The most-asked question at the festival? “What time did you leave the bar last night?”

The second-most-asked question? “What time did I leave the bar last night?”

The tightly-wound artists are starting to ease up now, as they get their first (or first few, or last!) set(s) out of the way and the weekend arrives. By the time Friday rolls around there’s a significant number of comics who are here with nothing to do but schmooze, party, vent and reflect. And Friday is also the day when Andy Kindler, who has been reflecting for the past 12 months, finally gets around to venting.

As promised, we skittered on over to the Hyatt in plenty of time to get a seat at the State of the Industry Address, which the program bills as “a charming mix of anger and jealousy” (Hmmm… That sounds like something SHECKYmagazine would concoct. We simply must look that up.) This year’s celebrity introducer was KITH Dave Foley, who asked the over-capacity crowd to welcome, “the most self-destructive man in show business.”

“The Most Self-Destructive Man In Show Business” and The Male Half of the Staff at the 80s At Midnight Party

It started 10 minutes late. No surprise there. It took him until the 29-min. mark to mention Hitler. No surprise there. What was a surprise? The tone. It was different. It was as close as he has come, in our experience, to a club set. Oh, sure, there were gags about ICM and Jamie Masada and Entertainment Weekly that provoked guttural, cathartic laughter among the folks in The Industry, but there was also reams of accessible material that would go over equally well in Uncle Fucker’s Chuckle Hut (Credit: Dana Gould, circa 1989). And, in spite of Kindler’s savaging of the comedy club business (complete with now-obscure references to Ken Muller, Dave Tribble, Tom Sobel and Brad Greenberg), this year’s address sounded less like a diatribe and more like an audition set.

“Why do real estate people have headshots?”

He told of attending a funeral where the minister asked, “How is everybody today?” When the assembled mumbled feebly in response, the minister countered with, “Oh, c’mon! You can do better than that!” Several punchlines later, he exasperatedly mused, “Does everything have to be high-energy these days?”

He managed to invoke or savage Rene Descartes, Margaret Cho, Joy Behar, Bill Bellamy, Zach Braff, Sanjay Gupta and Norman Greenbaum. And he found new ways to hammer perennial targets like Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Arliss and Lorne Michaels.

He was particularly sharp in mocking Last Comic Standing.

“They describe Ant as a ‘celebrity talent scout.’ Two of those words do not belong.”

“Ant is the only person who might be more unnecessarily gay than Bob Read.”

“Last Comic Standing makes American Idol look The Kennedy Center Honors.”

This year, the Fest insisted that Kindler host a new show on Saturday evening with the title, “State of the Fest.” Kindler worried that it might cause confusion. In fact, he said that he’d been approached on more than one occasion by folks who were confused by the show, who thought that his SOTIA was now scheduled for Midnight on Saturday.

And, as in past years, Kindler hosted the Alternative Show Friday night at the Cabaret Juste Pour Rire featuring God’s Pottery, Sean Cullen, Eugene Mirman, Zach Galafianakis, Glenn Wool and Sean Lecomber.

Murray of Stuckey & Murray (l) and Stuckey of Stuckey & Murray at the 80s At Midnight Party

Throbbing three floors above that very showcase was the 80s At Midnight party, sponsored by the Festival Just For Laughs and MySpace.com. We eventually made our way to that blast after taking in two earlier shows– Short Bytes Cinema at Monument National and Jim Jeffries’ one-man show, “The Second Coming” at Theatre Ste. Catherine.

Short Bytes is billed as “some of the funniest short films made for the web,” so you can understand why we might be interested. (We just “released” our second short film, so we were curious to see what passes for the state of the art, short-film-wise.)

We were horrified.

First, the good– The show was hosted by Stuckey & Murray, a funny guitar duo who capably handled the emceeing duties and got the show off to a rousing start. And the KickedInTheNuts.com presentation by The Family Guy‘s Mike Henry (he writes, voices and produces for the show) was amusing and Henry himself was charming.

Left to right: Al Madrigal, Kara Baker (Avalon Mgmt.), Matt Braunger and New Facer Sheng Wang at the 80s At Midnight Party

But the shorts presented by the folks from Heavy.com were mystifying. They stressed that the movies they pump through their wildly successful site– some animated, some live action– were targeted to 18-39 year old men, but to us, it appeared that they were aiming at 11-15 year old boys. Each short was loaded up with all the hallmarks of inorganic “viral videos”– irony, violence, celebrity, parody– but curiously missing was any trace of genuine humor. There was plenty of irony, but what good is irony when there’s no yuks? If this is the future of web videos, it is a bleak future indeed. Fortunately, the WWW is a vast, nearly limitless expanse where the zero-sum math no longer applies. So, soulless dreck like that offered via sites like Heavy.com can’t “crowd out” truly clever and honestly funny creations if and when they’re generated.

We strolled from the Monument National to the Theatre Ste. Catherine with J.P. Buck from HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. We arrived just in time to stake out some standing room in the balcony for the sold out Jim Jeffries set. Jeffries is funny, likeable, and confident– eliciting hoots from topics that range from filthy to deadly to profane. A minor quibble: We were always under the impression that a one-man show or a flying solo show (or whatever they call them these days) was separate and distinct from a 50-minute club set because it was produced and stage-managed and fussed over and tarted up with lights and sounds and props or stage direction, etc. Or at the very least, it had a theme that every inch of material reinforced. To be honest, we were surprised that “The Second Coming” had no geegaws or knickknacks– it was Jeffries, a stool, a chair and a stage.

Matt Harawitz (l) and Jo Koy at the 80s At Midnight Party

Up the road a piece, was New Faces at Kola Note. In all the retrospective pieces that have been cranked out on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of JFL, they note that New Faces premiered in 1996 and that it was “a showcase for unsigned talent.” We weren’t here in 1996, so it may well have been true. But it certainly isn’t true this year (and, to our recollection, hasn’t been true since 1999). Of this year’s crop of 16, only three seem to be without representation. Everyone else has the muscle and might of ICM or Gersh or Levity or Brillstein or 3Arts or what have you. We’ve heard the sentiment expressed on more than one occasion that it was pointless for a manager or agent to attend the New Faces shows, as everyone was already signed, sealed and delivered.

How difficult would it be to find 16 people who are truly unsigned? We daresay we could do so. (Hell, The Male Half and the Female Half are unsigned! There’s two right there… one-eighth of the way to the goal already!) It is not an impossible feat to find 16 (or 32… or 48!) unsigned comedians in North America, the U.K. and Australia who could “bring it,” (as Ant is so fond of saying!) in a New Faces showcase. And– BONUS!– audience members wouldn’t be paying 25 smackers to see comedians who’ve been in the game for only two or three years. No sir– it would be possible to stock a New Faces show with comics who average ten years behind the mike. We hasten to add that this diatribe is delivered with no help from The Green Monster– no “charming mix of anger and jealousy” here! We’re just observing.

There’s a quote in the HR from Greg Giraldo on his New Faces experience that is fascinating.

Giraldo, by his own admission, was fairly green to the circuit when he hit big at JFL at “the tail end of the ridiculous trend of giving young standups deals based on six minutes. That’s literally what happened. It took me from being an inexperienced, unknown comedian to an inexperienced, unknown comedian with a development deal.”

We hate to sound like a broken record (or, for the folks in New Faces, we hate to sound like a scratched CD… uh, make that, we hate to sound like a corrupted mp3 file), but we hear the same stuff year after year. We’re just sayin’ is all.

Left to right: The Female Half of the Staff and Talia Raine (Business Johnson) and Casper Frank (Business Johnson) at the 80s At Midnight Party (Editors note: In a previous posting, we mis-identifed Casner Frank as “Frank Casner!” We apologize for the error! And we attribute the mistake to the fact that, since we arrived in town, we know of at least three laminate goofups– two of which were ours! When we saw “Casner Frank,” we naturally assumed that this was yet another! Paul Ash has a laminate that reads “Ash Paul.” He shall forever be known to us as “Ash Paul!”)

We headed up the hill to the 80s At Midnight Party, arriving just after midnight (comics are noted for their timing!) and found throbbing music (from the 80s, of course!), a disco-era light show and plenty of gals in leg warmers slinging trays of hot smoked meat sandwiches and curried chicken on a stick! An hour or so later, the crowd had arrived and an 80s cover band was delighting all in attendance with a show that included costume changes! How utterly Vegas– we don’t mean that in a bad way. Rick James, Prince, Dead or Alive, DeeLite– no act too big or too small for this ensemble. What is it about 80s music that makes people ecstatic? Techno tends to put folks in a sour mood or it makes them hypersexed. 80s tunes makes them giggle and shout and hop up and down. Which would you rather have?

Sitting and relaxing at a party like this one is a luxury that only early-arrivers can enjoy. When the midnight shows empty out and the second large wave of attendees starts deploying from the giant freight elevators, the joint is SRO. And on this evening, it was blessedly transvestite-free! Not a hint of faux-hip, Euro-culture shorthand– no ripped, shirtless men wearing only tight satin pants and a bowtie; no fishnet stockinged “ladies” with prominent Adam’s apples; no Cirque du Soleil lite acrobats or mime-esque drink servers. Just catchy pop tunes, giant balloons and plenty of free liquor and edibles.

Final note today: The Female Half is no longer obligated to take extra special care of herself in anticipation of her impending surgery– we received word that her surgery has been rescheduled because her surgeon is scheduled for surgery herself! We hope that the surgeon’s surgery is not on her hands or on her eyes!