Any comedian can tell you a dozen stories of some drunk coming up to them after a show and offering jokes they can tell at their next show.  I get that these people are just trying to be helpful but no comedian has ever told a joke onstage given to them by an audience member ever.  Comedians either write their own material or steal from other comedians, give the material a Latino perspective, get a show on Comedy Central, get called out onstage by Joe Rogan, have a video of the confrontation go viral and disappear from the public eye.  

If comedians started using material that drunk audience members offered after shows, stand up comedy would be a lot less coherent and a lot more racist.  Like, seriously racist.  Why do so many people tell me such racist jokes after shows?  Is it my shaved head?  

Just this week I was at The Monday Night Comedy Show and a guy came up to me and offered up some material I could use the next time I was on stage.  It wasn’t racist (incredibly rare) but still incredibly fucked up.  When I got off stage this wild eyed, gray walrus mustached man grabbed me by the arm and bellowed “Man I got some REAL FUNNY shit you can tell next time you’re up there and it’s ALL true!”  I told him I’d love to hear it sometime (lie) but kindly asked him to keep it down while other comics were onstage.  

He flagged me down during the intermission.  Here’s his story, unabridged, as best as I can remember it.  

“Okay so back in 69 I was 19 years load, right?  Got a fuckin’ Dodge Dart.  Fastest fuckin’ car I ever been in.  Step on the gas? Forget about it.  So I got this girlfriend and I’m livin’ in Ham Lake and me and my friends load up the car and head to Anoka for a party.  Back then you could fill up the tank, get a carton of smokes and a case of beer for fifteen bucks.  We’d drive around with a boat hooked up on a trailer and guys on the boat would throw empties at people’s mailboxes and shit.  So we get to this party and I start betting people I can drink a twelve pack in 3 minutes.  So I start cracking beers and pokin holes in the side so I can drink ’em faster.  Cracking beers and cracking beers.  Did it in 3 minutes.  I won 20 bucks!  After that I’m burping and my buddy bets me I can’t shoot tequila faster than him.  Listen, I was 19 and fuckin’ stupid, alright?  So I do six shots of tequila and I’m feeling pretty sick so I tell my buddies I gotta go home.  We all pile in the car, they’re gonna drive me home and go back to the party, right?  So we’re driving back and I gotta take a shit real bad.  I tell ’em I gotta shit but my buddy driving tells me to hold it in and I say ‘I can’t!’ And it starts coming out, right?  Just this soft brown shit coming down my pant leg and the smell hits me!  I got a sensitive stomach, right?  So when that hits my nose I gotta puke but I can’t get the window down in time so it hits my buddy and it hits me and then pow!  Car right in the snow bank!  So they’re all ‘get out!  You smell like shit!’ so I get outta the car and I take my clothes off ’cause they’re covered in shit and puke so I’m standing there buck naked in the middle of the winter and this farmer comes up on his tractor and says ‘what the fuck?’ And my buddies say ‘he shit his pants, man!  You gotta help us get outta the snow bank!’  So he gets the car out and he gives me a blanket to wrap myself up in and he’s just shakin’ his head.  The farmer’s just shakin’ his head.  The farmer’s just shakin’ his head.”

So yeah, I totally have permission to use that joke next time I’m on stage.