CHAPTER 145

Before that, Erika receives an email from the Comedy Cellar,

Thank you for coming to the Comedy Cellar. We are always trying to improve, and we find that honest customer feedback is the most valuable resource we have. If you have a chance, please let us know what you enjoyed and what you thought could have been better. We cannot promise a reply to each and every email, however we do answer quite a few every week. Every email comment we receive is read carefully by the owners. Please be blunt.

Erika replies,

Okay you want blunt, I’ll be blunt. I had the worst comedy experience of my life at your venue last night. A disgusting person, I won’t call him a comedian because he’s not humorous, Sam Morril, took the stage and spent the first few minutes of his act disrespecting Lane Graves, the two-year-old child who was murdered by the alligator at Disney. He even cracked ‘jokes’ about his parents and his funeral. I have never in my life been so offended and repulsed by someone. I immediately left and stopped to tell your staff why. They followed me to make sure my drinks were being paid not because I had just had to listen to a sick man try to use a child’s death as a pathetic shock value attempt at being a comedian.

Furthermore, upon speaking with friends who worked for a comedy club for over ten years, I learned that your venue had to know his set prior to him taking the stage which meant someone approved of this garbage. You should be ashamed of yourselves too. The girl who was introducing all the acts simply replied to my outrage with ‘different people are offended by different things’. Oh really?! I would expect all human beings would be offended by a sicko making jokes about a 2-year-old baby’s tragic death, saying his mother probably said ‘later gator’ at his funeral, etc. I have posted about this on every social media account I own and asked people to share it. The comedian himself replied to me to say ‘pretty strong act huh? Tonight was my first time trying that one out’. What a complete and utter pathetic excuse for a human. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air or live on the same planet as that precious little boy’s family. So there’s my review. The other acts were fine. I really enjoyed the staff girl who introduced everyone until I received her heartless rude response to my feedback. She can fly a kite too.

Noam asks Liz if anything was left out. Liz says not. Noam replies,

I’m a parent with two small children and I completely understand your reaction to Sam’s joke. Comedians generally hold nothing sacred. For them, the bizarre nature of the incident inspires a kind of gallows humour which others may find offensive or just not funny. To be very clear, no, we don’t approve of any comedians’ material before they take the stage. You note in your email that this was the first time that he told the joke, so not only did we not approve it, we had no way of knowing he was going to say it, since he had never said it before. But even if we had known what he was going to say, I have to tell you that I would not have intervened. I cannot censor the artists who appear at my venue. Believe me, sometimes I would like to but I can’t. You simply can’t imagine the resentment that I would engender if I were to tell Louis CK, who has done jokes about pedophilia that were controversial, or any other comedian, what they can or can’t say. Stand-up comedy by nature lives close to the line. What one person considers thought-provoking another considers irreverently funny and another considers unacceptably offensive. It’s simply impossible to lay down an objective standard that everyone could agree on. It’s the same reason the First Amendment is interpreted so broadly. It’s virtually impossible to decide what speech is acceptable and what can be forbidden. In the end it would all become about not offending me and my particular sensibilities. As a club owner, all I can do is stop booking a comedian if they are not doing well with the audience, and that determination can’t be made after any one set that did or did not go well. All the comedians have bad sets and almost all offend someone at some time in their careers. Having said all that, it’s no pleasure for me that you left unhappy. If there’s anything I can do, perhaps refund your cover charges or invite you back to a better show as my guest, please just say the word. I hope this has been helpful to you in some way.