The only time I can ever remember doing a benefit show was at the Comedy Store fuck-teen years ago for legalizing weed in the days I would have done a spot anywhere for anything.
I don't do benefits for a reason. Most people don't like what I do. It's a simple fact. And benefit shows tend to draw caring, sensitive people cutting my demographic down to almost nil. Your friend is dying of face-cancer and all his friends and family are there at the show to show support and raise money and on stage you have some drunken asshole bleating on about justifiable homicide and corrective rape and the meaninglessness of life. And if that doesn't ruin the night, I'd probably not be able to stop myself from a couple face-cancer jokes to close it out.
I'm not heartless or greedy, I'm just not cut out to do charity functions. I'd rather just send a check than email apologies the next day.
The only way I can do a charity event is to simply do my own show for my own fans and just give the money to whatever organization without having someone's crying family staring at me uncomfortably.
So that's what I'm doing for the Humane Society of Southern Arizona.
If you haven't read THIS - I recently had a much-needed surgery pro bono from some extraordinarily generous surgeons in Tucson. In return, I told them I would do a benefit for whatever charity they chose. It was the least I could do, mathematically, in comparison to what surgery costs.
They chose the Humane Society which I love because unlike most of the human-related charities I mock, spay-and-neuter is at the core of what they preach. If that was one of the base messages of UNICEF or Habitat for Humanity then I'd be far more inclined to participate.
My big faux-pas was to book it in a theater that seats about four or five times what I can draw in that market. So I've been Twittering my dick off trying to find someone with a name that loves homeless kittens, who can sell tickets, and that doesn't need money. In Tucson. On a Saturday.
Funny how you go to call in a favor only to realize nobody owes you one. I should have been a better person I guess. I should have done more benefit shows when I had the act for it.
The good news is that a lot of my friends are still the funniest people in the world even if they aren't Big Names and the show will be a monster regardless. Brendon Walsh and Henry Phillips have signed on and we have local legends Nowhere Man & a Whiskey Girl as the house band.
Nobody is getting a cut of the profits. I'm paying everyone's expenses out of my pocket, not the gate. I'll be auctioning off Mother's Ashes as well as lots of other sentimental oddities. Bingo even said she'll auction off a lubricated handjob but I think that's illegal even in the free-thinking, progressive state of Arizona.
I'm only pushing this show this hard because some nice folks were nice to me and I don't wanna look like a dick in paying them back. So please spread the word and Facebook and Retweet and whatever the fuck it is you kids do.
Oh... and whatever you do... don't Twitter Sarah Silverman repeatedly about coming to this event. The sexual tension between us would be too palpable for mere comedy to overcome.
Here's to kittens and puppies,
stanhope
Tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets.