ANDREW SCHULTZ TAKES JOKING AROUND VERY SERIOUS
By Mike Binder
It’s obvious. It’s also obvious that he needs to be put to sleep. He needs to very gently be put down. That’s all there is to it. No good can come from this fellow’s type of comedy. It’s subversive and raw and smells highly of a mixture of malcontent, mischief, and street-level intelligence, which is completely dangerous. The guy is easily one of the most charming stormtroopers who’s ever marched across a stage, and I’m sorry, but if you took a little time and listened to his work, there’s a damn good chance he’d end up as one of your favorite comedians. He may already be. It wouldn’t be the first party that I’ve been way late to.
There’s more to Shultz than just a caustic bad-boy-comic, although I have to say, that’s enough to ring my bell some time. If you’ve read any of these substacks, I’ve written here, you know I like a raw, harsh, honest brand of comedy. I like an act that can get you canceled and make you a YouTube sensation on the very same Wednesday. I’m into a comic that doesn’t care about any other consequences than getting laughs and getting paid. If you’re getting paid the owner of the venue is happy and that means you made the audiences happy and that’s who my favorite comics cater to. The people that show up.
Trying to not listen or suppress edgy, non P.C. stand-ups is akin to following the science and the shit stump thinking behind masks and the shutdowns. Yes, it’s good to not hurt certain people’s feelings, of course, to not talk about things in public that might “carry-on-certain-stereotypes” , yes of course, but the power and the health benefits many, many others have lost from laughing that hard, from being that free, from feeling how powerful and then conversely not-powerful words are, so far outweigh the benefits of any kind of ass-hat word clamp and shut downs. I’m not saying that Lenny Bruce died for Andrew Schultz’s right to be insulting; he did however throw up in quite a few prison cells for it.
I love a couple of things about Andrew, and I’ve said this about a few of the new breed of comics, but he truly exemplifies one of my favorite parts: the bushwhacking approach to their careers. For those who don’t know, ‘bushwhacking’ is a hiking or camping term. It means going ‘off-trail.’ It’s commonly associated with using a machete or an ax to clear the brush or fallen logs in the way, but to me, it’s a perfect analogy of what it means to go outside of the system and chart your own course.
I feel like the first rappers going Gold on their own were the signposts in the ’70s and 80’s, but so were Country musicians and Rock acts all through the ’50s and early ’60s and in fact, that’s all that the Sun records acts and even where the Muscle Shoals sound charts from. No big-time record companies ever gave any of them the time of the day. In movies, the independent world was a bushwhackers way in too. Stand-ups though, still needed T.V. and radio, sitcoms or record deals and movies or big concert promoters and cable execs to anoint them for years.
When technology finally set them completely free, and the first group cleared the hill so that rubes like you and I knew of them like Joe Rogan and Bill Burr and a few others before they became household names, they were soon followed by the herd that’s running wild now. Comedians like Andrew and a slew of others that don’t need to bow to anyone putting the sword on their shoulders, bestowing them a title.
Schultz produces his stuff, not just specials, but podcasts, shows, tours, really anything he wants to do, and you can see in his work the confidence he gets from it. It must genuinely be liberating in this day and age to know you can’t be canceled. I mean, think about it, imagine someone trying to cancel Andrew Schultz for something he said on stage?
It would only make him bigger.
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying that he has a license that you can only give yourself. He’s taken it, and you can’t take it away from him. He applied for it with a crazy work ethic and by learning all kinds of skills above and beyond just telling jokes. Producing, marketing, directing, I’m sure editing, hosting, broadcasting, promoting. Even more important he earned the license by taking no prisoners and just not caring what anyone thought of anything he made jokes about. Just letting the dissenters all be a pack of screeching fools, people on social media with a lot more free time on their hands than he had.
If you watch enough of his stuff, you know too that he’s not looking to hurt anyone. He’s looking to make folks laugh. There’s a twinkle and wink to his stuff, even his crowd work. If you can’t see that as a noble cause, I’m sorry, but you’re missing something. If you don’t realize how important it is to be laughing, that’s the problem right there. By the way, when you hear someone tell a joke that really offends you at a comedy club, maybe you shouldn’t be at a comedy club? Perhaps you need to re-think your whole attitude? Maybe find a monastery that needs a custodian. I don’t know. I just know it’s a prickly world if you’re looking to get pricked, and this will piss many people off, but as I said, a lot more kids were hurt by going to school for two years wearing those soul-stealing masks than they or their teachers were helped. Deep in your hearts, you know that too.
A lot more Gay men and women, Black people, Jews, Handicapped, and Trans-folks are lifted up by being able to laugh at any jokes made about them, by the very act of making them just people, not precious China plates that can easily be broken.
I know too many of them who love to be teased and love good joking to know I know what I’m talking about. They just aren’t the type to march in their boss’s parking lot and pout on social media. They go to work, live their lives, realize that everyone has something that people are giving people shit about and they do their best to make a great life the best protest they have in them. I grew up in a time and a town when I was constantly teased and picked on and punched for being Jewish. I know that fuming and fighting Jew jokes only gets me so far, and when I do get my dander up, I usually want something else for it. I’m not honestly offended. I’m basically bartering.
I’m never offended by a funny joke about Jews. Not if I’m laughing I’m not.
The freedom these new acts have, which the lion’s share of the great Black, Gay, Women and Asian acts all have right now, is freeing and liberating to watch and enjoy. The best comedians aren’t looking to be hurtful, and audiences are smart enough to know it. That’s why clubs and concerts are all full these days.
Here’s a small sample of Andrew Shultz’s crowd work which he posts a lot. I’m sure he loves it, and he’s excellent at it.
See this guy live while it’s semi-affordable. He’s going to be an arena act very soon.
