The Detroit Free Press ran a story about how, for $15,000, you can sponsor your favorite celebrity on the Las Vegas Walk of Stars. Choose from a list of 100 future honorees, or one of your personal favorites. We note that there are a number of comedians among the 100.

Milton Berle
Red Buttons
George Carlin
Johnny Carson
Bill Cosby
Rodney Dangerfield
Redd Foxx
Shecky Greene
Buddy Hackett
Bob Hope
Alan King
Rich Little
Rowan & Martin
Bob Newhart
Don Rickles
Joan Rivers
Penn & Teller

So, for $255,000, we could sponsor all the above. Plus, we’d kick in another $2,500 for a few cans of Brasso. And constantly advertise in the Review-Journal for an obsessed fan of each star to volunteer to keep each star polished and chewing gum free. Read the rest here.

According to their webiste, “CBC Radio is looking for the funniest 3 minutes of radio in Canada, with the winner receiving a development deal to create a comedy special.” The promotion is called Stand and Deliver:

It’s pretty simple – we’re after 180 seconds of hilarious radio. You know you’re funny (or you like to think you are) and you’ve always hoped for a place to show off your comedic talent. Well, here’s the chance you’ve been waiting for.

All you need to do is send in some comedy that can be played on radio (3 min. max). Submissions can be any form of comedy that makes for funny radio: stand-up, sketch, song, poetry, parody, interview, commentary, mini-program, impersonation. Please, no pantomime!

No topic is off limits and any style of comedy will be considered. The only restriction Stand and Deliver has is that the humour be suitable for public broadcast. Hey, this isn’t HBO.

Deadline for submission is FEB. 13. Hop onto the website for the rest of the rules. Note to American comics: It’s clear they’re seeking Canadian comics only.

We were slogging our way through West Montreal, having booted the turn to get on the Pont Champlain (We always get lost when we try to leave Montreal!), when the announcer on the all-news Montreal radio station started one of those paragraphs with the long dependent clause– “Johnny Carson, the man who defined late-night television…”– and we just knew before she even got to the second comma how the sentence was going to end.

We were all stressed out because of the weather. We were monitoring the storm via CNN, because the Canadian version of the weather channel just didn’t provide enough detail about “the states.” But CNN was mainly interested in scaring people and sensationalizing the precip– focusing mainly on the Boston area and giving little useful info about travel. But all the stress took a backseat to the sorrow upon hearing of Carson’s death.

One fine day in 1990, we found four tickets to The Tonight Show in our Burbank mailbox. Because of demand, one had to order Tonight tix months in advance. Traci had ordered them and forgotten all about it. We called up the Saccone’s and made plans to attend the taping. We sat in the back row and saw Dianne Schurr, Lance Burton and Bill Cosby.

On the night that Johnny quit, nearly two years later, I was in a fevered haze in the bedroom (a victim of a flu bug of some sort) as Traci watched and actually wept. It was the end of a television era, but it was also the end of a comedy era. It is safe to say that any sane comic aspired to appear on the show. And we all assumed that he’d be there when we were ready– after all, he had been there since before we were born (or, for some of us, since we were little).

At the same time he was making the decision to leave the desk, the business of funny was going through profound changes, changes from which it is only now, more than a decade later, recovering. So, as the dream of getting the “okay” sign from Johnny was evaporating, the reality of making a living as a comedian was, for many, becoming a slippery proposition. Double bummer!

More than a decade later, there still isn’t a single, powerful show that can jump start a comedy career like Johnny’s Tonight could. Comics come up, collect credits, work hard, build followings, accrue power. But there isn’t a stand-alone, high-profile one-shot TV appearance that imparts the same concentrated prestige that one got from standing in front of those garish curtains in that studio at Olive and Alameda.

Johnny wasn’t just the host of a television show. He was an icon, a symbol. His approval meant a lot– to us and to America. We’ve been grieving for a dozen years. Johnny will be missed again.

The pre-Oscar announcements interview with this year’s Oscarcast host Chris Rock is being carried in newspapers around the globe. (We caught in the Montreal Gazette.) It matters not that he’s kidding when he says the following:

“I am rooting for Jamie (Foxx), and if he doesn’t win, I’m going to talk about it on the show,” Mr. Rock promised, a sly grin tiptoeing across his face.

If Mr. Foxx comes up empty?

“I’ll take an Oscar from one of the sound or light people that win and give it to him,” Mr. Rock said. “Jamie Foxx is not going to walk out of that place without an Oscar.”

It’s still an embarassment. And the Academy can’t be too happy about talk like this. Neither can anyone who wins a technical Oscar. (One of those poor “sound and light people” whose statue Rock would so cavalierly commandeer for his pal.) Of course the folks at MPAAS don’t care if Rock cheapens the proceedings with his own version of jury nullification– they are all a-tingle that Rock might say a naughty word or two. How desperate are they for ratings?

Of course, we can’t be sure that Foxx will win an Oscar based on his showing at the Golden Globes. The Globes’ results as an indicator of Oscar success has diminshed in recent years. But we are certain that, if Foxx loses and Rock stays true to his word and says something stupid, the actual winner of the Oscar will be one of the more unfortunate figures in Academy history. Second only, perhaps, to Marisa Tomei. (You’ll recall that Ms. Tomei was the victim of a whispering campaign, perpetuated by pimply-faced conspiracy geeks, that her Oscar win was a “mistake.”)

From the liner notes of “King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents The Steve Miller Band” (King Biscuit Flower Hour Records 79301880001-2):

…We were all under control of our road manager Lester Pouncey, an ex-Marine Sergeant and Vietnam vet from Brooklyn who collected the money, kept the band moving and was our MC for the shows. Lester counted every penny and none of the promoters ever questioned him, they could see it wouldn’t be worth it.

Every day started with Lester pounding on your hotel room door yelling, “Steven, get up and get moving now!” It never did any good to argue with Lester, he’d have you up and laughing and moving before you were even awake. We’d head to the lobby, pile in a rental car, drive to the airport, board a plane and fly to the next city, get another rental car and check into a Holiday Inn and then head over to the venue, usually a Paramount or Fox theater, and do the sound check and start it up all over again. Many years later I met George Burns and told him I’d played every vaudeville theater he had played and we spent the evening discussing the merits of each theater.

The tour depicted took place mainly in 1973. No year (or set of circumstances) is specified for the somewhat incongrouous meeting between Burns and Miller.

One half of us here (the male half) had a fondness for Miller, having seen one of the shows on his Joker tour (with the James Cotton Blues Band and Boz Scaggs opening). So this story has a special resonance.

Our first night at the Comedy Nest is history. It’s the fourth Nest location we’ve performed at over the years. This one is in the old Forum (now called “The Pepsi Forum”), where the Canadiens usta play. It’s on the third floor. It’s a bizarre thing to be walking around a place where so much sports history took place. (In the middle of this cavernous retail and entertainment complex, they’ve recreated center ice, using terazzo, and they’ve sprinkled some of the actual Forum seats around the perimeter. Tres cool!)

The club itself is pretty. We’ll see how it feels under weekend show conditions tonight.

We did a phoner with Montreal Gazette columnist Bill Brownstein the day before we took off for Montreal. (A coupla weeks ago, we hooked up a Clapper to the lamp on the nighstand. As we conducted our interview, the speaker phone on that same nightstand made the lamp strobe. Very distracting, but somewhat comical!)

The article appeared Thursday on the front page of the Arts section. Nice. We bought a couple hard copies at the Provigo on Ste. Catherine; we’ll have the entire text up in our press section next week. For now, you can read the first 25 words or so online (or the whole thing, if you register!)

Comedians Brian McKim and Traci Skene agree there’s nothing like taking a shot at your spouse’s expense to get a crowd going. They do it all the time.

You can read the rest here.

Colin Mochrie, in a Toledo Blade profile:

“I think standup is a thousand times harder than improv,” he says in a telephone interview from his home in Toronto. “With standup, you have to come up with your own material, you do it in front of an audience, and the audience knows you’ve written it, and that you think it’s funny, so there’s sort of a judgment thing there.

“When you’re doing improv, the audience is such a major part of the show, they know that you’re making it up as you go, they know you’re working on their suggestions, so you have a little more leeway.”

Mochrie (Whose Line is it Anyway?), who says he wouldn’t do standup if you paid him, contradicts the Blade’s Mike Kelly’s theory, which he lays out in his lede. Kelly says “many standup comedians wouldn’t be caught dead doing improv on stage.” Furthermore, says Kelly:

It’s just not that easy coming up with funny material on the spur of the moment, based on little more than a suggestion hollered out by somebody sitting out there in the darkness who may or may not be in full command of his faculties.

Of course, each side does a bit of each– Standup comics often improvise after “suggestions” from “somebody sitting out there in the darkness.” They’re called hecklers, or, more charitably, over-enthusiastic crowd members. Sometimes they “make suggestions” with malice and/or alcohol, and just as often not. In any event, we improvise frequently. (And some of us even seek it out by “working the crowd.”) Now, if we could only get the improv folks to admit that not everything is off the cuff.

A Canadian women has lodged a complaint alleging that Bill Cosby groped her about a year ago.

A female acquaintance of comedian Bill Cosby has made an allegation against him that has prompted a police investigation in Pennsylvania, the entertainer’s attorney said Thursday.

It’s all very foggy right now. Cosby’s attorney says, “it amounts to, at the most, ‘inappropriate touching.’ ” Stay tuned.

Journo Yummies to Paul A. Leone, writing in the New Times of Broward (Palm Beach), on the occasion of Cory Kahaney‘s appearance at the New York Comedy Club in Boca:

Since its heyday in the ’80s, standup comedy has gone through more ups and downs than Anna Nicole Smith on a pogo stick. But with the recent success of the reality show Last Comic Standing and Comedy Central’s latest hit Shorties Watching Shorties, it seems the standup stage is in the midst of a renaissance.

Nice visual, no?!

Although we agree with Mr. Leone that there is indeed a renaissance occurring, we maintain that it’s happening in spite of Shorties. That particular show is reprehensible. We keep it in mind whenever we hear Doug Herzog hold forth on the subject of comedy. Read the rest here.

The Concord Monitor has a nice article about former Bostonite Rob Steen, an enterprising comic who is helping to restore the greater Boston metro area to it’s pre-bust glory days– when it was estimated that Beantown comics had 200+ one-nighters to choose from within 90 minutes of their homes– he’s started a handful of gigs in the Granite State.

Steen includes himself in that category. He made Boston his home until about five years ago.

“It was so expensive down there,” he said.

Once he got here and saw all the 20- and 30-somethings, he figured it would be a good place to set up shop. He was right. His North Shore Comedy shows play all over the state, including three times a year at the Capitol Center.

Read the rest here.

We’ll be at the Comedy Nest this weekend. We’re heading out into the single-digit temps to travel to Montreal. Our first time working in Montreal since May of 1999 (mere weeks before our first visit to the Just For Laughs fest in July of 1999).

If you’re a SHECKYmagazine reader and you live in Montreal (or you’re in town), stop on by the Nest and say hey. We did an interview with Mr. Brownstein of the Gazette, which, he assures us, will appear in Thursday’s paper.

Stand by for pics.

Comedy Central President Doug Herzog says that “The process (of creating a comedy series) is broken at the networks a little bit.” He also hinted that he might bring back Tough Crowd.

Herzog — who’s responsible for such Comedy Central hits as South Park and The Daily Show — also said that the cable network’s late-night series Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn isn’t necessarily off the air permanently, admitting that it was pulled for poor ratings and high production costs.

“It’s resting,” he quipped. “We’re contemplating bringing it back. There’s a lot of value in what Colin built.””

Herzog and all the others are in Hollywood (Pasadena?) at the annual… What is it they do in January? Is it the television critics that gather out there this time of year? Anyway, the network heads puff out their chests, say ludicrous things using the cutest Network TV Speak and then throw it open to a Q & A. Such was the setting for Herzog’s latest bombshell. Read the rest.

Excuse me, did he say, “high production costs?”… Is that real caviar? I can’t believe how small my hotel room is! Hey, is that Phil Rosenthal? Are you going to the Fox party? We actually have a rental car this year. (This was not real overheard conversation… it is merely a re-enactment of a conversation which may have taken place at the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour.)

If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. In the newest “Keep It Tight” from Traci Skene, she uses the calendar to look forward… and look back.

To make matters worse, New Year’s Eve in 2004 fell on the following Friday. Ideally, comics prefer a Tuesday or Wednesday New Year’s Eve. This way you make semi-big bucks mid-week, but can still do a regular comedy show on the following weekend. By having a Friday night New Year’s Eve, we lost a lucrative weekday gig plus we couldn’t do a show on Saturday night because it was New Year’s Day. Which meant a guaranteed slow week for any comic who wasn’t either working at a resort or performing at one of the many “Chinese Who Want Nothing To Do With The Gregorian Calendar” shows. And no, I’ve never pretended to be Asian. But I did marry a man who’s last name is McKim which, when spelled “MC Kim” sort of makes him sound like a Korean rapper.

Hop on by clicking here.

Ted Pincus, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times (“Certifiable comedians cleaning up with humor”), talks to Adam Christing, founder of Clean Comedians, Inc. (of L.A.), then finishes big with quotes from Chicago-based Tim Clue. Paragraph two:

The impetus has been corporate America’s recent trend to let its hair down, and replace deadly serious, stuffy sales seminars and employee conferences with events that mix business with levity. To do that, of course, and remain politically correct and harassment-suit-proof requires a guaranteed clean comedian.

Not much new here for anyone who is familiar with corporate gigs and how they work, but worth a click. (The initial paragraph did make the hair stand up on the neck, however–“…he’s leading a crusade to clean up the nation’s comedy act…”– We thought for a millisecond that Mr. Christing was actually going to try to get comedians to clean up!)

Comics appear on the radio frequently. Some of them even migrate into a permanent position behind the mike. David Hinckley, writing in the New York Daily News quotes Michael Harrison, editor of the trade magazine Talkers and former morning host at WNEW-FM, on the subject of Air America’s Al Franken:

“He’s not a great comedian, not a great politician, not – at least at this point – a great radio host,” says Harrison. “But he’s good at all of them and, collectively, they add up to something compelling.

“I can’t define exactly what it is. But people pay attention to him. And he has been great for talk radio. There isn’t another new host in years who’s gotten so much attention for this field.”

Read the rest.

In anticipation of the upcoming inauguration, political humor gets a thorough going-over by Mike Thomas in today’s Chicago Sun-Times.

Sticking it to the Man is still the name of the game. And these days, it seems, the Man is getting stuck more than ever before. After a brief and much needed break to relax and regroup, the archers are back in fine form, firing flaming arrows over the castle wall. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss.

We had a phone chat with Thomas back a few weeks ago and we’re quoted among such other authorities as Harry Shearer, Stephen Colbert and Mort Sahl. Also in the same same link is an article on Christian comic Brad Stine.

Mike Weatherford, in a Las Vegas Review-Journal review of a recent Leno performance at the Mirage:

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.

Weatherford makes a good point. There’s nothing wrong with doing a “greatest hits” chunk, as long as one doesn’t ignore the 800-lb. gorilla in the room.

Editors note: When we first posted this, we mis-identified the Paul in the story as Reiser, instead of Provenza. We know the difference, we just mixed up our Pauls. Our spies on the west coast assure us the film is not a mockumentary. We will render a further judgement if/when we get copy on DVD. Yes, that is a hint.

The Wall Street Journal has entered the fray. We’ve been hearing buzz about a short film, created by Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza, that purports to tell and re-tell a joke that has allegedly been making the rounds of comedians for years. We here have been in the business for a combined 40+ years, but we’ve never heard it. Which doesn’t mean it hasn’t been out there, but we’re skeptical. (That, and we’re naturally skeptical of anything Jillette has any involvement in– he makes a living fooling people, after all.) With all this in mind (and while currently downloading the animated version via our sluggish dial-up connection), we give you this excerpt from the WSJ article:

One of the most unusual movies at this month’s Sundance Film Festival seems like it should be a sure thing: It features some of Hollywood’s most beloved comedians, from Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Phyllis Diller to Jon Stewart and Chris Rock. Its filmmakers include Penn Jillette, half of the magician-comedian team of Penn & Teller. It is already getting buzz, thanks to a short clip starring characters from South Park that’s going around the Internet. Still, the movie has yet to find a distributor.

The problem, maintains the WSJ (and everyone who has written about the joke lately), is that the joke is “so extremely off-color it is rarely told in public.” Say what? This is yet another thing that stinks about this whole affair. Can anyone recall a joke that is so “off-color” that it’s rarely told in public?! (And, has either Jillette or Reiser or Goldberg or the others been visited by the Secret Service? Just kidding.)

Another problem, says the WSJ, “It’s a documentary that consists of nothing but the telling, retelling and discussion of the same joke.” Problem? We’re of the opinion that documentaries, if done right, can be compelling about the most mundane of subjects. We are documentary freaks. We would say that two of the most enjoyable rentals we’ve watched over the past year or so have been “Theremin,” a docu on the inventor of the obscure instrument that bears his name, and “Capturing the Friedmans,” a docu on a family torn apart by accusations of child molestation. Being a documentary, no matter what the subject matter, is not, in and of itself, a “problem.”

One other thing: The documentary is described further as “a deconstruction of the joke, as well as a meditation on stand-up comedy and censorship.” Censorship? Where? Who, in this country, believes that there exists a joke that is too dirty to tell in public? Redd Foxx is smiling down on us from above. The mention of censorship is another red flag that signals “hoax.” Add to all this the fact that there’s been no advance screening of the film which, says the WSJ, is “rare” for Sundance. Hmmmm…

We are betting that it’s a “mockumentary.” (Which we have no trouble with.) But it is probably mocking the conventions of documentaries, as opposed to making any real points about censorship in America. At least it is hoped.

This just in: It finally downloaded. It’s… Let’s put it this way: It’s Otto & George with no punchlines, no craft, no art. You know how hard it is for Otto & George to get booked in this country. (Our face still hurts from his closing set at the Victory Theater at the Chicago Fest a coupla years back!) When was the last time Doug Stanhope was prevented from performing anywhere in the U.S.? (How many Americans under the age of 45 are even passingly familiar with the phrase “banned in Boston?”) We’ll wait and see if this is a hoax.

The wires are crackling with the news that Robin Williams will do the halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl… with a 7-second delay. How far into his set before he simulates the applause meter with his arm? How far into his set before he adopts the Southern fundamentalist preacher persona? How far into his set before he does the gay coreographer? How far into his set before he says, “(My/Your/His) pants are so tight you can tell what religion (I/you/he) (am/are/is)? That about takes care of the first 30 seconds of his act…)

As Eagles fans, it will afford us the opportunity to go out and buy a cheesesteak.

Janet Jackson’s tit is looking better and better.

Has Sasha Baron Cohen ever done standup? No matter. His HBO show is one of the few laugh-out-loud shows on television. And, in a Reuters item, (“‘Ali G’ Comedian Risks Riot at U.S. Rodeo,”) we get a preview of what will undoubtedly be one of the funniest episodes of Da Ali G Show ever:

After telling the crowd he supported America’s war on terrorism, he said, “I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards… And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.” He then sang a garbled version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

There has been speculation that Cohen’s Ali G act might have reached its limit– No more people left who can’t identify Cohen and his fake persona means he can’t fool anyone anymore– but, with a new character, he has managed to fool the organizers of a rodeo in Roanoke! Apparently, he can go on fooling people indefinitely.

We perused the program while waiting for the show at the State Theatre back in November (the show that featured Shelley Berman, Mort Sahl, et al) and noticed an upcoming show called “The Nobodies of Comedy.” We eventually learned that it’s a show that is regularly pitched to theaters and subscription programs (like Easton’s State Theatre program) all over the country featuring professional standup comics, usually five, who are competent, experienced but not exactly household names.

Today’s Rutland (Vermont) Herald has a story about one Nobodies combination featuring Andy Campbell, Jon Fisch, Alex House, Jamie Lissow and Eric Lyden. Apparently, comedy sells well among the subscribers and regular attendees in such small- and medium-town theatre programs.

Comedy and music — those are the two crowd favorites in surveys and in ticket sales, Ron Naples, the Paramount’s executive director, said.

So with the help of a group of local organizations, a comedy festival is being organized for the end of June that will almost literally be a three-ring circus of entertainment.

The culmination will be at the Paramount on June 24 and 25.

Fancy that. Tiny Rutland is having a comedy festival. This year’s fest will feature, among others, Pasquale Caputo, alias Pat Cooper.

January 25-26 is the date of the next Carnival Comedy Challenge, this time in Houston. A half-dozen or so similar contests were held last year, with the winner of each city’s competition getting what is essentially a paid audition on a Carnival Cruise. Dozens of comics have ponied up a few bucks for the chance to win. In the case of Houston, $15 is the fee. (It varies according to city… mysterious!)

Let’s hear it for Bruce Bruce for embracing standup. In an interview with the Tennessean:

Because he’s single… his home really is on the road, where he works 280 nights a year.

“My life is definitely going to TV and film, but I’ll forever be a standup comic. It’s something I love. I enjoy making people laugh. It’s my thing. It’s my life. Everything you like to do is good, and I love comedy.”

Despite the fact that Bruce’s schedule is rapidly filling up with TV and movies roles, he’s leaving L.A. for gobs of time for personal appearances. And at comedy clubs– the occasion for this particular interview was an impending appearance at Zanie’s in Nashville. He’s touting an upcoming film release in which he appears with Burt Reynolds and D.L. Hughley. Could it be the long awaited sequel to “Cop and a Half?” We can only hope!

The Last Comic Standing juggernaut rolls on. A Quad City Times story based on a phoner with Gary Gulman, in anticipation of his pending appearance at Bettendorf’s Penguins comedy club, contains the following:

“Every place I’m playing this year wouldn’t return my phone calls last year at this time,” Gulman said from West Palm Beach, Fla. “It’s given me a 180 in my career.”

Gulman and two other Last Comic Standing comics, Jay London and Alonzo Bodden, have toured together in the “I’m Still Standing Tour” from August through the end of this month.

According to the story, London opens, does 20 or 25, then Bodden and Gulman alternate closing. Despite the show’s truncation, these three have been on a six-month tour of the nation. TV killed comedy? These boys ain’t buying it.

Gulman says that fans are showing up at the shows bearing sugar cookies (a reference to his cookie bit) and that he’s been careful, until recently, not to do any of the jokes he did on LCS. Ridiculous, really, since half those in attendance probably didn’t see the bits in the first place, a quarter saw them and don’t remember and the remaining 25 per cent are there specifically to see him do the bits they saw on the tube! (They aren’t showing up with cookies by accident, Gary.)

Paul Krassner, writing in the LA Weekly, tells of Chris Warren, who had a visit from the S.S. after joking about violence against a “protectee.” Turns out they were hipped to the joke via an irate letter from a doctor in attendance at one of Warren’s shows.

“…So I was surprised with the visit by the Secret Service. I was asked to tell them the joke, and they both laughed! However, I was then told that if I was to tell the joke again, I would be subject to arrest, charged with a federal crime, that of threatening a ‘protectee’ of the Secret Service, then put on a terrorist watch list.”

Read the rest here. We’re not so much disturbed by the Secret Service leaning on Warren as much as we are by some crank writing a letter to a local paper because the comedian rubbed her the wrong way. The letter concluded with “Maybe Warren should look at his material and figure out that there are certain subject matters that are never funny no matter how you tell the joke.” Uh… wrong.

Was it Woody Allen who theorized that “tragedy plus time equals funny.” We’ve amended it around here to be “Tragedy plus punchline equals funny,” taking time out of the equation. Skene will never joke about a protectee– she just isn’t keen on telling anyone her weight!

We read that Soupy Sales got himself enshrined on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sales, whose given name is Milton Supman, was born in North Carolina. He got his start as a radio scriptwriter and standup comic, going on to host immensely popular local children’s shows in Cincinnati, Detroit, New York and Los Angeles. He also has made guest appearances on numerous TV shows, occasionally appeared in films and twice had hit records, with the novelty songs “The Mouse” and “Spy With a Pie.”

Associated Press seems to have forgotten that Sales also had a national show, starting in 1966. Not sure how long it ran, but it was definitely nationwide. He’s in a wheelchair these days– his health has hit a rough patch here and there– and we hear that he almost died recently from a torn artery in his heart.

We’re getting emails from radio stations and radio/internet hybrids and websites devoted to hipping you to the latest in satellite radio. It’s a crazy, scary, satellite/radio/terrestrial world out there!

Please pass this info along to comedians, singers, sketch groups etc.

Damage Control online radio show looking for comics and anything funny to feature on our show. We are online at www.newartistradio.com— just click on damage control. New Artist Radio gets anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 listeners each week. For the first half of the show we will feature other acts and then the second half of the show will be our fake radio broadcast, fictitional radio station WSUK. If you would like to get your material on-air please e-mail an MP3 to gene@damagecontrolonline.com or send a CD of your stuff to:

Damage Control
P.O. box 381
Tampa, FL 33601

Include your bio information or anything that you want us to say about you on the air.

Then, we got this:

Dear Shecky Magazine,

I’m the webmaster of a satellite radio website at http://www.satelliteradio-resources.com.

I’ve collected quality links to other resources on the Internet on my links page.

I came across your site and feel that it’d make a perfect fit in my collection of quality links about satellite radio. Hundreds of newsletters, articles and links all for FREE on one convenient website.

If you’d like the description of your site modified or if you have any other cross-promotion ideas just drop me a line.

Best regards,

Webmaster
Satellite Radio Resources
website@liqcentral.com

And finally, we got a note from the folks up in St.John (it’s in New Brunswick… you know, the province in Canada) at CFHA, which is an all-comedy radio format station that has a tremendous appetite for recorded live comedy. Hop onto their site (click on the above link) and investigate.

Everybody send stuff to these folks and then get back to us!

Just got back from a three-day swing through the Comix Cafe in Buffalo, NY. A splendid club, run well, five near-sellout crowds. The Buffalonians are attentive and enthusiastic– can’t ask for more than that from a gang of 180 or so people who’ve never met!

We were amused by the wall near the sound booth that featured a dozen or so examples of old headshots– side-by-side with the newer headshot! A persuasive argument for replacing our headshots on a more regular basis. The mid-80s Rich Vos headshot is particularly embarassing. (Cafe proprietor Randy Reese says that Vos has expressed a desire to roam the country and buy up all his old “ringlet and Jheri-curl” headshots to get them out of circulation.)

Near the tail end of a review of Robert Dubac‘s recent performance of “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?” in the San Diego Trib, we read this:

As an encore, Dubac served up a big slice of his next show, a work in progress called “Piss and Moan.” The excerpt was more edgy than anything in “Oxymoron,” a kind of equal-opportunity satire on how to bridge the political divide – and thus destroy the country. The speaker’s naiveté and the script’s acidic humor bode well for the piece.

We’ll keep an eye out for that. We made a point of catching “Oxymoron” when it came to Philly, so we’ll try to catch “Piss and Moan.” We’ll also ponder what to call it for short. “P & M, perhaps?” Maybe just “Piss.”

Sarah Blakely, one of the finalists on the two-hour finale of Rebel Billionaire, apparently gave standup a shot while living in Atlanta.

She moonlighted as a standup comedian: “My mom kept asking me when I was going to get married. I said maybe I’ll get a dog. She said, ” ‘Honey, that’s a 15-year commitment.’ So I told her I’ll get a 14-year-old dog.&qout;

Thank you very much! Drive carefully!

It’s so cool to admit that you’re a comedian that people on reality shows are dropping the factoid during interviews (and even providing the writer with a joke!). This is, over all, a good thing.

We’re just a tad cranky because one of the few shows we actually make a point to watch– House— is being pre-empted for the poorly-rated Richard Branson vehicle. If you haven’t seen it (House, that is), it’s headed up by Hugh Laurie, the British comic who formerly teamed up with Stephen Frye (Their BBC show, A Bit Of Frye & Laurie, aired on this side of the swamp a few years back. He’s the tall, thin, dark one.)

To make matters worse, it’s a sad fact around here that any show that captures the fancy of the folks here at SHECKYmagazine HQ is sure to be cancelled in record time. After watching the first episode, we briefly considered purchasing the domain name www.SaveHouse.com and mounting a pre-emptive campaign to muster support for the show before the boneheads at Fox even considered cancelling it. We’re still pissed that they cancelled Wonder Falls, a show whose coolness factor was high for no other reason than the theme song was performed by XTC! And don’t get us started on Action!

The editors of Time magazine paired Dave Chapelle with a writer (Christopher John Farley) and handed over their “Mind/Body” page to them:

There are some comics who are really well-adjusted, and there are some of these guys who walk around kind of wounded. I think I fall somewhere in between. There’s something powerful about being able to translate unhappiness into something positive. It’s a kind of alchemy that artists perform.[…]

Some interesting insights. And we don’t think we’ll see Chapelle complaining about censorship any time soon– he says that standup is “direct”– “…there are no intermediaries between you and the audience. I don’t have to go to Standards and Practices to clear my material. I don’t have to worry about advertisers and what they’ll say. I just tell people jokes off the top of my head.” Read the rest here.

The newest SHECKYmagazine.com columnist, Doug Hecox, has kicked in a new column. In this one, he holds forth humorously on the Opening Line:

An amputee comedian — who, for legal reasons must remain anonymous– opens with “I just flew in and boy are my arms missing!” and, to lesser success, a few comedians open with “I just flew in and boy are my jokes tired!”

Read the rest here

Murray Olderman, writing for the Los Angeles Times, writes the definitive article on Fred Sheldon Greenfield, who is more famously known as Shecky Greene.

His capers have become legends, some true, some apocryphal. Like the one about his driving his car into the fountain at Caesars Palace. When the cops arrived, the windshield wipers were going. Greene rolled down the window and said, “No spray wax.”

“I had a bad habit when I got drunk, and I think it must have been a death wish: to get in my car and just drive,” Greene says. “One night I drove 90 miles an hour down the Strip—which you couldn’t do now, crowded as the Strip is—and I hit this breakaway lamp at the entrance to Caesars. It went shearing across Las Vegas Boulevard, and I went right over the curb and into the water. The cops came, and I went. I told Buddy Hackett about it. He gave me the line about the spray wax, and I put it in my act.”

The rest of the article is mandatory reading for rabid fans of standup comedy. We’re just thrilled that the 78-year-old Greene is alive, healthy, relatively sane and, we would hope, ready to gig again. We’re frequently asked if the magazine is “all about Shecky Greene” or “named after” the famous comic. We respond that neither is 100 per cent true. The truth is that “Shecky” has become a generic term for a funny person, for one who strives to amuse. Add to that the fact that for three decades, Shecky Greene’s name (first and last, or just his first name alone) was, for many, synonymous with Vegas, with standup comedy, with live standup.

From the Catholic Telegraph (“The official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati”) article on Steve Harvey voiceover work in the new Disney flick “Racing Stripes”:

At least 90 percent of the lines he and Spade have in the movie were ad-libbed, Harvey admits, forcing other actors such as Frankie Muniz, Mandy Moore, Jeff Foxworthy, Joe Pantoliano and Dustin Hoffman to return to the studio as many as 10 times to re-record their lines.

Chuckles Harvey, “Yeah, the writer is a nice guy. But he ain’t that funny!”

Considering the considerable expense of asking top-shelf Hollywood actors to return to the studio even once, we suspect that the above anecdote is total… horseshit. Having decided that, we question the wisdom of portraying oneself as one or more of the following:

unprofessional
rude
costly to employ
arrogant

Odd, considering that we’ve heard (and have experienced firsthand) that Harvey is none of these things. Hmmm… Later on in the piece, Harvey says, “There’s no such thing as luck,” he insisted. “These are blessings. You can’t be ashamed to get up in front of people and tell them about God. God thought He could trust you – He gave you this talent. I ain’t perfect, you dig? But without God, you got nothing.” We suspect that the screenwriters, David Schmidt and Kirk De Micco, don’t feel terribly blessed that Steve Harvey turfs their script and subsequently trashes them in print.

Rocky Laporte fans may recognize the above as one of the multitude of wildly funny lines in his act. And, in a recent article on Rocky in Cleveland Scene, we learn that, since his recent Tonight Show appearance (and his recent divorce), his life and career are on a roll.

Some of his latest material is about his recent divorce after 18 years of marriage. LaPorte has moved from Hollywood back to Chicago to be closer to his four kids. And for the first time in a long while, he feels that his life and career have come together. “It’s fun having no ties,” he reflects. “You come home, and no one’s yelling at you. Maybe it’ll wear off in a year or two. But right now, I actually like it. If I go where I’m supposed to go, everything falls into place.”

From a Hollywood Reporter article:

HBO, which built its brand on such sharp comedies as Sex and the City, The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is taking on the traditional network family sitcom format.

The premium cable network has given the green light to a comedy pilot starring comedian Louis C.K.

The article goes on that the series will have “the trademark HBO edge and sense of reality, including mature subjects and foul language, which have made its series distinctive.” We just hope the kid is too young to know what’s going on.

We stumbled across an article from a small newspaper in Monroe, WI, heralding the impending arrival in town of The Good Humor Men– a show starring three of the (at least) seven members of a consortium of comedians who, comibined, have 56 appearances on The Tonight Show. Curious, we located the website for the consortium and, near as we can tell, it was lashed together by Pat Hazell, identified as a former Seinfeld writer and a comedian. (We seem to recall Hazell appearing on one of the first Rodney HBO specials way back when.) Not a bad idea, really– assemble a bunch of clean, experienced comedians with multiple TV credits, all of which (we assume) are geographically concentrated (in L.A., we assume) and, in your leisure time, sell the package (as “HaHaPalooza”) and wait for the phone to ring. From a cursory inspection of the website, it seems that one of the comics (probably Hazell himself), is doing the booking (the agent is listed as “Mike Stand” Har, har har!), so you don’t have that pesky 15 or 20 per cent chunk taken out of each and every check. We salute Hazell’s initiative.

Backstage.com has an article about cruise ships, how they’re booked and what it’s like to work on one. There’s not a whole lot of standup-centric info, but it merits reading nonetheless.

Check out Rob Brackenridge‘s detailed account of his recent stint entertaining the troops in Afghanistan.

We were in bed by midnight and at 4 am there was a bang on the door. I stumbled through the dark and unlocked the door and saw a soldier standing there. “You sirs leave for Farah in 15 minutes, sirs.” He said in a Radar O’Reilly way. Yes we were “Sirs” on this tour. Our military rank was GS-15, which is quite high for a civilian. It’s kind of like being a corporal. It’s pretty odd to waltz onto a base and outrank most of the people you see.

The following is from a Newsweek article by… well, let’s not even identify the guy so as not to embarass him:

Last time I was in a club was back in the pre-Seinfeld Era, when everyone and his brother would grab a mic, stand in front of a fake-brick wall, and make jokes that began, “D’ya ever notice how…” When I was in the clubs, comedians had to really work for their material, you know, by doing imitations of Scotty from Star Trek (“Aye cain’t do it, keptin!”) or making fun of how the teachers talked in the old Charlie Brown cartoons. Alas, not a golden age.

Somebody’s got issues! D’ya ever notice how people who are making a living in a business that’s supposed to require highly refined powers of observation actually have diminished powers of observation? Especially when it comes to standup? (One might counter that the poor thing is just trying to be… funny. All the more reason to be… funny, we say. We always marvel at the complex formula that says a writer who is trying to be funny is allowed to be cruel, ham-handed, obvious, inaccurate and/or misleading.