STAND-UP TUESDAYS: Ryan Staples

November 8th, 2011

Angie Frissore

Stand-Up Tuesdays is a weekly comedy spotlight written by the wonderfully talented Angie Frissore. Covering both known and unknown comics, Stand-up Tuesdays is your new source for all things funny.

This week, Angie puts a spotlight on Ryan Staples and his latest release, Fuck You Ryan Staples. If you or your comedy troupe would like to be featured on Stand-Up Tuesdays, please email utgjames@gmail.com.

Fuck You, Ryan Staples. There’s no better way to have a whole bunch of people cursing you than to title your first stand up CD as such, but the Worcester, MA native boldly chose to do so. The former sailor, custodian and now-writer and stand-up comic recorded his first full-length CD back in July at Beatnik’s bar in his hometown.

Released by Staples through Bandcamp, Fuck You Ryan Staples is a testament to indie comedy as Staples dished out jokes relating to his family, drugs, crazy train stories, internet dating, and texting breakups.

“Miss, if I sent you those exact three sentences (Hey, this is over, see ya)? If you had to kick me somewhere, where might you do that?” Staples asks an audience member.

“Probably right in the dick,” the woman responds loudly…and appropriately.

Staples humor is insanely self-deprecating while at the same time poking fun at the world around him – and despite being relatively new to the world of comedy (he’s been in stand-up for just under two years), Staples explains that the recording is not so much an effort of, “Hey look at me! I’m telling jokes and am bigger than I think I am!” and much more of a bookmark project, so to speak, in that he wanted to get a long set recorded as a way of saying, here’s what I’ve done so far.

“Myq Kaplan used to record his sets all the time,” Staples explains, “as sort of a way to say Oh, you liked the ten minutes I did at the Comedy Studio? Well, here’s an hour you can buy.”

The biggest downside to Fuck You, Ryan Staples – aside from (naturally) the all-inclusive audio quality of the CD (a downside to independent production as you can almost hear the individual conversations taking place at the tables) is that, knowing Staples and his stage presence, one misses out on the physical comedy involved. There’s nothing that gives me that feeling of exclusion more than trying to imagine what a comedian is doing on stage, and why it’s so damn funny. But, that could just be me.

What I love almost as much as Staples’ humor is the story behind the CD’s title.

“After the show we had a post-recording set, and no one was listening to Jeff [Landry]. I turned to talk to someone else, and Jeff sees me from the stage and says, Fuck you Ryan Staples, you tried to do an hour set and you did 54 minutes. When I did the editing, it was only about 40 minutes or so, so I cut the quote down for the title.”

Staples, in addition to stand-up and having penned two books, also partakes in a little satirical hip-hop via his character, MC Staples.

“MC Stapes is an alter ego; he’s my satirical stance on hip-hop culture,” Staples recently told Worcester Magazine. “In all honesty, I love hip-hop for what it is, but I think it’s pretty hard to disagree with the fact that the themes are more often than not absolutely mundane and juvenile: girls, money, cars, clothes. It used to be that I’d find a good beat, throw down whatever verse I cooked up that morning and then share it with my friends – but then a few people said I should put out an album because somebody might actually dig it. So, I have a free four-track EP available at mcstapes.bandcamp.com that nobody in their right mind should listen to.”

Preview Fuck You, Ryan Staples here!

For only $4.99, you can’t beat the comedic value of Fuck You, Ryan Staples. It’s a great set by an up and coming comedian that gives a great insight into local and independent comedy that is easily missed with some of the more well-known comics. Visit http://ryanstaples.bandcamp.com/ and grab your copy today!