A set that will go down in comedy history

By now you've probably heard about Tig Notaro's famous set last August at the Largo comedy club in Los Angeles. After taking the stage she announced she has breast cancer and continued to detail some of the other crap she went through--like a breakup, a life-threatening bacterial infection and her mother's sudden death at age 65--all in the span of six months.

Doesn't sound too funny, does it?

On his website, my man Louis CK says, "The show was an amazing example of what comedy can be. A way to visit your worst fears and laugh at them. Tig took us to a scary place and made us laugh there. Not by distracting us from the terror but by looking right at it and just turning to us and saying "Wow. Right?" She proved that everything is funny. And has to be. And she could only do this by giving us her own death as an example. So generous."

I can't imagine what the scene must have been like. I heard Tig on NRP saying there was a woman in the audience that night who just sat there crying.  Read Louie's full account of the show here. 

For five bucks, you can download an audio file of Tig's amazing set on Louis CK's website.  Tig gets $4 from every sale, of which a portion will be donated to charities associated with fighting breast cancer, and Louie keeps the rest to pay the costs of delivery etc.

I just hear the set last night. She does a bit on "God never gives you more than you can handle," a sentiment I sarcastically addressed here on Saturday in regards to my friend Donna's um, "life challenges." Hey, thank you all for the encouraging words for my dear cellulite-free friend. I love how she commented that when life gives her lemons, she makes a cocktail.  She's the best.

There is a happy ending to Tig's story. She underwent a double mastectomy (wait, what's so happy about that?) and is now cancer-free. She also got a nice book deal.  “It was really amazing timing,” she said on her podcast, Professor Blastoff, “because there was a bit of a bidding war for my book, and the day that was going down I was in surgery. I was completely unconscious and under the knife and publishing companies are submitting bids for my story.”

And I was a mental patient because I couldn't blink for three weeks.

Have you heard Tig's famous set? What did you think?