POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

Giraldo, comedy, addiction and decency

Turns out I was a lot bigger Greg Giraldo fan than I realized.  I'm ridiculously devastated.  I didn't want to do the cliche "comic with a dark side" post yesterday, but I keep finding myself back here.

There's the obvious loss to comedy.  I love stand-up.  A lot.  When I was in junior high my favorite show was A&E's An Evening at the Improv. Gawd, that's like a whole new category of nerd.  Some people like to jump out of planes, I like to laugh so hard I hyperventilate.  If I was being honest that would have been my dream job, but I know I would never have the cojones to even get up there, let alone the talent once I did.  It takes balls to bomb.  Even the worst stand-up has my respect just for giving it a whirl (except for Margaret Cho), and then only a small handful make it to the level Giraldo did, with good reason.  His most recent special was phenomenal.  Make a point to watch it if you haven't.  The prepared stuff was stellar, but there were a few minutes that will always stand out to me. 

This guy was practically sitting in the front row and fell asleep, unnacceptable.  Most comics would raz the guy for a couple minutes and move on, but Giraldo turned it into an entire new bit on the spot.  Beautiful. But don't take my word for it, take veteran comic and co-creator of Shecky Magazine Traci Skene's,  "Greg Giraldo was a brilliant comedian who understood the art of roasting better than anyone. His vicious jokes delivered with a wry smile hearkened back to the old days of the Friars. Onstage, he perfected meanness. Yet, it was his offstage generosity that his fellow comics will miss the most."

Addiction.  It's not a disease like cancer, but it is a disease.  Some people still don't seem to get that, specifically a certain ingrate on twitter yesterday that said he "got off easy", that he made a choice, as if he'd put a gun to his head and given his loved ones the finger.  That's the last time I sit on jokes that write themselves about someone whose entire internet persona is based on their cats, but I digress.  By the grace of God I don't suffer from addiction, but I've witness plenty of people go through it and have definitely wrestled my own demons.  I still shudder at the self-destructive things I've done.  As hard as it is you have to separate the person from the addiction.  It's one thing to blame someone for their own demise when they're too oblivious or self-centered to try to overcome it, but just reading through Giraldo's punchlines it's obvious he wasn't in denial.  It seems he was struggling for a long time, he'd already lost a lot.  When my brother went to rehab when I was in junior high, before the self help culture took over, one of the first things we learned was that recovery isn't the end of relapse and relapse isn't the end of recovery.  Giraldo had a relapse, it killed him and it's an unfathomably sad thing.  Just because someone loses at a battle you've never fought sure as hell doesn't make them weaker than you.  And being an asshole for sport is just a shitty thing to do.

via Chuck_Dizzle, Esquire article on Giraldo's conversion from lawyer to comic.  Oh yeah, did you know he had a law degree from Harvard that he gave up for comedy? 

crossposted at KillTruck + some video clips (I don't know how to post video on here)

P.S. In my opinion, a great way to remember Giraldo would be to go out and support live comedy.

Kill Truck

KillTruck is a wife, mother, blogger and native midwesterner now living in Eastern Washington state. She writes about politics, pop culture, parenting, wifing and a few other subjects she has no authority to write about. She has macabre fascinations with prostitution and/or cannibalism. In her free time she enjoys eating and/or drinking her feelings, liveblogging Lifetime movies, thinking about Scott Brown and mocking things she doesn’t understand.

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