I opened for Rick Shapiro here in Bisbee and afterwards at my house, some guys smashed him in the head with a beer bottle.

There are seven drafts of this story sitting unfinished in my computer, all stinking with useless words and pointless detail.

I figured I’d start this time with the least possible detail and work up to where I think I’d be satisfied as a reader.

My plan was to to take the summer off - for me that means at least two solid months. But the chance to get Rick Shapiro to Bisbee made it worth skipping out for a couple of nights in the midst of vacation. He was already booked in Tucson and I told him I ‘d get us a free gig in Bisbee just to work together. I like him that much and more.

St Elmo’s is at least manageable at it’s ugliest and it’s of the most popular bars in town (and attracts the thinnest of fat girls.)

The place holds under 100 - at least that could see the stage and we drew as many as could see. And the show went well for Bisbee, meaning that I didnt feel like I could never make eye contact in public afterwards. Rick Shapiro is brilliant and I caught some eyes that were dead-on getting every reason he’s beautiful.

As always, some douches thought he went on too long or that a jumpy train of thought was unprofessional by their Joe-LunchBucket work schematic… you know the people. They come to my shows sometimes too. We refunded their money - psychically - as there was no charge at the door.

You cant charge a door charge here because it’s generally an artist community but quite a few of the artists create art that doesn’t fetch a good price at market and therefore dont have the disposable income to use on, say - art.

And although Rick and I would fall under the “artist” heading, we actually would butt heads on many levels with the artists who inhabit Bisbee, who were probably in attendance at that show.

You are a silversmith and make sculptures of a dying flower and I am looking for the perfect two-word,two-syllable set-up description for “cunt” in a routine because I like that flow, that beat.

Bat-shit cunt. Too obvious.

Rat-bit cunt. Better but now I think I’m lazy by copying the rhyming pattern.  Rot-Eyed cunt. This goes on for hours and spirals to where I cant find the beginning.

No need to describe the insanity of the artistic process when the point is that most people wont even see it as art.

They didn’t all like Rick but a lot loved him and I think he’s in my Top Five of all time and one girl evidently like him enough that she came back to my house - along with a VIP list of whoever jumped in the car - where she (allegedly) drunkenly fucked him in the bathroom before leaving to go tell her boyfriend/ husband dude that she fucked the comic.

I’m 41 and I’ve been down in it at my own dirty level for longer than I can remember ( I dont remember how this blog entry started to be fair) but I won’t waste time trying to explain or even guess at what would make a woman do this. I don’t care anymore. Thats the only thing I enjoy about aging. Not caring about things you’d never get anyway.

So I’m deep in a what should have been a complete blackout when a man with a beard and kindly eyes walked through my front door - everyone else was out in the backyard - and asked for the comedian that fucked his wife ( or girlfriend, I dont remember but we’ll say wife from now on for brevity sake and facts-be-damned.)

The rest of this story is pieced together with vague snapshot memories which are suspect, second-hand memories of others which could be less trustworthy - in the case of Rick the story was repeated in all art and poetry without a lick of “just the facts, ma’am” - and otherwise using deductive reasoning.

The guy told me immediately that he knew it wasn’t me. I trusted him that I hadnt fucked his wife and moved on . I pointed out Rick Shapiro as the only other likely culprit. Not to be a rat, I had just done the math on who might have fucked his wife that was a comedian but not me and - have excluded the opener who was with his girlfriend - was excited to have come up with what i thought might be the correct answer.

“Rick Shapiro?”

Which would have had to been correct  but he said that didnt sound right either. He seemed to be mving as slowly and without passion as me so I wasn’t alarmed.

I dont remember anything else for a while until the opener came in fired up telling me that the bearded stranger had his “boy’s’ coming and some shit was going down.

Next thing I know is confronting the sleepy-eyed husband waiting out front for his boys, telling him that yes, my friend probably had sex with his wife - there’d been no denials - and that he should probably meet Rick since he’s really funny.

I truly believed at that moment that what I was doing would work. I have no idea what I thought I was doing but it seemed so right.

Then there’s a brief chunk of memory about Rick and Beardo-Guy discussing culpability issues over whether it is the wife or the random comic who doesnt know the girl or her marital status who should be wrong in this situation.

Now I remember violence but in no order and without context. I remember hitting the bearded guy in the eye with a beer can as we were falling. I remember a ringing on the side of my head that stunned me but there was no pain.

Now I’m standing and Phil - the bar owner is holding everyone back from everyone else and the circle is five.

The two “boys” that have joined the brawl in whatever fashion now start to leave with Beardy. I remeber saying gracious salutations - “Other than that it was nice to have you by. I’m Doug, nice to meet you. Drive safe.” I was kidding but I wasnt mocking. Even shit-faced, I know fighting is ridiculous.

Phil the bar owner told me later in the week that I was laughing the whole time. He also said that it wasn’t much of a fight, that we’re should be glad it wasn’t YouTubed. A lot of slow-motion haymakers, wildly missing the target.

The only strike was a blind-side beer-bottle smash from behind across Rick Shapiro’s head by the slighter, tweeker “boy” friend while Rick again was wasting his time trying to use logic as an artform with the jilted cuckold.

We woke up bloody but most of it was from the fall when Phil knocked us all down in a pile to stop us from making fools of ourselves. I had a small cut in the ear and so did Rick as well as one on the eye from the bottle. I heard that Beardo had a shiner and I hoped - I know this is wrong - that it was from my suspect memory of hitting him in the eye with a beer can. I know that the tweeker’s beer bottle was the more effective weapon than my flimsy can but the beer-can fits better in a coozy - where the bottle is too narrow.

I drink beer in the Arizona sun a lot more than I hit people in the face. I’ll stick with the cans.

There are two more details I’ll add about the show the next night in Tucson at Club Congress.

First a memory that needed Rick’s prodding to come back into my head. He was telling the story on stage and he tells of the part just before the violence where he said to the Beard… “Listen! Do I look like the kind of guy that would fuck your girlfriend?”

I hope you know Rick well enough to appreciate that.

Later that night I was near blackout drunk again, slumped over the bar at the Congress and talking to who knows what about nothing when I see a kitten walk in and out from behind the jukebox.

I take that kitten and I take him upstairs and throw him in the room with a passed-out Bingo and go back down to the bar for more drinking I dont remember.

And in the morning a I woke up from a terrific blackout with a long-haired grey kitten.

The moral of the story is that it’s better to wake up from a blackout with a kitten than a bloody ear.

I went to the Libertarian National Convention - not only because I dont like crowds - but because I am quite like those of you who come back to my shows again and again.

You know I’ll never be the Last Comic Standing  - you know what I do will never be popular - but you go because you believe in it yourself and thats good enough.

The Libertarian Party - as a group - is generally a place where everyone on a 86 list someplace goes to share their stories on why they never should have been asked to leave. But the politics of “get the government out of my life, I’ll do or die on my own” are the thru-line that (should) unite us all.

So long as it’s a party that wants as little government as possible, no matter the motive, I will vote that way.

But what happened is that a predatory, shit-spined ex-congressman - Bob Barr - saw the LP as an angle where he could just deny his Nazi-like past of Clinton-impeaching, drug-warring and gay marriage-busting and use his status as having been in government (as well as mocked in the Borat movie) as reason to be nominated to the countries third largest political party (third thinnest fat girls.)

It worked because the LP again had no candidate with any viable, press-worthy credentials and more people inside the party were concerned with getting some notice for what the party is about - less government and more individual freedom/responsibility - than they are worried that their guy will lose having been outed as a complete fraud.

I went to the LNC knowing that this was probably Bob Barr’s to win. I didn’t know until I got drunk that afternoon of the nomination which candidate I was going to back but I went with the Marijuana platform of Steve Kubby.  Mike Gravel would have been the most interesting and lovable candidate but he was no more credible than Barr. He jumped to the LP after he got drummed out of the Democratic race with as much face time and respect as real libertarian Ron Paul did in the Republican run. But being shit on by the same whore as Ron Paul doesn’t make you a Libertarian, capital L or not.

The LP was fucked as always but I booked myself a gig in Denver during convention weekend, taking an extra day to say some hello’s to folks I only know from the internet and see the whole process go down.  I figured it would be Bob Barr against someone when it came down to it. I didn’t care who so long as it wasn’t the only douchebag worse - a low rent, cheesedick named Wayne Allyn Root.

The Root of All Evil.

Wayne Allyn (spell it like you’re in a 80’s hair band) Root is the biggest slice of dog shit on Earth. I hate him for the same reasons you’d hate me if you only knew me from a Girls Gone Wild commercial that woke you up at 4:45 a.m. He is a sleazy infomercial guy who - like 1000 others - claims to be the best sports prognosticator guy in America, feeding on the false hopes of gambling junkies.

I have worked for these operations in Vegas and the shit-stink is as thick from the best to the worst. You get a call-list of gambling addicts and tell em that your boss knows exactly - 80 percent of the time even - who will win every week.

Slot-machine addict, your worries are over, because this Honduran change lady knows which machine is “due” and she’ll tell you for 500 bucks. That’s what the VP of Hollywood capped-teeth does on a different level.

Let’s back up - it doesn’t matter what the guy does, it’s that he is the most awfully, transparently fraudulent person on most of the Earth.

(NOTE - If you have seen “Requiem For A Dream,” Root talks and looks just like the character who plays the infomercial that draws the Mother to diet pills and then to her eventual demise. Google “Tabby Tibbons” and “Wayne Allen Root” images and put em side by side.)

All I cared about while I was at the LNC was that Root went home as shamed as he could be. Instead he was chosen by the Nazi as a VP, well after Root had discounted the Nazi on every level, hedging his bet like the gambling pro he claims to be and winning.

Thank your god that we had mushrooms and later cocaine to fall back on in our depression after seeing these two horrible human beings raising their hands in Holiday Inn victory.

Hopefully they will get some attention for the party - most any stooge on the street that I talk to about libertarian politics and that general mindset agrees that it’s the way to go - but hopefully none look closer at the souls of Bob Barr or Wayne Allyn Root. They will not have to trip hard to see deceit, ego & intellectual fraud at the base of the whole campaign.

I still vote Libertarian wherever I can but not for president - president being the least important of all your votes when compared to local politics which don’t have the drawing power for losers looking for vicarious and empty victories they can pretend to be part of or reason for.

This year I am riding first class and without apology on the Obama bandwagon. I think this guy is fantastic and will give this nebulous idea of “country” a personality. A great personality. Sure I hate his social-driven politics but I think the only difference between any major party candidates so far as money, freedom or taxes are concerned wont make a percentage point of difference.

These cuntidates won’t affect your day-to-day anymore than a sports score will. It might make you happy or sad but that is only because you decided to invest that much into the entertainment of politics. And Obama is the kind of entertainment I need right now. Happy, hopeful and will make the overseas cousins of our local nationalist douche-wits stop spitting in my sandwich when I play London because “I” started war in Iraq and refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

The most important thing is to vote locally and know what you’re voting for - and if race or sex are your first reason, you should be denied a ballot because you are an ape who should be banished to voting online for upstart variety show websites. If you dont know exactly why you are voting, go buy someone a drink instead. We’ll say it’s your civic duty.

Hear more of my boring and empty opinions at a live show , where we are both drunk and I scream in your face, do shots and then show your galpal my balls and how long they are in front of a crowd that will never comeback.

Only there we will be drunk and ready to take this ugly planet over if someone could just find the car so we could get out of here.

I am the head of the one-man Libertarians For Obama group. You can join by clicking the forum button on my site. It won’t matter and they won’t know what youre talking about because my forum people don’t really like new people. Ignore them. Theyre good people in real life… if there is such a thing.

stanhope

www.jesuslovesdougstanhope.com

If theres problems, leave comments here or go to Normans house and stab his neck.

The shows listed for June in Bisbee (Elmos June 18th) and Tucson (Club Congress June 19th) are shows These two are shows that I’m hosting for Rick Shapiro. Rick is one of the comics that’s absolutely floored me. Crazed, punch-drunk gutting stream of subconcious.

So I’ll be doing a bit of time up front but he’s headlining and I hope you love him as much as I do.

Spread the word. I’ll be back in Tucson and Phx in November to do regular headlining shows.

thanks

stanhope

The drive to Death Valley is about 12 or 34 hours depending on how much you lost at the Wild Wild West Casino on the way and how determined you were to get it all back. That’s usually enough time to get through a thick stack of the CDs that are handed to me on the road. 99 percent of them are music which I try to avoid when I can.

The reason I say that I simply don’t like music is because I don’t know anything about music. I don’t know good from bad from hack from talented from anything. I have no taste or ear for music. No, I can’t hear that lute in the background. I can’t even tap my foot in time.

I like what I like and have enough on my iPod to get me through an extended psychadelic journey - which is about the only time I listen to it.

I know that I have only the weakest pedestrian understanding of the artform. I do know comedy and I’m terrified of being the music-equivalent of the guy who publicly announces that he really loves Sinbad or Jeff Dunham because he doesn’t know any better.

Which shouldn’t really matter. You should be able to enjoy whatever the heck it is that grabs your goose without worrying about what other people think. Fine in theory but in reality, I’m the guy that judges you and is seriously disgusted by you for liking Sinbad. That’s because I’m a shitty person. I have to find ways to hate you more than I hate myself and I know there are others just like me who’d crucify me in their heads if they knew I enjoy “Uninvited” by Alana Morrisette

“Long Tall Glasses” by Leo Sayers is a great song and even a music snob might let you get away with it for it’s obscurity. But, if you knew that I had not one but three BareNakedLadies songs shuffling around in there like some Russian Roulette party fauz pas waiting to happen…

So now I have stacks of CDs that have been given to me on the road that we put in, listen randomly to tracks with a latter-day attention span and then - if they don’t catch on quickly, we heave them out the window. It’s good fun and blatent littering is so anachronistic that it makes me burst out into kid-in-church uncontrollable laughter. It also gives me a reason to use “anachronistic” in a sentence like I’m full of words that big.

Most CDs get the heave but there’s been some keepers as well - namely Mishka Shubaly who I’ve had the pleasure of touring with me lately. The Purrs were a find and Marvin’s Garden survived to live in the high cotton of my glove box for all eternity.

Comedy CDs will often get thrown out the window even if they aren’t bad and even though I actually paid money for the comedy CD - just because I can usually only listen to comedy CDs once. There’s a few exceptions that you can replay and still enjoy- Sean Rouse is one and there’s a few others that aren’t coming to mind.

Anyway…

Here’s some recommendations from this last trip:

Todd Barry: From Heaven

Todd is one of the few that can be just as funny recorded as live. Both of his CDs are fantastic. I wanna know about the chick on the cover. Todd and I are friends but I bet the real at-home and alone Todd Barry is a really creepy dude that you’d want to watch in disgust on a webcam. I bet that girl on the cover is crying somewhere over what she saw and can’t get out of her eyes. I like that Todd quite a bit.

Track I Loved Most: Unbelievable Questions (In fact, I had Todd send me the track to put on my Myspace but I still haven’t figured out how to put that shit up.)

Maria Bamford: The Burning Bridges Tour

Maria probably made us laugh the loudest on the trip. On paper, she should be everyone I hate. To describe her, one would think Tracy Ullman which would be entirely insulting. If you said - “Here - listen to a chick comic that does a lot of characters and voices,” I would be throwing it out the window while you were still saying the “aracters” part.

Maria Bamford is fucking hilarious and smart like a tripper smart. I think she has a new CD out as well which I will be buying post-haste. [Maria’s brand new CD “How To WIN!”]

Track That I Loved Most: Venette (You know it’s funny when you’re replaying it for people in the car when it’s 114 degrees out and they stay in the car until the track is done.

Mike Birbiglia: Secret Public Journal

I did a show in Montreal with Mike that was comics telling true stories and he had a fantastic one about being a sleepwalker and walking out a second story window as he was dreaming that a missle was headed towards him and the only way to save the troops in his room was to jump.

I was hoping that story was on this CD because I was obviously drunk when we did the show together and couldn’t remember all the nuances.

It isn’t but the other stories are really fucking good. I hate to say I was surprised because that sounds like I thought he’d suck but I was genuinely entertained without habitually deconstructing it as I am prone to do with lesser comics.

Track I Loved Most: Celebrity Golf (It might not be as funny if you havent been that guy but I have and I died laughing.)

Bill Burr: Emotionally Unavailable

I said before that Louis CK is probably the most underrated comedian in America but I think Billy Burr is even moreso. I’ve seen him live a couple times just shrieking laughing while kicking myself for not thinking of that myself over and over.

Like Birbigs and the sleepwalking story, I went into the Bill Burr CD hoping to hear the bits I heard live and drunk and only vaguely remember the premise but knew fucking destroyed me and they weren’t there. What was there was still on par. I love that it opens with Burr asking the crowd how they’re doing and gets fucking crickets. Zilch. Zero fluff, no warm-up guy coaching the people how to cheer, no plastic responses. Just announce me and hit record. It’s the red button. Fantastic. I can’t wait to hear another.

So there. That’s some shit I listened to and liked and hope you listen to it and like it as well.

********

PostScript: After writing this, I watched Last Comic Standing. It would be far easier and probably more entertaining to write a blog about how awful that show is - and there are so many awful things about it that you could write a new blog every week on a different aspect of the shittiness of it. That’s why it’s important to every now and again write about someone who not enough people know is great rather than something or someone that everyone knows is shit.

The Other Thing: Last Comic Standing is partially my fault. I did the presentation pilot for it. (For those not in the industry, a presentation pilot is a short version of a show that is being shopped to the network that will determine whether or not the network buys it as a series.) I spent three days in a house with four other comics to make a 20 minute presentation pilot. I have a tape of it somewhere. Bust my balls a lot and I’ll find it and send it to someone who knows how to get shit online.

It sucks.

stanhope

Regarding the Scotsman and Edinburgh…

While the basic factual information is correct - that I am selling only one ticket to only one show at the Edinburgh Fringe for 7,349 pounds - nearly everything else in Shan Ross’ article in the Scotsman that quotes me is a bit fucked up.

If you haven’t read it - it’s HERE

Quote…

“The big agents in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival are acting like douche-bags – they are trying to monopolise a festival which is for everyone and (they] could easily take a much smaller stake,” said Stanhope.

Of all these words, perhaps and quite likely I used “douchebag” but that is as close to accurate as it gets. And the insult to this journalistic injury is where she put “[they]” in brackets as though otherwise the quote was verbatim. But it was her first job - I assume.

Another quote…

“My advice to this year’s kids would be to play the big finger in the face of these agents. Anyone can do their job – why not just put an advert in a newspaper yourself and turn up?”

I guess I must have been using my fake British accent at that point of the interview when I said “advert” and “turn up.” I may have said something about giving the finger - metaphorically or otherwise - to agents and bookers as they are indeed primarily worthless and should make no more than tips. I still have no idea what it means to “play the big finger” - though perhaps we should come up with a meaning and make it part of our usual nomenclature. Perhaps as a pick-up line or a comfortable way to say someone has passed on.

“Oh, Jimmy was fond of the drink from when he was a wee lad right up until he played the big finger.”

So the lady was filling in for somebody and I’m not the easiest interview at 7:55 on a Sunday morning. I would have made up quotes too rather than try to turn my stuttering into usable copy. Mike Wade of the TimesOnline (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article4054075.ece) did an interview an hour later that was a bit more accurate and captures more of the flavor of what I was trying to say - that agents are carpetbaggers who should be as afraid for their personal safety as much as their next meal.

The bottom line is that the Fringe makes me crazy. Sure, most comics suck and probably should lose money to fast-track them out of the business. But you hear stories of top-level UK comics doing a sold-out run and getting a check for a total of 29 pounds for their effort - because of a shitty contract - and it makes you want to necklace both the agent and the artist who puts up with it. Some BRENDON artists BURNS will defend the venues by saying that we artists are unfamiliar with the costs of running a venue. As one anonymous BRIAN onlooker HENNIGAN put it… “He didn’t win a Perrier in economics.”

I only tend to agree with the latter because I have always made a decent chunk of money in the three times I’ve played the Fringe. I chalk that up to working a fair deal with an honest person. If this is unheard of in Edinburgh, then this Party of Four probably wont change a thing except for which venues get the most fucking done. The artists will still lose like they always have.

Keep in mind, I’m a myopic drunk who’s facts are derived from the bits of drunken gossip and small talk that I can remember the next day. But I’m still more accurate than the flight-headed bonerpile from the Scotsman.

I’ve been telling Brian Hennigan for years the we should try to construct a violent comics overthrow of the Fringe. Unfortunately, like most of my ideas it disappears into the ether once it leaves my big mouth. I’m too old with my own problems to be the fire-starter and I’ve met very few comedians there that seem to have any desire to fight the system.

Selling the one ticket for the average comics loss is not so much a protest as an insult. This new Alt-Fest corporate merger of shitheels might suck but they have sucked independently long before they decided to get together and suck all at once. If the ramifications of this suck-fest are that artists and others start boycotting or holding out for what is rightfully theirs, then Huzzah.

But that’s not why I’m doing this.

What happened is - at some point I was talking with Brian and he - knowing how much the talk of comedians being raped in Edinburgh winds me up - told me that the average financial loss for a comedian at the Fringe was 7439 pounds - about 15 thousand dollars. I replied by saying that’s how much I’ll charge for tickets next time I play there.

One joke lead to another and this is where we are.

One show, one ticket. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. See the entire Fringe from the perspective of the artist, morning til night, show to show, schmooze to ass-kiss, drunk and drugged and drunk some more, only to wake up 7 thousand pounds lighter in your hangover.

And now you’ll know what it’s like to Play the Big Finger.

stanhope

The last site’s lack of accessibility was a perfect excuse not to update for a year. Xanax and Ambien were another. Now I have a new camera with a picture that demands an update. And there’s this week in Portland & Seattle where good stories often crawl into you while you sleep.

Now I just have to figure out how to put pictures up on this blog.

It’ll be a week anyway.

Stay tuned.

New site launched April 30, 2008 9:50pm PST. Doug will be contributing soon and often. Join the Mailing List to get updates. Feel free to purchase some merch while you are poking around.