comedy needs Crashing

now, if you’ve
Netflix, you’ve
noticed a
number of
new stand-up specials
nestling about the
new releases

i do and?have,
and dig the comedy,
and so recently?dug
Chappelle, Louis C.K.,
Jo Koy, Amy Schumer;
got eyes on others

i also?dig on
Pete Holmes,
and so dug
season one
of Crashing on HBO,
which is
Judd Apatow produced,
and stars comic
Pete Holmes
as himself –
a person,
not incidentally
to the show,
who happens to have
some semblance
of oh-so-quaint
Christian faith

and?this is
just
it:

the confluence of
Holmes’ perspective
and a certain?”typical”
comedic perspective –
generally hilarious,
of course,
but also
sardonic, cynical,
melancholic and
world-worn and weary,
endlessly observational
when it comes to
finding problems,
but seldom (apparently)
when it comes to
actually addressing them,
actually living with them
in the day-to-day
(other than offering
its own oddly biblical
and plenty true
pseudo-spiritual
prescription of
“just laugh through it”) –
just *struck* me

now it strikes me:
“confluence” isn’t even
the right word;
something like
“incongruence”
is better;
something like
“juxtaposition”

it’s the dissimilarity
that struck me
between, e.g.,
a Louis C.K. –
who, no matter how
much i love him,
comes off, sadly, like a
man miserable
because he’s
smart enough
to see the world
as it is, but
faithless to the
point of having
no recourse
but misery –
and a Holmes,
with all his
boy-in-the-big-city
optimism, his
bright-eyed hopefulness,
his faith that
may not be perfect
or make everything perfect,
and which will
probably understandably
evolve over the series, as it
apparently understandably
has over his actual life,
but which nevertheless
addresses the day-to-day,
affects it, affects him,
affects those around him,
rousing responses of
“D’awww, you’re a
‘God person!'”
as Sarah Silverman quips
in a stand-out episode

and now it strikes me:
“struck me” isn’t even
the right way to say it

it doesn’t just “strike me,”
this incongruence,
it makes me long for
the world –
that of stand-up comics
and the rest of us –
to also see and notice
this incongruence
and?conclude:
faith is still a live option

it is an option
that real people
still actually?choose,
and when they do,
it actually affects things

when they do,
they still may
laugh through tears
with the comics,
as we all unfortunately
must in this world,
but?as they do,
they do so with
the ultimate end to tears
in mind –
the?ultimate end
which those without faith
do not,
unfortunately
cannot see

[SPOILER]
at the end of
season one of Crashing,
comedian Artie Lange
dives into a baptismal pool
(it’s a whole thing
you’d have to watch to get)

all i’m saying is:
there are still
baptismal pools

there are still
baptismal pools,
and entering them
is still a thing that happens,
and when it does,
other things –
brighter things –
can also happen