Papa John: The Future of Comedy
"Hahaha hehehe." Chances are if you've heard these sounds before, you've been to a stand-up comedy show. The funniest comedy comes from truth. That’s why it’s so funny when Bugs Bunny dresses up like a girl Viking and gets Elmer Fudd to fall in love with him. As the audience, we start to fall in love with Bugs Bunny and we want to get a big kiss from him; the honesty makes us laugh.
Recently, I attended a Kevin Hart stand-up show at Madison Square Garden. Kevin Hart came out, did an excellent 90 minutes of comedy, and at the end of it, I started to leave. "This next performer," Hart interrupted my departure.
Next performer? What is he talking about? I wondered.
"Well, you all know him, you love his pizza, give it up for Papa John."
The audience looked around, unsure if this was a prank or not. But lo and behold, out stepped Papa John himself.
"How you all doing?" Papa John started. What followed was a 25-minute set by a man who had never before performed stand-up comedy.
And he killed.
First, Papa John started out with some modest self-deprecation, as if to ease us into comfort. He looked at the microphone stand, confused. "This is the worst pizza paddle I've ever seen!" Silence. Then the crowd burst into belly shaking laughter, the sound of pure joy reverberating throughout the room.
"How many times has my pizza burned the roof of your mouth? I took one out of the oven the other day, and I swear, a volcano said, 'Too hot for me!'" A roaring laughter shook the theatre as we imagined a volcano saying this to a pizza. How absurd! "Call me Daddy J!" he commanded.
"This ever happen to you? You order a soda, and three fourths of it is water cubes!" Laughter and applause the likes of which even Jesus couldn't have achieved after turning water into wine exploded like firecrackers from the audience.
Then he did something none of us expected; he let an f-bomb slip.
"I'm like, what did I pay for, Pepsi-Cola or fucking water cubes?" The crowd loved this new "bad boy" that had transformed before their eyes. (It should be noted that each time before saying the phrase "water cubes,” Papa John closed his eyes very tightly, appearing to concentrate deeply, and did a "what do you call it" gesture with his hand, making it unclear if he knew they are called "ice cubes.")
"Hey, how many of you have gotten the shits from eating my pizza?" Hysterical laughter. "Call me Daddy J." A sorcerer stood before us, a master spellsman; and we were all under his control.
"The only thing cheesier than my pizza are my fat fucking Italian balls!" The man next to me laughed so hard he soiled himself. In fact, at this point, most of the theatre had. And in the interest of transparency between the reader and myself, I must admit, did I, too.
"Call me," he held the microphone to the audience and we screamed, "Daddy J!"
He paced around the stage, looking at his audience, a lion hunting its prey; it was time for crowd work. He pointed at a portly man in the front row. "This fat piece of shit probably eats a lot of my pizza." The man struggled to get the words, "I do," out as the laughter welled up inside of him, consuming him along with everyone in the audience except myself. Instead, my hands were clenched with white fury. This man had received the ultimate honor: to be roasted by Daddy J. And I got nothing.
"Alright, that's it for me. I'm DADDY J!" he screamed for all of Manhattan to hear. The inevitable standing ovation that followed brought a tear to my eye. For the future of comedy is bright, and its name is Daddy J.
