Tag: Cum Town

One rung above

Comedy is ass. And I don’t think I’m alone in saying that. The last great innovation in the medium, Cumtown, said it best: Donald Trump ruined it. It’s not because of his politics or his antiquated views on women and social issues. It’s because he treats the office of POTUS as one big standup routine. And the sad part is that it’s funnier and more daring and transgressive than almost all of comedy.

Comedians have struggled to keep up ever since.

But because the Trump era has created an unholy union between lowbrow entertainment and politics, certain performers, chief among them Joe Rogan, have mythologized comedians as modern day philosophers, or, to paraphrase Rogan himself, as the last line of defense for free speech. Hahaha! Isn’t that so funny? It’s getting high off your own supply. It’s aggrandizing your own self importance at the cost of comedy itself.

This explains why Stavros Halkias is having his moment in the sun. He’s offering a counter argument if you will; a return to tradition. His assertion is simple: comedy is good if it makes people laugh. Full stop. It’s not serious and the moment when you make it serious, it stops being funny. For Halkias, comedy is the lowest form of art. It doesn’t matter if that sentiment is valid though. What matters is that Stavvy doesn’t take himself seriously because seriousness is the polar opposite of comedy, which is his stock in trade.

It sounds pretty fuckin simple when you put it that way, eh?

But I suppose this gets at the heart of what it means to be a comedian. Who would subject themselves to being, as Stav said, one rung above a clown? Think about it. There is an ocean sized contradiction in the psyche of a comedian; to conceal their deep seated pain, they entice others to laugh at them. Or, in other words, the path towards standup comedy begins with a crippling superiority/inferiority complex. I’m sure even Rogan would agree with this. The best comedians can live with this gaping, unfilled hole in the hearts. They thrive on it. This is fuel for Nick Mullen and the legendary Cumtown podcast. Others give in to the anger and resentment and begin to smell their own farts. That’s the Rogansphere.

And others can successfully tread both worlds without fully reconciling them. Worse still, the gravitational pull of this calamitous spectacle can drag the entire universe into it. This is the mind of Donald Trump.

You know what’s sad?

I haven’t laughed at anything in weeks.

I mean, I DO laugh. It’s not like people tell me jokes and I just stare at them with my cold, dead eyes like a sociopath. But I’m just being nice. I’m not really laughing.

Ya know?

It’s unfortunate because I’ve always wanted to try stand up comedy. But I don’t know what’s funny anymore. All I’d do is go up on stage picking my nose and scratching my ass saying “you know, I was taking a shit the other day and was thinking: ‘do fish sleep?’”.

I just don’t have a sense of humor anymore.

But then I’d hear about my co-worker getting temporarily paralyzed due to constipation from heroin addiction and I go “lol! That sucks man.”

Is that how bad things have gotten?

I vaguely remember hearing about World War 1 soldiers taking up a morbid sense of humor to help them cope with the death all around them. But this isn’t a war zone. Mangled bodies and tear gas doesn’t surround me.

It’s boredom. Long, perpetual boredom. And the deep existential vacuum, deep in my soul, that has sucked up all joy and laughter that occupies the precious moments between birth and death.

That, and Cum Town.