If you are in Los Angeles on a Monday, climb to the deepest recesses of The Comedy Store (aka The Belly Room). You will likely be the only one in the audience of The Ding Dong Show but you will laugh until you cry.
Let me explain the show to you:
The host, Simply Don, is trapped in an eternity of rehearsing his cast of social outcasts (drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill, the physically atrocious). His pretend goal is to break them, and the show, into the big time. Broadway. The Academy Awards. The comic gold is feeding lines to people who can never ever get them right. Then to interrupt and insult them for it. And then to try again and repeat the process over and over. Pointlessly and hilariously.
The goal isn’t really a Tony Award but to point out the futility of the process of making nothing into something. In this case, because society will never embrace social deviants — people who are not part of any stylish or cool rebellion but rather just unacceptable and unattractive. The unpredictable and unproductive humans can never become respected and rewarded for their talents no matter how hard they practice.
Web2.0 tech bloggers are not social deviants in the least. Or hilarious like dingdongers. But they do futilely try to make nothing into something every day. Pointlessly. This is their whole deal. (more…)