SHECKYmagazine columnist Paul Ogata sends along the following listing from the August 28-Sept.3 TV Guide (Lost‘s Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim are on the cover). It’s their enticing description of Live At Gotham on Comedy Central:

Why risk becoming part of some stand-up’s act in a comedy club when you can laugh at home?

Why, indeed! Where do we begin?

The losers at TV Guide are still frozen in the 50’s mindset that comedians are constantly locking horns with The Heckler. That standup comics (Oooohhh, we hate it when they call us “stand-ups!”) do little but trash the people in the front row. When was the last time the author of the above actually went to a comedy club? The vast majority of comedians have what we call an “act.” It usually consists of “jokes,” or “stories” or “material.” Which is not to say that comics who “go into the audience” are lacking in those departments. Or that some terrific fun can’t be had by all when one does go into the audience. To the contrary. It is usually a thrill to the audience when a comic interacts with an audience member. In fact, the whole spectacle of a performer (a comedian) actually conversing, interacting with a comedy club patron might be one of the prime reasons for attending a show at a comedy club, as opposed to staying home and watching it on the television!

Oh, the irony: The show is called Live at Gotham, but TV Guide is discouraging folks from seeing comedy live at Gotham!

TV Guide is, of course, all about TV. (And we’re primarily about live comedy.) But must they present the choice in such a way? We wouldn’t dream of telling someone to exclusively consume live standup and eschew the broadcast form. We say it’s a big world, get it when and where you can… but go for the live whenever possible. As Jake Johannsen said:

The difference between watching an HBO special and seeing live comedy is like the difference between watching a porno and actually having sex. It’s a big difference.

TV didn’t kill comedy… perhaps TV Guide might!

On those nifty gift baskets, that is. The IRS says it will tax the recipients of gift baskets. Through their participation in the Oscar ceremony, actors, directors, presenters and writers receive a huge list of Blackberries, I-Pods, hotel stays and kimonos. Up through the ’05 event, they were not required to treat the swag as income. All that has changed. Most are speculating that it will signal the end of the gift basket as we know it. Assistant producers at Extra!, Hollywood Insider and Entertainment Tonight are hyperventilating, weeping and contemplating life in a monastery, as the demise of the gift basket will open up nearly uncloseable holes in the programming of those three wretched shows. The Gift Basket has itself become somewhat of a celebrity and the companies that contribute trinkets to them must now find other, creative ways to pimp their products.

Why should anyone care that a bunch of fatcat H-wood types don’t get a free 6-night stay at the Ihilani Resort & Spa? Well, we would counter that not all who receive the loot are fatcats. And we wince at the possible tax bill on a sack of goodies with a $100,000 price tag! And we would further counter that not all who have ever been invited to Hollywood’s Big Night are so well off that a nice, swollen bag of booty wouldn’t be appreciated in a very fundamental way. And that a gargantuan tax bill for said sack would be an actual hardship. (Considering the capricious nature of Tinseltown, how many times in the past 40 years or so do you think there might have been someone out there who actually could barely afford to attend Oscar night? Or couldn’t attend at all? Trust us, we’ve had first- and secondhand knowledge of similar situations.) It seems wildly unfair to shift any tax burden to the recipient. The folks who give the goods are receiving millions of dollars in publicity (Note: It is not “free” publicity. That is a phrase used mindlessly. It might only be considered wildly inexpensive.), so why don’t they figure out a way of taking care of Uncle Sam?

Allegedly one company has done so, introducing the concept of “gifting rooms,” where giftees select the cellphone or the tennis bracelet or the vacation package, then proceed to a table where they give some or all of their lucre to charity and receive a letter absolving them of a certain amount of tax liability. It all seems so tawdry. Surely there are tax lawyers out there who can figure out some sort of ingenious loot loophole.

Thus begins the blog of 29-year-old virgin Sarah DiMuro, self-described “comic/girl Friday,” who, through the kindness of Jane magazine, will finally realize her goal of getting banged by a near-total stranger before her 30th birthday.

Crass? Don’t blame us. According to Sarah, she…

…had this idea that I would try to lose my virginity by the time I turn 30 this November. That is, I’d like to try and meet a man who I might actually have a connection with and thus want to consummate our union. I haven’t dated much or practically at all and thought I’d really like to conquer this goal by or within my 30th year!

Sarah allegedly “writes autobiographical humor pieces and does stand-up comedy when she is not fashioning enticing come-ons for an online bakery,” according to the Lloyd Grove profile in the NYDN. “Me, I haven’t done so much with my life in terms of social stuff. So this is my adventure– with a kind of scientific method,” she gurgles. Scientific method? What science might this be? Alchemy, perhaps? For a comic, her quotes and her blog seem curiously… un-humorous. Perhaps she’s nervous about the impending demise of her hymen.

The folks at Jane are managing to wring absolutely no humor out of this affair and are presenting the entire mess with the desperate, breathless chirpiness of people who know they’re doing something that is horribly wrong on many levels, but who also know that it’s good for circulation.

For those of you not on the Jane train, their parent company, Conde Nast describes it thusly:

JANE is a magazine built for the 20-something woman who is the ultimate front-row influencer. JANE is always gutsy, cool, fun—with lots of attitude, just like our reader. We reach her with our five editorial pillars: humor, fashion, beauty, music and a peer-to-peer tone. She’s the girl with the great music collection, her own blog and a killer wardrobe. And she’ll give you her last lipstick… if you ask nicely.

Hello, I’m Sarah! Have you met my pimp, Jane?

Uh… she’s a female standup comic. She hangs out with (we assume, male) standup comics… and she can’t get laid?!

Is there a more cowardly bunch of people than local television executives? Is there a group of suits so totally political, so ridiculously (and so insincerely) hyper-sensitive to their consituency, or in this case, their viewership?

A commuter plane crashes in Kentucky Sunday morning. That evening, the Emmy telecast opens with a brilliantly produced package in which host Conan O’Brien is depicted flying to the Hollywood, on his way to the theater for broadcast. What follows is a chain of fantasies in which O’Brien finds himself trapped in various television shows. The first one of which is Lost (the entire story arc of which is predicated upon a plane crash). Of course, the depiction of a plane crash so soon after 49 people died on the runway in a commuter plane crash Sunday morning was too much for some folks.

WLEX’s president and general manager, Tim Gilbert, was home watching the telecast with his family and would have pulled the plug on the Emmy broadcast if only NBC network execs had had the sense to warn him ahead of time. “It was a live telecast– we were completely helpless,” Gilbert told the local newspaper. “By the time we began to react, it was over. At the station, we were as horrified as they were at home.” Gilbert said he’ll complain to NBC, but he said an apology won’t make up for insensitivity. “They could have killed the opening and it wouldn’t have hurt the show at all,” Gilbert said.

We suppose that, since the sketch also depicted O’Brien being mistaken for a child molester (as part of a parody of NBC’s Dateline spinoff To Catch a Predator), the network displayed insensitivity toward JonBenet Ramsey’s family! Maybe depicting Bob Newhart as captive in a sealed chamber was insensitive to the family and friends of the Austrian girl who recently escaped from eight years of captivity in an underground bunker.

Let’s face it, people: If we’re to blow out humor every time it accidentally overlaps tragedy, we’ll eventually outlaw humor. Or is that the eventual goal?

In addition to crocodile tears from news GM’s, we’re also reading similar honking and sputtering from television critics and Hollywood press blowhards like Nikki Finke.

By now, we’ve all read the AP item about the crazy Mongolian woman who tried to teach her dog how to drive.

Immediately upon reading the article, The Female Half of the Staff opined that half the club owners in America are now eyeing their labradors, assessing if their pooch is smart enough not only to drive… but to find his way to the airport… and on to the hotel where the comics are lodged.

That monologue by Conan O’Brien was top-notch. The musical number was spectacular and extremely well-written.

What is the deal with Blythe Danner? She referred to Bob Newhart, identifying him only as “that poor man.” (In a reference to an earlier bit by O’Brien that revolved around the venerable comedian/television legend being sealed into a chamber with only enough oxygen to live for the proscribed three hours that the network had alloted to the Emmycast. The gag being that, if anyone went over time on their acceptance speech, it might contribute to Newhart’s demise!)

That poor man? It’s Bob Fucking Newhart, you pretentious douchebag!

Perhaps it was irony. After observing Blythe Danner for over two decades, however, we are convinced that she a total stranger to The Big I.

In reverse chrono order, from the top: Goodnights proprietor Brad Reeder (l) and Force of Comedy Nature Tim Wilson after second show Friday in Raleigh… Johnny Milwater, The Female Half of the Staff, Kris Shaw, in the Goodnights green room, Friday night… The Male Half of the Staff, DJ Hazard and Joe DeVito, after the Master Standup Series at Gotham, before DeVito’s Professional Showcase spot.

We were in NYC for our Gotham Master Series spots on Thursday… then we headed south for two private parties in North Carolina, squeezing in a visit to Goodnights in Raleigh to catch a set by Tim Wilson. Millwater and Shaw were in town for a show at NC State, just down Hillsborough St. from Goodnights.

Attention all American comics, comedy fans, industry types who might want to attend the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal next year, and who might wanna get there by boat or plane: You might want to renew/obtain your passport because, by January 8 of 2007, passports will be required for…

… all air and sea travel to or from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.

And, for walking and biking and driving, you have until January 1 of 2008 to get your passport. The restrictions are slowly tightening.

It takes “about six weeks” to get one. First-timers must initiate the process in person; renewals can be done by mail. It costs $97. You can toss another $60 on the heap and expedite the process. We’re not sure, but we believe that only renewals– not first-timers– can be expedited. And we’re also not sure, but we believe that the expedited process still takes a week or two. Go here for answers. (The Male and Female Halves of the Staff have striking new ‘ports– the ones with the groovy holograms and all, so we’re good for a few more years. We’ve had up-to-date travel skins since a trip down under in 1991.)

There are only about 300 days until Just For Laughs starts up again. Considering that it takes about 40 or 50 days to obtain a passport (and considering that time can sometimes gets away from us once in a while), it might be a good idea to hop on this matter aggressively. Also consider that, since 15 or 20 million Americans will probably apply for passports in the next 10 months or so, that six-week figure might puff out to a hideously protracted eight or nine weeks. Anyone entertaining notions of passing a New Faces audition should quietly get his papers in order, as the Festival organizers have a habit of notifying the lucky winners with short, short notice (so short, in fact, that even an expedited renewal would not make it under the wire).

We know, we’re a little late to this party, but according to a July 13 an article in the Indy Star, the new owners are a comic and an attorney, who say that…

…Morty’s Comedy Joint, (is) an upscale club for jokesters scheduled to open Aug. 10 along 96th Street east of Keystone in a shopping center at the Precedent business park.

It’s important because Indy is an important comedy market. Indy is an important comedy market because it is the home of Bob & Tom. (Now, why didn’t those boys just open a damn club of their own?)

Differentiation: Good food (the chef is a CIA grad… no, not the Central Intelligence Agency), nice furntiture, a green room.

Traci Skene and Brian McKim will share the bill with D.J. Hazard, Jim Mendrinos and Eddie Brill at Gotham tonight on their Master Standup Series. Showtime is at 7:30 PM. The show presents five comedians with 20 years (or more!) of standup experience. Stop on by!

Or is it a pilot? Or both? Either way, comedian Rick Reynolds has so far created two episodes, co-produced with Tom Scheuber, of “Rick Reynolds Gets Happy,” a weekly video on his pursuit of happiness without the use of “meds, God or psychiatry.” Episode One is described thusly:

Rick sits down with another suicidally depressed guy, comedian Larry “Bubbles” Brown, to discuss the ups and downs (and ins and outs) of life, romance, and happiness. Funny and uplifting, in a sort of “Gee, I thought I had problems,” kind of way.

It’s a well-shot, well-miked and well-edited “series.” Is it a series? Hmmm… What we are witnessing is significant. Because of the relative high quality of this project, we are seeing the very beginnings of that blurring of the line between a network-produced television show and a handmade video podcast. As Reynolds and others like him venture further into the frontier, the viewers (the “visitors?” the iPod users? What shall we call them?) will be less and less able (or inclined) to make the distinction. And the cost/benefit analysis types will tell you eventually that the Rick Reynolds of the world will find it less and less appealing to give up autonomy for so-called “sick money.” Where will the nets be then? Stay tuned.

Digging through the archives of Norm Clarke, Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist, we caught an August 11 installment that had this:

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.

The R-J’s Clarke also previews the lineup of Jerry Lewis’ upcoming Labor Day Telethon in a recent column:

Joining Lewis from 6 p.m. Sept. 3 to 3:30 p.m. Sept. 4 at the South Coast will be resident headliners Louie Anderson, Lance Burton, Celine Dion, Clint Holmes and Rita Rudner. Barry Manilow, whose double hip surgery will keep him home, will send a tape.

Other comedians mentioned: Max Alexander, Ray Romano and, as always, one of a half-dozen hosts relieving Lewis will be Bob Zany.

For more information, go to www.mda.org.

It’s in Vegas (Where it belongs!) for the first time in 12 years.

A sweet story made nearly every newspaper in the world yesterday. A gang of eggheads got together to improve the quality of the lives of some rather unfortunate children:

Researchers from three Scottish universities have developed a speech software package which will allow children who cannot speak to crack jokes – by computer.

The scientists at Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh universities believe humour can be used to help non-speaking children learn to use language more effectively.

They have adapted computer speech technology made famous by physicist Stephen Hawking to enable children who speak using computerised aids to construct and tell jokes.

Apparently, the logic goes, as kids, we all use humor to play with the language. This type of experimentation leads to greater fluency later on, especially when compared to the rare child who doesn’t mess around with puns and parodies– like kids who flat-out can’t speak.

So, some of these kids– the ones using the Hawking device to communicate– now have this software which essentially enables them to quickly look up words, find similar words, locate homonyms, etc. They now have a means to locate the building blocks of rudimentary gags, puns… jokes.

24 hours later, here’s the first two grafs of (inexplicably popular) news website Ananova’s take on the story, under the headline, “Computer that can tell jokes”:

A new computer software program has been developed that can tell jokes.

The software is known as The System to Augment Non-speakers’ Dialogue Using Puns (Standup).The programme allows the youngsters to generate puns, helping them overcome language barriers.

What is up with Ananova? Sounds like it’s being run by a former American medium-size market local TV news GM! Sounds like all us standup comics are about to be replaced. Fear not– once every decade or so, a scientist tries to get a computer to write humor. It never works.

Etan Vlessing, writing for the Hollywood Reporter on July 26 says:

TORONTO — Montreal’s Just For Laughs comedy festival on Tuesday named veteran talent manager Maureen Taran as its vp of programming, replacing longtime programr (sic) Jodi Lieberman. Taran, a Montreal native, most recently ran her own New York City-based talent management business, the Taran Co., after working for nine years at the Barry Katz Entertainment Group. She will rejoin the Just For Laughs organization this fall after first cutting her teeth in comedy while working as a talent logistics coordinator at the festival during the early 1990s. Working alongside Just For Laughs chief operating officer Bruce Hills and the rest of the programming team in Montreal, Taran said she aims at extending the festival’s brand south of the border.

That bit about “extending the festival’s brand south of the border” is rather ominous, no? Who must worry the most? Aspen? Vegas? Boston? NYC? Stay tuned.

Jed Gottlieb’s profile of Jake Johannsen (“Just your average everyday famous person”) is worth checking out, if only for the quotes from the subject. How novel!

Johannsen came up with a lot the trendy, young comics. He doesn’t disparage what they do—he’s actually a big Cross fan—but the (largely fan-created) hipper-than-thou thing doesn’t make sense to him. The kids who dig Cross, or the adults who dig Seinfeld, would fit in just fine at any regular comedy club– and with the talent out there now, he adds, they’ll laugh their goddamn asses off.

“Most people only go to comedy clubs when Seinfeld or Ray Romano or Drew Carey is in town, but they’re missing so much,” he says. “The difference between watching an HBO special and seeing live comedy is like the difference between watching a porno and actually having sex. It’s a big difference.”

And, despite the fact that Gottlieb makes reference to “two-minute late-night standup slots” (?!), you won’t regret reading the entire article.

The second of the three original founders of National Lampoon has died. AP is reporting that noted Dallas philanthropist Robert K. Hoffman has died at age 59 after battling leukemia. Henry Beard is the surviving founder of the magazine cited by many comedians as an early comedic influence.

The third founder, Doug Kenney, died in the early 1980s.

That’s how the un-bylined AP story phrased it. How odd is that? At the very least, hit Wikipedia. (It was August 27, 1980. He fell/jumped from a cliff in Hawaii. At age 32.)

An AP story tells of Ron Shaw, elevated to Pilot Pen’s president in 1986, who spent 11 years on the road as a standup comic back in the 1950’s.

To hear him tell it, his career doing standup was perfect preparation for the corporate suite. It forced him to hone his delivery, learn how to disarm tough audiences and be good at working a room.

“You kind of know what you’re doing. You kind of take charge,” he says.

He now oversees a company with nearly $200 million in sales. (Let’s hope it was the AP writer Stephanie Hoo who was able to cram “11 years” into one decade, and not Shaw. Elsewise, Pilot Pen’s finances may be in some doubt.)

Standup fans in the Atlanta area are advised to tune into Showcase Comedy Radio as host Shawn Lesser welcomes The Male Half of the SHECKYmagazine.com staff, Brian McKim. The show airs Wednesdays, 5-6 PM on AM 1620, Radio Sandy Springs. Listen over the internet by clicking here. Catch the archived podcasts of previous shows by clicking here.

EDITORS’ NOTE: Edward Azlant is a film academic and screenwriter who spent time in the recording industry, where he edited a few Lenny Bruce albums, including the “Curran Theater Concert” and “Thank You Masked Man.”

He has written an article titled “Lenny Bruce Again: Gestapo? You Asshole, I’m the Mailman,” what the author describes as “a reappraisal of Bruce’s work,” with a special emphasis on Bruce’s later, neglected materials.

SHECKYmagazine is priveleged to be the first publication, online or offline, to present Azlant’s essay.

Below is Part I. The rest is linked below.

I

The late stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce suffered every indignity, alive and dead. Alive, he was caught in a time-warp of evolving standards of public language and hounded into oblivion. Dead, he was canonized as a martyr to freedom of speech and human liberation, both sexual and psychological. His legend is retold regularly in film, television, theater, books, and song.

Bruce was always poorly served by other people working his material. In life, it was policemen, whose artless courtroom renditions or mindless transcriptions of his act became the bases for his obscenity prosecutions. These misrepresentations led to the misidentification of Bruce as pointlessly “sick” or “dirty.” In death, it’s been mostly actors and lawyers, often with as little art or justice as the cops. It’s been observed that a corps of actors has spent more time as Lenny Bruce than Lenny did. In death Lenny has become an actors’ dream role of hip cultural rebellion and a lawyers’ perfect martyr for free speech.

But Bruce’s life and art were certainly more complex than that. In a moving obituary written at the time of Bruce’s death in 1966, Jonathan Miller observed the difficulty of Bruce’s circumstance, in which he was caught between two walls of vested interests, villains and sponsors, for whom Bruce had become target or mascot. Miller observed that Bruce had been unwittingly tossed into the front rank of the war of “evangelical sexual shock therapy” and had sadly become “a stalking horse for middle class liberal dares.” The pathos, for Miller, was that while he clearly regarded Bruce as a stage artist of great virtuosity, he also regarded him as an unlettered naif, “intellectually underprivileged,” whose talent derived from “a sort of daft, alienated infantilism,” a puckish innocence (Miller).

It seems from here that Miller, while a perceptive and dedicated Bruce fan, got it only partly right, the part about Bruce serving both sides as target and martyr in a cultural war. The part he missed was the depth, resonance, and complexity of Bruce’s art, and in this Miller was not alone.

The entire 9,000-word piece is here

Erstwhile SHECKYmagazine columnist Dan French has taken the blog plunge– Thoughts From Under The Table is the name of his online journal. From his first posting, “Descending the ladder in West Virginia”:

West Virginia is the redneck motherland. The source river. The core idiot isotope. The backwardness in West Virginia is like a fine wine. You have to go there and spend time to get its full aroma. After five days I had it down. “Ah, yes, a vintage year. I get a waft of poor education, laced with coal dust, spiced with a mother who drank during pregnancy, a hint of Daddy’s paint thinner, and just the barest trace of five generations of unceasing incest.”

Bookmark it when you get there.

San Francisco? FOS Larry Bob says that Mike and Ian have it covered, via podcast:

…a podcast about comedy focusing on San Francisco called the Mike and Ian Show. It’s done by Mike Spiegelman and Ian Jensen. You can get to it from Ian’s webpage and the podcast page is here

Larry Bob says that he was interviewed along with Nick Leonard in the next-to-most-recent episode and that the most recent one is an interview with Dat Phan.

A sharp-eyed reader spotted the saga of Alonzo Bodden, who had a bit of a problem checking into the Palms the other day, according to a post on his MySpace blog:

I got here today, thursday to do a gig Saturday. My picture is on the billboard, my clip is on the TV screen right next to the check in desk and no room, what? thats right, no room.” we didn’t know you were coming Thursday” Well, I have this contract thing in my hands, you know its written, and it says 3 nights . Now being that i have to go on the radio Friday to promote the gig I would guess the three nights are Thurs-Sunday but then I read the contract. Sorry about the whole expecting you to read thing. Next time I’ll send it on a flashy DVD. They wanted to check me into the Rio then they wanted me to pay for it. Now I could see if i were a drunken reveler, maybe a 20 something who walked in to party. maybe even if I were an old high roller here to pick up 20 somethings that might work. BUT I’M FUCKIN WORKIN HERE, IM ON THE FUCKIN BILLBOARD. Pay for a room at the Rio ARE YOU FUCKIN CRAZY

Apparently, they find a room at the Palms, but it seems that the Malouf Brothers take offense at Bodden incorporating the whole incident into his Saturday first show set.

Fast forward three days later, and Bodden’s getting offstage after his first show Saturday. He follows up with this blog entry in which he is escorted from the premises:

So I leave the stage and 3 guys in black suits were waiting for me. I recognized them right away as I’ve played them in movies and on TV. They were security and with some manager asking me to leave the Hotel. Did I say ask, I meant insist.

Bodden posts further that he apologizes to all the fans who bought tix for the second show. We’re stunned. Ya gotta give Bodden credit for handling this whole thing with… grace. He realizes that it’s their hotel and they can do what they like.

But they goofed up big time on this one, and in more than one way. They dissed the comic– Most other comics would’ve gone medieval on them for asking the comic to go to another hotel and pay for it! They also
boned their customers– It shouldn’t matter what kind of beef you have with the talent; you should just let him finish out the week, let the fans get their fill, then banish him from the hotel if you really think you need to.

The people who cook up Maxim online put up a slide show (without a byline!) called “The 12 Worst Comedians of All Time” (“If laughter is the best medicine, then these comics are Dr. Kevorkian.” Hey! A 7-year-old reference! Maxim’s gotta write some new material!)

It’s juvenile; it’s unSHECKYlike. (We were hipped to it by a reader who sent us the link. Oddly, there’s not much evidence of the slide show anywhere else on the website- it’s not listed on the Home page, it’s not listed among the titles of the other slide shows. Hmmm…)

Regardless of whether you like or dislike the 12 comedians named, it’s a pointless exercise. And it’s doubly puzzling that Maxim would consider slinging something like this to its (online) readership considering that parent company Dennis Publishing (they also do Stuff and Blender) is currently co-sponsoring a multi-city standup comedy tour with Anheuser-Busch. Can you imagine the boys at A-B getting this in their inbox? Does it make sense for the elves at Maxim online to trash standup when their boss’s boss’s boss is lunching with the promo people at one of the largest breweries in the world for the purposes of setting up a high-profile standup tour starring Joe Rogan, Charlie Murphy and John Heffron?

Sinbad
Margaret Cho
Whoopie Goldberg
Yakov Smirnoff
Louie Anderson
Sandra Bernhard
Paula Poundstone
Gallagher/Gallagher II
Kathy Griffin
Judy Tenuta
Christopher Titus
Carlos Mencia

Were any of the comics on the Bud Light/Maxim Real Men of Comedy Tour named as one of the 12 worst? No. Does it matter? Not really. But, does trashing comedy in any way shape or form really help ticket sales for the tour? Some might argue that it does, but we would disagree. And the case could easily be made that engaging in such negativity might actually impede sales. A reader who isn’t very comedy savvy might only be familiar with, for example, Rogan, through Fear Factor. They then might see this list, spot one of the comedians on the list whom they feel is on a par with Rogan in terms of notoriety and conclude that neither one is worth the price of admission. The result: The paper route money goes to the OZZFest instead of the October 14 Real Men of Comedy show at the Taft Theater in Cincinatti.

Another thing: The list is varied. They have managed to assemble a list of twelve comics who have wildly different styles, who appeal to a wide range of comedy fans. So… if their goal was to offend the largest number of comedy consumers, they may have succeeded. And to what end? If they weren’t the co-sponsors of this fall’s largest comedy tour, it would it would be mildly annoying and yet another example of anonymous MSM weaselry. As it is, though it’s weasely and moronic.

According to an article in CCM Magazine (“The online community for Chritian Music Fans”), November 7 is the release date for the DVD of “Thou Shalt Laugh,” a concert movie featuring Christian comedians.

Emmy Award-winning actress Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) hosts an uproarious night of stand-up comedy featuring some of the most gifted comedians in show business today. The lineup showcases seven world class comedians including Taylor Mason, Thor Ramsey, Michael Jr., Teresa Roberts Logan, Gilbert Esquivel, Joby Saad and Jeff Allen

The movie was produced by the same person who produced the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie,” Hunt Lowry.

Vincent Kidd of Hampton, VA, wins with “The taste that’s hard to beat.” Congratulations, Vincent, we’ll send you a SHECKYmagazine logo sweatshirt! Thanks to all who participated! Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to make some cock-flavoured soup!

Check out the fascinating article in the U.K. Guardian about the late Bill Hicks, with quotes from ’08 presidential candidate Doug Stanhope:

And the runaway favourite for this year’s if.comeddies award, the brilliant American stand-up Doug Stanhope, is forever being compared to Hicks. Which tees him off, for several reasons. “That guy would be so against us idolising him,” he says. “Stop turning him into a cult, man. He was a good comic, that’s all.” This posthumous popularity would amuse Hicks, who struggled for years.

Also included are musings from childhood Hicks buddy Dwight Slade

For any Hicks fan, Slade’s intimate photographs and films of the young Bill– goofing around in their apartment, hijacking Dwight’s wedding dressed as a mafia enforcer – will be as poignant as they are fascinating. But we mustn’t be too sad, says Slade. “When we were kids, Bill and I would spend every weekend putting on Aerosmith and Kiss and pretending we were rock stars. Bill loved that, because he wanted to be a rock star. And he would be thrilled by the fact that he has become one.”

Check out the links at the bottom of the article to wallow further in the Edinburgh coverage.

From the Lake County News-Sun website, Item Number 2 in a short article called “Three Things to Remember” is:

Two words for you: Walt Willey. We don’t know who he is either, but he’s doing standup comedy Friday night at Zanies in Vernon Hills. Call (847) 549-6030.

Oh, sure, we know that Walt Willey is a “stunt booking” and we know that it’s cute and cool for a publication to occasionally appear stupider than its readers (it’s the irony thing), but this is just plain moronic. Willey, after all, has achieved some level of notoriety as a soap opera star, not just as a comedy club performer. So, in demonstrating a snarky, ironic detachment from the comedy club scene in their backyard (and the nothing, nobody, no-names that appear there), they’ve also revealed a giant hole in their pop culture knowledge. And, the icing on the cake is a demonstration of their total inability (or disinclination) to use popular search engine Google. Back in the old days, these folks would have at best been labelled “square.” (How’s that for irony? They start out trying to appear hip, but end up appearing as though they’re in danger of breaking a hip.)

P.S.: As for Willey being a stunt booking, we may have to reassess that. Upon further reflection, we realize that he has, after all, been at this comedy thing for probably 15 years. We’ve never had the pleasure of watching him perform, but we must assume that he’s reached some level of competence.

Click here to find out about the Bud Light/Real Men of Comedy Tour and to find out how to enter the Real Men of Comedy Talent Search. (The promoters are going to throw a lesser-known comic onto the front end of some of the Tour’s later shows. A comic from each of 15 markets will host a show (or two) and bring out Joe Rogan, Charlie Murphy and John Heffron in a large venue like the Tower in Philly or the Orpheum in Boston.)

Check out the NY Post’s Page Six item about Andy Dick‘s behavior at the William Shatner roast which included, among other things, “groping and biting the hand of Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller backstage after the taping last Sunday”.

FOS Dan Rosenberg writes that he’ll be hosting a show at the Hollywood Improv called the King Davids of Comedy. It’s a charity event, as a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Magen David Adom, which, according to Wikipedia is “Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service.”

The Hollywood Improv
8162 Melrose Ave
Hollywood CA 90045

Dan Rosenberg (Host)
8:10 Jordan Rubin
8:18 Jeffrey Ross
8:33 Wayne Federman
8:43 Avi Liberman
8:51 Steve Hofstetter
9:06 Mike Birbiglia
9:14 Marc Maron

$18 cover and 2 drink minimum.

Displacing the Just For Laughs club, the national chain has opened a Bone at the Sands Regency. We told you about this early last month. Reno now has Catch, across the street at the Silver Legacy and Comedy Comedy, at the Hilton near the airport.

Hearne Christopher, Jr., in his Cowtown Confidential, tells the story. Here’s the money graf:

“This guy comes over and says, ‘I’m a cop,” Vos told the crowd after the melee, which lasted maybe five minutes. “But I didn’t think he was a cop because he tackled the wrong person. Then it got kind of crazy. Then the crazy guy started sucker punching everybody– the guy who looked like Bruno Sammartino with the blond girl.”

Now that‘s a clip.

Rich Vos gives a detailed account of the brawl that punctuated his Friday night headliner set (at Stanford & Sons in Kansas City) on a CringeHumor.com podcast. Vos is poolside, Saturday afternoon, and gives the interview via cellphone. It’s a lengthy interview, but worth hanging in there for Vos’ play-by-play and subsequent analysis. (Not work-friendly– strong language!)

Since we posted the information below, FOS Paul Ogata sent along the following: “I’m determined to salvage my trip by finding a way to make a show happen. Hopefully I can include as many other stranded performers as possible. No promises, but if you’ve already bought tickets, and your flights are nonrefundable, send me a message to www.myspace.com/paulogata and I’ll see what we can muster.”

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether The Hawaii International Comedy Festival, scheduled for October 1-7, 2006, will eventually happen. We have an email into the organizer inquiring about it. (We’ve heard from more than one source that he’s not answering phone calls. We’ll let you know if/when we get a response.)

We don’t want to panic anyone, but we figured that it would be nice if folks knew one way or the other before pulling the trigger on one of those expensive tickets to the islands. The website still lists workshops, showcases, travel and lodging deals, etc.

If anyone has any information, feel free to put up a comment on the end of this posting.

We had the pleasure of filling in last week at Goodnights in Raleigh, and the double pleasure of working with Blake Clarke. That club, you’ll recall, was among the ten that we cited in the USA Today piece from a year ago April 1, in which they listed “Ten great places to sit down and watch standup.”

New owner Brad Reeder has spent considerable time and energy (and a few bucks) re-branding the club as “Goodnights Comedy Club,” dropping the “Charlie” part. “The club never really was named Charlie Goodnights,” says Reeder. “That was the name of the Mexican restaurant downstairs.” Old habits die hard, however, as customers are still using the Charlie handle when making reservations.

Speaking of restaurants, among the many changes the new Goodnights regime has brought about is a new menu. Chef Richard is enthusiastically introducing such items as Tournedos of Beef King Louis (which was last week’s aptly named Special!). We must say that The Grille at Goodnights just might have the best food of any comedy club in America. (And, while we admit that we haven’t eaten at every comedy club in America… and we also admit that most comedy clubs don’t exactly offer five-star cuisine… it’s still darn fine club grub!)

That’s Jake Sclater, mugging along with the Male and Female Half of the Staff. He’s our great nephew (the Male Half’s neice’s kid) and he’s was born with a double whammy– Angelman’s Syndrome (a rare genetic disorder) and ACC (agenesis of the corpus callosum). The doctors say there are no documented cases of a tot with both conditions.

In order to care for Jake, his parents are doing things like holding the 1st Annual JMS Charity Challenge, a golf tourney to benefit Jake and VFW Post 3285, to be held August 26 at the VFW Country Club, 5901 Old National Pike in Fredrick, MD. And, while all or most of the slots are filled, donations (tax deductible donations!) can still be sent through the VFW post at:

VFW Country Club
5901 Old National Pike
Fredrick MD 21702

For deductibility, make checks payable to “VFW Post 3285” and put “JMS Charity” on the note line.

Hop onto JustForJake.org to find out more!

The Male Half is quoted in a Chicago Sun-Times article by Mike Thomas on Whoopi Goldberg‘s recent foray into morning radio. From “Can Whoopi wow radio audience?” comes the following quote:

So why in Wolfman Jack’s name do they do it? More specifically, why is wealthy and (presumably) well-rested Whoopi opting for godawful hours (5 to 9 a.m.) and audience feedback that comes largely via blinking phone lines?[…]

It’s also one hell of a promotional tool for hosts and guests alike.

“Radio gigs are sought after because of the power of the medium,” says Brian McKim, editor of stand-up comedy cyber-bible SheckyMagazine.com. A trained comic, he has worked in radio and knows the tremendous influence it can have. “So these folks who are supposedly slumming in radio are actually wiser than most. If you can handle the schedule, if you can handle the hours, if you can handle the pressure, I think there’s nothing else like it.”

From Dan Allen:

I was nominated this year to be on a twenty-five member team task force for Big Brother Big Sisters of NYC’s annual Race For the Kids on September 16th.

Last year they had over 2,500 participants and raised about $325,000 and this year are seeking over 3,500 individuals with a goal of $500,000. You can register at the above link!

To create an awareness of the Race, I’m producing a fundraiser show for the Big Brother Big Big Sister of NYC at the new Gotham Comedy Club, Monday, August 14, at 7:30PM, $12 with a two drink minimum, at W. 23rd St (btw 7th and 8th Ave). Call (212)367-9000 for reservations, and mention “Big Brother”

Should be a fun show with a great all-star line-up who moonlight as mentors: Bill Burr, Tom Shillue, Wali Collins, Michael Sommerville, Veronica Mosey, Jon Fisch and me, Dan Allen.

There will also be a silent auction at the door– Various items, like a video IPod and $100 Yankees tickets will be up for grabs!

“Edinburgh is world’s toughest gig for comics” is the title of a Reuters piece about the Edinburgh Fringe that compares the three largest comedy fests in the world and also compares the styles of comics from three continents.

Says Aussie comic Adam Hills:

The Americans are the slickest in the world. The British will be intelligent, the Irish will tell stories, the Canadians will be quirky. What we do best as Australians is piss about.

Our favorite quote comes from Rich Hall:

He revels in the camaraderie of comedians at festivals.

“You feel a bit like mercenaries. We’re in Rwanda, now we’re in Angola, next it’s Vietnam.”

But he mocks the image of the comic as a lonely genius only smiling on stage.

“You cannot have a better job. All this tortured artist stuff is just bull.”