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I think that Doug Stanhope is the finest comedian working today. I find that nearly everything he says is right and everything he says is at least worth hearing.
I have shared Doug Stanhope’s work with many friends and relatives and as a result have lost contact with many friends and relatives.
I once attended a Doug Stanhope show where he said (I’m paraphrasing, but it is very close to exact), “I agree with everything that Bill Maher and David Cross say. I just don’t understand why they are such dicks.”
Indeed, I used to hang out at a club called Largo where I met very many artists, and with only one exception they were very nice to me.
One night I was walking into Largo at the same time as David Cross (I’m pretty sure that this was before I heard Doug Stanhope’s above “endorsement,” but I did see him do a show where he began by singing a kind of Yiddish song that reminded me of my immigrant, Russian grandfather at family gatherings. He also had a really funny bit about his intent to raise his kids strictly Amish without following any of that sects strict tenets himself. Something like, “How come we can’t watch TV, but you can?” followed by “Because unlike you I am not Amish”)
So having had many positive interactions with somewhat established artists there, I said to David Cross, “One of my good friends used to do stand up in Boston and came up with you.” David Cross mumbled pretty much as rudely as possible “Yeah the good ol’ days” and rushed past the doorman, leaving me to precariously decide whether to risk paying my $10 and risk further abuse were I to accidentally cross paths with Mr. Cross when I went up to Ellen the bartender to order my one Rolling Rock, which I would always drink half of at which time it would become warm leaving me to hold on to it for the rest of the night trying to fit in with the other drinkers.
My best experience meeting an artist was when I met Mitch Hedberg and in that case, due to my excitement upon meeting him I actually deserved abuse, because I said something to the effect of “Hi, I love your work and I saw you in San Francisco and they really didn’t get your act, but they kept buying you drinks and your wife had to come up onstage and take the drinks away from you, and after that she kept reminding you offstage to promote your CD. Then you said ‘Raise your hands, how many of you motherfuckers are actually interested in buying my CD,” and me and another guy were the only ones who did.
Looking back, especially since his wife had also done a short and funny set at Largo that night I should have just said, “Hi, I love your work.”
To my great relief and glee. Mitch immediately said, “You were there? That’s hilarious!”
I later wrote this about it.
“I don’t know how to describe it to you, but the instant you met this guy you realized that he didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. Maybe the sweetest thing God ever produced. He spent like 20 minutes smoking with me. He introduced me to his wife. I asked him if he got sick of staying in so many hotel rooms and his answer was ‘No way, we love it.’ I’m guessing Mitch was thinking of the genius way he’d found to get the world to clean up his room for him.
After his death, I read about how he’d met a couple of college kids and after hearing about their sweat box dorm room returned the next day with an air conditioner. The only celebrity death that’s ever left me severely depressed.”
Doug Stanhope appears to be a very functional drunk, I have no idea how he does it, but he claims to be nearly always drunk, and somehow comes out with a great CD/DVD every year and the last few years he’s even written two books.
I’ve talked to him after shows many times and he has always been very nice to me. In Cleveland, he signed a CD for me, and then I pointed out that when I opened it to listen to it I would lose his autograph and he patiently watched me fumble endlessly to unwrap the cellophane so he could then sign it again. What I should have done was just bought two CD’s and let him sign just the one. He then again patiently waited for me to figure out how to use the camera on my cell phone so I could take a picture with him.
He always encourages his fans to pirate his work and I told him perhaps too proudly that while I once had a decent amount of money, I did not anymore so I had made a pledge to steal everything I could from artists that were worth tons of money, but when smaller artists I love put out products that I made sure I bought everything they put out immediately from whatever site made them the most money. I really do that, but I should have just kept it to myself, and Doug gloriously said to me, “You’re an idiot!” I laughed and said “You’re probably right.”
In the time that I pompously wasted, he very likely could have sold at least ten CDs or DVDs. So indeed, “I was an idiot,” because bragging about my generous patronage had probably cost him like $50.
Once I saw him in Chicago. I started smoking at 28 because life is stressful and cigarettes actually reduce stress. It was still the stupidest thing I had ever done. Now this had led to me meeting a ton of cool people in Los Angeles, because the smoking bans there resulted in a lot of cool people to converse with outside of clubs. Los Angeles has better weather than Chicago does, especially in the wintertime. Due to a quirk in the law Doug was allowed to smoke onstage and did, but realizing that this quirk made it legal for anyone onstage to smoke he put out a bunch of comfy chairs and a couch for his fans to come up and slowly kill themselves on during the show. I am very addicted and took advantage of this at least four times, and it’s still one of the most heroic things I’ve ever seen a performer do.
He talked to me after the show, and I commiserated with him about how Joe Francis had just become newsworthy for bad behavior, and as a result one of the very few times Stanhope had done something just for money (a “Girls Gone Wild” commercial) led to that tenuous endorsement airing on a seemingly endless loop everywhere for months. I went back the next night to watch pretty much the same show, just because he really treats his fans that well, which is also heroic, because his fans are insanely loyal, often very odd, and he has admitted numerous times that their worship of him completely creeps him out.
I’ve read many lists of top comedians or top comedian releases of the year, and even if they go fifty deep, he is never mentioned. He is only mentioned by other comedians. This I believe is called being a “comedian’s comedian” and always results in that comedian never getting any real popularity or cash.
Endearingly, this is mostly Doug Stanhope’s own fault, because he decided that he did not want to do anything other then do his work, when he wants to and where he wants to. He moved to Bisbee, Arizona and pretty much made himself harder for Hollywood to reach than Bill Murray. If someone flew out from Hollywood with a commitment free, ten million dollar cashier’s check merely to consider signing to star in a situation comedy, written, produced and directed by the most talented and ethical people in that field, armed with a season’s full of amazing scripts crafted just for him exactly the way Sophia Coppela pursued Murray for “Lost in Translation,” it sounds like he would ignore them knocking on his door until they left. While this fantasy scenario was playing itself out, he would likely sneak in random, broke drunks looking for some free shots of Popov Vodka or whatever alcohol he had on hand, serve them and as long as they did not bring children with them, and let them stay for as long as they did not distract him from drinking and writing.
In 2011, Louis C.K. begged him to do one and only one episode of his well respected and popular television show. Stanhope in turn begged Louis to leave him alone and promised him that even if he gave his best effort that it would suck. It happened. It did not suck, in fact it led to near universal praise, which Stanhope then completely did not capitalize on it other than to add about five minutes about it on his next CD/DVD.
Early in his career he was extremely funny, vulgar, and tasteless. His signature joke from at least 2000 and probably earlier would make him more hated by women that Bill Cosby, even though it was completely facetious and lasted less than a minute. The final routine on that same album may well still be his most downloaded selection on iTunes. It is a 7:34 story about winning a relatively, reprehensible bet, which used the woman’s real name. About ten years later she had actually heard it, become a born again Christian, and there were repercussions, which he handled and chronicled hilariously on his website, again using her real name. Both the original routine and the follow up are tours de force, and have something true to say in them about the nature of men and women. If I wanted to date a woman I would never play her the original or show her the follow up, perhaps even after our 30th anniversary, but there remains a lot of truth in all of his early material. Basically, all mocking his shallowness and all things that probably any male hooked up to a lie detector/electric chair would have to admit unless he were suicidal.
If pressed, I would probably have to say that using her real name was a mistake. I have no idea if he thinks it was or not, but no one else seems as willing to say, yeah I did that so quickly and deal with the fallout,
The first thing of his I heard was this.
Less than two minutes long and I was immediately saying to myself, “What am I doing with my life?”
Then I head this and I questioned what I had actually always hoped I was doing with my life.
By 2007, he was running for president as a libertarian and taking it seriously until he found out exactly how hard it was to do so without a lot of money even if you were representing a party that had no chance to win. His corresponding CD/DVD “No Refunds” is about as perfect as political commentary can be and slightly more than ten years later is so prescient it is scary. I post this everywhere with no fear of reprisal from anyone of any gender creed or color. It even picks the exact nationality of the type of immigrants that Donald Trump said that he wanted.
In an insidious time where perhaps 99.9% of people who post memes on social media are idiots, this is perhaps the only meme worth posting.
Bill Hicks said similar things, and people want to compare him to Hicks, which just irritates Stanhope. First because he says that if he is still echoing the things Hicks said that it shows that Hicks achieved nothing, and second that Bill Hicks’ shows had an optimistic ending (albeit one Hicks is then immediately, pantomimically assassinated after reciting), but Hicks’ message was like John Lennon’s “Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright” perhaps even “all right,” Stanhope never said that or believe that once. His message was we’re all fucked, leave me be while I do my best to stay on the sidelines and live with that.
George Carlin had the same attitude at the end, he said basically its a freak show and I’m happy to watch the whole thing burn down, but as bitterly and as eloquently as he said that you could tell Carlin cared, that perhaps he cared way too much more than anyone else. George Carlin’s daughter is a fierce defender of his legacy. She interviewed Tony Hendra, who played the manager in “This is Spinal Tap” on her father’s Sirius channel and she mostly told him that he had to listen to Doug Stanhope.
Lenny Bruce is the patron saint of truth telling comedians. He wrote a hilarious book full of funny stories that may be true.
But sadly, it is full of lies about Bruce’s drug use, because had he told the truth about that his legal troubles would have tripled.
In fact, I’ve learned that almost ever single memoir is written to put the best possible spin on the author’s life, and they are filled with lies even the smallest of lies to define their legacy.
Doug Stanhope has written two memoirs.
“Digging Up Mother: A Love Story”
Now take the most honest person in history and they will not say anything bad about their mother. I never would even if I was indeed hooked up to that lie detector/electric chair.
That memoir does nothing, but tell apparently true stories that make his mother look horrible. He admits to committing felonies in it. Every story that no one else would ever murmur to their therapist is in there; often makes both of them look bad; is told with complete and utter pride; and indeed it is somehow a miraculously told love story to his mother.
Then the next year he released the second memoir:
“This Is Not Fame: A ‘From What I Re-Memoir'”
He cracks on Bill Maher, but the story’s true dick is revealed to be him.
He cracks on David Cross, where Cross is again the dick, but it is very brief.
The one who is trashed 99% of the time and proudly is its author!
In May of 2016, Jon Stewart was asked at a University of Chicago interview by a student about allegations against Louis C.K. and acted shocked to find out that any even slightly credible ones existed, and then when C.K. admitted that they were true, Stewart said he was even more shocked.
I have no idea what Stewart ever knew, but I’d heard those rumors at least three years before May of 2016, and I’m not a comedian and I have never met Louis C.K.
When the rumors had no name attached (even though everyone knew whose name they were attached to), Doug Stanhope came out and said “I’ve done worse shit. Those rumors are about me!”
Now surely, you can say that Stanhope lives in Bisbee and has little to lose, especially given the Trump level devotion of his fans, but that is exactly why Stanhope lives in Bisbee and exactly why his fans are so dementedly loyal.
Since 2007, Stanhope hasn’t appeared to be in any way an activist, other than to occasionally share tidbits of wisdom to fuck up a fucked up system.
There is ton of political insight in all of his work since “No Refunds,” there is just no crusading or piety involved.
The last cruder like thing I’ve heard of him doing was raising close to $126,000 for a woman and her family after she refused to say that the tornado that destroyed her family’s house was “God’s will, ” because she lived in the Oklahoma, where everyone else said that, and was honest enough to say that she was an atheist.
Basically, he just says this is what I’ve been reading about in Bisbee, while I drink and try to enjoy my life.
Politics in comedy once widely derided and avoided is everywhere now, because of Donald Trump.
He is to me the exact reason they taught me nothing about being Jewish at “Sunday School” and instead replaced it with nothing but how to spot fascism.
Now you can’t find a comedian without something to say about Trump. They even pushed Jimmy Fallon, who Stanhope also cracked on in his second memoir, over the I’m just here to be sweetly funny fence.
My guess is that those comedians have decent moral reasons for their newfound social outrage, but it can not be denied that there are a ton of comedy dollars out there working the Trump circuit, and the only comedian I’ve seen who purposely has said almost nothing about Trump, and he lives in Bisbee, where he wants to be left the fuck alone, while he writes valuable political things ignored and washed away by the Trump hysteria.
— Matt (@matthewjohn1212) June 28, 2018
Now look at that. Forty seconds and he nails Trump better and harder than anyone else has in the past three years and he’s done! Forty fucking seconds. And then realize where he says it, in England, foreign soil, which is exactly the definition of treason to every single person wearing a #MAGA hat. Then like Bob Dylan he’s done, said everything he needed to say and moves on to his next artistic impulse as he defiantly claims to not understand what an artist is much less pretend to be one.
Which is a long way of saying, this “functional drunk” has somehow also done 265 podcasts since 2013, so much material that I can’t keep up and haven’t heard a single one in its entirety.
But I do know that it is nearly impossible to make any money doing podcasts, and my guess is that Doug Stanhope makes very little from his.
I do know however that whatever money he does make from that podcast (none) comes from his proud sponsor “Russia’s finest” Popov Vodka.
So yes, I rarely drink. When I did it was usually a half a bottle of Rolling Rock, but when I drink now I choose Popov Vodka.
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I’m Javier Ferrán, chairman of Diageo. We have many brands. Our finest is Popov Vodka, which is enjoyed in more than 180 countries around the world.
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We advertise out products only in places of the highest ethical character, and when it comes to our flagship brand Popov, we only do so on the Doug Stanhope Podcast.