One more to go!

Jonathan Thymius GONE!

It must be awful to get that close to the tour– the lengthy, 60-city tour– and then get booted off.

As much as everyone wants to win Last Comic Standing, with its $100,000 (after taxes) prize and its “development deal” and its bragging rights, everyone still wants that delirious gig where you get to hit four- or five-dozen cities (often in a nice, downtown, meticulously restored, vaudeville-era theater) and fall off that 20-minute-set-log every night in front of a thousand or so standup comedy/television fans. How life-affirming must that be? You get to stick a thumb in the eye of every two-bit booker who ever routed you from Sioux Falls to Minot to St. Cloud to Tampa (in one week) and– win or lose– you soak up some ink in every Picayune and Bugler and Enquirer in the land while expensing nice breakfasts in a succession of Embassy Suites and Doubletrees and Crowne Plazas in towns that heretofore paid zero attention to you when you were featuring there under John Fox.

Life is sweet for those five. And all the comedy fans who show up for those dates will experience an intoxicating night of concentrated Comedy Kill that will rearrange their brains for weeks or months or years to come. This is a strong handful of comics that will plane/bus/drive throughout North America and dazzle people with all the material they held back on, all the material they kept in their back pockets due to the constraints of Standards and Practices. The producers of this season need not worry if they’re doing any damage to Standup. The rest of the Standup Comedy Community can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that no one will be walking out on this crop of comics as they do their Comedy Ambassador thing on the highways and byways of Standup America. And if the decision as to whether there will be a Season 8 rests on the feedback from the upcoming tour, we can expect to see announcements and entreaties and schedules regarding auditions in New York and Los Angeles come this January.

Who will win? Who cares? It will be splendid to see the show no matter who wins. (And we expect to be in the house when they hit the Keswick or the Tower or whatever venue they have in mind when they hit the Philly area. We just hope it’s on a weeknight. Otherwise we’ll be working… we hope.)

We saw Ryan Hamilton’s mug (in a loving closeup) during tonight’s broadcast. What is up with that?! We saw Fortune Feimster in the crowd in a previous episode. But when The Halves show up at the Alex, they get… NOTHING! Were we not laughing enough at Tommy Johnagin’s set? (Even though we had seen it four or five times the previous weekend when he ironed out the bugs at Comedy & Magic in Hermosa Beach?!)

Good for Mike DeStefano for doing a joke that involved a homeless person! It was a great joke that made a point and reinforced DeStefano’s persona and point of view. And kudos to Judge Andy for keeping his trap shut! (See our previous posts on LCS if you have no idea what we’re talking about.)

Ron White was, to use one of Judge Greg’s favorite words, hilarious! One of the things we liked about this season was that they didn’t hesitate to put up a few “adults” in the competition– people who are maybe greying at the temples, maybe a bit weary from the road, maybe… experienced– maybe even very experienced. A lot of guys and gals who know their way around a mike stand and who are primed for the opportunity represented by a shot on primetime network television. Who represents them all better than “Tater Salad?” He may have been the perfect choice for the guy/gal who comes on at/near the end of the whole ordeal and powers through a set of signature material that demonstrates why he’s packing them in in every zip code and time zone in the English-speaking world.

White’s an inspiration. We hung out with him for a week in Atlanta back in early ’01. He had just come off the tour. The Tour. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour. But he had not yet “blown up.” He was, at that time, still doing the four- or five-night week at the Punchline. (In other words, he hadn’t the juice to just jet in and do the Friday/Saturday thang. He was drinking the scotch that the folks in the cheap seats drink. He wasn’t yet “RON WHITE.”) A few months later, he ventured north to Montreal and dominated JFL ’01. And the rest, as they say, is standup comedy history, sociology and anthropology. This blow-up thing can happen like lightning… and it can happen in the strangest ways. Which is not to say that it doesn’t take a lot of creativity and poise and hard work… it does… but the avenue from obscurity to celebrity is nearly always tortuous and the turns nearly always unexpected.

Tommy Johnagin posted a bunch of lovely photos from our Bulleit bourbon-fueled, impromptu party at the Glendale Hilton on the night of the second Last Comic Standing semifinal competition. The bars were all closed, so The Halves went up to the room and fetched a bottle or two of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and comandeered the shuttered Hilton bar and carried on until 2:50 in the AM. Judging from the shots on the elevator, we have a feeling that the party (Parties?) continued until way into the morning.)

Semifinalists Jesse Joyce, Kurt Metzger, Tommy Johnagin at the Hilton "After Hours" Bar.

Comedy Totem Pole (from the top): Nikki Glaser, Joe List, Tommy Johnagin, Ryan Hamilton, at the Hilton "After Hours" bar.

Tommy Johnagin and The Halves at the Hilton "After Hours" bar

From top left: Shane Mauss, Roy Wood, Jr., Ryan Hamilton, Tommy Johnagin, Nikki Glaser, in the elevator