I don’t normally talk about the mechanics of comedy on this blog for a couple of reasons.  It’s kind of boring if you’re not a comedy nerd and talk like this should be left to more capable comedians than myself.  Personally, I love talking shop about comedy but this blog is about one thing, feeding my ego.

Regardless of my completely not at all overinflated ego (feel free to comment, link, post to facebook, digg, stumbleupon, email to your parents, print out and hand to strangers on the street while wearing a white robe and singing etc.), I posted a joke on facebook last night that I was thinking of taking onstage sometime and a friend pointed out that it was pretty close to a Mitch Hedberg bit.  I posted –

“The back of the Ritz cracker box is really presumptuous about the effort I’m willing to put forth into topping a fucking cracker. Tell you what, Ritz. You’re getting either peanut butter or cheese and maybe some summer sausage if we’ve got company. I’ll save the roast beef, horseradish and parsley for actual bread.”

This came to me while I was (get ready to peek in to the mind of the auteur as he crafts comedy gold) putting peanut butter on a Ritz cracker and reading the back of the box.

Seriously. The "Cheesy Tomato Melts" recipe calls for pepper and garlic powder. It's a cracker, not an episode of Iron Chef.

A short while after I posted this a friend commented that it was a Hedberg bit.  I couldn’t think of a Hedberg bit about topping crackers so I just took his word for it and decided to drop the bit before I ever took it onstage.  Another friend posted a link to the actual Hedberg Ritz cracker bit and stated that the context is different. It’s true, I certainly go in a different direction than he did but the basic foundation is the same and he came up with it first.

So what should a comic do in this situation? Throw the joke out.

It doesn’t matter that I came up with the joke on my own because I didn’t come up with it first. This rule holds true whether the bit was performed by an icon like Hedberg or a shitty open mic comic. You wrote it first, it’s yours.

Besides, if I’m funny I’ll be able to write a different joke that’s just as good. Comedian and aggressive top Rob Delaney wrote in Vice Magazine about a time a joke was stolen from him and performed on TV. He said “I realized that if I couldn’t immediately write several more jokes to replace it, then I wasn’t funny, and I had no business calling myself a comedian”. This philosophy should hold even truer (according to spell check it’s a word!) if you inadvertently steal a joke.

I’ll just write more, better jokes.  I’ll be fine.  In fact, you can see me at The Monday Night Comedy Show tonight. I’ve got a great new joke about Triscuits.