A Note On Stealing

Reader, let me spin you a tale of discontent and anti-merriment brought to you by the tortured souls of the stand-up comedy open mic night at Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY (every Sunday at 8! Hosted by Bryan J. Ball! I plug things!).

A good friend of mine, Billy T. Anglin, and I were hanging out at my house a few weeks ago before the open mic at Boulder Coffee Co. talking through our upcoming sets, drinking a few beers and writing down ideas that we came up with in conversation. This is how I do my best "writing" for the stage. I have a terrible time sitting down and trying to write jokes, because I get bored with it quickly, but mainly because I believe that my best stuff comes up on the fly; which is why I usually have a very small notebook and a pen with me to jot down the stupid things I find funny and hope to shoehorn into my set. Billy, on the other hand, actually sits down and writes out his stuff in a very diligent, professional manner that I am jealous of. I one time asked him, "Hey, Billy how do you get through writer's block?" I got 6 text messages back to back describing a very scientific approach to writing jokes that I immediately deleted for fear that it would creep into my mind and make me feel even more worthless than I normally do. We spent a few hours together, Billy and I, getting ready for the show. It was fun. I got a little drunk, came up with some ideas for bits I'm still working on and really enjoyed myself in the process.

My other friend and I, Bryan J. Ball (mentioned above in the shameless plug for the open-mic he hosts at Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY on Sunday nights at 8) hang out a lot during the week. We grab a few beers at Tap and Mallet or go out together with our girlfriends or he makes me amazing mac and cheese and I eat it. I'm going out on a limb here when I say this, but when Bryan and I start riffing on something the jokes that come out of it are phenomenal and usually more suited to him than to me, because I can only think of one joke I've done on stage that has come from our conversations and I was less than pleased with it. Bryan is also a writer, I think, because he takes the usable chunks of our conversation and crafts them into a longer format that translates incredibly well on stage. I've never seen him sit down and write out a joke, but I have about 4,000 texts on my phone from him about 1 joke, so I know he thinks about it and works hard to make sure his set is tight, timed well and something to be proud of.

What Bryan, Billy and 95% of the comics that do open mics in Rochester have in common is that they work really f_cking hard on their material. Actually, this is pretty much the case across the board with stand-up comedians. It's really difficult to write good, solid jokes that will play in almost any room you can think of, and it takes a metric shit ton of effort to figure out the pacing, timing and presentation (this is something I am starting to work on more, as I'm beginning to realize I suck). Until a few weeks ago I had only heard some comics use a line or a phrase that sounded similar to the work of another, better known comedian, and until a few weeks ago I had never known what it felt like to be in a room when the audience has little to no clue that the person on stage is lifting his entire set from someone, yet all the comics do.

The tension, needless to say, was palpable and disturbing.

I'm not going to name names, but it rhymes with Shmantonio (which is how he'll be referred to from here on out), who was a first timer, energetic and overly confident on such a huge level that it bordered on psychopathic or sociopathic delusion. I watched with the audience as Shmantonio prowled around the stage, yelling loudly and enthusiastically into the microphone with timing eerily precise for a guy who had never done stand-up before. It felt more polished and put together than the sets of some people who have been doing stand-up for months. The honeymoon phase lasted about 2 minutes.

After that, I started hearing punchlines and set ups that sounded strangely familiar; which honestly isn't that rare, because comics do tend to pounce on similar subjects, have similar opinions or mindsets that make their material sound like someone elses and vice versa. There's a reason every comic in the country told the same Tiger Woods joke when they heard about his car accident and the fallout that came after it, it's because everyone thought of a Tiger Woods joke and told it on stage, but if you were paying attention you'd notice that only the theme was shared and not the entire joke (for the most part). It's just the way things go and it's the main reason a lot of the more successful people in the stand-up business do not do pop culture, this just happened yesterday humor, because it's timely and not timeless and grows old faster than a shitty peach. This wasn't Shmantonio's case.

Shmantonio completely ripped off 5-7 minutes of Martin Lawrence's stand-up. Yes, Martin Lawrence. Yes, the same Martin Lawrence that brandished a pistol while screaming at tourists on Ventura Blvd.. Yes, the same Martin Lawrence who almost died because he went jogging in 100 degree heat wearing several layers of clothing. Shmantonio decided to rip off the star of Big Mamma's House, because evidently Shmantonio thought that a room full of comedy nerds (mostly white comedy nerds, so I can see why he would racistly think none of us would even be aware of Martin Lawrence, let alone be able to recognize his material... seriously, now that I just wrote that, I'm even more pissed. What a dicknose) wouldn't notice. Big. F_cking. Mistake.

I'm an idiot, as I've said countless times right on this very blog, so it took me a lot longer to catch what was going on than the other comics in the room who noticed almost immediately. The host, Bryan J. Ball (remember, Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY, Sunday nights at 8) got pissed. Dan "I'm Already Mad At Everything" Maslyn got pissed. Billy T. Anglin was mildly upset; which for him is like being pissed. Everyone who caught it was upset, as they should've been, but this was his first time and we all must have thought "ah, he'll never come back, just let it go..."

Two weeks go by and Shmantonio returns to Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY (which has a stand up comedy open-mic night on Sundays, at 8). Being the consummate gentlemen and host that he is, Bryan cautiously warned the audience and all fellow comedians that "stealing other people's material will not be tolerated," and to stick it to Shmantonio and see whether or not he had evolved and recognized the error of his ways, Bryan put the plagiarist up first. The weird thing is, neither I nor Bryan nor Billy thought that he had lifted someone else's stuff at the beginning of his set and we had decided "well, he doesn't steal, he's just terrible." Fair enough. We were dicks to assume the worst anyway... or were we? (Hint: We weren't.)

Luckily for us and the audience another comic went up to Bryan and said "I can pull the YouTube clip of Martin Lawrence up right now and show you where he stole this from." This is the point where everyone started to get a little crazy about what was happening, so crazy, in fact, that I actually did very well that night; which doesn't happen as I am terrible. Bryan, again being a gentlemen (though, pissed off and ready to make with the punching should he be pushed enough) went outside to talk to Shmantonio and advise him on what to do in as nice a way as possible. I snuck out with them to eavesdrop and be ready to support my friend should the shit hit the proverbial fan. Bryan didn't out and out ban Shmantonio, but he told him he couldn't come back the following week (which means you really need to pounce on the chance to see the open mic this week before Shmantonio drags his shit cloud back into the building) and needed to write his own material or he wouldn't be welcomed back. Bryan even went so far as to say "you can come back and watch, but you're not going on stage" The conversation was more polite than I thought it was going to be.

But, Shmantonio didn't leave; which would have been the proper response after getting called out on stealing. Shmantonio should have slipped out of the side door quietly with his head down (and walked straight into traffic... I really hate this mother f_cker, by the way) and gone home to think about what he just did, but he didn't; he stayed and decided to be a jackass. I mean, a complete and total jackass who sat in the audience and cackled and basked in the attention like some freak of nature who, due to an evolutionary mishap, didn't have shame or the wherewithal to understand he was goading people into getting increasingly more angry with him.

His whooping and hollering and idiocy lasted the rest of the night. Even as people pointed out, on stage, that he was a thieving bastard who deserved to get pinched rigorously by the ghost of Andre The Giant until the pain was so unbearable he could do nothing but submit to the sweet release of a coma; which he would remain in for years and years until waking up one day to find the world completely bereft of the memory of Martin Lawrence, thus creating the opportunity Shmantonio needed to kill at Boulder (which, by the time he awoke from his pinch induced coma would have been renamed Bryan's House O' Coffee and Jokes). But I digress.

What I came to realize through gritted teeth and angrily clenched buttocks is that Shmantonio very well might be insane, or just painfully stupid, I can't decide and part of me, for a minute, started to feel sorry for him. I started to think "here's a guy who really doesn't have the mental facilities available to him that most of us do. I bet he lives in a group home surrounded by people who have other, similar disabilities, and his only joy is watching Martin Lawrence stand-up specials on VHS when all the other people go to sleep." I thought, "Maybe the only memory he has of his mother or father is of them watching Martin on Fox when he was younger, and this is some twisted idea of a tribute to the quickly fleeting memory of his life the way it used to be." I thought, "Jesus f_cking Christ now I'm going insane. This guy is just a gigantic, sociopathic prick who has no idea what's wrong with what he did and I guarantee he'll come back in two weeks and do the same f_cking thing." Which I dearly hope he does not do, because I am frightened by the possibility of comics getting into an actual fist fight with each other, because it would be the most unintentionally gay fight in the history of fights as most comedians actually developed their humor as a way to avoid getting punched in the face. Except Maslyn.

Looking from the outside, you're probably thinking "what's the big deal?" And you'd be an asshole for thinking that, but not really to blame if you don't do stand-up. There is a common misconception among people that comedians just go up on stage and be funny, that they don't work hard to nail a joke down perfectly or that jokes are just community property that anyone can cherry pick and do on stage if they want to. Nothing is further from the truth. Comics work really f_cking hard on their jokes; which is why when no one laughs it can be crippling, but when they do it's the best feeling in the world. It really is. So when some dickfaced piece of shit waltzes in after putting zero effort into his set, because he just rewatched a DVD a few times and memorized another person's jokes, the stand-up comedians who live for their weekly open mic, and put so much of their self esteem on the line in the process (like myself and others) get pretty upset. And we have every right to be. Those 5-7 minutes mean so freaking much to most of us, and to have someone come in and make it seem like all we do is other people's jokes just isn't tolerated. That's why we get mad. That's why, not some stupid superficial reason. It runs much deeper than that.

I just thought you might want to know.

UPDATE: Shmantonio came back last night to Boulder Coffee Co. in Rochester, NY. Completely disregarding the fact that the host, Bryan J. Ball, was more than nice in saying "take a week off," which meant "do not come back next week expecting to perform," yet he did and he made it awkward and dark, because like the huge pile of dick that he is, he sat right next to the stage and stared at everyone. I did tell him to f_ck off while I was on stage, which is one of my prouder moments, and another comic called him a "joke stealing piece of shit" when Shmantonio was trying to heckle him.

Here's the thing, reader, my fellow comics and I are giving this cretin too much attention and starting this morning I am in no way going to enable his douchebaggery by even acknowledging his existence. I suggest we all do the same.