The weasels at ABC News, who so slavishly followed the media pack when building up the anticipation prior to the release of the Borat, have led the charge now that the Borat Backlash has begun. Privately we predicted this would happen. The movie is, after all, a comedy. And it’s a comedy that takes on political correctness. It was only a matter of time before comedian Sascha Baron Cohen would be portrayed as evil.

In an item titled “Borat a Bad Influence?” a 17-year-old Bronx high schooler says that:

…he’s heard teens repeat some of the more misogynistic lines from the movie.

“They talk about women being b—— and prostitutes.”

One particularly hysterical nitwit said the movie was “a disgrace and an insult,” and that the movie “was reversing some of the progress her community had made teaching its teens to be respectful and ethical.” We would bet money that these same weepy goofballs (and the editors at ABC News) are positively placid however when it comes to the following:

Fat, gorilla, monkey mouth bitches cant get in our mothafuckin’ dressin room or backstage
And if they do, we kindly put our foot up their asses
And re-direct them bitches to security dressin’ room, you dig?
Sick of these ugly ass bitches bein’ my dressin’ room

That would be Ludacris, featuring Snoop, from one of Luda’s trademark, bouncy rap romps called “Hoes In My Room.”

We’re not suggesting for a minute that ABC News go all C. Dolores Tucker on Luda, but we are suggesting that, for some odd reason, they seem to get more bent out of shape when the insults are delivered via comedy. When the bitches and hoes are talked about with virtually zero sense of humor and without a hint of irony, like in the above example, it’s truth-telliing, it’s refreshing; the rappers are the modern equivalent of troubadors, broadcasters, purveyors of socially relevant messages, etc. When Sascha Baron Cohen’s message is misinterpreted and subsequently repeated by immature goofballs trying to get a laugh (and maybe noticed by the girls at happy hour), the movie and the comic who masterminded it are a “bad influence.”

Note to parents: Borat is “Rated R for pervasive strong crude and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language.” Children under 17 are not admitted. And if your 17-year-old lacks even the maturity of a 15-year-old, perhaps he/she shouldn’t be permitted to see something that requires a sense of irony.

As for the adults condemning the movie, perhaps they need to work on their sense of irony as well.

“Throw The Jew Down The Well” is the “Short People” for the new millennium. We wonder what Randy Newman thinks of all this commotion.

The Sierra Mist Standup or Sit Down Finale will present Steve Byrne, Sarah Colonna, Eddie Ifft, Jen Kober and Jordan Rubin on TBS this Friday night at 10 PM EST as the five finalists. The winner will be awarded $50,000 on Comic Relief, which airs November 18 (Saturday) at 9 PM EST.

But wait, there’s more: After the conclusion of the show, viewers will be able to hop onto MySpace.com and vote for one of the five finalists. According to MySpace.com: “One user that votes during the final round will automatically be entered for a chance to win $1,000.”

We like how MySpace refers to us regular folks as “users.” Those of us who watched enough episodes of Mod Squad can’t help but associate the term with heroin addiction!

And what is with the wording? “One user that votes” will automatically qualify? What exactly does that mean? We interpret this as meaning that one user will qualify and compete against… against whom, exactly? Himself? (Or, to be gender neutral, him or herself?) If there’s only one user, it’s hardly a competition. We suspect that someone from Kazakhstan is writing the copy at MySpace. We figure this: One user, among the thousands that vote, will be chosen as the winner of $1,000. At least we hope that’s what they mean.

A short piece on that network’s Sunday Morning Show talked about how comedy is big business.

They talked to Denis Leary, Kathy Griffin, Stu Smiley and Doug Herzog. Herzog takes the Straight Face prize (as in “Did he actually say that with a Straight Face?”):

The success of Comedy Central all comes from point of view. Jon Stewart has a very particular distinctive point of view. Stephen Colbert does, Carlos Mencia does, Dave Chappelle does. We think that’s what succeeds. We’re not looking for the guy who appeals to everybody. (Emphasis ours)

Say wha?! It’s television. He who is not looking for someone who appeals to everybody (or closely approximates same) will find himself out of a job.

(Note to Doug Herzog: Substitute “guy” for gender neutral terms like “person” or “performer” or “comedian.” Never thought we’d hafta give the president of Comedy Central sensitivity training.)

An Ananova item tells of some scientists who “blended the features of 20 top comics to come up with the perfect face for comedy.” See the results below.

“The characteristics of a feminine face imply that the person may be agreeable and co-operative, which can be causal in our first impressions of comedians as being friendly and funny,” say the eggheads. And that “a round face, small forehead and wide nose, with soft feminine features, is most likely to make us laugh.”

The Male Half has a large forehead, a long, narrow face, a thin nose and sharp masculine features. All along he’s been convinced it was the glasses that made some audiences hostile.

You may recall that Letterman had Ventriloquist Week a few weeks back. This time, it’s mimicks who get spots each night. The first one? Rich Little.

Coming up in subsequent shows: Fred Travalena, Gordie Brown, Frank Caliendo and Kevin Pollak.

Upcoming theme weeks: Comic Magicigan Week? Guitar Act Week?

The Male Half is waiting for Tall, Fair-Haired, Freckled, Late 40s But Can Play Late 30s, Observational Comic Week.

The Female Half is waiting for Dick Joke Week.

The folks in Ithaca College’s Comedy Club are upset. With good reason.

The club is a regular meeting of a bunch of campus cut-ups (not a “club” in the sense of a bricks-and-mortar building) who get together to work on the funny. Apparently, during a recent meeting, one of them made a “joke about lynching” (no details available) during an improv exercise.

In last week’s issue of the Ithacan (the campus newspaper), is a story about how the African-Latino Society was alarmed about “six bias-related incidents,” in recent months on campus, incidents like the “destruction of a Jewish student’s mezuzah prayer scroll” and “swastikas drawn in Emerson Hall.” Lumped in with the rest of the incidents was a “racist joke about lynching” made by a member of the IC Comedy Club.

The club members are pretty steamed.

When it comes to jokes in our meetings, everything is fair game. Our meetings are hallowed ground for any kind of joke, and once someone declares a topic off-limits, then a bias is created…

Equating us with the other events in the article is ludicrous. Racism is a deep-seated mentality that manifests itself in worse ways than an off-the-cuff remark.

They have a point. Of course, since comedians (especially beginners) aren’t accorded the usual status of other artists whose purpose is to shock, to stretch the boundaries of human experience, to experiment, etc., anything we say can and will be used against us. Other spoken word artists can say all manner of vile things about any person or group– it’s exciting, it’s art, it lays bare the listeners’ prejudices and biases, it’s an agent for social change because it makes the recipient of the message look inward.

When a comedian says something that’s slightly off-kilter, the reaction among the academics and the media is to immediately suspect that something is wrong with the soul of the bearer of the message. “It is indicative of a deep-seated opinion or long-held belief,” is the usual diagnosis.

We were going through some old floppy disks (the 3.5-inch kind that nobody uses any more) and we came across this quote from a book called “Hate Crimes– The rising tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed” (Plenum Press 1993, Jack Levin & Jack McDevitt):

In sharp contrast, modern “attack” comics like Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Kinison, Eddie Murphy, Bobcat Godlthwait and Jay Charboneau make no pretense of having some higher purpose.”

That’s right. In 1993, in a book about bigotry and bloodshed, the connection was made between horrific violence against a person based on race, creed or color and “attack comics.” None of the comics named had, to the trained eye of the academic, busy-body authors, a “pretense of having some higher purpose.” So the ground rules are clear: The Comic had better justify his every utterance with a “pretense of having some higher purpose” lest the intellectuals mount a campaign against him.

It is worth noting that this was published near the very bottom of the Comedy Bust. We have always maintained that a significant contributing factor to the crash of comedy was the pall cast over the land by political correctness. In an atmosphere where a couple of Boston eggheads can make even the faintest connection between Kinison, Clay, Goldthwait, et al, and bigorty and bloodshed, it is hardly a wonder that comedians of all stripes felt embattled, stifled, undervalued.

Unique among artists, the comedian is ajudged to harbor the very prejudices he seeks to destroy. Wes Craven is not thought to secretly want to dance around the corpse of a freshly killed innocent. Brett Easton Ellis writes “American Psycho” and it is said that he “imagintavely explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time.” No one would put forth the notion that Ellis secretly wants to saw off his ex-girlfriend’s head.

We see echoes of such anti-comedian bias frequently. And we see echoes of it in the Ithacan piece. Some might say we identify this bias a bit too frequently. However, if you’re at all familiar with the piece upon which the title of this post is somewhat facetiously based, you’ll know that we’re deadly serious about fending off any curtailment of our artistic freedom this time around.

It’s The Female Half and The Male Half (Photo credit: Chris Coccia) in a photo taken backstage at Philadelphia’s Comedy Works, circa 1985. It was in one of those black frames that the clubs put all their 8 X 10’s in.

That’s a Comedy Factory Outlet jacket that The Male Half is modeling (note “Brian” embroidered over the heart). The Female Half is wearing… those might just qualify as pantaloons. (What are pantaloons, anyway?)

The above was attached to the glass in the frame. Trust us, it’s totally ironic– The Halves bonded early on over their purple hatred for Bil Keane’s obnoxiously sweet family cartoon. (The Male Half even had a rather sick bit in his act that centered on his irrational dislike for Billy, Dolly, Barfy, et al.)

Some of the more astute among you may have sensed a slight drop in the number and frequency of our postings lately. You’d be correct.

We run these pieces of art here today because we’re involved in an ongoing and sprawling operation to cull our worldly possessions. The new owners of our building (a snazzy, four-unit, mint-green deco number on a busy boulevard in South Jersey’s suburbia) are converting it to a 55 and older complex. We’ve gotta bug out in the next 75 days, so we’re plowing through years of accumulated memorabilia. Erected just after WW II, this building’s two-bedroom apartments are larger than most modern apartments. We’ve got two large BR’s and a storage unit crammed with an intimidating amount of papers, pics, chachkes and assorted oddities, some of which were carried with one or both of us, from location to location, starting in 1981.

We also discovered a couple dozen framed 8 X 10’s that formerly hung in our bathroom. We solicited signed headshots from comics and told them to sign their pics with the knowledge that their puss would be displayed in the head. The resultant scribblings ranged from the ridiculous (“I can see you!”) to the obscene (“You piss on my face, I’ll piss on yours.”). The entire experiment was curtailed when it was determined that we could never allow any old folks or children to use our facilities, as it had become R-rated.

One of our original ideas for a website, in the days and weeks leading up to April 1, 1999, was one where we could scan and display the comedy memorabilia that we had squirrelled away in boxes and folders over the years, most of it necessarily centered on Philadelphia and surrounding area. While inspecting some of the materials, our conversation turned to standup in general and we realized that a site devoted to standup comedy, in the modern era, would have a wider appeal.

Now we just hafta get rid of all this crap.

A sharp-eyed reader sent along a link to a story on channel 2, the CBS affiliate in L.A. Katt Williams, of HBO comedy special fame, was popped at LAX:

Williams was booked for possession of a firearm, which turned out to be stolen, and was held without bail on a warrant from Kalamazoo, Mich., Lopez said. The nature of the warrant was not immediately reported.

This story isn’t going away any time soon. (Another story says there were three more guns in his check-through luggage.)

The AVClub has an interview with Tina Fey in which she acknowledges the art form:

AVC: Did you ever do stand-up?

TF: At a very amateurish level in Chicago. Very safe open-mic nights. More like coffeehouses than actual comedy clubs. But I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it’s terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It’s a dying art, in a way.

AVC: It’s sort of a distinct art form from being a comic actor. There’s a great Mitch Hedberg joke about how when you get really good at comedy, they want you to be an actor. “You’re a really good chef. Can you farm?”

TF: Right. It’s a separate, special skill. And so many people get into it just to get opportunities as an actor. That’s why, when you look at people like Colin Quinn… that’s their art form. The art form they want to master and are so brilliant at. That’s what I think is cool.

Special thanks to sharp-eyed reader Rick Guerra!

Editors note: FilmThreat.com has removed the offensive passage cited below. We thank them for their quick response. Mr. Goebel’s response is included below.

Paul Goebel, writing for a popular film review website, says the following in his review of NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:

COMEDY CLUBS DO NOT HAVE LOCKER ROOMS! And I definitely would never leave my valuables unattended in a roomful of comedians (in case you don’t read Shecky Magazine, Andy Kindler has sticky fingers.)

We would like to state for the record, that SHECKYmagazine has never implied that either a) Comedians are untrustworthy when it comes to leaving valuables around or that b) Andy Kindler has “sticky fingers” (literally or figuratively).

(This gives us an opportunity to re-run our interview with Kindler, from our August ’02 issue… back when we had “issues.” And, what the heck, it gives us an opportunity to link to The Male Half’s definitive review of the horrific movie, “Punchline.”)

Goebel responds:

It is with a debilitating sense of irony that I write to inform you that my refernece (sic) to Andy (a friend of mine) having sticky fingers was a joke. Sorry to bum you out, but in the future if you want a link or some kind of credit when invoking the name of your magazine, don’t be so touchy.

Film Threat decided just to remove the reference altogether.

I’ll be careful to never mention Shecky again in my blogs, on my podcast, in my live shows or in any of my TV appearances.

From the King of TV
Paul Goebel

To which we reply:

Though you may have a personal relationship with Mr. Kindler, the reader would not know it from your reference.

We are a magazine about standup. We try not to say bad things about comics. Any comics. Some folks who read your review may not be so understanding of your “sense of irony.” We put ourselves in the position of one who isn’t in on the gag (or aware of your debilitating sense of irony), and we read the following:

SHECKYmagazine.com says Andy Kindler has sticky fingers.

You can make all kinds of ironic jokes about your friends, but when you drag us into the conversation, you run the risk of besmirching not just Mr. Kindler, but us as well. Our email was an attempt to prevent that.

As for your not mentioning us ever again, we would say that you take your own advice: Don’t be so touchy.

Further beyond that, we seem to recall that you’ve been a reader of the magazine since its inception in 1999. It would be tragic if your readership were to cease over such a small incident. Stupid though it may have been, your “botched joke” has been corrected. The damage has been minimized. We hope that you continue to be a SHECKYmagazine.com reader.

As Steve Ochs has so helpfully pointed out (and as we neglected to inform you):

“Sheckymagazine.com readers can get on the guest list for admission by mentioning that they’re Sheckymagazine.com readers. All the details are right here.”

So, while the event on Thursday might be sold out to the general public, there are tickets set aside for V.I.P…. like SHECKYmagazine readers!

“National Lampoon’s Comics With Cameras: Farting, Fighting, Rocking and More” is the title of the show this Thursday (sold out!) and Monday (tix still available!) at M Bar (1253 N. Vine St.) in Hollywood.

The concept is simple (click here for the C.W.C. blog): Comedians who have created short films will exhibit them before fans and industry at one of the coolest venues in H-wood. SHECKYmagazine will be represented with their short “A Man and a Woman!”

National Lampoon screens writer Steve Ochs‘ overblown short, “Le Petomane: Parti Avec le Vent” as part of its first ever Comics with Cameras. It’s a full-costume, turn-of-the-century period piece, following the life of history’s most famous flatulist (that’s right, he passes wind…and it’s based on a true story!). More films round out the night: John Bizarre takes his camera along for a trip into the danger zone as one of the “Comics on Duty” touring military bases; “A Man and a Woman” explains the age-old dynamic between the sexes; “Ralph the Roadie” follows the misadventures of an inept rock’n’roll roadie; and three stand up comics go on a gig only to encounter a serial killer.

Other comic/directors represented: Jonathan Schmock and Scott LaRose.

Details/tickets for Monday’s show can be viewed/purchased at GoldstarEvents.com (lightning fast registration required).

Some mighty fine comedian/filmmakers are involved. It should be a fun evening! We sincerely regret not being able to be present while our humble motion picture is exhibited before a live audience!

AP article on comedians entertaining soldiers in the desert:

Comedian Derek Richards recalled arriving there in 2004 to discover soldiers dumbfounded that comics were in their midst. The area was so dangerous, they told the comics, that even the reporters covering the war stayed away.

“I went, Oh, sweet Jesus, what did we get ourselves into?'” said Richards, who lives in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Yet another account of the not-so-famous who have always been an important part of the effort to entertain those in uniform.

Former presidential candidate John Kerry got into a little hot water while addressing a group of students when he told them that students who don’t study hard and do their homework would likely “get stuck in Iraq.”

After letting the controversy swell and throb for 24 hours or so, he finally explained why he made the crack, saying it was a “botched joke.”

Speaking as people who have botched many jokes, we say: We know botched jokes; and that was no botched joke. We are professional joke botchers, so we know a statement that starts out as a joke and turns horribly wrong when we see one. After listening to the recordings, we are prepared to say that the “botched joke” defense doesn’t wash.

In the past, we’ve advised against politicians trying levity, when we autopsied Joe Biden’s clumsy attempt at ball-busting. That was obviously a feeble stab at making a joke. Biden was mimicking any one of a number of comedians he may have seen and he tried (after the fact) to sell the gag with a bit of mugging. In the Kerry incident, there was not even a thin framework for a joke.

If Kerry had even the slightest reputation as a jokester, the botched joke defense might have worked. As it is, it was too little too late. Attention to all politicians: Humor can rocket you into office or it can cut you off at the knees. Use with caution!

TBS has greenlighted a pilot starring Bill Engvall in a family comedy.

It has been a quick turnaround for the untitled project, written by Engvall and veteran TV comedy writer Michael Leeson, which was picked up as a script about two months ago.

The big three whine and moan about the genre (sitcom) being dead, the talent pool thinning, the ideas less than exciting, etc. The network suits and the TV critics wring their hands and daydream about Jerry Seinfeld returning to primtime. NBC lays off thousands, cuts hundreds of millions from their budget and vow to fill one-third of their schedule with cheap reality and game shows.

Meanwhile, TBS is developing a sitcom by recruiting a middle-aged male comedian with a high recognition factor (by virtue of his participation in a successful concert movie which spawned sequels and a TV variety show which sold millions of DVD’s and concert tickets) and pairing him with a writer/creator whose pedigree includes The Bill Cosby Show, Mary Tyler Moore, Taxi, Happy Days and All In The Family. This is getting interesting.

Not Barry. Phyllis Diller. In an Archive of American Television Interview on this website (Scroll down, we’re not exactly sure what this site is!?), Diller is interviewed about a wide range of topics. Toward the end of the grilling, the concert pianist, painter and standup comic says the following:

It’s wonderful to be able to do something that not everyone can do. Not everyone can play the piano. I’ll tell you what: You know how dear old Rodney Dangerfield says “I don’t get no respect?”

When you play the piano, you get a lot of respect. Because here you are with an audience of 3,000, and maybe 15 people can play fair in that audience. Your art show. People are coming and looking at your art and going “ooh!” and “ahh!” and buying it. Not everyone can paint.

Everyone can talk. Some of them can even sing. In fact they get in the shower and they think they’re pretty hot stuff. Now… This is why comics don’t get the respect they truly should: People think they even know how to tell a joke. Most of them don’t even if they have an audience. If they have an audience they will elongate. They’ll pad it. They think, “Oh my golly, they’re loving this!” They aren’t loving this. They already know the answer, maybe. They’re maybe being polite.

But you see, they look at you and if youre really good, they think your ad libbing they think you just walked out and talked. They don’t realize that 45 years went into getting the experience to looking that peaceful and looking like you know what you’re doing, and holding their attention and making them laugh. You are an impresario. You’re in charge. It’s power.

Just because you’re talking, they think they can do it. They think they can do it.

They know they can’t play the piano, they know they can’t paint. But they think they can do that. It looks possible.

The 28:43 tape is the sixth of seven sessions from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation and was recorded March 8, 2000, a scant 13 months after Diller’s heart stopped three times.

Montreal comic David Schultz gives Indyish readers a rundown of the Montreal English language comedy scene open mikes.

A comedy “scene” is made up of stages, in other words, and this article will be a guide to Montreal’s English standup comedy open-mic stages from Monday through Friday, with considerations for both audience and comic.

Indyish is “an online indie boutique, a network of artists, and a tricked out group blog. Were a loose affiliation of folks who make stuff. We work in our livingrooms, or in the small studios we share. We paint, sew, develop websites, make music.”

The final ten contestants are up on the site here. Did they hafta go with the giant red X’s through their faces? The ten go to Hollywood where they’ll tape a set that’ll go up on the MySpace sit so that folks can vote.

We made some changes over the weekend…if anyone is still having problems getting the site to load, send us an email, please. We removed some possibly troublesome javascripts and eradicated some lazy HTML mistakes here and there, so things should no longer be choking your browser. Let us know what’s going on out there if there’s still some problems. Thanks!

We proclaimed it to be one of the ten great places in America to sit down and watch standup (in USA Today). We think it’s also one of the ten great places in America to stand up and do standup.

This weekend, we venture north to Buffalo, NY, to perform at the Comix Cafe! We will be appearing Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. For reservations, tix, etc., call (716) 835-HAHA (4242).

Kathy Griffin, in the course of flogging her current 25-city tour, in the (L.A.) Daily News:

When I was starting out, there were more girls out there. Now the ratio is about 20 to 1. It’s just unbelievable.

We’re unclear on the point of Griffin’s expression of disbelief. Just who is to blame, if that is the correct word to use? And, perhaps more importantly, what would she have us do? Bring in the EEOC? We direct Griffin to Traci Skene’s column on the subject of gender and joke-telling here.

Andrea Kay, self-described “career whisperer” in the Asbury Park Press (“Don’t force yourself to fit in”):

Most people, though, end up… walking through the doors of small businesses or multibillion-dollar corporations where they follow traditional work conventions and a corporate code of conduct.

But one group of workers really means it about not trying to fit in. Their job? Comedians.

Read the rest for the quotes from Jerry Seinfeld and George Wallace.

The Female Half of the Staff as a sorceress.

The Male Half of the Staff attended a reunion of Temple University News-ers. It was to celebrate the 85th anniversary of that school newspaper. TMHOTS practically live in the News offices for about two years, starting in the fall of ’78, after transferring from Bowling Green State University in pursuit of a journalism degree.

His first editor was Barry Levine (pictured above at left), who went on to work for The National Star and A Current Affair. He is currently the editor of The National Enquirer.

One of The Male Half’s first courses at Temple was Short Story Writing, taught by Jacqueline Steck. Steck was in attendance Friday night, having been a part of Temple’s Journalism program in one capacity or another for sixty years. Upon learning that one of her former students was a comedian, she volunteered that her nephew also performed comedy from time to time. Who is that nephew? Danny Bonaduce!

Click here to get the expanded, interactive version of this:

That green arrow is the newest addition to the comedy landscape in NYC. We Googled “334 W 46th St New York, NY 10036” (the address of Martin’s new club), then we clicked on “Find Businesses” and typed in “Comedy Clubs” and up popped a map of Manhattan stabbed with a startling number of Google pushpins!

Martin assures one and all that, on or about November 15, his state-of-the-art facility…

…will be available for TV, radio, film, pod casts and web streams. Just as important we will showcase not only veteran perfromers but also “New Talent” comics before the national media.

The press release also adds that:

Chicago City Limits–the longest running comedy troupe in New York City, will make make it’s home at the Broadway Comedy Club as will Comedy Sportz.

Finally, Aaron Haber’s “The World” will operate at the Broadway Comedy Club Cafe.

Editors note: Not being all that familiar with the NYC comedy scene, we failed to notice that the address for the Broadway Comedy Club is identical to that of the Improvisation. To put it another way, the Broadway is merely the Improv renamed.

As described on the Nick website “Funniest Mom 3 is a six-part series on Nick at Nite which follows these moms’ journey to glory.”

Nick at Nite is traveling across the country in search of this year’s Funniest Mom in America! Real-life moms looking to try their comedic chops on those other than their kids can win a shot at this year’s title. All Moms are invited to simply BE FUNNY to advance to next round of competition.

One lucky mom will win $50,000.

Glory is it?

Hop onto the site to obtain the official rules, release and waiver.

Listed under “Sightings” in the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Norm! (the gossip/news column of the R-J’s Norm Clarke):

Righthaven LLC has teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post to sue ‘mom and pop’ websites, as well as nonprofit, political action, public interest, writers, and forum board operators for copyright violations. The strategy of Righthaven is to sue hundreds and thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to settle out of court. Nearly all cases are being filed in a Nevada Federal Court and must be fought in this jurisdiction. You are not safe from Righthaven if you are out-of-state.

We have removed the quote in order to protect ourselves from legal action.

Thanks to Kevin Kearney.

They handed out the 2006 Canadian Comedy Awards (They call their awards “Beavers!”) last night in London (Ontario, ya hoser!), according to an article in the London Free Press.

Pete Zedlacher and Laurie Elliot took the Beavers as best male and female stand-up comic, respectively, while Jon Dore drew the best newcomer prize. His win ranked as ironic since Dore, 30, has been doing professional stand-up routines for nine years and spent three seasons as the resident comic on the Canadian Idol series.

They also gave Mike McDonald a genius award. Thanks to Simon Rakoff for the alert!

We got a press release from Comedy Central crowing about the launch of two “broadband series,” exclusive to ComedyCentral.com. They’re launching Baxter & McGuire (a series about talking testicles!) and Good God.

The second one caught our attention. It’s called Good God and it’s described as “a live action comedy, a la ‘The Office,’ revolving around God’s workplace environment.” (Check out a short clip here.) The creators, writers and directors are listed as Jeffrey Sikaitis, Jeff Stamp and Jake Wheeler. And they’re also listed as executive producers.

It sounded familiar… very familiar. So, we went back and checked out our Just For Laughs coverage from 2003, specifically our comments on Pitching It, and recalled that a similar project was pitched called Genesis, Inc., a clever show pitched by Canadian actors/writers/comics Russell Hamilton and John Kenower. (See a clip of that online series here.) At the time, we said that their pitch was one of only two (out of eight pitches total) that got anyone on the panel of TV execs enthused, noting that it “was immediately coveted by CBC’s (George) Anthony.” And an article in Playback.com, dated August 4, 2003, said that the series “could be taped in Toronto as early as next spring.”

We’re not that savvy when it comes to the inner workings of giant television conglomerates (Oh, sure, we like to toss around words like “interstitial” but that’s all just swagger!), but we wonder how huge was the sack of cash that Comedy Central pushed across the table to these Canadian dudes to get them to walk away from this project? To the point where their names are nowhere near Good God?

The press release is packed with quotes from Lou Wallach, “senior vice president, original programming and development, COMEDY CENTRAL,” who says that the two new internet-only shows “…are examples of the talent community reaching out to us to create innovative, irreverent short-form programming for the digital consumer. It is truly a compliment to the strength of the COMEDY CENTRAL brand on all platforms.”

Here’s something that’s never made sense to us concerning this wacky television producing game (complicated even further by multiplatform this and broadband that): Wallach watched, along with 200 other folks, those boys from Canada pitch that show at Just For Laughs three years ago and saw the enthusiastic response of all present– their pitch killed! (The CBC guy practically tackled them and had them sign the papers right there!) And the video they showed was elaborately produced– heck, it looked like something that was already on the air! Isn’t it unnecessarily complicated (and unnecessarily expensive!) to buy off the original guys, then find new guys to execute basically the same project/idea when the perfectly good original pilot (short though it may have been) was already made, practically fully-formed!?

Television! It makes our head spin.

Jay Leno, interviewed for the Miami Herald by Glenn Garvin, in anticipation of his appearance tonight at the Seminole Hard Rock:

So it’s not surprising that some comedians start thinking they can save the world. But you can’t be that vain. . . That’s one of most dangerous things in the business, the journey from comedian to humorist to satirist to out of the business.

Leno, we’re reminded, still does 150 nights a year. The interview allegedly won’t be online for long, but it’s worth a look.

Thanks to Tommy James!

Mere months ago, Rolling Stone named him “Hottest Comic of the Year.” (Or was it “Coolest Comic of the Year?” We’ve read both on various websites here and there. Sounds like a thermostat problem to us.)

Anyway, Your Father’s Pop Culture Shopping List/Your Daughter’s Pop Culture Shopping List (Take your pick) is now having second thoughts about their previous pronouncement that Dane Cook was worthy of their readers’ attention.

This is getting fascinating.

A sharp-eyed reader hipped us to RS’s latest flip-flop on the hottest/coolest comic that Rolling Stone had ever seen until last Thursday. This time, Rob Sheffield is the hatchet man, dispatched to do the dirty work whatever way he can. The tools at his disposal? Cattiness, haughtiness, rumor, innuendo, implication and downright lazy journalism. Check this out:

The best line on Retaliation goes, “He was hit by a Dodge, which I found funny and ironic.” I can’t wait to figure out which old Emo Philips record that one comes from.

You can’t wait?

Emo’s got exactly two “old records.” (unless we’re mistaken). We figure with Amazon.com and FedEx and a few dollars from petty cash, Mr. Sheffield could solve this deep mystery in a matter of 48 hours. Surely, the demolition of Cook’s reputation (and the necessary editorial backtracking on Rolling Stone’s part) could have waited that long.

First, he’s the hottest comic in America. Minutes later, the question posed by Rolling Stone is:

“How can any comedian get as famous as Dane Cook has with no jokes?”

The answer to that, of course, is: Capricious and superficial rags like Rolling Stone, in an effort to pander to their equally capricious and superficial readers, proclaim him the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Somewhere in between helping to elevate Cook to Numero Uno and writing the vicious screed linked above, the cynical and shallow editors at RS decide that the comedy monster they’ve created must be destroyed. They have an inflated notion of just how responsible they were for the upswing… and they’re mistaken if they’re miserable pouting might cause a downturn.

Fascinating.

A reader has informed us that he can’t seem to get SHECKYmagazine.com to load on his Firefox browser, using Mac OSX. Hmmm…

Is there anyone out there who has some sort of HTML smarts who can view our source and tell us what might be casuing Firefox running on a Mac to choke on our page? Small though the segment of our audience may be that is accessing us using that particular combination of hard-/software, we like to be accessible to all.

Being that the Male Half is the Head HTM-Elf, we’re at a loss as to how to determine what might be the problem.

Thanks in advance for any assistance! Feel free to post the results of your study on the comments to this posting. (And spare us the critique of the layout and design– we merely borrowed a layout from Blogger.com and jiggered it to our specs.)

Hmmm… we just realized that anyone running Firefox with Mac OSX won’t be able to see this posting. What a dilemma. Well, we trust that there are geeks out there who are running more than one computer, running more than one OS and fiddling with more than one browser at a time.

The 27th Annual Seattle International StandUp Comedy Competition begins Wednesday November 1, 2006 at the Liberty Theater in Puyallup, WA, and concludes Nov. 26, with the winner getting $5,000.

Ladies and gentlemen, your ladies and gentlemen:

WEEK ONE:
1Nicholas Anthony–Minneapolis, MN
2Tyler Boeh–Portland, OR
3Geoff Brousseau–Mountlake Terrace, WA
4Daniel Carroll–Seattle, WA
5Tony Daniel–Kent, WA
6Pavel Simsa – Bellevue, WA
7Jason James – NY, NY
8Dylan Mandlesohn–Toronto, ON
9Tim Mars–Los Angeles, CA
10Emmett Montgomery–Seattle, WA
11Dave Reinitz–Los Angeles, CA
12Rosie Tran–Los Angeles, CA
13Damonde Tschritter–Vancouver, BC
14Debbie Wooten–Tacoma, WA
15Jay Holzman–Seattle, WA

WEEK TWO:
1Jeff Dye–Seattle, WA
2Mike Agostini–Tacoma, WA
3Yoram Bauman–Seattle, WA
4Natalie Gray–Birmingham, UK
5Dustin Kaufman–Kansas City, MO
6Myq Kaplan–Boston, MA
7Paul Myrehaug–Toronto, ON
8Steve Monroe–Los Angeles, CA
9Haji Outlaw–Chicago, IL
10Victoria Pattison–Vancouver, BC
11Dan Rock–Tacoma, WA
12Rory Scovel–Washington, DC
13Arlo Stone–Portland, OR
14Manolis Zontanos–Hamilton, ON
15 Carlos Kotkin – LA

You have until October 30 to vote for Ian Bagg, Eddie Ifft, Jen Kober, Josh Sneed, Randy Kagan, Steve Wilson, Sarah Colonna, Steve Byrne, John Roy, Joe Matarese, John Wessling, Vargas Mason, Michael Loftus, Dan Cummins and Jordan Rubin. Go to MySpace and send five of them to Las Vegas. The winner gets $50,000 and a development deal.

Above, from left to right: Tom Wilson (“Biff Tannen” in the Back to the Future trilogy), David James and Kevin Avery of San Francisco, in the green room at Philadelphia’s Helium Saturday night. (Not pictured: Ed McGonigal) The Male Half stopped by to snap a pic, shoot the breeze with Wilson and meet SHECKYmagazine MySpace friend Avery in the flesh.

Wilson is busy these days– in addition to standup, he’s also an artist, painting the most engaging pop art, and he’s also Jane Kaczmarek’s used car dealer boyfriend in the new NBC series Help Me Help You.

Read about Brian Regan’s career and approach to comedy in this Ann Arbor newspaper article.

I purposely want my topics to be incredibly generic to the point of almost being bland,” he said. “I’m hoping that I’m hitting on some peculiar stuff, but stuff that everyone can relate to.

“It’s kind of an odd challenge, because I want to talk about topics that have been done to death, but I want to find things that everybody relates to that no one else yet has talked about.”

Except for that crack about Comedy Central specials being a dime a dozen, it’s worth clicking to.

October 23, on TBS, look for Pit Stop Comedy featuring the standup of J. Scott Homan, Tim Wilson, Jon Reep, Steve McGrew and Marc Ryan. At least according to the Pit Stop Comedy MySpace site. (We scoured the TBS.com site and couldn’t find any evidence of it. Not even in their online program schedule. Perhaps this is all an experiment in the power of MySpace to drive people to the show. Hmmm…) Regardless, the MySpace site says that it will feature…

…the biggest, most boisterous comedy acts that you may not have heard of, but America has. Take a look under the hood and inside the comedy engine of southern comfort comics.

NASCAR and comedy. A demographic marriage made in heaven… or Atlanta, in this case. (Editors’ note: The show was actually taped in Las Vegas, during the ’05 Las Vegas Comedy Festival!)

In a related story, SmallTownNation.com is the creation of Jon Reep, who confesses to feeling somewhat out of place in the big city coming, as he does, from tiny Hickory, NC. He describes it thusly:

I went online and started my own small town, SmallTownNation.com. It’s an online community of small towners, like MySpace for rednecks. People join up and trade pictures, video and stories about goin’ to “the river,” or cruisin’, or trailer park parties they have, or any of the crazy stuff you do to entertain yourself in a small town. I’ve also got professional comedians from small towns who have their own pages here. It’s fun as hell. So join the nation, and get you some Townitude.

That’s A.C., as in Atlantic City, not Air Conditioning. Although there was air conditioning at the Comedy Stop at the Trop last night. And an appreciative crowd in that sparkling, nearly-new venue. And a tremendous show in addition to a competition to see who would win the right/privelege/honor to open the Bud Lite/Maxim Real Men of Comedy Tour dates in Philly, Boston and Atlantic City.

The Male Half of the Staff battled it out with the above trio– L to R: Kevin Williams, Roy Johnson and John Razos— each doing six-minute sets in front of a trio of judges (producer Matt Komen, Trop proprietor Bob Kephart and an editor from the Atlantic City Weekly… sorry for not getting that name!).

The contestants were sprinkled throughout last night’s regularly scheduled show featuring Sam Fedele, Christine Stedman (pictured above) and Billy Garan (pictured below right).

Everybody had a blast in the green room, the crowd was enthusiastic throughout the show, all the comics– combatants and non-combatants– had sparkling sets. When the dust settled, it was Roy Johnson who came out on top. Congratulations to Mr. Johnson. He’ll open for John Heffron, Charlie Murphy and Joe Rogan next Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Joan Rivers is at the Keswick (in suburban PHL) next weekend and at Resorts this weekend. The Philadelphia City Paper has an interview/profile. Most notable among la Rivers’ quotes:

Political correctness has ruined this entire country. People are afraid to say anything.

Read the whole thing.

Lengthier video of the now infamous James Inman attack video are available here and here. The first link goes to Inman’s MySpace profile. (Thanks to Eric Firth.)

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy saw a fan emerge from the shadows during a set at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, MO, the other night, says the website Pitchfork:

According to an anonymous Pitchfork reader, Tweedy punched a rowdy fan in the face about 30 minutes into Wilco’s set yesterday evening. “So some dude jumps on the stage,” the reader claims. “After he gets on stage (who really does this at a Wilco show?), he runs up to Tweedy to give him a fat smooch on his cheek.

“Tweedy… grabs the dude by his throat. While clinching to his throat, Jeff hauls off and decks him with a punch/open hand slap/shove to the face and [the] dude skirmishes away. Tweedy later apologizes (sort of) and hurries to the point of the set where they bow out before the encore.”

Pat Hagin, managing partner of the firm that promoted the show said:

This guy [the fan] was an idiot. There’s this video of Keith Richards taking his guitar to somebody getting on stage, it wasn’t certainly anything like that. But he [Tweedy] certainly has a right and a need in my mind to feel safe onstage.

Read the entire account on PitchforkMedia.com.