The U.K. Independent, for reasons that are unfathomable, features a pathetic 1,762-word rant by British comedian Alexei Sayle. All you need to know is contained in the sub-head, which, we’re fairly certain, was provided by the Independent’s editors:

Sour. Self-pitying. Cowardly. These are the defining characteristics of the stand-up comedian, argues Alexei Sayle.

The Independent has found a self-hating comedian to do their bidding. He proceeds to generalize about comics, and, in the end, turns out to be as sour, self-pitying and cowardly as anyone.

The occasion for such vitriol is the death of 76-year-old Brit comic Bernard Manning. Sayle’s essay is an anti-eulogy of sorts.

Paragraph three:

I never met the man, nor wanted to, but have met and studied many like him, largely because his generation of old-time comedians present a frightening object lesson in the perils of what being a stand-up can do to you if you don’t take care to ameliorate its more malevolent effects.

Emphasis ours. Sayle was no doubt tapped by the Independent for his unerring ability to take the perceived qualities of one individual and extrapolate it over an entire population. (Which, it would seem, is precisely the rap laid on poor Bernard Manning in his latter years.)

We’ve seen serial killers get a better send-off.

What makes this doubly frustrating is that the bottom third or so of the column contains decent, insightful analysis of standup. Why Sayle found it necessary to assail a dead comic is beyond us. Perhaps it was a requirement for publication in the Independent. No serious treatment of the artform unless it’s prefaced by hackneyed, vicious stereotypes that play to our readers’ worst instincts!

Read the rest here. If you come away with anything positive from this screed and feel compelled to write to us and defend it, save yourself the keystrokes and lie down until the urge goes away.

Return to SHECKYmagazine.com this evening– We’re going to drop a load of blog after the airing of Episode Two of LCS, sometime around 10:30 PM EDT. “The international search continues as the talent scouts go from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, in the search for the world’s funniest new comic,” says NBC.

Kevin Burke will perform Rob Becker‘s “Defending The Caveman” at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas six nights a week.

When we were in Vegas last, performing at the Riviera in February, Burke stopped by. He was in town to make final arrangements on the pending opening of DTC.

It opened June 1, and there are performances every night at 8 PM (Dark Tuesday ), with a matinee at 3 PM on Saturday and Sunday.

Go to the Montreal Just For Laughs website and click on the link to “Festival,” then click on the link to “Toronto Festival.”

There’s going to be a three-day Just For Laughs… in Toronto, July 26-28 just after this year’s fest in Montreal.

Hmmm… first the host hotel shifts a few blocks over and down to the Hyatt, now the fest continues on for another three days in another city.

We called the exodus of the Aspen fest from Aspen. Might the JFL be inching toward exit in Quebec? Or is it a pre-emptive strike? Something to forestall anyone from starting a rival fest in that Ontario burg? (They’re bringing in heavy hitters– Craig Ferguson, George Lopez and Howie Mandel— so they mean business!)

Stay tuned!

The El Paso Times is reporting that Damon Wayans walked on a room full of fans five minutes before the second show Friday at the Comic Strip in El Paso, TX. According to the Times, Wayans got huffy when…

…5 minutes before his second show, two female friends were not immediately allowed into the club.

TMZ.com ran the EPT story as well, adding their own snarky comment.

We were treated poorly at the very same club once over a decade ago– if we had it to do all over again, we woulda walked five minutes before showtime, too. So, we’re curious as to Wayans’ side of the story.

Ben Grossman, writing in Broadcasting & Cable, says that an unnamed source says that some NBC suits met with Jon Stewart and his agent.

“They just made their interest known in finding a way to do business together if Jon was ever available,” says the source, who categorized the talks as “exploratory.”

It gets interesting further down the page.

When the dust settles, the whole affair might make the Johnny/Letterman/Leno baton handover conflagration look like a shift change at the local mini-mart.

The network has some major decisions to make in the wake of its announcement that Conan O’Brien is scheduled to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in 2009. Leno is still printing money for NBC, and the show’s profitability is even more important now, given the network’s primetime struggles.

While NBC may decide to keep Leno and give O’Brien a reported $40 million payout…

Conan to Fox? Kimmell to the Home Shopping Network? Our world, it is rocked. Read the whole thing here.

Someone wrote to us and asked why the producers of the program didn’t show Pete Dominick advancing to the next round. He was shown, however, on the premiere episode, during the Gotham tryouts. In fact, he was the first one chosen to advance, the first comic awarded the Red Ticket. But, mysteriously, the part where Dominick got his ticket was not in the final edit.

Turns out Dominick was asked, as a condition of his promotion to the Hollywood portion of the competition, to give up his two daily Sirius Satellite Radio shows. Dominick weighed the pros and cons and decided to keep the radio gig and forego the network television exposure.

Both shows are on the Raw Dog comedy channel. Comedy By Request airs weekdays, noon to 1. Getting Late airs weekdays at 11:15 PM.

Meta Wagner, writing in her Vox Pop column for PopMatters entitled “Surrender yourself to the attack of the comedians,” seems somewhat surprised that comedians…

…through a combination of smarts, talent, and chicanery, have managed to infiltrate and conquer just about every field of entertainment, where they were once relegated to the role of “funnyman,” and have even made inroads into the media, where they were once only the subject of reviews.

We’ve maintained all along that comedians have, since the days of vaudeville, acquired and maintained plenty of power. With the explosion of media choices via the internet and other modern doo-dads, their power has grown proportionately.

We’re thinking of Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Danny Thomas, Milton Berle as examples of some, among many, who, from their notoriety in radio or television’s early days, were able to roll it up into power, wealth and influence. Even in the days before standup was fully formed as it is today, Charlie Chaplin was one of the United Artists who ran a studio and Will Rogers dined with kings and presidents.

Wagner seems to think that the power derivers from some fanciful “speaking truth to power” formula. “It may at first seem absurd and more than a little frightening that comedians—people who tell jokes for a living—would have such sway in our culture.” she says. It’s hardly absurd and not at all frightening. But it’s not as complicated and heavy as she makes it sound.

It’s all about the funny. Babies can smile at birth and smiles have been spotted on babies in the last trimester of pregnancy, says an article on the Parenting website. Would it not make sense that people who specialize in provoking smiles– and out and out laughter– might wield tremendous power in the business of show?

Sorry. We couldn’t come up with anything less blasphemous or more clever.

Anyway, this post is about a pair of upcoming tapings (in Nashville, TN, on the 23rd, and on Murfreesboro, TN, on the 24th) that will be edited into a full-length, theatrical release that will attempt to duplicate the success of the Blue Collar movie.

Only this time around, it’s with “four of the funniest professional Christian comedians,” Jeff Allen, Brad Stine, Ron Pearson and Anthony Griffin.

That there is a pretty strong lineup, no matter what your religious persuasion.

Read the entire article on “The Apostles of Comedy” in the Christian Post.

Comedian David Steinberg has a book out, called “The Book Of David.” The Toronto Star calls it a “non-linear, blithely anachronistic and not always factual faux-biblical memoir of his life in the business.”

“If this book gets me out there a little bit, then maybe I’ll put myself out there again. I wouldn’t go to the same venues again because I like to get in my jammies a little earlier than I did when I was younger, but maybe on the lecture circuit or something like that.”

Read the Star’s interview with Steinberg here.

Rex Morgan, Tom Wilson, Legendary Wid, at the bar at Helium (PHL) Friday night (Photo credit: Patricia Wall)

We found ourselves idle on a weekend and home, so what did we do? We visited a comedy club, of course. FOS John Kensil emailed us that he was in town and working with Tom Wilson at Helium, the Philadelphia comedy club that is just a train ride away.

Also on the bill was Chris White, whom readers may recall from his brief appearance on the premiere episode of LCS. (And, though the chyron said he was “from Washington, D.C.,” he actually hails from Media, PA, making this bill, with Villanova’s Wilson and Kensington’s Kensil, an All-Philly-Area extravaganza.)

We were hanging in the green room when Rex Morgan and Patty Wall (with their adult child, Rachel, in tow) rounded the corner. (Morgan is a member of the comedy troupe Mixed Nuts, who rose to prominence at the Comedy Works at the exact same time that Wilson was honing his craft in anticipation of his eventual migration to Hollywood. Wall, as readers of this magazine know, is the person responsible for badgering the Male Half into doing his very first open mike, thus setting him on his current life/career path.)

Just when we thought the green room couldn’t get any more raucous, The Legendary Wid entered the room. Wid also rose to prominence during the abovementioned era, making this evening a bizarre, historical Philly comedy confluence.

We trained home in time to catch yet another Philly comic– on Conan. Paul F. Tompkins appeared on the late night NBC show in conjunction with his week at Comix in NYC.

Other Philly comic items? The issue of Maxim that’s on the stands (the one with Sarah Silverman on the cover) mentions Todd Glass and Tompkins. The mention is in response to the question, “Who are your favorite comedians today?”

For readers in the Pacific Time Zone, be advised that NBC is re-running the premiere episode of Last Comic Standing on this very evening (Sunday). We’re not sure if they plan to re-run every episode– it might make good, cheap, summertime programming sense– but tonight, you can catch it again… or for the first time, if you missed it.

And, if you’re just now finding us, you can read our analysis of LCS by scrolling down a few posts on this very page.

And, if you’re planning to watch the entire season (provided the ratings hold up and NBC chooses to air the entire season), stop back here Wednesday night and catch our analysis of the next episode, too!

The Minneapolis Star-Turbine has an obit for William Fleming, who died June 6, at the age of 79, from pneumonia. The first few grafs pay attention to his work as an attorney and his involvement with MPLS-area theater and his work as a playwright.

Then, there’s this, in paragraph six:

…His dry, droll comedy hit the national scene when routines he had penned such as “Hi There, Fun Seekers” and “Look Back in Dullness” were performed by Jackie Vernon on the Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Ed Sullivan shows.

The Male Half often cites Vernon as a very early influence. He recalls seeing Vernon actually doing the Fun Seekers bit on Sullivan, but remembers little else, other than it was hysterical, even to his single-digit-aged sensibilities.

Just got a comment on our giant LCS wrapup posting. It goes like this:

Letting the pros in on this is a flawed concept. I want to see people trying to get their first break– not a bunch of people I know are getting paid and don’t really need the money– just more exposure. Who would have thought the execs at NBC could be so dumb. Do they think that none of their viewers have Comedy Central in their cable plans? Last year I was shocked to see folks like Gabriel Iglesias. Is NBC taping this stuff and leaving it on a shelf for a year, or what? Let’s see…how many professionals have I seen on a show that’s billed like an amateur contest? Arj Barker, Ralph Harris, Sabrina Matthews, Dwayne Kennedy, Amy Schumer, Doug Benson, etc.. It’s like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston showing up to audition for American Idol. You know the real amateurs have NO shot. Even worse, a lot of the pros use some of their same material. It’s like a pathetic rerun of routines I’ve already seen. If you’ve already been on TV, you should not be allowed to be on this show! Comedy Central already has a contest for the best stand-up of the season. Maybe they should offer prize money to lure these camera hogs away from those trying to get their first break.

Where do we begin with this big pile of dumb?

At the top.

Letting the pros in on this is a flawed concept. I want to see people trying to get their first break– not a bunch of people I know are getting paid and don’t really need the money– just more exposure.

Watching a bunch of “people trying to get their first break” doing standup comedy would be a mixture of painful, boring and largely unfunny. How do we know this? Because the vast majority of standup comics start out as painful, boring and largely unfunny. It takes a long time to get good at it.

As for who needs the money and who doesn’t, we’d like to see the magic formula determining exactly who might “need the money.”

(H)ow many professionals have I seen on a show that’s billed like an amateur contest?

Last Comic Standing is not now, nor has it ever been, “billed like an amateur contest.” It is a reality series that seeks to find “the funniest new comedian in the world.” (According to NBC’s own website.) By “new,” they mean new as in undiscovered or not known to the general public. Arj Barker may have had a special on Comedy Central, but the audience for a cable outlet isn’t large enough to make anyone a mainstream star, especially compared to the power of a network television outlet like NBC.

To the comedy fan, Barker, Benson, Matthews, et al, may be familiar names. To the watchers of Comedy Central, they might seem to be stars, but to the average NBC viewer, they are “new” and the audience is “discovering” them for the first time, with the help of LCS.

The website also says that the three talent scouts are “traveling across the globe to find the best professional and aspiring comedians.” But the word “amateur&quot is never used.

It’s like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston showing up to audition for American Idol.

Actually, no, it isn’t. The rules on Idol specify that a contestant cannot have previously had a recording contract. We believe that Ms. Dion and Ms. Houston have each been recording for the better part of twenty years. But Idol is clearly an amateur talent contest. LCS is not.

We’re puzzled by the public’s constant confusion of the two formats.

Let us end this posting by quoting ourselves. From a comment that we posted yesterday:

The first season featured a good number of seasoned veterans of comedy. As has each consecutive season. As does this season. In spite of the efforts of the producers to ram green comics into the process, it is the experienced ones who stand out, who make an impact in their brief turns or who eventually dominate the final ten.

If it were up to us, there would be even more experienced comics vying for the top prize. If it were up to us, this silly town-by-town “talent search” conceit would be replaced by an invitation-only process, based on review of video tapes, submitted by comics themselves or by their representation. But that somehow goes against the already calcified conventions of reality TV– a genre that, though only a decade old, has already veered into self-parody.

FOS Nick Zaino promises to dedicate some of his new blog, The Optimistic Curmudgeon to comedy.

His first such posting details the baffling LCS appearance by Boston-area comic Chris Coxen who failed to advance to the evening showcase at Gotham during Wednesday night’s premiere. His Combat Dancing character was met with… puzzlement.

Zaino writes frequently and eloquently on the subject of standup for the Boston Globe.

In an interview in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal with Alonzo Bodden, the Season 3 Winner continues the ruse:

Commenting on season five of Last Comic Standing, Bodden was vague.

“I can’t give away any inside information. But don’t make any bets with me because I know who they picked,” he said.

Okay. Make bets with us, then! We bet the top ten chosen are:

Gerry Dee
Deb DiGiovanni
Amy Schumer
Dante
Jon Reep
Ralph Harris
Matt Kirshen
Doug Benson
Lavelle Crawford
Gina Yashere

So far, only a handful of websites out there have driven some traffic to our Deluxe LCS Spoiler Info-Nugget, most notable among them being FOS Raven Snook‘s TV Guide LCS Blog. For them we are grateful. As for the rest of you out there, what is your problem?

P.S.: Just as we predicted Wednesday night, “Mel Silverback” is the most googled name out of all the names from the premiere of the series.

Also: Zap2It.com says that the first hour of LCS came in third behind the second hour of So You Think You Can Dance on ABC and CBS’s Criminal Minds. The second hour finished with respectable numbers finishing second to CSI:NY.

However, since the numbers can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, James Hibberd of TVWeek.com says that the show “gave NBC its best Wednesday evening since February.” So, it looks like, at least for now, NBC’s not going to Bodden* anybody this year.
__________

* Bodden: v. to disrespect by not airing the final episode in which one is announced as the actual winner of a several-weeklong reality series.

An article on NewKerala.com, a news and infotainment cite covering India and the region, tells of a new series:

Comedy Circus, a new reality-based comedy format show to be aired on Sony entertainment television from tomorrow, will have popular television actors… team up with seven well known stand up comedians in their bid to make the viewers laugh.

Watch for it to migrate to American television soon. Retitled So, You Think You Can Kill, U.S. producers will give their version a slight twist or two, adding a dunk tank segment, partial nudity and limiting the competition to celebrities who have been in rehab within the last 36 months. And celebs will be coached by comedians Dustin Diamond, Andy Dick and Ant. Because it just wouldn’t be standup comedy without humiliation, freaks and the faint whiff of failure.

Steve Heisler, writing for TimeOut Chicago, interrogates Patton Oswalt, giving him a chance to say some interesting things about the alternative vs. mainstream debate.

But also keep in mind a lot of, um, 90 percent of mainstream comedians are just boring people and 90 percent of alternative comedians are bad comedians. You know? Alternative comedy came out of comedians who’d been doing it so fucking long that they just got bored with it and started fucking around and getting more personal and more experimental. So a lot of these comedians that just started off just as alternative comedians never went through the “just becoming good comedians” first. Does that make sense? It’s like a chef starting out going, “I’m gonna be, like, the guy at Alinea or the guy at Moto.” It’s like, Well, no, you need to learn how to just cook an omelette first. [Changes voice]”Fuck that! I’m gonna do like a weird fusion thing where you’ve gotta wear a silver hat and….” No, dude, just… I bet the guys at Moto and Alinea, if you just gave them a pan and three eggs, they could make the best omelette you’ve ever eaten; but they could do it without thinking, so that’s boring for them. Does that make sense?

The omelette metaphor (or is that a simile?) is perfect.

We recently came to a tentative conclusion that a lot of agents and managers abused the “alternative” label, passing off their clients as alt acts to provide a sort of cover for their client’s inexperience. (An alternative stage was one venue where a comic’s seemingly offhanded delivery and/or lack of slick was perceived as an asset rather than a liability.) Of course, in the case of many of the early alt acts, that delivery was achieved through years of working at standup in the traditional way, then deconstructing things. To put it another way, it was a studied and intentional lack of polish. Less than 48 hours later, we read Oswalt saying basically the same thing.

Somehow, FOS Lisa Corrao discovered that she and an animator at an outfit called 4EyedAnimation shared the same last name. One thing led to another and she ended up with this nifty animated short that married a bit of hers with the quirky, Crickfalusian animation that the Brooklyn-based studio incorporates into Flash animation, websites and Shockwave games.

The Male Half is envious. Some years ago, he discovered that he and a hotshot artist-producer at Disney share both a first and a last name— look it up, “Brian McKim” is in the credits in nearly every animated Disney project from Little Mermaid to the present– yet the eponymous animator answered not one email.

The Mandatory Reading light is flashing. Check out this Houston Press article that tells the sad tale of the rise and fall of the once-vibrant Houston comedy scene. It’s a story that’s the same, more or less, in nearly every major market. Only the characters are different and the time frame shifts a little.

As far as Houston is concerned, it’s Kinison, Hicks, Martinez, Prelli and Babbitt. The former, of course, being the town’s late and legendary comedians. The latter being the folks who either masterminded the art form’s dominance and/or presided over it’s long, sad decline.

Martinez says in the early ’90s, the game totally changed. “It was difficult to sell it, when you can get it anywhere, you can get on cable, you can get on regular television, you can it anywhere — free. What’s the point?” says Martinez. “We had to add phone lines and hire telemarketers to start giving away parties to businesses, to colleges, give discounts to NASA and other industries around here.”

Uh… in other words, you had to market the product? You actually had to differentiate your product from all the others competing for your market’s entertainment dollar? Heaven forbid you should have to do anything but throw open the doors and turn on the lights!

Which is all a lot of owners had to do in the ’80s. When the going got tough, though, the owners wept like babies and tightened their fists. The blame game geared up and television was the scapegoat of choice.

Former Houston Laff Stop owner Mark Babbitt, who took over the Laff Stop in 1995 says:

“There were so many stand-up shows on TV that, my theory is, it depressed the market for live comedy.” The rise of comedy specials on HBO, BET and especially the introduction of Comedy Central encouraged more people to try their hand at stand-up– not always successfully. Pressed to fill time slots, the networks, Babbit says, “were just throwing people up there thinking that it was good for comedy, and it wasn’t.”

But Babbitt cites the sweet spot in that era as prosperous. “I’d say between 1998 and 2002, we really hit our stride. We had a national reputation for good crowds and intelligent crowds,” he says.

You’ll have no trouble finding comics who parrot this line of nonsense. Useful idiots, Lenin would call them, if he were involved in the comedy business.

Instead of doing what any businessmen would do– consult with other owners, share information on promotion and marketing, spend money on advertising– they closed their wallets, pinched pennies and surveyed the landscape for someone or something to blame for their predicament. Standup television showcases and the people who coordinated the talent took the fall.

If as they say, television killed comedy, the paucity of comics on television in the decade between ’94 and ’04 should have been boom time. Leno took over Tonight in ’93 or thereabouts (subsequently ratcheting down the number of standup slots) and, at about the same time, Letterman famously announced that he was not having any more comics on his show, so there were fewere 4-minute, 30-second spots even on late-night network television. HBO avoided comedy for a long time during that decade, only recently announcing their re-entry in 2004.

We were practically out of the business by 1995, holed up in Philadelphia, writing comedy for an afternoon drivetime radio show. Frustration was our dominant emotion. We didn’t mind if someone took a look at our tape and passed. But we seem to recall that an awful lot of the folks out there in Comedyland weren’t even bothering to look at tapes or even answer their phone. Why bother reviewing video when you can book half your year in one phone call to Acme Talent or Consolidated Entertainment? A lot of club owners and bookers got lazy, took shortcuts, took their eye off the comedy ball. When their behavior only exacerbated the situation, they blamed TV.

And, like we said, so did a lot of comics. To their detriment. Comics are slowly coming to the realization that television is our friend, perhaps the best friend we ever had. Duh! Why are so many 20-year+ veterans calling in favors to do a frenzied two minutes (or less!) in the middle of the afternoon in an empty club in front of Ant? Because exposure to millions via television is still the limited access highway to packed houses, door deals and bright lights. Radio works wonders, but it’s a distant second to the tube.

Let’s all breathe deeply… Innnnn… Ouuutttt…

Once more… Innnnn… Ouuutttt…

Let’s go to our happy place.

Ant is a judge. Ant is telling people that they must come up with something original.

Let’s just leave that hang in the air for a second or two.

Innnnn… Ouuuutttt…

So far, no Buck Star, no strippers.

Auditions in New York, Montreal, San Antonio.

First the raw data:

From New York (taped at Gotham):

Lori Chase
Amy Schumer
Joe DeVito
Arj Barker
Dwayne Kennedy
Jane Condon (Capital One Audience Favorite)

From Montreal (taped at Kola Note):

Mel Silverback
Deb DiGiovanni
Gerry Dee

From San Antonio (taped at the Rivercenter Comedy Club):

Andi Smith
Sabrina Matthews
Ralph Harris (Capital One Audience Favorite)

Of course, NBC couldn’t help but ratchet up the geek/freak quotient, but, hey, that’s reality television for you. You gotta give the people what you’ve conditioned them to expect, after all!

Ant didn’t come off nearly as bitchy as we were told he was in reality. He was positively serene. (We loved Madigan’s slam when Ant got itchy and tried to ditch an auditioner just a little too quickly– “Your hair’s on! You’re sitting down, c’mon!”)

But we still have trouble with Ant being a judge, a talent scout, whatever they call them. San Antonio auditioner J.R. Brow got in a nice dig when Ant told him, “We’d love to have you come back tonight and bomb.” Brow replied, “Okay. I’ll do your stuff.” Bang! Zoom! Right back at you, segmented one!

(One thing we can conclude is that comics are basically nice people. How do we conclude this? Well, flash back to the first few episodes of each of the last six seasons of American Idol. Lots of bitchiness, arguments, feuding. Lots of diva-like behavior and more than a few, “Oh, yeah? Well, you can just go fuck yourself Simon, because I’m going to come back some day and piss on all y’all!” So far, the only blood drawn was by Brow’s smackdown– and that was delivered with the idiot grin/bemused look that comics effect when they know they’re delivering one below the belt! When comics are ascribed all those nasty attributes, perhaps it’s singers they have in mind, not us comedians.)

But we come back to it: Ant telling comics to come up with something original? As the Female Half astutely points out, Ant wouldn’t make it past Ant!

And any regular reader of this magazine probably cringed when the Talent Scouts were depicted throwing fruit at the target on the front of the t-shirt of one NYC auditioner. Throwing fruit at the comic! A timeworn cliche if there ever was one, probably dating back to before vaudeville! It matters not that he was wearing a target on his chest. Someone– everyone!– should have known better.

Big Issue: What is the producers’ obsession with inexperienced comics? When Bodden said to Montreal aud DeeAnne Smith, “You’re funny, but you’re not ready.” he summed up our thoughts well. We wonder why the producers don’t heed this sage advice. What good is a Bravo special going to do someone who is in this for three years? Or four, even? They’ll be forced to buy material, lots of it, but they’ll still hafta deal with the annoying gestures and the quirks and the overdone facial expressions that eventually disappear when folks get experienced and confident. Some folks might find all that endearing, but audiences would probably not be charmed over a 30- or 40-minute set.

Compare some of the greener comics to Phil Palisoul, Roy Wood, Jr. or Costaki Economopoulos— they’re polished, they’re calm, they’ve crafted jewel after jewel which they’ve woven into lengthy sets that have been road-tested in front of countless crowds or at innumerable showcases. How does youth and or good looks trump that when you’re searching for “The Funniest Comic In The World?”

Hey, why didn’t Capital One give out $1,000 to the Audience Favorite in Montreal? They could actually have saved a few bucks and given out $1,000 Canadian!

And why didn’t they mention that Montreal is host to the largest comedy festival in the world every year? And considering that many of the fest’s events are held in the very venue that L.C.S. taped in for the Montreal portion of the show, the omission is even more screwy.

We didn’t recognize any of the Montreal comics, except for Scott Faulconbridge. There are a lot of great Montreal comedians. Sad not to see them at least scurrying around in the background on those greenroom/backstage shots!

Mel Silverback (aka Dan Licoppe) is giving everyone conniptions, apparently. They let a guy through wearing a gorilla suit, goes the main theme of the whining. We gotta say, though, that the guy, er, the ape actually made us laugh. We honestly don’t think that a gorilla would take the whole enchilada, of course, but letting him through to the next round is no more ridiculous than promoting someone who does, say, a character. Like Larry the Cable Guy… or Jose Jimenez. Would anyone be inclined to watch a gorilla in a club for 45 minutes? Stranger things have happened.

We gotta say that Mel’s act, strange as it may have been, was better-constructed and more carefully written than a lot of folks who weren’t wearing a gorilla suit and a tuxedo.

(We predict that our stats will be filled with google searches for “Mel Silverback” He’ll make one of the larger cyber-splashes. Of course, a good number of them will be for “Mel Silverberg,” from people who don’t get half the joke. Other Google monsters will be Devito and Harris.)

The Joke of the Day. What was that? It should be called, “Are you funnier than a fifth grader?”

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Lame-ass jokes for $2.99 per month Standard Text Messaging Rates Apply open to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older.

Lame-ass jokes for $2.99 per month Standard Text Messaging Rates Apply open to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older who?

Orange you glad I didn’t say banana? Hysterical!!!

The first punchline is “A bucaneer.” For the third joke, “What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?” the punchline is, “Kathleen Madigan!” Jussst Kidding!

Other comics who got major face time:

In NYC:

Pete Dominick
Victor Vornado
Big Jay Oakerson
Wali Collins
Michelle Buteau
Chris White
Costaki
Calise Hawkins
Matt Kazam

In Montreal:

Richard Ryder
Ryan Belleville
Graham Clarke
Alan Park
Trevor Boris
DeAnne Smith
James Cunningham

In San Antonio:

Bob Biggerstaff
Robert Hawkins
Roy Wood, Jr.
Phil Palisoul
Billy D. Washington
Dean Lewis
Johnny Elbow

Host Bill Bellamy is inoffensive and not much of a factor so far. (And has apparently struck such a sweet deal that he didn’t even have to travel to San Antonio or Montreal. Even Seacrest has to hump his ass to Birmingham every year!)

And a shout out to Philly boy Ralph Harris! (The Female Half and Harris were in the same open mike class over the river, back in the mid-80s!)

Once again, for those of you who have scrambled aboard only recently, the ten finalists for this season will be:

Gerry Dee
Deb DiGiovanni
Amy Schumer
Dante
Jon Reep
Ralph Harris
Matt Kirshen
Doug Benson
Lavelle Crawford
Gina Yashere

Stay tuned.

An article in USA Today by Gary Strauss features the previous seasons’ winners and does a “Where are they now” number on them.

We were on the horn with Verizon this morning… we’ve been having some connectivity problems since… well… since we signed on with Verizon. Before that, it was problems with Earthlink. This DSL thing should’ve had all the bugs worked out by now, right? No matter. If need be, we’ll rent a hotel room and blog from there, so determined are we to weigh in on this conflagration known as Last Comic Standing. Just thought we would let you know. Just so you don’t wonder if there’s a delay.

The countdown begins… or continues. No matter– we are going to be watching the new season of the hit NBC reality show Last Comic Standing starting at 9 PM EDT.

Sometime after 9 PM (We’re not quite sure when), we’ll hammer out our inimitable commentary on the show– who did what, how does it reflect on standup in general, what might happen in future episodes, etc.

We have competition this year… sorta. NBC says that the show’s host, Bill Bellamy, will immediately be “blogging” after the show. (We suspect that the ultra-cool producers– or newly hired PA’s– will be the ones who are doing the actual blogging.)

Either way, bookmark this site and come back in the next 26 hours or so to see what we think. And you folks in Mountain Time and Pacific Time will be advised that the potential for spoilers is high!

Comedian Brian Mann is producing a series of shows at the Long Beach Playhouse that books nothing but clean comedians over the age of 40. In an article in the Press-Telegram, Mann says:

Mann found it at the Playhouse, when he called (LBPH Managing Director Gigi) Fusco-Meese to see if she might be interested. When he got the go-ahead, he started lining up comics. The main caveat: keep it clean.

But Mann also wanted to give opportunities to older comedians – including himself.

And so, a monthly series is born. It’s the first Sunday of every month at the Playhouse.

Did anyone see Don Rickles on Late Late Show last night? Who knew that Rickles has a book on the NYT best-seller list? It’s called “Don Rickles’ Book” and in it, he tells how, among other things, Sinatra gave him his big break.

We couldn’t help but notice that he bore a startling resemblance to someone… someone familiar… another comic? Is it Jim Norton? Jim Norton in “The Don Rickles Story?” Would that be boffo, or what?!

On another network, was Wanda Sykes, who appeared on Tonight.

A brief Hollywood Today interview with Sykes is notable only because she floats the notion of her portraying Moms Mabley in a biopic.

She sees humor in the future of the country but when asked about her next move Sykes did sincerely share the hope of portraying one of her inspirations, groundbreaking African-American comedian Moms Mabley and assured that there is more to come from her career.

That would be perfect. If they make it, we hope they don’t give it to a non-comic.

Does anyone even mention Dustin Hoffman as Lenny? Movie fans don’t. Standup fans don’t. It’s time to make another one. (The Female Half recalls that Rich Vos portrayed Bruce in American Dreams.)

It’s not in Seattle proper, but Dave Dennison‘s new Laughs Comedy Spot is in Kirkland, just across Lake Washington. It is there, in the eastern ‘burbs, the so-called Greater Eastside of the Emerald city, that Dennison is realizing his dream. It opened last week with Doug Stanhope. Click here for the saga of owner Dennison and click on the other pages to see who’s coming, how to get there and what to eat.

A Meath Chronicle article
on a new series on Irish TV that follows six comedians as they venture back to their old schools to investigate what made them comedians.

Throughout the series, not only do we get to see a range of comic styles, from the laid-back story-telling of Niall Tobin to the boundless energy of Jason Byrne, but we also get a glimpse at the social mix that made up Irish schools in decades past.

We’ve always held that the class clowns are the ones who don’t become comedians. More often than not, it’s the shy, quiet ones who display a sense of humor in more subtle ways who grow into adults that, in turn, grow into comedians, at least that’s been our experience.

And, conversely, the ones who say, “All my buddies told me that I’m such a card that I should try this standup thing,” are the ones who, quite often, have a disastrous experience at their first (and last) open mike.

They might be surprised at what they find. Of course, things might be different in Ireland. The loud and hyperactive ones might actually be the ones who mount the stage and become the comics.

No matter what, it is interesting that a series is going to afford viewers some honest insight into six artists (comedians!), without taking the cheapshot route, without, it seems, any hostility.

Are there any TV executives here in America willing to rip off this particular series idea? That would be refreshing.

In followup AP stories, this was found:

From now until the end of September, they said, travelers would be allowed to fly to those destinations if they present government-issued identification, such as a driver’s license, and a receipt from a State Department Web site showing they had applied for a passport.

Kinda important. Not sure why it was left out.

We sounded the alarm when restrictions on travel kicked in. We warned that folks who were planning to fly to (and from) Canada for JFL had better get their apps in for a passport, as that document would be needed to return to the good ol’ USA.

It seems as though these warnings (not just ours, but the MSM’s mostly) caused a stampede and the subsequent backlog at the passport processing centers. So, the folks in Washington have eased the requirements.

The proposal would temporarily lift a requirement that U.S. passports be used for citizens flying to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The rule, and its suspension, does not affect Americans driving across the Canadian or Mexican borders…

It’s still a good idea to get that passport. It’s just not as urgent as it was.

According to KCStar columnist Hearne Christopher Jr., “For the first time in decades neither south Kansas City nor Overland Park has a front-line stand-up comedy club.” Fear not, say the owners of Stanford & Sons, they’re opening a new one in the western burbs of Wyandotte County.

“Let’s face it, that is the new entertainment district in Kansas City. It’s really going to turn our city around, and we’re glad to be a part of it. Wait till you see it– you’ll feel like you’re on a television or movie set.”

Is chicken wire a part of the new design? (We seem to recall an audio interview (on Cringehumor.com) with Rich Vos making the rounds a while back in which he described a chaotic fistfight in the front rows of Stanford & Sons. It seems K.C. comedy fans are always up for a good brawl!)

The northern equivalent of Comedy Central has announced their 10th anniversary season slate of shows, some imported (from England or from the U.S.) and some original, like:

The Jon Dore Show stars award-winning comedian Jon Dore whose flat out crazy take on life is told through an array of real-life interviews, off-the-wall tangents and wild antics. Topics include: performing as a male stripper to help cure the blahs; getting help from a Hypnotist to squash a smoking addiction; and enlisting the services of an army drill sergeant to whip himself into shape. The 13-part, half-hour series is The Comedy Network’s newest original production.

It would seem that standup comics are perfect frontmen/women for reality shows. This occurred to us as we watched Kathy Griffin‘s D-List premiere last night.

Has Comedy Central ever imported anything from our Canadian neighbors, besides Kids In The Hall? Or The Red Green Show?

We sent in our Festival Just For Laughs accreditation forms yesterday, so it looks like we’re headed north again, for the ninth year in a row. (Nine years in a row? Whatever will we find to talk about?) Note to Comedy Channel: How about you break with tradition and actually INVITE US TO THE COMEDY NETWORK JFL PARTY? We always find out about it second- or third- or fourth-hand and we end up getting in anyway. Or, if you don’t find it in yourselves to invite us, can you at least throw us out in a very public and very dramatic manner, so we at least have something spectacular to write about? (We suppose we could fake it. We could concoct a story in which Comedy Network officials discover us drinking free Labatts and eating free smoked meat and toss us out onto the concrete while shouting incomprehensible epithets in Frenglish, but that is so Hunter Thompson-ish, so 1973.)

Perhaps we could wangle an invite through our “good buddy” (and newly minted TCN star) Jon Dore (seen above with The Male Half at the 2005 Festival Just For Laughs).

Reads the headline in a fantasy world.

Witness the illustration on the front page of the NBC website (above). It’s a “comic” from Australia. We suppose that a still of a white male or female dressed normally (which, we suppose would be the vast majority of the folks auditioning) is a real yawn, so the dress-ups and the screamers and the scary-haired ones make it into the website thumbnails for the video samples. And into the trailers.

“Sydney Auditions- Oz’s Shining Star” reads the title of one video. The subtitle reads, “The only funny man in Australia?” So… they’ve managed to diss an entire continent’s comedians. Nice! (We suppose they have a twist. It’ll probably come out that they’re only being provocative, but it’s rather unnerving that they feel they have to go that route.)

In the main trailer, Bill Bellamy briefly interviews an auditioner, a female. It is discovered that it’s her first time doing standup. Why she was included in the trailer is mysterious.

In the comments under the trailer, some folks weigh in on the rookie, with one, Casey R., who says, “Her name is Jamie Greenberg and she was seriously the most insane person I have ever met. One time she was drunk in the dining hall and got up on the table and screamed out ‘eat my ____'”

NBC undoubtedly has good lawyers.

We suppose one of the main things we’ll be keeping an eye on is how this circus– the promotion of the show, the show itself, the commentary, the website– reflects on standup comics and live comedy in general. So far, it’s… less than positive.

Always a good time in Raleigh. It’s one of the few clubs with a house emcee. In this case, it’s Ray Wagner. We entertained ourselves in the green room (which was, in another life, the building’s elevator shaft) by watching chunks of Wagner’s DVD. It’s a melange of short films, some live action, some animated, some performance.

Especially well done is his Orange County Moppers video. (Click to see it on YouTube.)

Goodnights house emcee Ray Wagner (Myspace site), though only 5’10”, dwarfs The Male Half through photo trickery (and a stool). In the greenroom at Goodnights. Photo credit: Female Half

Speaking of well done, we once again enjoyed the fine cuisine from Richard, Goodnight’s chef. (We regret that we forgot to bid farewell, so focused were we on exiting and heading north.)

We plan to use June to shoot and edit one, maybe two, of our short film projects. We’ll be homebound for a good portion of the month, with only local or regional gigs that won’t take us away from SHECKYmag HQ for very long.

Of course, we’ll take breaks from our cineastic endeavors to blog on Last Comic Standing. As in seasons past, we’ll do it in near-real time, meaning that we’ll watch it, and post our impressions as soon as we stop spluttering and finish typing.

Stay tuned.

We can’t make this shit up.

39-year-old Patrick Knight will die June 26, barring any meddling from well-meaning but misguided nitwits. He killed his neighbors. Shot them to death. They were Walter and Mary Werner. It was nearly 16 years ago.

Now, as he is snuffed out, he wants his last words to be… funny.

This hump wants to go out with a chuckle.

So far, he’s received over 250 “wisecracks,” as AP likes to call them.

Knight said he got the idea for a joke as his last statement after a friend, Vincent Gutierrez, was executed earlier this year and laughed from the death chamber gurney: “Where’s a stunt double when you need one?”

We hope this isn’t a trend. We fear it may already be.

We wonder how much he’ll pay per gag. Don’t take a check.

Oh, and one more thing: Don’t send him any joke that has to be explained.

An article on Backstage.com (“Where Can Comics Go Without Sitcoms?”) by Andrew Salomon tells of the changing landscape in Hollywood. The lack of sitcoms is creating a slow panic among agents, managers and comics. The argument is made that it is now somehow more difficult for a comedian to get a sitcom built around him. Of course it is, but only marginally so.

According to an October report in Entertainment Weekly, there were 62 comedies on the fall schedule in 1997; last season, there were 20. Earlier this month, at the upfront presentations in New York, the five broadcast networks announced there will be only 17 comedies during the 2007-08 season (21 if you count the four animated shows on Fox on Sunday nights). For the first time in 30 years, NBC — the network of Cheers, Seinfeld, Frasier, and Friends — picked up no new comedies.

To review: A decade ago, there were 62; This season, there will be 17.

Veteran comedy publicist and manager Glenn Schwartz bemoans the paucity of sitcoms:

“Economically, television has changed, so there are less scripted shows in favor of reality shows and game shows, and that’s simply because they’re profitable,” said Schwartz, whose clients have ranged from Milton Berle to Lewis Black. “No network feels an obligation to its audience to say, ‘Well, gee, it would be better to create the next Seinfeld… as opposed to [showing] bingo in prime time.'”

This should not come as a shock to anyone– Networks behaving in a pack, pursuing only that which is profitable. And, as fewer sitcoms are developed, fewer pilots are shot. As fewer pilots are shot, fewer sacks of cash (or “development deals”) are pushed across the table to comics and their agents and managers.

But, like we said, the odds were always thin. Now they’re razor-like.

Then, there’s this from comic Eric Lyden:

“The hardest thing about comedy is being where you’re at and not focusing on the brass ring,” he said. “The trouble is, in this business the brass ring is very, very attractive. It’s TV, it’s fame, it’s money, and there’s a very, very good chance you’re not going to be the next Seinfeld… Are you okay with just being a comedian? I wrestle with that. Some days it’s yes, some days it’s absolutely not.”

Are you okay with just being a comedian? A lot of comedians have been conditioned to answer “no.” A decade ago, agents and managers were telling their clients (and anyone else within earshot) that “there’s no money in personal appearances.” This caused considerable discontent among many comics who felt that honing the act was a giant waste of time. Pity.

It would seem a good and smart move to hone the act, though. How many comics have made the jump to television and movies and then resumed the personal appearances? Even Seinfeld himself– the comic by which most comics measure their lives, their careers, their worth– returned to personal appearance. How many comics are filling theaters right now? How many have done so without benefit of a sitcom or a major motion picture role? Are we seeing a reappraisal of the “no money in personal appearances” mantra? It seems that it has always been a good idea to be the best comic one could be.

If you’re a comedian, being a good comedian and making your living via standup should always be your Plan A.

We’re in Raleigh, at Goodnights. It should be a good weekend– One show tonight, two Saturday, one Sunday.

Josh Blue headlines here next week. Which reminds us– Last Comic Standing fires up in just 12 days. Lavelle Crawford (Top ten LCS comic this season) was just here. Jon Reep, another Season V Top Ten Comic is coming in September, the week of the finale. Rumor has it that erstwhile SHECKYmagazine columnist (and son of Raleigh) Dan French will be opening for Reep.

P.S.: Check out our newly updated schedule to see where we’ll be through the end of 2007!

AP tells of an ingenious publicity stunt cooked up by the Laugh Factory. They’ve signed Jon Lovitz to a contract to appear at the Hollywood comedy club every Wednesday night for the rest of his life.

As part of the deal, the 49-year-old Saturday Night Live alum will also write a Laugh Factory blog giving advice to up-and-coming comedians.

Lovitz giving advice to up-and-comers? How’s that work? The actor comedian only recently plunged into standup, so he does have that in common with the newbies. But, let’s face it, he had a bit of an advantage that most folks don’t have.

Blog Entry Number One

It will help you tremendously if, before you attempt standup for the first time, you appear regularly on a late-night sketch comedy show on a major network. I chose Saturday Night Live– You may have heard of it, it was on NBC, I think. You might have other television shows in mind. Any will do, really. That way, when you go onstage at, say, the Laugh Factory, you’ll have that tiny advantage of instant recognition by nearly every person in the English-speaking world.

If you can’t log several seasons on a major network television show, try imagining the audience in their underwear. Yeah… That’s the ticket!

Thanks to Al Romas for the tip!

NBC finished fourth in the ratings. Fourth. We’ll say it again– Fourth.

So they canned Kevin Reilly and put a pair of suits in his place to help pull them out of the ratings toilet. Marc Graboff is one– he’s currently president of NBC/Uni West Coast. It is said that Graboff will “focus more on the financial side of the business.” The other is Ben Silverman.

Silverman, an independent producer behind shows like “The Office,” “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” and “Big Brother,” is expected to concentrate on the creative process. (Emphasis ours!)[…]

The 2007-08 season is considered crucial for NBC, which has languished in a ratings rut since long-time comedy hits “Friends” and “Frasier” ended three years ago.

Oh, and he also produced “Ugly Betty.” So… he repackaged (Ripped off? Negotiated the licensing for/recast?) a British sitcom, he “repackaged” a Spanish “telenovella,” he “created” a quiz show and he “repackaged” a Dutch reality show. He’s in charge of the “creative process!”

Interesting to note that NBC is boo hoo-ing all the time that they’ve been languishing in the ratings since the demise of Friends and Frasier, yet they will tell anyone who’ll listen that “the genre is dead,” or that unscripted sitcoms are where it’s at!

P.S.: The internet is not yet a threat to TV– not in the “I’d rather watch it on my computer than on my TV” kinda way. Last night we tried to watch the season finale of Lost on our VCR. There was a power failure in our absence, so it didn’t “take.” So, we resorted to watching it on the Gateway, via abc.com. Excruciating is the word for it. And we have DSL! At this point, TV is much more of a threat to TV than the internet is.

The actor’s passing on May 25 in Los Angeles went without mention in these pages. Last night however, we received a splendid 2,000-word appreciation of Charles Nelson Reilly from actor/writer/director (and standup comic, of course) Paul Provenza.

I am so sorry to see Charles Nelson Reilly pass without the tremendous recognition he deserved in life. Not surprised, but still quite a bit sorry about it. He was so ubiquitous and was masterful in such unlikely ways, he became an ordinary part of my generation’s everyday life on TV all the time. I was actually moved by his passing in a way that doesn’t seem appropriate, but makes complete sense to me. He was such a big part of the comic pantheon of my impressionable youth that made me discover comedy with such a passion. I want to give the man his props here if nowhere else. He was so vastly underrated in comedy and as an artist in general.

It’s a touching and personal tribute. Read the whole thing. You’ll find out just how much you appreciated him, too.

On the Philadelphia City Paper website, under the heading of “Things That Matter To People Who Matter,” is the following:

Do you know why I love standup comedians? Because they’re not funny at all! What attracted me to go see standup comedy was the concept of a punch line. I thought a punch line was just that, a line you wait in to punch those rambling fools in the face. I was so pleased to find out that a night of standup comedy is far more evil than that. It brings me, Skeletor, the overlord of evil, such joy to see standups bore their audiences with their tales of pain and suffering. Their woeful accounts, of how they quit smoking or how they are forced to use their girlfriends’ scented soaps, are such a delight! The way they tell their tales with the bravado of a first-day substitute teacher couldn’t be more compelling. I, Skeletor, salute those who have truly perfected the art of torturing an audience! Hail evil!

The byline on this “essay” is “Skeletor, Evil Overlord, Lounge Singer.”

There are three other short essays– on a digeridoo performer, on a book and on Hefeweizen– all by creative types who populate the Philly arts scene. Then there’s this Skeletor douchebag.

Our question is why? Why did the editors deem this drivel worthy of their publication?

On the local PhillyComics newsgroup, a comedian identifying himself as Benny or ComedyLeper said that he was familiar with Skeletor as he had shared a bill with him on one occasion. He described the incident further:

He ate shit for 8 minutes and then shuffled offstage to heckle the rest of the comedians, tell disinterested patrons about his imaginary booking on the Conan O’Brian show, and subject both himself and his girlfriend to ridicule.

How does it enhance the reputation of the City Paper to run this crap? An obviously frustrated comic (who probably has a friend or two on the City Paper staff), sends in a couple hundred words of spiteful garbage and they run it under “Things That Matter To People Who Matter.”

He’s a regular at clubs and villages up and down the west coast… Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Basket Mouth!

He’s just one of the comedians mentioned in a lengthy (and, at times, tough to comprehend) article by Ezechi Onyerionwu on AllAfrica.com.

Sourcing raw materials from every imaginable aspect of Nigerian life, and dissecting them with a knife dipped in the light-hearted fluid of comedy, the instructional import of its assertions never escapes the alert mind of the sensitive connoisseur. From Nigerian politics and all its laughable indignities, to the palpable financial situation of the average Nigerian, and to the curious behavioural patterns and value system of the Nigerian peoples, the Nigerian stand-up comedians as conscientized and sensitized individuals in their own rights open chapters and chapters of the chequered existence of one of the most talked about of world nations, not only to their countrymen but also to the insatiate outside world.

Oh, yeah! That’s going in the press kit! We think…

Nigeria hit a rough patch for a decade or three following independence in 1960. They just experienced their first “the first civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in the country’s history,” (according to the CIA Factbook). We hear there were some “irregularities,” but, near as we can tell, there’s never been a better (or less dangerous) time to be a socially-relevant comic in Nigeria. The author cautions the comics not to blow it:

The Nigerian stand-up comedy remains a hugely important appurtenance of the artistic renaissance occasioned by the return to a democratic system of government. Irrespective of reservations from several quarters about the truly democratic quality of our leadership, it has at least provided our stand-up comedians the ambience to say it as it is, as well as how they want to say it without fear of molestation or intimidation. This art-friendly environment accounts for a bulk of any credit for artistic courage and bravery we want to ascribe to our performers. This is in spite of the fact that our darling art certainly has to do with a considerable degree of censorship, as it regrettably appears that some artists are throwing modesty to the winds to utilize foul and vulgar language. Also the tendency to embarrass top government functionaries and occupiers of public office should be adjusted to tally with the dictates of decency.

Translation: Sure, we can work blue, but do you have to?

From what we can get out of the article, regular theater is at an all-time low, in a shambles even. But standup is on fire.

An article in the North County Times (CA) says that Vicki Barbolak (website) has won the title of Funniest Mom in America.

The reality television show, in its third season, included a nationwide talent search for funny moms. Thirteen contestants were narrowed down to three finalists as the women competed in various comedic challenges, including sitcom acting and improvisational activities.

During the show’s finale on May 13, Barbolak performed her comedy routine for a crowd of 1,500 people before being named the winner.

“(The win) was given to me like a miracle, it couldn’t have come at a better time,” Barbolak said.

It got by us. We were on vacation.