The Bringer

Hey pal, long time no see! How’ve you been? You hitting a lot of mics these days? Ah, I know it’s hard to find the time, but you’ve got to make sure you grind it out, keep working out new stuff, you know? I remember when I was your age, I was doing ten mics a week, at least.

So how long have you been doing comedy now? It’s been twenty five years for me, and let me tell you, it doesn’t get any easier. Starting out, you always try to shoot for the moon, but it takes years of finding your voice and maturing as an artist before you ever really have a good set. I didn’t have my first real good set for eight years, and that’s actually pretty quick in this industry.

Have you considered starting your own show? You know, a lot of bookers look for that in new talent. I’ve probably run about a dozen of my own open mics, and it’s got me opening for… wait, you’re on the lineup tonight?

Let me ask, have you been to New York yet? Eventually, you’re going to want to set aside some time to get up there, it is a totally different ballgame! I know some people in that area, so if I like your set tonight, I’ll put in a good word. Alright, so tonight you’re going on… you’re the closer. You’re headlining?

You know what, that actually makes sense. This booker loves the young ones, so you’re probably headlining so these people have something nice to look at by the time they’re wasted. Get the pros in first while everyone is sober. That makes sense.

Anyway, congrats on the headlining spot! Keep working at it, you have great energy and I see you going places. Just don’t rush anything and you’ll be barking with us big dogs before you know it! Now excuse me, I’ve gotta look over some notes before I do this five-minute spot.

By Tyler Dark.

INDIANAPPOLIS, IN – After being asked for months to “do some of her little skits,” 29-year-old comedian Alex Remi performed a few minutes of standup in her living room while her family watched from the couch.

“They kept saying ‘we’re bored, we want to see the little skits you used to do at all those shows you did all these years,’” said Alex. “As if it’s a switch you can just turn on. But then my dad pointed out that I don’t pay rent and I kind of just caved in, and I ended up doing some of my more tame material.”

Remi’s grandmother, Paloma Axelenmous, was particularly disturbed by the content of Alex’s act, which included numerous references to oral sex and drug abuse.

“I never imagined that after all the work my parents did to get us to this country, that my granddaughter would choose a life of such filth,” she into a tear-soaked handkerchief. “This family’s American Dream has been made into a floosie’s dick-joke nightmare!”

Not everyone in Alex’s family had negative feedback for her material, however; her sister Rae loved the jokes and was excited to know her sister was making a name for herself.

“My sister’s a badass bitch and this cuck of a family can’t handle her realness,” revealed Rae, to the chagrin of her grandmother, who was sitting a few feet away. “It’s called freedom of speech, and The Internet raised me. People like Grandma don’t get it because they’re old and they don’t get her edgy, raw style.”

At press time, Remi’s mother Nikki was reportedly holding pictures of her as a baby in the family’s study while crying. Meanwhile, father Richard could be heard dropping multiple wrenches while screaming expletives.

By Chris Hudson.

Los Angeles, CA — As the number of online content spikes, experts are issuing warnings saying that people who have previously performed stand-up comedy may be more likely to start a podcast.

“We were worried when our son Jim had started performing at the local open mic,” confessed Joe Giam, whose son recently fell victim to podcasting. “We warned him that we all know where this could lead. He assured us, it was only going to be stand-up for him. No acting, no screenplays, just stand-up comedy. But when his friend Greg had him on his podcast as a guest host, and he got a taste of it… I’ll never forgive Greg for that.”

As podcasting brings great shame, awkwardness, and unnecessary embarrassment to many families, it also hurts, and sometimes destroys friendships.

“I got my roommate a Blue Yeti mic for her birthday and now I can never hang out with her,” recalled Andrea Gankman, who referred to her newly podcasting friend anonymously to prevent association with her. “The only time I ever get to talk to her is if I’m a guest on the show. And considering it’s only to let her know it’s her turn to do the dishes and take out the trash, those are not very good episodes.”

Podcasting is viewed by many as a fast track to success, as hosting a podcast can be an excuse for someone without social skills to converse with anybody they choose.

“I met my ex when he asked me to do his podcast,” said comedian Allie Goldstein. “He really only used it to say the N-word to his six Patreon subscribers, but he’s still made the most money podcasting of anyone I personally know. So that should give you an idea of the kind of people who do this.”

Comedians are encouraged to avoid falling into podcasting by taking precautions such as maintaining healthy lifestyle choices and fostering meaningful relationships.

By Brett McCabe.

Tucson, AZ — The comedy world was shaken to the core last Tuesday, when stand-up comic Stedman Glen did a bit linking the fast-food chain Taco Bell to excessive flatulence at the Laugh House in Tucson. This groundbreaking piece of subversive artistry makes us question the very nature of free speech, and its role in society.

“You ever notice how Taco Bell gives you the farts?” Glen asked an audience, and ultimately a nation. “They should call that place Toxic Smell,” the philosopher-comedian went on, fearlessly exposing a taboo truth, deemed too sacred a cow to be spoken about in polite society. 

Gasps were heard throughout the club, and at least two people fainted. As many patrons looked around in stunned disbelief, as if silently questioning each other as to whether it was okay to acknowledge this brilliant observation. Eventually, however, one patron after another rose from their chair in support of Glen, many of them proclaiming, “I stand with you.”

Many are calling Glen a modern-day Socrates, and expect this set to have a similar resounding effect as when Hannibal Buress called out Bill Cosby.

“There has never been any proven correlation between our food, and excessive gassiness,” claimed a representative from the fast-food giant. “Is Stedman Glen a brilliant comedian? Sure. I mean he turned the word ‘Bell’ into ‘smell’. No one can deny such genius. But he is not a scientist, and should not be taken as anything more than a incredibly talented, and original satirist.”

Taco Bell announced later that day that it had filed for bankruptcy, and will likely be out of business by the beginning of 2021.

By Mike Moran.

Richmond, VA – An outdoor comedy show at Libby Hill Park erupted in a applause this past Saturday as 27-year-old comedian Mark Dillenger walked away from the microphone stand to go back behind a tree where the show’s backstage area was located, and was followed by a brand new gas grill.

“It felt good, I think,” he said quietly, so as not interrupt the sizzling of the headliner. “I’m doing a mid-size picnic next week in a park up the street, so I was hoping this would go well. Plus, now I can say have ‘opened for George Foreman’ in my stage credits.”

Dillenger was booked by Penn Easterly to kill some time while the first round of hot dogs were getting a good char during an outdoor show that billed Easterly’s new Foreman Smokemaster as the “most badass grill of the century.” Dilleneger was asked to bring his own microphone and had to prepare at least 10 minutes of stand-up material.

“It was pretty cool to warm up the crowd for a grill that’s warming up the food,” Dillenger said. “The show itself featured a dozen other stand-up comedians doing shorter sets while their significant others and members of their families watched on. We all got first dibs on burgers off the Grillmaster, so, you know, not a bad deal!”

The show gave many comedians an opportunity to perform for live audiences for the first time since a widespread quarantine was put in place. Social distancing and mask wearing were to be strictly enforced “unless you don’t feel like it” per the poster that was shared via social media.

Easterly donned an apron which read “Kiss The Chef’s ass” as he shouted “Woo!” while flames shot up from his grill. “This is as hot as it gets, y’all!” he yelled right before Dillenger was about to launch into a punchline. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I being loud?”

“The nice thing about this quarantine is that a lot of people still be shoppin’,’” said Ernie Yeldon, a comedian who got his start in October 2019. “I can do my classic bit and all I have to do is add ‘online’ in front of it. One woman booed me and I just looked at her and said, ‘what, you use eBay or something?’ It was a major victory for me.”

Yeldon was later found passed out after alledgedly drinking too much and eating too many performer comped hot dogs.

By Chris Hudson.

Valparaiso, IN — A new themed comedy show called Mustard Baby Spit Take, in which no more than three actual jokes are told in the span of two hours, premiered last weekend in the upstairs bar of Ronnie’s Downtown Lounge.

“We are so excited to finally to see this idea come together,” said host Lily Buckingham, who was wearing clown makeup for some reason. “Basically, comedians have to choose which artisan mustard they are going to gargle with beer before running a lap around the building and, in the unlikely event they have any time left, tell a quick joke. Oh, and everyone’s dressed like babies! I had so much fun, and me having fun is what comedy is all about.”

With many comedians acknowledging that writing and crafting original material is difficult and time consuming, themed shows like this one have taken the pressure off of performers with wacky semantics and nonsense distraction.

“Normally, I am all nervous to try out new jokes,” claimed Mark Nellie, who performed on the inaugural show. “But with themed shows, I just do something stupid, like gargle mustard, or pretend I’m on a spaceship, and the audience just trusts that whatever we’re doing is funny. I didn’t tell one joke at Mustard Baby Spit Take, but I still had the best set of my life!”

Patrons at Ronnie’s who were accidentally present for the show had mixed feelings about the emerging comedic format.

“What I saw was not exactly what I’d call comedy,” remarked Kathleen Ponzetti, who was having dinner with her family while the show was going on. “It was more of a frantic, interpretive children’s theatre, performed by moderately drunk adults with little to no actual written material prepared. Like slapstick, but sad. They seemed to be having fun, but I can’t imagine there’s actually a market for shows like this.”

Comedians who want to check out the next themed show near them are encouraged to stay home and work on developing actual comedic material instead.

By Tyler Dark.

Paradise Valley, AZ – Comedian Jason Tortle has recently made waves, figuratively and legally, after deciding to officially trademark the phrase “I, uh,” and subsequently suing every other comedian.

“After not getting anywhere in comedy for a year and a half, I decided to bring my background into the scene,” says Tortle, who graduated from the Caruso School of Law at Pepperdine University in 2015. “The thing I didn’t like about law is that everything out of my mouth had direct consequences for other people, which I didn’t realize when I first got into it. That was too much pressure, so I started doing comedy.”

Tortle’s lawsuit is so expansive, that anyone who has performed comedy in the Phoenix metropolitan area in the last decade has more than likely been sued for trademark infringement.

“I got a cease and desist letter after walking off stage last night. I’m pissed,” said open mic regular Jinn Beeker. “This is the worst thing that’s happened to me as a comedian since I got heckled by my grandparents. I don’t see how he could legally prove that that’s a unique phrase.”

Several lawsuits have been filed against national headliners as well, including Mick Twardson, whose new one-hour special is called “I, Uh… Farted.” Tortle expects “a total shitstorm” from Twardson’s legal team.

“Getting the examining attorney to believe those words were specific to my act was easy,” Tortle admitted, grinning sinisterly. “Finally, there’s a benefit to my coworkers never attending my show. Now I have household names like Twardson talking about me. I’m gonna take his money, and next year, he’ll be opening for me! And that’s if I let him!”

Tortle is struggling to move forward with the lawsuits amid huge amounts of backlash, and at the time of reporting, is still couch surfing. Meanwhile, comedians throughout Arizona have resorted to saying “I, ooohhhh…” between thoughts in order to avoid legal scrutiny.

By Todd Basil.

Jersey City, NJ — Stand-up comedian Ricky Tucker was disappointed to learn at a recent show that his saved drink tickets cannot be redeemed for top shelf liquor.

“I’ve been looking forward to that top shelf drink ever since the first time I performed on The Totally Funzies Comedy Show,” said a forlorn Tucker over a mixed drink made with Bowman’s. “They should be like any other money, where more of it is worth more, and vice versa. Is that such a crazy idea?”

Every Monday night at The C’mon Inn seven comedians are invited to perform in the bar’s back hallway. For their set that night they each get two drink tickets, or four if a comedian is friends with a sober comic also on the line-up. Tucker has done the show eight times in the last year and has accumulated almost twenty drink tickets that he keeps in his wallet.

“I would just rather have three fingers of Grey Goose once than ten shots of Vlad,” he wrote on Twitter. “What sort of economic culture are we promoting in the world of comedy, if we can’t reward the patience and fiscal responsibility required to save drink tickets like this?”

Sam Vogelsang, a bartender at The C’mon Inn, has stated that in addition to it being against policy to comp top shelf drinks, he was suspicious some of Tucker’s tickets were fraudulent.

“Some were red. Some were blue. Several were the ‘KEEP THIS COUPON’ ticket,” Vogelsang pointed out while cutting a lime into fifty-four slivers. “Who’s to say he isn’t bringing in tickets from a different show? Hell, a roll of 500 raffle tickets is less than five dollars if you have Amazon Prime. Just keep the whole roll in your backpack, dude. I’d never know if you actually performed or not, because I’m always hovering over my phone while it’s charging by the register during the show.”

When Tucker was asked how he could perform all of those stand-up sets without even one comped drink as a reward, he responded, “Well, I’m pretty much always baked, so…”

By Alex Grubard.

Philadelphia, PA – A microphone named Chip is reportedly excited to start life anew in the big city, at Philadelphia’s own Fun Fun Comedy Club, after leaving behind a quiet existence at a church in Bucks County.

When Chip felt the call to explore the secular realm several months ago, he began cutting out purposefully during mass, until Reverend Armand Lee grew tired of his antics, and sold him on Craigslist.

“I just wanted to feel what it was like to have someone other than Reverend Lee speak through me as a vessel of the word of the Lord,” expressed Chip. “For once, I wanted to taste the spice of life on the breath of a half-drunk amateur comedian! I wanted to bathe in the bright light that they flash in front of comics to tell them to get the hell off stage!”

We were there Sunday night for Chip’s first night of action, a three-hour comedy open mic. Chip’s bubbly excitement soon faded after the first ten comedians all bombed horribly. After the show, Chip appeared downright depressed and sported a few new dents from a Tinder bit that had gone awry. When we asked if his new vocation was all that he thought it would be, Chip broke down and sobbed.

“Brothers and sisters! I hath strayed, and in my aimless sojourn, stumbled upon the Devil’s Playground, a house of wickedness! A man has licked me during an oral sex joke! I have had unclean words enter unto my body, and though I wash myself with many Clorox wipes, the stain on me is clear to the Lord, our God. He knows I have sinned.”

When we followed up a few days later with Chip via email, he let us know that he had confessed his sins to Reverend Lee, who forgave him and repurchased him from Fun Fun Comedy Club. Chip also stressed that he was attempting to atone for his sins through missionary work as the microphone for a small church in Liberia.

By Damien Wendy.

The trip I took to Skankfest NYC with a couple of my best friends was one of the defining moments of my comedic career. We were so excited to see the legends of dickfart comedy – Big Jay, Ari, Gillis, you know, real heavy-hitters. But what we got instead was better than anything we could have imagined.

Something seemed a little bit off when we first got to the venue; the Javitz Center didn’t seem like the ideal place for an underground comedy festival. We expected The Stand or something a little more intimate. But apparently, Legion of Skanks fandom had exploded, because thousands of people were crammed into this building.

The flyer said the opening act was Nick Mullen, but the first person to walk out was some kid named Charlie Kirk, and I’m telling you, he fucking killed! He can’t be a day over fourteen and he’s got a little meatball head, but he went on a rant about how any woman with a computer is a terrorist, and the crowd went wild.

Next, some old guy talked about how racism is actually good for the economy. Again, roaring applause. By this point, we had figured out that we weren’t at Skankfest, but at the Conservative Political Action Conference. And honestly, the longer we stuck around, the more we enjoyed ourselves.

The two acts we agreed were the most outrageous were Richard Spencer and some dude named Milo. Now I have heard some gross shit get said on stage, but these guys were the nastiest I had ever seen. They literally did Nazi salutes. I’ve never seen more gutsy, anti-P.C. comedy in all my life.

While I would like to describe the incredible time I had with my friends at Skankfest, I truly wonder if it would have been as much fun as CPAC. As a comic who hates progress, it was so great to be around people who see the craft of stand-up like I do. I will totally be going back next year.

By Tyler Dark.