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The Navigator

With a Facebook like that, he has to be funny

By RICK GERSHMAN
Published January 26, 2007

It's true of stars from Dave Chappelle to Jim Carrey, Ellen DeGeneres to Richard Pryor, Jerry Seinfeld to unfortunately Rosie O'Donnell:

Before they hit it big, they did stand-up comedy. And they did a ton of it, over and over, night after night, all across the country.

Long before they headlined blockbuster movies, hosted hit TV shows or offended every carbon-based life form (nice work, Rosie), they worked the circuit. They lived out of suitcases, playing hole-in-the-wall comedy clubs and working on their repertoires.

And they're proud of it. In the latest issue of GQ, brutally cutting comic Sarah Silverman comes to the defense of newly minted superstar Dane Cook, who has few fans among fellow road warriors.

Whatever you think of Cook's humor, Silverman points out, he worked the circuit for a decade to get his shot at the big time: "He's paid his dues."

But Cook also took knocks from old-school comics because his popularity blossomed on such new-school outlets as MySpace, where he marketed himself heavily and now boasts about 1.7-million "friends."

By comparison, after 16 months on MySpace, I have exactly ... no friends whatsoever. Seriously, it's sad. Even Tom freaking dumped me.

(If you didn't get the last joke: Tom's the default "friend" every MySpace user starts off with. Just ask anyone who uses MySpace. Like your teenager, your cat, your unborn child. Maybe even your unborn cat. Everybody's into it these days.)

Comedian Steve Hofstetter is a good ways off from Cook's quantity of "friends," weighing in with about 425,000 on MySpace, but that's not too shabby for someone you most likely never heard of before.

Hofstetter, who brings his "Night of Jewish Comedy" to the Tampa Improv in Ybor City on Sunday, is the sort of 21st-century comic who is so computer-networking savvy he threatens to make Cook seem like a Mennonite.

(Okay, sure, I know Mennonite jokes are way too easy. But I prefer them to Wiggles jokes, because Mennonites don't use e-mail. And they don't write message board posts with titles such as, "I want to hurt this reporter." True story.)

Instead of making his mark on the road, Hofstetter used Facebook, the collegiate sister to MySpace, to market his comedy skills. As he wrote in a January 2005 essay:

I was on Facebook when I got a message asking me when I was performing at a particular campus. I wrote back with the details, and it dawned on me - what a great way to let people know when I'm in town.

I started adding people I didn't even know as friends. ... I decided to see if I could get 10,000 friends on the site.

Word started spreading that there was a crazy comedian adding people on Facebook. And suddenly, I didn't have to ask anymore. I spent hours adding all the people who were asking ME to be THEIR friend... I'm already over 5,000.

Four months later, Hofstetter had eclipsed his goal with an extra 0: He had more than 100,000 friends. Showoff.

Granted, the 27-year-old doesn't just hang out on social networking Web sites. He tours frequently, and he writes a sports humor column for Sports Illustrated's Web site, SI.Com.

And judging from his debut album, Cure for the Cable Guy, Hofstetter isn't purely a Facebook/MySpace creation. While his material doesn't exactly break a lot of new ground, he has a likability that mixes well with his decidedly impolitically correct humor.

Plus, Hofstetter notes often on the album that he gets a lot of hate mail.

I feel you, brother. But trust me: Take it easy on the Doodlebops.

Rick Gershman can be reached at rgershman@sptimes.com or 226-3431. His Times blog, the Ill Literate, is at sptimes.com/blogs/tampaarts.

If you go

A Night of Jewish Comedy with Steve Hofstetter

The comedian plays the Tampa Improv on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. The club is in Centro Ybor, 1600 E Eighth Ave., Ybor City. Tickets are $18. Call (813) 864-4000.

[Last modified January 25, 2007, 12:17:54]