Who needs illegal immigrant labor, anyway?

[mburbank]

Washington Times-

The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job.

[El Blanco]

Didn't everyone make that joke when the topic was brought up? I remember Carlos Mencia was accused of stealing it from some third tier comedian (not that Mencia is the pinnacle of funny) and it almost started a brawl.

[SimpleLogicnMocking]

Didn't everyone make that joke when the topic was brought up? I remember Carlos Mencia was accused of stealing it from some third tier comedian (not that Mencia is the pinnacle of funny) and it almost started a brawl.

El Blanco, there is a good point to have made. I relize this is going to trail-away from the original, but this was an interesting spin on your comment I found in an article:

"Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:

Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society. The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius," and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.
The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page. Thus, in 2002, the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.
These long-standing rights to anonymity and the protections it affords are critically important for the Internet. As the Supreme Court has recognized, the Internet offers a new and powerful democratic forum in which anyone can become a "pamphleteer" or "a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox."

[KevinTheOmnivore]

What????

[El Blanco]

I wasn't being all that deep. It was kind of a throw away line.

[mburbank]

Carlos Mencia is a NOTORIUS joke thief. But then so is Robin Williams and it never hurt his career.

Plus, I love it when dumb obvious jokes become true.

[El Blanco]

All comedians use material from others. Why is it people only seem to steal obvious, easy jokes?

And true stand up doesn't come from the joke, but from the delivery.

[sspadowsky]

All comedians use material from others. Why is it people only seem to steal obvious, easy jokes?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but there are plenty of comics who would rather stick their junk down a garbage disposal than steal a joke from another comic. Stand-up comedy is the most self-policing art form out there. A handful of guys will get away with it, but if you get a rep as a joke thief, they will run you the fuck out of the club.


And true stand up doesn't come from the joke, but from the delivery.

It's been my experience that guys who believe that also think Dane Cook is funny.

[El Blanco]

Its been my experience that people who make those statments are bigger pretentious pricks than the degenerate, emotionally broken, attention whoring, self pitying, self involved assholes they follow. Seriously, they are bigger douchebags than self styled music critics.

And I don't like Dane Cook.

[sspadowsky]

Insult all you like; it still doesn't change the fact that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and any professional comic would tell you the exact same thing I did. I'll take a professional comic's opinion on comedy and joke-stealing over, say, yours.

Kudos for at least recognizing that Cook sucks.

[El Blanco]

Insult all you like;

Did it lok like I was waiting for permission?

it still doesn't change the fact that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and any professional comic would tell you the exact same thing I did.

How odd, that the ones I used to hang with didn't.

I'll take a professional comic's opinion on comedy and joke-stealing over, say, yours.

We're talking about some mentally fucked up people. Kind of hard to take what they say at face value. You should watch them. See The Aristocrats.

[sspadowsky]

How odd, that the ones I used to hang with didn't.

I'll bet that either their shit was never stolen, or never good enough that anyone would want to steal it. Fuck 'em. Every single one of the comics I currently hang out with thinks that joke thieves are hack pieces of shit. And they're right.

Let's say you're a blues artist, and you've written all these great tunes, and people have heard of them, but maybe don't know who you are, because you picked the wrong guy to manage you. Then you walk into some bar and see four thieving British fucks playing your music as if it were their own, and getting cheered, and getting paid insane money, and the crowd thinks they're the geniuses who came up with it. You'd be pretty pissed, wouldn't you?

We're talking about some mentally fucked up people. Kind of hard to take what they say at face value. You should watch them. See The Aristocrats.

Saw it, loved it, bought it. It's not hard to take what they say at face value at all. They're far more interesting than most people you'll run across on a daily basis. It's shallow and stupid to write off something they say just because they make jokes for a living. Besides, when faced with a choice of whom to hang out with, gimme the fucked-up people every time. They're a lot more fun than "normals."

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I don't hang out with comedians like you two do. :(

[sspadowsky]

It's an exclusive club, baby. Nicholson don't even get past this velvet rope.

[MattJack]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddktfwjvu7k

Sorry to derail this thread even further. But I did this for you Blanco.

And some for you too sspad, but I'm sure you've seen it.

[El Blanco]

I'll bet that either their shit was never stolen, or never good enough that anyone would want to steal it.

I was refering to stage presence and delivery being more important than actual lines.

Fuck 'em. Every single one of the comics I currently hang out with thinks that joke thieves are hack pieces of shit. And they're right.

I didn't say joke stealing was cool. It is wqrong and the people that do it should be called out.

However, I think the accusation is thrown around way too easy. That video Joe Rogan made a while back shows Mencia and a few comedians telling similar jokes. But they were easy jokes. Its entirely possible for two people to seperatly come up with a shitty joke.

Let's say you're a blues artist, and you've written all these great tunes, and people have heard of them, but maybe don't know who you are, because you picked the wrong guy to manage you. Then you walk into some bar and see four thieving British fucks playing your music as if it were their own, and getting cheered, and getting paid insane money, and the crowd thinks they're the geniuses who came up with it. You'd be pretty pissed, wouldn't you?

At them? Sure. If they knowingly stole my work. But then, again, I should get pissed at the retard that didn't copyright it to begin with.


Saw it, loved it, bought it.

So, you see how a bunch of different comedians took the same joke and did it themselves, right?

It's not hard to take what they say at face value at all.

It can be when they are crying about how wronged they were.

They're far more interesting than most people you'll run across on a daily basis.

At first.

It's shallow and stupid to write off something they say just because they make jokes for a living. Besides, when faced with a choice of whom to hang out with, gimme the fucked-up people every time. They're a lot more fun than "normals."

Except when they are crying drama queens that always have to hog the attention.

[El Blanco]

I don't hang out with comedians like you two do. :(

Past tense. I outgrew that after college.

Individually, some of them are pretty cool, decent human beings, but in a group, when a topic like "joke stealing" appears, it just gets pathetic. The only thing worse is "selling out".

[mburbank]

Okay, okay.

Paralell generation and joke stealing both exist. You can't always tell the difference but mostly you can. Accusations of joke stealing come from people showing up at an open mike or showcase night and later telling a version of a joke they have never told before that was very similar to a joke another comic told that night and has been telling.

In the comic community 'joke stealing' is frowned upon. Nothing is more frowned upon than established comedians who go slumming at local clubs and later do jokes in a professional setting that they have never done before that are very similar to jokes done by comics at those clubs on the night the established comedian was there.

As for what comedians are like, in my experience, a higher percentage of them are fucked up jerks than you'd find in say, a group of accountants, or lawn care professionals. Comedy isn't something you go into professionally because your well adjusted and happy. On the other hand, they can be, you know, funny. It doesn't get your taxes done or cut your lawn, but you laugh. Who you hang out with is your own choice. Who the fuck cares?

Delivery vs. material. They are both really important, and I never seen a truly great comedian who didn't have both in spades. That being said I have seen great writers bomb more seriously than I've seen comics with great stage presence bomb. Again, so what? To me that has more to say about audiences than comedians.

Comedians learn from each other, the copy technique of each other, but Sspad is right that joke stealing is shitting where you're eating, most comics don't do it, it can't be stopped, but it's loathed by comics the way good doctors hate plastic surgeons and MD's who practice to support a drug habbit.

I think Mencia is a joke stealer. But way before I thought that, I thought he was a totally shitty comedian, with a little bit of delivery skills, but whose material virtually always sucked. When he steals, he steals low rent material which he then delivers worse than the original stuff. But he's famous because like Larry the Cable guy, he caters to peoples inner retard. Git r' done. Duh duh duhn.

Yeah, I'm way down on the comedy totem pole. But I worked full time in the comedy world for eight years, I opened for Ron White who could beat Larry the Cable Guy to death with just his booze breath back when nobody knew who the hell he was, I coached miserable fucked up comedians for eight years and managed to keep a roof over my damn head, so when I say Menicia sucks huge ass even if he isn't a joke stealer, you have NO DAMN CHOICE but to acknowledge that I'm TOTALLY RIGHT.

[El Blanco]

For the record, I didn't say Mencia is a good comedian. I thought he was okay a few years ago when he stopped by occasionally on the Opie and Anthony show. But, that was before he was the Latin Dave Chapelle.

[Preechr]

For the record, I don't think cutting lawns for a living is a profession people that are well adjusted go into either.

[mburbank]

I bet they're better adjusted, though. Seriously.

[kahljorn]

what's wrong with cutting lawns for a living? you fucking imus

[El Blanco]

Absolutely nothing. Those wetbacks are doing noble work.

[mburbank]

See, now you need to go on an apology tour. How come Mencia hasn't been called to task for the painfully unfunny ugly shit he says each episode?

Not that I think he should. I think if we set a standard for national apology well spend a lot of time listening to apologies, which are rarely interesting or even believeable.

[El Blanco]

Can I sell tickets to my apology tour?

[kahljorn]

nmaybe if you donate the funds to an apologetic charity.

[El Blanco]

The National Coalition of White Guys that Just Don't Fucking Get It

[kahljorn]

We don't need any money just hot babes sorry ;o

[Courage the Cowardly Dog]

Insult all you like; it still doesn't change the fact that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and any professional comic would tell you the exact same thing I did. I'll take a professional comic's opinion on comedy and joke-stealing over, say, yours.

Kudos for at least recognizing that Cook sucks.
Someone else thinks Dane Cook is a moron?
THANK YOU FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER! Someelse has good taste.

Mencia is pretty funny for a joke thief though. I love his racist Mexican humour that it's okay to laugh at cause it's being told by a Mexican.