in order not to have babies you want to make sure to pull out and cum on her face. Clearly dirty. I've changed it to "pull out and care on her tummy." Now it's clean. It's the same content, but the language changed a little bit. And I get a better reaction from the audience.
To conclude, I am not saying dirty is bad, or that I don't want to follow a dirty comic. I am surrounded by dirty comics in the bay area. But can we leave the filth to twitter?
I will be headlining at Milk Bar in The Haight February 28th and also performing at The Punchline in San Francisco March 6th. You can see all of my live dates at www.stefandaviscomedy.com
If you want to follow my jobless, soon to be homeless ass on twitter you can do that here: @notstefandavis
Also, my CD "Of course I'll choke you" is on iTunes. You can click HERE for that, so you can buy it.
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I'll see you all in the desert.
SD
