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The host of one of the stupidest television shows in history - Fear Factor - turns out to be a standup comic of surprising intelligence.
Go figure.
Joe Rogan faces HIS biggest fear: "ignorance" - which would be a hard stunt to stage on Fear Factor (I don't know, maybe getting a lobotomy or watching CBC for 24 hours straight; just spitballing here) - by making jokes about it. Wherever there are morons, you can find comedy. If they're willing to eat bugs on television, all the better.
So just try heckling this samurai sword-sharp comic when he performs tonight at the River Cree Resort and Casino. Go ahead, take your shot. YouTube is full of clips of Rogan cutting hapless comedy club morons to pieces. He's one of the best heckler busters in the business, his comebacks adding up to inspired improvisational comedy, as good as anything in his act proper, spawned by "drunken retards" stupid enough to try and take a shot.
Rogan has made a careful study of stupidity.
"Stupidity is an aspect of life, especially an aspect of modern life," he says. "The way we have the world set up, it's very easy for the average person to just get through. All you have to do is figure out some task that someone's willing to pay you for. That's all you have to do in this life. You don't have to know much. You don't have to pay attention to politics. You don't have to know what's going on in the news. You don't have to be aware. And in that sense, we've made the world very easy for morons to survive. There's very little incentive not to be a moron. If you really pay attention to what's going on in the world, it's sad and disturbing."
But who wants to be sad and disturbed all the time? Better to be dumb and happy. Or if that's not an option, you can avoid misery by not taking anything too seriously, by finding amusement in the blunders of idiots. That's what George Carlin did, God rest his atheist soul.
Rogan goes on, "The logical conclusion is that none of this matters. You are in a temporary state, in this life for a short period of time, relatively speaking, to the rest of the universe. Whether or not you think it's important or not, it's not. You're one little tiny portion of an infinite, gigantic mechanism that is the whole universe."
This is the kind of helpful material Rogan comes up with while immersed in his sensory deprivation tank, one of "all sorts of things" he does to alter his state of consciousness.
He continues, "So you can't get upset or depressed. It's a waste of energy. You should go through this life spreading as much positivity and enjoyment as you possibly can. The way I vent my frustrations is by working out, talking with friends or doing standup comedy. It's a great way to convey bemusement. Life is very complicated, there are so many variables that occasionally it produces irony, bemusement."
Like being famous for being the host of a dumb TV show, which he sees as an opportunity: "Awesome" money, people eating bugs on television - the material practically writes itself.
As a taekwondo master - leading to his recent gig as an Ultimate Fighting Championship commentator - Rogan brings a martial arts discipline to his comedy.
Quoting samurai swordsman Musashi Miyamoto, Rogan says, " 'When you understand the way broadly, you see it in all things,' the idea being when you are great at anything - carpenter, artist - that greatness, that something you do to become fantastic at one thing will translate to all aspects of your life."
Just as I've always suspected: Standup comedians are the philosophers of our time - the smart ones, anyway.