Episode #8
LeMent Tonight for September 10, 2026
This Week On this episode of LeMent Tonight, host Bob LeMent welcomes Las Vegas comedian, bartender, and street musician Steve K. for a candid, wide-ranging conversation on navigating the comedy world. Steve opens with a self-deprecating monologue touching on getting older, the indignities of open mics, and feeling like an outsider in entertainment. The discussion quickly pivots into an honest dive into Steve’s 20-year obsession with stand-up, where Bob challenges Steve’s tendency to get trapped in his own head and hyper-focus on local scene politics. Offering tough-love mentorship, Bob encourages him to stop obsessing over peer validation, lean into his unique raw perspective much like Rodney Dangerfield did, and measure success by the creative act rather than the pursuit of fame. @tomedy601 https://youtube.com/live/0EaFjA6ayF4 Bad AI Transcript Hey, everybody, it's Lament Tonight. I've got my special guest tonight, Steve K. Steve comes from Las Vegas, Nevada. he's an eligible bachelor there in las Vegas. he uh part-time uh drag queen, full-time bartender, I think, right? So, let me read you a quick bio that he has here. He's a comedian who just does not feel like he fits into the comedy scene. Isn't that all comedian Steve? But I cannot stop thinking about doing comedy. So, here i am. Maybe I can feel part of a community here. That's his plausible bio. Steve K. from Vegas. How's it going, Steve? Um, well, thank you, Bob. Thank you for having me and hello to all your listeners out there. Well, I was gonna you can do a little monologue here if you'd like. I'll just kick it over to you. Oh, I feel like we're on the Jimmy Fallon show or Jimmy Killen. I get to go out on the stage. Yeah. Where's the band? Well, here, hold on a second. Let's see. Gary, are you there? And that's what she said. Oh, yeah, that's true. Bob, you are a great asshole. Thank you, Gary. All right. Go ahead, Steve. Okay, I'm just going to read some crap to you guys. I'm reading right off a piece of paper. I can afford to do that here because you can't see me and my glasses. I just want you to know that I am competing very hard for my next gig. as a shopping cart attendant. I believe I got what it takes. I won't let anything or anyone stand in my way. Not even my comedy career. I really feel I got this. And between the busting music on the street and DoorDash, I won't need to work anywhere else and I can focus more on my open mic career. There we go. Hey, thank you. Give me the light. In comedy, we have the light, Bob. So give me the light when my time's up, all right? Oh, I'll just, I'll give you the hook, but go right ahead. Yeah, give me the hook. You know, they used to say when we were young, don't trust anyone over 30. Now it's the opposite. We're being erased. Okay, look at a magazine, 40 successful people under 40. Every time there's an acting gig, they don't want us. The jobs I work, young people ride around in golf carts, three, four of them, or they're hiding and they come around to make sure that I'm not leaning up against the wall. In speed dating, all the groups of 25 to 35, 35 to 42, you don't have anything really above 42. Maybe incorporate a 55 plus island but we will be the final generation. I know, don't laugh at your own words. Thank you. Some foods know not to enter my mouth because my body is like the Hotel California. You can check in anytime you want, but it can never leave. It takes me two days to shit out a slice of pizza. Passing gas is your body's way of saying, hey, I got food trapped inside of me. Sometimes I feel like a rocket ship that keeps trying to take off, but it can't, so it keeps shooting out flames. Never ask a woman… Thank you, Bob. Thank you for the mercy laugh, the mercy symbols. Two more jokes and you'll be out of your misery, everybody. Never ask a woman her age. We should all know that by now. It's written somewhere. in the Ten Commandments, but it's a double standard. Just like it's okay for a woman to clean a men's room when men are urinating. Recently, a woman bluntly asked me how old I was. I told her the truth. She replied, still kicking it. Huh? As she looked me up and down, I said, stop sizing me up. What the hell does that mean, still kicking it? anyway you haven't you haven't kicked a bucket yet? You haven't kicked over? Yeah, but i i'm still kicking it. I'm kicking it hard. Thank you. When I was a child, they were tearing up the woods. So I tried putting up uh flyers oh they're tearing up the woods, right? And every time they're tearing up the woods, I thought, wow, you know, new kids are gonna move in and i'm gonna make some new friends because i didn't have any friends. That's why i was riding my bicycle around in the woods, right? Well, these kids, they would not be friends with me. They were rich kids. They became friends with the popular kids. So then not only did I not have any friends, but I didn't have any more woods to ride through. So I tried putting up flyers, like for a flag football league. Nobody showed up. You know, this is before the internet. I don't know. Oh, oh, wait, one more thing and I'll stop, all right? Well, I'm going to bring it up. I'm going to turn it around, okay? I got an email from Plausible. Anybody, you should all join Plausible because you'll get it on the email list. You can participate in, like, workshops and comedy. And they sent out emails. Who's on your comedy team? And I had to think about it. Nobody but me. If I were in a bubblegum shrimp boat… Not even Lieutenant Dan without his legs would come join me. I try to start an open mic here. Applause will go to Forrest and friends. I get everybody one day notice. I sat there for one hour. Nobody's sure. This is my career in a nutshell. I will hand it back to you, Bob. Thank you. Oh, okay. Let me give you some applause there. Well, I was wondering at one point there during your monologue if we weren't going to be starting a support group here. Well, that's what it is. Comedy is a support group. I'm not going to lie. It's just something I do. I think you've got a couple of different divergent support groups going. You have the constipation support group and then also the comedy slash support group. So maybe you can combine the two. Why not? I mean, I try to start an open mic implausible, but apparently I'm not cool here. I'm not popular. Well, nobody is. You know how it goes, Steve. I know. I try not to take it personally. I'm trying to find a funny in it, Bob. You'd be on TikTok if you were really popular. I've been on TikTok. It's a horrible app. That's where Miles is right now. Miles Title, my co-host for Static Radio. He's over on TikTok right now. I guarantee it. We won't touch him, will we? Oh, no, I judge him constantly. Totally judge him. All right. Well, let's not talk about him. Let's talk about you, Steve. So you've been doing comedy for how long now? I started in 2006. Really? 2006? And what was the catalyst to do this? Well, I was always a writer from a time I was 12. But I went on a website for a local comedy club where I lived. And it was like a little ad site. comedy classes. You too can become a comedian. I think it was $250 for the class. Now, I never thought about how do you become a comedian. I like some comedy. I'm like, wow, you could take a class and you could actually do comedy. I never thought about it. Wow, I'm going to take this class. I made up my mind when I saw that ad. I was 39 years old and I took the class. And ever since then, I quit many times. I walked away, but I've been obsessed. I've been obsessed with comedy for the last 20 years. Interesting. But it sounds like, I mean, is comedy… It's not doing it for you. You have all these kind of, you know, bad experiences. Because of me. I have to take accountability for what I did. What were you doing? I'm just like a piece of wood that needed to be sanded down. I was rough around the edges. I'm the guy… who goes from one extreme to the other, who doesn't talk much or talks your ear off, who doesn't know how to make things, who's too real maybe, too open about himself. There's too much for people to handle. Gotcha. Well, that's a good question. So you thought that maybe you were touching on subjects that people were uncomfortable with? Uh, yeah, I, I believe it wasn't funny. And, and, uh, you know, I've been told many times, this is not your therapy session, Steven. You have to talk about things that people can relate to it. That's part of my problem. I have to, I have to let go of my narcissism and, you know, make it about other people. That's how you get people to like you. That's why I'm so alone. You know, I'm, I'm too self involved. Well, how can you get out of your head? That's what you always got to do. You got to get out of your head, you know? Have you tried anything else? I mean, you took a comedy class. So, I mean, you showed some initiative to do something, right? That you thought, oh, this will be interesting. I like comedy. I want to do this, right? And now you've just told me one of the issues that you're having. So why haven't you attacked that issue the way you attacked the comedy thing? I think I finally found the formula. It took 20 years because I mean, I told you I've been going to open mics on and off, and I was the awkward, clumsy kid who couldn't fit in at these mics. I always made maybe one or two friends, or I would get paranoid. I thought I was too popular, and I would just disappear and hide for two years. And in comedy, when you disappear, when you stop coming around, it's like you're erased when you come back. You know, nobody knows you. You're a couple years older, too, and people don't like old people. So that's, you know, I'm just… I… Now, why do you think p
