Indie comedy label Stand Up! has produced the edgiest comedy in the country

The Twin Cities-based laugh factory offers smart hope in dumb times

By Matt Snyders

Clockwise from top left: Lewis Black, Doug Stanhope, David Cross, Greg Proops

It's 8:30 p.m. at the Triple Rock Social Club and Doug Stanhope is on in 30 minutes.

For the third April in a row, the iconoclastic pied piper and self-proclaimed "deadbeat hero" is playing the West Bank rock venue. Given his two-season stint opposite Joe Rogan on Comedy Central's The Man Show—not to mention his hosting a 2004 Girls Gone Wild video ("Show us where babies feed!")—you might be forgiven for assuming the 41-year-old is a bland, dunce-pandering hack...and not one of the most critically acclaimed and provocative comedians in the country.

On this unseasonably frosty night, fans running the gamut from bookish alt-geeks to boisterous rabble-rousers file into the stage room as Jello Biafra wails from the jukebox about lynching the landlord. Outside, the hanging mist and dropping temperature portend sleet; it's the kind of night conducive to cruel laughter.

Dan Schlissel, the lumbering founder of Stand Up! Records, shuffles back and forth between backstage and the main room. His slacker appearance—dark unkempt beard and scraggly mane, a navy blue flannel shirt worn over a black iPod shirt—contrasts sharply with his brisk, purposeful movements.

"We're actually gonna record this tonight," he says, turning his attention to the cockpit of soundboards and wires near the back of the room. "We'll see what kind of material we get."

This is all unbeknownst to Stanhope.

"If he knew, it might fuck up his performance," Schlissel explains.

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