I am standing here watching “Copyright Criminals.”  I stand when I watch documentaries.  They get me too excited to sit down.  After watching 1/2 of this doc I realize that Stand-up is the only art form where you can’t steal “sample” other artists material.  And I also have come to the realization that it’s very important we comics and audiences continue to police this.  

Every other art form gets away with stealing “sampling.”  Poets, authors, musicians, composers, painters, every one!  Even cartoons take from one another. Only Stand-up is truly original art.  I think that is because we police ourselves by refusing to let two comics have the same joke, or in reality if you are the first to tell it on TV then it’s yours.  “Congrats.”  However, we will still call you out in public. 

Even if an audience member hears a similar joke told by another comic they will come up to one or both of the comics and rudely let them know they stole.  Sometimes they will even go on public forms to say, “Hey so and so from Boise, Idaho stole so and so from Miami’s joke.”  I know this because I have stolen “sampled” from “friends” and “Seinfeld” numerous times.  I will let you decide if I mean the TV shows or people that are kind of my friends and Jerry Seinfeld.

It’s a fact that in the olden days audience members would take comics that stole jokes behind the “Laugh Factory” and breath fire very close to the comics hands and feet.  Audiences called these rituals, “Dane Cookouts.”

Moving on, stealing in baseball just doesn’t make sense, so don’t do it.   I don’t have the stats on this, but it’s something like, 100% of the time it’s stupid to make an out just so a runner can advance one base.  I learned that stat from a movie that “sampled” from a book called, “Moneyball.”  So, you know you can trust it.

Thank you,

Brady Novak