We’re excited. The Mainstage Comedy and Music Club is opening in Seattle and The Male and Female Halves of the Staff will be the first headliners. We’re headed out there Feb. 8-10 and we expect there to be a lot of hoopla, as this is the first new club in that city in some time.

National Public Radio has, for the second time in a couple of weeks, turned its attention to standup comedy. This time, they’ve noticed a resurgence in the New York in “New York Sees a Comedy-Club Renaissance” by Mike Pesca.

With so many venues, it’s possible for a working comedian to fill up a weekly schedule by making the rounds-— and even make some money doing it. A good, but unknown, comic can earn $1,000 a week just by playing the city’s clubs.

We haven’t the bandwidth to listen to the entire report, but the text on the front page of the report manages to indulge in at least one timeworn cliche.

Even with all of these venues, comedy can still be a soul-crushing profession. After all, you need to get that humor-fueling discontent from somewhere.

Yeah… that humor-fueling discontent is what it’s all about, dontcha know. (And “soul-crushing” has become a alterna-hack phrase that makes us cringe!)

There’re a handful of links to past comedy-related pieces that might be of interest.

We’re in our new SHECKYmagazine HQ now… a scant 1.25 miles and one municipality away from the old HQ. We did the move over nine days, using our 85 cubic feet of space in the SHECKYmagazine Wagon and the help of a few friends– with a short trip to South Carolina in the middle of it all! We’re profoundly exhausted, our thumbs are virtually useless (!) and The Female Half of the Staff has a fat lip, slightly blackened eye sockets and soreness in her front teeth from stumbling and hitting the wall face-first while carrying two sock drawers. (Had the wall she attacked been plaster instead of drywall, she could very well have lost teeth or been knocked out cold!) Especially nice, since we had our pictures taken yesterday for our upcoming feature in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Jan. 21 is the publication date).

We’re posting this at 31 Kbps, since we’re forced to use dialup until our DSL transfers to our new address. (Once again, we can’t believe we put up with this ancient form of internet access until August of 2005!)

Some moving advice: Always move the dumbbells first! If you leave them until last, you’ll regret it– you will lack the energy to move them in the late going! Indeed, the only objects left in the old apartment are a lonely pair of dumbbells in the second bedroom/office. And what is with the thumb soreness? The Male Half remarked that his hands, fingers and forearms haven’t been this sore since he can’t remember when. To which the Female Half replied, “Not since you were single!” Nice one!

It’s off to WalMart for shelf liner and cup hooks!

Can’t post long… making the transition between apartments… we can say that we had the pleasure of meeting David Lee Nelson this past weekend while we were gigging at the Greenville Laff Trax club. Nelson was in town (his hometown, Greenville, SC) in anticipation of the upcoming appearance of The Skinny White Comics show at downtown Greenville’s Coffee Undergound tonight and tomorrow night and the subsequent run of the SWC at the Charleston Comedy Festival later this week.

We chatted in the Crowne Plaza lobby (while the Eagles flamed out on the TVs behind the bar) and found out that Nelson, who currently resides in NYC, produced the Skinny tour and it features Isaac Witty and Amy Schumer. We also found out a lot about the Spoleto Festival, which we were only vaguely aware of up until Saturday night. (We were also totally unaware of the Charleston Comedy Festival!)

We noticed the ad for the SWC dates in the local alterna-rag and were delightfully suprised when Nelson popped into the house. What he is doing, in producing this comedy show in various alternative venues and fests, is a verrrry Shecky thing to do. Click on any of the above links to find out more!

We’ve had it up to here with McDonald’s and their latest ad campaign– Any size coffee for 69 cents. You’ve seen the multiple television spots, many/all of them national buys. You’ve also heard the saturation radio advertising. “Any size McDonald’s coffee for just 69 cents,” they all say.

Do you think we can get a cup of McDonald’s coffee for 69 cents?!?!? NO!

The Male Half is the only member of the staff currently drinking java and he has gone into at least a half-dozen McDonald’s since the promotion began– in all different parts of the country– and each time they look at him like he has three heads. What the hell is going on there? Sure, the ads say the offer is valid “at participating locations only,” but since when do any of these franchises not participate in nationally-advertised campaigns? Not only are they not participating, but they claim to have zero knowledge of the campaign!

Has anyone else experienced this?

Madonna, hodling forth on the Rosie O/Donald Trump fight, said the following (and we’re paraphrasing, but only slightly):

I think if every standup comic were penalized for saying something politically incorrect they’d all be hanging in the public square.

Madonna? Going to bat for standup comics? Our world is upside down. Madonna gets it.

It was a brief clip on a TV news show. We’ll try to find it online and link to it.

Roger Friedman of Fox News is reporting that Rosie O’Donnell is leaving The View. Actually, Fox News is reporting that Roger Friedman is reporting that, but the truth is merely that O’Donnell, whose contract is up in June, probably won’t renew it. No huge story there.

How this leaves The View for the rest of the TV season remains a mystery. O’Donnell isn’t going to quit, and Walters can’t fire her without ABC’s approval– and she won’t get it. The show is already lacking a fifth correspondent, and without O’Donnell– who replaced Meredith Vieira — it doesn’t have a marquee name as moderator. Of course, we’d love to hear what Joy Behar is saying off camera about all this.

The protracted and public pissing contest between O’Donnell and Donald Trump has spiked the daytime talker’s ratings. Significantly, the show stars two comedians (O’Donnell and Joy Behar) but is about as funny as… a show that doesn’t star two comedians!

Sorry for the late notice, but the Male Half of the Staff is featured in an interview on All Things Considered on National Public Radio. Check your local NPR affiliate for airings. (It’ll be on the NPR website tonight at “approx. 7:30 PM ET.” Update: Here’s a link!)

Correspondent Elizabeth Blair spoke to T.M.H.O.T.S. (who scurried over to the Philadelphia studios of WHYY-FM, the NPR outlet round these parts) on the subject of the Jay Leno/Judy Brown lawsuit. Not sure how much of the 15 minutes or so was used by Blair, but it should be interesting to hear.

And, for all you Delaware Valley WHYY listeners who heard the interview and want to know where you can see Brian McKim and Traci Skene perform locally, make plans to attend one of their five shows on January 25, 26 or 27, at Rascals in Cherry Hill, NJ! Hop onto the Rascals website to check out the showtimes, make reservations or purchase tickets!

And the media blitz continues: The Male Half will also be doing “The SHECKYmagazine Report” on WICC 600 AM, Bridgeport Connecticut’s Dependable News & Information Station! He’ll be on The Brian Smith Show at 6:35, with guest host Johnny Rizzo! It’ll be spirited conversation about all things comedy.

We’ve bought the tickets, so there’s no turning back! We’re actually going to visit Los Angeles next month. (Folks in L.A. think we already live there. And some L.A. folks think we live in N.Y. And all the New Yorkers think we live in L.A.!) We’re at the Comedy Club at the Riv FEB 12 through 18, so we’ll cross the desert on the 19th, beginning a weeklong debauchery in sunny Southern California! (The Male Half has a spot at the Comedy & Magic Club on the 22nd, but other than that, our calendar is open.) We’re always seeking spots and we’ll be seeking invites to crazy events– excuses to hang! And, of course, we’ll be blogging the entire time… if we ever get our laptop back from the Everex Custome Service Center in Fremont, CA! (We packed it off in mid-December and haven’t heard from it since!)

It’s our first trip to Los Angeles since August ’04 and that trip was all too brief!

Send us an email!

To promote next Sunday’s premiere of 24, in which she plays “computer genius Chloe O’Brian,” Mary Lynn Rajskub is interviewed in yesterday’s Parade.

I like playing non-mainstream clubs. I’ve even played laundromats. Mostly small clubs– almost underground stuff.

Of course, most Parade readers probably think she’s joking about the laundromats. She’s not. Hollywood is famous (notorious?) for presenting comedy shows in the least likely places– like laundromats.

Jordan Carlos (or “Stephen Colbert’s Black Friend,” as he is known to hundreds of thousands of Colbert Report viewers) guested on the op-ed page of the Washington Post on Sunday (“My Schtick? Being Black”).

Carlos (pictured below with his white friends Brian McKim and Adam Devine at last year’s Just For Laughs festival!) takes the occasion to talk about living at the intersection of black and funny and explains how he got the Colbert gig.

How did I get to be Colbert’s on-air compadre of color? Simple. One day a friend of mine who happened to be a producer for the show called and asked me to come and have my picture taken with Colbert. He explained that it was for a segment they’d be airing that night in which I would play Colbert’s black friend. With zero prospects and a gnawing fear that they’d find a replacement, I streaked over to the studios on New York City’s West Side, where I was quickly introduced to the man himself, Stephen Colbert. We took the picture and my producer friend showed me out. The joke has since become a running gag. I had hoped to parlay it into a job; instead I got a lot of MySpace “friends.” These experiences didn’t leave me feeling good, but they did make me think more about being black. Better late than never, I guess.

Carlos also tells about how he inquired as to the possibility of getting one of those juicy correspondent gigs on the The Daily Show and being told that the show “tried a black guy once, but it didn’t work out.” Ouch! Eerily similar to the story that nearly all minorities hear– The Female Half recalls a variation on this exchange on countless occasions over the last 20 years: “We had a female comic in here once… two years ago, I think it was… She stunk out the joint!” To which she replies, “Oh… I guess you haven’t had any men come in here and stink out the joint. And (motioning in the direction of the Male Half)… I see you’re still booking men in here!” Sigh.

As for the Colbert producer’s explanation for the dearth of African-American correspondent’s in their lineup, his statement is as much a testament to television’s cowardice/timidity and lack of vision as it is a testament to any racism. (Having read this, however, we advise all black comics to immediately send a package to The Daily Show, whose producers, after having read the quote in the Washington Post, will no doubt make a point of hiring at least one African American correspondent by Monday, which, coincidentally, is Martin Luther King’s birthday. It’s a win, win, win! Sometimes the timidty/lack of vision thing can be worked to one’s advantage!)

NOTE: An earlier version of this post confused the Daily Show with The Colbert Report… not once, but twice! It has since been corrected. Thanks and we apologize for the error.

From comedian Amy Anderson comes the following solicitation:

I’m currently working on a new radio project that gives exposure to female comedians. I need content asap! If you fall into one or more of the following categories please help out:

1) you’re a funny chick

2) you work with funny chicks

3) you know other funny chicks!

Here’s what I’m looking for:

– CD/audio recordings of female stand up comedy

– Must be PROFESSIONAL quality recording/engineering for play on national radio

– Selected bits will be between 1:00 to 1:10 in length-– if you can flag some samples that you think are particularly worthy, that helps– remember between ONE MINUTE and ONE MINUTE, TEN SECONDS

– Bits must be terrestrial radio CLEAN-– i.e. no cursing, explicit sex, drugs, etc. I can do a bleep here and there, but it sounds better w/o

PLEASE send your CDs to me! I want to put as many women comics in the show as I can – we deserve and need the exposure and I’ll need lots of content. Snail mail to this addy:

Amy Anderson
8581 Santa Monica Blvd #130
West Hollywood CA 90069

Feel free to email if you have any questions or concerns! ALSO, please forward this and pass around to the funny women you know– especially ones with recordings! Thanks for your help and here’s to a GREAT 2007!

Amy Anderson
www.AmyAnderson.net
www.MySpace.com/amyandersoncomic
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1757537/

Comedy Central is having a Standup Showdown in which they serve up the top 100 comics– “100 COMICS. ONE TITLE. THIS TIME, IT’S FOR THE HONOR.” No word on what it was for the last time!– and exhort the site’s visitors to browse through them alphabetically and vote for a favorite.

They only list the top 20 on the front page, one must dig, click and scroll to find the other 80.

At blogtime, the top twenty were:

Cook
Hedberg
Caliendo
Benson
Mencia
LaPorte
Koplitz
Gaffigan
Reep
Black
Francisco
Galifianakis
Attell
Martin
Swardson
Sykes
Regan
Bailey
Arnez J.
Phan

It is a good thing that we are able to list them by last name only and be confident that, in most cases, most readers will know to whom we refer.

Just in case anyone wonders, The Male Half and the Female Half are not driving folks to the site for personal gain. We are not in this contest; as we are not among the top 100 comics in the business. (However, if we were, the Male Half would be sandwiched between Steve McGrew and Carlos Mencia. The Female Half would land between Jim Shubert and The Sklar Brothers. Do you think that Comedy Central would allow write-in candidates? Hardly likely.)

In keeping with the spirit of multiplatformicity, fans can text their votes in, via their mobile phones. (Ask your mommy and daddy if you can vote, as each vote costs $0.99!) And, just in case you’re 14 years old and you have all the time in the world, contest architects have restricted the voting– “Remember, you can only vote for one comedian a day!” they warn sternly! And, though it isn’t readily apparent, there is a deadline– Voters are advised to watch a marathon countdown “all day long” on Sunday, January 28, in which Comedy Central will present the top twenty vote-getters.

Not sure why Universal would want to change it, but…

On August 13 of 2005, we posted about how Joe Carnahan was greenlighted to direct “Smokin’ Aces,” which, at the time, was supposed to be about “an FBI agent supervising a manhunt for a standup comedian (Piven) who has decided to squeal on the mob.”

Well, the movie comes out at the end of the month and now Piven plays a magician. A “sleazy” magician.

Apparently, the director isn’t all that shook up about it. He tells CanMag.com that the script that you can download there represents the one that the studio originally approved, but overall, he sounds upbeat.

Still, it makes no sense to change the character from a comic when comedy has never been hotter. But, we suppose those studio execs know what they’re doing, right? We downloaded the script. No comic. A magician. Where’d Dark Horizons get the idea that the main character was a comic? Perhaps when the script was bouncing around H-wood. Maybe the way to sell a script these days is to pitch the main character as a comic… yeah, right!

“Fired!: Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized and Dismissed,” is a collection of humorous essays about getting canned from Tim Allen, Harry Shearer, Bob Saget, Paul F. Tompkins, Dana Gould and others. The book was inspired by Gurwitch’s own experience of being layed off by Woody Allen.

The book will be a movie– after a short theatrical run, it will pop up on Showtime. (See the trailer here.) Variety describes it as “A free-wheeling, first-person documentary.” Who doesn’t enjoy a delicious story about getting shitcanned?! (Of course, it must be told long after the sting of termination has subsided. Otherwise, it gets scary and the folks listening to the story start to make sure they have a clear shot to the emergency exits!)

Below is an excerpt from Bill Maher.

When I was twenty-nine, I was hired to do a talk show. I had just done a series called Sara with Geena Davis and Alfre Woodard, and by then I had done some Tonight Shows and so I had some heat on me, as agents and managers say, so King World and Motown (now there’s an axis of evil if I ever heard one) called me in and they said, “You’re the guy.” I remember vividly in the meeting they said, “We want someone fresh and new. We don’t want Robert Klein or David Brenner.”

We worked for a few weeks writing sketches, some of which were pretty good, but they put me with Dinah Shore’s producer, and I didn’t have the clout to fight it. I didn’t even know what a producer did. I figured his name was Fred and Johnny’s producer’s name was Fred–well, I guess you gotta have a guy named Fred.

We never shot the show. We did a test shoot, one test shoot. We should have been doing a hundred test shows–that’s what we did when we started Politically Incorrect– but you take a twenty-nine kid, and yeah, he’s not that good.

After they canned me, I turned on the TV one night and there was Billy Preston, who I had rehearsed with as my bandleader, with none other than David Brenner. I just thought, “Oh, they kept the bandleader.”

Is Bill Hemmer toasted? (We think he just proposed getting a $2,000 hotel room with Julie Banderas!)

And when did Carson Daly start looking like Jimmy Neutron?

And that Christina Aguilera dance/music number was totally squaresville!

And Dick Clark blew the countdown again… he’s just not the same since the stroke… we don’t wanna be cruel about it, but they shouldn’t be asking a stroke victim to countdown.

Happy New Year from us to you.

We look forward to the rest of 2007.

Thanks for a tremendous 2006.

Jim Blumenfeld writes:

I am pleased and excited to announce that the “Paul Rudeen Benefit for MADD” show will be held on Saturday evening, May 19th, 2007, at the Auburn Elks Lodge just off the Mass Pike at exit 10 in Auburn MA. The room seats 350 and seeing as the wake had 275 people we expect a full house.

The current lineup includes:

Chris Tabb— Host
Tom E. Morello— Cuban
Dan Boulger— The Future of Comedy
Tim McIntire— Headliner
and other young punks, to be announced

I will be introducing the family and then getting out of the way. There will be raffles and a soda bar (obviously no alcohol for an event of this nature).

Thank you all for your support. More news to follow.

As we reported here, on October 16, Rudeen was an aspiring Boston-area comic who died when another motorist lost control of his vehicle and crashed into Rudeen’s vehicle.

This year’s San Francisco International Comedy Competition winner, Jay Wendell Walker sent us the following:

Can’t thank you enough for all press you have given me. But I am starting to feel like an ambassador for senior citizens. There will always be people who say your too old or too young or from the wrong part of the country. It is kind of fun proving them wrong! Thank God there are people like Jon and Anne Fox who give us a chance to do it. I don’t think they get as much credit as they should. A lot of great talent came out of their contest over the past 31 years. I watched Jon for six nights a week for three weeks. I was impressed with his love of the business, the respect and support he gave every comic and how hard he worked to make sure the contest was fair, honest and a learning experience for all of us. So, for every person who says you can’t, there are people like Jon who says you can.

Wishing both of you a Happy New Year,

Jay Wendell Walker

Thanks, Jay. And, as for the senior citizen thing, we hope that every time we mentioned your age, we also mentioned the amount of experience that you have acquired. That’s the impressive thing to us. We’re dumbfounded by the lack of respect that experience commands in the business. And we’re doubly perplexed by the premium placed on youth– which, with few exceptions, necessarily indicates an utter lack of experience. (Trust us, if your or someone your age won the SFICC after only having done standup for two years, we would have made far less of a deal about the victory.)

That’s right, Brian McKim and Traci Skene have produced their very first audio CD– 66:41 of hilarity!

We thought that the fourth-to-last day of 2006 would be the perfect time to launch the CD. It’s been a year of D.I.Y. for us– new color headshots, new video clips, YouTube and MySpace exploitation– all made possible by the new WWW technology and some local capital investment in some hardware here at SHECKYmag HQ.

We recorded the audio using our Sony MZ-R50 MD recorder. We copped it from eBay way back in the early spring, and also picked up a couple of inexpensive lavaliere mikes with pretty good frequency response. The quality is startling.

The title comes from the intersection that The Male Half of the Staff grew up a half-block away from, in Pennsauken, NJ. We think it captures us quite nicely!

Click on the PayPal button in our left column (the one where you can buy a sweatshirt … the same button that has been inoperative– unbeknownst to us for a few days!)– and you’ll be whisked to our PayPal page. It’s available for $12! (That includes shipping and handling!) We did a test-market this past weekend and things went well! And the feedback we got was very positive!

There are many ways of doing things. One can wait around for someone to come along and do it for you, or you can Do It Yourself! It’s a nice feeling to have finally created an item like “Pleasant & Gross.” It’s nice when an audience member comes up and proclaims, “I gotta have one of those!” And it’s a nice feeling to be able to provide it!

We plan on many more D.I.Y. projects in 2007! And we wish you all the gumption, the energy and the wherewithal to do yours, too!

Standup comic Frank King, who bears a striking resemblance to ’04 vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, has at least another year to impersonate the former North Carolina senator for cash! Edwards announced that he’ll run for the White House in ’08 yesterday in New Orleans. (He was depicted in wire photos, appropriately enough, wielding a shovel!) King, whose website is notjohnedwards.com, is undoubtedly rooting for Edwards to avoid a rout in the early primaries and jumping on the opportunity with a press blitz.

“I have an enormous advantage as an impersonator,” King explains, “in that most people who are look-a-likes aren’t actually performers, much less comics. They can stand and wave, grip and grin, and maybe deliver a few canned one-liners as the person they resemble, but that’s it. I can do comedy, in character, and as the campaign progresses I’ll have more and more material.”

An AP article says that a Florida firm is suing Leo Gallagher. We’re not exactly sure why from reading the story. Will the judge be tempted to place grapes under his gavel?

We saw Gallagher perform in the theater at the Sahara in 1998 and were disappointed. Everyone has his off nights. We’ve recently heard chunks of his material on XM and found them to be thought-provoking and well-written. (We’ve never understood the bad rap that he’s gotten. We’ve concluded that it’s a kneejerk reaction to his use of props.)

1. Michael Richards melts down at Laugh Factory

And what followed was a circus parade of various figures saying and doing the most ridiculous and shameful things– Factory owner Jamie Masada sets up a virtual swear jar for his comics; Paul Mooney, Dolemite and Oprah Winfrey publicly declare that they’ll reconsider use of the dread N-word; Jesse Jackson parachutes in, Media Whore Gloria Allred reps the “victims”; All the while, the DVD of Seinfeld’s Season Seven sells like hotcakes. Best quote to come out of all of it: “I’ll be damned if the white man uses that word last!” (Damon Wayans upon using the word several times onstage at the Factory– and gladly paying the subsequent “fines.”)

2. 2006: The Year of Dane Cook

He signed a mega-deal with HBO, produced “Tourgasm,” starred in a major motion picture, headlined two MSG shows, caused a stir at a Vancouver comedy club. We could have proclaimed 2005 as The Year of Dane Cook, but Cook topped Cook in the last twelve months. It wasn’t without controversy– everyone from Rolling Stone to Louis CK fans to his fellow comics did their best to take him down a notch or three, but his stock shows no sign of falling.

3. The return of NBC’s Last Comic Standing and HBO’s Comic Relief

After they hosed Alonzo Bodden, everyone (including, probably, Jay Mohr!) thought L.C.S. was dead, done, fini. Not so. It was more popular than ever. It’s back in 2007.

After the media’s obsession with homelessness subsided, everyone (including, probably, Whoopi, Robin and Billy!) thought Comic Relief was dead, done, fini. HBO, however, had different plans– a festival to promote (The Comedy Festival) and a disaster to relieve (Katrina). It’s a win-win-win: Hours of programming, prime exposure for comedians and actors, promotion of the fledgling fest… oh, and Katrina’s victims get some dough, too!

4. 2006: The Year of the Internet and Comedy

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. Right!

So far, we have Lazy Sunday, the Pauly Shore knockout hoax and Chriss Bliss juggling to “Golden Slumbers.”

5. Booing makes an ugly comeback

Reports from the field detail comedy club crowds that have no compunction about booing standup comics, no matter what their level of accomplishment. We can’t wait until polite, icy silence makes a comeback. Who ever thought we’d long for the days of polite, icy silence?

6. Howie Mandel, Bob Saget and Penn Jillette occupy primetime television real estate as hosts of network television game shows

In January, we advocated the kicking of Howie Mandel’s ass. Upon the announcement that he would be hosting a game show on NBC, he (or his publicist) circulated the preposterous notion that such a venture would be death to his career. Of course, we knew different. Mandel has since recanted, thereby prompting us to rescind his ass-kicking fatwah.

Saget’s show is breeding a whole new generation of unsuspecting Saget fans who will be fooled by his warm and fuzzy TV persona into witnessing the hair-curling specatacle that is his twisted, filthy nightclub set!

7. Jon Stewart is hyped as host of the Oscar telecast

We called this one. We praised his performance during the buildup. He was modest, he tried desperately to ratchet down the expectations. The hype was unbearable and we said as much. His performance was tremendous. And we defended him when the MSM tore him a new one. Ellen Degeneres has already been announced as the host of the ’07 telelcast and Stewart will get to host it again when either hell freezes over or Letterman is offered another shot at it– which will be on the same day.

8. Stephen Colbert bombs at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Word of it was carried to all corners of the earth. And they spelled Colbert’s name right. When the dust settled, nobody cared and “truthiness” was named word of the year by dictionary makers Merriam-Webster.

9. Oldster wins SF Comedy Competition

Jay Wendell Walker won the 31st Annual San Francisco International Comedy Competition at the age of 64. This is in direct contradiction to the boneheaded pronouncement of D.C. Improv manager Allyson Jaffe who said, in a piece in the Washington City Paper, that “Once you’re 10-plus years in this business, you only have a certain amount of years to make it.” Walker is simultaneously celebrating his win in the SFICC and his 46th year as a comic.

10. “Shecksism” and “Charlie McCarthyism” continue unabated

The Mainstream Media and their useful idiots perpetuated the notion that standup comics are dull-witted, misogynistic louts.

The assault on standup comedy as an artform and standup comics as people was taken up by Tom Shales of the Washington Post, Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly and Paul Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times. We detailed their crackpot rantings in numerous posts. Bigoted, hate-filled invective propped up flaccid prose in many an article in the MSM in 2006. As always, we pointed it out when we were aware of it. The rigors of such a quixotic campaign makes us weary to our marrow, but our recent two-week break has re-energized us.

SHECKYmagazine coined the term “Charlie McCarthyism” to describe the Comedy Police, Comedy National Guard, Comedy Supreme Court– three MySpace entities that were organizations formed by comedians, of varying experience, ostensibly dedicated to rooting out sub-par comedians, incidents of supposed intellectual property theft and various other standup-related transgressions. We took offense at the attitude, tactics and fallout from such endeavors and we especially took offense at the idea that the accusers sought to remain unnamed. (If we gotta hang our ass out there with our name and likeness emblazoned on our publication, we’ll be damned if these weasels were going to be allowed to operate under the cloak of anonymity.) All three projects eventually withered and died.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

We’re glad to be back at the keyboard. We’ll continue to publish SHECKYmagazine indefinitely. We look forward to the new year and we’re anticipating continued and increased success for us and for all of our hard-working, creative and enterprising colleagues engaged in the coolest occupation of all– standup comedy.

Happy New Year to all our readers! We’ll be here all year! Try the veal!

We’re posting again. And we went through the year of postings to assemble a list of those folks who were comedy-related who passed away in the past twelve months. Here is that list.

Red Buttons, comedian and actor, 87

Don Knotts, comedian and actor, 81

Al Lewis, comedian, actor, club owner, 92

Jan Murray, comedian, 89

Allan Johnson, Chicago Trib columnist, 46
Johnson wrote often about, and was a fan of, standup comedy.

Blair Shannon, comedian, 46
The comic was shot to death in his hotel room in St. Thomas, while working on a cruise ship.

Richard DeAngelis, comedian and actor, 73
The actor portrayed Col. Raymond Foerster on HBO’s The Wire and performed earlier as a comedian under the name Ricky Roach.

Lyn Bartlett, longtime Punchline (ATL) employee
Among three people brutally murdered in a home invasion in her farmhouse in Cumming, GA.

Matt Long, comedian
Hit by a car on Highway 33 in Ventura County

Robert K. Hoffman, one of the three original founders of National Lampoon, 59

Peter Boyle, actor, 71

Joe Restivo, restarateur and onetime standup comic, 54
(Not to be confused with Joe Restivo, longtime comedian who still merits the bold type because he is still very much alive and performing. The live Restivo battled the confusion caused by the matching names and similarity in vocations.)

One of our most popular columnists, Dan French, has surfaced. He last wrote for us when he landed a gig writing for Dennis Miller at CNBC. (He had written previously for Craig Kilborn on Late Late Show and for Fox’s Best Damn Sports Show, if we’re only going to list the high-profile positions.)

His columns (now archived at the end of the above link) remain among the most-hit files on our server and for good reason. French headed to Hollywood with his eyes open and his pencil sharpened. Our readers are among the most savvy in the business, due in no small part to having had regular access to his dispatches from the balmy, batty epicenter of the entertainment industry.

Out of the blue, we received a holiday present in the form of an email that announced that he would be sending us columns once again. From his perch in Austin, TX, our What Works columnist will resume the analysis. His prologue follows.

So, on July 23, 2006, roughly seven years after arriving in LA, I jumped on the same highway– the 10– that brought me there, and headed east, out of the city, to move back to Austin, Texas. True story– on the way out, just past Upland, I paced Hulk Hogan in a convertible, hanging with him at his cruising speed of 90 mph for about twenty minutes, until he turned off onto the route to Palm Springs, flipping me the finger because I had spent too much time within his allotted celebrity space.

Ah, now that, my friends, is a proper exit from LA– full of all sorts of nuanced lessons in meaningless, yet somehow meaningful, brushes with important, and yet utterly unimportant people.

It’s been a while– oh, probably three years– since I last wrote anything to Shecky, which is probably a good place to begin to find an explanation for why I decided to get out of Hollywood and back into the Hinterlands. It’s kind of a big story, and most of it I won’t get into here because who really cares, but basically, after three staff writing jobs, and lots of tiny writing jobs here and there, and lots of driving of city streets, and lots of job chasing and packet writing and friend-making and experience-getting, to tell you the truth, I got tired of the work of Hollywood. I got a little tired of “the game,” and of the city, but mostly, I got tired of the actual work. I got tired of endless production of material, most of which went unused, that would be churned and burned and abandoned and forgotten forever. I got tired of the politics, and the impression-management and the effort around the work. But beyond all that, I got tired of working for people who, though all talented in their own way, never made me laugh. I was spending all my own creative capital constantly feeding a voracious furnace– television– that I couldn’t even force myself to watch– even if I had written the piece that was on the air. So, I’m saying that I didn’t leave because of creative differences, I left because of creative waste. Because I could easily see myself at the end of all of this sound and fury I call my life, looking back and not being able to point to a single thing that I had created, or helped to create, that I thought was “good” or interesting or enlivening or even palatable.

Ugh.

But let it be known, I probably would have stayed in that system if I couldn’t see other options that might also be lucrative, and perhaps more satisfying. Hollywood money is good money. When you work, as long as you’re not being screwed by a non-guild signatory show (there are lots of them now)– the money is great, and therein lies the ultimate tar pit truth of Hollywood– big money makes you put up with big a-holes. And even makes you start to think you’re creating good product. Although, sorry, you aren’t. Even if it’s “popular.” It’s still mostly– okay, almost always — crap.

But I make humor for a living, so to leave the place where most of that is done, and move away from the production facility, you better have a plan. And I guess I do. Ill ‘talk about it here more in the future, but basically there are things opening up on the Internet, in standup, and in the great splintering of the media, that will allow more people to do smaller things, own them, and then watch while Hollywood tries to buy them. I know this because I’ve got experience in that system, I know how much that system needs product, I know why that system can’t produce interesting product on its own. So I’m taking that experience elsewhere to see if I can make the theory– that good humor can be created on smaller budgets in non-Hollywood cities, then sold back to Hollywood– into any kind of reality.

I’ll keep you posted.

The hardest working man in show business has taken his final bow. Brown died this morning.

Brown was performing to the end, and giving back to his community.

Three days before his death, he joined volunteers at his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he planned to perform on New Year’s Eve at B.B. King Blues Club in New York.

Read the entire obit.

The Male Half saw the Godfather of Soul perform in 1980 at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music (with Wilson Pickett opening!) and found it to be one of the top three concert experiences of his life, if not the top. Just last week we transcribed a live album of Brown’s (“James Brown Mean On The Scene”) from vinyl to digital. Recorded at Studio 54 in 1982, the disc is poorly produced but has a thrilling version of “Too Funky In Here” and a spectacular rendition of “Get Up Off That Thing.” Even though it isn’t the highest quality (and contains only five decent tracks), it’s an aural snapshot of Brown in his prime.

That’s Bonnie McFarlane onstage at the Kid Chris-Mas Holiday Spectacular on Ice.
The Electric Factory is just over the Ben Franklin Bridge. Literally five miles and two turns after we leave our parking lot. So we headed out on a foggy Thursday evening to hang backstage with FOS Rich Vos and FOS/Columnist Bonnie McFarlane at the Kid Chris-Mas Holiday Spectacular on Ice.

1,200 or so WYSP fans screaming and drinking their guts out for a lengthy lineup of comedians– Rich Vos, Pat House, Ed McGonigal, Chris McDevitt, Geno Bisconte, Bonnie McFarlane, Rev. Bob Levy, Colin Quinn— and an “eclectic” assortment of show regulars (although that is stretching the term) in a rapid-fire, raunchy, rowdy radio bacchanal thrown by the station’s afternoon drive host Kid Chris.

That’s Kid Chris, the 3-7 PM host on WYSP, next to Ed McGonigal.

That would be Colin Quinn, Chris McDevitt and Bonnie McFarlane.

From Radio Ink:

Standup comedian, Comedy Central fave and frequent “Howard Stern Show” guest Nick DiPaolo is joining Stern’s longtime terrestrial flagship, the former K-Rock, now Free-FM. DiPaolo will host a midday Talk show.

David Hinckley reports in the New York Daily News that in addition to the arrival of DiPaolo, XM’s Ron and Fez will join Free-FM for 6-9 PM and late-evening and overnight shows are also expected to be added.

After we posted about the forensic counselor who declared that all comedians have attention deficit (“It’s official: Standup comics are sick”), we decided to get a second opinion.

Who better to ask than Dr. Will Miller? Miller is former spokestherapist for Nick At Nite, a comedy veteran and a “recognized expert in the area of interpersonal relationships, organizational health and workplace culture!”

Here’s what he had to say:

It is always suspicious when a therapist sees others through the lens of their own diagnosis. How cheap and easy and, by the way, ethically ill-advised. I am happy that the doctor has discerned his own psychological problem and found good medication for himself. But clearly his generalizations about comedians are absurd and offensive. Of course there are comics who struggle with attention deficit and even hyper activity. And perhaps comics share some of these characteristics at a higher incidence then the general population. But he is shamelessly over-reaching with his arm-chair diagnosis. Does Emo fit the same psychological profile as Jerry Seinfeld?

Do Brian Regan and Jim Carey share a similar brain style? Where is the evidence of ADHD in Steven Wright? I never got an ADHD vibe from Paul Reiser or Jeff Foxworthy.

This is, of course nonsense. It’s bad enough when media pundits pose as experts talking about politics and culture. But it is inappropriate and unethical for mental health professionals to publicly speculate about the mental state of someone they have not seen and do not know. Any new comic will tell you that Richard’s rant, whose content was egregious to be sure, was more likely rooted in his inexperience being confronted by rude crowd behavior. And to propose letting him off the hook because of a speculative psychological diagnosis is false. His vitriol does indeed suggest racial animus more than ADHD. Richards may be a television celebrity but he is a raw newcomer to the world of nightclub standup. It took me a few years and hundreds of performances to handle interruptions with calm equilibrium. To suggest that Richards has ADHD (a ridiculous presumption) or bipolar disorder (a serious psychiatric diagnosis) tells me that this forensic psychologist needs to shut his yapper rather than trying to insert himself into a nasty media storm. I might suggest that the Doctor has misdiagnosed himself. From what I read he may well have a narcissistic personality disorder that can be treated with psychotherapy and a different medication than the one he is taking. And it is very likely that he is repressing his bitter rage that he is unable to be a standup comic himself. I mean if he too has ADHD, maybe he should get his butt onstage on open mike night. He would come to appreciate the interior strength it takes to be a standup comedian.

Just kidding, of course. You cannot diagnose someone you don’t know. Michael Richards has to work out this mess himself with the help of a professional who is actually speaking to him. CAPICE, DOCTOR?

Dr. Will holds four graduate degrees and is a practicing psychotherapist at Purdue University where he lectures on popular and organizational culture and the media. Will spent 16 years as a professional comic in New York City and, according to his email sign-off, “probably has ADHD.” to be his MySpace friend, click here.

Check out Elayne Boosler‘s reasoned rejoinder to the nonsense that’s pooled around our ankles since the Kramer Meltdown.

The rule about heckling is this: you fire at a cop, get ready to die. Yelling “you’re not funny” at a comic is firing with an AK. Hurt your feelings? Tough. Anything goes for hecklers, including excessive force. I lay myself bare up here, at my most vulnerable you shoot me in the chest, I will kill you if I can. You know why Richards looked so shell shocked at his own outburst? Because he’s not a racist, he was simply in the zone. Comedy clubs are like Indian reservations. They are their own country. I don’t think he should have apologized. You pay your money and you take your chances, step right up.

It’s got references to Bernie Mac, Chris Rock, Marsha Warfield, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and lots more. At times, it veers dangerously close to a “In my day, comics would never…” screed, but it always swings back into a focused, final word on the insanity that followed the famous freakout. It’s worth reading to the end and there’s really not a word wasted. We just wished she’d have sent it to us first.

Peter Boyle, Ray Romano‘s TV dad for ten years, died.

What comic doesn’t love “Young Frankenstein”?

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

A Christian Brothers monk who turned to acting, Boyle gained notice playing an angry workingman in the Vietnam-era hit “Joe.” But he overcome typecasting when he took on the role of the hulking, lab-created monster in Mel Brooks’ 1974 send-up of horror films.

The Puttin’ on the Ritz scene is frequently cited by comics and non-coms alike as one of the funniest moments in cinema history.

Boyle had local Philly roots. The Male Half is familiar with Boyle’s father, also named Peter, who went by the name Pete and was a Philadelphia broadcasting pioneer. (He vaguely recalls the elder Boyle hosting a show in which he talked to puppets, introduced cartoons and did charcoal drawings. The show was sponsored by Acme Markets, owned by American Stores. Patricia Heaton, who portrayed Raymond’s wife, Deborah, is currently spokesperson for Acme Markets here on the east coast. Spooky! At one time the senior Boyle took over the hosting of an afternoon cooking show when the host moved to mornings. That host was Ernie Kovacs. There’s always a comedian involved.)

From club owner Rob Jenkins:

The Pauly shore incident was definitely a hoax. we planned it all weekend long and fun with it. It was all planned out rehearsed and carried out perfectly as far as Pauly is concerned. was it stupid? Maybe but it definitely let other comics and performers know we are here. We are a great club with great patrons we hire off duty police to help w/ crowd problems which have never happened. A few hecklers of course but nothing would EVER happen like this EVER at my club. I know that for sure. We have two huge security guards and a off duty police officer every weekend. Thanks for the coverage! Talk to you soon.

What could they have been thinking?

We can’t figure out what our favorite part is:

“…but it definitely let other comics and performers know we are here”

or

“Thanks for the coverage! Talk to you soon.”

The Odessa American, the local paper, ran a story today on the hoax.

Meanwhile, Jenkins, who performs standup comedy himself, has been basking in the publicity.

“Word’s getting out,” he said. “They’re calling me to work the clubs.”

Too creepy for words!

TMZ.com is reporting that the Odessa cops say that the whole thing’s a hoax. Of course, the press release from the Odessa cops could be a hoax, too. But then we’re really into weird territory.

The objections raised earlier are still valid. The hostile environment just as real. The negative fallout for comedians is still negative, hoax or not.

What could Pauly Shore have been thinking?

Here it is, 4 PM EST, and the MSM hasn’t run a word about it. Only three or four websites have covered it so far. That makes no sense. Pauly Shore might not be a comedy star on a par with Carlin or Steven Wright, but he’s been in several films, he had a television show (if only briefly) last year, and he was a fixture on cable for a good chunk of the nineties.

The club where it’s alleged to have happened hasn’t posted anything about it– last time we checked, they had taken Shore down and had put up this week’s headliner, Michael Winslow.

A hoax? It would appear that way. A good, old-fashioned hoax. For publicity purposes, we suppose. That a comedy club would go along with a gag like this is inconceivable, seeing as how poorly the club appears with regard to their security and the inhospitability of their patrons. But we suppose it’s all good as long as they spell the name right.

In our initial post, we almost likened the whole affair to an Andy Kaufman-esque stunt– part performance art, part publicity stunt. It appears our initial instincts might have been correct.

The fallout for the rest of us, however, might be bad. How long before yet another patron mounts the stage and socks a comic?

According to the Defamer, the clip originally appeared on YouTube, but was taken down at the request of Shore’s reps at the Gersh Agency, ostensibly because it was a copyrighted performance and was used without permission. The clip bobbed back to the surface on iFilms.

The reaction of some comedians and others has been disconcerting. The word of the day: schadenfreude, “A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.” Some folks, even some comics, are behaving like 14-year-old junior high girls by taking the “I never liked that guy anyway/he deserved to get socked/it’s about time” approach to the whole affair.

Shore is a comedian. Plain and simple. He’s a draw, he’s a professional, he’s a standup comic, just like us. We see him get punched and we immediately identify. If you think you’re immune to this kind of assault, you’re out of your mind. If you think Pauly Shore somehow deserved to get punched onstage in a comedy club, you’re part of the problem.

Ifilm is hosting a short video that purportedly shows Pauly Shore dealing with a heckler in the front row of The 8th St. Comedy Club in Odessa, TX. Another patron hops onstage, confronts Shore, then decks him, as the crowd yells, “Hit him!”

The title of this post is what someone (we believe it’s the guy who eventually assaults Shore) yells just before the confrontation.

the 8th St. Comedy Club in Odessa seems to have a crowd control problem. And America seems to have a problem with comedians.

Is it real? According to their website, Shore headlined there this past weekend. It sure looks real. There’s no statement on the site alluding to any assault. Other websites like the Defamer are reporting it, but the MSM has yet to pick it up. We suppose that, since there was no racial slur involved in the incident, there’s really no story here. (Unless you count Shore calling the crowd “White trash motherfuckers,” as he left the stage, after being assaulted.) And, because of the MSM’s inexplicable hatred of Shore, they view this as something that was inevitable, if not a public service.

Thanks to Paul Ogata for alerting us.

A sharp-eyed reader has notified us that Associated Press is shooting out an article about Enss Mitchell’s declaration that his Comedy Union will welcome comics who use the dreaded N-word… and all other words as well.

“Someone had to stand up for comics and freedom of speech has to rule the day,” said Enss Mitchell, owner of Comedy Union. “No matter if you agree or disagree with what someone says, you have to allow them the opportunity to say it.”

Apparently, Mitchell declared the Union’s Friday show as a show where anyone could say anything. The show was, according to reports, well-received and no complaints were registered. At least not by audience members…

“It is amazing to me when we see acts of racism, when we see acts of injustice, when we see acts of war, clubs don’t take an hour to fight that, but they want to have a fight for the right to call us” the n-word, (Rev. Al) Sharpton said. “There’s something sick about that.”

Nice to know that Al’s on the side of free speech.

A NY Post item says that The Asian-American Journalists Association was fuming after O’Donnell mocked the Chinese language and Chinese speakers. (On The View Thursday O’Donnell said that Danny DeVito’s drunken appearance made news internationally. “In China it was like, ‘Ching chong, ching-ching-chong, Danny DeVito!'”)

Kelly Ripa makes a vaguely anti-gay crack while busting on Clay Aiken and O’Donnell goes apeshit. (Ripa denies the remark was in any way a reference to Aiken’s vague and, as yet unofficial sexual leanings. O’Donnell would have none of it.)

Out of the blue, O’Donnell performs a schoolyard-caliber imitation of a billion Chinese folks and it’s A-okay. Hmmm… A double standard to match the double chin?

We were impressed by the scorched-earth policy of O’Donnell’s spokesperson:

“She’s a comedian in addition to being a talk show co-host. I certainly hope that one day they will be able to grasp her humor.”

Ouch!

We’re of the opinion that nobody should be immune to mockery. Chinese people, gay people, vaguely gay people, Chinese gay people, vaguely Chinese gay people, rotund talk show hostesses– all should take it in the spirit in which it was delivered. And keeping up the quality of the humor might go a long way toward defusing any anger on the part of the mockee.

And smug, humorless outfits like the AAJA should be able to issue fiery, indignant statements to the press.

Yes, even comedians are fair game for such mockery. All we ask is that it be delivered with a sense of humor and that the humor be of a decent quality!

A Reuters item quotes a Wall St. Journal article that says that CBS, Viacom, NBC and Fox are in talks to create a rival to YouTube. Google purchased YouTube last month for a little over $1.5 billion. (Actually, it was $1.65 billion, so, in this case, “a little over” equals only $150 million!)

The companies aim to cash in on the fast-growing market of Web video advertising and have also discussed building a Web video player that could play clips, the Journal said.

Rumpled British wit Christopher Hitchens holds forth on the subject of humor and gender in this article for Vanity Fair (the magazine SHECKYmagazine called “Tiger Beat for people with post-graduate degrees”).

Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex, and Mother Nature (as we laughingly call her) is not so kind to men. In fact, she equips many fellows with very little armament for the struggle. An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.

Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift.[…]

The Female Half Of The Staff says it should be re-titled “Why Christopher Hitchens Can’t Get It Up Around Funny, Hot Chicks.”

Hitchens’ piece makes a nice companion to Bonnie McFarlane‘s last column for SHECKYmagazine, “Women Aren’t Funny.”

An Aspen Times News article hypes Saturday night’s Laugh Your Aspen Off comedy show at Steve’s Guitars in Carbondale, CO. It’ll be the third in a series of shows produced by FOS Clifford Fewel, who hatched the idea while working at the Aspen fest earlier this year.

“I heard Dave Chappelle describe Aspen as ‘your little Smurf village’ one evening while I was selling tickets at the tent,” said Fewel, “and it made me curious as to what an insider’s perspective about life in this area might be.”

As a standup comic with 10 years under his belt, Fewel wondered if there was enough local talent to stage a show about “life in Aspen and below.”

Turns out there were at least ten comics– Nine guys and one gal share the bill this Saturday in Carbondale– who passed the September auditions for the series. Fewel says, “a highlight DVD has been sent to HBO with hopes of being accepted as a part of the 2007 Comedy Festival in Aspen in late February.”

Doors open at 8 p.m. Admission is $10 per person for the 18-and-over show, with Steve’s Guitars’ customary BYOB policy in effect.

From a Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer article by Kaffie Sledge, speculating on why Michael Richards acted like an asshole, comes a quote from a Ph.D:

“I don’t have any statistics, but we do know that most stand-up comics are ADHD adults,” said Paul A. Jurek, Ph.D., a presenter at the annual Convention of the National Association of Forensic Counselors in Las Vegas.

No, he doesn’t have any statistics, but he does have a gross generalization formed from… formed from what exactly? A half-baked theory mixed with a little prejudice, a dollop of folk wisdom and a heaping helping of junk science?

Read the entire piece. Could this guy sound like any more of a crank? What’s next? Forced sterilization? It gets stranger on a near-daily basis.

Hey, Doc, how about you take your ritalin and go fuck yourself? (There’s that anger boiling up out of our brain that’s “30 percent slower than the brains of everybody else.”)

The next time someone looks at you funny when you tell them you’re a comic, you’ll know why. (Be prepared, they’ll probably start speaking slowly– just so you’ll be able to understand them better. And they’ll probably flinch if you make any sudden moves.)