We never to get to declare anything… Okay, maybe we actually do declare things… perhaps too frequently! Readers may recall that back in April of ’06, we declared (tentatively) that “Funny is the new sexy.” That failed to catch on. Perhaps it wasn’t subtle enough. Perhaps we should make an end run.

Well, we’re here to declare that Jew-y (rhymes with “chewy”) is the New Sexy!

It’s a trend– in advertising, in music, in pop culture generally– and now, it’s seeping into standup! Jew-y is the new sexy! This helps us in our quest to associate standup with desirability.

Major publications and other media entities have declared that, most notably, Sarah Silverman and Sascha Baron Cohen are “sexy” and “hot.” They’re merely body surfing on the crest of a larger pop culture wave.

As we all know, Funny is associated heavily with Jew-y (“…according to a survey in 1979, 80 per cent of comedians in America were Jewish.” Lawrence J. Epstein, “Haunted Smile”). If Funny is Jew-y and Jew-y is the New Sexy… then, perhaps (finally!) Funny is the new Sexy!

An article on Christian Today tells how the Church of England launched a standup comedy club yesterday at the start of Lent, “as part of a wider effort to make the period more fun.”

The club’s founder, Helen Tomblin, hopes to keep the material clean and says that cutting out the swearing and crude material can enhance the standard of the humour, reports the BBC.

Just stick to the facts, Helen. You’ve come up with a nice way to entertain folks during Lent. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?,

Inexplicably, there are detractors. Specifically, comedian and writer Arthur Smith, who says that:

“Comedy without any ‘grit’ would be very bland.”

and that

“Humour is meant to challenge a bit.”

and further that

“Comedy also needs cruelty and victims,”

and that

too much “victimless comedy… can be sterile.”

To which we reply:

Nonsense.

and

Not necessarily.

and

No, it doesn’t.

and

Can be… but it is not always. Comedy with victims can just as easily be “sterile,” if, by sterile, you mean to say it’s void of humor or punchlines.

Longtime SHECKYmagazine readers know that the clean vs. dirty debate drives us nutty. Comedy, as you can all probably recite in your sleep by now, needs punchlines. If it’s funny, it’s all comedy. A comic can be clean or dirty… clean and dirty (often in the same set!)… gritty and/or smooth. We like to refrain from absolutes.

We were pointed toward a mini-screed in the online version of the BGNews (the student newspaper of Bowling Green State University) called “Comedy’s running downhill.”

It’s just a few hundred words and we might be tempted to ignore such a lightweight essay, but, as hardcore SHECKYmagazine fans might recall, The Male Half attended Bowling Green State University for three years. So, in the interest of keeping the (standup comedy) discourse at an acceptable level on the campus of Dear Old BugZoo, we must turn our attention to the scribblings of Jon Ruggiero.

What exactly has happened to comedy nowadays? Stand up comedy, in my eyes, has died because of a few factors, mainly because either people take their comedy styles from the legend of the past, or they just aren’t funny.

That’s how it starts, then it lurches around, contradicting itself and making foggy points and grousing about… about what, exactly?

Comedy has died? Someone thinks he’s an expert on comedy!

Is there anything positive about this tantrum? Yes. Someone at a student newspaper is talking about standup comedy. And he’s urging his cohort to listen to the oldsters (in this case, “oldsters” are Carlin, Steven Wright and Bob Goldthwait.) while trashing some contemporary comics.

But Comedy has died? Ruggiero is being outrageous in the pages of the BGNews merely to provoke a reaction. (Says the Male Half– Been there, done that!)

Comedy is quite alive. Comics have never been more plentiful, more visible, more… funny. Innovation is prevalent and wickedly funny material is being presented in traditional forms as well.

When one does 14 shows in a short period of time (two shows a night for seven straight nights), one starts to suffer from the “Did I just do that joke?” Syndrome. Woe to the comic who goes into a 14-show week without a set order! By night Number Six or Seven, one is beset by doubts and confusion! We’re happy to report that neither of us repeated any jokes (nor did the inestimable Larry Reeb, who shared the bill). We were clearheaded enough to do our time without any lapses, but the nagging doubt is worth commenting on!

Vegas was crazy– The not so harmonic convergence of the NBA All-Star Game, the Chinese New Year and some sort of garment industry confab made for some historic auto traffic, some bizarre and ofttimes ominous behavior on the sidewalks of Las Vegas Blvd. and congestion and chaos overall.

But we had a great time onstage. As always, it was a great time at the Comedy Club at the Riv! And on our final evening at the Riv, we had some quality hang time with Reeb and fellow comic Mark Saldana.

So, now we sit in Pasadena– our bellies full of goat cheese and (Trader Joe’s Gourmet Cracker) lavash and San Miguel Premium Lager (Imported from Manila, since 1890. At least the Male Half’s belly.) and we’re debating on whether to swing by a comedy club and hang out with friends or go sit in the hot tub. Right now, the hot tub is winning.

We listened to the Male Half on the KLOS Five O’Clock Funnies a few minutes ago.

(We stayed an extra day in Vegas yesterday to do our laundry and get various other mundane things out of the way, then pushed off for Los Angeles this morning. We pulled into the Kingston Inn & Suites in Pasadena in plenty of time to relax, then go down to the car to tune in 95.5 at 25 minutes past the hour.)

It sounded tremendous… we notice that they took the audio straight from the YouTube clip (the one we recorded live at Goodnight’s in Raleigh). It was a nice lead in by Joe Benson, too. He pumped the appearance at the Comedy & Magic Club on Thursday (with Ralph Harris) and he said the name of the magazine at least two times!

Now the Male Half has a dilemma: Does he do the exact same set (and tack on additional two minutes or so to fill the time), or does he fashion a whole new set? Just how many KLOS listeners will show up the day after tomorrow? If a bunch do, will they care if they hear the same material again? So many questions!

Dear Britney:

So sorry to hear that you’re in rehab. (Actually, we’re not surprised… but we’re still somewhat sorry.)

Since we know you’re an avid reader of SHECKYmagazine.com, we figured this would be the best way to contact you.

We have an offer: We’d be happy to take your children and look after them.

Before you say no, consider this: The Female Half of the Staff bears a striking resemblance to you (or, at least she did… 20 years ago… And, the more you let yourself go, the more the two of you resemble each other yet again), so, when the tots look up, they’ll see a face that is startlingly similar to their momma’s. Also consider that, since we’re in the business of show, we regularly work in a lot of locations where you have a home/residence– remember when we narrowly missed bumping into you on the beach in Destin a coupla years back?– (so, you’ll be able to visit the little ones… or at least spy on us from afar). And, we’re married– and we intend to stay married– so the kids will have a two-parent home. And we both wear underewear when in public! And both the Female and Male Halves can say “Hi, y’all!” while affecting a convincing southern Louisiana twang, so the Spears-lets will be comforted by the sound of their ancestral home.

All we require is $20,000 per month ($10,000 per young’un/month… a bargain!), to be re-negotiated when they reach school age. (It’s private schools or nothing for these two… we insist!)

You can contact us through the mag.

Thanks, and we hope to hear from you!

If you’re going to read a newspaper (and actual, physical paper, not an online version) by a pool in Vegas, there’s none better than the Los Angeles Times. Among the many interesting entertainment-related pieces in Sunday’s LAT there’s a short interview with script rewrite specialist Billy Ray, whose second directorial effort “Breach” was released this weekend. When asked what it’s like to be a rewrite man, he responds:

By the time they bring you in as a rewriter, everyone around yo is in a state of panic. Because they’ve done draft after draft and they’ve spent a ton of money and they just want someone to come in and say, “Don’t worry, it’s all gong to be OK and there’s a way to fix this.” So you get to come in and be a hero. And that’s a great feeling. When you’re the first writer on the movie it’s like sticking your head in the mouth of a cannon.

We would link to it, but it’s only available online to subscribers.

Jon Caramanica’s review of Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson starts off about as badly as any review could…

THE 10 longest minutes in late night belong to Craig Ferguson. His monologue at the outset of “The Late Late Show,” which he has hosted for over two years, is a comedic desert, one gag less funny than the next.

…but ends rather nicely.

Ferguson is not without his strengths: he’s unfailingly affable, quick to laugh (especially at himself) and appears comfortable using his body to comedic effect. When introducing guests from shows on other channels, he mock-spits on the ground after mentioning the network’s name. He’s not actually indignant, but even the approximation thereof is nice.

If you can get past the first few, ghastly grafs, it’s a decent review.

One unanswered question looms: Where the hell is Craig Kilborn these days?

From Las Vegas, we head west toward “the coastal sediment-filled plain located between the peninsular and transverse ranges in southern California in the United States containing the central part of the city of Los Angeles as well as its southern and southeastern suburbs.”

Most of us just save a lot of time and call it “L.A.”

I all goes according to plan, we’ll hit the inevitable slowage at about mid-afternoon on Tuesday. We intend to stay through Saturday. We’ll try to hang at the Improv on Wednesday (Montreal auditions are going on there that night).

(The Male Half will be featured on Five O’Clock Funnies on KLOS on Tuesday, at 5:25-ish. He’s got a spot at the Comedy & Magic Club on Thursday night– we’re looking forward to seeing old PHL comedy colleague Ralph Harris, who’ll also be on the bill as well as FOS Joe Starr!)

Comedian Johnny Rizzo was featured in the Connecticut Post the other day. His regular substitute host gig on WICC was the topic.

Turns out Rizzo has been subbing for Smith on and off for the past year.

“About a year ago, I went down to WICC to be on the Brian Smith show,” Rizzo told me this week. “You know, sit in, plug my gig, say a couple of funny lines and leave. Brian extended the invitation to stop by any time. So any time it was. I was there almost every free weekday I had.”

We’ve been pleased to provide a helf-dozen segments on the show over the past several months, doing “The SHECKYmagazine Report,” providing the latest in standup news for central CT radio listeners. Hop onto WICC’s website to listen live.

The MPLS Star-Turbine reports that award-winning satirist Al Franken is running for Norm Coleman’s senate seat. That’s U.S. Senate. (Although Franken no doubt views it as Paul Wellstone’s seat!)

In a post-announcement interview in his Minneapolis townhouse, Franken tried to make the case that “humor and seriousness don’t have to be in conflict with each other.”

Is he serious, or is this just a way to gracefully exit his gig at Air America?

Anything can happen in this election… it’s Minnesota (which we still pronounce with the patented Jesse Ventura inflection– “Minn-uh-SOH-duh,” pausing for what seems like an eternity on the “SOH” portion).

We admire Franken’s nerve. Instead of merely sitting on the sidelines and taking potshots at the politicians, he’s actually going to run for office and see what develops. It should make for an entertaining debate or two!

We’re still posting from the cybercafe on Vegas Blvd. (the one next to the Peppermill), so we’re keeping it brief. Our laptop is allegedly on its way here, via UPS Ground… we shall see.

The Riv is, as always, a great gig. (They managed to spell the Female Half’s name “S-k-e-e-n” on the marquee. Is that how one spells “marquee?” They must figure she’s got it all goofed up on her publicity and in her press kit!)

We’re here through Sunday with Larry Reeb. (As we like to say, he puts the “Larry” back in hil-Larry-ous!”)

Daniel Kinno, Wayne Federman and Suli McCullough are at the Improv at Harrah’s. Jim Lauletta, Andres Fernandez are listed as being at the Stop at the Trop. Jay Leno, Katt Williams, Jamie Foxx and Arnez J are all coming to town to entertain the hordes that are descending on Vegas for the NBA All-Star Game– the city estimates that 250,000 extra folks are coming to town to watch the millionaires in short pants battle it out at the Thomas and Mack Center.

Freelancer and FOS Larry Getlen‘s piece in the most recent issue of Radar Magazine hit the stands the other day (click on the link for the online version). In it, he explores the modern state of joke theft (and inlcudes a bit of the history of the practice).

While most comics take pride in performing their own material, many have built lucrative careers on borrowed bits. (Robin) Williams, for example, has long been lauded for his ability to instantaneously improvise scenes and gags. But while few question his gifts as a live performer, there’s no way to know how much of his sharp-minded inspiration over the years has been provided by an unwitting writing staff. “I’ve been in clubs in L.A. where Robin’ll walk in the room and whoever’s on stage will just get off,” says Boston comedian Kevin Knox.

Juicy!

In a related online development, there’s a link circulating around the WWW that depicts Joe Rogan trashing Carlos Mencia onstage at the Factory. Allegedly (according to website TheSuperficial), it was enough to get Rogan banned from the Hollywood club’s stage.

One thing we like about both stories is that the folks making the accusations are naming names– including their own names! People who are making the charge are owning up to it. How refreshing. We’ve always looked askance at those who grumble but never go so far as to make a public accusation with their name attached. We all have a right to face our accuser… it’s the American way!

But, we agree with Nick DiPaolo who says in the Radar article that the frequency of joke theft in Modern Standup America is way overstated. We’ve all had it happen to us– both Halves of the Staff can cite examples of having material stolen in a bold, brazen manner. (And, we hasten to add, the “parallel thought” defense (also sometimes referred to as parallel development) has some validity.)

Articles like this (and actions like Rogan’s) will keep us all more honest in the future, no?

David Noonan of Newsweek has come up with some sort of Unified Humor Theory to explain why we laugh at what we laugh at… “We” being Baby Boomers.

None of this is chiseled in stone, of course. Jon Stewart, born in 1962, is technically a boomer, but “The Daily Show” (which echoes and improves on “SNL’s” 31-year-old “Weekend Update”), can hardly be considered boomer humor. And there is plenty of so-called humor produced by boomers that, well, we would prefer not to think about, including some unmentionable Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy movies. (“The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” anyone?)

It’s a long article, with some (but not a lot) of reference to standup. (Not enough, if you ask us.)

We’ve been telling any club owner who’ll listen (which, admittedly, isn’t all that many!) that they should court the boomers. They’re the ones who made comedy in the 1980’s what it was (and what it is today), and they’re also the ones who now have platinum MasterCards! We’ve been encountering them in the clubs a lot lately and they all say the same thing: It’s been a long time since I laughed that hard… and I usta go out to the comedy clubs a lot in the 80’s!

Welcome back!

Can’t post long… off to SeaTac… Weekend at Mainstage over… Coolest green room in all of comedy! Vince Valenzuela (Seattle-ite, next week’s Mainstage headliner) stopped by the club last night… Best crowds of the weekend… More to come.

Dan Carrol, Dartanion London and Scott Moran in the V.I.P Lounge at Mainstage. The room is named after the defunct furst-run syndicated series starring Pamela Anderson… we think.

Left to right: Brian Moote, Scott Moran, Jane Haze, Dan Carrol, Traci Skene, Justin Rupple, David Cope, Mike Cummins and Jeff Dye, posing in front of the newly painted Mainstage logo. (Just before piling into the club for a Brian McKim/Traci Skene SHECKYmagazine Q & A! “Meet the folks who run the WWW’s most beloved magazine about standup comedy and have your questions about standup comedy answered!”)

A cavalcade of PacNW comics mounted the stage last night for the second show, including headliners Brad Upton and Ty Barnett. Are the comics coming out of the woodwork to see us? To eyeball the newest comedy club in town? Who can say?!?! It matters not, as all are swell people to hang out with and it was a good time, of course.

We’re flying to Vegas tomorrow. We’ll post when we get our laptop back from UPS… it’s on a truck between Jersey and Nevada. It’s a long story.

That’s the question posed in the title of a ludicrous article in the Christian Science Monitor that ran in Wednesday’s Chicago Sun-Times. (We actually pick up hard copies of the antique media when we fly!)

The short answer is “Yes.”

For the long, dumb answer, check out the article by the CSM’s Gloria Goodale. (Poor dear, it’s probably not her fault totally. She’s probably the victim of a nitwit editor who can’t seem to think of a good angle for a story on the debut of Sarah Silverman’s Comedy Central series.)

Yet, for every step forward, say many comics and cultural observers, when it comes to being funny, women still face many societal prejudices…

Yawn.

The Sun-Times version then seeks out “local funnygals” and solicits their opinions. We don’t blame them, either… they’re just telling the reporter what he/she wants to hear. (And, more than likely, they’re misquoted!)

The Female Half of the Staff has given up trying to argue against this inanity. Instead, she has concluded that, since she is an attractive female that has been making both male and female audiences laugh for over twenty years, she is an extraordinary human being, with near-godlike powers to amuse across genderal, socio-economic, racial and ethnic lines. All hail The Female Half of the Staff!

We know… it’s just sooo cliched… but as we’re walking around Seattle, we can’t get the theme song from Frazier out of our heads. The producers of that classic sitcom did little to evoke the city in their scripts, but they did set a lot of scenes in a coffee shop. And if there’s one thing the Queen Ann section of town has it’s coffee shops… on every corner and in between… wedged into the bottom of office buildings, apartments… we even saw a small coffee shop inside a coffee shop… just in case you run out of coffee on the way to your table. (Okay, we lied about that one.)

As we strolled around the neighborhood, we realized that it’s rare any more to work at a club that’s actually located in a city proper. So many of the clubs have migrated to the burbs. In strip malls, in hotels, anywhere, it seems, but in or near the heart of a downtown. We took off up the hill on Queen Ann Ave., investigating rumors of a Trader Joe’s. We eventually found it. Just one more of the amenities of staying downtown! (Mind you, we got nothing against those strip mall clubs, but it’s nice, once in a while, to have three or four Thai restaurants within walking distance of the hotel… or sixteen coffee shops… or three Indian joints… or three used CD stores… or the station for the Monorail!

“When I die, I’m donating my body to science fiction.”

Or the Science Fiction Museum, which is where we went yesterday! On the way out of the exhibit portion of the museum, on a wall of quotes about science fiction from famous people was the above quote from Steven Wright. The museum is located a couple blocks away from our hotel, just a few hundred yards from the Space Needle and all the other groovy stuff erected on the site that was the epicenter of the 1962 World’s Fair.

We had dinner last night at Ten Mercer (see illustration at left) with Mainstage’s Beka Barry and Robin Hordon, former talent coordinator of the defunct Catch A Rising Star that was located on Cambridge Square for 3 or 4 years, back in the late 80s/early 90s. Dinner was wonderful! We recommend the establishment!

Stopping by last night were Brad Upton (pictured above, on the left), Billy Wayne Davis (pictured with Brad Upton), Monti Carlo (afternoon drive DJ on Movin’ 92.5) and Jeff Dye. The green room was packed! (And it’s actually a V.I.P. Lounge… entry by non-coms is strictly controlled!) In spite of the light house, a good time was had. Davis, Monti Carlo and Dye rounded out the bill with Barry hosting. The staff could not be nicer– The Male Half requested only a coffee but was told that, due to some opening night jitters, there was not one bean in the house! Staffer Karen quickly rushed to a nearby Starbucks (aren’t they all?) and a “venti” was purchased! (That would be that “rock star” treatment that Barry is committed to heaping on the standup talent here at Mainstage!)

Folks up north are looking to give away oodles of cash to a particularly funny person. As they put it…

…Canada’s legendary comedy institution is looking for the funniest person on the planet with the 2007 Yuk Yuk’s Great Canadian Laugh Off. Anyone from anywhere can visit www.yukyukslaughoff.com, sign up and have a chance at fame and fortune – CDN$25,000 big ones and a TV appearance! So take a good hard look in the mirror: Are they laughing with you or at you? Then sign up before contest closes March 1.

We’re posting on the computer in the lobby of the Mediterranean Inn on Queen Ann in Seattle. The folks at Everex fixed our laptop (for the second time!) then sent it back to us via UPS Ground… so it should be arriving at our apartment in the next 48 hours or so… which would be tremendous if we weren’t on the other side of the continent.

We never did get our Earthlink DSL working before we took off from Jersey.

Things aren’t going well, technologically for us.

At least we’re in Seattle… awaiting the grand opening of the Mainstage club this evening. We stopped by last night on our way home from our casino gig in Yelm. Wednesday night saw rock, not comedy. Local sidemen (the best of the best in Seattle and surrounding area) playing together as a band for the first time… sounding as though they had shared a womb and been a band ever since.

It seems as though the principals are going to realize their dream of “Seattle’s only comedy A-room.” We’ll keep you posted. (That the principals are all chicks, girls, gals, women, womyn, seems hardly worth noting… perhaps of interest to those folks who count genitalia like others keep track of runs batted in or touchdowns.) It looks top-notch from all we’ve observed.

We’ve got one show tonight and more on Friday and Saturday. We hope some fans of the magazine stop by.

If we can figure out a way of uploading pics, we’ll do it. Expect text.

We’re going to tell UPS to re-direct the Everex to the Riviera. As for Earthlink, Verizon high-speed is looking better and better.

NBC announced a new host and new talent scouts for the upcoming season of Last Comic Standing:

NBC’s unscripted laughfest Last Comic Standing will return to the schedule this summer with new host Bill Bellamy, new talent scouts including Last Comic Standing alumni Alonzo Bodden, Ant and Kathleen Madigan — and an all new quest — to find the funniest new comedian in the world. The Emmy-nominated series broadens its scope this season by searching internationally for the world’s funniest comedian, holding casting calls in London, Montreal and Sydney, Australia in addition to Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, San Antonio and Tempe. Celebrity judges will also join the talent scouts as they search for the world’s funniest new comic.

Count Shake-ula (Anthony Clarke), who did such a smashing job hosting the fourth season, will go on to other projects. Bill Bellamy, so likeable in the ill-fated Fox series Fastlane, will probably be an engaging host. RossMark, the two-headed Simon Cowell imitation, are, we assume, history. This bodes well for the selection/audition portion of the show. It may actually be… funny.

Editors note: We meant to dub the former scouts “ReadMark,” an amalgam of the names of the former LCS scouts, not “RossMark,” which, as a reader pointed out, is merely an amalgam of the first and last names of one scout!

That’s Brian Haley on the left, with the Female Half of the Staff on the right,. They shared the bill at the Comedy Works in Bristol (PHL), PA, this past weekend.

Haley is getting back on the standup horse after years of being solely an actor. He’s relocated to the NY area and is determined to get the ol’ headline set sharpened up. He’s been doing small- to medium-sized clubs on this side of the country, flying under the radar (at least until he works with the editor and publisher of the WWW’s most beloved magazine about standup).

Haley, readers may recall, was a white-hot standup in the boom years (four Tonight Show appearances (with Johnny!), roles in high-profile movies, guest shots on sitcoms), who left standup for acting. He’s back on the standup stage now– part of a trend, it seems! Standup comics who left the actual standup for other ventures– writing, acting, what-have-you– who are back to their first love.

Hop on to his myspace and request his friendship– he’s only been on a few days and he only has three friens– one of whom is “Tom!”

Far left: Penguin poses with Big Jay Oakerson at Rascals in Cherry Hill last night. Near left: Cover of DVD of Bob Saget‘s “Farce of the Penguins,” in which Saget, with the help of Samuel L. Jackson, Lewis Black, Mo’Nique and others, manages to find the lewd in docu sensation “March of the Penguins.” According to Wikipedia, Saget…

…stated on the Howard Stern Show on January 29th, 2007 and Late Night with Conan O’Brien on January 30, 2007 that he originally wanted to simply redub the documentary March of the Penguins but did not receive permission from the filmmakers.

In late November, the film, sourced from a screening, was leaked on the internet. There has been no response from the production company as of yet.

The occasion for the frivolity at left (a tremendous penguins suit, btw!), was the launch of the campaing to promote the DVD release.

Pardon our web-speak… it’s all the rage these days.

The folks at JFL are calling it a portal. (The “P-word” hasn’t been current for some time… but we think we know what they’re getting at.) Let them explain:

Each profile page will feature a short bio, along with at least one photo and most importantly, links to their current website, agent’s website, show dates, DVD’s for sale and any other links which they believe may help increase their exposure. In order to help us establish this portal and create a special page for your profile, we would like to ensure that you commit to uploading three to five performance or sketch clips (not purely promo reels) that can be shown to maximize your exposure. We ask that these clips be kept under two minutes. Please also keep us abreast of your touring schedule, TV appearances and the like. More content and contact with us ensures that you are included on rotation on our home page and possibly other pages to help deliver timely visibility. Please note that the artist owns their clips, they are not for download or sale by us from the site, nor do we ask for exclusivity. We will withdraw submitted clips at anytime the artist (or representative) asks, as well as delete your profile if you wish to terminate participation. This is to be your profile.

So… JFL invites all comics to allow them to submit vids, skeds, pics and such. FOS Paul Ash sent us word of the latest development. He says it’ll have “a structure similar to MySpace with elements of YouTube.” It’s at hahaha.com.

If you’ve noticed that we’re posting less often or if you’ve noticed that there’s been a paucity of postings here at SHECKYmagazine.com, it means that:

1. You’ve sensed a smaller number of posts and/or…

2. You’ve noticed that the number of posts lately has been smaller than usual and you’ve got a good vocabulary.

Since the move, we’ve been depending on dialup! Our DSL is experiencing difficulties. We’ve been on the horn with “Keith” from Bangalore lately, though, so it should just be a matter of days until we’re up to lightning speed!

They’re celebrating a quarter of a century in Atlanta, at the Punchline. We got an email from Punchline proprietor Jamie Bendall:

On February 11, 2007 we are going to present a show during which 25 comedians will perform to celebrate the 25 years The Punchline has been in business.

If you are interested in participating in this show, please let us know. Shoot me an email to let me know if you are going to be in the neighborhood…

He’s taking emails at jamie(at sign)punchline.com.

Suits from Turner Broadcasting were apologizing as fast as they could Wednesday afternoon when several devices (describe as “magnetic lights”) were discovered around the Boston area. Officials thought they might have been some sort of terrorist plot. So they shut down the Charles River… and 93… and pretty much all of Boston.

The devices depicted the Mooninites (pictured at left), characters on Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force show, giving the finger. They had been placed in several cities by a marketing company called Interference Inc. The Boston cops said they’ve arrested at least one person, probably someone from Interference. We suspect that he/she is in a lot of hot, bubbly, stupid water. We also suspect that the folks at Interference who cooked up the plot, like many of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force viewers, are too young to remember 9/11.

Brett Clawson has died, from injuries suffered in an accident earlier this month. His myspace is gathering comments from friends and others.

Near as we can tell, he was 32 years old and based in St. Louis.

Can you believe that Jonathan Katz never released a CD before “Caffeinated?” (Available on Amazon.com) It hit the stores yesterday. We interviewed Mr. Katz (he’s not really a doctor!) way back in August of ’03! You can read that here. The answers are terse… in a good way, a Katzian way, not in the bad way.

TBS, who is staking it all on comedy programming (“very funny” is their tagline. No caps, which makes it… hysterical!), has launched what the folks in the biz like to call an “online comedy initiative,” called Superdeluxe. (At least that’s what they kept calling it in the phone conversations we had with the folks in Atlanta. It seems that way back in October, they were hot on recruiting us in some sort of an editorial capacity– they wanted to pry the Halves of the Staff away from SHECKYmagazine to run their sparkling new comedy video juggernaut. We were all flattered and all, and we signed some sort of NDA (which is why we didn’t talk about it until now), but the whole thing just sort of quietly and slowly (and agonizingly) disappeared. Only recently did we find out that it was launched. Very frustrating!)

Anyway, it’s up and it’s kind of a cross between YouTube and ComedyCentral.com or, as they put it:

…Super Deluxe is the premier spot on the Internet for top-quality comedy videos. Why? It’s simple. We’ve got some of the funniest peeps in the comedy biz making exclusive clips for us. And unlike other video sharing sites, we specialize strictly in comedy.

It’s the latest thing and it’s hot and all the nets are doing it. As we posted in our Year in Comedy posting:

MySpace.com creates MySpace Comedy and YouTube is embraced by standup comics and standup comedy fans. And every other week sees the announcement by some huge media entity of their “online comedy initiative.” HBO, TBS, Comedy Central, NBC and others have announced such initiatives where they will, to varying degrees, develop comedy programming and build a site that relies heavily on “user-generated content” and serve as high-tech hothouses for future programming.

It’s our new catchphrase around SHECKYmagazine HQ– “Adding hatefulness to emptiness!” Don’t you just adore that? It’s just one of the semantic highlights of this bundle of high-minded speculation on Sarah Silverman by Brendan Bernhard in the New York Sun (“See Sarah Swear”)

Has there been more ink spilled on a comic in the last 13 months or so (with the possible exception of Dane Cook)? The folks at Rolling Stone, Slate, the NY Sun, New Yorker, et al, are in a quandary. On the one hand, they all have monster crushes on her (We dare you to cite one article that doesn’t lead off mentioning Silverman’s “wholesome good looks” or describing her as “beguiling” or “sexy.” It’s all rather unseemly!); on the other hand, they are alarmed that they find her funny. They invariably go on to try to analyze Silverman’s humor in such a way as to assuage their guilt at having a good laugh at her vicious, sometimes racist, sometimes “ugly” (their word, not ours) humor.

In the Sun piece, we’re treated to the spectacle of one critic (Bernhard) quoting another critic (an unnamed Slate critic) merely to mock his conclusions and go on to diss any critic who has ever said anything nice!

“Silverman is a prototypical ironist– someone who says things she doesn’t mean and (through more or-less subtle contextual winks) expects us to intuit an unstated, smarter message underneath. But what is that message? Does she, like Socrates, play dumb in order to make us smart? Or just to experience the cheap thrill of public racism? Every ironic statement, should, in theory….” Etc., etc.

Ms. Silverman has been called “the funniest woman alive” by Rolling Stone, which is enough to make one weep for women. But perhaps it would be more to the point to weep for critics.

Ouch!

Throughout his critique, Bernhard asks more questions than he answers. But he eventually decides that her approach is flawed… we think.

Ms. Silverman’s specialty is to take false problems, like overdeveloped racial or gender sensitivities, and then make inhuman, “daring” little jokes about them — fake humor about fake dilemmas.

Now we’re starting to feel sorry for the man.

Why all the ideological gymnastics over a bunch of jokes? When Slate speculates on whether there is an “unstated, smarter message” underlying Silverman’s gags, we’re astounded– of course, there is! It’s a joke! These folks are trying way too hard and it’s because they’ve all been inculcated, at various institutions throughout their lives, with the P.C. message. They desparately want to/actually do find Silverman hysterical, but they’ve been led to believe that her jokes cannot possibly be funny. (And, of course, they would never use the term “hysterical,” as its root derives from a time when we all thought the womb caused insanity in the weaker sex!)

So, they cook up clever catchphrases like “prototypical ironist” and “contextual wink” in order to find a way to proclaim her not just funny, but wickedly so… and politically correct in the bargain. It’s a win-win!

Of course, we would argue that there is no greater example of a prototypical ironist out there than one Dan Whitney (aka, Larry the Cable Guy). But, for some strange reason, his contextual winks and his unstated, smarter message never sees the light of day in these august journals. Instead he, and his fans, are painfully literal– such things as contextual winks are as utterly foreign to them as, say, bathing or the proper use of a fork.

Of course, they’re startlingly similar, it’s just that Larry chose to work flyover country, whereas Silverman took her humor to the streets of Los Angeles and New York.

The only reason either of these comics stands out, in a positive way or a negative way, is because many of their jokes, their approach, and in some cases, their subject matter have been virtually banned. By Political Correctness. The fancy folks at the colleges and the newspapers have declared them “outlaws,” yet each has found a way to do the material in an acceptable way.

Writing for the Times, Chris Barton kicks off his sprawling assessment of the Los Angeles alt-comedy scene (“Amusing Asides”, Jan. 25, Calendar cover story) with the obligatory trashing of the alternative to the alternative:

Hey, did you hear the one about stand-up comedy in L.A.?

Of course not, because stand-up died a horrible death somewhere around the time everyone started loving Raymond. Doesn’t every comic here just want to get on TV anyway?

Well, believe it or not, no. Though there are still plenty of comics dreaming of that miracle sitcom gig and searching for the perfect head shot, stand-up comedy is enjoying a renaissance in Southern California. And it’s happening far from the storied walls of the Laugh Factory, the Comedy Store and the Improv

Okay, so we have the schematic: Alt comics– Good. Other comics– Bad. Motivation of bad comics– Evil (Money, fame, wealth, sitcom). Motivation of good comics– Pure (Fun, cameraderie, entertaining twentysomethings who wear hoodies and stocking caps).

It’s a tremendous piece of work if for no other reason than it provides readers a comprehensive listing of all the niche standup venues in the Southland. It should drive some folks through the doors of the comedy nights that have been produced by plucky comics like Brad Stewart and Jen Kirkman and Brendon Small. And, even though the author of the piece goes to great lengths to trash the “comedy clubs,” the alt venues will act as gateway experiences– the alcohol and marijuana to the heroin that is the Laugh Factory, Improv, Comedy Store, et al.

In thie piece, the regular clubs are the enemy– The clubs have “rules and restrictions” (?), the comics only want a sitcom (horrors!) and the glasses clink too loudly. The alt venues are idyllic– young, smart, idealistic comedians mingle with sweet, young, hip patrons in an atmoshpere reminiscent of Paris in the 30s or San Francisco in 1956. Of course, the reality is somewhere in between, but that wouldn’t make for very good copy. (And it definitely wouldn’t get on the cover of the Calendar section!)

We applaud the folks who start up these comedy nights. And, as is happening in Seattle and (we gotta figure) other markets, more stages/more stage time is a boon to comics young and old, famous and not so famous. We just wish the journos would find an angle where everyone seems decent and everyone is motivated by positive things. It can be done, and it can be entertaining if done correctly. We like to think we do that here on a semi-regular basis.

An article in The Stranger (“Don’t Fuck Up” by Brendan Kiley) goes into great detail on the maturation of the Seattle alternative comedy scene. It begins with this:

There were four comedy clubs in Seattle in the 1980s: Giggles, the Comedy Underground, Laughs, and the Improv. It was the height of the standup comedy boom in America, and clubs everywhere were hopping. A lot of people were paying to see acts like Andrew Dice Clay and Gallagher. When the demand for acts began to outstrip the supply of comedians, producers pulled up inferior talent from the hacky rank and file to throw in America’s face. The form’s popularity took a turn. The country turned its attention to sitcoms and grunge while anachronistic dinosaurs like Carrot Top continued to flail around, to everyone’s embarrassment.

At least that’s the story Seattle’s comedians and club managers tell. It sounds probable, and it contains a whiff of protest: that standup doesn’t have to be painfully bad, that it can be good, that, perhaps, we’re due for a comedy renaissance.

Hey! We think Kiley may have stumbled onto something resembling the truth here. Aside from the cliched slam of Gallagher and the inaccurate characterization of the cream of 80s comedy as nothing but Gallagher and Andrew Dice Clay (which ignores dozens, nay hundreds, of tremendous comedians) and the gratuitous (and hackneyed) poke at Carrot Top, we might actually agree with the author’s summary of the Comedy Bust. (Of course, it was told to him by Seattle’s comics and club owners, so there’s every possibility that they’re merely regurgitating that which they have read in the pages of this magazine!)

You would think that the term “alternative comedy” would be as irritating to its practitioners as “grunge” or “adult contemporary.” Naming something seems halfway to killing it, but most of the alt-comedians use the term unflinchingly, even if they aren’t sure what it means.

Indeed! We hear that even Janeane Garofalo has disavowed the term. Perhaps this is alt-alt.

Or, (and this is far more likely) they are more media-savvy than anyone gives them credit for and they use the term as alt-weekly bait– which seems to have worked. This is at least the third time in a couple months that the PROK/Mirabeau/Laff Hole gang have garnered press in Seattle. Terms like “alternative” are like an aphrodisiac to the alt-stained wretches!

Read the whole article if you want a thorough account of a major comedy market in a state of flux! We especially liked reading about Mainstage (which Both Halves of the Staff will be co-headlining next month!) and we also were morbidly fascinated by the plaint of Giggles proprietor Terry Taylor, who explains the slow-motion wreckage of his venue on everyone but himself.

Terry Taylor, who owns Giggles, offered a less charitable outlook: “Alternative comedy is just people who can’t get booked in clubs so they have to go out and make their own nights,” he says.

Nice!

People who “have to go out and make their own nights?” Sounds very Shecky-like to us. Take note, all you comedians in other markets– read “Don’t Fuck Up” three times, print it out, memorize certain passages and recite them to yourself when next you feel compelled to merely bitch about the local booker who is ruining your scene.

An article from the U.K. is making the rounds (It was forwarded to us by FOS Peter Berman.) that contains details from the trial of six terror suspects arrested two weeks after the London bus attacks in ’05.

The contents of the rucksack of one suspect has captured the fancy of the press and the British public– along with deodorant, clothing and an 11-lb. bomb (made from hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour!) was a copy of “Meet The Fokkers.”

Berman, who has toured Afghanistan more than once, got it from an acquaintance in the military. Apparently, all are puzzled that a terror suspect, toting a bomb onto a London subway, would also be lugging around a DVD of a Ben Stiller movie (which, btw, was decidedly not a bomb)! We must admit it is puzzling. We’re also rather surprised that a bomb can be made from hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour! (But then again, who would’ve thought that folks could put someone’e eye out with Mentos and Diet Coke?) We hear that onion kulcha makes a damn fine wound dressing in a pinch.

Robert L. Jamieson Jr., writing for the Post-Intelligencer, tells of turmoil in the PacNW, specifically of a mini-revolt among the Seattle comics.

A tiff in Seattle’s comedy scene is pitting the owner of the well-established Giggles club against comics who say the way the venue is run is nothing to laugh about.

Their biggest beef is what Rodney Dangerfield famously riffed about — respect, or lack thereof.

The delicious part comes at the end, when Jamieson introduces the wildcard, comic Beka Barry, who, with a partner or two, is opening the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club, across from Key Arena.

It will be a radically different landscape once Mainstage opens.

(Full disclosure: The Male and Female Halves are the co-heads the opening week of the venue. We’ll be there February 8,9 and 10 and we look forward to it. We haven’t played Seattle proper in quite some time. And it’ll be doubly exciting since we’re opening up a new club. There should be quite a bit of excitement in the Seattle media.)

From all indications, Barry isn’t blowing smoke. We expect to be treated like rock stars and we expect the operation to be run in a professional manner. And, of course, we expect to deliver the “killer shows” that Barry speaks of in the P-I piece.

Of course, we’ll keep you posted.

Saturday night is the final night. Catch A Rising Star has been on the second floor of Resorts for two years or so. They’ve been doing one show a night, seven nights a week, Sunday through Saturday. Atlantic City slims down to two comedy clubs (at the Borgata and the Trop). The Catch chain slims down to three clubs (Providence, Princeton and Reno).

Musical director/house emcee Lonny Sarao can be contacted via his Myspace.

According to Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in New Yorker, Steve Scully, a senior executive producer of C-SPAN, and the president of the White House Correspondent’s Association (and the man who booked Stephen Colbert into last year’s dinner), has decided on Rich Little as this year’s entertainment, “because Billy Crystal charges too much money” We’re pretty sure Scully was kidding.

Little, who had a variety show on television in the nineteen-seventies, appeared on Letterman not long ago but hasn’t had much other television work in recent years. “My agent tried to get me on Maher’s show, but I was told that Bill said, ‘That Rich Little is a pretty funny guy.’ He didn’t want to take the chance that I would be funnier.” Little said that he does not find Maher and his ilk terribly funny. When asked to name a young comedian he admired, he responded, “Robin Williams. He’s just off the wall.”

We’re pretty sure Little isn’t kidding.

Goldberg also reports that Little’s website contains a list of 169 impressions. Of those 169, 115 are of people who are dead. And 112 of those sound suspiciously like Rich Little doing an impression of Johnny Carson.

And, in case you’re wondering, “Maher and his ilk” includes every comic under the age of 60. Robin Williams excluded, of course.

We got profiled in the Neighbors section of the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer. Rusty Pray is the byline. It’s a nice hit, and it coincides with our upcoming weekend at Rascals in Cherry Hill, NJ, this Thursday through Saturday. Color photo on the front page of the section, and a B&W pic accompanying the text inside. If this doesn’t pack the house, we don’t know what will!

However, there are two big, fat problems.

One was in the 13th paragraph, where The Male Half of the Staff is quoted thusly:

Then came the 1990s and the bottom dropped out of the comedy club business, a development many industry observers attribute to comedy shows on cable television.

“Why pay for stand-up when you can see it for free?” McKim said.

Beware of the reporter who doesn’t use 20th century technology, like a tape recorder. We did utter the above sentence, but we were characterizing the logic of the folks who put forth the exact opposite of our argument! We have always maintained that the “Why pay for standup…” position was one of the most boneheaded on the planet. Now, thousands of Delaware Valley Inquirer readers are treated to the spectacle of one of the editors of SHECKYmagazine uttering that which is 180 degrees from the magazine’s editorial stance. It’s like the Pope quoted as saying that he’s a little skeptical about this God thing. (Although TMHOTS hastens to point out that he’s no pope. And he’s reasonably certain that Pope Benedict XVI couldn’t scrape together a decent ten minutes if his life depended on it.)

The other big, fat problem is the pic. And “big” and “fat” are appropriate modifiers in this case. The Female Half of the Staff in particular is profoundly unhappy with the way the pics turned out. She likens them to those tabloid shots that they run of Britney with a screaming headline that reads, “Time For REHAB?” She wonders how, since she has dropped 25 lbs. in the last two months, can she look 25 lbs. heavier than before she dropped the 25? (For those scoring at home, she’s look at a net photographic weight gain of 50 big ones.) We are guessing it was the wide angle lens. We spent an hour at Rascals last Tuesday smiling gamely and alternately giggling and grimacing through the session, which had to have resulted in hundreds of images. We’re stunned that those two pics made it into the publication. Somewhere along the way, we theorize, we must’ve pissed off the photog. We now understand why celebrities insist on photo approval. (And don’t go thinking that we’re always complaining about bad photos, that we’re never happy about anything that anyone snaps of us. We run all kinds of pics of us in these pages– the good and the bad. These two are particularly hideous, though!)

If this sounds like two people complaining while getting a hit in a major American daily, it is. The Female Half is “mortified” by the pic. And it is painful to see eight years of crusading blunted by a misquote. Fortunately, we have the magazine to set the record straight.

Allow us to think out loud for a minute. (Which, when we get right down to it, is what blogging is all about, no?) We were recently alerted to a mention of standup comedy on a blog. The blogger, a writer by the name of Al Shipley, runs a blog called Narrowcast and he got a coupla tickets to see Jim Gaffigan at the Lyric in Baltimore. Afterward, he scurried home and wrote a 189-word review of the show.

It got us to thinking about things like how to go about getting press, how to approach the alternative press and what benefit there is from getting reviewed. And then we considered the blogosphere (the alternative alternative press!) and we thought: Is it not a great idea to court the bloggers? Wouldn’t it be a good thing to attempt to get the attention of bloggers for the purpose of getting reviewed and getting the name out there?

Gaffigan, of course, is a pretty big name and, as such, he has been getting ink in the MSM on nearly every stop of his recent tour. But the rest of us, who aren’t as high-profile as the Gaffigans or the Regans or the Blacks of the standup world (and who aren’t as likely to get a hit in the major dailies), might consider comping the occasional blogger at a show here or there. Publicity is publicity, right?

When compared to mainstream writers, bloggers are a bit more accessible. And most entertainment writers at major dailies are pulled in so many different directions that they rarely pay attention to standup. Bloggers, on the other hand, pay attention to whatever they want to, without any input from editors (and they have a larger, nearly inexhaustible, newshole!) and they might actually welcome being treated like “real journalists” (and we don’t mean that in a bad way).

The downside is that, in most cases, their “circulation” is a fraction of even the smallest newspaper. But, they might just have a narrowly-focused audience that perfectly matches the demo that we as comedians can benefit from.

(Of course, we’re bloggers, but we have an editorial policy of not reviewing standup performances. Occasionally, we’ll write something here or there, but it’s never a review in the traditional sense.)

We don’t recommend that anyone seek mentions solely in blogs, to the exclusion of all other forms of exposure. But it’s becoming clear that blogs are slowly asserting themselves as legitimate sources of news for significant numbers of people out there and we’d be goofy to ignore it.

According to the (low-bandwidth) UPI obit, Ron Carey was also “a former stand-up comic, (who) broke into films playing a cab driver in ‘The Out of Towners.'” The Male Half recalls that Carey’s Officer Levitt was the Barney Miller character that made his old man laugh the hardest. Carey’s was a subtle performance; he had a way with a take and he used his round face to maximum effect.