In the world of stand-up comedy, where standard topics are condoms, cops eating at doughnut shops, and foreigners working at the 7-Eleven, Paul DiGiulio is an original. His humor is observational, even scientific.
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When he taught the occasional sex-ed class to seventh- and eighth-graders from a south-side housing project, DiGiulio kept this particular routine to himself. One time he did tell them, “I was going to teach you about menstruation, but I think it’s the wrong tune of the month,” but only one person got it. Ultimately frustration and crummy pay led him to leave the Chicago public schools.
“There was a lot of hypocrisy in the educational system,” says DiGiulio. “They wanted you to teach sex education because of AIDS. But they really didnt want you to teach sex education, because some of the facts about AIDS aren’t pretty. . . . I said they dont want us to teach sex education because some people still think that AIDS can be transmitted through the exchange of knowledge. . . . They thought the best forms of contraception were shame, guilt, and self-doubt.”
“It is a very scientific method. I use trial and error. Each joke is a hypothesis. I test the hypothesis at the clubs, and if it works, I keep it. If it doesn’t, I discard it.”
