From an entertainment website, comes this line, from a synopsis/review of Mike Birbiglia‘s movie, that is featured at this year’s Sundance Film Festival:

He’s one of the few alternative comedians that can tell a good story without delivering a lot of laughs. But when those laughs hit, they are full of impact. You can just tell that the stories he’s telling on stage are personal, which makes laughing with him twice as enjoyable.

Turn that over in your mind… let the idiocy sink in… savor the utter backwardness of it. (Hmmm… if he’s getting, let’s say, half as many laughs as “conventional” comics… and it’s twice as enjoyable, then… isn’t it a tie?)

We have nothing against Birbiglia. It is the crippled thought process, employed by the author, that pains us so. (And the depressing notion that so many people swallow such nonsense unquestioningly.)

We’re not so sure that standup can be saved.

We don’t normally comment on stuff that appears in other blogs (probably because we don’t read other blogs all that often), but there’s a posting by A.V. Club’s Sean O’Neal that seems to be making waves on the WWW.

In it, O’Neal engages in what we called (in a December 8 posting) “The New Hack!” (That is, he trashed a wildly popular comic, and, by extension, his fans.)

The incident that spurred the snark-alanche was this: Dane Cook stopped into the Laugh Factory last night and worked out material for 45 minutes. And some comics were bumped. And the material was less than focused or polished and touched upon subjects that offended the delicate sensibilities of some of the comics that witnessed the whole debacle.

Dane Cook doesn’t need us defending him. He’s a big boy, he’s successful, and controversy follows him wherever he goes yet he still ends up prevailing.

But the antics of two of the comics quoted in O’Neal’s piece are particularly interesting. Daniel Kinno (who knows a thing or two about being held in contempt by fellow comics) makes a catty comment about Cook and seems awfully peeved that he was bumped… at a major showcase club… in Los Angeles. To which we reply: “Boo–Fucking-Hoo.” If you’re living in Los Angeles (or regularly performing there, or performing in NYC), getting bumped is part of the game. Any comic who does anything more than express mild disappointment is being thoroughly dishonest. Any comic who then takes a shot at the comic doing the bumping is being a sore loser. And any comic who offers the cheap shots to a publication (or broadcasts them via social media) is being a dick. Take it and deal with it. You will be able to do it yourself if/when you get to the point where a comedy club manager in one of the two major comedy markets in the world decides that his audience would rather see you than the comics he has scheduled. 99 per cent of comedians understand that they will be be bumped by 1 per cent of the comedians on this planet. It’s nothing personal; it’s business.

The other mopey comic is T.J. Miller, who took his frustrations out via Twitter. He expresses outrage that Cook would bump comedians (and is outraged on behalf of bump-ee Bobby Lee), and labels Cook as a “damaged man” who “didn’t earn” the right to steamroll the other acts on the bill that night.

Again: Deal with it. And we’re sure Bobby Lee is getting along all right without any assistance from Miller.

We met Miller when we were headlining in Pittsburgh a few years back (he was in town shooting “She’s Out Of My League”) and we found him to be pleasant and humble. We also thought that his performance in SOOML to be perhaps the highlight of the movie. So we’re puzzled by this whole outburst.

We’re doubly puzzled by the expression of disgust at Cook’s choice of material. We’re told that it was “vicious, misogynistic, cruel, and arrogant.” Hmmm… with the possible exception of mysogynistic, are we not told that these qualities are the hallmark of some of the best “edgy” and “truthful” comics working today? (And, in some respectable circles, misogyny– and material that depends on it– isn’t merely excused but celebrated.)

When did we suddenly do a 180-degree turn and start valuing comedians who are kind, gentle, understanding and humble? Miller is particularly fixated on a Cook bit about… abortion? (Last time we checked, comics aren’t allowed to cross the George Washington Bridge or get through the Cajon Pass unless they show proof of an abortion joke in their showcase sets. Indeed, The Female Half of the Staff (half)jokingly says that she’s starting to feel bad for being the only female comic on the planet who doesn’t do an abortion joke.)

Miller further takes Cook to task for trying to “work through his own shit on stage” and for believing that “it’s okay to bomb and talk about your issues.” Exactly what the hell is going on here? Have we not, for the last decade or more, been bombarded with the meme that what matters most is the bold, edgy attempt at getting to the heart of one’s “personal truth?” And that it matters not what kind of response we get? And that audiences rightly thrill to the spectacle of a daring truthteller working things out onstage, not caring one whit about whether or not it results in belly laughs?

Cook defended himself by saying, “This was only the fourth time I’ve ever performed it, as well as the fourth time I’ve ever admitted this incident in public. So it still feels like a very nervy high wire walk for me. There’s times when I lose the audience and have to get them back, freeze up, and wonder if I shouldn’t have just kept this whole incident to myself.” Oh… waitaminute… that’s not Cook, that’s a quote from Patton Oswalt defending his savaging of a heckler at a room in Los Feliz about 12 days ago. When Oswalt tries out material during a “drop-in” appearance, he’s everybody’s hero. When Dane Cook does it (and bumps Jenna Marbles, Daniel Kinno and T.J. Miller in the process), he “took a shit on everyone.” A curious double standard to say the least.

And, writes Dave Itzkoff, he’ll be replaced by a “system” whereby “a ‘Late Show’ staffer will scout comedians at clubs and other performance spaces and invite them to perform in showcases for a group of senior producers. These producers will then decide which comedians to book on future broadcasts.”

Sounds… cumbersome. Should we all dub our sets onto VHS tapes, just to be prepared for the next “evolution” at the show? We give this system about a month before the “senior producers” start grousing about having to spend their precious time at Standup NY or the Cellar on a weeknight when they could be eating sushi or playing Angry Birds. Then, when the entire controversy has blown over, they’ll hire another talent coordinator. It seems like a giant step backward– especially in this day and age when such innovations as DVDs and Youtube.com make the process so much easier. And let’s face it: If you limit yourself to those few comedians who can be seen by a “staffer” at (NYC) “clubs and other performances spaces,” are you really doing your best to scout for standup talent?

Itzkoff also writes this:

Mr. Brill’s position was already an awkward one at “Late Show”: In addition to booking comedians, he teaches comedy workshops and programs the Great American Comedy Festival, endeavors that were perceived as conflicts of interest. Other comedians had expressed concern that he could favor performers who paid to take his classes.

Hmmm… could this be the real reason?

We’ll know if it’s the “sexist comments” or the conflict of interest that prompted Brill’s exit when they eventually hire a talent coordinator. If it’s a woman, it was the sexist comment. If they hire a dude, it was the COI.

Someone identifying himself as “Jason Zinoman” commented on our “Brill makes a ‘Kinsley gaffe’” posting (scroll down). “Jason Zinoman” is the name of the New York Times columnist that wrote the article on Eddie Brill which set off a chain of events that resulted in Brill’s dismissal as talent coordinator for Late Show. (We have no way of knowing if it’s really Jason Zinoman.)

Our commenter says:

So Shecky, let me get this straight. Previously, you argued that comedy shouldn’t have an independent columnist at the Times. Now you say that the conflict of interest issue that was reported on by the comedy columnist at the Times was real and important and while you knew about it, you didn’t write about it because of fear of criticism. That sounds to me like a counter to your original point, no?

Let’s take this point-by-point.

We never argued “comedy shouldn’t have an independent columnist at the Times.” We said that a column such as Zinoman’s…

…will have an effect on comedians, on consumers of comedy and on the business of comedy. And not all of it will be positive. Much of it may be negative.

And later on in our posting, we said:

Our biggest fear is that comedians will start changing to conform to what they perceive as the features necessary to receive the blessing of Zinoman (or other reviewers). The logical outcome of such a scenario is that comedians will slowly begin to sound, act and look the same. Already, we’ve heard from one comedian who cautioned that we should go easy on Mr. Zinoman, not anger him. The theory is that standup needs columnists. We’re not convinced. And such subservience gives the reviewer added, unearned power which might warp the creative process.

Emphasis ours.

So… we never said that “comedy shouldn’t have an independent columnist at the Times.” We stated that we weren’t convinced that comedy needs such a columnist, as some of our colleagues have suggested. And we urged folks to temper their joy with caution and we theorized that comics might take it upon themselves to change– not that the columnist might actively undertake to change the comics. Big difference.

“Jason Zinoman” also says that we were silent on Eddie Brill’s seeming conflict of interest regarding his workshops “because of fear of criticism.” This is not so.

This magazine is mainly for comedians. We rarely, if ever, cater to those who are casual observers of comedy. Our readers are comedians, industry people and perhaps a handful of rabid fans. And they all knew about Brill’s workshops. Many of our readers have taken the workshops! Brill conducted these workshops and publicized them and advertised them openly. We’re not sure what purpose it would have served to make a stink about such a conflict of interest. Like we said– we were appalled, privately. We didn’t see the upside to publicly airing that particular opinion. And, obviously CBS and Worldwide Pants had no problem with the arrangement. We are but a lowly online blog run by two comics/authors. The only result (from our perspective) would have been the “raft of shit from the comedians who would inevitably defend Brill’s practices in the hopes that doing so would make Brill more favorably disposed to slotting them on the show. Like we said, Brill is a politician. And there are plenty of amateur politicians out there. It’s an exhausting game.” Weariness, not fear, is what often motivates us.

Our silence on this matter is in no way a contradiction of any of our previous opinions on the splendor/horror of an NYT columnist dedicated to comedy. We told our readers to be “careful what you wish for.” And, significantly, we said that the worst result might be not what the critic does but what the comedians do in response to the critic. This is a subtle thing. (And something that a culture critic for the NYT should easily grasp… which is why we have our doubts that our commenter is actually Jason Zinoman.)

We are rarely, if ever, motivated by fear. As some proof of this we might point out that we kinda/sorta trashed comedy’s independent columnist at the Times! Were we motivated by fear, we probably would have jumped on the “We Love Jason Zinoman” bandwagon and heralded his assignment with tears of joy and expressions of great relief. (Perhaps in the hopes that Zinoman might turn his attention to our book, which was released just weeks before Zinoman’s debut as the Times’ comedy critic.) Instead, we urged our peers to be cautious. (And we highlighted some of Zinoman’s egregious and gratuitous slams at us– “most of those comedians are ordinary or bad” and “a majority of male stand-ups are neurotics nursing anxieties.”) This doesn’t sound like the words or actions of fearful people.

We are puzzled when “Jason Zinoman” refers to the conflict of interest “issue” as “real and important” and says that he “reported on it.” We suppose that this is true in the strictest sense. It seems to us, however that the conflict of interest wasn’t the thrust of the story. Indeed, it was but a paragraph (the seventh!) in a story that had 19 paragraphs. And, in a story that totaled 1,114 words, the “real and important” “issue” took up a whoppping 46 of them. If we don’t count the words of Anthony Jeselnik, who, we are helpfully reminded in the parting graf, just might have an ax to grind by virtue of an (“unsolicited”) diss from Brill. If anything, it could be argued that the columnist created a protective bubble around Brill by treating the COI so cavalierly and subtly portraying the “skeptical” Jeselnik as disgruntled, thereby leading the reader to discount his criticism and the criticism of others.

In the end, Jason Zinoman (the real one) has made our point for us. We have no doubt that Brill thought that he would come out on the other end of his encounter with Jason Zinoman with a nice, glowing clip in the most influential newspaper in the country (nay, the world!). Instead, he ends up unemployed with his ethics questioned. Of course, Brill must take the majority of the blame for his predicament. Regardless of whether or not his comments were taken out of context (as he claims), had they appeared in the Des Moine Register or the The Oregonian, all would be sunshine and lollipops for him on this Tuesday morning. But he spoke to the independent columnist for the New York Times– great care should be taken when speaking to such an awesomely powerful publication. If you dare to speak to them at all, you should endeavor to appear modest and benevolent and you should, like a master chess champion, try to think several moves ahead. We’re somewhat surprised at the lack of savvy displayed by Brill.

We’re not surprised at the fallout.

The New York Observer says that CBS has canned Eddie Brill. They cite Mirth Magazine as the source. (Mirth is a new publication, run by FOS Larry Getlen. They are quoted in the original Observer story– scroll down to read about that one. In the Observer, Mirth is described as “a new publication about the comedy industry that is planning to release its first issue in March.” Upon reading Brill’s comments, Getlen spun out an opinion piece for his magazine, mainly taking issue with Brill’s crack about female comedians. Brill commented in the pages of the magazine, in the wee hours of the morning of Jan. 15, then, 12 hours later, walked back some of what he said and apologized. A lot.)

Mirth’s source says that CBS let Brill go for “speaking to the press without authorization.”

If we go by the Observer’s most recent headline, “Letterman Booker Eddie Brill Fired After ‘Women In Comedy’ Flame War,” Brill was canned because of the comments he made concerning female comics. They assume a lot.

If this were the case, the dismissal was unjustified and unfair. Brill (and all the other comedy talent coordinators) are paid (and well, we assume) for their opinions– specifically their opinions about standup comedy and standup comics. There is one way that CBS terminated Brill because of the comments about female comedians: CBS might be hypersensitive about gender issues in the wake of the controversy over the extortion attempt of October of 2009, in which a CBS producer “threatened to reveal that Letterman had engaged in sexual affairs with multiple female employees.” (CNN) And Letterman’s incessant attacks on Bristol Palin led some in the press to theorize that the host’s repeated jibes were more about gender than politics. Or maybe it’s about those seminars that Brill was conducting. It is entirely possible that CBS saw them as some sort of “pay to play” device. They may have been okay with such an arrangement until this latest hit in the NYT. Though they were only mentioned in passing, perhaps some “inquiries” were made that caused CBS to have second thoughts.

But, as we said late last year, be careful what you wish for.

We’re torn. We understand the power of the press. We also understand the considerable influence of the Times. And that power and influence could be a shortcut– for a handful of fortunate comedians– to the big time. And good for them if it happens!

But Jason Zinoman is but one man. One man who now wields (disproportionate?) influence by virtue of his new designation as comedy critic at the NYT. To those who rejoice at the prospect of regular standup reviews in the Times, we would recommend that they temper their joy with caution.

Such a column will have an effect on comedians, on consumers of comedy and on the business of comedy. And not all of it will be positive. Much of it may be negative.

We already note that Zinoman says that “most of those comedians are ordinary or bad.” We are not, at this point, going to dispute this claim, but we wonder why a critic would feel compelled to include this in the fourth sentence of the first paragraph of the essay that kicks off the whole comedy reviewing adventure.

And in his second column– on female comedians– Zinoman says offhandedly that “a majority of male stand-ups are neurotics nursing anxieties.”

Leaving aside the fact that Zinoman is bringing his prejudices and questionable assumptions to the task of reviewing standup comics (he is human, after all), we can’t help but think that this could end badly.

Well, it ended badly for one comedian.

We’re not sure what all the fuss is about. Eddie Brill, the comedian who coordinates the talent for CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman, was profiled by Jason Zinoman. (Zinoman, our readers will recall, is the man tapped by the New York Times to regularly comment on standup comedy. We talked about the danger of such an animal here.)

Anyway, Brill said some outrageous things while talking to Zinoman. Oh, he probably said a bunch of innocuous, boring, predictable things to Zinoman, too, but the truly ridiculous statements made it to print in the “paper of record.” And that is what has Brill swimming and simmering in a high-temperature broth.

As far as we can tell (judging from the hoo-ha that has sprung up on the WWW), the thing he said that was most controversial or offensive was this:

“There are a lot less female comics who are authentic,” Mr. Brill said. “I see a lot of female comics who to please an audience will act like men.”

We here at SHECKYmagazine.com found other of Brill’s statements to be outrageous, among them that Brill “never thought Bob Hope was a great stand-up comedian.” And we’re certain that others are fuming over his tepid assessment of Eddie Murphy– “I never thought of him as a great stand-up comedian.”

But it’s the (you’ll excuse the expression) broad condemnation of female comedians that seems to have given most folks the greenlight to trash the large-headed, obscure, avuncular yet influential comedian (all Zinoman’s characterizations, not ours).

Ho-hum. It merely puts Brill in the company of such giants as Johnny Carson, Christopher Hitchens and Jerry Lewis. And, from watching the show over the past few years (or at least watching YouTube clips of the comedians on the show and monitoring Facebook bulletins about who appears on the show, as we have not really watched the show for quite some years), we have noticed something: There are hardly any female comics on the show. Nor have there ever been. So… anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention to the show has noticed that something (not so) funny has been going on.

So… why is this a shock to anyone?

Which explains the title of this post. A Kinsley gaffe is defined as “a politician inadvertently saying something publicly that they privately believe is true, but would ordinarily not say publicly because they believe it is politically harmful.” (And what is Eddie Brill if not a politician?)

We here at SHECKYmagazine.com have known Brill for about 20 years, having worked in the clubs with him, way before he ascended to his current position. And, even though we’ve had our disagreements over the years, we’re still probably what one might call “friends.” (Although that might be stretching things, as Brill “un-friended” both Halves of the Staff on Facebook because TMHOTS once labeled one of Brill’s hyper-political Facebook status updates as “childish twaddle.”)

(Full disclosure: The Male Half solicited feedback from Brill back in “04 or so– for the purpose, of course, of exploring the possibility of appearing on the show– and found Brill to be complimentary. But the follow-up feedback was a smorgasbord of somewhat off-putting, vague, “advice,” contributing to a very damaging bout of second-guessing and a lengthy period of self-doubt. He has since recovered and learned from the encounter. Among the lessons: Never try to get on Letterman again.)

The Female Half auditioned for Letterman’s show many years ago. How long ago? So long ago that TFHOTS acknowledges that she wasn’t ready for the show, but was, in fact, learning “how to auditionunder pressure.” It was a bizarre episode at the old Comedy Connection in Boston (the one under the Charles Playhouse) in which one of the show’s producers hit on TFHOTS just prior to the showcase. So… the “chick problem” at the show is… systemic. And long-standing.

So no one should be surprised. We certainly weren’t. (Which is why we ignored the article when it first came out.)

We have been more appalled at the fact that Brill has been regularly staging workshops– at various festivals and venues throughout Standup North America– in which he purports to teach people how to get on the show. This is mentioned by Zinoman only in passing (“Mr. Brill teaches comedy workshops…”), but we think it represents a glaring conflict of interest. We’ve never gone to the trouble of mentioning it in the pages of this magazine because… well… we didn’t feel like putting up with the raft of shit from fellow comics who would say (with utmost certainty) that the only reason we did so was because Brill has never seen fit to put us on his show. And, of course, the raft of shit from the comedians who would inevitably defend Brill’s practices in the hopes that doing so would make Brill more favorably disposed to slotting them on the show. Like we said, Brill is a politician. And there are plenty of amateur politicians out there. It’s an exhausting game.

So we kept our traps shut, put our heads down and tried to hone our acts for the other late-night showcases. (Privately, however, we made no bones about our dissatisfaction with the conflict of interest.)

And while we’re on the subject of conflicts of interest, we always thought it was somewhat… imprudent… for the show’s standup talent coordinator– Eddie Brill– to occasionally schedule Eddie Brill on the show as standup talent. Of course, who among us wouldn’t take advantage of that?! Perhaps that’s the problem… should a late-night show hire a standup comic– who is still interested in being a comedian– as its standup talent coordinator? Or, if it does so, should it not do so with the understanding that said comedian never appear on the show as a standup comedian, so as to avoid the appearance of some sort of (Entertainment Industry Version of the) appearance of impropriety? Perhaps we’re being too scrupulous here, but we would never take the gig unless there was an understanding that we would never ourselves appear. (With the possible exception of taking one shot– at the end of our tenure– as a sort of a golden parachute. You know, just to get the credit.)

Our estimation of comic Anthony Jeselnik skyrocketed when we read this quote: “He trades on the name of the show,” the young comic Anthony Jeselnik said. “He has workshops, a festival. He has the market cornered. I can’t believe Letterman lets him do it.”

The article contains other insights into the muddled alchemy that goes into booking the comics on a late-night show. We’re not surprised at all that it’s an inexact science. Or that female comics get the shaft. Or that acceptance or rejection is based on such fuzzy, nonsense as “the comic importance of vulnerability.” That’s his prerogative. And, were we he, we would probably never give people like Zinoman any kind of meaningful quotes that would give away our formula for choosing comedians. There’s just no upside. It just opens you and your methods up to examination and criticism.

We suspect that Brill just couldn’t resist. After all, a hit in the NYT means higher fees for personal appearances, workshops and the like. And there you have that nasty conflict of interest rearing its ugly head again.

There have been plenty of tremendous comedians on Letterman over the years. And there will be plenty more on the show in the future. And they should all be proud of their credit, as it is a prestigious one. And we are certain that this little hiccup won’t tarnish that credit one bit.

And we acknowledge that there has to be some sort of filter (some sort of “gatekeeper” as the NYT calls Brill), but we suppose that it’s just somewhat jarring that the one who has been doing the filtering has applied such clumsy, benighted criteria for so long. Or that the process isn’t as… pure… as everyone had imagined/hoped it to be.

China Daily reports about a scholarship established by Shanghai dialect comedian Zhou Libo. He’s forking over $47,100 annually so some Chinese kids can go to school. An admirable thing, right?

Apparently, it’s “controversial.” It’s not immediately clear why. Partly because China Daily doesn’t exactly present stories using the ol’ Inverted Pyramid. (And partly, we suspect, because English isn’t the first language of the journos who file the stories.)

But a Shakespearean scholar (red flag!) says the campus “had been invaded by entertainment figures” and a teacher who declined to be identified said the “scholarship is a sign of bowing to vulgarity.”

So, basically, a bunch of eggheads are upset because a lowly comic is doing well enough to fork over the dough for a college scholarship.

Later on in the story, Libo is described as a “plebian person who always spouts empty and insincere chatter to amuse people.” The unmitigated horror!

Hey, if a comedian can’t be excused for spouting empty and insincere chatter to amuse people, just what is this world coming to? Thank God we don’t have such humorless intellectuals in this country! Right? …Right?

Anyone who did comedy on the East Coast in the 1980s or 1990s probably worked, at one gig or another, with Rick Scotti. (In fact, Scotti was the headliner on The Female Half’s first road trip– at a club in Richmond, VA, way back in 1986.) Scotti stopped doing comedy in 2000.

Scotti is back doing standup again. And writing a blog called “Inside and Out.” The subtitle is “Eleven years ago, Rick Scotti performed stand up comedy for the last time. Now returning as Julia,she chronicles the long journey back.”

Julia Scotti writes of her first time back onstage at The Comedy Works in Bristol, PA:

I’m on.

“Thank you! It’s good to be back.! A lot has happened in these last eleven years…let’s see, I went back to college, got my degree, my parents died, upgraded my cable package…and oh yeah…I HAD A SEX CHANGE.”

At that moment, the oddest thing happened. There was total SILENCE. The kiss of death for a comic. The equivalent of being buried alive underground in a cigar box. Like being at your grandma’s 100th birthday party with five generations of your relatives giving her gentle hugs and you squeeze her so hard you crack her rib. It’s that horrifying. Time stops. The little people in your mind get the battle stations claxon and you can see them rolling out of their bunks. Millions of tiny little engine room workers are frantically shoveling mental coal into the boiler to bring the brain some power. At the very least, this line should have provoked a titter, and possibly a nasty remark from some scoundrel heckler. But there was nothing. Crickets. Why?

And then it hit me. They didn’t believe me. All my fears of being teased, of being called a freak in public, of religious zealots throwing holy sand at me and exorcising the demons that led me astray back to Sodom were for nothing, because they thought I had been lying! This was fucking insanely fabulous! (Cue the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah)

I had to do something. So I looked them squarely in their eyes and said; “No really.”

Still nothing.

At this point, it was like opening the trunk, taking out the jumper cables and attaching them to their collective nipples. I took one last shot.

“No….REALLLLLLLLLY.”

Finally, they responded. Some laughed. Some began to talk among themselves. I needed to take control again, so I found the hunkiest young guy in the audience and said…

“And don’t get any ideas, buster! I see you looking at me and undressing me with your eyes! Come on… put ‘em back on !

And that opened them up. The rest of my set was nothing memorable, but I got enough laughs to make me realize that maybe I could do this again after all. Sure I was rusty and my timing needed a tune-up, but I had told the truth. And I survived.

When it was over, Kaplan walked over to me. I was expecting kudos. What I got was, “NOW WAS THAT SO FUCKING HARD?”

Ya gotta love him.

The Kaplan referred to is the perpetually (but charmingly) annoyed Comedy Works proprietor Mike Kaplan.

We always find it fascinating when someone leaves standup… and then returns. And it’s even more interesting when the returnee comes back after a major change or two (Divorce? Weight loss? Near-death experience?) and feels the need or the desire to re-invent himself/herself onstage.

The above-mentioned comeback performance occurred just a few weeks ago, so Scotti’s real-time recounting of the saga has just begun. There’s no better time to hop on, bookmark it and follow along than now!

The Male Half was waiting in line a the Budget Car Rental Counter in Vegas when he looked up ta the plasma screen behind the counter and spotted FOS Lisa Corrao in a national commercial for Liberator Medical, a company that sells, among other items, catheters and catheter accessories. Corrao portrayed one of those headset-wearing 800 operators who are always “standing by.”

Fast-forward a few months and there’s a viral video which consists of a short chunk of The Soup in which host and Minister of Snark Joel McHale runs a snippet of one of Corrao’s commercials (this one pushing mens’ catheters) and then makes vicious fun of the commercial. It’s hilarious!

We sure hope the producers of the show bring Corrao on live! It’s a natural. If you’ve never seen the show, it’s really well done and it moves like lightning. It’s been around a while– initially named Talk Soup and originally hosted by Greg Kinnear– it has evolved while being hosted by comedians John Henson, Hal Sparks and Aisha Tyler. Some would say that the show has reached near perfection in its current form.

Making fun of such uncomfortable things as a cheery commercial for male catheters is right in the show’s wheelhouse. And it’s known for occasional guest appearances by some of the same celebrities (and near-celebrities) it so mercilessly skews. So… an appearance by Corrao would be hysterical and entirely appropriate.

The new, new hack. Trashing wildly popular comics and their fans! It’s all the rage!

And this time, the trashing comes with a twist: It’s perpetrated by a comic! (Jason Serafino. We mention his name in passing.)

What is it with these bitter, maundering goofballs? Do they think that standup is a zero-sum game? How many Enlish-speaking people are there in this world? Wikipedia puts it at 375 million… and that’s just the folks who claim to use it as a first language. Throw in the Dutch and the other folks who are handy with it as a second language and you probably have nearly half a billion. That’s half a billion potential fans of standup spoken in English. That’s who we’re all competing for, now that we’re all connected via the internet.

So… why all the fuss if Margaret Cho manages to carve out seven-figure income while catering to one-tenth of one-tenth of one per cent of them?

Does the author think that toppling the top 15 comics will clear the way for him? Is he convinced that it’s a zero-sum game and that he’s number 16?

And the writing is atrocious. We’re not up for any Pulitzers here at SHECKYmagazine.com, but Complex.com might actually hire an editor or two. Carrot Top, “…bores crowds into submission with an array of props that are about as funny as being audited by the IRS.” Oh, really? How exactly does that work? Does he bore them before or after they fork over millions each year (at $49.95 a pop) to see him perform live here in Las Vegas? When does the submission happen? Before or after the ticket prices. (The packed crowd we were part of last year at the Atrium Luxor Theater was far from bored.)

Serafino calls Carrot Top a “ginger-haired dud.” Okay, Gramps, whatever you say! The writing is a cross between Daily Variety and a junior high school “how I spent my summer vacation essay.”

The Carrot Top description should be enough to discredit Serfino. It’s mostly just inaccuracies and pure snark.

But the attempted takedown of Bob Saget clearly demonstrates that Grandpa Serafino is in the dark when it comes to his comedy history. Saget’s comedy “…comes off as a sad attempt to shed an image that has been attached to him for the past two decades,” and he’s “…desperately trying to separate himself from his clean-cut sitcom image by profusely cursing and telling some of the filthiest jokes this side of Reddd Foxx.” One problem: Saget’s been delivering this kind of act since 1980 or so– long before Serafino was watching Full House in his jammies with a bowl of ice cream. Saget, he says, “simply isn’t funny.” (We suppose this nitwit’s never heard of the concept of comedy being subjective. Such pronouncements are embarrassing. But, we suppose embarrassment is yet another concept he isn’t familiar with.)

No doubt Serafino committed this heinous act to gain some sort of cred. We’ll put it in terms that Serafino can understand: “Fail!”

Has he noticed that even the least successful person on his list is pulling down millions? Is this immaterial to him? We suspect that he’s contemptuous of the fans of the top fifteen. Such impotent ranting is difficult to watch. It’s the new hack.