Puppies & Heroin is the perfect title for a stand-up comedy album where a roomful of nice Lake Wobegon type Minnesotans meet a New-Yawk Eyetalian former heroin addict stand-up comic.
I have never heard anything quite like it. Mike DeStefano immediately goes for the jugular, telling his audience they are so nice that it hides the fact they are full of shit evil f-cks. When they do not quite get on board says that he is right and they should appreciate how funny he is. The audience does a 180 and the tone is set for the evening. At the end of the show the Minnesotans do not want to let this guy go. It makes for one hell of a wild and funny ride.
DeStefano was a Jekyll and Hyde comic. His story was he tried to be nice but there was always something that brought out his evil twin such as offering his seat to a guy with a cane and being told off. What set him off the hypocirsy of others not recognizing their evil side. For example, in the second bit Race Relations DeStefano tells the Minnesotans the reason they can say they are not racists is there are no minorities there to hate in the first place.
This segues into how life itself is a bad deal that nobody would go for if it was explained to them. Other hypocricies the comic goes after is retail therapy, the fact he is a former heroin addict colleges pay him to tell college students not to do drugs and he gets more an hour telling them that than they will ever get.
The last third of Puppies & Heroin is connected to that part of DeStefano’s life and the hypocrisies fo people’s imagined diseases and conditions.
The show ends with a story about an event at the Special Olympics where the comic figured out the meaning of life.
I do get a shiver up my spine when DeStefano jokes he is headed for a heart attack as that is what happened soon after the recording sessions for this album.
Major kudos to Dan Schlissel of Stand Up! Records for Puppies & Heroin. I understand the album is the result of a series of sets Schlissel recorded and then had to tweak together after DeStefano died. I have a rather picky ear when it comes to comedy recordings and this sucker flows seamlessly.
Puppies & Heroin
Mike DeStefano
Stand-up Comedy download album MP3
Stand Up! Records 2016
Our Stand Up! Records page has more excellent comedy
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