Yes I Kiss My Mother With This Mouth

 

Yes I Kiss My Mother With This Mouth

By

Stu Cassell

For ten years I performed comedy professionally. There are similarities between writing a newspaper column like this one and performing stand-up comedy. In both instances you have to consider your audience, and in both instances no matter what you do, sooner or later someone might be offended.  

I started out going to open mike nights in Detroit, Michigan. New guys like me went last.  Often by that time the audience was tired and intoxicated and I needed to do “blue” humor to hold their attention.

As time went on, I got better at it; I began to get paid bookings in nicer venues. My choice of material reflected a greater sophistication. Back then, a serious comic (oxymoron) had both nightclub material as well as squeaky clean television material. If you didn’t, you had no hope of ever getting on the Tonight Show or David Letterman.  Those shows represented the pinnacle of a comic’s ascent in show business. To this day, those shows are considered springboards to sit-coms, movies, and higher paying comedy gigs.  

The irony is that today you hear and see things on network television that would have been considered risqué twenty years ago. Still, there are plenty of people alive today from my era or earlier, who maintain the standards of their upbringing. For them, a lot of today’s television shows are offensive.

I learned a few hard lessons years ago when I first retired from doing stand-up comedy. I was working at an active senior community as their activities director and wanted to perform some of my act for them. At one of the first parties I organized, an older woman got up and told a dirty joke that made everyone laugh. I thought, “Oh goodie, I can do a lot of my material here and not worry about offending anyone.” WRONG! The first time I mentioned a certain part of the female anatomy that rhymes with rest (notice I’m specifically not mentioning it here), I got slammed. I was told by more than one resident that they were offended by my use of that term. That saddened me because not only is it one of my favorite terms, but it frequently appears in many of my feature length day dreams.  

I had to make a conscious effort to start thinking about what I said or wrote so I wouldn’t upset anyone. This is necessary when you serve or entertain the public in any capacity if you don’t want to offend anyone. Sometimes it seems it’s unavoidable.

A few weeks ago I emceed a show for a local chorus. In my opening remarks, in addition to asking people to turn off their cell phones, I made a joke about putting their babies in their purses so they would sleep through the show. Later, when I heard a baby crying I remarked, “Apparently one of the babies escaped from the purse.” It got a nice laugh, but upset the mother who sent the chorus a two page complaint letter. I was very surprised when I read the letter, especially since there was another performer on the show, an 80 year old comedienne, who talked about flatulence for ten minutes. Despite the show being in a church, that didn’t bother anyone. Go figure.

My mission as an entertainer has always been to make people feel good, not offend them.

It’s not always easy, especially when you have the kind of earthy sense of humor that I possess. Unlike Michael Scott, in The Office, who frequently takes an innocent line someone else says, and turns it into something dirty with: “That’s what she said”, for me I must try to keep it under control at all times. That’s very hard… “That’s what she said.”  Oops!