The Louis C.K. / Dane Cook Summit
Filed Under Stand-Up Comedy
So this is almost nigh…
I’ve seen speculation that this meetup will address the joke stealing controversy, but I’m not so sure. Louie can be such an odd, surreal show that this moment could be about almost anything else. It could be at worst like the Letterman/Leno Super Bowl commercial… an opportunity for a good joke that neither comic can pass up. Louis C.K. has recently expressed mixed feelings about the accusations, so even doing the show is a little bit of an absolution for Cook.
I’ll be watching like all of you to find out.
Update: And I was completely wrong.
What’s really great about this episode is that it makes Dane Cook the aggrieved party – hardly what anyone expected. You’re put inside Cook’s mind as a person who knows his innocence and finds the stellar success he achieved in 2006 used, in part, to convict him. Both comics make great points here… C.K. asserting that Cook may have unconsciously absorbed his material in the constant need for fuel that a career like Cook’s requires. Cook pointing out that C.K. allowed him to be taken down without full-throatily making the accusations himself. (Whatever you say about Joe Rogan, he’s had the nerve to accuse Carlos Mencia publicly from the beginning, letting everyone know where he stands.)
Cook, near the end, points out how universal it is to have an itchy asshole. And Louis C.K.‘s brilliant joke that follows is wonderful. But C.K.‘s suggestion of how to avoid an itchy asshole is just as much an acknowledgement of how common an itchy asshole is in the human experience. A neat little way for C.K. to absolve Cook for at least one of the jokes, even if there’s no way either could entirely see eye to eye on the other two jokes.
I always found the ‘Naming Your Kids’ accusations to be the weakest of the three arguments. Back in high school, long before Louis or Dane were known comics, I was always telling my friends about the weird names I could give my kids.
With a last name like ‘Down’ I joked about how a name like Mark Down would be perfect for a kid working in car sales or retail. Or how they could not grow up to be cops, since they would be Officer Down. I had a long list of inappropriate names. So did my friends. It is an old joke, dating back to… lord knows how long… vaudeville? Earlier?
The ‘deliberate’ theft accusations always felt like a witch hunt, the guy is too popular, blah blah. None of the ‘evidence’ seemed as solid as the Mencia / Cosby joke.