His only redeeming feature is that he’s made any potential terminal illness i might be diagnosed with, much easier to handle. ” oh i have eye cancer and will be dead within the next agonising hour….it could be worse, i could be Dane Cook’.

“One Final Word On, About and To Dane Cook…Intermittently

Or, Why I Like Dane Cook Better Than You.”

It would take a lot for me to write about Dane Cook, now that even mentioning the name draws yawns in comic’s circles (and most other circles as well.) But now it has to do with me! Me me me me me! And I love to write anything that has to do with me on some underwhelming level.

I found this in a Dane Cook interview ( http://dailyfiasco.com/2009/05/20/dane-cook-talks-comedy-critics/ ) where he says “…there’s a lot of cynical, jealous guys. I’m not going to name names, but I know some of the names that you want to check. You just have to look at their careers. You have to look at where they’re at and what they’re probably frustrated about and you also have to understand that the guys I came up with, the group I came up the ranks with are very proud of me, and they’re the only opinions that matter.”

Before I get to my point let’s stop here for a moment. I think it might have been Rogan that said it in an interview – someone said it – that there are lots of comedians who make it really big and are actually respected and congratulated by their peers.

Shitloads of them.

Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle. Jon Stewart.

Chris Rock? Name two comics of any merit who don’t like Chris Rock. You can’t. Who doesn’t like Dave Chappelle? One of my personal heroes and I can’t name a comedian I’ve heard say a bad thing about him in 19 years of this business. How about Jon Stewart? Fucking brilliant, huge for a long, long time and no spite from the comedy world whatsoever.

So why no backlash from other comedians? Because comics know the difference between craftsmanship and repeatedly hitting oneself in the face with pies.

But that’s not why I’m writing.

In the same interview, Dane was quoted as saying -

“It’s funny because there’s another name of another guy that’s maybe one of the most vocal guys. After my mom passed away, this guy wrote me the first e-mail that I got. He said ‘I remember you talking about your mom at this spot that you and I were in one time on a show together. I just wanted to say how sorry I am. I knew she meant a lot to you. As far as some of the backlash, and some of the things people are saying, it’s all a game.’ He admitted to me he embraced it simply to satisfy his fans. I’m behind the scenes, and I know the real deal with some of the things people are saying.”

The comedian in question was me. Only the email has been gently misquoted just enough to make it change from being a kind word to fitting his agenda. What a cruddy thing to do.

I found the email that I sent and it says exactly this -

“Dane -

Just read in an article that your Mother passed away. I remember how you and I would call our Mothers after shows in SF in 95 so, regardless of all the dogshit that is show business, I know how that is real.

My sincere condolences. The rest is just a game.

stanhope”

That’s it, Dane. If you somehow read into this that I embrace the repercussions against you only to satisfy my fans, you have keen glasses on, sir.

I am unsure how you took “it’s all a game” to specifically regard why you are disliked by comedians at all, nor is it even inferred.

It is a game perhaps in that the shit I talk about you really doesn’t affect my daily life one way or another whatever you do. It’s just a game in that this entire industry is ludicrous, the idea that laughter is such a rarity in this work-and-die structure of humanity that we can get paid to provide it and that people can get as much of an outlet or more from hating an entertainer as liking them, and so on.

You make it sound like I only insult your stand-up as though I had some PR angle in doing so. Why can’t you just come to grips with the fact that most comics don’t like your style of stand-up? The ones that I know who don’t like you publicly now, didn’t like you privately before you were widely recognized. It’s just that back then nobody in the press had reason to ask.

Listen, I’m not trying to be a prick but you are the one using my words as some de facto evidence that the comedy world would love you if it weren’t for the success.

People, listen to me. Obviously I am not a fan of Dane Cook’s comedy. I’ve enjoyed not liking his comedy for almost 15 years and I think I’ve disliked him (not on any personal level, just professionally and for fun) in a very healthy way.

Dane and I did the San Francisco Comedy Competition together in 1995. That’s how we met.

We were both fairly new to the industry and I saw his manager at the Melrose Improv in LA shortly before the competition started. When it came up that I would be competing, he jokingly tried to bet me prize money against his guy Dane.

I said no. I didn’t even know his guy.

Besides… competitions are all bullshit. (That was written with a warped-tooth grin.)

Cut to – Mitch Hedberg and I are there for the first night of a three week competition that goes all over Northern California. The top five finishers averaged over the first week move on to the second round. The top five of the second round go to the finals.

The first night of the first week, Hedberg and I don’t place in the top five. Dane Cook comes in second. This is bullshit and we should just quit right fucking now, says a drunk Mitch and me. And we continue to get drunkerer.

This is when I pass Dane’s manager at the bar, he says with his big pelican head, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t bet me priiiize money now?”

I am drunk and hateful and primed to talk shit so I say “I’ll bet you 100 dollars I win this whole fucking thing no matter what your guy does.”

He made the bet and for the next three weeks it turned into me and Dane neck in neck the whole way to the final night and I won 10,000 clams. Plus one hundred dollars from Dane’s manager.

It took me a year and three different payments to get the hundred dollars in full. One time I had my mother go up to him at the Improv.

“You still owe my son 60 dollars.”

“Heh heh. Let’s see. I only have twenty on me.”

“I’ll take it.”

I remember a lot of nights during the competition that both Dane and I would be calling our mothers to tell ‘em how we did and it was kinda funny.

That is why I wrote him the email when I heard his mother died. Because I felt sympathy for a guy I knew (although I did feel a little schadenfreude in hearing that his brother scammed him for millions but that’s different).

In a lot of ways, the backlash against Dane sucked for me because it made Dane-bashing tired, and stole that joy from me. I feel like the guy that knew the band when they were just a garage nuisance and now everybody else is hip to em. “I knew Dane Cook sucked before you guys ever even heard of him!”

Now everybody is doing it, and hating him doesn’t have the same personal feel anymore.

Overall, Dane Cook’s high profile is good for me and others like me because it creates a sort of protest market, people who want to see some other type of comedy specifically because it’s not that, like rooting for anyone playing against Yankees.

Keep in mind it’s just fucking comedy. The worst vitriol and invective that you hear one comic say about another, it’s still just a stupid fucking job. Don’t you go getting too wrapped up in it, it’s not your fight. No need for you to go sending off shitty emails to one side or the other.

People take this shit way more seriously than even the comics themselves, sometimes when they don’t even know what the fuck they are talking about.

Watching the whole Rogan/Mencia plagiarism thing go down and reading horribly misspelled comments on YouTube that said shit like “Who cares who wrote it if Carlos does it better it then he owns it” – you know even Mencia would cringe at his own fans’ idiocy.

I get emails from people who can’t just compliment you without also adding in who they hate – “You rock, fuck Lisa Lampenelli!” or whoever.

What? Where the fuck did that come from? Why the necessity for the unrelated hatred? I don’t get it even when I’m guilty of it.

It’s as though people think that we are all in some heated competition and they will win us over by saying that they hate some other stand-up.

The truth is that if I walked into a bar crowded with a bunch of my fans and Dane Cook, I would go hang out with Dane first without question. Nothing personal but I’d have something to talk about with him. We are in the same very small business for the same amount of time and, except for the numbers and the small details, have a lot in common that I don’t have with but a handful of people on this planet.

Hitler might have taken Mussolini for a chump but I bet if they met up in an airport bar in Hell, they’d probably have a lot more to talk about with each other than with their troops. Dane Cook and I would probably have a great laugh about all the shitty emails we get from people.

Here’s why I think it’s ok for me to say Dane Cook sucks but you shouldn’t:

First, you really shouldn’t be spending so much time disliking people. As has been said a million times – turn the channel and go find something you like. Life is too short. Find something great and come back and tell us about it on the internet rather than only spewing your pro bono critiques of what infuriates you, thus advertising it.

Is that hugely hypocritical of me? Unbelievably. I should be slapped.

But – and secondly – I believe I am more qualified in saying that Dane Cook sucks because I am in the business and know all the tricks and the angles. I know exactly why he sucks and that makes me irritated when other people say he sucks when they have no idea why.

Here’s the analogy…
It’s like if you are an expert plumber, and you fucking hate AAA Plumbing because you know they aren’t very good at their craft but they thrive because they are first in the phone book and have no shame in driving around town in a van with a giant styrofoam faucet on the top of it with full-page ads in every Thrifty Nickel newspaper and coupon book.

Now I – who doesn’t know jack-shit about plumbing – say AAA plumbing sucks because I tried to stick a whole turkey carcass down my garbage disposal on Thanksgiving along with a million other assholes and they were too busy to help me.

I call you and say “Fuck AAA Plumbing, You Rock!” You know I don’t even hate them for the right reason and if you ever ran into AAA plumbing in a bar on Thanksgiving night, you’d laugh at all the assholes who stuck turkeys down their garbage disposals, and not who’s first in the Yellow Pages.

HaHaHa

So leave the Dane Cook hating to me and you go out and find shit for us to enjoy.

We don’t all need to be this miserable all at the same time.

———————————————————————–
from me: Fuck Dane Cook.