Monologue Jokes -- Week of January 2, 2017

Apple announced this week that they and CEO Tim Cook have agreed to a cut in pay...

- Tim Cook is quoted as saying, I just clicked “agree” without actually reading the document. 

On Friday, Donald Trump went on a Twitter rant about how the new Celebrity Apprentice’s ratings are nowhere near as good as when he was the host...

- So if you thought the Presidency was going to change Trump, you were tragically mistaken. 

At one point in the Twitter rant, Trump refers to himself as “The Ratings Machine, DJT”...

- Which is a slightly better wrestling name than his previous one, “Money Boo-Boo”

A newly declassified report on Russian hacking says the Russian government developed a "clear preference for President-elect Donald Trump."

- In response, Arnold Swarzenager replied, “There’s only been one episode!” 

A woman is suing Chipotle for 2 billion dollars, claiming they used an image of her eating at the restaurant in promotional ads without her consent...

- The tabloids are already calling it the ques-o-the-century. 

On Friday, North Korea celebrated their president, Kim Jung Un’s birthday...

- He’s said to be either 34 or 35, but he doesn’t look a day over toddler. 

It was reported on Tuesday that the world’s oldest known killer whale had died...

- But I just got confirmation that Chris Christie is doing just fine. 

A 105 year old French cyclist set a world record on Wednesday when he rode his bike an impressive 16.5 miles in one hour...

- Also on Wednesday, I - a 29 year old - at an impressive amount of French Toast and got winded walking up a flight of 16 stairs.  

#52ComedyAlbums -- Week 1: George Carlin "Occupation: Foole"

Butt sex just isn't for me. I've never been down with it. 

...

Sorry, I've been sitting here writing a first sentence and deleting it over and over again, and I'm just not good at introducing a new, weekly column that I will be writing for the year 2017. So I just wrote the first thing that came to mind. Anyway, now that I have your attention, welcome! 

This is the first installment of the #52ComedyAlbums column! Every week this year, we'll learn a little bit about a comedy album from years gone by. Now, this is not a "Top 52" list. What people find funny is way too subjective to try and delegate a winners list of the best albums of all time. Besides, I don't think anyone really cares which albums I find to be the best. This list, rather, is going to take time each week to tell a short story about an album, its artist, and the context in comedy and cultural history that it was released. In fact, some of the albums on this list may even be particularly bad. But I promise that they will all be interesting in their own way. 

Starting us off this year is the greatest white stand up comedian of all time, Mr. George Carlin! 

Whoa there! Wait a damn second, Joe! First of all, some would say Carlin is THE greatest stand up comic of all time. And secondly, what's all this "white" bullshit? 

Well, the way I see it, if you say Carlin is the best of all time, you're not wrong. But if you say Richard Pryor is the best of all time, you're not wrong there either! There will never be another stand up comedian to go on stage that is not directly or indirectly influenced by one of, if not both, of these giants. So, as far as I'm concerned, this is one instance in which you can delegate a black/white qualifier. Alright, are we cool? No? Well, I never liked you anyway. Back to the album. 

Here's the Tale of the Tape on Occupation: Foole...

• Recorded: March 2nd & 3rd, 1973 
• Venue: Circle Star Theater - San Carlos, California 
• Label: Little David Atlantic 

Now, if you fancy yourself a comedy history buff, I'm sure you're grumbling to yourself something like, "If he's wanting to focus on Carlin's stuff from the early 70s, why is he wasting time on this forgettable album? Why not do a piece on the groundbreaking AM & FM or Class Clown - the album that sparked the "Seven Words You Can't Say On Television" phenomenon?

Because you already know about those. Besides, this one is interesting in its own way. 

At this point in 1973, Carlin was on top of the world. A year earlier, he had released two albums that would define him as the Irreverent Pope of the counterculture movement. 

Since then, he had been arrested for violating obscenity laws in Milwaukee after performing his infamous 7 Words bit. And later that year, when a radio station played a recording of that bit, it sparked a legal case over obscenity regulations that wouldn't be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court until 1978 when they upheld the government's right to penalize stations that broadcast such material on public airwaves during hours when young people may typically tune in (6 a.m. and 10 p.m.) . 

Tough loss? 

On top of all this, Carlin was in his prime drug-using days. And that's one of the interesting things about this special, because you can totally tell in both the material and the album art. As he put it in an interview with Playboy in January 1982: 

"The Class Clown album was done totally sober. I'd realized what a hell I'd made for myself and I cleaned up completely for three months. You can hear the clarity of my thinking and of my speech on that album. But by the next one, Occupation: Foole, I was right back into the trip again. I'm more frantic, more breathless. You can hear how sick I am. If you want to see a cokehead, just look at the pictures on the Occupation: Foole album. The angles of my body show you an awful lot. I started doing coke to feel open but by that time the hole had opened so wide that I'd fallen through. The body language in those photos tells you everything." 

In this interview it almost sounds like he's embarrassed by this special. Which makes it even more interesting. Like it's a small, forgettable stain on an otherwise legendary section of his career and stand up comedy as a whole. But it's really not a terrible special at all. Maybe by Carlin standards it is, but it still hits on a lot of the heavy-hitting cultural taboos of the day. 

It does almost feel a milking of the material that had blown up in his previous two albums, though. He even has a continuation of more "Words You Can't Say On Television" at the end. 

The most literal connection to his previous albums comes up on Side B, when in the middle of the show, a stagehand brings Carlin a sheet of paper that informs him that FM & AM had just won the Grammy award for Best Comedy Recording. The Grammy Awards were being broadcast at the same time he was on stage, and he had not attended because he was contracted to perform the concert which became Occupation: Foole on the same night.

And that's why I like this album. It's less of a special, and more of a direct documentation of what was going on in Carlin's life during this massive jump start to his legendary - and drug fueled - career. 

So that's week one! If you loved it, stay tuned for a new one every week. If you hated it, keep reading them to see if they get better. 

If you're indifferent to it, I get it. I find myself feeling indifferent to a lot of things too. Maybe we're sociopaths? You should keep reading too just so people don't think you're a serial killer.

This Is Only A Test

I'll mostly be writing my weekly monologue jokes here. The ones that I've been posting to TUMBLR, that no one ever reads. IT'S AN EXERCISE IN JOKE WRITING, ASSHOLE!

But anyway, I might occasionally write up a little article thingy here too. 

That'd be cool, right? 

But for now, I'm just writing gibberish to see what this looks like on here. 

I'll add some tags to see what the hell that means. And then I'll add some categories to see how the hell that's different from a tag. I thought tags were just internet jargon for categories? 

The comments are turned off. Should I keep them off? I'll turn them on to see what it looks like. Say mean things so it feels authentic. 

Alright. Stay black.