Both halves of the staff would like to wish all our readers a happy Thanksgiving! We have plenty to be thankful for in this, our seventh year publishing SHECKYmagazine.com! We are particularly thankful for our readers– you are the finest readers– and the finest standup comics and standup comedy fans, in the entire blogosphere. (And the industry people ain’t so bad, either!)

We’re taking a day or two off from blogging. (And we’re sure our American readers will be taking a day or two off from reading!) When we return, we’re going to give away a fabulous new SHECKYmagazine.com sweatshirt! Stay tuned for details on how you can win!

Things are winding down in the Seattle Comedy Competition. They’re in the last two or three months of the contest and they have about six or seven more weeks to go. Just kidding.

After 18 shows, the finalist have been chosen in the 26th Annual Seattle International StandUp Comedy Competition. They are: Lamont Ferguson, San Diego CA; Heneghen, Seattle; Sadiki Fuller, Houston TX; Graham Clark, Vancouver BC; and Andy Peters, Seattle.

Details on the final forty or fifty shows are at the Seattle Comedy Competition website. Again… just kidding.

An article about an “important new study from the forthcoming Quarterly Review of Biology” says that a long time ago (millions of years ago, so don’t even try to imagine when), we developed the ability to not just laugh at funny stuff– a fellow sub-human slipping on a banana peel, maybe– but we “evolved the capacity for willful control over facial motor systems.”

In other words, we got so far along in the laughter department, we mastered the art of the fake laugh. We figured out that we could muster the occasional fake laugh for such handy dandy purposes as “strategically punctuating conversation, and conveying feelings or ideas such as embarrassment and derision.” Say the eggheads:

Humans can now voluntarily access the laughter program and utilize it for their own ends, including smoothing conversational interaction, appeasing others, inducing favorable stances in them, or downright laughing at people that are not liked.

From this is derived such obnoxious phenomena as the nervous giggle, the maniacal laugh of the comic book villain and the derisive laugh of that kid on The Simpsons!

XMRadio has added a new channel, Laugh Attack, which showcases Canadian acts. We noticed it for the first time while driving back from Atlanta yesterday. We’ve never heard so many jokes about bears! (Just kidding, eh?)

Whether it’s politics, relationships or the regular travails of daily life, the hunt is on for the big laugh. Laugh Attack puts the comic spotlight on Canada’s rich pool of extraordinary comedic talent such as Mike Bullard, Maggie Cassella, Jeff Fink, Larry Horowitz, Jim Carrey.

So reads the description of the new channel on the XM Comedy page. (As of this writing, the above Laugh Attack link brings one to a blank page. We suspect they’ll be correcting that soonly.)

So far, it’s a pretty tight rotation, artist-wise– lots of Glenn Foster, Jebb Fink, Larry Horowitz, Bruce McCullough, Elvira Kurt, etc., but we suspect that’s only because they’ve only recently begun soliciting recordings from Canadian comics. (And, we suppose, they’re actively engaged in trying to determince which recordings among the audio they’ve already received might actually be from Canadian comics. How does one go about that? Ask, we suppose?)

We seem to recall reading a while back that Canada had essentially barred its citizens and tavern owners from owning satellite radios. After all, the powers that be wouldn’t be able to properly regulate the content! The last we heard, the Canadian government, at the urging of Canadian artists and their labels, passed laws which required Canadian radio stations to devote a hard percentage of their programming to Canadian artists. The theory is that, in so doing, the Canadian artists won’t get drowned in a cultural tsunami of big, bad American artists. The problem with XM and other programmers who are beamed via the birds are that Canadians just over the border (which is about 95 per cent of Canadians) would be able to listen to 200 channels which had no such restrictions! Quelle horreur! We heard that some tavern owners and other regular (outlaw!) citizens were copping XM units anyway! We guess that, after some arm-twisting and other concessions, the folks at XM agreed to block out a few channels for Canadian and French-Canadian programming so that our neighbors to the north can purchase and use their Roady’s with impunity.

Mike Weatherford wrote a lengthy piece on last weekend’s gathering in Vegas. Not your ordinary fluffy wrapup, but a decent account with some interesting details and some inside observations.

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.

There were some tactical and strategical errors by the folks who threw the fest, resulting in empty seats and disgruntled fans here and there, but it was the first year and it was rather large… and there were three large entertainment entities involved. That many suits can’t agree on anything.

We enjoyed reading Weatherford’s piece, but we disagreed with a couple of his conclusions, like the following about Dennis Miller:

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.

“Do or die time?” Hardly. Miller is regularly playing, and, we assume, packing Vegas– elsewise, he wouldn’t be playing there regularly. In fact, he was just there (at the MGM Grand?) when we were at the other end of the Strip (at the Riv) last month. As for the any perceived change in Miller’s tone, it probably isn’t an indication of any newfound humility as much as a recognition of the seriousness of the situation and the subject matter. Anyone who regularly watched Millers CNBC show saw a lot of “soft-spoken explanation,” especially during that show’s Varsity segments.

We saw Extra!, the strident, ghastly, orgiastic celebrity rag of a television show, describe this festival as the first ever comedy festival to be held in Vegas. Can we get an Ouch! for the folks who put on a comedy festival in that town for three out of the last four years? Yes we can. Speaking of which, we hear rumblings that those folks are mounting yet another effort to hold a festival in Las Vegas, this time in January of 2006, with some different strategies, different backers and ambitious partners. Stay tuned for updates on that.

We got an email about yet another comedy contest, this one to take place in Cleveland.

The Ground Floor Theater is proud to announce the inaugural Cleveland Comedy Challenge beginning Wednesday January 11th at 8:00 PM. The competition takes place over six weeks with five hundred dollars going to the winner. Every week, two finalists will be selected to go on to the semi-finals in week five. After the semi-finals four comics will be selected to go on to compete in the finals week six. The Cleveland Comedy Challenge will be an ongoing competition every six weeks. The finalists will be selected in part by audience vote and in part by a three-judge panel.

In order to compete comics must sign up by calling (216)323-4677 or emailing standup@groundfloortheater.com. The Ground Floor Theater is a comedy theater with a full-service, 170-seat venue located at 2781 Euclid Heights Blvd in Cleveland Heights. The historic Centrum theater serves as home for the Ground Floor Theater in Coventry.

Thanks and good luck to all contestants.

Nate Cockerill
Artistic Director
Ground Floor Theater
nate@groundfloortheater.com

Depending on how many contestants they plan on allowing, it should attract comics from Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Detroit.

It can be revealed that the winner of the Laugh Factory’s charity auction (via eBay) last month was L.A.-based comic/actor Mark Moseley. For more info about him, you can visit his website. Readers may recall that the enterprising folks at the Factory auctioned off a spot on a future Jon Lovitz-hosted show at the Hollywood comedy club, the proceeds from which were to benefit victims of hurricane Katrina.

David Schwimmer stars in “Duane Hopwood,” a little movie about a boozy pit boss in Atlantic City, released today. (Read the Chicago Trip review if you like things like that.)

The film is notable in this publication because supporting Schwimmer are standup comics Janeane Garofalo, Judah Friedlander and Dick Cavett and standup comedy empresario Steven R. Schirripa. That, and Friedlander portrays a standup comic in one scene. (If anyone sees it, let us know where the scene lands on the authenticity scale– “Punchline” being zero and “Insert title of movie yet to be made that accurately and sympathetically portrays standup comics here” being ten.)

Laurie David had them rolling in the aisles last night at The Comedy Festival in Vegas:

“We’re calling for the country, the government, to admit global warming exists, admit humans are causing it and to start working on solutions now,” Laurie David says.

Stop, Laurie, you’re killing us!

In a cruel twist of fate, on the same day that David was wet-blanketing the house in Sin City, the wires were crackling with an upcoming report from the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, in which a killjoy Turkish egghead scientist concludes that global warming is caused by the sun. (Who would have thought?!)

Attendee Bill Maher was quoted as saying that “the environment is one of the hardest subjects to do in comedy. It doesn’t have an obvious, easy, funny target.” (Indeed! Try working “the signal of the quasi-biennial-oscillation in the extratropical stratosphere tends to be strengthened in solar minima, and weakened in solar maxima” into a punchline! Not even Jack Black could pull that off!)

Maher no doubt longs for the day when the topic du jour for serious, concerned standup comics was homelessness– remember Comic Relief? (Oh, the irony– while Comic Relief was raising oodles of cash for the homeless, a good chunk of openers and middle acts were living in their cars and sleeping on various couches throughout the U.S., unable to spare the required $15 for a Comic Relief T-shirt!)

The statement was part of David’s schtick during the taping of Earth to America, which airs Sunday on TBS at 8 PM EST.

Just caught Seinfeld‘s set on Tonight. Great set, as usual. Then he did panel and pumped the Seinfeld boxed set.

Before going to commercial break, Leno said he was going to welcome Shelley Berman. How perfectly wonderful that Leno would bring on two legends of standup on one show. Let’s hope it’s a trend. Maybe they could bring on Carlin and Shecky Greene on one show. Make it a regular feature.

Maybe it was Seinfeld’s idea. Berman is, after all, a regular on Larry David‘s Curb.

Disappointing they didn’t have him do standup. Oh, well. Read our interview with Berman here.

So we’re walking down the hallway at our fine hotel here in Atlanta when we see it– A plastic bag containing a towel (we think… we hope), with a note attached that says, “Sorry for that”

The imagination runs wild.

In an interview in the Pune Times (please, save the jokes for later), Hindi comic Raju Srivastav says that he is pleased that he is “being liked by most masses and classes,” and that “people have realised the difference between stand-up comedians and comedians in films.”

Presently there are lots of comedy shows coming up in television. And I think the number of shows are going to increase in the near future. Now I believe audiences want comedy shows and producers too want to cash on with the trend.

Even the suits in India get it. Over on this side of the planet, our executives think the sitcom is dead.

Says the BBC:

In an eleventh-hour agreement ahead of a UN internet summit in Tunis, Tunisia, negotiators agreed to leave the US in charge of the net’s addressing system.

The Tunis deal leaves the day-to-day management of the net in the hands of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which answers to the US government.

Icann will keep its current responsibilities for overseeing domain names and addressing systems, such as country domain suffixes, and managing how net browsers and e-mail programs direct traffic.

It’s a sign. Yuk Yuks, the 800-lb. gorilla of Canadian comedy, is having a contest, called the Great Canadian Laugh Off, and they’re giving away lawts of munney. Entrants must sign up online by December 15, 2005, 12 am PST. A random computer draw will select the final 52 people chosen to compete.

Entries are open to comics from around the world and the grand prize winner will be presented with a cheque for $25,000 and the credentials to become the next big standup comedy star.

We assume that, since it’s a “cheque” and not a “check” that it’ll be made out in Canadian dollars and not U.S. We’re just a tad skeptical of the “next big standup star” claim, but hey, it’s a contest press release!

It’s a sign. We figure that two things are at play here: Yuks is making oodles of money these days (as are a good number of comedy clubs in North America, due to the resurgence of live standup comedy) and Yuks is feeling the heat of competition like never before. Either way, it’s a good thing.

Hop onto the above URL for details. The grand finale will take place over seven days, kicking off Feb. 6 at the Toronto Yuks.

AP reports that Michael Graham, who was canned from WMAL-AM in D.C. for calling Islam a “terrorist organization,” has landed on his feet at Boston’s WTKK, replacing Jay Severin. Graham knocked around on the comedy circuit for several years before entering the wild world of talk radio.

According to former Big Mover Tommy James, he and wife Michelle have created Devin Thomas James, a 6-lb. 3oz., 18-in. child. He made the big move on Nov. 12 at 12:06 AM, and, like so many who move to Los Angeles, he was early. In his case, 4 weeks early.

First, there was Sundance. A film festival that claimed to champion the smalltime, alternative filmmaker and eschew the big-studio, conglomerate way of making the cinema. Then, when Sundance got all bloated and corrupted and just as Hollywood as Hollywood, a bunch of wise guys started Slamdance, “across the street” from Sundance.

Enter Laugh Dance. From what we can tell, it’s the answer to the bloated, corrupt and Hollywood-as-Hollywood Aspen fest. Or, it’s a film and comedy contest. We’re not exactly sure. If it was a comedy festival, why wouldn’t it camp out across from Aspen?

I was wondering if you could post the information I have below for a comedy festival that will be held during Sundance. All the information is below. Also you have my permission to publish my name, letter and address.

Thank You,
Nate Bargatze
WWW.natebargatze.com

LAUGH DANCE COMEDY and FILM FESTIVAL

Seeking standup comedian for Laugh Dance Comedy and Film festival held in Park City, Utah, during the prestigious Sundance film festival. Artist will compete for cash prizes and Industry opportunities. Submission fee 35 dollars make check or money order payable to Laugh Dance. Include VHS or DVD of standup performance no longer than 10 minutes. Deadline is December 1st, 2005.

Send To:

Laugh Dance
C/O Dustin Chafin
30-62 Stienway street suite #184
Astoria, NY 11103-3802

We’re pretty sure they mean Steinway and not Stienway. There’s a website, where they explain, “At Laughdance Comedy & Film Festival we bring life healing laughter to the world by promoting comedy through quality film and stand-up. In turn, we demonstrate the unique value of comedy as a serious expression of art.” So far, two comedians are listed. One of them is from Salt Lake, the other is Dustin Chafin… hey, that name sounds familiar…

We just received an email from Scott Bennett. Below is but a small portion of it:

My name’s Scott Bennett and Kelly Moran was my best friend. First of all, I wanted to thank you guys for posting the info about Kelly’s memorial that we had for him at the Comedy Store. We had a really good turn out and everything went really well. I know Kelly loved it.

If you’d like to read the rest, click here.

Hollywood Reporter says:

Although the festival’s focus is on the consumer market, industry insiders from Los Angeles are expected to turn out because of the short distance and the good time and socializing opportunities to be had. Meanwhile, New York industry insiders have expressed less interest in traveling out West for a long weekend of work and fun.

The occasion for the story was word of the addition of George Carlin to the Founders segment of the Fest (the only portion really worth going out of one’s way to see, IOHO).

Fascinating that HR has picked up on the fact that New York industry types don’t want to make the trek to Vegas. Who doesn’t take any opportunity to go to Vegas (on an expense account)? What the hell is wrong with these people?

Perhaps it was all that talk about this being a “consumer-oriented” festival. What did they expect? The organizers did everything they could to scare away the industry by insisting that it was for regular folks. And, let’s be honest, hasn’t everyone in the industry (on both coasts) already seen George Lopez, Jon Steward, Jerry Seinfeld and Dennis Miller perform already? So, where’s the incentive for the NY suits to show up in the desert?

We just got back from three days at the Buffalo Comix Cafe. We were pleased to see that the USA Today clip (in which the Cafe was among the “Ten Great Places to Sit Down and Watch Standup”) was lovingly framed and prominently displayed on the wall of the customer chute that leads into the showroom. We were also tickled that Karen (the Female Half of the Comix Cafe staff) was sporting a T-shirt that read, “Rabid Comedy Fan,” a reference to our description of the Comix Cafe crowds!

We’ll be at SHECKYmagazine HQ for 48 hours or so before taking off for Atlanta and a week at the Punchline. We didn’t have ideal internet conditions in Buffalo and, rather than struggle against the technological tide, we saw it as an opportunity to take a break. That would explain the paucity of posts for 72 hours or so. We’re back now, posting here and there before hitting the road again. The Doubletree has WiFi, so we should be back to our old selves starting Wednesday or so.

Read the New York Post review (Free reg. req.) of the limited-run reality series Comedians of Comedy but find something else to do when it actually airs.

Unfortunately, their life on the road is not funny. The series is not very watchable. I mean, really, who cares?

If I wanted to watch people act out and complain, I’d stay home and watch my neighbors.

Ouch.

We’re disappointed by two things: First, the show, had it been centered around comedians who were slightly more upbeat and less narcissistic, would have been watchable, funny and interesting. Second, the Post’s Linda Stasi seemed to be of the opinion that “people who make jokes for a living are funny all the time” but was now of the opinion (after watching C of C and other TV projects) that comedians “are often depressed or sometimes… downright mean s.o.b.’s.” Great. She’s ping-ponging between two extreme (and untrue!) stereotypes, neither of which is very complimentary.

We here at SHECKYmagazine have been doggedly engaged in dispelling various negative stereotypes about comedians. We’re trying to bury the old myths and promote new impressions of the people who make a living causing laughter. Projects like Comedians of Comedy make our task unnecessarily difficult. And Stasi shows that some members of the media hold onto (and promote) the old impressions for far too long.

We saw the movie upon which this new series was based when it was screened in Montreal in July. We took a dim view:

The movie was, to use a favorite alternative comic phrase, “soul crushing.” It is ironic that a movie about comics could be so downbeat. Nearly everything that seemed to motivate Oswalt was negative– Comedy clubs suck; comedy club audiences suck; his target audience (18-24 year olds) don’t make any money; everything sucks, sucks, sucks. Four funny comics, to be sure. But the frame, the underlying themes, the entire raison d’etre of this celluloid exercise was to combat the mediocrity that Oswalt sees in every nook and cranny of the planet… except perhaps when he looks in the mirror. How utterly un-SHECKYlike. To quote our new favorite TV executive and spiritual guru, the Eeyore-esque Moses Znaimer: “Such talented people; such ho-hum ideas.” On the positive side, we applaud anyone who, like Oswalt, assesses his current situation, deems it unacceptable and then takes giant, innovative steps to change it and takes trusted and talented colleagues along for the ride. Very SHECKYlike.

Stasi says she, “…can’t imagine anyone will tune in for more than one show.” We’re hoping she’s right on this one. (Thanks to John Kensil for tipping us off to the NYP piece!)

Word has rippled throughout the world’s English-language media that Lewis Black will be used by The Weather Channel to… to… we’re not quite sure what.

They have said that Black will be in Atlanta to tape several segments, talking about airport security, global warming and other topics, which will be sprinkled throughout this weekend’s regular weather programming.

Actually, the plan is to have several celebs tape segments for Celebrity Weather. From all indications, CW looks to be what the suits like to call “interstitial programming,” which is fancy talk for short segments sprinkled throughout regular programming.

Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be less weather on The Weather Channel? Look for less weather in the future.

David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun gives terribly negative reviews of two of this evening’s PBS offerings– The Kennedy Center Presents: The 2005 Mark Twain Prize, honoring Steve Martin and Pioneers of Primetime, a documentary featuring Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Steve Allen, Bob Hope and Red Skelton.

While we will do all within our power to avoid any show that features Diane Keaton singing “The Way You Look Tonight,” (The Twain Prize presentation), we might expend the effort to tape the Pioneers documentary. Apparently, it emphasizes vaudeville and stresses its effect on early variety television shows. (Mr. Zurawik found this to be unforgiveable.)

“…and welcome to Inside The Actors’ Studio.”

Did we dream that? Did we actually hear that Dave Chapelle/Chappelle will be featured on the slowly disintegrating smugfest Inside The Actors Studio?

(From the description of Chappelle/Chapelle’s “Half Baked”: “A trio of bong-loving buddies hatch a pot-laced plan to spring the fourth member of their smokers’ circle out of the Big House.” This oughta be… unusual.)

No air date has been set.

We knew the show was proceeding downhill when they had Rosie O’Donnell as a guest, but this latest announcement seals their doom as a serious show. Don’t get us wrong, we love Dave. But his guesting on this show is, to put it charitably, incongruous.

Their description, not ours. Yet another festival enters the fray in January when Comedy Central will promote a festival in Miami with Fernando Arau, Mario Cantone, Dane Cook, Greg Giraldo, Kathy Griffin, D.L. Hughley, David Spade “and many more rising Latino and urban comedians.” (No rural comedians here, no suburban comedians, but a lot of urban comedians!)

NEW YORK, November 9, 2005 — COMEDY CENTRAL, the William Morris Agency, Fantasma Productions and Anheuser Busch have joined forces to launch THE BUD LIGHT SOUTH BEACH COMEDY FESTIVAL, it was announced today by Mitch Fried, SVP Promotion Marketing, COMEDY CENTRAL. The four day, multi-cultural festival will take place in South Beach, Florida from January 18 through 21, 2006. THE BUD LIGHT SOUTH BEACH COMEDY FESTIVAL is a partnership that links the preeminent name in comedy, the industry’s top talent agency, the number one promoter in Florida and the leading producer and distributor of adult beverages.

The two main sponsors are Bud Light and Taco Bell– two items that probably aren’t much in demand in trendy SoBe. (Perhaps this fest will help them make inroads. “Put down that Pellegrino, yo! I got a case of Bud Light!” “You’re right,” says the gorgeous Czech model to her Brazilian companion. “Bud Light goes much better with the… what do you call them… take-o’s?”)

Every time someone announces a new festival on U.S. soil, we wonder, “Do they think this will be the festival that supplants Montreal?” Will this be the American comedy festival that is a combination of consumer-friendly, industry-friendly and comic-friendly. We shall see. So far, though, it doesn’t appear to be this one.

AP reports that the results of a study showed that “Women May Enjoy Humor More, if It’s Funny,” at least that’s what the headline says. We’re not scientists, but we still like to think we can understand an AP summary of a scientific experiment.

While there is a lot of overlap between how men and women process humor, the differences can help account for the fact that men gravitate more to one-liners and slapstick while women tend to use humor more in narrative form and stories, Reiss said.

That we can buy.

AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid had the unenviable task of summarizing something that was written in the MEGO language of typical scientists, but we’re certain he captured the essence. We’re not so sure we agree with the conclusions reached by the researchers, however. Of course we’re not sure what it means!

“Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said Reiss. “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.”

Huh? The Female Half says that it makes women sound either cynical or stupid. Neither of which is very flattering.

“Beware a ‘Digital Munich’ ” is the title of an opinion piece by Norm Coleman, Republican senator from Minnesota, in the Wall Street Journal. We won’t even bother excerpting it. It doesn’t go far enough in delineating the horrors of a UN-controlled internet. Other writers have managed to paint a much more frightening scenario than Coleman.

Let’s just put it this way: The UN? In charge of the Internet? Are you insane?

The argument is made much more forcefully here.

At one point in his recent Newsweek/MSNBC.com interview, Bob Saget says, “Very few people hate me. Ten years ago more people disliked me.” When asked why he replies:

The video show. The jokes were really lame and dumb. I’d laugh at my own jokes. It was what it was. I was doing family comedy at seven o’clock at night. I couldn’t grab my nuts. What was I going to do? But now I do my standup. My 15 year old and 12 year old have never seen my R-rated standup. I don’t want them to see it until they’re older because to me it can be damaging. I think there’s a time and place for filth.

Amen to that– the filth part, that is.

We’re still disturbed by the header on the article, which describes Saget as “the goofy star of unfunny television shows in the 1990s.” How unaware can one be? These are adults writing these things. Amazing. Would the same author label The Flintstones as “unfunny?” Questions of relative unfunnyness should be directed at the endless parade of lifeless sitcoms that are aimed at adults. Bland family fare should be allowed to exist free from such examination. Why do we even bother talking about the relative funniness of such shows as Full House?! It’s for children! It doesn’t have to be all that funny to adults! We get it! The show sucked! What would you have us do about it? Insert a few passing references to oral sex here and there? Have the occasional walk-on from a scantily clad Eva Longoria?

Even Saget has hopped aboard the Trash Saget’s Old Shows bandwagon. He’s constantly forced to defend his old work. (At least he’s settled on “It was what it was.” A weak defense, but a true one.) We suspect he’s merely doing it because to argue any more strenuously would just get in the way of his new message, which is, “I do standup now… really filthy standup.”

As for AFV, well, sure the intros to the videos were inane, but it’s for families! Must everything appeal to urbane, streetsmart New Yorkers? (Personally, we here at SHECKYmagazine HQ still guffaw at AFV reruns… well, at least the Male Half does. And if The Planet’s Funniest Animals happens to pop up while channel surfing, PUT THE REMOTE DOWN and BACK AWAY! Who can watch a dog chase his tail and keep a straight face? Who?)

They try to throw in a comedian when they give out the Medals of Freedom.

Andy Griffith. The actor first achieved national acclaim in the 1950s for his standup comedy routines. He went on to star in television shows such as The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock and numerous Broadway productions and films.

Not a whole lot of folks know that Griffith was a comic early on. XM has been running some bits from his albums. A relaxed, storytelling style that is very bizarre and oddly effective. Very southern, almost to the point of being a sort of dialect comic. “The nation’s highest civil award” will be given out at the White House on Wednesday.

We got yet another email from a television producer, this time from Melissa Mayne, from Tiger Aspect Productions in London:

My name is Melissa and I work on a brand new show for the TLC Channel called “Ultimate Blunders.” The show features everyday blunders and mistakes. I read with interest your website whilst I was doing some research on the Internet and I thought you may be interested in talking to us.

We’re looking for people who’ve had a funny, embarrassing, or unusual blunders and true life funny stories at home at work or in public.

Maybe you’ve mistaken you’re friends mom for his sister and tried to kiss her? Fallen into the toilet in your new in-laws bathroom and got stuck there…..? Jumped out of the hotel room closet to surprise a complete stranger? Forgotten the rising tide and seen your dad’s car floating out to sea? Forgotten the name of your child at parents evening or gone out of the house with your skirt tucked in your knickers.

Maybe you’d like to nominate a friends outrageously embarrassing blunder, perhaps you’re a serial blunderer or you’ve committed the blunder to end all blunders.

Hit the website or call the Ultimate Blunders Hotline at (240)223-3450.

Strangely enough, we couldn’t recall making any blunders! Of course, one or two will eventually occur to us. We suspect that we’ve blundered here and there, but that our natural defense mechanism has enabled us to weather the initial embarassment and subsequently erase the incident from our memories. Perhaps that’s one of the characteristics that enables us to be comics– without it would we ever be able to mount the stage after that initial bomb? After all, is not dying in front of a roomful of people always named as the number one fear? (Talk about your blunders!) Comics have different criteria, maybe. Hmmm… We shall see.

Just got an email from Yoshi himself. It seems that David did follow up on that phone call he alluded to in the Herald article:

Yes, he called. And I got a little flustered. He is just like the character in the show. He just told me it is just an unfortunate coincidence. And I believe him. Since he told me he doesn’t have writers for him.

Happy ending! It seems it was all a misunderstanding.

Just got an email from Yoshi himself. It seems that David did follow up on that phone call he alluded to in the Herald article:

Yes, he called. And I got a little flustered. He is just like the character in the show. He just told me it is just an unfortunate coincidence. And I believe him. Since he told me he doesn’t have writers for him.

Happy ending! It seems it was all a misunderstanding.

FOS Rick Jenkins sent us a heads up about an article in the Boston Herald by Sean L. McCarthy which gives a thorough airing to L.A.-based comic Yoshi Obayashi‘s suspicions about his opening bit turning up on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Obayashi has been opening with a bit about his grandfather being a retired kamikaze pilot. A recent episode of Curb featured a friend, named Yoshi, whose grandfather was a kamikaze pilot. The gag in both cases is that he “was obviously not very good.”

We bring it to your attention, not because we’re interested in policing material theft (that’s a role best left to others), but because we were struck by the Herald going out of its way to air the complaint. A lot of us have seen our gags turn up on television– usually in a sitcom script, sometimes out of the mouth of a fellow comic– but we usually shrug and move on. In this case, the Herald went so far as to quiz David about the “coincidence.” A sign of Curb fatigue perhaps? A trend toward helping comics protect their intellectual property? As the Herald article says in the last sentence– stay tuned.

From FOS Sharilyn Johnson comes the following email, touting her regular radio show up north:

Tonight on Laugh Tracks, I speak to Al Rae about stolen material!

We try to convince John Q. Public that they’re going to hell for liking Robin Williams, Al reveals a deep dark secret within the first 3 minutes of the show, and I risk being deluged with emails from Dane Cook‘s fanbase.

All with the low production value you’ve come to expect from UMFM!

In Winnipeg, tune in to 101.5 FM. Anywhere else in the world, listen online at www.umfm.com . Wednesday night, 8:30 pm (central), repeating Friday and Sunday morning at 6:30 am.

The topic of stolen material is becoming all the rage these days. Mr. Rae is a fine standup comic as well as the artisitic director of Winnipeg’s Gas Station Theatre.

A recently updated entry on the Snopes.com website seeks to sort out the claim that “Comedian Chris Rock originated a quip about the best golfer in the world being black and the best rapper being white.” The status of the claim is “Undetermined”according to the usually rock solid and dependable website that is devoted to debunking myths and ferretting out truth.

Undetermined? That’s right. The site has found that the earliest known utterance of the quote is in an October 2000 newspaper profile of Charles Barkley. Hmmm… They go on to say that Rock wasn’t heard in public saying anything like that until 2005.

We find it hard to believe that Barkley could have come up with the observation. He was after all quoted as saying that he was misquoted in his autobiography. Let that sink in. His autobiography!

Comedy Central’s announcement yesterday will delight fans of the faux Mexican standup whose show now replaces that of Dave Chappelle/Chapelle. Carlos Mencia will be on the tube, on the CD, the DVD and on the live stage with a 30-city CC-branded standup tour.

Of course, not everyone is happy with the major goodies that Comedy Central has heaped on Mencia. Joe Rogan has for some time been telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s all for originality and all against joke thievery. He sounds mighty sincere. And in some blog entries on his website, he talks about his feelings re stealing material and about about how he was alerted to a bit of trash talking by Mencia during a recent radio interview. Seems that he poured a little fuel on the fire and actually mentioned Rogan by name. Big mistake. Makes for some interesting reading.

Cash Levy writes:

There will be Memorial for Kelly Moran next Weds Nov 9th 8:30 at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Could you let everyone know and tell them to spread the word?

Consider it spread.

Fluff with detail is how we describe those Parade profiles. This one is on Jamie Foxx who, he claims, went up on the comedy stage for the first time on a dare from a girlfriend.

Within a year and a half, he had left college, dropped his birth name and invented “Jamie Foxx” as his standup moniker. “The way I looked at the whole situation was, if I fail as Jamie Foxx, I’ll just change my name and come back as something else.”

The entire interview will go up on the Parade website on the 7th of November.

A short item in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer told of a book, co-written by Jay Leno and Tonight writer, called “How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole Wide World (or Just in Your Class).”

“I’m in a business where people throw money at you,” he said. “They’re in a business where people shoot at you. It’s just a way of saying thanks.”

Nice quote. Proceeds benefit Concerns of Police Survivors Inc., an organization that looks after the families of cops killed in the line of duty.

(Oh, and that “throwing money” quote? Let’s hope that the cretins among us don’t take that too literally. We envision quarters and half dollars flying toward the stage at a one-nighter or two in the near future.)

In “Pride Goeth Before a Sock Modeling Contract,” columnist Doug Hecox mulls killing two birds with one stone next month in Orlando, perhaps combining comedy with… sock modeling? It all makes sense if you read the whole thing—

Modeling and comedy don’t really go together. There was a belief in the 1970s and 1980s that a comedian can’t look better than the crowd. “No crowd will laugh at jokes told by someone who looks better than they do,” or so went the theory borne out by the absence of supermodels playing to packed rooms at Jimmy’s Chuckle Shack in Anytown, USA. Comedian Kim Coles is the only former model I know of who made the transition but, it must be said, she was a “plus-size” model and it’s always okay to laugh at a fat girl, even if she’s cute.

Does it seem like you send SHECKYmagazine.com an email and never get a reply? Please re-send any correspondence if you’ve sent something to us recently and haven’t gotten a reply. We’ve always prided ourselves on replying to any/all legitimate emails.

But, the wave of spam got really bad there for a while. And, while we’ve got Earthlink as our ISP and, while we like their service and we’ve been with them a long time, their Spam Blocker options are frustrating. Either: one is capable of blocking a ton of spam (but inadvertently blocking a half-ton of legitimate mail along with it!) or one must “unblock” individual senders via an arcane system which requires us to manually flag those individuals as desirables– only after asking them to send an email along requesting to be unblocked. For this, we simply don’t have the time. So…

We’re going to start over, unblock all domains, selectively weed out the bad ones and hope that anyone who has sent along a note to us in the past few months (and hasn’t heard back from us) will re-send that note. We promise that it’ll get through Earthlink’s ham-handed Spam Blocker this time and we promise a reply.