Of all the comics practicing their craft across the country today, none uses his venom quite as cleverly as Doug Stanhope. The cranky, Austin-based Stanhope doesn’t know the meaning of “tread lightly” and uses his deep-seated cynicism to go to that place, the one that makes you do a double-take and either laugh, cringe or outright protest. Provocative at its best, obscene at its worst and, for the liberal-minded, painfully funny, Stanhope’s humor has touched on everything from Jesus (“Why would you die for someone's sins? Your sins are the only thing interesting about you, you dreary, bleak motherfuckers”) to his feelings on the military (“As long as the people who kinda wanna go kill other people are going to go kill other people who kinda wanna go kill other people, you're killing all the right people and opening up all the best parking spaces”). The current political climate has provided Stanhope with a wealth of material to wax filthy about, his observations about easy target Sarah Palin so explicit and lurid that they can’t even be rehashed in an alternative newspaper. Sat., Nov. 8, 9 p.m., Crowbar, 1812 N. 17th St., Ybor City, $20, 813-241-8600, aestheticized.com.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2008.