This is all Variety will give us before requiring us to register:

Bravo is back in business with Kathy Griffin, greenlighting a six-episode reality series chronicling the “D-List” comedian’s attempts to keep her career afloat….

From what we can tell, Griffin has herself a series on Bravo (or, as we like to call it, “NBC’s gay little brother”). Good on ya, Kathy! And, good on ya, Bravo! Was it necessary for Variety to use the a-word (“afloat”) along with the c-word (“career”)? It’s so… catty! (We hasten to add: If you have a series on Bravo– even a six-episode commitment– that career is quite buoyant, thank you very much!

Roseanne Barr holds forth on various subjects and catches us up on her most recent activities in a recent interview in Broadcasting & Cable. It seems that she’s tapdancing in her underwear, singing and making videos for children…. and reflecting on her past in the wilds of television, As always , she’s a vertitable fountain of juicy quotes:

Why do you think your sitcom was such a hit but your subsequent projects failed?

I see now that it’s almost a fluke when anything actually works on TV. The variables are infinite. My talk show had a huge audience, but got caught in the middle of corporate politics as King World became CBS. My reality show was dropped when I got ill. I was totally connected to the sitcom, and was treated with comparatively great respect by the network, producers and writers, who serviced my ideas. All that changed. I subsequently worked with people who wanted me to shut up and do it their way. I wasn’t too good at doing that, though I did give it a try.

And then there’s this one, about standup:

Is it a comeback for you after your hysterectomy [in 2003] and the canceled TV shows? Were you scared to jump back into work?

It’s a comeback to do standup. It has been about 14 years since I did a 70-minute show. Yes, performing in public gave me huge fear. I had fierce stage fright. I’d freeze up on stage, too. But I just kept doing it, because for some reason, I have always been possessed by performing and writing. And now it’s fun again.

And, finally, there’s this cryptic quote which, we assure you, isn’t taken out of context.

In your stand-up act, you repeatedly say you expect the world to end within 1-1/2 years. What’s that about?

Talking about the end of the world is something I want to encourage people to do and think about. What really matters to you on Judgment Day?

Late? Maybe a day or two. But why quibble? We’re just getting back into the office after a lengthy period of holiday entertaining and relaxation. We’ve already got the receipt box squared away– now all that remains is to wait for those pesky 1099’s to come through. The newswires quieted down somewhat in the last six weeks, but we expect news about the entertainment business in general and the standup biz in particular to accelerate.

And professionally/personally, we’re headed to Buffalo and Montreal in the next coupla weeks, but we plan to stay close to SHECKYmagazine HQ in between our road trips to devote more time to personal projects (video productions, audition videos, press kit fabrication, 2005 bookings, etc.). Since we purchased a new computer and reconfigured our offices here, the whole operation is more efficient. So, there should be an uptick in the amount of postings and information coursing through the SHECKYmagazine conduit. (A side note: I’ve been mis-identifying our new baby as a Gateway 720GE. In reality, it’s a Gateway 702GE. It is odd to consider that we’ve actually gotten a bunch of hits from people seeking info on a “Gatway 720GE!”)

To all comedy fans in Buffalo: Seek us out at the Comix Cafe on JAN 6-8!

To all SHECKYmagazine readers: 2004 was a watershed year! Our coverage of Calgary’s Fest, Boston’s Fest, our showcase at the NY Underground Comedy Fest and our sixth straight year of Montreal coverage once again put you closer to the action! We are eager to do more of the same in ’05! And we would to love to hear from you all in the coming year– either via our email or via the comments feature at the end of each post! Thanks for all your interest and thanks in advance for a great 2005!

Mentioned, in passing, in an article by Denver Post TV critic Joanne Ostrow, are two standup-related “niche networks.” Here’s the paragraph of note:

The list goes on. Blackbelt TV, Telenovela TV, Si TV and Wine TV. The Gospel Music Channel, Standup Comedy TV and Wheels TV. Three horror movie channels and as many gaming or casino channels.

All right. Standup Comedy TV is the obvious one. Hmmm… which is the other? Well, if you’ve been reading this mag– and following the links faithfully– you’d know that Si TV’s owner is Jeff Valdez, who started his career as a standup comic in Pueblo.

We heralded the arrival of Standup Comedy TV way back in 2004… not sure exactly when. (We were introduced to the Big Cheese at the Just For Laughs Festival back in July, too.) They’re based in Chicago and they’ll tell anyone who will listend that they’re launching this month. We’ll keep an eye on that. Golly, maybe some day we will actually have 500 channels.

The needle on the standup-is-cool-again meter jumps a notch or two with the revelation (in the Edmonton Sun) that he did standup (their wording, not ours). To wit:

“I had a certain physical comedy I did with a partner,” he recently told reporters. “But I didn’t want to be funny all the time, only when I felt like it. And that’s not a good idea.”

No, that is not a good idea.

Mr. Pacino is vague. No time, no place, no how long, no positive i.d. of this “partner.” Actually, he could be talking about sex, for all we know.

But, we note again that the prevailing attitude in Hollywood (and Edmonton!) is that it is once again approaching okay to say (to admit?) that you once were, or once thought of yourself as, a standup comic. The pendulum swings. What could account for this shift in attitude? We may start to keep a list of those folks– famous and not so– who drop the s-word in interviews and on talk show panels. Stay tuned.

Nick at Nite is seeking the Funniest Mom in America. Follow the link to the page that will enable you to download the Entry Form/Contestant Waiver and Official Rules .pdf document that will catapult you from housework to Hollywood. (Of course, we don’t believe for a second that a real housewife will win this thing… at least not a housewife as we traditionally imagine one… especially if we watch Nick At Nite or TV Land any. We are betting that a comic– who happens to be a wife and who happens to live in a house– will win. Stay tuned.)

A short item in the Pueblo Chieftain gives a brief history of Jeff Valdez

Jeff Valdez grew up the youngest of nine children in “the projects” on Pueblo’s South Side. He relates how his mother, Mary Valdez, told him that if he made the right decisions, stayed away from drugs and violence, he could “do amazing things.”

Starting out as a comic in Colorado Springs, he’s living in Beverly Hills now.

Hey– Anybody wanna buy Eddie Murphy‘s house? Here’s what it would take:

If you’re trying to do the math in your head: a 20 percent down payment on the home would be $6 million, and monthly principal and interest payments would add up to about $168,634 for a 30-year loan at a 7.55 percent interest rate.

Read the listing on the Inman Real Estate website here.

In a Kevin Spacey interview in the Orlando Sentinel (on the occasion of plugging his Bobby Darin biopic), is the following:

Dressed in an emcee’s black-flecked gray suit and a bright-yellow tie, Spacey does indeed look like he could hop up on stage for a song at any moment.

“He’s like a song-and-dance guy, really,” says Paul Giamatti (Sideways), who appeared with Spacey in The Negotiator and on stage in The Iceman Cometh. “He was a standup comedian for a while, you know. He’s a real showman-entertainer kind of guy.”

We’re fairly certain that Giamatti is talking about Spacey and not Darin. How about that– the pendulum has swung and it’s now cool for actors and actresses (and who know who else? Deejays? Chefs? Ranch Hands?) to say that they once were standup comics. This is significant because there was a time not too long ago when even standup comics were leaving that information out of their resumes and interviews. Standup might be cool again… at least for few weeks or months. Stay tuned.

Dean Haglund, the standup comic who gained fame as the geek on The X Files, apparently is a geek in real life– and an inventor. He stumbled upon an inexpensive device that keeps one’s laptop cool… and one’s sperm count high!

We speak from personal experience here at SHECKYmagazine… not about the infertility, but about the discomfort that our first laptop caused when it was placed over… there… for too long. Our Canon InnovaBook 360CD caused a vague, dull ache. We theorized that some sort of electromagnetic field was the culprit. We referred to the effect as “fried nuts.”

(The pic at left is from our 1999 coverage of the Just For Laughs Festival. Haglund was in Montreal to participate in an Improv program. We accosted him in the tent across from the Theatre St. Denis and snapped this pic after veryifying that he was indeed a standup comic.

Haglund recently patented the Chill Pak, a cooling system for computer laptops, which were identified in a recent study as the culprits behind lowering sperm counts in men.

The whole article awaits.

The WWW is burning up with the news that Germany’s top comedian has returned to television after a year-long hiatus. Reuters reports that “Germany’s most revered comedian Harald Schmidt made a spectacular return to late night television on Thursday, exactly a year after his abrupt departure from a rival network sent its share price plunging.”

“We are no longer Nazis,” Schmidt, 47, told his audience, quoting a mock English primer he said he would like to distribute to tourists.

“But our former Fuehrer is still on the front pages of our newspapers. Just last week we found out he was a tax dodger,” he said, referring to a recent news story. “That’s alarming because the war wasn’t cheap and we needed the money.”

Vielleicht (Perhaps) physische Anwesenheit (physical presence)
ist erforderlich (is required). To translate even further: Maybe ya hadda be there.

There’s nothing worse than hearing, just minutes before you’re heading to bed, “Coming up next after Action News, ‘Comedy Festival.’ ” Aaaarrgggh! Now we gotta stay up and investigate!

We were watching Cap Cities’ Philadelphia affiliate, WPVI Channel 6. Turns out ABC 7 up in New York videotaped all the goings on at last month’s New York Comedy Festival and, we speculated, all local ABC affiliates were offered a package of highlights– theirs to air at such inauspicious times as Sunday night after the 11 o’clock news.

It was a good thing that an hour-long special about standup comedy was being sprayed throughout the country (we assume that it was carried in other cities besides just New York and Philly), but, overall, it wasn’t a great ad for live standup comedy! As we watched, it slowly dawned on us how unfunny it was! And it wasn’t immediately clear why.

Unfortunate, really. We were thrilled that there was an hour-long special on standup. But, rather than seeming like a celebration of a gathering of comics in one of the comedy capitals of the world, it seemed to be more like a paid advertisement for the NYC Convention and Visitors Bureau. It was inexplicable– all or most of the people on it were people we’ve seen live in the past who have been funny and capable and professional. And the lineup– the high-profile lineup that they used to sell the whole shebang in the first place Steven Wright (whose name they spelled wrong on the chyron!), Drew Carey, Denis Leary, Roseanne Barr, Mo’Nique– should have made for a dazzling special. But something– the editing? the conditions they were performing under? the sound? Some thing (or combination of things) contributed to a special about comedy that was… oddly unspecial and uncomfortably unfunny.

It seemed more like an awkward cross between a documentary and an infomercial. Of course, because we’re editing a magazine about standup, we’re up to our eyeballs in standup comedy– we’re jaded. Maybe, to the untrained eyeball, it was a dazzling and appealing peek into the world of standup comedy, particularly the world of New York City standup comedy. But we’ve seen this kind of thing done with much more verve and much more of an appreciation for standup done before. On Canadian television, for instance, in connection with the Just For Laughs Festival.

Did anyone see the footage of Richard Pryor on syndicated gossip television show The Insider?

We knew Pryor was in bad shape due to the ravages of multiple sclerosis, but his condition has deteriorated to the point where he is unable to speak or move.

And, while we have compassion for Pryor and wife Jennifer, we must ask how badly they want to publicize the movie of Pryor’s life that is currently in production (and was the impetus for the Insider piece)? Host Pat O’Brien held a pathetic, one-sided “interview” with the incapacitated comic. It was sensationalism at its lowest. And, there’s a second installment tomorrow evening, with input from Goerge Carlin— a double score for the ghouls at Insider.

If you have a hunger for up to the minute info on Pryor, skip Insider and just hit RichardPryor.com, or the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

The San Jose Merc News reports that George Carlin will enter rehab to treat his dependence on wine and the popular painkiller Vicodin. Read the rest here.

We caught “Oceans Eleven” on cable. We weren’t so dazzled that we would seek out the sequel in the theaters. In the follow-up, the boys are all forced to lay low and get what one critic (Katie Meyers of Knight Ridder) calls “legitimage jobs”:

Another big change is Livingston Dell (Edward Jemison). In the first movie he was a giddy computer nerd who would sweat profusely whenever he got nervous. This time around his occupation is comedy; he is a standup comedian working in nightclubs … where did that come from?

Where indeed? Information on Jemison on the WWW is scant. Perhaps he has always entertained fantasies of being a comic. Could being a standup comic actually be considered “laying low?” In Vegas? Is it really necessary to read the rest here?

The New York Times has an exceptional piece on Vaughn Meader, who passed way earlier this year. When he died, we ran something here, but we were stunned at how little fuss was made in the MSM. Maybe the major dailies couldn’t find anyone old enough to write a decent appreciation. Meader was not only significant for his Fleetwood Mackian album sales figures, but for his strong and all too brief cultural influence.

Lenny Bruce supposedly opened his first post-assassination show with a sympathetic sigh, then: “Vaughn Meader is screwed.” Meader had been terrifically successful and famous for a year. He would live 41 more.

It’s written by Elizabeth McCracken. Mandatory reading– click this.(Free registration required)

Three (or perhaps even four) cheers for The Toledo Blade and staffer Mike Kelly, who are running a Year in Comedy article in today’s Arts section:

Other highlights of the year locally in comedy included appearances by Judy Tenuta, Heywood Banks, Wendy Liebman, Etta May, Lord Carrett, Bill Hildebrandt, Poppy Champlin, Jim Wiggins, Dobie Maxwell, and the Sklar Brothers.

Respectful. And no mention of mental illness or self-esteem. Nice to see they considered these folks “highlights!” If this piece appeared in HomeTheaterMag.com, they’d consider them “a bunch of other hacks you’ve never heard of.” Read the whole thing here.

Just got the following email:

Subject: Army Wall of Fame

Dear Comics of SHECKYmagazine:

Hooah! I’m hoping you can help me with a project for the United States
soldiers. As a medic in the United States Army, I started a project to
boost the morale of my fellow soldiers while on deployment. It showcases
over 1000 celebrities and positive role models from around the globe who
have autographed pictures to the soldiers.

It is the Army Wall of Fame and it’s a great tribute to all who have worn
the uniform to defend the freedom of the United States of America. The
address is ArmyWallofFame.com.

The Army Wall of Fame is a huge success due to the benevolence of actors,
actresses, television personalities, athletes, and positive role models from
around the globe. We would like to continue to see the Wall expand at the
largest military base in the United States. The Wall is located in one of
Ft. Hood’s most high traffic area which is the United Services Organization
(USO).

I’m requesting autographed photos personalized to the U.S. Soldiers and one
for my private collection. Please send the items to the address listed
below. We look forward to receiving your autographed photo and seeing you
on the Wall at Ft. Hood, TX! You will also be showcased on
www.armywalloffame.com under one of the
Identification Tags.

I can be reached online at armywalloffame@hot.rr.com or by phone at
254-366-3226 if you have any questions regarding the Army Wall of Fame. If
you would like a complimentary banner link to your site, please e-mail me
with that information. Thank you for your support of America’s soldiers.

I recently returned from Iraq and I can assure you that the men and women
that are deployed under Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) appreciate your
support! We’ll also sending extra pictures and items to the soldiers in
Iraq and Kuwait if you would like to include more than one personalized
item. Please share this information with your friends. Over past two
years, we’ve helped raise over $200,000 worth of donations for the troops.
Thank you!

Sincerely,

Timothy D. Stroud
4208 Adobe Drive
Killeen, TX 76522
Killeen.com

We’re warming up the brand new retractable Sharpie. A dozen headshots of each of us are on the way, as soon as the local post office opens tomorrow. I’m not so sure we fall under the “positive role model” classification, but the case could be made for some degree of celebrity.

Word on the wires is that David Letterman took the show to Camp Taqaddum in Iraq and taped in front of appreciative troops.

“Paul and I were in Afghanistan three years ago, and last year we were in Baghdad,” Letterman told the crowd. “We wouldn’t want it any other way. We’re sorry we keep having to come back. If you ever come to New York City, come see us and we’ll treat you like big shots.”

Comedian Tom Dreesen was also along for the ride. No word on when it might air. Read the rest here.

What to make of this? A doc came over the cybertransom from one Warren Durso, an L.A.-based comic on tour to entertain the troops in the Gulf. It is a quite detailed (and, from what we can tell, credible) tale of a rather casual and frighteningly successful attempt to breach security on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Durso was especially surprised when he cleared that machine without triggering its alarm. “Hell, I’ve got titanium hips,” said Durso “Those things can’t even make it past the metal detector at the Viper Room.”

“Now we’re on a nuclear carrier unescorted, trying to look like we belong there,” said Yaffee. “The fact is we’re about as military looking as Cheech and Chong.”

So far, we’re the only publication to be running this story. The implications are enourmous. And rather unsettling. (And, on a side note, it’s not badly written, either!) We’ll keep you posted on any developments. I suppose real journalists would put a call into the Pentagon and ask for comment. Hey, it’s Christmas Eve.

Read the rest here.

Just received the following email:

As the sole owner of the published Jim Carrey interview, I hereby request the removal of the text taken from the Taipei Times in the following website:

URL for Posting Here

You should know that copyright infringements are against the law and you do not have the right to publish such interview neither copy any part of it.

I appreciate an answer regarding this issue or legal actions will follow.

NAME WITHHELD BY US

Get a load of this guy! Throwing around vague threats and peppering his email with crap about “copyright infringements!” Well, for your informationl, mister, we took Journalism Law THREE TIMES before we finally passed it! There’s this little legal do-jiggy known as “fair use.”

You know how when your college professor usta Xerox a bunch of pages from a book and hand it out to the class so they might better understand the current topic of discussion? Well, he didn’t pay the author for that material. However, the courts have ruled, time and again, that such use falls under what has become known simply as “fair use,” and, as such, doesn’t violate any copyright infringement. There were limits, however– you can’t Xerox an entire book, for instance. That would be naughty.

There have been a few bloggers and websites here and there who’ve been sued for copyright infringement. But those cases almost all involved video or an image– as you can imagine, it’s near impossible to use only a portion of an image. And video? Well, video is… special.

In the past, when we’ve discovered a site or a blog running an entire interview of ours, we’ve written letters to these blogs and sites asking them to take it down. But then, we offer an alternative: Run a paragraph or two, then link to the full text of the interview on our site. (And we never threaten anyone with a lawsuit!)

But what we did with this gentleman’s article– excerpt a paragraph, then link to the URL containing the entire piece– hardly constitutes a copyright infringement. Matt Drudge has made a nice living off it. You may have heard of him, Mr. Author Man.

Nonetheless, we’ve taken down the paragraph. (And we blew out the link, too. To hell with him. Come to think of it, I think I’ll go back and edit the posting to excise his name as well.) Not that we’re afraid of any legal action… we’re what is known in the legal biz as “judgement proof!” (It sounds like a good thing, but it has its downside!)

We can’t figure out his beef. It seems like a win for all concerned– we provide a nugget of information for our readers, hip them to an interview online, they go to it. The website harboring the article gets traffic, the author’s work is read, everyone’s happy. Well, almost everyone. What planet is this guy from?

The Eye, a weekly entertainment rag that keeps track of Toronto’s entertainment scene, ran a sort of Year in Comedy review. They mentioned one of the folks we had the pleasure of working with last spring at the Calgary Fest:

The strangest ascent of 2004 saw a collision of the city’s biggest and smallest comedy institutions, as terrific spaz Derek Flores became the newest member of the Second City’s mainstage production. The native Calgarian, featured in the company’s current Good’s Good, Evil’s Bad revue, also continued to host and curate (with roommate Kristian Reimer) the summertime rooftop variety show DK Ranch, which plays on their tiny back deck.

Read the rest here.

A reader sent along the following comment:”Recap of the last handful of posts: You’re anti-union and pro-war. You can’t imagine anywhere in the world being more free than the U.S.A. Ra-ra rah republican. We get it. Please stick to the comedy.” Well, at least he said please.

You make too many assumptions. Among them:

#1: That we are anti-union. No. We are anti-comics‘s union. Unions are good for coal miners, bad for comedians. Unions are good for tool and die makers, bad for comedians. We have many reasons for why we think so and we’ve gone into them in great detail in the past. (Besides, if we are the Nazis you think we are, would we run a link to the NYT article and provide a soapbox for one of the primary organizers of the union talked about in said article?)

#2: That we are pro-war. We never said anything of the kind. What we did say was that it was presumptuous (and not good for standup comics in general) for anyone to assume that we are all, as a group, anti-war… or pro-war… or anti-this or pro-that.

War, like a handful of other issues, is an emotional and divisive one. Why would you want the country to believe that all (or mostly all) comedians are anti-war? And, conversely, would you want the country to believe that all (or mostly all) comedians are pro-war? Either way, you run the risk of having 50 per cent of the country avoiding comedy clubs.

How about we leave it up to the individual comic to address such issues onstage (and suffer any consequences), if he or she so chooses?

If you think we’re being paranoid, ponder this: There was a lengthy period of time in the late 80s and early 90s when much of America was convinced that, if they were to attend a show at a comedy club, they’d see a presentation that was mysoginistic, sexist or racist or all three and then some. Their preconceptions were not based on fact, but on a notion that was regularly fostered by the media. It mattered not that their fears weren’t based on personal experience. We maintain that any preconceptions that might keep comedy club patrons away from clubs would be a bad thing. We still are dogged by one particularly vicious canard that says that comics just aren’t funny! (We can’t tell you how often we hear that said, depicted, written, in the major media, on television, in magazines.) Nationally-syndicated radio talk host Laura Ingraham is one of the prime offenders on this one– even after we sent her an email admonsihing her for the diss.

And, before you burn up the keyboard admonishing us for equating homophobia, mysogyny or racism with an anti-war stance, let us assure that we are making the point that any generalizations are bad or potentially bad.

So, you see, we actually were “sticking to the comedy.”

And, at the risk of sounding prick-like, this is our blog and we can write about (or not write about) anything we damn well please. In fact, we could even run the recipe for Christmas cookies that we’re using this week.

1 Cup Butter

1/2 Cup Sugar

2 Egg Yolks

1 t Vanilla

2 Cups Flour

1/2 t Baking Powder

Combine the sugar and the butter. Combine the yolks with the vanilla, then combine it with the sugar/butter mixture. Combine the flour with the baking powder, then mix it into the butter/sugar,etc. mixture. Don’t refrigerate. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Use a cookie press. Sprinkle with a bit of colored sugar before baking.

Merry Christmas!

We got a nice email yesterday from a fellow from Manteca, CA, by the name of Tom Bickle hipping us to an article on the wires that might be of interest to our readers. He mentioned a the end of his email that he liked the magazine and that, later that evening, he was going onstage for the first time.

We thanked him for the tip and the compliments and we asked him to please let us know how it went and, if there were any digital cameras available, maybe send us a pic to document the auspicious occasion. Here’s his email from this morning:

Regarding my first open mike – I’ll be honest with you. It was … not bad.
I remembered my set, didn’t flub the wording, and made it through with no
tossed tomatoes. My delivery felt more wooden than I would like, but I can
work on it, my material was fairly strong, and I got some encouraging
feedback from others present.

It was some small consolation that the crowd was small, and even the most
comfortable and poised among the performers did not harvest roaring belly
laughs. While I am not cheering a lackluster night, at least my performance
wasn’t the albatross of the evening.

Alas, no digital cameras were available, so no pics. Thanks for asking,
it’s nice of you.

Tom Bickle

Thanks for the update, and congratulations– now that you’ve gone onstage once, your name can be in bold. We are happy to be a small part of what may turn out to be a watershed moment in your life.

As for the rest of us, perhaps this should serve as a jumping off point for our New Year’s 2005 message. To wit:

We know there are a lot of readers out there who secretly (or not so secretly) want to try standup comedy some day. And, since we’re (according to USAToday, at least) “charming, sincere and helpful,” we firgured that Mr. Bickle’s account of his first time might be a tremendous help in realizing that goal.

And, for those of us who have been doing standup for a year or five years or ten years or so long that we occasionally lose track, maybe his email will serve as a reminder of what it was like on that first night. And perhaps it will help us assess and appreciate all that has happened to us since then.

P.S. Bickle also adds that it all happened at “The Fat Cat Music House & Lounge,
hosted by local comedian Sam Bam, in Modesto, CA. They run standup every week there.”

Charming, sincere, helpful. It not only describes us… it captures our readers as well. Thanks.

On the occasion of Lewis Black‘s impending visit to the University of South Carolina Beaufort on Tuesday, an article in Low Country Now gives fans a chance to catch up.

While Black concedes that South Carolina is a pretty conservative place, he says his standup act was well received when he played Myrtle Beach.

“People keep losing sight of the fact that there’s still a mix everywhere and I think just because they’re conservative doesn’t mean they’re not going to laugh at what I’ve got to say,” Black explained. “My audience realizes that both sides are psychotic – you can be a conservative or a liberal and understand that.”

A comic who feels a “sense of liberation” while travelling to South Carolina.

No less an institution than the New York Times has seen fit to comment on the current skirmish (alluded to in the pages of this very magazine by SHECKYmagazine columnist Jim Mendrinos in his most recent column) between NYC comics and NYC comedy club owners. Seems that the club owners have a pile of cash that the comics covet. They’re throwing around terms like “coalition” and “strike” and getting some owners to give up some of the jack.

But workanight comedians say the rates in city clubs pale to what they can make doing longer sets on college campuses or headlining in other cities. “I could do 30 shows in town and make $800,” said Ben Bailey, a 34-year-old comic with a wife and a cat at home. “Or I could work the road and do eight shows and make $2,000. There’s no comparison.”

The obvious question is: Why then doesn’t Mr. Bailey work the road? Does anyone work a NYC club for the money?! One of SHECKYmagazine’s fine columnists is a driving force behind this movement, and we wish him and all the comics who have chosen the NYC lifestyle well. But we’re weighing that against our longstanding opposition against anything that even smells vaguely like a union. We’ll keep tabs on this whole affair and let you know how it plays out.

Note to NYT reporter Jesse McKinley: Check your hackneyed prejudices at the door. Get a load of paragraph #3 from McKinley’s piece:

Seriously, folks, you can’t make this stuff up. Hardened by decades of low wages and even lower self-esteem, some 300 New York comedians have decided to unite to ask the city’s comedy clubs for, well, a little respect. (Oh, and more pay.)

Let’s think back… back over all the billions of gallons of ink spilled on the noble cashier/auto worker/bus driver who ever made even the slightest rumble about a pay increase and let’s try and recall if there was ever a mention made of anyone’s fucking self-esteem!! We don’t want any melodrama, and we acknowledge that it’s an article about “funny people(!)” but cut us a fucking break! Read the rest if you are registered with the NYT website.

We’ve been getting email for a couple years now from one Karel Beer, an expat Brit who lives in Paris and books U.S. and U.K. comics into his comedy room at the Hotel du Nord. We even alerted our readers about it a few months back! Expatica.com, a website that claims to provide, in all caps, “NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR EXPATS IN FRANCE,” just ran an article on it. Here’s a quote from one of the comics who frequents the Hotel du Nord:

“For Americans there is a sense of liberation being overseas,” he said adding there was “more latitude to say what you feel.”[…]

Huh? Welcome to the upside down world of Greg Proops– An American comic who must go to France for “a sense of liberation.”

Jim Carrey calms down long enough to give a straight interview to (Name of author vidnictively withheld by SHECKYmagazine.com) of Atlantic Syndication. We found it via the Taipei Times.

SORRY…the author sent us a threatening letter with some gibberish about copyright infringement, so we can’t run an excerpt (at least according to him).

And now, you can’t read the rest of it unless of course, you do a Google search using the keywords “Jim Carrey” and “Name withheld by SHECKYmagazine.com.” Haven’t any of these people heard of the internet and little thing called “blogging?”

See the posting above for our response to the author.

Under the title “Rebuilding an Antiwar Movement for 2005,” a writer on a website that seeks to coordinate various anti-war activities (and frequently compares President Bush to Hitler) wrote the following:

….perhaps we should all remember being at a rally one time or another and being damned bored with the speakers. This is where we should learn a lesson, both from my hometown, and from the NED and their street activities in the Ukraine. We had rock bands and rappers and DJs at our rallies. People go to rallies to add their bodies to an influx against war, not to hear a professor who they have read many times and comes off better from the page than the pulpit. The Barenaked Ladies, among other groups, led many rallies. It helps that in Canada, the cultural industry is very left wing, but representatives of the American cultural industry have a very special responsibility. Rallies as well should not be hosted by the typical campus moralizer in their best Bill Moyers/Jesse Jackson guilt-rendering liberal tone, but by, perhaps, standup comics. Every city has a standup community. Standup comics are almost universally antiwar.

Say what? To be sure there are some comics who have registered their discontent with the war, but almost universally antiwar? Tell that to all the comics who have travelled, at considerable risk, to the Persian Gulf to entertain the troops. And tell that to all the comedians who regularly perform on USO tours or who perform for servicemen and women here at home. (In fact, we here at SHECKYmagazine will be performing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Feb. 26!) Hasn’t this chucklehead heard about the Comics On Duty Tour? Didn’t he read our excellent piece here in the pages of this magazine by Steve Mazan? And, maybe we’re a little touchy, but doesn’t the way this whole thing is pitched seem a bit presumptuous? Need something to perk up your anti-war rally? Go get a comic! There are just hundreds of them laying around in every major city. Go get one! What’re you waiting for?

How does this idea that standup comics are “universally anti-war” get started? How does one year of Janeane Garofalo quoting Howard Zinn on The View wipe out forty years of Bob Hope? And in October our showcase at the New York Underground Comedy Festival, and many of the other shows at the festival, benefited Operation Uplink, an organization that seeks to keep military personnel and hospitalized veterans in touch with their families and loved ones.

P.S. If you’re interested, you can check out Bob Hope– The Vietnam Years (1964-1972), a collection of Hope’s performances throughout Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. It might ring a few bells.

The comics in Boston are having a rollicking time for a serious cause: Comic Lauren Dombrowski, who started out in the rough and tumble Boston comedy scene of the early 80s, has breast cancer.

With the same cool nerves and humor, she’s now facing breast cancer. Sunday’s final Ding Ho Reunion show at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway theater will be dedicated to her by her old friends, and a portion of the proceeds of the show, which will feature host Tingle, Steven Wright, Jim Morris, Chance Langton, and Fran Solomita, will go to the City of Hope cancer research center in LA in her honor.

As Boston Globe writer Nick Zaino III points out, Dombrowski, by virtue of her gig as co-executive producer of MadTV, has health insurance. With friends like the boys in Boston, who needs insurance? Read the rest here.

The folks at Blogger have fixed the glitches on their end, so we’re posting like there’s no tomorrow. Unfortunately, there’s nothing Blogger can do about the errors we make on this end! In the caption for the picture below (“At the B Bar with the Boys”), we mistakenly identified J. Jay Boyd (He’s the one on the left). We were so wigged about getting the “J. Jay” part correct that we totally gooned up the “Boyd” part! We apologize for any confusion or misdirected mail or death or dismemberment! Our thanks to a sharp-eyed reader, Joe Starr for pointing out our mistake.

From India New England Online (talk about your niche publications!), comes word that film director Piyush Dinker Pandya (“American Desi”) is dabbling in standup comedy promotion with his Gurus of Comedy 2004 revue:

“These are South Asians and they are the best at what they are, so [I] decided ‘Gurus of Comedy’ would be a good name,” Pandya says.

The Boston show will be hosted at the Comedy Connection in Faneuil Hall. The lineup is impressive: Russell Peters, a Canadian who has worked with Comedy Central and Yuk-Yuk Improv and whom Pandya describes as “the best South Asian standup comic” he has seen; Anand Chulani, from Comedy Store and the movie “American Chai;” and Paul Varghese, from the Improv Comedy Club, who performed in NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Another Canadian talent, Mo-D, will host the show.

Read the rest here.

Two posts in the last 24 hours highlight the eagerness with which some members of the media are willing to display their ignorance (See ““Unknown Hack Toils for Home Theater Mag” below and see the post just south of this one.) Then, there’s the review of the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”/”Frosty the Snowman” DVD release that’s been making the rounds on the wires lately, from which we pull this quote:

“Frosty the Snowman,” at half the length of “Rudolph,” uses conventional and somewhat cheap-looking cartoon animation. It’s still enriched, though, by the gravelly voiced Durante’s inimitable rendition of the title song. (Jackie) Vernon, whose deadpan standup comedy was a staple of the old Ed Sullivan Show, has never been more bouncy than as Frosty.

If you’re going to be slapping the media’s wrist regularly, you must occasionally pat them on the head for a job well done. This guy/gal (no byline, unfortunately) not only knew that Vernon did the voice, he knew who Vernon was and slipped in a little history. This is how it’s done– rather than display your ignorance of such matters, you try to lay a little knowledge on the people. And you make yourself look smart in the process. Is that so hard to grasp? (We’re especially pleased because, around these parts, Jackie Vernon has always been a favorite. His slide show bit is a modern classic. Our efforts to contact his son for an interview were fruitless. If anyone in Los Angeles knows Vernon’s kid, ask him to get ahold of us!)

This from the Duluth News Tribune, among their listings for Entertainment Best Bets:

There’s nothing like seeing your sweetie in a blinking Rudolph sweater to test your love. Get decked out and go to the third annual Bad Sweater X-Mas Party at 10 p.m. Saturday at Pizza Luce, 11 E. Superior St.

Music is by rock band Baby Granta Claus. There also will be standup comedy, but don’t let that stop you from going. Cost is $2. Call 727-7400.

Emphasis, of course, ours. We’ll refrain from the obvious Duluth jokes and just state once again that one of the reasons we started this magazine was to battle the media bias against standup comics. Looks like the folks in Minnesota still need some educating. (We console ourselves by concluding that anyone who would find a Bad Sweater X-Mas Party to be the pinnacle of wit would not find anything to like about standup comedy. It’s probably a kid fresh out of the two-year Journalism Associate Degree Program at St. Cloud University. And if it isn’t– let the fucker defend him/herself… the little prick.)

A gang of enterprising comedians in Music City got in the face of Tennessean Senior Writer Tim Ghianni to the point where he coughed up a rather lengthy overview of the entire Nashville comedy scene.

Comedy in Nashville includes, but is not restricted to, classic stand-up stylings seen and heard most nights at Zanies on Eighth Avenue South in the city’s antiques district. The 21-year-old club has served as the Nashville home to hundreds of comedians on the comedy-club circuit. The more or less ”old reliables” such as Killer Beaz and James Gregory and the big stars such as Jackie Mason call the club their Nashville home.

There’s also mention of the NashvilleStandUp.com website, which acts as an online billboard/press kit for all the Nashville comics. We could’ve done without this crack:

If you’ve been to any big comedy club or even watched comedy on television, you pretty much know what to expect at Zanies: a guy or gal, perhaps sweating, clutching a microphone and pacing a stage that is backed by a brick wall.

“Perhaps sweating?” Yeesh. On the plus side, there is an exhaustive list of the comedy venues in town. Read the rest here.

Must reading for any comic living in (or planning an assault on) NYC, the latest installment of IN NY is a year-end review of the comedy scene, a year which saw the passing of Comic Strip GM Lucien Hold, Dangerfield’s namesake Rodney Dangerfield and Comedy Cellar manager Manny:

To lose a passionate voice in comedy is always a sad thing, and Manny was absolutely passionate. The room is still the hottest club in town even after the cancellation of Tough Crowd.

All is not doom and gloom, however, as Mendrinos does a club-by-club analysis of “the Mecca of comedy.”

Remember those releases you signed when you appeared on those television shows back in the early nineties? Well, there’s a new four-DVD set out called “Koch Vision Presents 32 of the World’s Funniest Women—Live and Uncensored,” and it sounds like a repackaging of a ton of those sets. Only this one is all females. The review in HomeTheaterMag.com is less than complimentary:

The premise behind Funny Ladies is a good one: a four-DVD set featuring uncensored standup routines from some of the best female comediennes in the business. Most of the material dates from the early nineties, and the outfits and hairstyles are often funnier than the stand-ups themselves. Unfortunately, the real joke is on anyone who purchases this travesty of a collection.

While the content on this DVD might be dated, so too is the approach that the reviewer takes– being cruel just for cruelty’s sake is sooo last decade! And the reviewer, though he may be working for a publication that purports to bring readers “the very latest in audio, video, surround sound, movies and music,” doesn’t seem to be all that knowledgeable about subjects outside their narrow purview. And apparently there’s no memo that cautions HTM writers against displaying their colossal ignorance when it comes to other matters… like standup. Gary Maxwell (the mook’s name) just looooves Margaret Cho, Ellen DeGenere and Janeane Garofalo but he refers to the other comediennes as “a bunch of other hacks you’ve never heard of.” Nice! Cruel and stupid!

Who are identified as unknown hacks? Just on disc one: Andrea Martin, Susie Essman and Judy Tenuta. Elsewhere there’s Rita Rudner, Kim Coles and Wanda Sykes. And, except for his brief mention here on SHECKYmagazine.com Gary Maxwell might better fit the description of unknown hack than any of those ladies. We’re done now. Mr. Maxwell can slither back into oblivion.

Ellen Cleghorne, Susie Essman, Stephanie Hodge, Cathy Ladman, Caroline Rhea, Carol Montgomery, Nora Lynch, Henriette Mantel, Nancy Parker, Carrie Snow, Sarah Silverman, Mary Jo Pehl, Judy Toll, Andrea Walker, Shyma, Leah Krinsky, Roberta Kent, Kim Coles, Judy Gold, Karen Haber and Laura Kightlinger are also featured.

We wound our way down Rte. 30 to the Borgata to hang with (L to R) J. Jay Brown, Joe Starr and Basil before, during and after their gig at the Borgata comedy club. You’ll pardon the paucity of postings lately– a coupla gigs and the delivery of a Gateway 720GE (1GB of RAM, 250 GB HD, DVD burner, 17″ monitor), so we’ve been fixing up the nursery for the arrival of the impending bundle of joy. A flurry of postings to come, we assure you. And a new column or two!

NOTE: We’re having blogger difficulties at present. Every time we post, we get the following message:

001 java.net.UnknownHostException: ftp.sheckymagazine.com

We are making every attempt to correct this problem. If anyone out there with Blogger.com experience has any input, please drop us an email! Thanks!

I have been alerted to the problem of not being able to reach the Peter Anthony column…I checked it out on IE and Netscape…it seemed okay.

Then I opened it up in the HTML editor and– THERE IT WAS: a missing “<"

Sometimes that's all it takes is one lousy "<" in the right place to screw things up.

And the insidious part is that it works in some browser but not in others…some are less "fussy" than others.

Thanks to all who posted about the error.

Click to Canada now!

If you go onto the Chicago Comedy Festival website, you’re greeted by a black screen with the two tiny words in the center: “go away”

It would seem that the Chicago Comedy Festival is no more.

It was a great festival in a great comedy town. Dan Carlson can be proud of what he did. We have no idea if he really has given up for good, but, if he has, we wanna thank him for throwing a great party and for emphasizing the standup comics in his get-togethers. We’ll try to get it together over the next few days and prep our Chicago Comedy Festival files so that they’re accessible to our readers. (We just got a new desktop– a Gateway 720GE with a gig of RAM and a 250-Gb HD!– so, we’re going to plunge back into editing video again, so it might be some time before we follow through!)