A NYDN gossip item tells of Eddie Griffin getting the hook at Black Enterprise’s 14th annual Golf and Tennis Challenge in Miami last weekend. The event is run by publisher Earl Graves, who got a standing ovation when he told the audience that Griffin was cut off after ten “N-word-laced” minutes.

Graves, a prominent businessman whose Labor Day weekend event attracts corporate sponsors like Aetna, Pepsi and FedEx, got a standing ovation. He said Griffin, 39, would be paid.

This is twice in the last ten days that we’ve heard of a comic getting yanked– but paid! Nice trend! It seems it’s possible to work the corporate and college circuit with a dirty ten! You go up, do your filthy ten, get asked to leave and get a check! All this time, we thought we needed a solid, squeaky 45!

Browse Tom Clark‘s MySpace blog for his account of his trip to Cape Town, South Africa, as part of the Cape Town Comedy Festival.

BTW the other comics I’ve been working with are: Carl Barron from Australia, Alistair Barrie from England, and Laurie Elliott from Canada. There’s also some local South African comics that rotate in and out of the line up. They’re all very funny. Last night they agreed to open the hotel bar just for us so we could celebrate the opening night of the festival.

Clark resides in Los Angeles (but hails from Milwaukee) and he’ll be in Cape Town through the 22nd of this month.

FOS and NYUCF Industry Liaison Carole Montgomery passes along the following industry invite:

We are gearing up for the 5th anniversary of the NYC Underground Comedy Festival. This email is our invitation to you and your guests to any of our wonderful shows throughout the week of Sept. 28 to Oct. 7.

Our main industry showcases will be presented at the Sage Theatre (711 7th Ave. at 48th St.). You are also free to attend any of our shows presented by our comedy club partners during that week.

Everything this year will be done electronically so please let us know if you are attending, and how many, by replying to: ivorygirl(at sign)att.net

We’ll be in the Festival Tuesday evening, Oct. 2! Details will follow.

Written by Bill Brownstein, it ran on the front page of the Gazette. Butler’s funeral was on Monday morning.

“I’m not happy with the universe right now,” Muncey continued. “Our friendship of 33 years has just melted away right in front of my eyes. But Ernie’s final gift was bringing people together for his funeral from all corners of the city, friends I haven’t seen in years.”

Russel Peters picked up the tab for the entire funeral.

From the Mohegan Sun website, is the following description of the NBC’s Last Comic Standing Live Tour, at the Sun September 21-23:

NBC’s fifth season of Last Comic Standing went to the UK, Australia, and Canada this year, searching the globe for fresh comic talents, coming down to the wire with the five following comics. Lovell Crawford earned his comedy stripes appearing with Jamie Foxx Presents:Laffapalooza, and has played clubs and colleges all over the country. Canada’s Gerry Dee is an ex-teacher who has numerous TV credits, including a role as Boston Bruin hockey great Wayne Cashman in the Canadian mini-seires Canada Russia 72. Philadelphia’s Ralph Harris was the opening act for Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation tour, and was more recently seen in the feature film releases Dreamgirls and Evan Almighty. Jon Reep is one of the busiest young comics working today, and may be best known for his role as the redneck who wonders “That thing gotta hemi?” in the Dodge truck commercials. Amy Schumer has been a regular on the Manhattan comedy-club circuit. Her win on Last Comic Standing, along with frequent appearances on MTV shows such as Fight For Your Rights continue to build her audience.

Emphasis ours.

What is this all about?

Of course, they spelled Lavell Crawford’s name wrong. And they misspelled the word “series,” but the rest of it is written like a press release that might have come from NBC.

Somebody at Mohegan Sun or at NBC has written a press release that talks about “her win.” If NBC screwed up and let the information out prematurely with an embargo, and then someone at Mohegan Sun wrote the above description with the information provided by the network, that would explain the typos. Or it could be merely a transcription error at the Sun, with little or no oversight/copy editing.

Either way, what isn’t a typo is the phrase “her win.”

It is interesting that they put her name last. Showbiz convention that means “headliner,” or most important.

They are in alphabetical order, though. That still wouldn’t explain the win thing. Are they referring to her win to get into the final round? The final ten, perhaps? That wouldn’t explain anything, since they all won a spot on LCS of some kind or another.

TMZ.com reported not 48 hours ago on a complaint that Andy Dick was chucking bottles into his neighbors rear garden. And yesterday, there was another TMZ.com item about Dick attacking a photographer after he was refused entry to the trendy nightclub Opera in Hollywood.

Today there’s a report on AP that Dick was busted on a street in Columbus, OH, for pissing on the sidewalk.

He was in town working the Funny Bone and Bone manager Dave Stroupe ran down the list of offenses:

…the 41-year-old actor-comedian made inappropriate comments while on stage, groped patrons, took women into the men’s room and urinated on the floor and on at least one person.

Somewhere, there is a comedy club manager who is reading this and saying, “Maybe we could bring him in here for Valentine’s Day!”

That’s an average of one bizarre incident per day. If he keeps this up, people are going to start looking at him funny.

Acappella Productions is producing the South African leg of the New York Underground Comedy Fest in October. They’re seeking a comedian. They want comics to audition via the WWW. Here are the details:

So, as many of you know we’re hosting New York Underground South Africa.

We’ve decided that the official New York Underground Comedy Festival would be nothing without some American flavor. Ever wanted to visit South Africa?

We are conducting video auditions for headlining American comedians. If you would like to win a trip to perform in SA, please send me a MySpace email with the following:

1. Full name
2. Bio (including big shows & awards)
3. A link to a YouTube clip or two of you doing stand-up. Needs to be decent quality.

Conditions:
1. Acappella will pay for your standard return flights (anywhere in USA to JNB airport), 3-star accomodation, ground transportation.
2. You need to be in posession of a valid passport.
3. You need to be available from Monday 1 Oct to Saturday 6 Oct. The show nights are Wed 3, Thu 4, Fri 5 in Johannesburg.
4. You will be interviewed live in-studio on SA’s biggest national radio station.
5. The flight and accomodation is for one person only, if you want to bring friends, family and pets, you may, but at your own expense.
6. You will need to cover food and beverage costs, which isn’t that bad considering you get 7 of our Rand for 1 of your Dollars.

Acappella’s website is here, but they’re requesting that all correspondence regarding the audition process be sent via their Acappella Productions MySpace site.

FOS Sean L. McCarthy, blogging for the Daily News, caught an Aspen Daily News article that quoted HBO officials as saying that they’re not returning to Aspen in ’08… nor are they going to migrate to Santa Barbara.

We called that one. All this hoo-ha about moving it to Santa Barbara was just to squeeze Aspen. Or just cover. Whatever it was, we figured that once the Vegas fest was up and running (and demonstrating the potential for making money for all interested parties), “Aspen” (the concept, not the actual conclave in the mountains of Colorado) was toast.

Says McCarthy:

Unless HBO decides to include stand-up or sketch showcases in Vegas, this means Montreal’s Just For Laughs is now the only sure place for comedians to get seen by top network scouts, agents and managers.

(Unless, of course, you discount Los Angeles and New York. But, we’re certain he meant the only North American comedy festival.)

We remind all that The Comedy Festival in Vegas is conducting Lucky 21, a multi-platform “contest” that drags relatively unknown comics from all corners of the continent to Sin City for showcasing. They did it last year and they’re doing it again this year, so someone must have derived benefit from it.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out. We are predicting that JFL will migrate to Toronto and that “Aspen” will be folded into Vegas. And Vegas will rightfully assume its place at the center of the comedy universe.

You think “Vegas,” and, rightly or wrongly, you (reflexively) think Elvis, Wayne Newton, Frank Sinatra and Shecky Greene. If you go general rather than specific, you think singers, gamblers, showgirls, hookers and comics. It’s just the way it is. Standup comedy is in the Las Vegas DNA. Like we said before, the history (official and unofficial), the customs, the habits, the attitudes– all of it was shaped, to some extent, by the comedians who lived there, who worked there, who played there. It’s not such a fun place by accident.

And, for thousands of people in the latter half of the twentieth century, Vegas was the first place (and for many, the only place, the last place), they ever saw a comedian perform live. For those people, the city in the desert is forever entangled with the idea of standup comedy.

How appropriate that a comedy festival should blossom there in the beginning of the 21st century.

Ernie’s CJAD Comedy Show, which was regularly scheduled for tonight at 11 PM, was instead a tribute to the late comedy impresario.

In studio were Heidi Foss, Joey Elias and Scott Faulconbridge. Joining the wake by phone were DJ McCarthey, John Rogers, Freddy James, Phil Schuchat, Basile, Jeff Rothpan and many others. All shared their favorite stories about Ernie and there was a lot of laughter and more than a few touching moments.

It was the next best thing to actually attending. We know all those comics from our many trips north to work for Ernie. We listened via stream through CJAD.com and it was like being in the greenroom at Winnie’s.

We recorded it. (Most of it anyway– there was a 5-minute gap when the stream choked for some reason.) If CJAD doesn’t offer it, maybe we’ll shrink it to an mp3 file and offer it via YouTube.

Editors note: Heidi Foss was mistakenly identified as “Heidi Fleiss,” which is no doubt something Ernie would have found hysterical. And something, we hope, Heidi would find hysterical as well. We’ve known Heidi for over a decade… we were tired and upset. That’s our excuse!

And Freddie James was misidentified as “Freddie Charles.”

We apologize for both errors.

Mp3 file of the Tribute here (It’s 50 MB, and there’s about three minutes missing from the last segment– our stream kicked out briefly– but it’s great to listen to.)

Ralph Harris GONE!

They teased us unnecessarily at first.

They brought out Doug Benson for a short set. His surprise/non-surprise guest appearance at the top of the show got things off to a lighthearted start. Benson stated that he was darn happy to have been designated as the “sixth funniest person IN THE WORLD!” And we especially liked it when the camera cut to Dante in the audience. (Benson even squeezed in a “Hi, Dante!” between jokes.)

But then, instead of announcing who was eliminated, they merely announced one comic’s name, Gerry Dee in this case, who would perform this evening. Then they brought him out and had him do a set.

And it went like that, cruelly, excruciatingly, until they were down to two.

Next up was Lavell Crawford. Now let’s meet Lavell’s family! Cut to: footage of Lavell visiting home in St. Louis and… eating! Of course! Crawford was much more confident this week. So much so, it was easy to forget that they were still engaged in a competition. That’s right! This set will be judged by the “global audience” at home! Perhaps the stay of execution and the way in which it’s administered (seconds before they’re introduced) that instills a sort of giddy confidence.

There goes that prediction. Crawford was lucky, because Lavell was not Lavell last week. Predicting is pointless from here on out.

The hardest we laughed all night was when Crawford opened with a callback to Dee’s set (a reference to Dee’s supposed grade school project where he and a classmate taped their penises together).

Amy Schumer was next and, after the Going Home video package (that showed Schumer in a tiny, white bathing suit, playing beach volleyball!), Schumer came out and did a set that sounded much like that which might have been cobbled together from a first-year comedy joke idea notebook. (The Female Half actually had the “I dated a mime… and I just felt that there was this wall between us” joke in one of her early notebooks– actually did it a few open mikes, but quickly dropped it, as it was tired even in 1985.)

The worst thing that could happen to Schumer would be to continue on another week in this competition, as further sets like that only serve to point up just how in over her head she is. It’s time to break out the checkbook and buy some material. (Throw Matt Kirshen a few grand and have him crank out the next set or two.)

Since the last two left were Ralph Harris and Jon Reep, the time came to ditch one.

Whose dreams of winning the title will come to an end? We’ll find out after a spate of commercials for Heineken, Benadryl, Clorox Wipes and T-Mobile.

And, as we already know, it was Ralph Harris.

The slo-mo tribute to Harris, featured none of the video that they no doubt shot in Harris’ hometown of Philadelphia. We wonder why his goodbye package featured none of the Harris clan, but showed Deb DiGiovanni instead? We know that they shot footage back east and we also found out that Harris’ mother is ill. We compliment him for not using the illness to gain sympathy votes.

Harris said, “We’re on national TV as comedians; what more could you ask for?” and he exhorted the audience on hand, and at home, to go to a comedy club and see live comedy. A classy move that displayed both optimism and altruism.

They showed Reep’s journey back to Hick’ry. Then Reep came out and did a confident, high-energy set.

But it was somewhat anti-climactic. Leaving the ouster of one comic to the next-to-last spot seemed somewhat odd. And not at all fair to Reep, since he had to come out and perform just after Harris’ exit. Might they have been better off having all five come out and do sets, then kick one off at the end? The loser gets in America’s face one last time and the tension is preserved until the end. Or just kick off the loser at the outset. Sure, you’d lose the tension, but the tension they had tonight was all jumbled and ambiguous an not at all entertaining anyway.

Josh Blue and Harland Wiliams will perform next week.

Just got this from Jim Pacheco, Montreal radio station CJAD producer:

It’s with a heavy heart that I report on the passing of Comedy Nest owner and host of the CJAD Comedy Show, Ernie Butler. He passed away at 7:04am Wednesday from a short battle with stomach cancer. He was 58. He leaves behind his lovely wife Marie, and three children: Shannon, 17, Silver, 30, and Ryan, 19.

There will be a special tribute show tonight on CJAD from 11pm-Midnight EST, when the Comedy Show normally airs. It can be heard at CJAD. He will be sorely missed.

Thanks,

Jim Pacheco
Producer
CJAD Comedy Show

We just saw Ernie at the Hyatt, very briefly. We heard from another comedian that Ernie was ill, but we had no idea just how bad off he was. We emailed him just the other day for a progress report and to ask his permission to let the general public know about his illness. Of course, we never got a reply.

The Male Half recalls meeting Butler at Caroline’s, when it was on 8th St. in the Chelsea district, perhaps in 1986:

I finished my set and was making my way to the back of the house, when a short, mustachioed man seated in the audience handed me his business card– “Ernie Butler, Comedy Nest, Montreal, QC, Canada.”

He liked my set and he said he wanted to bring me to Montreal to headline me. I was very excited and especially so because he was the first person to headline me in a legitimate comedy club. We went to Montreal every year for many years thereafter and our association with Ernie is one of the longest ones we’ve had in this business.

Ernie’s love of standup– as proprietor of the Nest and as the host of his radio show– was quite obvious. He is one of the main reasons that Montreal is one of the best comedy towns in the world. We’ll miss him.

Our condolences go to Ernie’s family and to all the comics in Montreal.

Sign the Ernie Butler Guest Book at Legacy.com here.

Read the Montreal Gazetter obit here.

It stars Josh Sneed, Bill Squire, Jim Tews, Mike Polk, Michael Ivy and Chad Zumock and, in 5:35, it illustrates the “11 Guys You’ll Always Find Playing Pickup Basketball.”

Youtube seems a little sluggish today, so if the above link to the film doesn’t work, go to FunnyOrDie to watch.

If you’ve ever been in a pickup basketball game, you’ll bust a gut.

Not really. We found out who one of the “special guests” will be next Wednesday.

Doug Benson!

That’s right– Doug Benson, ejected from the show on Episode 9, after a head-to-head-to-head with Ralph Harris and Matt Kirshen, will return to the very same theater to do a set on Episode 11!

Should be funny. A chance for Benson to stretch out and not have to worry about voting.

Due to be released September 11, “Comics On Duty, We Love You Mrs. Bevins” features Danny Bevins, Sarah Tiana, Dave Mishevitz and John Bizarre on a tour of Iraq, entertaining the troupes.

Reminds us of a similar effort by Jeffery Ross from two years ago, the superb “Patriot Act,” which depicted Ross and others on tour with Drew Carey.

What’s happened to the network TV specials depicting these tours? Bob Hope’s were among the most highly rated of all work (or at least fondly remembered). We bet that the nets would find that contemporary shows would garner similarly high numbers.

The DVD is a production of High 5 Records, ” the ultimate vision of the founder of an international chain of comedy clubs opened and operated in five countries and throughout the Caribbean.” Mwaa ha ha ha haaaa! Sounds like some sort of Bond villain who intends to change the rotation of the earth through comedy to melt the polar icecaps and corner the inter-galactic spring water market!

The Male Half appeared on The Tonight Show last night. Sorta.

The show re-ran an episode from last month, when they were showing a “Pass The Mike” segment– a well-edited series of quick jokes from comics, taped at various parties and in the lobby and bar of the Hyatt Regency Hotel at the Just For Laughs Festival last month in Montreal.

In the foreground of one segment was Andrew Grose, doing a joke in the tent in the rear of the Hyatt during the Just For Laughs afternoon cocktail party.

In the background, clearly visible on the right of the screen over Grose’s shoulder, were the Male Half, with Joe Satterfield and Terry Turner of TS Talent. (The Female Half was totally obscured by the gangly Turner.)

John Monoghan, writing for the Detroit Free Press, tells of a movie about the Detroit comedy scene, “Be Funny.”

Though a dozen Detroit-area comics are featured, the movie spends much of its time with (Mike) Green, who is seen in hilarious bits on stage and also at home on the phone trying to line up gigs in a tough economy.

The film premieres at 7 PM Sunday at Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle.

Helen Herimbi, writing for the South African entertainment site Tonight, previews next month’s first ever South African Comedy Awards. SACA CEO Sam Hendrickse spouted the usual boilerplate stuff that awards show organizers say.

But this stuck out:

“We need to create an A level, a B level and a development level of comedy, so that people can trust spending their money wisely.”

He didn’t say that out loud, did he? The implications are potentially huge and ominous. Our head… she spins! We have an informal, implied system here in North America– the Headliner/Middle/Emcee Levels. This A, B, D(evelopment) thing seems a bit regimented, a little too… codified. Perhaps it’s a language thing. Maybe we misunderstand Mr. Hendrickse, but he seems to have shifted from being on the side of the talent to being on the side of the customer. More like Ralph Nader than Budd Friedman. Imagine if Consumer Reports ran an issue that advised consumers on how to choose wisely when it comes to a comedy show!

Will there be an application process to upgrade one’s status from Level D to Level B? Perhaps we worry too much.

Esquire online has a short essay by Louis CK on what it feels like to bomb.

…Bombing means: You lost them, they’re gone, and you just roast in hell until your time is up. You want to get offstage. But you also don’t want to get offstage till you can solve it. Millions of things race through your head, but it’s mostly visceral. It’s mostly in your gut: Your stomach gets a shitty feeling, your throat constricts, you can’t breathe in a natural rhythm, you’re too aware of how you’re breathing. It’s like being high, but bad.

Read the rest.

NOTE: This whole controversy could be over in a minute if the people at WYSP were to declare the runner-up in the contest the new winner and award him the coveted opening spot.

If anyone should be upset about how this is playing out, it should be the person who placed second. That’s usually how contests work. Even Miss America had a clause in the contract that stipulated that the runner-up would assume the duties of the winner if the winner craps out.

“Ed McGonigal is a sore winner,” says the Philadelphia Daily News’ Dan Gross in yesterday’s edition (scroll down to fifth item).

McGonigal won a slot on the bill on September 15 when this year’s Traveling Virus Comedy Tour comes to the Tweeter in Camden. The show will feature Bob Saget, Jim Norton, Louis CK, Patrice O’Neal among others.

McGonigal won the spot by competing in a contest held through WYSP’s Kidd Chris Show, on which McGonigal is a regular (‘YSP carries O & A as well, so the audiences for the shows are commingled).

McGonigal, SHECKYmagazine readers may recall, appeared on the Kidd Christmas show in December at Philly’s Electric Factory, so he’s familiar to O & A/Kid Chris audiences… even somewhat of a fave, maybe even something of a draw. But McGonigal is backing out of next month’s show because he won’t be paid for the performance.

According to Gross, “Kidd Chris tore into him for his decision to bail on the show, as did O & A’s Norton.”

“I’ve spent 42 years making bad decisions. I see no reason to stop now,” McGonigal said.

Considering the eye-popping amounts of cash that the others on the bill are no doubt getting (we suspect that Saget is at least getting five figures… and that he can’t be the only one), it is rather unseemly for the O & A people to be so tight.

And it’s totally ridiculous when you consider the hellish reception he’ll no doubt get when he mounts the stage. Again, readers of SHECKYmagazine will recall that even many of the nationally-known acts on the stage at the Tweeter last year were subjected to the most reprehensible treatment. (Bill Burr‘s legendary snapout was in response to that boorish behavior.)

To ask McGonigal to collect his “prize” with good cheer and for no money, and then to berate him for refusing to do so, takes some colossal nerve.

Bellamy Bill started off the show with a textbook example of how to do 7- to 12-year-old topical material– just start it off by saying, “I shook hands with Barack Obama the other day… (transition)… How about that Bill Clinton?” We have no problem with comics doing 12-year-old jokes. But 12-year-old political material? It’s noticeable.

Four minutes for each comic, then they cut off the mike. Thems the rules. No one went over. They performed in the following order:

Lavell Crawford
Jon Reep
Ralph Harris
Amy Schumer
Gerry Dee

Crawford seemed nervous… seemed not in command. He goofed up word order here and there, added in extraneous words, quite possibly left out others. A large part of the appeal of this large man is his confidence. Tonight he had little. Perhaps it was only noticeable to our highly-trained eyes.

Reep, on the other hand, was very confident. And he has a dangerous likeability factor. The energy plus the confidence and likeability will take him far.

Harris appears to be showcasing his acting talents. He is doing characters. (Second in that category is Reep, who is doing a character, one character– It’s Jon Reep.) But Harris is doing several and he does more than one in a short set. Does anyone look at comedians and assess whether or not they can “build a sitcom around them?” We’re told the sitcom is dead. If it’s not, then Reep and Harris are two worthy candidates and, regardless of how the voting goes over the next few weeks, they’ll be sitting around a lot of bowls of fruit in executive offices. Both have been on sitcoms– Harris starred in his own and Reep was a recurring character on Rodney Carrington’s show, so none of this is a stretch.

Schumer is unashamedly flogging this female sympathy vote thing– “Women have to be twice as funny to get half the credit.” Either she believes it… or she’s cynically pandering to get the female/eunuch vote. Either way, it’s revolting. (What would Schumer have done this year if Kathleen Madigan had been in the final five? None of this would have worked.) It will probably garner her enough votage to keep her in until the next to last week.

Dee closed the show. He’ll make it through this round for three reasons: He went last. He’s the only Canadian, so he’ll garner all the Canadian vote. During his set, the camera panned to Season Three winner John Heffron, thereby sending out a subliminal message to all the voters that Dee is The Next John Heffron.

Prediction: Lavell Crawford– GONE!

Lavell Crawford 866 978-2701
Jon Reep 866 978-2702
Ralph Harris 866 978-2703
Amy Schumer 866 978-2704
Gerry Dee 866 978-2705

These numbers are for US and Canada only! All others can vote online.

Next week, we’ll find out who is gone. The remaining four will perform again and there’ll be two special guests!

Prediction: The two special guests will be Howie Mandel and Caroline Rhea each of whom host NBC shows. And, in a long shot, Dane Cook. (He’s got a movie coming out, so it could happen.) Or Sinbad, because his management want to put to rest the rumors that he died. Jimmy Fallon is also a good guess. Although not a standup comic, he did just sign a big deal with NBC.

Or Kathy Griffin, who has a show on NBC-sister station Bravo and who was just nominated for an emmy.

Back on July 30, we posted about a Houston Chronicle story in which Houston Laff Stop owner Jeff McFerrin bemoaned the “diluted comic pool” facing modern club owners and which also quoted Cap City Comedy Club GM Margie Coyle. (That post is here.)

We immediately heard from Zanies big cheese Bert Haas, who expressed an interest in addressing some of the issues raised in the story and in the post. Here is is two cents:

Dear Shecky Magazine:

In response to the article about a shortage of talent,
I would respond that too many funny comedians exist
for there ever to be a shortage of talent.

There is always a shortage of comedians who are well
known enough to sell tickets, but this has been the
case since about 1985.

A current development in the industry that is
noteworthy is the movement away from comedy clubs and
toward venues. By comedy club I mean a club that
sells tickets no matter who is appearing based on its
reputation for presenting great comedy. Zanies in
Chicago, FunnyBone in St. Louis, Comedy Works in
Denver, Punchline in Atlanta, and the Ice House in
Pasadena are comedy clubs that come to mind. These
clubs are traditionally well run, well booked, and
provide a supportive environment for the comedians.

By venue I mean a room that books only acts that are
expected to sell tickets – the big barn venue that
customers do not attend except to see a specific act.
The problem is that comedians who can sell that many
tickets are most in demand and thus less available.
Only at this level is there a shortage of comedians.

Too often I am hearing from fellow bookers, “he
doesn’t sell tickets.” Unless the comedian is
commanding top dollar, he is not expected to sell
tickets. (And please understand I use the all
encompassing “he” rather than the more clumsy “he/she”
but the rule applies to male and female acts.) It is
the responsibility of the comedy club to sell tickets.
That is why the club keeps the lion’s share of the
revenue because the club carries all the
responsibility of paying rent, buying advertising,
staffing the room, providing the sound equipment, etc.
What the comedy club provides are great shows for its
customers and a great place to work for the comedians.

My question to my fellow bookers is this: When was
the last time you booked a show just because it was a
great show and not because you thought it would sell
tickets? If the answer is over a month ago, then the
shortage of talent exists only in your mind, not in
the market. And there will always be a shortage of
talent.

Bert Haas
Executive Vice President
Zanies Comedy Clubs, Inc.

Fear not, we will be blogging it. (The hooter surgery went well. The Female Half is comfortable and resting. Scroll down to the Stanhope posting below to see the actual technical term for the procedure.)

Tonight there will be no challenges, merely performance. How… novel. Five comics doing what they do best. We would bet money that more time will be spent on recapping past episodes, showing backstage “drama” and other nonsense than will be spent on actual standup.

Such is the nature of Reality TV, we suppose.

Doug Stanhope, self-identified “road pig” who plays “all over the country and all over the world in a lot of shitholes,” and who says, ” Shitholes are my favorite places to be,” has published a screed on his myspace on how to book yourself into a string of those very shit holes for fun and profit. Sort of.

Essentially, he’s talking about liberation from comedy clubs and comedy club owners and striking out on your own to do, for lack of a more technical term, “door deals.”

Listen up, queercakes. You don’t need club owners. On every corner of every town there’s a bar with a stage and a microphone. They also have seats where they’d like people to be drinking, the heavier the better. They don’t care if you’re doing comedy, stripping or juggling onions to get people in the door.

Between Myspace and YouTube and the thousand other copycat sites, there is no reason you can’t build up a fanbase that will fill those seats in any given town, be it a comedy club or an Elks Lodge or any other boozer joint.

The lengthy, often rambling essay makes its points amid vivid, Thompson-esque depictions of life in the clubs and tangents that talk about the kind of acts he prefers to open his shows.

But the basic thrust is that a comic can be captain of his own comedy vessel. And there is much to recommend in his tract. And there is a lot to be said for crafting individual deals and handling much of the detail.

But it’s not easy, it takes a lot of work and it takes some risk. We figure it’s the risk that is the biggest hurdle for most. And, conversely, it’s the deferment of risk that keeps so many comics in the clubs– when you work in the clubs, you assume almost none of that risk; it’s all borne by the club owner. A lot of comics can’t break free of that arrangement and they pale at the thought of having it any other way. And it is only when they attain a certain level of notoriety that they even think of asking (or their management/representation even thinks of asking) for a “piece of the action.”

We’ve done the occasional door deal. We’ve had success here and there. And some disasters. It is a lot of work, but when it succeeds, the reward (and the attendant freedom) is great.

It is even more work when you are not a draw. Not being a draw means that you must plan (and maybe even finance) some ambitious promotion. Difficult when it is in your own backyard, much moreso when it is 100 miles away or 1,000 miles from home. Modern conveniences notwithstanding– YouTube, MySpace, college radio– it’s still quite a logistical undertaking.

Stanhope maintains that comics who choose to work in clubs (which he characterizes as venues, “who peddle mediocrity through fishbowl lotteries”) are creatures of habit or comfortable in those surroundings– the implication being that they’re lazy or mediocre. There’s even a hint that such comedians might be “chicken.”

The further implication seems to be that clubs stifle creativity and that they serve up mediocre acts to ordinary audiences. Stanhope prefers the “chaos and adrenaline” of what has become known as “non-traditional venues.”

That might be true in some clubs, but it is certainly not true in all. We’ve had spectacular, savvy crowds in comedy clubs. Conversely, we’ve played non-traditional venues who had no idea how to handle comedy crowds– or who attracted audiences who had no idea how to consume comedy– and the whole thing was a shit mess.

But the big difference between the clubs and the non-trad door deals is that there is a guarantee in the clubs. Most comics (it is probably safe to say) are desirous of a guarantee. So much so that they gladly give up more lucrative arrangements that might require more effort on their part. It’s a tradeoff.

And, let’s face it: No matter how many MySpace pals you have, no matter how many clips you have up on YouTube or .wav files of your act are circulating through LimeWire, you’re still going to be at the mercy of the venue and you’re still going to be dodging all manner of obstacles toward your goal of a packed house.

We just had a bad experience with a door deal. It illustrates the perils of such a mode of operation. But a previous experience with the same venue illustrates nicely just how pleasant and profitable they can be, too.

We hooked up with Higher Ground, a mainly music venue in Vermont. We agreed to do two shows on a Saturday in January and it went well. Not perfectly, but, if every such engagement went as well, we’d do them all that way.

We agreed to another deal at the same venue, this time in August of this year. There were at least two reasons that it might not go as well as the last time, however: 1) It was summer and 2) A show, with local comedians, was scheduled the Saturday before our show. We agreed to take the chance and we pulled out all stops, promotion-wise.

Then came the deathblow: A MySpace Secret Standup Show, featuring Louis CK, on Thursday night, two nights prior to our show. And… it was free.

There is no way that enough people (in a market the size of Burlington, VT) were going to pay $12-$14 to see us when they had just seen a comic the magnitude of Louis CK two night earlier– for FREE! (And, since it’s a MySpace Secret Show, it wasn’t announced until Monday!) After some deliberation, we pulled the plug.

Some comics would say that we should plaster on a smile, make the trip anyway and take the chance. But here’s where the absence of a guarantee and the assumption of risk comes into play: We weren’t just looking at the prospect of not making money, we were looking at the real prospect of losing money just by making the trip. And losing money is something that we simply cannot afford to do right now.

The Female Half is having surgery tomorrow (a left-breast ductoscopy with major ductile excision… or, as she calls it, “hooter surgery.”). We don’t have health insurance. We pay cash for everything. We can’t assume that kind of risk.

Perhaps in the future, our situation will change. Perhaps we’ll have the fiscal cushion to absorb the risk and the MySpace muscle to ensure a healthy turnout. Until then, though, the clubs, with their supposed oppressive atmosphere or their allegedly arbitrary or corrupted methods for choosing or rewarding talent, will be where we predominantly ply our trade.

In a brief AP story, Bob Newhart is among the finalist for a literary honor.

The deadpan comic and sitcom star was one of three finalists announced Tuesday for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, a $5,000 literary honor named for the famed author and humorist James Thurber.

His recent memoir caught the attention of the the folks at The Thurber House. The winner will be announced this fall.

We see the strangest things in our stats. Most often, it’s the keywords that folks use to search for something– which somehow has them ending up at SHECKYmagazine– that give us pause… or a good laugh. Keywords like:

Filthy+fishy+pussy+jokes

Doug+Benson+groupies

Joe+Rogan+versus+Milton+Berle

Russel+Howard+Shirtless

Howard+Stern+cleft+lip

Gary+Gulman+shirtless

But the ones that keeps popping up, the ones that make us crazy are

Mitch+Hedberg+death+hoax

Bill+Hicks+death+hoax

Rich+Jeni+hoax

We’re assuming we have Andy Kaufman to thank for this nonsense. We have a message to all who might be tempted to entertain this ridiculousness: Stop it, now! It’s stupid. And to the people who are obviously perpetuating this idiocy: Stop it, now! It’s pointless and it’s hurtful to the people (the real people) who are left behind, who loved these people and who are still dealing, to this day, with the grief. But it seems like nothing will stop them. The urge to cobble together an alternate reality from the facts at hand is a strong one. The desire to construct fantastic scenario that’s a whole lot more interesting than the dull (actual) one is too attractive for these nimrods.

The conspir@cy mania that seems to ensnare too many of the feeble-minded among us is reaching absurd proportions. We watched a two-hour special on the History Channel last night, 9/ll Conspir@cies: Fact or Fiction, which “Examines the various conspir@cy theories espoused on the Internet, in articles and in public forums that attempt to explain the 9/ll attacks.” (It re-airs Saturday at 08:00 PM and Sunday at Midnight.)

One of the men at the center of the so-called “truth3r” movement, A1ex Jones, is a syndicated radio host out of Austin. He was featured prominently in the special. As he spoke, we noticed that he bore an eerie resemblance (and, with his Dallas-born, Texas twang sounded like) the late Bill Hicks. Hmmm… this gave us an idea.

You folks want a conspir@cy theory? We’ll give you one: Jones is actually Hicks. It all adds up (if you have a funky, “The Truth Is Out There” abacus for a brain). The evidence: Hicks had a lengthy bit on the JFK assassin@tion, he was raised in Texas, Jones was born in Parkland Hospital, which is the very same hospital that JFK was taken shortly after unknown person or persons shot him! They look alike. (See this page for several image of Jones! From certain angles, it’s positively eerie!) Hicks faked his own demise (since, after his HBO specials and his multiple Letterman appearances made him a marked man by the totalitarian government!) and re-emerged as a talk show host on Sunday afternoons in Austin. The timeline might be a little hinky, but some of our best minds can work out those details!

There! Are you happy? Now that we’ve done much of the investigative groundwork, it’s up to the rest of you to devote your free time to furrowing out The Truth! (Whoa, dude! We can’t go into this in any more detail because we’re convinced that someone is tapping our modem.)

Comic Dave Odd, who produces standup in Chicago under the Edge Comedy banner, is opening a full time standup comedy club at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts.

He’ll be christening the new room with a Grand Opening Fundraiser Extravaganza on the 330-seat mainstage this Saturday, August 25th, at 9:30pm. Says Odd:

This show is meant as somewhat of a sampler platter of upcoming acts for the club, as well as to build capital for advertising and promoting the club so we can bring in strong audiences and bigger and bigger acts. The focus of this club will be on young, original, up-and-coming talent with headliners on the cusp of fame (or in some cases already there).

We met Mr. Odd some time ago while working at Wiley’s in Dayton. He is known in Chicagoland for producing standup comedy shows “with a punch.” Click this for details on the upcoming grand opening. Click here for Odd’s myspace.

It’s our lastest film, and it’s “Easter Parade,” a short (3:43) movie that could be described as “Industrial Light & Magic meets The Dollar Store!”

Click here to look into our shorts. Film shorts, that is.

Thanks!

News to us.

From the Scotsman.com comes this article on a recent poll conducted by a “drinks firm” in the U.K.

And while sarcasm may be denigrated as the lowest form of wit, a new survey claims it is also the nation’s favourite.

It suggests stand-up comics jostling for attention at the Edinburgh Fringe might be better to jettison their gags and opt for the withering diatribes of comedians such as Jack Dee.

The results found that “seven in ten people found sarcasm funny, while 63 per cent admitted cracking up at ‘silly’ jokes. Just over a third confessed to being entertained by slapstick or the stunts on shows such as TV’s You’ve Been Framed.”

And although no drinks firms here in the USA do similar surveys (if they do, they don’t make the results public), we suspect that the results would be similar.

And in this article, from Canada.com, Bruce Deachman asks:

…Is there, in fact, a distinct essence of Canadian comedy? If a Brit, an American and a Canadian comic walked into a bar, could you tell the difference?

The answer, from Mark Breslin, Howie Mandel, Colin Mochrie and Humber’s Andrew Clark is… yes… and no.

No conclusions, but a lot of philosophizing and dissection of Canada’s comic psyche, especially as it’s influenced by the presence of America. Ask a Canadian about anything– humor, food, music– eventually, the conversation comes around to the USA. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing… it’s just a thing.

Read both if you’re a comedian who is venturing/wants to venture to the U.K. or Canada.

A reader asks:

Hey, is there an RSS feed for sheckymagazine.com? I like reading it, but it would be much easier if I could read the updates through my feedreader along with the rest of my morning must-reads. Thanks.

There is indeed an RSS feed for SHECKYmagazine. “RSS” stands for Real Simple Syndication, or so we’re told. It is a means by which we can syndicate or “push” our content to desktops everywhere via feedreaders or similar aggregators. (To put it another way, a reader can sit and wait for our postings to be sent to him. This eliminates the need for the reader to have to come to our website to read our content.)

We set it up some time ago, via FeedBurner and, at the time, we immediately put a little “Add this site to MyYahoo” buglet on the righthand column, then promptly forgot about it.

We have moved that bug up to the upper lefthand column. And it is now accompanied by another bug, a standard feed icon. Click on the top one to add this blog to a number of popular feeders. Click on the MyYahoo button to add us to your MyYahoo!

What does all this mean? It means that those of you who use a feedreader or an aggregator to peruse this and other blogs will be able to have SHECKYmagazine content delivered to your reader at a specified time every day.

What does that mean? We’re not sure. But we know it’s a good thing.

If anyone has any questions about this FeedBurner technology, ask them in a comment on this post. AND… if anyone has the answer to any inquiries, post them in a comment on this post. If no comments appear, we’ll assume you’re all technologically savvy!

Thanks!

Read the London Sunday Times for a profile of Judd Apatow, whose movies have grossed nearly a billion bucks.

For Apatow, becoming a stand-up comedian was actually more than a dream. It was, from the time he was eight or nine, a geeky obsession. “Before VCRs, I would tape the television series Saturday Night Live with an audio-cassette recorder and then transcribe it,” he recalls. In his teens, he got a job as a dishwasher in a comedy club; then in high school on Long Island, he started a radio show called Club Comedy so he could interview comedians.

He goes into some detail on his standup comedy experience. (Far from burying his standup past, he goes to some lengths to mention it when he does print interviews or panel on the talk shows. We recall Apatow being a regular emcee at the Melrose Improv in 1993.)

Federal workers who want to participate in the Funniest Fed contest that’s happening October 4 at the New York Underground Comedy Festival, click here and download the application. Bureaucrats have until September 14 to send in that app. The contest has been opened up to military employees as well.

Stanley Myron Handelman (with Billy Barty) in front of tour bus. (Photo from www.timfowlar.com)

Check out The Stars and the Stories, one of many pages of photos and reminiscences from Tim Fowlar, who served as band leader and eventually conductor of Roy Radin Vaudeville Revue from 1973 to 1979. Fowlar is currently in the music business in Las Vegas.

The site has a paragraph or two on many of the stars that were part of the revue, including Milton Berle, Jack Carter, Jackie Vernon and, pictured above with Billy Barty, Stanley Myron Handelman.

Scroll down for a link to Handelman’s obituary.

For the first time in almost forever, The Female Half has written a column. In it, she reflects on that fateful day in August of 1977, thirty years ago today… the day after Elvis Presley died:

We were on vacation that week. My grandparents had decided to take me and my older sister to Atlantic City. In my early years, I had stayed at their house quite often, but this was the first time we had actually vacationed together for any length of time. It was my grandpop’s idea. I now realize that he must have known something was wrong.

Since my grandparents didn’t have much money, we stayed at an establishment that was part motel/part B&B– minus one of the B’s. It was dark and it smelled like an old person’s house. The lobby was always full of French Canadian men who were far too old and too fat to be wearing the late 1970’s equivalent of a Speedo.

Read the whole thing.

Adam Murray, writing for TVSquad.com says:

Burnim-Murray Productions and October Moon Television are attempting to sell a new comedy game show for syndication. The series, called Laugh Off, would give unknown comedians a chance to compete in different contests centered around stand-up, improv, charades and mime.

We’re troubled by many things.

Firstly, the art accompanying the article is a photo of a braying horse. We suspect that they couldn’t find a stock photo of an actual jackass. It was an editorial decision by someone at TVSquad, no doubt, who figured that a boring shot of a comedian holding a microphone in front of a brick wall didn’t suit the copy.

Second, what is Burnim-Murray and October Moon’s idea of “unknown comedian?” That could be anyone from Jim Gaffigan to the guy at the water cooler who cracks us all up with his dead-on impression of Jim From Taxi! You know how these TV producers look at the world!

Third, why does everyone feel compelled to muck things up with improv, charades and mime? (We suppose that pitches are getting ever more tricky these days. It’s gotta be “fresh” and “new,” but it also must be derivative and downright larcenous. What you end up with is something that’s vaguely familiar, superficially inventive and hardly exciting. Rather like thoroughbred horse breeding– each new horse must be able to trace his bloodline back to a previous champ– but the resultant increase in speed over the past century hardly seems worth all that fussing and is far, far less than what you’d expect.)

Charades?!! Invite Buddy and Sally over! We’re going to play charades!! How do you feel about Adlai Stevenson? This baked Alaska is scrumptious!! Is this irony? We fear it is not.

The links to the videos in this post no longer work. The page displays a message: “his video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc.” We posted about the YouTube–Viacom lawsuit on Tuesday.

Positively devastating YouTube clip of Jeff Ross skewering Flavor Flav on Comedy Central’s recent highly-rated roast. (When did we stop referring to him as “Flava” and start calling him “Flavor?”)

Carrot Top‘s clip is beating out Ross’ in terms of plays. The folks who leave comments below the clip seem shocked that he would be so funny and nearly all grudgingly admit that the set was well done. He seems a bit flipped at first, but settles in nicely when he gets to the props, at one point remarking, “I shoulda gone to the props first!” The Top was the second most dumped-on attendee, after the guest of honor, so it took some guts for him to get up there. Some would say it took guts to show up.

From MediaWeek.com:

The Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav soared to a 2.9 household rating with 3.8 million total viewers on Sunday, August 12 at 10 p.m. Comparably, that is the cable net’s highest rated telecast of the year and the most-watched roast ever among men 18-34. It was also the highest-rated show of the day on basic cable among adults 18-49 (2.5 rating). And it grew from the year-ago roast of William Shatner by as much as 89 percent among adults 18-34.

SHECKYmagazine columnist Adam Gropman, writing for the cultural commentary website The Simon, files a detailed and entertaining report on his experience with the television show, Next Best Thing:

It was at this point that my audition got really interactive and riffy, with me responding in character to random questions of theirs and Jeffrey Ross coaxing me to do a Sarah Silverman impression. Although the judges had liked my Sandler impression, I suddenly realized that all of this unscripted improvising risked diluting my prepared performance and chances of moving on in the show.

The judges had given me a few obligatory quips and digs — like when Elon Gold said I sounded like Carol Channing — but they also gave me positive feedback and an overall thumbs up, saying I passed on to the next level. I jumped off the stage — probably not a second too soon — and gave a brief, triumphant post-audition interview to the awaiting Ms. Merkin.

After filling out over a solid half hours’ worth of legal documents, I drove off into the night with the mildly intoxicating feeling that I’d sort of, kind of just done something perhaps tenuously related to huge TV stardom.

Read the whole thing. And, while you’re there, check out his dissection of radio talk show hosts and the importance of humor in broadcasting.