6 thoughts on “Patton Oswalt, Barbara Gray, and What You Can Learn From Their Internet Rumble

  1. Rob DeSantis says:

    A quick point here Josh: In item #1 number one you say “I don’t know the answer to any of these questions” when one of the questions was “Was it out-of-bounds for that audience member to film Patton’s set?” The answer to that question is yes, and it is always yes. It is ALWAYS against the rules to tape any comedian without asking. Every good comedy club worth their salt will say “please no filming or photography during the performance.” Now i tend to doubt any comedian caring ifs someone took their picture, but filming is never allowed. At open mic nights the rules are more lose, but it is still against the rules. So there is a chain reaction that started here by whoever was running that room not asking the audience members to keep their smartphone camera’s off. Period. The first event that caused a chain reaction here wasn’t the person filming the set, it was whoever running the room not making it very clear to the audience that isn’t kosher. So I think in this whole Oswalt thing, that’s one of the major details that is getting overlooked.

    I understand that isn’t the focus of the article, but most things I’ve seen written about the subject don’t bother to mention these people not having control of their room.

  2. Rob DeSantis says:

    Also i don’t spell check things i write.

  3. Josh Spector says:

    Yeah, the person filming shouldn’t have been filming. Like you said, that’s not really the focus of this article, but that is a fair point – I’m certainly not defending that part of the incident. Probably should have chosen my words a little more carefully…

  4. Vasco De Gama says:

    I’ve seen Barbara Gray’s standup. She’s not bad but the show I went to the audience wasn’t into her and she went off on them as well. Wow, pot calling the kettle black.

  5. Alex says:

    why are comedians like High School girls?

  6. Mark Miller says:

    I learned #3 the hard way, when I wrote about a cross over show I did with some slam poets and creative writing types.

    I tried to be inclusive and positive yet honest about each performer including the poets, but since I only decided to wrtie the post after having already done the show, I didn’t have any notes on anyone, and the only names I had were the ones on the flyer. Couple that with the fact that I really can’t focus or sit still for anything that happens before my set and I’m never paying attention to the person who goes right after me (or at least not the first half of their stuff) and someone was bound to be left out or overlooked.

    I wound up being accused of being a sexist pig, because I only wrote 3 sentences about the only woman on the bill and I was heavy on honesty and light on actual descriptive positive review…. I was really only trying to recount a show that I was proud to be a part of, but I ended up really hurting this woman’s feelings and it took every bit of back-pedaling-apology skills to rectify the situation which had spun way out of control by the time I was aware of it…

    Lesson learned. Words have consequences….

    Sub-lesson:
    Slam Poets and Feminist writers (both of whom I respect) aren’t comedians and don’t always know how to handle gentle barbs and tactless honesty.

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