HERE’S THE THING: Dane Cook gets really defensive and horribly misguided about comedy criticism (among other pretty bad things)

Welcome to HERE’S THE THING, where I talk about comedy-related things in a very HERE’S THE THING-type way.

My friends and cohorts at The A.V. Club started a shitstorm on the Internet yesterday when they posted about Dane Cook’s horrible stand-up set that was, to borrow the words of Sean O’Neal, “…the egotistical ramblings of a narcissist who has lost all touch with humility and quite possibly humanity.” Cook apparently went off the deep end, delving into material so disturbing and misogynistic it drew the ire of every other comic in attendance, including TJ Miller—who chronicled the entire horrifying recount on Twitter.

Lamer still, Cook spoke to LaughSpin presumably via email, and the site posted his words without much commentary nor a single follow-up question (taking a page from the Michael Ausiello book of nonconfrontational starfuckery—or if you prefer, the Tom Haverford book of “betting on all the horses”). This includes invoking the name of recently deceased comedy favorite Patrice O’Neal, inviting Miller and The A.V. Club away for a spa weekend, and this statement of defensive defensiveness: “It’s impossible to be both an artist and a critic.”

What I think he is trying to say is that TJ Miller’s opinion about his comedy is meaningless, because TJ is a comedian. As he outlined to Marc Maron on his WTF episode, he really doesn’t care what his peers think. And you know what? That’s fine. He should have just said that.

But the notion that artists can’t be critics is horribly misguided. In order to be good at what they do, artists need to honestly and purely experience the world around them, tracking the way people create. Same goes for critics, who are able to discuss art in a way that excites and inspires because they’re familiar with the tortuous creative process, and fully understand how someone gets from point A to point B.

For fear that this gets too vague and weird, let’s just talk about comedy. Artists and critics are the rare people who watch comedy and don’t simply evaluate it in binary; they’re able to think beyond, “Was it funny or not?” And that’s worth celebrating.

Can you imagine a critic who has no idea what it takes to be a comic? That person would be so removed from the artistic process that there’s now way they could appreciate the joy of a perfectly constructed joke or a life-changing stand-up set—nor could they articulate that in an inclusive way. (I mean, I’d like to think even Roger Ebert learned a thing or two about film by making his own.)

Can you imagine a comic who hadn’t thought deeply about what makes something funny, deconstructed the way other people make things funny, and wasn’t a harsh and relentless critic of their own work? They’d be really shitty and boring, and probably have a self-proclaimed nickname like “The Sassinator.”

I’m a comedy critic, but I also run and host my own comedy show, produce a major comedy festival, act with an arts education group and craft comedic pieces to perform at storytelling shows, reading series and stand-up-type shindigs. Am I bias, then, when I write about comedy? Of course I am. It’s human nature. But I see it not as a limiting factor, but one that opens my opinion up to the world. I always try to come at a piece of comedy with as open a mind as possible—with as nuanced an understanding of what that artist had to go through to get it made just the way they wanted. I also like to think I’m way more forgiving when something doesn’t live up to expectations, because I know what it feels like to bomb and take it personally.

Actually, I take everything personally, which means I also know what it feels like when a peer doesn’t like something I’ve done. It sucks, Dane. I know it; you know it. But you can’t have it both ways—you can’t purport not to care about your critics while simultaneously discrediting them. Maybe it’s not that it’s impossible to be both an artist and a critic, Dane. Maybe you’re oblivious to the fact that we all are.

HERE’S THE THING: Advice for aspiring journalists, because you asked nicely and it’s almost 2012

Welcome to HERE’S THE THING, where I talk about comedy-related things in a very HERE’S THE THING-type way.

Sometimes I get emails from people who ask me how to get involved in journalism. Sometimes those emails ask about producing comedy shows or even just simply being affiliated with The A.V. Club in any way. Sometimes those emails ask me to approve the Facebook friendship of a beautiful woman who thinks I, “have a nice picture profile with a good page.. i just created my profile on here… if i may ask how long have you been on this site? i hope you are having fun over there.” I usually respond to all three, because the more Facebook friends, the more people who will “hear” my response to the previous two inquiries with their eye-ears.

I’ve gotten a decent amount of them in the past year, which leads me to believe that there are a whole lot more hungry young freelancers (unemployeds) out in the world, eager to sit around all day resisting the urge to play Fortune Street and having ingested enough coffee to distract even the most medically sedated of my cousins. So I thought I’d answer everyone at once in a heavily trafficked public forum—or failing that, my personal website.

First, a caveat: I do have to admit that my first thought upon receiving such emails is “Why me?” It’s nice to hear that people think I have discovered the secret to success™, but I do feel like a phony talking about something I figure out more and more every day, and something that other people seem to have figured out more than me. But maybe it’s a façade; perhaps we’re all in the same boat, waterskiing our way around a lake until we decide to let go of the rope. Plus, maybe I’m just as qualified as anyone. As my brilliant Just For Laughs boss once put it, “Somebody has to do your job, and that person just so happens to be you.” So I’m embracing the circumstance—and, hopefully, everyone else’s tolerance for boring blog posts.

HOW TO BE A JOURNALIST WHO WRITES ABOUT POP CULTURE AND INTERVIEWS COOL PEOPLE, SO ADJUST YOUR 2012 RESOLUTIONS ACCORDINGLY!

1) Don’t quit. There are a lot of wonderful careers, and a lot of work goes into doing what I wrote up there in the bold font. If any of what I’m about to say is overwhelming and insurmountable, know that it’s okay—you’ll get through it. But if it gets to the point where you’re driving yourself crazy, you’re not a failure for thinking you might want to try something else. You’re probably pretty sane, actually. Just know that by not quitting, you have a non-zero chance of success!

2) Seriously, don’t quit. No judgment if you do, but if you don’t quit, you’re even better off than everyone who does. Now, I used to tell people this, then tell them the caveat that all the previous people I told had quit, so if they don’t quit then they’re even better off. They’d say, “Nice!” Then quit. Then the next group, I’d begin the story again and add another caveat about how all those other people quit, and soon I had my own rendition of a “12 Days Of Christmas” kind of thing. Is that how Christmas works? I’m Jew-ish.

3) Read a lot. Go to websites that write stories you enjoy reading, and read all of them. Then ask yourself, why is it that I enjoyed this? What tone was it written in that spoke to me? What did the author say that I agreed with, and what did they say that I disagreed with? What about how they said it? It’s important to have a solid knowledge base of what journalism-y stuff is out there for the next step. AW, HERE IT GOES! (Related question: Who loves orange soda?)

4) Ask for what you want. If you’d like to write TV recaps for TV Recap Weekly, then email the editor of TV Recap Weekly and ask if you can write TV recaps for them. HOWEVER: Get yourself prepared. Any good editor is probably going to want to see relevant writing samples, both in format and voice. So if you don’t have any to show, mock some up. As in, go out and write fake TV recaps for no one other than yourself. Or, better yet, start a Tumblr page and just post the recaps on it, and send links to the editor. Also, be specific in what you ask for—do you want to recap Community every week for a site that currently doesn’t cover Community? Do you want to interview Dan Harmon for a site that hasn’t ever spoken to him before, or maybe hasn’t spoken to him about a particular aspect of his show yet? Poke holes in a helpful way, which is the name of my failed PSA campaign from the late ’90s.

5) If you don’t hear back, follow up. There’s an old saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it’s true not because it’s old, but because it’s true. But at the same time, know when to walk away. You know how that one girl you’re sort-of kind-of interested in is always way more attractive when they’re dating someone? If an opportunity isn’t panning out, give yourself a self-five® and email somebody else to ask out in a totally non-committal way because you haven’t made up your mind about them and are unwilling to admit to yourself that, actually, this is all pretty indicative of the fact that you probably have made up your mind. Journalistically speaking.

6) Be prepared to suffer from these emotions: Parks & Rec exhaustion, paralyzing oversleeping guilt, self-aggrandizement, questionable eyebrow-raises from loved ones, Tumblr, repeated Googling of the word “letter” to make sure you spelled it right, guilt for ending the work day, guilt for taking a break to eat, guilt when you look at the clock, guilt when you’re mentally exhausted, guilt when personal feelings get in the way of what you deem to be cold and hard professional situations even though it’s impossible, just a lot of guilt, temporary sandwich Alzheimers.

7) Don’t quit.

Congratulations! You’ve sufficiently procrastinated right along with me. Maybe you’re cut out for this after all.