Courtesy of Improv.com/Raleigh
Louis C.K.
Louis C.K.
Lately, I’ve been enjoying the Stella Donnelly song “Old Man,” the first track on the record she’s releasing in a few weeks. “Old Man” is a pretty, deliciously sharp tune that rejects old-guard patriarchy in no uncertain terms. “Your personality traits don’t count if you put your dick in someone’s face,” Donnelly sings in the second verse.
Sound familiar?
Louis C.K.—he of the aggressive masturbating, sexual harassment, and an insufficient time-out—brought his poor-me pop-up tour to Raleigh Improv last night. The new venue, part of a national chain, is in one of those bizarrely knotted strip-mall clusters off Highway 55 in Cary. The club announced the show on Monday and promptly sold out (a waiter said the capacity is about 460).
I arrived bracing myself for another disastrous set of horrifying jokes, like his recent one about the teenagers who survived a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Instead, Louis C.K.’s appearance was one of the most boring, pedestrian stand-up sets I’ve ever seen. And that was the biggest laugh of all.
The set of new material lasted a little under an hour and included such trenchant insights as:
• This is a comedy club. The stuff that gets said here doesn’t belong on daytime TV, just like porn doesn’t belong on daytime TV.
• Wow, I hate it when my doctor tells me not to eat so much ice cream.
• Isn’t it weird and occasionally confusing how some words in English are pronounced differently than they’re spelled?
• Dicks!!!! I have one!!!
• I went to France, where a lady told me that they stick thermometers in their ASSES, not their MOUTHS. And they keep eggs in the pantry! (This was also the section where he used the term “foie gras pussy,” which is just fucking bizarre.)
• Don’t leave bad tips, but also, don’t tip too much.
• DIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DICKS!!!! AAAAGGHHHH! DICKS!!!!!!
• I lost a lot of money, and that sucks! But I still have a gold watch, which I kind of feel bad about, but I don’t, really!
• Do you ever think about how many people your mom has had sex with?
He alluded to his downfall occasionally, noting that he'd had “a hard year,” that he liked to jerk off but didn’t like being alone, and that he’d visited France because he needed to get out of the States. There was nothing exactly shocking, but there was still plenty of good ol’ (read: very shitty) edgelord charm. The comedian had some extended opinions about how it shouldn’t matter if we call people with developmental differences “retarded,” because, according to him, they don’t know the difference, they’re just happy to be around anybody (wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong). He also rambled at length about penis sizes, relying on tired racial stereotypes to do the heavy lifting and going so far as to say that all Asian men are, in fact, women.
The ticketing page had promised that the show was “XXX adult material.” In reality, it was on par with what I heard as a fourteen-year-old taking the bus home from public high school. One joke was about how he’d put lipstick around his anus and gotten his drunk male friend to have sex with him. Then the lipstick residue left on the friend’s dick got him in trouble with his wife. He followed that with a convoluted mess about how he’d told his sister their dad was dead, and she got upset. Then he went and killed their dad, but first, he made his dad sodomize him at gunpoint. Or something? Reader, I haven’t got a single fucking clue about either one of those.
But Louis C.K.’s shit still stinks, and he knows it. Why else would he make such an effort to block any documentation of it? The audience had to put their phones in a magnetically locked bag made by a company called Yondr, which clearly is not standard venue policy, as pre-show graphics on the stage encouraged the audience to Instagram, tweet, and check in on various social media platforms—hard to do when your phone is locked away by interlopers.
Shortly after I was seated, I took the novel I’d brought with me out of my purse along with a small notebook and pen. Within a few seconds, someone—it wasn’t clear if he was a venue employee or one of Louis C.K.’s people—appeared to tell me to put away the notebook. He threatened to take it away if I didn’t. When I pressed him, he said that the comedian’s policy was “No press, no media, no nothing. It’s in his contract.” When C.K. finally took the stage, I tried to slip a piece of paper into my lap to take notes. Another person, this one clearly a venue employee, slipped over and told me I couldn’t have these items. These efforts were as subtle as my cat scratching around in the litter box at 2:00 a.m. Kick sand around all you like, bud, but it’s pretty obvious what you’re up to.
The rise and fall and sorta-rise again of Louis C.K. feels like an allegory for so many men I’ve known, both personally and peripherally. He built his career on nihilistic, self-deprecating jokes about the ugliness and chaos of his inner and outer worlds, and I've known many men who used their love for him as a substitute for developing actual personalities and interests. Their song goes, “I hate the whole world, but I hate myself more. I’m awful, but look how nice and good I am by telling you that I’m awful!”
But no, eventually, you learn that the nice guy isn’t so nice after all. When he gets busted, his efforts are Oscar-worthy. He’ll be up for Best Actor for his dual roles as both the real victim and the naughty scamp who still just loves to make jokes. He’s a strong contender for Best Editing, revising history to his liking—“Oh, it’s not that bad, it just got blown out of proportion, don’t you see?”
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that tune, I could buy a gold watch of my very own.
Louis C.K. took the cheapest shots and got the cheapest laughs. He still feels entitled to take up space and air, the ancient rime of white privilege. And sure, it was thoroughly troubling that so many people bought tickets to his show, beating the tables (yes, really) and howling at his bad, dumb jokes, but that’s cracking into a whole other warped piece of the American psyche. As Louis C.K. sneaks around at small clubs in secondary markets, he’s not making art that’s important or even good; he’s flailing around in inflatable armbands in the toddler pool. A comeback most grand. My wish for Louis C.K. and men like him is that they meet the loneliest fate of all: the slow, relentless sting of knowing they’re being forgotten.
