Quote: (03-15-2017 08:24 AM)Dan Woolf Wrote:
This very easy to say for someone who's not "suffering" from creativity and artistic tendencies.
You make a lot of good points, but you are wrong about this one. I know exactly what I was talking about. I was an aspiring comedian in San Francisco during the 1980's and my peers were people like Bob Goldthwaite, Tom Kenney (voice of Sponge Bob, and a good comedian), Rob Schneider.
Also a whole host of people you never heard of who were as funny or funnier than the famous people out of the SF scene like Ellen DeGeneres -Dana Carvey- Greg Proops, guys like Bob Rubin and Steven Pearl(who Robin Williams owes a lot of his act to.)
I did it for two years. I was all right, not great. I didn't end up like this Goldsmith character. I had my dreams, but knew I would never be one of the greats in comedy.
I would listen to Bob Goldthwaite, and Bob Rubin riffing on a morning radio show and say to myself, I can get better, but I will never be as good as those guys. I don't think I have the comic talent or the need to be the center of attention.
Also, I realized that I was fundamentally a serious person, and though I love comedy, it wasn't the core of who I was, so I went off to do something else.
So, I am well aware what it takes to be an entertainer, and I have spent a lot of nights in smelly tiny clubs waiting until two in the morning to have my chance to go onstage in front of a crowd of ten, and I am saying that it is not a fatal affliction.
I also did it during a time when comedy was king, and everyone and his brother was trying their hand at it, it was
the thing to do in the eighties.
That is why I feel comfortable about my opinions about this dude Goldsmith.
There's nothing wrong with deciding that comedy is not for you. And there is nothing wrong with making a living without being the best of the best. Small clubs need their acts too.
I am just complaining about how the SJW mentality has seeped into everything, and it certainly doesn't belong in the free speech sandbox of stand up comedy.
Be a comedian, or be a SJW, but don't pretend that holding better comedians than you to SJW standards is somehow part of being a comedian.
That's all I'm saying.