Routine of spite by mark matchak

Michael Spite is a comedian who lives in an underground in-law unit with his girlfriend named
Warren. He will open his routine by delivering this information very quickly, only to pause and
say, “People say that isn’t Warren a man’s name.” and then he goes on to say, “So what, yeah and
I’ma Michael Spite.”
Sometimes in his routine he will refer to Warren as Warnie or Marnie. Marnie sells ecstasy and
heroin for a living, though neither of them use. Michael drinks and smokes like many stand up
comics. He has done performances where he will wait till the end of his set to finish an entire
drink and then gulp it down in one sip.
Michael claims, “Joking is always a solepcistic live act” and yet that “people are easily readable
when something’s humor is always in the back of your mind.”
After he prefaces something with “people say,” Michael extenuates in drawl, in a way that many
audience members have remarked, “renders the encounter with whoever is in question to be
inaudible.”
Sometimes Michael will say, “And America says to me.” Or after a series of difficult executions:
“and the world says to me.” Michael has closed with this line several times before, explaining it
must be drawn out from under the frantic cadence of his performances.
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“Horny’s Funeral” – For Stage
Michael starts in singsong, “Our world says to me, into the sounds of me hearing it say.”
and proceeds into a joke called “Horny’s Funeral” in which he drawls on what he hears:
(the Mourners attempt in speaking) “Life like Henry’s / to which no cathedral understands /
beguiles beyond the curtain / long past the end of this mass.” Michael explains in response that,
“Horny was fuckin’ cartoon guy and he got cartoon awe with / us / in here now.”
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Michael’s voice is froggy and in between, fading. He trembles a bit and then says a punch line.
Michael winces sometimes while building up the joke. Rarely does he yell though he’s raised the
microphone above his head before shouting through a layer of phlegm, “My people … Fuck the
free world.”
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“The Dice Waltz (Love, Love, … Love)” – For Stage
Michael opens in saying, “Love is non-linear and insane. Rock stars are probably good at sex but
cannot fathom the idea of being in love. There’s a chorus in response.” On which Michael
shrieks, “This band’s a members only club, / boys do we love our members.”
(Michael saunters around the stage.)
Often the joke ends here but at times making light of his relationship, Michael drawl on:
“Come to my palm Loved One / It won’t be long.” Michael in singsong, “When the lamp’s so
dim… / she sings.” Michael in drawl, “Two little crows with salt on their feet.”
“Here’s to love / or whatever goes out after the rain / perfectly dry without the insanity blanky.”
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Michael now rarely entertains joking about romantic perils in his set, but rather off stage has
remarked how ineffectually other comedians have turned being in love toward their own material.
Michael said once that it’s “easy to see, harder to articulate, and impossible to joke about,
‘showing’ articulation doesn’t count.” If someone who was not in effect a comedian were to
illustrate this feeling, Michael claimed it would, “come out as a greeting card, which has a shelf
life of around two days on the top of my refrigerator before encountering some disgusting mold.”
Michael has reflected on his act as an industry failure, remarking “I’m left with you here, feeling
martyr, and I’m not holding, fuck it, holding a nail to my own hand or anything … yeah Michael
Spite, all my life people told me hey Michael you’re a comedian you must see the little joys in
everything. Oh ho ho and no that’s Micky Spit. Micky Spit. Shit. Micky Spit, tells jokes, the guy,
a couple doors down at the club and really gets past the mic at you with ‘What comes after the
light at the end of the tunnel, for comedians I guess it’s a network deal.’ That’s a delightful little
Micky Spit joke. I’m Michael Spite, I can’t tell those jokes when I’m here saying, ‘Micky, which
way is the tunnel motherfucker?’ and he’s long gone into the light, wherein it’s okay for him
now, as to read the specifications of the mic’s build aloud and be out there still getting laughs.”
Michael has mentioned the fictional comedian Micky Spit in his routines several times,
positioning him as a sort of nemesis to his own act. Spit seems to represent comedy as a sort
unfulfilling prophetic venture. Unlike Michael, he has a larger, perhaps more diverse audience,
and attempts to level the same critique with more imagined support.
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“Micky” – For Stage*
Michael explains, “I will now present you with one changing or several different shit eating
grins.” (Michael goes on to move his lips in slight and makes several attempts to draw his eyes
downward past his nose in effort to look at his own mouth.) Michael then mocks, “When I get my
smile in the rightest / I am left with you who support me / But this smile, his kind of smiling, is
too straight. / But to all who take direction / ‘left or right’ / here’s to contingent, non-deceptive
career successes. / drawn out appearances, of everything human and circumstantial / because
when it reaches its own stillness / it cannot think.”
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* This joke appeared previously on a compilation album where it was titled “Micky selling out”.
Michael Spite is the sort of archetypical nutjob male stand up comedian. His delivery is often
apathetic and it sometimes gets compared to that of Stephen Wright if Wright spoke a bit quicker
and was less observational. Michael’s favorite Stephen Wright joke is “I got up out of the bed and
told her I’m going for a walk and she said how long will you be gone and I said the whole time.”
Like Wright, Michael’s jokes sometimes hang on to their emptiness after the audience laughs, or
more often than not, if the audience laughs.
Michael is cynical without the brashness of Bill Hicks and unstable like Maria Bamford except
more resilient. Some of his material tempts what he describes as “the hilarity of gestural
inflation.” He has been recently lying about his associations with other more famous comedians
and then trying to denigrate their reputations under false premises. In his last performance he
talked about getting lunch with Louis C.K. who was drunk the whole time they hung out. He said
once that the hyper-masculine comic Andrew Dice Clay came onto him in a bar.
“Musn’t Post” – For Stage
Michael’s most recent material involves summoning a friend to the stage. Prior to this Michael
will claim this friend secretly booked him for the first time that night at the club. Michael’s friend
is then brought up on stage and forced to stay up there for the rest of his routine.
Michael is keen on playing the role of out-of-towner.
Somewhat in line with lying about his ties to more famous comedians Michael will often open
under this pretense he’s been flown in from out of town to perform at an open mic or local
showcase. He will make sure to acknowledge how much previous clubs have paid him to perform
but commend the audience for being more inviting than audiences in places like Las Vegas or
New York.
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“Angels Talk” – For Recording
Michael explains, “It’s the early morning in Petrarch’s Studio: / A Comedian turns on /
A Voice Actor / and against monorailist practice, all voices turn higher / And with tediousness of
pitch effaces the handle on the spatula or baseball-bat-cigar-thing / So wacky.”
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Michael’s family is relatively well off and this allows him to live in multiple cities at a time. He
has a brother, Jean, who goes by the family last name of Pitts. Jean Pitts is several years younger
than Michael however; he has outshone him in terms of completion. Jean acts on Broadway,
which as one might expect, Michael resents. On the radio program “So What Chicago?” Michael
called Jean a “real life Corky St. Clair” though went on to commend his efforts in the theatre.
Jean on the other hand, has kept Michael out of his comments to the press, only once regarding
his material as “currency used by the madman for escaping to the outer limits of a frame / or
contested structure, queering against it’s own earthliness.” Michael has requested clubs use this
bit as a descriptor proceeded by “Jean Pitts – BROADWAY STAR”.
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"One about the Gun” – For Stage
In an evaluation of what Michael has called the “theatre of deceit” inside of which the country
acts, Michael has taken to more performative material on touchy, media-popular subjects.
Michael’s a favorite joke to tell in this vein is a very trivial anecdote about how terrible his
friend’s car sounds. It’s a jab at the NRA but for Michael that’s not really the funny part. The
joke involves him making the sound of a semi-automatic being reloaded and then fired over and
over at the audience. He closes with the line “if everyone’s muffler sounded like this, maybe the
world would seem a lot safer.”
Michael wears a black leather blazer or a very tight black t-shirt tucked into black slacks when he
performs. One performance he wore a shirt with a comic from the strip “Life In Hell” on it. He
claims to be “oblivious” to the climate of contemporary stand up comedy and says he does not
own a TV. Michael has praised the comedian David Cross for requesting a club remove all of the
chairs in the room before a show thus forcing the audience to stand for the entire performance.
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