RETURN TO NORMALCY: COMEDIANS ONCE AGAIN CLAIMING “LOUIE” CREDITS

NEW YORK - After several tumultuous years in the entertainment industry, there are more signs than ever that things are getting back to normal for performers on the road.  In perhaps the strongest sign yet that touring is returning to pre-2020 levels, more and more comedians are once again using their appearances on FX’s canceled TV series “Louie” as a selling point to lure audiences.

“I mean, you had to mask that shit for a long time there,” admitted Burt “The Staten Island Hurt” Tarfelson, who played a stranger flummoxed by star Louis C.K.’s foibles in an early season.  “Just having been exposed to Louie made people wanna stay six feet away from you.  I was here in the city through the worst of it, and I can tell you, even after the Comedy Cellar reopened, just mentioning his name made it colder than a morgue truck in there.”

“The smaller towns, they kept it on the flyers the whole time, they didn’t give as much of a shit,” said Sheila Singletary, who played a bystander bamboozled by star Louis C.K.’s idiosyncrasies in an early season.  “People just assumed it was a normal thing, like the flu.  They’d see me, a woman on the road, and they knew I’d already been exposed.  To Louie’s dick.  I think some of them were just hoping I’d help spread immunity.”

But even in the larger cities, where caution ruled the day the longest, crooked and misspelled AS SEEN ON LOUEY FX lettering now appears on the marquees of more and more brewpubs with a side room that everyone pretends is a comedy club.

“I get it, you know, you can’t be too careful, you’re talking about people’s lives here,” shrugged Jackie Smurch, who played a citizen perturbed by star Louis C.K.’s quirky foofaraw in an early season.  “But you gotta balance that out with us little guys trying to keep the lights on, right?  You take this credit from me, all I got left is 'Laughs On Fox' from 2013.  I gotta keep touring to grab that brass ring, you know?  I see Louie up there getting a Grammy and selling out theaters and I’m like, hey!  C’mon!  Me too!”

The return of “Louie” credits feels like vindication to some, like veteran comedian Nick Di Paolo, who claimed from the beginning that locking down those credits was tantamount to tyranny.  “Hey, I was on the tee vee!” Di Paolo cried, when reached at a homeless shelter in Queens.  “Now I ain’t on-a tha tee vee!  Sebastian Maniscalco can lick deez-a nuts-a, capisce?”

Reached for comment about the changing fortunes of those in his wake, comedian C.K. broke into a sweat, made a distressed face, and dove into a Dumpster full of jizz-stained plain black t-shirts for cover.

- ​Keith Bergman
 

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