The Revolution Against Evolution

Tags: comedy writing, Saskatoon, Saskatoon comedians, Saskatoon comedy, stand up comedy, stand-up comedy, stand-up diaries, standup diaries, The Stand-Up Diaries, Trevor Dean comedian, trevor dean saskatoon, writing

I should have better things to do than be on Facebook late at night, but hey, Facebook now has a dating app within its Facebook app, so why not see how many rejections I can get from women who are scared of a guy that attends church (just a heads up… there’s more than you think!)

I was taking a poll on one page about which foods you liked or disliked, when I saw Kevin Hart’s photo in the top right corner. It had a headline saying he stepped down as host of the upcoming Oscars awards show.

Normally, I’d think it was fake news but I clicked on the story. Then to verify the facts, I googled the story and sure enough, it was true.

Kevin Hart was going to host the Oscars, then a day later he roved himself from the role. He got into hot water over tweets and material he did ten years ago that was homophobic. From what I read, he tried to offer an explanation that apparently did more harm than good.

Personally, I don’t find Kevin Hart funny. He’s a good actor but not somebody I’d watch doing comedy. Him, Chris Rock are ones who feel the need to yell and get angry with every word they say. Sorry, not my thing.

At the end of the day, political correctness is getting too out of control. It seems like there are people that get offended on someone else’s behalf much easier than a person of a specific group to take offence.

If Hart was smart enough to realize it, he’d see that these people that went all the way back several years ago to find this stuff didn’t like him in the first place, so out of jealousy and ignorance they decided to bring up the past to expose what he used to do for material.

Think about it, it’s from ten years or so ago, and probably doesn’t reflect his thoughts or opinions now. But that doesn’t matter. Instead of celebrating opportunity that someone gets through hard work, we all want to find a reason to knock that person off of their peg. Believe me when I say this, that the people who dug this stuff up on Hart, it says more about who they are as people than it does about Kevin Hart. You can take that to the bank.

Here’s another thing worth keeping in mind. Hart sells out arenas all over North America and his films do reasonably well at the box office. So why would he care about a small minority of people that want to keep him from making a living?

People seem to forget that comedy is like politics in a sense, in that you should be evolving in your thoughts and ideas. Something you believed or made fun of years ago may not be how you see the world presently. The majority of his fans, I would hope have enough common sense to determine that.

A politician cannot call another politician a list, or accuse them of lying, when they are in the House of Commons, as libel and slander laws are in effect in the house. In comedy, the comedians right to free speech is protected, not only by the constitution but also by the venue they perform in. While you are allowed to do material on whatever subject you want, there are one or two words that you must not use. Liking comedy is kind of like listening to the radio or watching t.v. If you don’t like what you are watching or hearing, change the station. Simple concept, hey?

Now, in my case, of the videos on my website, I think all of them, with the exception of one, aren’t completely clean. The videos are anywhere from 75 – 90% clean. When people I know watch it for the first time, they aren’t ashamed, I don’t get scolded. They say parts of it are funny which is the point of posting the videos.

I’ve cut the vulgarity out of my act, in addition to the sexual references. My act is cleaner now with better stories being told. Some of the material from years back in the comedy clubs isn’t something kids, let alone teenagers should hear, but in the age of the internet, some probably have. I’m not ashamed of it, nor does it reflect who I am at the present time.

The only reason those videos stay up on my website is to show you my evolution as a comedian, and hopefully as a man as well. Just about every new comic starts out doing vulgar and crude jokes. After a while, I figured out that wasn’t a good path for me to travel down and got cleaner. Not only that, but I just don’t feel like doing vulgar or dirty material anymore, not because it will offend a Liberal snowflake in the crowd, but because I don’t feel good in performing that material. I know I’m capable of doing better so I try to hold myself to that standard. Attending an amazing church now has helped on the accountability side. I get challenged to be clean and funny, and to do Christian material if I can make it funny and relatable.

People like the ones that outed Kevin Hart are probably ones that lien to ruin other people’s lives when good breaks happen, like if nothing good can ever happen for me, I’m going to make sure it doesn’t happen for somebody famous.

That’s a broken and sad way to live. A comedians material is part of their journey. I’d like to think that Canadians in general aren’t as negative and spiteful as some Americans appear to be. North of the border we tend to celebrate the success of others. People grow, they change, they evolve. I thought that’s what life is about, knowing you can wake up the next day and know you don’t have to be who, or what, you used to be from the day before.

If most comedians tune out the negative chatter around them, they will see that those who are in their corner heavily outweigh the naysayers, thus drowning out their voices.

Love triumphs over hate. Optimism and hope triumph over fear. They must. Otherwise, life isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.