It's just you

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 24th, 2008

The Female Half received a review copy of “Is It Just Me, Or is Everything shit?” It’s authored by Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur with Brendan Hay. (The reason for the “with” authorship is that the first two are the authors of the “runaway bestseller” British version of the book, while Hay is the fellow who was commissioned to Americanize it for consumption on this side of the pond.)

Hay has written for The Daily Show, The Simpsons and Frank TV. The subtitle is “Insanely Annoying Modern Things.” The items are arranged in alphabetical order.

One of those modern things, (on page 47, sandwiched between “Colors of the Season” and “Coppolas: The Next Generation”) is:

Comedy Clubs

In every comedy club, the MC always kicks off with the lie: “We’ve got a great bill for you tonight.” His icebreaking banter involves asking the audience where they have come from. Perhaps inevitably, the answers rarely provoke high comedy, so the conversation very soon starts resembling distant relatives who haven’t met for many years exchanging pleasantries at a funeral. “So where did you come from?” “Minneola.” “Great.”

The first act begins by explaining that he’s “trying out new material.” Sadly, though, somewhere in his mind the phrase new material has become entirely disassociated with the concept of “jokes.” Fairly soon, it goes so quiet you can hear people pissing in the toilet.

After a few more minutes of no jokes, a bachelor party starts yelling: “Fuck off, you suck.” “No,” the comedian shouts back, “you fuck off.” When this has finished, the host returns to try to simultaneously to convey the two sentiments “Don’t do that or I’ll have to get tough” and “Please, for the love of God, do not turn on me.”

The pattern is repeated three of four times until the arrival of the headliner– or, rather, the pseudo-headliner, the actual headliner having canceled (a fact advertised by a small hand-written note stuck on a wall behind a curtain).
The bachelor party’s “fuck offs” will grow in intensity until you realize, as they trade unamusing insults with another bastard working through their “issues” by inflicting their paper-thin personality on people who have never done anything to hurt them, that you have paid good money to sit in a dark room listening to people bellow “fuck off” at one another.

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