Comedian, Los Angeles (USA)

Ron is stand up comedian. This means Ron makes himself vulnerable on stage by subjecting himself to the judgment of strangers for a reward, usually in the form of laughter, approval, and, sometimes, money. Parents, love your children.

Standups can get away with saying just about anything on stage, with a few exceptions. You ever work blue or try to push the envelope?

I’m actually pretty clean now, but we all go through a dirty phase. When you start out doing standup, you’ll say anything to get a laugh. I actually still write dirty jokes, but don’t tell them on stage. There’s things I can get away it and then there’s things I can’t get away with. Adorable pun? I can do that. But if I tell a joke too dirty, all of a sudden I turn from likable into your creepy uncle who looks down your shirt at Christmas. Here’s a few jokes I did when I first started doing comedy:

I used to work for Make a Wish and there was this kid named Bobby. We had just finished watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and his wish was that he wanted a lifetime supply of chocolate. So I just gave him a candy bar… he didn’t have much time left. It was a fun-sized one too. Turns out he didn’t even finish that, because he died. I know, sad. Or is it happy because I made his wish come true. All I’m saying is what have you done today?

Does a Native American get offended when he walks into a restaurant and the maitre d’ asks, “Do you have a reservation?” (I learned the hard way that this is not the best opener when you’re playing an Indian casino.)

Comedians seem to pay little attention to style which is strange for people who make their living on a stage. Any thoughts on fashion these days?

I feel like a lot of women today look like they got dressed by falling into a hamper. I feel like everyone is playing a game called, “No I’m Wearing The Most Interesting Thing!” Case in point. She looks like she got dressed by starting off naked at one end of a thrift store and just ran through the racks. She came out wearing thigh highs, a raccoon hat, non-prescription glasses and thought, “Fuck it, I look good.”

The thigh highs work though. Ladies, please bring that back. I promise that if you wear thigh highs, no guy is ever going to say, “Gee, I wish you didn’t do that.”

People called me some horrible things when I was a kid. You have a “cock” in your name. I bet you had it worse.

Growing up is hard enough, but doing it with male genitalia in your last name really puts the screws to you. Middle school was definitely the worst. For 7th grade, I went from a public school where I was actually kind of popular to a Catholic school. The first day the teacher brought me to the front of the class and said, “Class, I’d like to introduce a new student, Ron Babcock.” A kid in the back yelled, “Faggot!” It was all downhill from there. On top of that, I wore a vest and there was this unofficial rule that apparently only gays and girls wore vests. I went home crying that day.

Jeez, what a fa–

Middle school is just a factory for assholes. They had a list of 50 or 60 different nicknames for me: smallcock, nocock, littlecock, cocktoast, cockcheese… a lot of them got pretty weird. I used to be jealous of this kid whose last name was Malacarni. I wanted his last name because to me Malacarni sounded like a restaurant that served warm calzones. Babcock sounds like a shitty bowling alley somewhere in Ohio.

+ Ron’s blog

Words by BLOODY BULL
GGGOZU.COM