Dream Guest: Andy Breckman.
Dice Clay certainly came off as more likeable than in his stage act, but...uh...(1) low bar; (2) I don't really love letting people off the hook for being "nice guys" in private when they've made their public bones yelling things like "If you don't know the language, go the fuck home!"
Yeah. On the one hand, kudos to him for raising kids who seem to be well-adjusted. On the other hand, he seems like one of those guys who just can't recognize when he's stepping over the line with hurtful material. Or worse yet, willfully blinds himself to the hurtfulness of it. "These are just jokes" ... "I'm playing a character" ... okay sure but ... I listened to some of the "crowd work" on
The Day the Laughter Died where he picked on awkward couples on dates, and some of that shit was just so mean and misogynistic. I dunno. It's all subjective I guess, but there's a certain level of denial on Dice's part that kinda blows my mind.
Tom and PFT had an interesting take on this stuff when they were discussing Kinnison ... they talked about how Kinnison maybe knew that he was joking or exaggerating, but there were a lot of mutants in his audience who didn't necessarily pick up on that.
Anyhow, no diss on Maron for doing the show, it was interesting and compelling listening. It seems like one of the central running themes of the show is "What the fuck
is 'comedy', anyway?". Which is a very interesting and/or very boring question, depending on one's mood.
