Alright, let's get this out of the way quick and easy:  No show at Monkey Pants this Thursday because of bar caroling.  If you want to be involved in bar caroling, go down to Pants at 6.30, pay $60, and you will be driven from bar to bar in a goofy sweater, singing carols and drinking a shitload.  Your money covers drinks and tips at all bars.  It's a good deal and a great time; no comedy show, though.  Also, Steve Marek will be at the Comedy Spot on 12/18.  Visit www.thecomedyspot.net for more information.

Now, for the business at hand.  This Friday, 12/16/11, will be the 50th birthday of Bill Hicks.  Hicks was an amazing comedian that never held back, never compromised, consciously attempting to further his art by injecting his acerbic judgements of life, religion, and culture into his stand-up.  He could shock an audience with his vulgarity and his morality, sometimes in the same sentence.  He paved the way for countless comedians to speak their minds about what they saw was wrong with the world, and to do it within the confines of a comedy stage.  There were some before him, like George Carlin and Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, but those guys weren't Hicks, shouting and screaming from the stage, sweat dripping, leaving bits of soul on the stage, dying to have his truth heard.

Bill Hicks is the reason why this podcast exists.  When I first met Steve in 2001, we both knew Hicks' comedy, and it was the only thing we had in common.  It was the springboard for everything else that came after.  From there we learned to appreciate or tolerate each other's taste in music, we played in bands together, and we started our own adventures in comedy together directly because of Hicks' influence on us.

When we first started going to shows, we were very pleasantly surprised by the caliber of the local performers, but it didn't take long for us to realise that the local comedians just didn't quite have OUR voice.  They were making us laugh, but they weren't shining a light on a dark subject like we wanted to.  They were entertaining audiences, but they weren't shouting from the pulpit like we felt we could.  They were getting laughs, but they weren't changing minds...and that's why we started doing comedy.

Of course, there's been a lot of learning since we started doing stand-up.  Lesson 1.  It's impossible to get good laughs, subvert a paradigm, and ignite the lust of every woman in the room when you have a mere 6-8 minutes to perform.  Lesson 2.  The more we learn, the more we realise just how vast is the gap between Hicks' stand-up and our own.  Lesson 3.  Read Lesson 2 until your eyes dry out.

No one has affected us nearly as much as Hicks.  Recently at work, after listening to 2005's "Sane Man" on Netflix, I turned to Steve and said, "Patton who?"  After leaving a screening of "American:  The Bill Hicks Story" at Madcap Theaters, Steve jokingly told me he was quitting comedy.  Something in Hicks' material gets under our skin and gives us chills.  Something in Hicks' performances makes us believe that if we can find a similar freedom on stage, maybe we'll be happy.

I don't ordinarily care about the birthdays of dead people- hell, I don't ordinarily care about the birthdays of living people.  This one matters to me, however.  Maybe it's because I want to follow Bill Hicks' trajectory so tightly, because I want to emulate him so badly, because I want to bear his flag into the great spiritual and cultural battles that are waging right now, that I'm thinking of his birthday.  That Hicks would've had 17 more years of experience today to apply to the crashing Euro, to the Occupy Wall Street movement, and to the deplorable state of American politics is an awe-inspiring idea.

But that's a what-if that can never be answered, and will only take up valuable time and creativity.  It's far more important that we at the S&M Comedy Podcast simply issue a fondest of happy birthday wishes to the ether, pick up a mic and keep blurting out in the name of truth, to never back down, and never stop growing.  That is the truest emulation of Hicks that we can muster, and the most fitting tribute to his memory that we can offer.