Where to begin? From a recent Wired article:

Karaoke is soooooo 1990s. For those who’d rather make people laugh at their punch lines than cringe at their high notes, the new wave in participatory entertainment is Joke-e-oke.

First of all, this is appalling. Secondly, we must correct the author– “For those who’d rather make people laugh at their punch lines…??! We don’t think it’s a technicality to point out that these punchlines they speak of are not those of the Joke-E-Oke-er, they are the property of the writer, the original comic!

The premise behind Joke-e-oke is that, at some level, everyone wants to be a comedian. It’s a form of entertainment software that allows people, momentarily, to realize this ambition while emulating the classic comedy routines of their favorite comedians.

Did he say emulating? I believe he did. We like to call it “stealing” or “ripping off.”

The idea for Joke-e-oke is simple. It’s basically karaoke with stand-up comedy material. Many dream of the chance to be a comedian with killer material in front of a laughing crowd. With Joke-e-oke, people are able to live out their comedy fantasy of being their favorite comedian onstage, choosing from a list of stand-up comedy icons to perform. A built in laugh track is added, timed perfectly to accent punch lines.

Pathetic.

If that doesn’t angry up the blood, try this:

“I was impressed that a lot of the cool art hipsters at the Rx, people who wouldn’t dare go to normal comedy clubs, got up and did a comic’s act,” said local comedian Mike Spiegelman, who did a mean version of a classic Jerry Seinfeld routine about airline food. “It was fun to see people interpret the material and get caught up in the joking. They got laughs by delivering the jokes, mimicking the comic, or by looking lost and screwing up. A lot were charmed by it.”

Who are the bigger assholes here? The faux peformers or the douchebags (excuse me, the “cool hipsters”) who cooked up this abomination in the first place? Throughout the entire article, no mention is made of royalties, rights or that kind of tiny technicality. The article does mention, in passing that the creeps who cooked up this whole mess, Angry Waiter 4am, “has not yet made a business out of selling the program but is looking into licensing it for distribution.” Stay tuned. This can only get worse. (Thanks to Ken Marx for the tip!)

(Editors note: We commented on this wretched phenomenon way back on Dec. 7 of 2004. In that posting, we said that we would call the venue and complain, but we never followed up. We apologize!)

We’d like to thank Kelley Coe and Carol Farnum, our hosts while we were on the base here in Twenty-Nine Palms (Or is it 29 Palms? Or Twentynine Palms?) and we’d also like to thank Marlene Breegle (she’s officially called a “Military Event Coordinator”) of H.O.T. Military Comedy Tour.

This was a tremendous experience and we certainly enjoyed our extended hang time with Joe Lowers and Shane Keith.

But the best part? We were thrilled to be able to hang, if only briefly, and meet and greet the men and women of the Marines in the lobbby of the theater after the show. (The Gratitude Equation was way out of whack– Marines thanking us for entertaining them?!? I don’t think so! We’re comics, you’re Marines!)

From the Everett (WA) Daily Herald review of Woody Allen‘s latest movie:

Allen’s joke-writing recalls a different era– the era of Shecky Greene and Allan King and Johnny Carson. It doesn’t really work anymore, and there are few actors who can work in that mode.

Doesn’t “the era of Shecky Greene and Allan King and Johnny Carson” span about 40 years or so? And, since Carson and King have only died within the last 14 months or so (and, since King was gigging right up until the last and was just as creative and relevant until then), might it not be argued that the era is not one that has passed? Eras can run coincidentally. We’re still in the era of Shecky Greene. Put it this way: If Woody Allen were to book himself into Steve Wynn’s new casino as a standup comic headliner, would anyone speak of him as from a bygone era? We think not.

Just kidding, of course.

This item appears in Variety:

Consumers have spent more than $82 million on DVDs featuring the standup comedy show featuring comedians Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall and Ron White.

Did they say $82 million?! Yes, they did. Standup comedy, in case you haven’t heard, is back. Fully recovered from the bust of ’93. It’s official. And we do not fear that proclaiming the patient’s recovery will jinx the whole affair.

And the Comedy Central roast of Jeff Foxworthy gathered a whopping crowd and his special on the WB doubld that time slot’s usual numbers.

Sorry for not blogging much over the past few days– we’ve been busy travelling and designing a website or two and doing other non-comedy things. We are currently in Twentynine Palms, CA, home of a whopping Marine base. Tonight we (pictured above, outside the cinema on the base, are, clockwise from upper left, Traci Skene, Joe Lowers, Shane Keith and Brian McKim) will perform on that very base for a crowd that is hoped will number more than one thousand.

This afternoon, we were treated to a tour of the base by our gracious hosts and we’re relaxing a bit before tonight’s 7 PM call. The front page of the local paper (The Observation Post) teased the article on the front page of the Sports & Leisure section about Colin Quinn, Robert Kelly and Steve Byrne playing ten days in Iraq recently as part of the Bringing Up the Rear tour. Quinn, it says, has done four tours so far.

“A lot of people say to me, ‘Oh, my God, you’re going to Iraq? Be careful!’ Be careful? I’m surrounded by Marines; I’m safer than they are, back in the states!”

Last night, we were drinking in the Cactus Bar, a little watering hole on Adobe, a coupla miles from the entrance to the Marine base, and the bartender, Bill, proved to be quite a standup fan. (He was especially adept at yelling “Git ‘er done!” and mimicking Ron White saying “Drunk… in… pub-lick”)

We’re in the desert, but it’s rather chilly. And the recent rains have not only caused Death Valley to bloom, but the roadside between here and Vegas is covered with wildflowers as well.

We’re scheduled to depart out of Vegas late Thursday night for a redeye flight, but we’re going to try to blog in some detail between now and then.

From an AP story on Friday night’s Vermont victory over Syracuse in the NCAA playoffs:

WORCESTER, Mass. – He is the Shecky Green of the Green Mountains, a Catskills comedian temping as the Catamounts coach who already has taken Vermont farther in the NCAA tournament than it ever had gone before.

And now, Tom Brennan is one step away from the round of 16 and an even bigger audience for the off-beat, off-kilter, occasionally just awful anecdotes and one-liners that have made him one of the biggest stars in a state that normally shuns them.

We like to keep track of all the references to Greene in the media and the culture. Often people will ask us if the magazine is about Shecky Greene. We say, yes, and no. It is named after Greene only in that his name (his first name, really) has become a generic term, synonymous with one who likes to crack wise. And, in addition to pointing up yet another Shecky reference, this particular item has the additional benefit of tweaking our own Tommy James, whose beloved Orangemen fell victim to Greene, er… Brennan’s Vermont squad.

Note to AP: You spelled Shecky Greene’s last name wrong.

Just watched an episode of National Body Challenge, on the Discovery Channel, this one focusing on Jodie Wasserman, an NYC comedian who battled to drop 40 lbs. before her “big showcase.” (She failed miserably, admitting just before the last commercial break that she had been binge-eating the entire time she was supposed to have been dieting.)

Supposedly a slice of “reality television,” the show presented a rather skewed view of standup comedy. We suppose it’s because of the constraints of television, and the desires of the producers, and the presence of cameras. (Why else would someone– a guy in the business, mind you– be heard asking Wasserman, “So, how’s the standup coming along?” That’s the kind of question your doctor asks you… or your great aunt. Of course, we don’t blame the guy– it was the cameras making someone self-conscious, we figure.) And, why are comics who are featured in reality shows always so… somber? They come off as utterly humorless. What gives there? (OR, they come off as an over-the-top hybrid of Robin Williams, Rip Taylor and a Jack Russell Terrier.) Wasserman may be quite the scream onstage and/or off, but in this episode of NBC, she was… sullen? Morose, perhaps? And the onstage portion of the episode was shot and edited in such a way as to suck the funny right out of the whole affair. Curious, to say the least.

We can wait to see if the world of comedy gets hideously warped on the Extreme Makeover featuring Steve Mittleman next Thursday. (VCR alert, to the max!)

AP reports, at 9:15 EST, the following:

A painter working at David Letterman’s Montana ranch was charged Thursday with plotting to kidnap the talk-show host’s toddler son and nanny and hold them for $5 million ransom.

More to come.

The horror!

We’re watching ABC’s Jake In Progress, (which, by the way, is very good!) and the crawl from the local ABC affiliate comes on and says, “Plot to kidnap Letterman’s son”!

What is going on here? Has not David Letterman had enough freakish fallout from fame? We haven’t found any updates yet, we’ll search the WWW.

Steve Mittleman has gone under the knife on an episode of Extreme Makeover, to air next Thursday, March 24. Check your newspaper for local channel and showtime. (Do people still check their newspaper for that stuff?)

Those of you who are familiar with Mittleman’s… “expressive”… face will undoubtedly be popping corn next Thursday night.

A reader writes:

Just saw “The Aristocrats” at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. Exceptionally hilarious. (Believe it or not: funniest version of the joke? Billy the Mime. Wearing a wireless mic.)

Paul Provenza did a Q&A and mentioned that the film will be getting released, unrated and uncut, in theatres in July (Thanks to ThinkFilm), with DVD to follow. The editor said that there’s over 100 hours of footage to draw from, so the DVD will be loaded with extras, including more footage of Bob Saget, who went about an hour before hitting the punchline. He’s out to destroy Danny Tanner in the public’s mind and it’s a wonder to behold.

An hour? We’re Saget fans, but that’s gotta be excruciating.

Columbia Pictures has bought the film rights to playwright Seth Greenland’s debut novel The Bones for director David Mamet and producer John Calley, reports Variety.

Greenland will adapt his darkly comic book, which tells the story of Frank Bones, a talented but self-destructive standup comic who reconnects with an old friend who’s become the hottest comedy writer on television.

We received the cover art for Bones, with a nice note from the author, promising to send along the real thing. So far, the ol’ box is empty.

We had hopes (not high hopes, just hopes) that the book wouldn’t beat any cliches into the ground– we’re still affected by Punchline (the worst movie about standup comedy ever… and possibly the worst movie ever)– so we’re still waiting for Hollywood to undo the damage done by that flick. If the press release describes the main standup comic character as “talented but self-destructive,” we might have to wait still longer.

As we reported here yesterday, Judge Rodney Melville has clarified the gag order on Jay Leno. Leno will be permitted to joke about Michael Jackson, just not about any aspects of the trial that might be related to the matters that Leno might actually testify about… we think. Anyway, the Los Angeles Times’ Steve Chawkins filed a story on the hearing which mostly repeats that which was contained in the earlier AP story. (Ah, but the AP story didn’t wrap things up with a quote from SHECKYmagazine.com editor Brian McKim!)

“Heaven forbid that for a few weeks Mr. Leno will not be able to make cruel jokes at Mr. Jackson’s expense,” a defense motion stated. […]

That view was shared even by a comic or two.

Brian McKim, a New Jersey-based stand-up comedian who runs sheckymagazine.com, a trade website, said Jackson’s right to a fair trial trumped Leno’s right to poke fun at it.

“If people are going to pick a fight about freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment, they should pick a better fight than this,” McKim said.

“When it’s all said and done, all we’re talking about here is some jokes.”

It looks like Leno won’t be able to recruit the like of Drew Carey, Carrot Top and Roseanne as surrogate joke tellers. From a publicity standpoint, perhaps it would have been better to not challenge the gag order. NBC was getting plenty of press, complete with clips, of the surrogate stunt. Read the rest here.

At a hearing today, Judge Rodney Melville clarified his gag order as it applies to Tonight host Jay Leno:

Responding to a request by Leno’s attorney, Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville clarified that the gag order would not prevent the comic from making jokes about Jackson in his monologues.

Leno, who may be called to testify about a phone call with Jackson’s accuser, has been having other celebrities tell Jackson jokes on his show since being subpoenaed. Media attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. argued for the clarification on grounds Leno’s First Amendment rights were violated.

The judge said the gag order barred Leno from talking about the specific areas on which he may testify, but it wouldn’t prevent him or anyone else covered by the gag order from commenting generally about Jackson.

He said he would not even try to make Leno stop telling jokes that assume Jackson is guilty.

“I am not attempting to prevent anybody from making a living in the normal way that they make their living,” he said.

The judge also joked: “I’d like him to tell good jokes … but I guess I can’t control that.”

Can I get an ouch?!

Read the rest here.

Paul F. Tompkins has landed on a television show. We aren’t paying any attention to any reviews, as we want to decide for ourselves whether or not it’s enjoyable. (A lesson learned from watching the best sketch show on television, Mad TV, get 1/1000th the praise of its pallid, unfunny older brother, SNL.) It debuts Sunday evening on Fox. Check your local listings!

Grammer has put together a decent cast of comics. Paul F. Tompkins will be familiar to those who watch VH1’s Best Week Ever, and he recently has had a recurring role on that show as Michael Jackson’s attorney. He also has appeared on Mr. Show With Dave and Bob and as a correspondent on Real Time With Bill Maher.

Read the rest.

The site has been neglected over the past four days. SHECKYmagazine went on vacation. Pictured above is one of our hosts with a lorakeet on her finger, shortly before the colorful bird nipped her hand, spilling a sizeable amount of blood over everything. (This is at the aviary at Gatorland.)

We almost didn’t make it to Orlando. The lunkheads at USAir goofed up our reservation (claiming that we were the ones who goofed) and almost didn’t let us take our trip without substantial penalties. You know what they say at USAir: “The customer won’t stop bothering us!” (Just in case any of you should have a problem with USAir– and if you plan on flying USAir, it is probable that you’ll have problems– do what we did and call the Consumer Affairs number! (866)523-5333 is the number… don’t tell them we told you… the number seems to be a well-guarded secret. Besides, we hafta fly on them one more time before they go out of business– which should be any minute, based on the treatment we received last Sunday night/Monday morning!)

On the flight home, though, we got back into blogging mode, clipping an item from the local paper down there: Comedy Warehouse, the “comedy club” inside Disney’s Pleasure Island (it’s actually improvisational comedy), was described in today’s Orlando Sun-Sentinel as offering a “Shrek-type of clean comedy, seemingly pure with a touch of ‘Did he just say what I think he said?’ ” In other words, it’s clean and bland for the kids, but one of the troupe throws in the occasional sexual impotence or anal sex reference so the adults aren’t bored. Kind of like every Disney animated movie since Alladin– good, clean Disney fun with Robin Williams throwing in semi-obscure dick jokes.

We’ll be quoted in an upcoming Los Angeles Times article! There’s a hearing today (Friday) on whether Jay Leno must adhere to Judge Rodney Mellvile’s gag order in the Michael Jackson molestation case. We chatted for a bit with a Times reporter who will be in attendance. Not sure when it’ll run. Hope someone out there can snag a hard copy!

We are very envious. In what is being billed as “The Greatest String of One Nighters in the World!,” three comics, John Wessling, Tommy Drake and Chuck Savage, are embarking on HELLGIG AMERICA. (“It’s not a contest…it’s a CONQUEST!”) Near as we can tell (their damn Flash featurette is still loading…) Wessling’s had it in his head to do this for five years, and the trio will finally realize his twisted dream starting April 9 in Beaumont, TX, and ending May 27 in Honolulu. We are envious.

Although both of us here at SHECKYmagazine HQ have been members of the 50-State Club for some time now, we took the 20-year approach– our plan was equally ambitious, yet far less efficient. Doing it in 50 days will be thrilling to say the least. We hope they can muster the press they deserve– we envision camera crews from local TV news operations in each market, maybe rose petals strewn in their paths as they cross each state line. We will endeavor to bring you details on their progress, maybe a pic or two. We’re trying to get them to upload a press release with details (Remember words? Set in type? Damn that Macromedia!), so we can all follow along. For now we can offer the following information:

1. Fri 4-8, Beaumont TX
2. Sat 4-9, Baton Rouge LA
3. Sun 4-10, Biloxi MS
4. Mon 4-11, Pensacola FL
5. Tue 4-12, Birmingham AL
6. Wed 4-13, Atlanta GA
7. Thu 4-14, Greenville SC
8. Fri 4-15, Knoxville TN
9. Sat 4-16, Raleigh-Durham NC
10. Sun 4-17, Richmond VA
11. Mon 4-18, Baltimore MD
12. Tue 4-19, Wilmington DE
13. Wed 4-20, Atlantic City NJ
14. Thu 4-21, Hartford CT
15. Fri 4-22, Providence RI
16. Sat 4-23, Boston MA
17. Sun 4-24, Portland ME
18. Mon 4-25, Portsmouth NH
19. Tue 4-26, Brattleboro VT
20. Wed 4-27, Buffalo NY
21. Thu 4-28, Erie PA
22. Fri 4-29, Detroit MI
23. Sat 4-30, Columbus OH
24. Sun 5-1, Charleston WV
25. Mon 5-2, Louisville KY
26. Tue 5-3, Indianapolis IN
27. Wed 5-4, Chicago IL
28. Thu 5-5, Madison WI
29. Fri 5-6, Minneapolis MN
30. Sat 5-7, Fargo ND
31. Sun 5-8, Sioux Falls SD
32. Mon 5-9, Sioux City IA
33. Tue 5-10, Omaha NE
34. Wed 5-11, St. Joseph MO
35. Thu 5-12, Overland Park KS
36. Fri 5-13, Ft. Smith AR
37. Sat 5-14, Oklahoma City OK
38. Sun 5-15, Albuquerque NM
39. Mon 5-16, Colorado Springs CO
40. Tue 5-17, Casper WY
41. Wed 5-18, Bozeman MT
42. Thu 5-19, Pocotello/Rexburg ID
43. Fri 5-20, Salt Lake City UT
44. Sat 5-21, Las Vegas NV
45. Sun 5-22, Kingman/Lake Havasu AZ
46. Mon 5-23, LA to Bakersfield CA
47. Tue 5-24, Portland OR
48. Wed 5-25, Seattle WA
49. Thu 5-26, Anchorage AK
50. Fri 5-27, Honolulu HI

We gave up on the Flash thingie. Maybe we’ll call Wessling this afternoon. Stay tuned. All you broadband people might hop onto their website to check out that bulky Flash file. Inquiries can be directed to Mr. Wessling at hellgigamerica@yahoo.com.

According to an AP story Jay Leno, who has been subpoenaed in the Michael Jackson molestation case, might be barred from doing jokes about Jackson due to Judge Rodney Melville’s gag order forbidding anyone involved with the case from speaking about it outside the courtroom. Of course, this has driven normally sane and reasonable people to say all sorts of ridiculous things. Like law professors who say that “The court, in order to avoid a Constitutional showdown, would try to draft a very carefully worded gag order that would allow him to make fair comment on the public aspects of the case.” Huh? Or, Jay Leno, might just want to shut his yap for a couple months in order to save the court and the people involved in the case a lot of trouble, time, expense and heartache. Are a few dozen monologue jokes about Michael Jackson really worth going to the mat over? If you’re going to wake up the First Amendment in the middle of the night and dance it around the room, shouldn’t it be for something that’s kind of… oh, let’s see… important?!?

And then there’s David Brenner chipping in with a whole different kind of dumb. He takes the opportunity to engage in his two favorite pasttimes– Making himself seem important and dissing other comedians:

Comedian David Brenner decries what he sees as creeping censorship for entertainers but thinks Leno might want to restrain himself on the subject.

“Making jokes about Michael Jackson is like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun. It’s so easy … Pick on something that makes you reach a little bit,” said Brenner, who was a frequent Tonight guest host in the late Johnny Carson’s day.

“Creeping censorship?” Is he serious? Has he never heard of a gag order? What planet is he living on? (And, more importantly, why doesn’t that planet’s cable system carry Court TV?)

And, while we normally don’t like to say un-nice things about other standup comics, in Brenner’s case, we make an exception. This is a familiar pattern of behavior for him. You’ll recall, in the buildup to his HBO special a few years ago, he boasted incessantly how it was going to be all off the cuff, ripped from the headlines. He ended up doing 25-year-old Uncle Momo jokes instead. (Don’t get us wrong– we don’t mind 25-year-old Uncle Momo jokes at all. We just took offense that his talk show spiel leading up to the special did little but berate and belittle other comics for their lack of spontaneity and their lack of risk-taking.)

His invocation of the C-word (Censorship) is insulting to folks in other parts of the world who live with that ugly monster on an hourly basis. (Not to mention totally baseless.) People who toss around the term with such carelessness make it hard for other folks to clearly identify genuine censorship when it actually does occur.

Fortunate indeed are the citizens of Toledo and surrounding area, for Mike Kelly of the Toledo Blade writes about standup comedy on a regular basis for his newspaper. Who is this Mr. Kellly, and why does he burn to write about standup comedy so? Is it his editors’ idea? No matter. The fruit of his phoner with Drew Hastings appears today. Hastings is in the Glass City as part of a revue featuring comics who regularly drop in on Bob & Tom.

“I get people making comments like, ‘Oh, Drew, your stuff is so smart, the people in Indiana and Ohio probably don’t really get you.’

“And I just want to say, ‘Boy, it’s you who don’t get it.’ I wrote this stuff in the Midwest, I honed it in front of midwestern audiences, and they’re who I do it for.”

Read the entire interview.

Bob Newhart has snagged a recurring role on the ABC series Desperate Housewives. Newhart will play Morty, the estranged boyfriend of Susan Mayer’s mom, Sophie, played by guest star Lesley Ann Warren.

In the episode, Teri Hatcher’s single mom Susan will attempt to get Sophie and Morty back together to keep her mother from moving in with her and her daughter.

We’ve never seen it. From the promos, it looks like an amalgam of Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure, set in Lower 48 suburbia. Newhart should fit right in… oddly enough.

SHECKYmagazine.com readers might recall that, way back on AUG 27, we posted on this very site an account of an incident that occurred while were in transit between gigs on a southwest U.S. swing. SHECKYmagazine editor Traci Skene slipped on a banana peel in a truckstop in Arizona. So moved by the serendipitous nature of the incident was Skene that she devoted an entire column to the incident, earning her, if not legendary status, at least a very high ranking on Google when one enters “slipped on a banana peel.”

Whaddya know– six months exactly from the day she slipped on her first peel, Skene found herself skidding again, this time in the parking lot of the Maryland House in… Maryland. So astounded were we that we consulted with friends and found a statistics expert. We wanted to know what the odds were that Skene would slip twice, exactly six months apart, on a banana peel. What follows is his expert opinion through an intermediary:

Given that your friend slipped twice on banana
peels, my first question is, “Does she own monkeys?”

I suspect that banana peel slippage statistics are
pretty hard to come by. You might just check out
emergency room records.

I believe the government actually keeps as part of
its health statistics, “slip, trip, and stumble”
statistics, but I don’t think they break it out by
specific fruit or vegetable.

At the risk of sounding sexist, I remember the old
joke (circa: 1970):

A (blonde, dumb guy, whoever) is walking down the
street, sees a banana peel a hundred yards ahead,
and sighs, “Here we go again.”

The fact that your friend slipped TWICE and was
wondering about the probabilities also reminds me
of another lame old joke about the guy who was getting on an airplane carrying a bomb. When challenged, he said, “It’s just a matter of probabilities. I read that there’s one chance in a million that there would be a bomb on any particular plane. Knowing the rules of probability I knew that the probability of TWO bombs being on a plane was infinitesmal. So every time I travel, I make sure I carry a bomb.”

Bottom line, I don’t know the odds of slipping
twice on a banana peel.

Sorry for the lame jokes.

Ned Freed
Author, Professor of Statistics
University of Portland (Oregon)

Tommy James sends along the following, from Ananova.com:

Prisoners get comedy lessons

A prison is offering criminals comedy courses.

Winchester Jail has hired comics to run the courses for 400 offenders reports The Sun.

The scheme is being funded with £3,500 public cash and by comedy bar chain Jongleurs.

One source said that, “This teaches inmates communication powers of empathy and humility.” We say that it puts that tiny seed of doubt in the mind of every comedy club patron from here on that “this bloke up the stage probably learned to do comedy while he was locked up for who knows what kind of crime.” Thanks, Jongleurs! And thank you, Winchester Jail!

Of course, this will never even get anywhere near a vote:

WASHINGTON (Reuters)– Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said on Tuesday he would push for applying broadcast decency standards to cable television and subscription satellite TV and radio.

“Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area,” the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local television and radio affiliates. “I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air” broadcasters.

“There has to be some standard of decency,” he said. But he also cautioned that “No one wants censorship.”

We’re not familiar with Stevens. But we’ve always been of the opinion that cable and other pay broadcast services should, by their very nature, be unfettered. And, trust us, they’ll remain so. No word on whether Stevens wants to restrict satellite transmissions.

If this ridiculous notion had any chance of becoming some sort of law, we’d be worried. As it is, we’re calm. (Exactly what does Ted Stevens think this is going to do for his career? The folks back in Alaska are going to be very peeved.) Here’s what would happen if Stevens waved a magic wand and made HBO and XM and Sirius subject to FCC regs: Everything would go backwards– and slide back to a time before Eisenhower. And no one in this hemisphere would stand still for that. Hell, the FCC wouldn’t even want that hornet’s nest!

What does any of this have to do with standup comedy? You’re here and you ask that question?

Rest assured, it ain’t happening. Go back to your homes. Nothing to see here.

If only Halle Berry had standup comedy to fall back on. This quote is from Jamie Foxx, backstage after winning his best actor Oscar:

Best-actor winner Jamie Foxx has his own solution for maintaining quality control in his future career, especially after Sidney Poitier urged him to take “responsibility for your art.” Foxx said backstage that, “I can cheat. I’m a standup comedian. So that means that, if we do not have the movie that we think is going to be a responsible movie, I will go on the road. And I will see you in somewhere in Poughkeepsie, Detroit, whatever.”

We supppose this means that Foxx won’t be popping up in the equivalent of Catwoman.

Among the many time-saving ideas instituted last night by Gil Cates was, it seems, a horrific compression of the tribute to Johnny Carson. Normally those montages are exceptionally well-done, mixing slow-mo, black and white,color, stills, sound clips, silent clips, on a music bed, etc. The end result is usually enough to bring watchers to tears. Not so with the Carson tribute. It was way too short, the clips were rushed, it wasn’t very artfully assembled. A damn shame, considering all that Carson meant to the Academy and all he meant to television viewers over the past 40 years.

The entire broadcast seemed rushed. The time-saving measures, designed to bring the show to an end at a decent hour, oddly had the overall effect of making the whole affair seem… emptier than in the past! How ever did they manage that?

It’s the latest Observational Humor column from Adam Gropman! Live free or diet, says Gropman:

I don’t hate everything about the Atkins Diet. I just need some balance. I enjoy snacking on a large bag of pork rinds, a wheel of gouda and a summer sausage. I just need to have my garlic bagel, stir fried rice and stack of pancakes mixed in there somewhere. I believe it’s important to draw equally from all the unhealthy food groups.

Eat… er, read the entire column!

Special material written by:

Chris Rock
Lance Crouther (You’ll remember him as one of the members of the Mary Wong Trio comedy troupe out of Boston)
Nick DiPaolo
Richard Jeni
Mario Joyner
Carol Leifer
Aoi LeRoi
Jon Mccks
Chuck Martin
Bill Scheft
Frnk Sebastiano
Chuck Sklar
Jrff Stilson
Richrad Vos

We missed the first segment or two, but Rock was neither an edgy adjunct to the procedure nor was he much of a presence during the broadcast. And all the nitwits who fretted (or who said that anyone else might be fretting) over whether Rock might say anything profane during the broadcast were dithering fools who were had by the Academy and by the publicists for ABC. Each and every one of the pre-Oscar articles which focused on Rock demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of how comics operate and just how precise they are when it comes to language, context and decorum. Rock would have no sooner said anything “off-color” during tonight’s broadcast than any other host. His training as a standup comic and his savvy as a major electronic media celebrity means that he knew exactly where those line were and he knew exactly how to sneak up on them and no go over them.

If anything, Rock erred on the side of safety. If we were to bet on his eventual fate, we’d bet that he’ll not be back again next year… or in any other year. The Academy got a ton of ink out of the hiring. Rock’s performance will not be one of those that is talked about for years. A win for the Academy. No major gaffes. Nothing to write home about, either.

We were quoted in an article in the Long Beach Telegram (which we were led to believe would appear in the Los Angeles Daily News… anyone out there have access to a LADN news box?) as saying:

Similarly, McKim doesn’t expect Rock to tread the razor’s — and censors’ — edge and suspects that the spark-generating comments in Entertainment Weekly were probably a publicity-generating plot hatched by Rock and the academy.

What kind of jokes would McKim steer Rock toward if he had the comedian’s ear?

“I’d say, ‘Go and hire yourself the best writers you can and write Oscars-specific material, particularly pertaining to the films that were nominated or the films that were in the news in 2004,'” says McKim. “And I believe that’s what he has done. He’s smart in that regard. You don’t get as far as he’s gotten as fast as he has without busting your hump.”

We also said that Rock didn’t get as far as he did as quickly as he did by being stupid. On the contrary, Rock knows exactly what’s at stake.

And, while we have never really been enamored of David Bianculli’s analysis of television (being familiar with his writing because he wrote for a Philadelphia daily for years before ascending to the Daily News in New York), we must applaud him for nailing the rest of the Chicken Little press for the hysterical coverage of the impending Rock inferno:

Since it was announced that Chris Rock would host the Oscars for the first time tonight at 8:30 on ABC, there has been a lot of concern the comedian will lace his jokes with the types of obscenities he uses in his standup act – and thus give the network’s delayed-broadcast bleeper a workout, and the FCC plenty to fuss about afterward.

That’s bleeping ridiculous.

Rock is not an idiot. He knows the difference between playing for a few million paying customers on HBO and appearing on a commercial broadcast network for one of the year’s largest national and global TV audiences. He’s eminently capable of self-censoring the dirty words you can’t say on television. He has attitude, not Tourette’s syndrome.

Actually, Rock is so far from an idiot that the people worried about his profanities should be more concerned about his profundities. If Rock is likely to outrage, it won’t be because he pushes the envelope. It’ll be because he pulls no punches.

Hmmm… sounds vaguely familiar. Who’s your finest comedy analysts? SHECKYmagazine.com, that’s who.

Note, in one of the smaller signs below, the 1st Taste restaurant. (“Meet me at the 1st Taste. It’s in the Cum Park.” That is one date that’s over before it starts!) Would you want your kid’s little league team to be sponsored by Cum Park Plaza? Sorta makes Chico’s Bail Bonds seem tame by comparison. And, on the other side of the parking lot is the Cum Park Laundry, right next to Dubey’s Pet World. Welcome to the zany world of Burlington, NC!

In a piece entitled “The William F-ing Buckley of stand-up,” John Swansburg, writing for Slate, says:

“I can play the Apollo, and I could play the Senate,” Rock bragged to Charlie Rose last year. “In the same day. And have great shows at both.”

Sure, we’ve pointed out to anyone with ears that Rock’s more right of center than everyone thinks. (Even getting quoted saying as much in a couple of articles on Rock in major dailies.) But no one will believe it (or hear it!) until it’s in Slate! To bolster his point, Swansburg cites a chunk of a Rock screed from an old HBO special:

“If a kid calls his grandma ‘mama’ and his mama ‘Pam,’ he’s going to jail,” Rock explains. To all the women who leave their kids at home so they can pop some bubbly at the club, Rock has this advice: “Go take care of those kids before they rob me in 10 years.

Interesting article.

We’ll be watching the Oscarcast… or at least time-shifting it. We expect that Rock will acquit himself nicely. He didn’t get this far this fast by playing it safely… nor did he get this far without being very shrewd. We still don’t think his hosting performance will come close to that of David Letterman’s.

From a Christian Science Monitor article:

KHOST, AFGHANISTAN– Mubariz Bidar would give Robin Williams a run for his money. He’s an Afghan comic who has this city– once ruled by severe Taliban– howling at their former oppressors.

Shortly before 9/11, days before, probably on the first or second of September, we put up an item about how the Taliban were bulldozing discos in Afghanistan on our Like We Care page. (The title, as we recall, was something like, “Hey, Mr. Taliban, Tally me bananas…”) After the attacks, we took it down immediately, lest anyone think that it was SHECKYmagazine that provoked the wrath of the al Quaeda. (Not really, but we still took it down.)

Even when in power, the Taliban were the butt of jokes – behind closed doors– that targeted everything from their spot checks for shaved armpits (a rule in Islam) to the radio call-in show where people dedicated songs by mullahs (minus the music, of course). Like others, Afghans have used humor to channel dissent, avoid aggression, and let people separate themselves from the ruling group, experts say.

From youth using humor to cope with– and eventually bring down– Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, to comedian Jay Leno’s post 9/11 monologues of Osama bin Laden jokes, comedy is gaining legitimacy as a post-conflict healer.

Fascinating story, worth the whole ten minutes or so it might take to go and read it. And it certainly puts things in perspective.

But after the Soviet invasion of 1979, actors slipped out of the country and comedy declined. During the factional fighting in the early 1990s, mujahideen literally blew the roof off the once-stately theater that used to show Molière and Chekhov adaptations. And when the Taliban arrived in 1996, comedy came to a standstill.

Now, with more than $8 billion worth of reconstruction aid estimated to flow into the country during the next 3 years, comedy is finding its footing once again.

Funny… comedy came to a standstill here in America at roughly the same time. Of course, it was for radically different reasons.

Tommy James hipped us to an an item in the Aspen Times saying that resort owners in the mountaintop Denver town are a little miffed that HBO descends, Baby Huey-like, upon the berg for their annual wingding, filling the hotels, buying plenty of pricey bottles of wine and ringing up giant meal tabs on studio accounts, but they don’t do any skiing.

“As it is now, they displace people who want to come to ski,” Perry said. “We want to talk to HBO and see if we can convince them to do that. I don’t know how successful we’ll be.”

This year, the Feb. 9-13 festival overlapped with Mardi Gras – a popular travel time for guests from South America and Latin America, he said. It will bump up against Mardi Gras again next year if the festival takes place at the start of March, Perry noted.

Tommy says that, since the Fest is scheduled to coincide with pilot season, the powers that be are loath to change the date. James opines that they’d sooner change it to another resort. (We brought to your attention last week an item that said the folks at HBO are contemplating a second Fest, in Las Vegas, in November, maybe. Hmmm… could it be that the whole idea of a change got garbled and that HBO doesn’t plan a second fest at all– just a change of venue to… drumroll, please…LAS VEGAS, BABY!

Ooooh! Would that be spectacular, or what? Makes perfect sense, really. They could have asked us and we would have told them to do it.

While we’re not a huge fan of TV critic Matt Roush’s prose, the tribute that TV Guide ran in their Feb. 13-19 issue was spectacular just for the illustrations. Johnny (and his wives) graced the cover of the tiny weekly many times over the years and the Phillippe Halsman portrait of him on the front cover from 1966 is practically suitable for framing. One sad thing, perhaps the saddest thing we’ve heard out of all the sentiments we’ve heard since his death was in the sidebar to the tribute, “Don Rickles Remembers Johnny.”

After he retired, you didn’t see him around much. The sad part is I just moved near him and from my house, you can look over to his tennis court. I planned to put him on and say, “Do you want to come over and see a big mansion?” I never got that chance.

Is there anything sadder than a comic who had a gag all prepared for the next time he might see his friend… and he never gets to deliver it?

While gigging in Richmond a coupla weeks ago, we picked up the complimentary Richmond Guide, stacks of which grace all the area hotel rooms. In an article entitled “Tales of a Concierge” by Joan Tupponce, Marriott Hotel concierge Rudy White holds forth on the many odd requests he gets from guests. And, there on the third page of the article, in a pull quote is this:

When comedian/actor Jerry Lewis was in town, White had to find a full-size refrigerator for his room.

We refuse to even speculate as to why Mr. Lewis needs a full-size fridge.

Never too late for a delayed blow of one’s own horn: SHECKYmagazine.com Editor Brian McKim appears on the Op-Ed page of the brand new Washington Examiner. The piece, a breezy, wiseacre screed all about how politicians should stay away from cracking jokes and how standup comics shouldn’t take themselves too seriously, ran Tuesday. The Examiner is a new daily, launched a couple weeks ago by billionaire Phil Anschutz. Anschutz is in the news a lot these days as he bankrolled the recently-released “Because of Winn Dixie” and he also put the jack up for “Ray.” He also owns a professional sports franchise or two as well as a chain of movie theaters. The plan is for the Examiner to go up against the stuffy old Washington Post and the Times with a free, ad-supported tab. (It’s a trend, don’t you know.) Stay tuned.

Courtesy of Tommy James:

WB is moving forward with a new project called Mobile Home Disasters with host Bill Engvall, per Variety. Think Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for mobile homes. Billed as a show with blue collar sensibilities, the design team and host arrive at a mobile home in need of fixing up, and in keeping with the homeowner’s ideas of what is cool and what would make their home the best place on earth, the design team sets upon making those ideas come true.

They should have called it “Git ‘er Done!”

We don’t normally herald a personal appearance (except maybe our own!), but a mini-profile of Bob Saget in the Broward New Times, to promote his appearance at the Lauderdale Improv through Sunday, caught our attention.

Those of us with a clue already know that Saget’s standup act is a bit of a shocker to the goody two-shoes crowd — almost as staggering as his cameo in the 1998 stoner film Half Baked, which put to bed the myth of his nicey-nice image in just one sentence: quot;I used to suck dick for coke.”

If you’ve never seen Saget live, he’s fun to watch. The male half of the staff here recalls that, back in 1982, when he found out that the Comedy Works open mikers were allowed to catch the weekend shows for free (standing up in the balcony), the first headliner he was priveleged to see was Saget. Watched all four shows that weekend. Was chanelling Saget for two weeks after that. Saget lived for a time in the Philly area and graduated from Temple University, so his appearances at the Works were an event… even back then.

Although he wasn’t a comedian, Mark Drucker was familiar to many of the comedians who lived in or passed through Philadelphia at the peak of that city’s comedy scene. For much of the 80s, Drucker read the news on DeBella’s Morning Zoo show. DeBella hosted Friday nights at the Comedy Factory Outlet and many of the comedians appearing there guested on the show, usually on Thursday or Friday morning. Drucker died Wednesday after a battle with cancer.

In the mid-’90s, he co-hosted and produced comedian David Brenner’s syndicated radio talk show. They became friends and later played golf together.

He also filled in for Dick Cavett on a syndicated talk program.

Drucker graduated from City University of New York in 1978, and was immediately hired by Howard Stern. The future “shock jock” was then program director of a soft-rock station in Westchester County. He later worked for WLIR-FM on Long Island, N.Y., and after arriving in Philadelphia, at WDRE and WWDB before going on DeBella’s show.

Read the entire article here.

We got an email in which a readers asks: “Can an amateur ‘sell out’?” We always thought that the concept of selling out was an artificial construct. Something contrived by folks who can’t sell out but dearly wish to. But it’s far, far less than that. Anyway, our emailer was in a contest… let’s let him tell it:

This weekend I participated in the first round of the All Comedy Radio
Comedy Competition in Kansas City held at a local cocktail lounge. I had my set all planned out. It was the perfect balance of dick and fart jokes that do well at our local comedy club. Five minutes before the competition was to start, we were informed that there was some guy’s 50th birthday party going on in the lounge. There would be kids and grandparents in the crowd and the owners of the club wanted us to keep it clean. Spotless. Dickless. The contestants all got together to discuss our strategy and we decided to do the jokes we planned.

The batting order was handed out and I was to be the first on stage. As ‘Roger’ the 80 year-old magician (hired by the birthday boy) finished his act, I panicked. In my head I quicky erased questionable jokes from my set list. I went on a fumbled through a weak, 5-minute PG-13ish set.

The rest of the comics did the jokes they planned. F-Bombs, dicks, you name it. As I watched my friend go through his NC-17 set, a overheard a lady complaining to the owners, “How much longer will this go on?”

After the show, the audience applauded for who they thought should progress to the next round. I made through. But, did I ‘sell out’? Should I have done my jokes as planned?

Congratulations! You achieved what you set out to achieve. Sure, you did it by accident, but you did it. As for this notion of “selling out,” this is ridiculous. I am not sure that the phrase or the concept has any real meaning. We suspect that the only reason you are having any qualms about your choice is that you have been branded as some sort of weasel by your colleagues for making the choice you made. This, of course, would make them weasels and not you. Think back– were they up there on the stage with you? Were they committed to going through the crowd during your filthy set for the purpose of minimizing any disharmony caused by your dick jokes? I didn’t think so. It was you up there and you had to consider yourself first.

Sell out? We’ll ask you this: Did you get into standup to make people laugh or to make money? Before you answer this, be advised that you don’t have to make the choice. And know that making money at making people laugh doesn’t make you less of a comic. And know also that doing comedy for free doesn’t make you more of a comic.

We can argue whether or not the owner or the contest organizers were thoughtless or unprofessional in planning a contest so poorly that it coincided with a 50th birthday party, but that isn’t the issue here. Someone made a not-too-unreasonable request that you all clean it up and you did it.

The contestants all had four choices: Clean it up, Keep it dirty, Back out, Surrender their autonomy and do whatever it is that the mob decides is best for them. You did Number 1. They all did Number 4. (At least, that’s what it sounds like from the email. If that wasn’t the case, please– no angry emails. Trust us, though, we’ve seen that kind of pack mentality take over in other, similar situations.)

Keep this in mind: You were in a contest. Contests are notoriously unpredictable. Anyone who enters a contest expecting logic, order and justice is a fool. Yet we enter them anyway. We also buy lottery tickets, play the occasional hand of blackjack or go for the girl who is “way out of our league.” Sometimes, things actually go your way.

You inadvertently found that you have a talent for switching gears. You sized up the situation, assessed the possible impact of any of four or five choices and you cleaned it up and advanced to the next round. Seems to me that you exhibited good judgement in a situation that, in abstract terms, may not be all that different from any one of a number of situations that you might encounter in the not-too-distant future, should you decide to do comedy for money (and, in so doing, choose to make that money, in part or in total, by doing one-nighters, private parties, corporate gigs, colleges or cruises).

We were told that the semi-finals would be at a later time and our material could be more adult oriented. Some of my best jokes have an adult theme. But, do I stick with ‘clean’ and appeal to everyone knowing the material may be average? How do I go for the win? Surely, you’ve been in this situation.

Congratulations, Grasshopper– You have asked the unanswerable question. We believe it’s what the ZB’s call a “koan!”

Seriously, though, logic is handy here: Do what you do best. Unless, of course. there are restrictions (reasonable or unreasonable). Only appeal to everyone if “everyone” is determining your fate at the moment (Are they judging by applause?) If not, is the local DJ determining the winner? If it’s the DJ, find out if he digs dirty stuff. If he’s the DJ at the local Christian rock station, use caution. See how this works? The more knowledge you have, the more informed decision you can make. One thing you really shouldn’t do is base your decision solely on a consensus arrived at by the other contestants. You can certainly solicit their opinions, but give them the proper weight.

Is any of this making sense? We hope so. We’ve been in a few contests. We’ve also turned down many. We’ve been pretty consistent with our stand on entering contests. Until now, though, we haven’t talked much about what to do in the heat of one. Quite often, because of the high pressure of the situation, folks make bad decisions or decisions based on emotion. It’s best to remain calm, empathize with everyone who has an effect on the outcome and take it from there.

Anyone else?

In our Nickelodeon Funniest Mom posting, we left out the URL for Regina Smith‘s website. How unlike us. Regina, you will recall, hosted the whole affair.

SHECKYmagazine.com editor BRIAN MCKIM (left) takes self-portrait alongside comic extraordinaire DAN WILSON at Wisecrackers in Allentown, PA, Saturday evening. Note: That is not a ceremonial Aztec headdress on Wilson’s head, merely an optical illusion caused by the capture of some of the Ramada’s 70s vintage decor in the photo.

Wilson reminded us that McKim was responsible for him getting his very first official road gig (back in 1984 or 1985, at Going Bananas in Philly).

After careful analysis of Wilson’s act this past weekend, we concluded that he is one of the original alternative comics! Hard to categorize, always surprising, always wickedly funny! The Midget Wrestler bit, Rudy Vallee singing hip-hop, the whole spectacle is riotous.

We had a blast this past weekend– in spite of the fact that one of us (the male half) lost most of his voice and had to resort to cheap whiskey to anesthetize the vocal chords long enough to croak his way through the two Saturday night sets, resulting in a Tim Wilson-meet-Slingblade delivery.

Pauly Shore has finally convinced someone (in this case, the folks at TBS) to buy his idea for a reality series. Hollywood Reporter says that TBS has ordered 10 episodes of Minding The Store.

In “Store,” club owner Mitzi Shore allows her 37-year-old son to take control of the Comedy Store. As Shore gets to grips with running a family business his mother can’t quite let go of, he also must deal with her disapproval of his dating habits– long a subject of tabloid fodder. All the while, Shore tries to regain his footing as an actor– even prodding his agent to get him dramatic roles.

TIVO alert! We’ll keep you posted. Sure hope they resist the urge to make the comics who get on camera look like jackasses. Hmmm…