God Bless Dane Cook

My wife asked me to go to a comedy show at the Rocket Arena in Cleveland yesterday.

I asked her the headliner and she said Matt Rife.

I responded that I had no idea who that was.

She said "he has 20 million followers on TikTok."

I don't have TikTok.

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While waiting in the car outside of the Rocket Arena before the show, I tried to do a little research on Matt Rife. His online presence, outside of his own website, his own social media presence, and his own TikTok videos, was remarkably thin.

Then I tried to look up the headliners for the show and the tour website said "a rotating cast of regional and national headliners."

I really went into the show cold.

The opener started his career at the Cleveland Improv. I forgot his name by the end of his act.

The second opener was funny enough to remember his name, but then I forgot it.

I had little reason to believe in the material of the third opener, but then the MC blurted out "and give it up for Dane Cook."

Dane Cook? Yes, THE Dane Cook! He lined 'em up and knocked 'em down. His timing was impeccable and his skit about Digital Detox was spot on.

(I thought Dane Cook was cancelled, I thought to myself.)

But near the end of his set, he gave the audience a wink, and a smirk, and all I could do was think to myself 'God Bless Dane Cook.' That guy owned the stage. No matter what life threw at him, he came out the other end. Now was some of that pain self-induced? Almost every great comedian has some sort of self-induced pain.

Plug for Merch

And then Dane Cook gave a rousing introduction to the headliner Matt Rife.

Now Matt Rife was just as funny as Cook, but his comedy was a bit more meandering, a bit more conversational. The crowd wasn't there to see Cook, they were there to see Rife. Every home run by Rife was met with riotous laughter. Cook's home runs were met by polite applause.

But without giving too much away, content-wise, it was a night well spent. Was Cook and Rife worth the price of admission? Absolutely.

So a 30 year old kid sells out an arena, has a national comedian headlining, then trots out local favorite Machine Gun Kelly as the show ends and gets no local press?

Something doesn't fit.

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You say my review is sorely lacking? IT IS! It was a good show, but I couldn't believe no one else in the city wrote about the Stay Golden Tour. My plan when I woke up this morning was to write about Putin going to Alaska.

Not arch-nemesis cleveland.com.

Not Axios Cleveland.

Not Cleveland Scene Magazine.

Beacon of Speech, at its core, is a free speech website. Co-founder Ted and I were just talking about our admiration for stand-up comics last week. The art of stand-up comedy is free speech in its purest form. It is fearlessness.

If you had a problem with any of Cook's or Rife's Content on Sunday Night, they aren't the problem, you are.