Self-described “puertorican pittsburgher” Paulette F. Poullette offers her “quality homemade independent media,” (which is, near as we can tell, comic books) through comic book stores in Pittsburgh.

One particular issue, called Comicore Jr., contains five signed and limited-edition prints of ’80s standup comedians. Steven Wright (above) is depicted along with Bobcat Goldthwait, Judy Tenuta, Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay. Comicore Jr. is also available online at USSCatastrophe.com. Visit Poullette’s website to see her other offerings.

(A tip of the hat to USA Today’s Whitney Matheson, whose Pop Candy pop culture blog hipped us to the existence of the above project.)

Sure! Why not! A sharp-eyed reader tipped us off to the lastest one.

What is it about Dane Cook that bothers the chatterati? Come with us one more time as yet another sputtering critic (this time it’s Slate’s Bryan Curtis) tries desperately to say something really bad about Dane Cook while trying to appear as though he’s actually saying something good about him!

There’s an inherent problem with Cook’s act, however: There’s doesn’t (sic) seem to be anything at stake. Not every comedian needs to be explicating a high-minded moral code (like, say, Bill Hicks) or a blessedly mundane one (like Jerry Seinfeld). But every great comic must use his act to create friction—- some value must be rubbing up against another value. When Cook begins to crack wise, he seems merely to be describing the benign hang-ups of the college/post-college set rather than actually weighing in on them…

We interrupt this screed to interpret: With Dane Cook, “there doesn’t seem to be anything at stake.&quot’; Jerry Seinfeld, however, is “blessedly mundane.” To rephrase it: Seinfeld– good. Dane Cook– bad.

Back to the piece, the author cites an example of Cook “merely to be describing the benign hang-ups of the college/post-college set”:

…In Retaliation, for example, Cook confesses that he desperately wants to own a pet monkey. He would give the monkey a sword and dress him in a suit of armor, he says. “How pumped would you be driving home from work knowing that some place in your house that there’s a monkey you would battle?”

Is it just us, or does that sound vaguely… alternative? Close your eyes, toss in a few $50 adjectives and work in a Dark Messiah of Might and Magic reference and the bit/concept might fit comfortably into the set of Patton Oswalt or Brian Posehn. (Note: Not a slam on either comic, just an observation and one that, we’re sure you’ll agree, for the sake of argument, is not that much of a stretch.)

Why do we do it? Why do we waste the ink defending Dane Cook? Well, we’re not so much defending Cook as we’re trying to solve the mystery of why some folks in the media are so hot and bothered about him.

And why are they so interested in a world where every comic is Bill Hicks? Imagine their universe: Every comic is “explicating a high-minded moral code” and “must use his act to create friction.” It would be about as dynamic and as attractive and as commercially viable as today’s folk music scene. (Oh, sure, they say that not all comics must be that way, but they so often cite Hicks– and, to a lesser extent, Bruce and Carlin– as their ideal, and they so often say the vilest things about Gallagher and Whitney and Cook– that we have a hard time believing them.)

Face it. These folks just despise comics. Especially Dane Cook. They know damn well that they can’t be seen as despising all comics. So they fixate on one or two or three (Larry the Cable Guy, Cook, Gallagher– all of whom are dismissed in this essay) and weakly praise a few others while assembling the case against the main target.

To use a music analogy: The world (and the music store) would be a boring and limiting place if every artist was Yitzhak Perlman. Or every artist was Ella Fitzgerald. Or every musician/writer was a slight variation on Bob Dylan. The same can be said of the world of standup comedy. The insistence of these folks that we all be like their ideal comic is childish, to be kind. The orders are clear: Everyone must be like their hero(es). If you don’t measure up (indeed, if you’re perceived as not even trying to measure up), you’re somehow less of an artist.

The Male Half of the Staff will be presenting The SHECKYmagazine Report on WICC, 600 on your AM dial, Central Connecticut’s “Dependable News and Information Station,” as a guest on The Afternoon Show with Brian Smith.

Guest-hosting for Smith today will be comedian Johnny Rizzo. This will be the third time that Rizzo has invited us on to give ‘ICC listeners the lowdown on all things comedic. If you’re in the area, tune in! (We’ll be on for at least one segment starting at 6:45 PM today!)

The Sands is coming down. The folks who bought it, Pinnacle, are going to demolish the casino and the tower behind it and, in its place, erect a $1.5 billion resort. We only mention it because there was, briefly in the 90s, a comedy club there– the Eddie Murphy Comedy Club. It was a dismal failure, as it was just off the casino floor and there was little to block the din of slots and merriment from the gamblers.

TFHOTS was appearing at Resorts all this week. Jerry Seinfeld was there the week before and he did a bizarre thing: He did two casinos in one night. He performed at the Hilton at the west end of the boardwalk, then performed at Resorts, up the other end. Sold out both, from what we hear. At $150 per ticket.

Atlantic City has changed a bit since TMHOTS wrote a column comparing AC to LV. For one thing, The Comedy Stop did eventually open in the latest expansion of the Trop. And the Borgata, as we all well know, opened up a beautiful new comedy room. So, at lest for the time being, A.C. has three full-time comedy rooms.

Comics booked into the two boardwalk-based clubs might want to check out the newly-opened Pier at Caesar’s– especially the top floor. They’ve filled in the glass-enclosed outer perimeter with sand and planted several Adirondack chairs, affording folks a spectacular view of the ocean and beach looking south. There’s also a deck on the rear that’s perfect for ocean-gazing, although it might be a little uncomfortable in February!

Check out this video of an incident at the Seattle Underground (at least we think it’s the Seattle Underground… there’s a big sign on the stage that reads “Comedy Underground,” along with an illustration of the Seattle skyline. If it isn’t the Seattle Underground, it’s totally illogical for a club in Columbus or Austin.)

It’s entitled “Comedian Attacked” but we like to call it “Where are the bouncers?”

We don’t recognize the comic. Anyone out there know who it is? Anyone know any of the other circumstances? Our thanks to “Rick in Seattle” for turning us onto the clip. Says Rick: “This goes back to the need for managers to police their clubs and shut down the heckling before you have someone on stage smacking you.” We concur.

From the Milford Daily News:

State police said Harland was driving in the left lane when he lost control of his Ford F10 and swerved right across three lanes of traffic, plowing into Paul Rudeen of Framingham, who was driving a Saturn.

The crash killed Rudeen, whom family members describe as a friendly and outgoing young man who enjoyed performing standup comedy.

“I never even got a chance to see him perform,” said Sandra White, Rudeen’s mother. “He was only 21 and he was just beginning to explore the open-mic scene in Boston.”

Reading the LAT obituary in the online version of the Indy Star, we are staggered by the eye-popping resume of Jerry Belson, who died Tuesday at the age of 68.

Nobody gives interview like Joe Rogan. He’s in Syracuse on Sunday, with Charlie Murphy and John Heffron, when the Bud Lite/Maxim Tour stops at that city’s Landmark Theater. The interview in the Daily Orange is worth reading.

This is a very unique time in comedy, for both good and bad comedy. (It’s) getting a lot of attention right now. It’s a very underappreciated art form. It’s hard to do it correctly, but there are a lot of people who are doing it well. It takes a long time to do comedy well. It takes about 15 years to become a good comedian, and there are a few comics who have (been doing it for that long) and they’re just starting to blossom.

Rogan sounds like a man who has given this comedy thing some thought.

If you haven’t had enough Rogan after reading this, check out the SHECKYmagazine.com Rogan interview.

Is it possible that Wanda Sykes is making her HBO debut this Saturday? Yes, it is. We would have guessed that she already had an HBO comedy special on her resume. (We often have trouble distinguishing between HBO and Comedy Central when it comes to these matters.) This Saturday, “Wanda Sykes: Sick and Tired”, 10 PM ET. Check your paper for local times. (And sneak a chunk of it, via IFilm, if you absolutely cannot wait. All hail, multiplatformism!)

It’s the future. The not-too-distant future. And the internet looks radically different than it did just 12 months earlier. How did that happen? The better question: Why would you expect it to stay the same?

According to Forbes.com, Google made money when they shelled out $1.65 billion for YouTube.

While $1.6 billion may seem like a lot to spend, it really isn’t–not when the deal is all stock. Shares of Google gained $8.50 on news of the deal today, driving the company’s market capitalization up by more than $2 billion. So at least for the day, Google made more than $400 million on this deal.

Sweet!

Our ears stood up when we heard that part of YouTube (GooTube? YouToogle?)’s strategy might now entail micropayments to the content providers. That’s right: You sling your five minutes of comedy up there, promote the hell out of it via one or more of the social networking sites, drive eyeballs to it, and, somewhere down the line, you get a check for $12.27 signed by Sergei Brin and Larry Page. It’s only right. In the future, we’re all television producers.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said earlier this month that anyone who would consider buying YouTube is “a moron.” The usually forward-thinking Cuban justified his harsh assessment by saying that any such purchaser would be trapped in a thicket of legal troubles, as so much of what is now up on the popular video sharing site is neither copyrighted nor posted by the legal owner. We’re fairly certain, however, that Brin and Page have thought this all through.

For a mind-boggling exercise, check out that Forbes.com article– it is a snapshot of the current WWW landscape. It is a lot like the starting gate at a high-stakes horse race. A handful of mind-bending technologies and business models are all poised, waiting for the bell– a short and furious sprint, over almost before it begins, will sort out the winners and losers. And in 18 months or so, the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Tonight and Wired will break it down and we’ll witness yet another re-arrangement of the entertainment industry that no one could have imagined. Nobody will get excited about “paradigm shifts” any more, as they will be coming on a quarterly basis.

Mash all those websites and techno doo-dads together, add several billion dollars in capital, shake well using a broadband connection and what comes out is dozens (hundreds?) of miniature television networks. They look the same as the old ones, but the content is provided by the viewers. If you’re still not getting it, check out this article from the August 2005 Wired.

In the meantime, YouTube is a smashing way for comedians to display their wares, to “send out a videotape,” five or six minutes at a time. Pretty soon, we won’t need to assemble a press kit or visit the post office. Not soon enough, we say.

We totally forgot it was going on. Then we get the following, in a press release:

Longtime standup comic Jay Wendell Walker proved this weekend that old comedians never die – or fade away either – by winning the 31st Annual San Francisco International Comedy Competition. At 64 years of age, Walker becomes the oldest comic to win the prestigious competition.

“I had to prove I was back,” Walker said when asked why he decided to tryout at this time in his comedy career. “After being sidelined this last year with heart failure and put on a transplant list for a while, people began writing me off – figuring I wouldn’t be able to survive the rigors of standup any more.”

Our congratulations go to Walker. We spoke to him on the phone back in early July. We had no idea he had plans to compete. We have been meaning to interview the man ever since we heard he had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show— it’s unusual for someone who is working the circuit these days to have that credit!

The airwaves are crackling with news that Barbra Streisand felt compelled to castigate her audience last night after the diva’s skit was interrupted by hecklers in MSG. Babs has a little thing worked out with a Bush impersonator.

From an earlier Baltimore Sun review:

Of course, the famously left-leaning singer introduced political talk along the way, but with more humor than her detractors might expect, thanks to uncanny President Bush impersonator Steve Bridges.

Looks like some New Yorkers didn’t dig the playlet and let la Streisand know it. Video clips of Bridges are making the news/talk shows and the wires are recounting the encounter:

She told him to “Shut the (expletive) up!” The crowd applauded wildly. Streisand added, “Shut up if you can’t take a joke!” With that one F-word, the jeers ended.

Streisand later apologized to the audience for using the F-word and delivered a message of tolerance. As for the Bush impersonator, Streisand pointed out that “the artist’s role is to disturb.”

Oh, yeah! We have always maintained that Steve Bridges is right up there with William S. Burroughs and Willem de Kooning!

We linked to Bridges’ contract in a previous post, after the presidential impersonator made a splash on the Jeff Foxworthy roast. We’re sure he’s negotiated new terms since that document was created.

Kicking off last night, the Sahara in Vegas is presenting Redneck Comedy Live! in their Sahara Theater.

The ensemble cast usually includes Dick Hardwick, T. Bubba Bechtol, Sam Griesbaum (pronounced “grease-bomb”), and Killer Beaz. These stars of The Nashville Network, Prime Time Country, and the Grand Ole Opry bring fresh, new entertainment to the Sahara Theater.

Can’t figure out how long they intend to offer it, or what nights it’s on, but it promises “All-American, down-home humor found in our everyday lives” and it’s open to all ages. Obviously capitalizing on the success of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, it’s interesting to see a casino offering a four-man show that is all veteran standup comics, a full-time comedy revue.

Marooned at one end of the strip with the Stratosphere, the Sahara also offers The Amazing Johnathan (variously described as “The Freddy Krueger of Comedy” or “The Madman of Comedy”).

They previously offered The Divas of Comedy in their Casbar Lounge, but discontinued it in June. We ask why they didn’t just put the Divas (an all-gal standup show offering three acts) in the big room? (Or, at least bring the Divas back, as the Sahara obviously has no problem being heavily associated with standup comedy!)

Anyone see tonight’s episode? The hourlong drama, a fictionalization of SNL, has plenty of Aaron Sorkin’s snappy, Bringing-Up-Baby dialogue and obscure references. But it must be lauded for providing at least what feels like a backstage peek at the production of a sketch comedy show.

SPOILER ALERT

Tonight’s episode, however, has an A-plot that has D. L. Hughley‘s character reading a bit about ADHD (on their equivalent of Weekend Update) which turns out to be ripped off, word for word, from an obscure comic (named “Lenny Gold”) who performed the bit a year or two earlier “at the Laugh Factory.” (A video snippet of which was discovered minutes later by a reporter who is backstage, doing a feature on the show.)

Minutes after the show wraps, the head writer of the show is apprised of the theft and he immediately freaks and starts talking about reprisals from the original author and starts screaming about “get me legal,” and how they’re going to have to re-tape portions of the show and apologize, and how everyone connected to the show is going to be named as a defendant. (The reporter, portrayed by Christine Lahti, sniffs, “Well, if you accuse a writer of plagiarism, you might as well call him a child molester.”)

Huh? We wish! Has there been a show like SNL that ever once worried about possibly ripping off a comedian? Not that this kind of thing happens that often, but, if it did, do you think they’d be waking up any attorneys or loading in a second audience or re-taping segments? We don’t think so.

The eventual outcome is that Matt (Matthew Perry’s character) has been putting so much pressure on the writers to produce material that one of them felt the need to submit material that was… lifted.

Turns out the whole thing is a false alarm. Turns out that Lenny Gold is contacted and cops to stealing the bit from one Ben Barkley, former writer for Studio 60. Turns out further that Barkely– who hasn’t written for the show in nine years– wrote the bit when in the employ of the show and, therefore, the bit is the property of the show. Nothing to see here, folks. (We like how the head writers wouldn’t give up the harried writer/child molester dude. They instead chose to blame the head writer for exerting too much pressure on the staff! Yeah, right!)

The show is, we assumed, eerily accurate when it comes to depicting the production of a weekly network televisione sketch show. Now, we’re not so sure. Apparently, there isn’t enough drama in a week of production to fill up an hourlong episode of a fictionalized version of the show and they feel compelled to make up dreck like that detailed above.

We just love how the comic in the plot was eventually found out to be a thief! Nice!

FOS Tommy James points out, quite rightly, that the role of Lenny Gold was played by real-life standup comic Fred Stoller.

Who is in town in Atlantic City this week? (Besides, of course, the Female Half of the Staff, with Peter Fogel, that is.)

Borgata: Eric McMahon, Marty Rackham, Steve Morris.

Comedy Stop at the Trop: Steve Shaffer, Jeff Norris, Rob Sherwood

We posted on October 5 about how the Sierra Mist/MySpace folks had made some changes to the contest with regard to the dates, prizes, etc. One hour and fourteen minutes later, FOS Shaun Eli commented on our posting with the following:

After reading the rules I’ve opted not to send anything in. My interpretation (though I am not an attorney) is that you are giving them rights to your material, including– and this is specified rather clearly– the rights to have others perform your material.

I suggest that people actually read what you’re letting them do with your material before ever submitting material to contests or websites.

We assumed he was referring to the following passage, from the Official Contest Rules, which were revised on Oct. 3:

“By entering the Contest, you grant Sponsors a perpetual, fully-paid, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, distribute, display, sub-license, exhibit, transmit, broadcast, televise, digitize, otherwise use, and permit others to use and perform throughout the world the Material (including without limitation, the underlying intellectual property therein to the extent necessary to exploit Material) in any manner, form, or format now or hereinafter created, including, but not limited to, on the Internet, and for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising or promotion of Sponsors and their services, all without further consent from or payment to you.”

We can understand how this passage (and the clause we emphasized) might give someone pause. We’ve signed some so-called “universal releases” in our day. (And while it hasn’t resulted (to our knowledge) in anyone getting rich by selling our material through truckstops or pumping our acts through a late-night, syndicated TV show, it has resulted in some pretty embarassing stuff still living on, way past its shelf life, offered through websites or maybe informercials.)

We read these releases, too but, not being lawyers, we can’t say that we always fully understand what we’re signing, the nuances, the clauses and sub-clauses. We pretty sure, though, that we can’t recall any releases in the past that contained that bit about letting other folks use the material. And, again not being attorneys, we can’t say for sure that it means what we think it might mean.

But, stepping back from the minutiae of a legal agreement, it might seem strange, even to a non-lawyer, that the rules of a contest were changed after the contest already started. Are the folks who submitted prior to the rule change still bound by the old rules as they stood prior to Oct. 3? Will they have a choice as to which set of rules they must adhere to? Was that option spelled out in the first set of rules? And what guarantee does the comic who signs up on October 7 won’t have yet another set of rules when he wakes up on Oct. 8? So many questions.

This is one of the more high-profile contests to come along in a while. Winning comics will get national television exposure, the credit of a major comedy festival, a development deal slot and large gobs of cash. It would be a pity if comics missed out on this opportunity just because of some confusion over some fine print.

BTW: The folks at MySpace have extended the deadline for submissions. You now have until 11:59 PM on Oct. 11 to upload a video.

“PAIR CAUGHT CANOODLING IN A BOOTH,” is the screaming headline of a NYPost Page Six item that describes Dane Cook and his Employee of the Month co-start Jessica Simpson “whispering into each other’s ears” at a NYC premiere party. We despise the word “canoodle.” Not sure why. We just do.

We especially like the last line of the gossip tidbit– “They finally left with Simpson’s hairdresser Ken Paves.” Not sure why. We just do. No good can come of this.

(Our thanks to sharp-eyed reader Tanyalee Davis who drove us to the page.)

We get some interesting requests here.

This one seeks someone to “star” in a “reality TV show, documentary, video, and text blog.” They describe the project as “Super Size Me meets MySpace.” Essentially, you’d be the front man/woman for a new-media quit-smoking campaign commissioned by the American Cancer Society.

How about we let them explain it:

Casting: Man or Woman 25-– 45 (roughly) Smoker, but willing to try quitting. Must live in one of the following states: Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Prefer someone with basic computer skills. Also prefer someone who has tried to quit smoking before.

Important: This is NOT a full time project. The person chosen to star in this project will be able to do this while maintaining their normal life/routine. Person chosen to star in project will potentially need to be available for promotional opportunities.

Reality: This project will receive a PR push from the American Cancer Society. That being said, the more media buzz the project generates in and of itself, the more potential opportunities the lead will have to showcase his or her personality and talent to America. Essentially, as the hype around this project grows, so will the opportunities for the lead person.

Payment: To maintain the authenticity of the project, there is no direct cash payment. The person chosen to star in this project will receive a new laptop computer, video camera and digital camera valued at roughly $3000. If the person follows through on entire project, he or she will be able to keep the equipment. Additional, resources will be given to facilitate the project.

If all this sounds good, introduce yourself: Send us a 3-5 minute video of yourself. Let us know why we should make you the star of our project.

Talk to us about who you are. What makes you unique. Make us laugh. Make us care.

Tell us why America will want to listen to you, watch you and read what you have to say.

Upload videos to a site (any online video site will work fine) and send links to to: toddiqtv@gmail.com

If you can’t upload a video, mail the tape/DVD to:

Todd Slutzky
IQ Interactive
1950 North Park Place
Bldg 600
Atlanta, Georgia 30339

ALL TAPES/DVDs ARE DUE IN BY OCTOBER 11th. Tapes and DVDs will not be returned.

Feel free to email questions to the above address as well.

And, bless their hearts, they consider a standup comic to be living a “normal life.”

Two weeks from tonight, The Male Half of the Staff will be going up against four other comics at the Comedy Stop at the Trop in Atlantic City for the right to open three shows on the Real Men of Comedy Tour. (The evening’s winner will open for Charlie Murphy, John Heffron and Joe Rogan when their Anheuser-Busch/Dennis Publishing-sponsored theater tour comes to The Tower in Upper Darby, PA (PHL), the Orpheum Theater in Boston and the Borgata in Atlantic City the following weekend.)

So far, contest talent coordinators refuse to let TMHOTS know exactly who he’ll be competing against(!) and we’re not sure what the rationale is (if there is any!) for the secrecy. If anybody out there reading this is scheduled to perform on this bill, send us an email!!

Thursday, October 19, at the Comedy Stop at the Trop, the new club is inside the multi-million addition to the Tropicana casino in A.C. called The Quarter. Stop on by and root for your favorite!

Last month, we posted about the Sierra Mist contest being conducted via MySpace.com and we said there’d be further clarification. Well, here it is:

Judges selected by the Sponsors will judge the submissions on Creativity, Comedic Delivery, Humor and Originality and pick the top 15 comedians.

Between October 18th and the 30th, YOU’LL decide who stays or who goes as the voting begins. Here’s where it really gets good: The Top 5 will perform live at The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas on November 16th and that performance will air on November 17th only on TBS at 9pm!

Immediately following the TBS broadcast, YOU’LL decide who the Grand Prize
Winner is by coming right back here and casting your vote for who is #1. The winner will be announced during the Comic Relief broadcast on TBS November 18th.

Five lucky winners will each receive a development deal and one lucky Grand Prize Winner (in addition to the development deal) will receive $50,000 in cash and a multi-city tour! Stay tuned…more details to follow.

Also, check the contest page for rules clarification and video upload verification!

They alluded, in earlier announcements, to “sending in video,” but now it seems they have opted to go with the video upload model. MySpace is using this opportunity to drive people to their video upload option, no doubt in an attempt to take a bite out of YouTube’s comedy video traffic. (We tried uploading a short film using the MySpace video interface and found the results to be less than spectacular. It was easy, but the clip played a little “jerky,” even halting on occasion. Jerkiness is a severe impediment when displaying a comedy clip, being that comedy depends a lot on timing. And jerkiness tends to wreak havoc with timing. We hope they’ve ironed the bugs.)

Of course, after what we posted about Sierra Mist and our Boston Comedy Competition experience, we’re pretty sure that we’ll not be uploading any video to their competition any time soon!

J.P. Buck, Manager of Talent-HBO Comedy Festival/The Comedy Festival, sends along the following:

The HBO Comedy Festival will be holding an open call for comedians and comedy groups at The Cap City Comedy Club in Austin, TX on Tuesday October 17, 2006 from 11 AM to 3 PM. The Festival is looking for the best up-and-coming comedic performers, including stand-ups, sketch groups, one person shows & alternative acts. All persons wishing to be considered for the upcoming festival in Aspen, CO should prepare 2-3 minutes of material. Please bring a headshot with contact information on the back. No other materials are required; however performers can bring DVDs of longer performances to leave with the festival representative.

And, the folks who run the “original” Las Vegas Comedy Festival are looking for comics at Chicago Zanie’s, October 9. From 1:00-3:00 PM audition spots will be granted on a first come, first served basis, with 8:30 PM callbacks.

Hit both of the above links for further information regarding future auditions.

Josh Sneed, in a MySpace blog entry, writes about getting booed offstage at his hometown Funny Bone.

…It wasn’t a “Now that wasn’t very nice” kind of boo. It was a “We don’t know you, and we don’t like you” kind of boo. It was the kind of boo that might have made me quit comedy had it happened when I first started…

Exactly what the f*** is going on out there? (And, by “out there,” we mean in Comedy Land.) Decent, honest, successful comedians getting booed. Booed to the point where they can’t continue. Sometimes before they’re given a chance to get their set going. Often against the wishes of the people who are actually enjoying the set.

This is bad. Very bad. It’s time for club managers to start a zero tolerance policy and make it clear that such behavior is grounds for expulsion. When was it ever not grounds for expulsion? When did this booing thing gain any traction? We’ve seen three or four examples in the past nine months of incidents like the one Sneed describes.

And in at least one incident (in which The Female Half of the Staff was set upon by an ornery O & A crowd at Helium in Philadelphia), not one patron was tossed. Weak attempts were made to silence the goofballs, but to no avail. Where are the bouncers? Are there bouncers?

It makes no sense. We seem to recall that timid club managers, back when The Bust was happening in excruciating slow motion, would tolerate almost any kind of bad behavior from patrons because ticket sales were slumping and they were reluctant to piss anybody off. Now, however, live comedy has never been a bigger draw. There’s never been a better time to make sure that everyone that comes through the door has a pleasant experience.

Folks were fond of saying that television killed live comedy. If the current crop of club managers aren’t careful, live comedy will kill live comedy.

In an earlier post on this blog, we wondered…

Why anyone– especially a current or former comedian– would want to run for public office in this age of political correctness is beyond our ability to comprehend. Folks in this country tend to like our comedians to make fun of politicians, not become politicians.

We forgot about a handful of emails in our inbox from Joey Novick who, on his website seeks…

the consideration of your support Election Day, Tuesday November 7th, 2006– to allow me the privilege to serve as your Mayor, and work together to face the challenges facing Flemington.

Novick is familiar to comics on the Eastern Seaboard from the 80’s and 90’s– He did all the clubs, and booked a few of them here and there.

After becoming an attorney and getting involved in Central Jersey politics in the 90’s, Novick is now setting his sites on the office of Mayor of Flemington, NJ, “a quaint but vibrant American small town where greater than 60 per cent of the buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places.”

Bobcat Goldthwait has written and directed a motion picture called “Sleeping Dogs Lie.” Click on the trailer and the choice of title will be abundantly clear.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone described it as “demonically funny and surprisingly sweet.” (Which is how we would describe nearly all of the Farrelly Bros. films!) It will be interesting to see if he can pull it off. (Get ready for a barrage of prissy film critics jabbering about “gross out humor” and impressing themselves and their colleagues by figuring out how to address the subject of bestiality in a family paper.)

If you’re wondering how Goldthwait’s been occupying his time, check out his IMDB bio.

It’s only 1:52, but comedian Tom Wilson’s snippet on YouTube.com has beckoned nearly 12,000 pairs of eyeballs in its short life on the video site. His “Biff’s Question Song” is shot at an unnamed comedy club. It seems to be a record of the big finish to his live act.

In it, he endeavors to answer the questions that he has encountered in the two decades since the release of “Back to the Future.” The comic/actor from Villanova, PA, played the evil Biff Tannen in the film trilogy (and, Wikipedia notes, he played Tannen in the ride!) and also voiced the character in the animated BTTF series. We suspect that a lot of the inane Biff questions have come from bank tellers and investment counselors! Wilson demonstrates at least one way of dealing with a role that dominates an actor’s body of work.

Wilson comes home in two weeks to play Helium in Philadelphia.

The subtitle, “True Stories of the Road from America’s Top Comics” sums it all up. Stories involving (says one reviewer) “travel, intoxicants and the colorful characters on the fringes of the comedy world,” are contributed by Jay Leno, Ron Shock, Alonzo Bodden, Drew Carey, George Lopez, Joan Rivers and others, including, of course, the authors/editors of this collection, veteran comics Mark Schiff and Ritch Shydner.

The Female Half recently tried to re-read “Comic Lives,” a somewhat similar aggregation of interviews, snippets and stories from the early days of the Comedy Boom. The macho posturing, the paranoia and the blowhardism made for some tough sledding. It is hoped that this book is a mature update on that work. As most or all of the comics in the Schiff-Shydner anthology have achieved a high level of success, they probably have what a lot of the acts in the earlier book didn’t have– perspective.

Purchase “Spoiled Rotten America”

Book publishers do all they can to sell a book. They frequently compare their author to other, similar authors. They chose to compare Miller to P.J. O’Rourke. Apples to pomegranates, we say. Miller is a good, maybe great writer, but the laughs come from entirely different methods than those employed by O’Rourke. It took us several chapters to shake off the O’Rourke comparison and just enjoy Miller for Miller. His chapter on “Jerry Allen” is especially poingant and it’ll take any comic back to his early days and to those comics he bonded with during those uncertain, exciting times. Miller’s standup was always about story-telling. He is eqally adept at telling stories and making points with the written word.

The website has the details.

…the event will expand to five days and feature dozens of performances and special events in a variety of venues within Caesars Palace, including The Colosseum, with 4100 seats, and the outdoor Roman Plaza amphitheater.

Scott McLennan’s article in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette gives readers some insight into the current configuration of the Boston comedy scene, detailing the opening (by Dick Doherty) of a new club in Worcester, about 40 miles west.

Doherty’s mainstay in recent years has been the Comedy Vault at Remington’s in Boston. Doherty started doing standup in the 1970s, opened a comedy venue in Hyannis around that time, succumbed to drug and alcohol addictions in the ’80s, and resurfaced in the late ’80s with his finger on Boston’s funny bone. In addition to opening places for comics to work their craft, Doherty has managed careers, including the early days of Dane Cook.

The buzz around Boston a couple weeks ago was that one of two comedy venues branded by Steve Sweeney had just closed down. One door closes, another opens. What is that saying about the weather in Florida? If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes. The same holds true for the scene in the Town of the Bean.

Kinky Friedman, the musician and novelist running as an independent for governor of Texas, has a greater appreciation for what is known as “opposition research.” A blog, The Burnt Orange Report, has run an audio clip of Friedman performing in 1980 in which he uses what the press and others have dutifully stuck to calling “The N-Word.” (There’ve been other, more recent, comments, but none seems as egregious, or as likely to turf his candidacy, as the older, moldier ones currently being circulated.)

Notable here only because the news reports insist that Friedman was performing as a standup comic when the statements were issued. Indeed, some reports refer to him only as a standup comic, totally ignoring his body of work as a musician and novelist over the past three decades.

We’re not aware of his dabbling in standup. We’ve been aware of his work, but we could hardly be called fans. (We own exactly one Kinky Friedman recording, “Pearls in the Snow”— a tribute album from 1999 that is quite good and features Willie Nelson’s rendition of “Ride ’em Jewboy” and a killer version of “Rapid City, South Dakota” by Dwight Yoakam.) This may be another case of the media identifying someone as a comic only when the aim is to marginalize that person. It’s not unprecendented. We’re inclined to believe that the audio clip making the rounds is merely between-song banter from a musical set. Either way, it’s a bit ridiculous that someone should be held accountable for statements made onstage in 1980– 26 years ago. Had he made the statements in the capacity of a legislator or a judge or a zoning board official, perhaps we could see the relevance. But it was 1980 and he was fronting a band called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, for cryin’ out loud! One of his signature songs was “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore!”

And speaking of that song, its authorship has been attributed to Friedman in countless news accounts. But we read in an August 2003 Boston Phoenix article on bawdy female comics of the 1950s and early 60s– “Funny girls talk dirty” by Michael Bronski— that the song may have been around long before Friedman’s musical career started.

A close friend told me that in the ’50s, her parents would go to business conventions in Manhattan and loved to see Patsy Abbott’s nightclub act, and that her unofficial theme song was “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore.”

The Daily Texan (the UT Austin student paper) has a fine opinion piece on the entire brouhaha, penned by econ grad student Garth Heutel that sums things up, offers some theories and considers the role of political correctness may have played/may be playing in the affair.

The truth is that by appearing “politically incorrect,” Kinky could win more votes than lose. Being attacked by the NAACP and editorial pages (that is, the liberal media) will only raise his appeal among those demanding less PC in their politicians. Kinky Friedman might be an idiot for saying what he did, but he might be savvier than he’s getting credit for.

And, in another case of art (if you want to call it that) imitating life, Robin Williams is about to hit the bricks next month to promote his latest film, “Man of the Year” (Watch the trailer.)

What would happen if one of the nation’s funniest men became its leading one? Oscar winner Robin Williams reunites with the director of Good Morning, Vietnam to answer just that question in the comic tale of an entertainer’s accidental rise to power, Man of the Year. Acerbic performer Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) has made his career out of skewering politicians and speaking the mind of the exasperated nation on his talk show. He cracked scathing jokes at a fractured system night after night until he came up with a really funny idea: why not run for president himself?

The capsule description above asks, “What would happen,” but we all know what would happen. Ask Pat Paulsen fans. Ask Doug Stanhope fans what is happening as their favorite comic runs for the White House in ’08. Tom Knapp, libertarian blogger speculating on the current crop of L(ibertarian) P(arty) candidates for FreeMarketNews.com, sums up Stanhope’s chances, and the general feelings of the LP:

A comedian who has never been elected to prior public office running for the presidency of the United States is, and will be seen as … a joke.

Why anyone– especially a current or former comedian– would want to run for public office in this age of political correctness is beyond our ability to comprehend. Folks in this country tend to like our comedians to make fun of politicians, not become politicians.

A sharp-eyed reader sent us a link to Sept. 3 The Los Angeles Times article (Free reg. req.) that might not be there for very long, so hurry.

It tells of a gang of comedians who regularly converge on Victors Liquor & Delicatessen in Hollywood every Sunday afternoon.

Soon, the table expanded. Author Marc D. Allan gets major points for name-dropping!(Alan)Kirschenbaum brought along L.A. music scenester Chuck E. Weiss– the subject of Rickie Lee Jones’ “Chuck E.’s in Love.” (Jeffery) Ross came along, as did Lee Frank (a comedian who’s written for cable TV’s Reality Remix and Girls Behaving Badly) and (Don) McEnery, who used to headline the Wall Street comedy spot called Jokers and Brokers, where Ross got his start. McEnery persuaded his poker buddy Jonathan Solomon (comedian and writer for Mad About You and also a friend of Rowe’s and Frank’s) to come break bread.

We are envious of any comics who have such regular meetings with colleagues. It always seemed like a good idea to get together with peers, and not necessarily in a comedy club setting. (We wonder if the gathering has been ruined now that the secret’s been spilled in the LAT!?)

FOS Clifford Fewel is seeking comics of any/all levels…

…to audition 2-5 minutes of material at Crystal Palace Theater Saturday, Oct. 7 from 10AM to 1PM for a two-night show in Aspen, Oct. 19 and 20. All material must focus on life, work, play and social classes in Aspen and beyond. A tape of the show will be submitted for entry in HBO Comedy Festival in February. Call Clifford Fewel for info at (970)274-8248.

Above is an editorial cartoon by Bruce Beattie of Copley News Service that ran in Friday’s USA Today. And, we assume it ran in dozens of newspapers that subscribe to Copley’s service. (Oh, sure, there was a caption– a reference to the president’s recent address to the UN– but that’s irrelevant to what we’re discussing here.)

The depiction of the comic– with his loud, checked sweater, bowtie, bald head and bug-eyed expression– is something that has always bothered us.

And the recurring theme of the comedian being subjected to thrown objects is even more bothersome. What has us patricularly upset in this instance is the fact that the audience has hurled a tomato, a pie and a knife(?!?) at the performer.

Beattie is employing a set of visual stereotypes that might be as much as 75 years old– The misshapen, bald head, grotesquely elongated nose, the dated clothing– all hearkening back to vaudeville, a culture that ceased to exist in the 1920’s! And the idea of an audience throwing objects at the comic probably pre-dates vaudeville!

We’ve seen this tired visual cliche used here and there in the recent past– the original cover design for Richard Belzer‘s book on standup depicted a rotten tomato smashed against it. Subsequent reissues of the book removed the tomato.

Old habits die hard– cartoonists, graphic designers and others seem incapable of letting go of the rubber chicken, the Groucho Marxian nose-and-glasses and the squirting flower as archetypes. In Jungian terms, these objects are “an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience and present in the individual unconscious.” It is this toolkit that enbles cartoonists and others to conjure up entire sets of concepts and associations with just a few strokes of the pen– it is their shorthand.

But our attention is drawn to that knife! Are we being overly sensitive? No, not at all. The illustration shows a comedian having a deadly weapon tossed at him. Had the person throwing the knife been accurate, it clearly would have hit the victim in the head! A pie in the face is bad enough, but it would have merely been humiliation and not serious injury or death. Same for the rotten tomato.

We must wonder why Copley, USA Today and Beattie felt it was acceptable to portray violence against a comedian. Is this indicative of some sort of a lack of a societal sanction against such an act? Are comedians so reviled, so despised that we’re all comfortable with a deadly assault against one?

We believe that the entire standup community is owed a public apology from USA Today, Copley and the artist, Beattie.

Readers may recall that we posted a warning back on August 14 that the Hawaii Festival, originally scheduled for October 1-7, might not happen. It is now official. Following is an email we received minutes ago.

The Hawaii International Comedy Festival as originally planned is canceled. Registration fees will be refunded as soon as possible. We are unable to reimburse travel expenses. For comedians still planning to enjoy a Hawaii vacation, and for all Hawaii based comedians, Pipeline Cafe is still available as a venue for October 6th & 7th. If enough comic express interest in performing, we will hold shows and give money to The Life Foundation.

I am terribly sorry for the delays and inconvenience, but feel free to contact me directly at home at 808-842-1754 or email me at ozellamahari@aol.com.

Ozell Daniel

No, not God. Louis CK, the creator of the show Lucky Louie, says that the reports of the demise of his show are exaggerated. In a MySpace bulletin, CK vows that it will continue, but he declines to go into any detail.

Lucky Louie IS NOT DEAD.

Lucky Louie is the best thing I ever did. It is a great show. People love it.

I will be fighting for the next weeks to keep it alive.

There’s a piece on Slate.com (“Stop Them Before They Joke Again”) by a guy named Peter Hyman. It’s kind of embarassing. He doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor, the poor dear. (Unless, of course, he has some sort of hyper-intellectual sense of humor that we just don’t get– a sorta ultra dry, ironic, I-went-to-Harvard, advanced degree in funny kinda sense of humor where one doesn’t actually get the joke in the traditional, throw your head back and cackle way, but in an arched-eyebrow, knowing smile kinda way.)

He gets a coupla things wrong.

He seems to think that “There is more comedy being broadcast today than ever before, thanks to the full flowering of the Seinfeld effect (everyday existence is funny) and the comedic explosion inspired by the show.” Of course, this is horse hockey. He completely ignores the Survivor effect. The truth is that there’s never been more reality television– a genre that is tenaciously and drearily without a sense of humor. And, since television (even with several dozen cable outlets) is a closed system with only so many broadcast hours to go around, the preponderance of reality programming necessarily has meant a precipitous drop in comedy programming. Perhaps Mr. Hyman just feels the humor more acutely– rather like the recently dumped lover (who thinks everyone is in love!) who can’t even bear to see the squirrels in the park doing the nasty.

And then he makes the classic mistake of asking a professor about humor.

Andrew Stott, an English professor whose academic treatise Comedy explored the philosophy of humor, sees it like this: “Being funny is a means of avoiding scrutiny. It’s a deeply concealing activity that invites attention while simultaneously failing to offer any detailed account of oneself. The reason humor is so popular today is that it provides the comfort of intimacy without the horror of actually being intimate.” Thus, schlock-jock Opie & Anthony clones rule drive-time America while truth-tellers like Bill Hicks linger in relative obscurity.

Two things: Here all this time we’ve been told that we’ve been avoiding intimacy by joking all the time. Now, according to Professor Haha, we’re “providing the comfort of intimacy” with our humor. Curious. Secondly… does Mr. Hyman think that Mr. Hicks is still alive? It would seem so. Mega-curious. (And, as for Mr. Hicks’ obscurity, we daresay that Mr. Hicks is selling more CD’s than a lot of comedians that are alive and well.)

We agree with Mr. Hyman on a larger point and that is that joking should be left to the pros. We’ve said in this very publication that folks like Joe Biden and others in positions of authority quite often make giant fools of themselves when they attempt to make merry.

But Mr. Hyman seems intent on bringing the entire humor industry down with his screed. He just comes off sounding like a master curmudgeon. (And one of the YouTube clips he sites as relying on “hacky premises” is actually quite well-done and rather funny! We realize humor is subjective, but, in this case, we think that Mr. Hyman actually misses the funny train on this one! Click on it and see if he rightfully singles out this clip for hackiness or if he simply misses the subtlety.)

The whole essay is a mess-ay, but we figured we’d hip you all to it. Is there anyone at Slate (besides Hitchens) that’s making any sense?

Backstage at the BCF: Kathe Nelson of Comedy Blvd. with Norm Crosby. In background, Anthony Clark.

Also present at some of the BCF functions was Bill Dana. It’s nice to have your picture taken with Lewis Black or Steven Wright or Denis Leary, that goes without saying. But if you spot a legend, ask if you can get in a two-shot with him/her!

So begins the joint pitch from Sierra Mist and MySpace.com as they seek to find “the next superstar of comedy from within the MySpace community.” Click the above link for details.

Submissions begin September 25th and end October 6th. Voting begins October 18th! FIVE lucky winners will perform on a nationally televised special on TBS and one winner will walk away with $50,000 in cash, a TV development deal and their own DVD!

They want “performance tapes” up to five minutes in length. We would surmise that they want VHS (no Beta, please!) and that DVD’s would cause smoke to come out of their ears. (Actually, we’re just going on what happened last month in relation to the Bud Lite/Maxim search for contestants for their promotion when they specified “DVD only.”– not enough folks out there in Comedyland had DVD’s, so they relaxed the rules, extended the deadline and solicited VHS tapes in addition to the discs.)

And, since this is the internet, there will be INTERACTIVITY!

…if you prefer to laugh rather than dish out the comedy, this is the contest where you’re in control. You decide…who stands up and who sits down.

Also: In order to be considered as a contestant (or to vote on who wins/loses), you must have a MySpace profile and you must add the standuporsitdown entity as a friend. (It’ll all make sense when you get there, trust us.)

No word on where to send the tapes yet. We suppose that, soon enough, standuporsitdown will let everyone know what’s up.

For all of you who find it odd that we would help promote something so vulgar as a contest (after what transpired last week in Boston), let us stress that we never said contests were uniformly bad or tawdry or poisonous. Besides, from all indications, this one seems like it will be easy to enter and free. (At least we think so. We figure MySpace is in this whole thing to bulk up their membership and increase awareness of MySpace Comedy. And Sierra Mist is in it to reinforce their association with standup.)

Disturbing sidenote: MySpace Comedy’s tagline is, “Find the funny only at MySpace.com.” (Emphasis ours) Hmmm… We are troubled by the use of the word “only.” Ah, but who among us has not indulged in such bombast?

While you’re there… Don’t forget to make SHECKYmagazine a MySpace friend.

What is it about that March 2006 Archive file that gives us so much trouble? (Correction: In earlier editions, we called it June. It is March we speak of.) It disappears once in a while. Apparently, The Male Half (who doubles as the SHECKYmagazine Head HTMelF) was tinkering in June and accidentally banished that month’s archive file into some sort of server purgatory.

It’s back now, though.

Once in a while, we find it fascinating to randomly pick a month from our archived blog files (There’s a long string of them in the lefthand column. Scroll down and you’ll see them listed.) and just take it from the top and read the entire month’s postings in one sitting. It only takes a few minutes, but in that short time you see a snapshot of 30 days in the business of standup. (And it’s surprising how much of it is forgotten so quickly!)

In March 2006, for example, we comment on Jon Stewart hosting the Oscars, a final Club Soda Kenny update, the rumors in the runup to Last Comic Standing IV— we even manage to take a shot or two at Tom Shales!

We’re always in a quandary when we get our haircut or attend a reunion or get stuck in an elevator– How do we avoid talking about what we do for a living? Why are we so against letting people know we’re comics? Is it a shortcoming on our part? Is it just us? Apparently not.

Chicago-based comic Matt Wayne provides well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) comedy fans and others with a few pointers on how to talk to a standup comic!

…In fact, I would rather tell people at a party that I am a garbage man. The conversation ends right there. Theres no “How did you get into garbage?” or “Who’s your favorite garbage man?” or “Can you throw this away for me?”

It’s SHECKYmagazine exclusive. Read the rest here.