Scott Capurro should just shut the hell up.

I have never had someone ostensibly trying to make me laugh evoke such hatred in all my life. This "comedian" fills me with nothing but loathing. His status with me starts with the baseline that he's just not funny. From that baseline add the arrogant homo 'tude and the bile meter starts to rise. His only shtick is being the "outrageous gay guy" to bland straight audiences. Sarah and Vinnie (Vinnie just returning from a finally successful stint at rehab) have a popular morning show I also can't abide, mostly because they are so vocal and adamant on matters of which they have no actual knowledge. Mildly entertaining, Sarah and Vinnie are morons with megaphones, but such is the nature of the top 40 radio morning show. But Sarah and Vinnie think Scot Capurro hung the moon and they have their lips firmly ensconced on his ass. Alice (the name of the radio station) books him on air at every opportunity and it always has me crawling at my skin in rage. (Unfortunately in my valley, Alice is the only station my clock radio can receive, other than mariachi music and NPR. Since I don't want to wake up to Spanish language chatter or stories of Middle East unrest, it's Alice or the buzzer).

Capurro is apparently "big in Britain," but no one here finds him all that funny, unless that one is a straight white person titillated by gay stuff. The typical review of his British act is that he riffs on psychotic dysfunction and calls it typical behavior of the gay community, then picks a straight guy and makes him uncomfortable with all the sexy man-on-man stuff he would do with him.

Here's the sad truth for the self-described "gay comic": gay's don't think he's funny. He's embarrassing. And he's sort of fucking it up for the rest of us by exaggerating the over-the-top fetishes of the gay fetish community to conservative white folk and packaging it as true scandal. It's not really funny, and it's certainly not clever. It's hyperbolic gossip. That may be the best description of his act—that he's not a comedian, just a bitchy gossip queen who continues to exaggerate or make stuff up for the attention.

Kevin and I had a theater night last Tuesday (Young Frankenstein, hilarious) and backed it up with an excursion to "Speakeasy" night at Truck. This night requires a password, and patrons are encouraged to check their clothes as an "underwear night." Most do not, but those that look good wearing little often engage. The vibe is intentionally somewhat seedy and gets progressively frisky. The heat is bumped up and some porn label is promoting something, and showing a video against the back wall. It's good, clean salacious fun that can turn into a heavy petting zoo.

This is an underground sort of thing. It's sort of almost a secret sex club sort of idea, but you can also just enjoy having a drink with your friends while various degrees of disrobed debauchery may or may not play out around you. Very uniquely and lovingly San Franciscan. It's a gem, and a special secret sort of fun that everyone recognizes for what it is and either celebrates it or moves on. And it's rather tame by SoMa bar or SoMa street fair comparisons.

Capurro is in town trying to peddle his snake oil, and of course Sarah and Vinnie can't get enough of his trumped-up antics. I imagine Sarah and Vinnie have no other gay friends. When Fernando and Greg had their show on another station (ultimately bought out and canned), they were forced to book Capurro once and, according to the producer I spoke with, got all sorts of irate calls begging them to ban Capurro from ever returning. With other gays at the mic, Capurro just isn't funny, and in his flailing panic he goes for his usually easy money shots of degrading the gay community (or actually successful gay comics such as ANT). When the audience is the gay community, they want him to just shut the hell up. They certainly aren't laughing. If no one is laughing and everyone is cringing, some of them looking for torches and pitchforks, Capurro becomes less of a "comedian" and more of a "douchebag."

I woke up Wednesday last week to Capurro regaling Sarah and Vinnie about his ribald date with some 20-something baby gay who does porn videos and was enamored with Capurro over his six seconds of screen time in Mrs. Doubtfire. After their dinner they went bar hopping and the porn baby wanted to go to Speakeasy night at Truck.

On air, Capurro went off on all the wild sex acts going on at Truck and Sarah and Vinnie gasped, clutched their pearls and begged for more! And more they got, and having actually been there, I would say that 99% of what he described was lies. The bartenders were and never have been naked. Everyone was not naked. There was no sex going on all over the place. Some guys in underpants and with their shirts off? Sure, but not all that many and for most tastes not enough. Some guys venturing some exhibition or touching here and there? Sure, that's what the shadows in a dark bar with a password are for. Wild reckless sexual sadomasochistic abandon? Not even close.

Even with that one grain of truth in the dry desert of Capurro's tale, here's the thing any cool gay person would know and every other fucktard should: The first rule about Secret Club is DON'T TALK ABOUT SECRET CLUB. Here's this neat little underground sexy scene he was lucky enough to be allowed into without the password—it's called "Speakeasy" for a reason—and he exposed and exploited it on the radio for just another 30 seconds of desperately-needed attention.

So now it's gone. It got too much notice. By prudes. And columnists. And the "that's just not proper" alarmists, who then demanded action from the police.

And now what was once an occasional bit of salacious indulgence and slight secret-society thrill is gone. Another jewel of classic and underground San Francisco exposed to raw light and ruined like so much undeveloped film.

It's like the guy whose first thought wasn't "This is so cool that I get to party with Michael Phelps" but rather "I can make some money by taking a photo of Michael Phelps with a bong at a private party." Capurro's first thought wasn't, "This is cool and I'm lucky I got to be a part of this secret society." No, he had to be a dick about it, make it more than it was, shout about it, and ruin it for everyone else.

For all of us who have a sense of frolic, and a sense of humor, I beg you Scott Capurro, just shut the hell up.