“Show us where babies feed!”
More than anything, these are the words that come to mind when I think of Doug Stanhope — the brutally opinionated, smoke-tinged comic set to play Jazzbones this Tuesday, June 5.
More than his stint with Joe Rogan hosting “The Man Show” (Stanhope and Rogan replaced original hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla), more than any of his stand-up work, and more than his self-published book about baiting pedophiles on the Internet, I will forever associate Doug Stanhope with a certain late night infomercial for a certain line of late night (or early afternoon) DVDs.
“Girls Gone Wild.”
Surely you remember them. The plot was simple. “Girls Gone Wild” owner Joe Francis was seen sitting in all sorts of swanky locations, sending Stanhope to booze soaked destinations around the country in search of falling-down-drunk sorority girls amped over the opportunity to bear their boobies, and seemingly equally excited to forever humiliate every father, brother and future child in their lives.
They’re classics, as far as infomercials go.
Even Stanhope admits on his Web site, www.dougstanhope.com, those “Girls Gone Wild” infomercials “keep creeping back like life-herpes on my resume.” When I got a chance to chat with Stanhope prior to the start of his latest comedy tour, which will take him from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Colorado Springs, I couldn’t help but inquire about his work for Joe Francis and his “Girls Gone Wild” empire.
“I’ve never met anyone who I found more distasteful,” Stanhope says of working with Francis.
“Personally, you just go, ‘God, what an asshole.’ He is the scumbag he looks like on TV. Every time we were in the same room it was just awkward tension,” continues Stanhope. “It was still an easy gig. I went out seven or eight nights, to different college towns, and just goofed on sorority douche bags. People act like it’s a dream job, but ask any bouncer how great it is to work with drunk, last call, stupid fucking sorority chicks.”
There’s more to Stanhope than boob jokes, a revelation that may surprise some of you. As with most comedians worth remembering, Stanhope’s shtick is both seriously comical and social commentary. Though he recently announced he was ending his bid, earlier this year Stanhope started a campaign for the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 2008. Obviously designed for laughs, there was a streak of actual political activism in Stanhope’s platform. Even now that he’s officially out of the race for the White House, he continues to support the Libertarian Party, and amidst laugh after laugh, continues to make people take a more discerning look at the world around them.
“I don’t see that what I’m doing makes much of a difference,” says Stanhope, who cynically sees “no hope” for the world.
“If anything, it’s just finding that one guy who thought the same way and thought he was crazy because no one else was saying it. That’s the most you can hope for.”
[Jazzbones, with Andy Andrist and Rusty Shackleford, Tuesday, June 5, 8 p.m., $15 adance, $18 door, 2803 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.396.9169]