A sharp-eyed reader sent us the link to the Chicago Trib’s rundown of the roster for the inaugural Just For Laughs fest in the Windy City. Click through the slide show and the third face you see is that of Andy Dick.

The photo that the Trib chose to use the pic from the Murietta (CA) police department– it’s the photo from when he was charged with four misdemeanor counts of battery, public intoxication, possession of Xanax without a prescription and possession of marijuana in connection with his July 16 arrest. Complete with the orange jumpsuit.

A Google image search using “Andy Dick” returned 59,000 images… of course, there are duplicates, but you get our point– did they hafta use that one?

Is it a case of the media taking yet another dig at standup comics, as our emailer speculated? Or is it just the Trib editor trying to make a joke?

We’re of the opinion that it’s neither.

It has become a given in show business that you don’t primarily hire Andy Dick for a personal appearance because he’ll deliver a spectacular performance and wow the ticket-buying public as much as you hire him hoping that he’ll get caught by the cops whizzing in an alley at 5 AM or he’ll drape his penis around his wrist while on stage or he’ll narrowly escape being booked on felony sexual battery. And the ensuing ocean of ink will benefit your venue (or your festival) long after Dick’s been sentenced or has completed a diversion program of some sort or he gets out of rehab.

Is it a cynical exploitation of Dick’s obvious inability to play well with others? “Not exactly known for being a upstanding citizen, Andy Dick never fails to deliver on the surprises,” reads the copy under Dick’s glassy-eyed, grinning visage. The Trib is in on the gag. They probably thought they were being witty in choosing the pic that they did. No one can blame them. The Fest is in on the gag, too.

Show business has no shortage of tales like this one: Bring in the “mercurial” figure who will dance on the table, shoot up the hotel room with a Colt .45 and kiss all the girls…. We just hope he doesn’t die while he’s on our dime. The first few who book him aren’t so much to blame, but the ones who do so while he’s in the in the throes of drug or alcohol addiction or true madness are seeking the spectacle as much as the celebrity.

But, in this case, it might be in poor taste to run the arraignment photo. If we are to believe what we read, Dick might actually have it together finally. Leslie Savage, writing for Entertainment Weekly in February, reviews Rehab House:

Mr. Dick has had his fair share of addictions, but his current drug of choice is Rolling Rock beer (I know– what is he, a freshman in high school?). Everyone knows Mr. Dick as being, well, true to his name. But in Sober House, you see a whole new side of him, and it’s a bit disconcerting. You may actually find yourself empathizing — and dare I say liking him? He’s vulnerable, he’s sincere, and he’s truly ready to get his act together for the sake of his 20-year-old son, whom he lives with. Which begs the question: Could this possibly be the best career choice Andy Dick has ever made?

Which Dick will show up? The excitement is killing Chicagoans, no doubt.

Perhaps the folks at the Trib didn’t know that Dick made yet another attempt at rehab. We wish him the best. He’s a funny guy and his short-lived show was hilarious. And he might be a great standup comic… who gets booked for funny stuff, done onstage.

Readers may recall that last Thursday, we posted with great pride and amusement that The Male Half was listed among “Notable Deadpan Comedians” in the Wikipedia entry on the topic of “Deadpan.”

In the interim, some vengeful, hate-filled loser/cocksucker has excised The Male Half’s name from the list.

How creepy is that?

We are having trouble with search engines. Some sort of “badware” is on our internet service provider’s server. There’s no harm to you, of course, but it is wreaking havoc with our readers’ ability to search through our archives.

We have temporarily taken down the Google SearchSite toolbar at top of the center of our center column. Once the problem is solved, we’ll put it back up.

In the meantime, if you’re searching for something on our site, we urge all to consider using Google or any of the other popular search engines– But, you’ll succeed in getting to your goal if you click on the “Cached page” link at the bottom of any search results that come up.

We were unaware of the contest that Comedy Central was sponsoring until we saw Tim Slaigle pumping his video via Facebook.

It’s the Open Mic Challenge.

Welcome to the Jokes.com Open Mic Challenge! Are you an aspiring stand-up comedian? Show us your bits for the chance to appear on Comedy Central. Check back every month for a new challenge!

We notice that there’s not a whole lot of comments or views for the videos, even those that have been up for four or five days. This is odd, considering that it’s backed by Comedy Central. Hmmm… are folks growing tired of online video contests? Are comedians hip to the draconian Content Submission Policies? (We clicked on this one and got a “The Page You Are Looking For Cannot Be Found” message. Hmmm… would any video submitted during this timeframe not be subject to the (no doubt) ridiculous and one-sided terms of the normal submission policy?)

Anyway, we’ll check back to see if it gets any momentum. Perhaps the adverts haven’t started running yet.

Or, it’s yet another case of folks trying and failing to shoehorn old conventions into the Web (the L.A. Times capitalizes it). Like producing television “Webisodes” of original content for exclusive exhibition on the Web.

An LAT article, titled “Hollywood hits the stop button on high-profile Web video efforts” by Ben Fritz and Dawn Chmielewski, serves as an obituary and a coroner’s report on the failed effort by several large entertainment entities (and several smaller “investors”) to create successful “online comedy initiatives,” or OCIs, in the lingo of that sub-genre of the entertainment industry.

Nearly all have failed. Some still struggle on.

The number of studios bankrolling Web videos has shrunk significantly, however. As a result, many who continue to believe in the promise of Web video are coalescing around new ideas such as integrating sponsors into projects ahead of production.

“There are fewer buyers now, so increasingly that conversation involves working backward from what a brand needs, rather than financing a Web video in complete isolation,” said Jordan Levin, chief executive of production company Generate, which specializes in digital content.

Ah… So… You’re going to make… long-form… commercials? The kids will eat that right up. (The same kids, we are constantly reminded, who do not like “slick” or scripted comedy. The same savvy kids who can smell the stench a sales pitch from a mile away? Oh, this is going to be big!)

Full disclosure: We dodged this bullet when, back a couple years ago, we were considered for the position of running Super Deluxe, Turner’s failed OCI. We suspect we were turned down because we asked for too much money. Turns out, our suspicions were probably dead-on:

With the search for a sustainable business model ongoing, many wonder how long talented people will continue to work for peanuts and the promise of rewards somewhere over the rainbow.

Los Angeles-based Big Fantastic, a group of filmmakers, has produced six series over the last two years for various Web production companies. Still, writer and director Chris Hempel admits they’re waiting for their big reward.

But money is probably less of a problem than the folks who are behind these ventures who just plain old don’t understand the medium. They may understand television or movies or talent management, but they don’t “get” the Web.

An awful lot of what we see on the WWW is merely an attempt by some folks with deep pockets to bend the WWW to their will. To make it do what the other media have done– Instead of episodes, we’ll call them “webisodes,” and it’ll be just like TV! But we’ll make it do what we want on a somewhat different scale, with different ways of generating revenue!

But along the way, they make fundamental errors. Like not letting others embed your content. Or attempting to make your product look just like television, when that medium is actually sliding in popularity. Or trying to “manufacture” videos that are “viral.” Or plucking someone from obscurity (someone who has created videos on a shoestring that have garnered millions of hits) and setting them up with larger budgets on the assumption that the larger budget will automatically mean that many more hits.

In our Montreal updates from 2000, we marveled at how many new, online ventures there were. (We called them dot-coms back then, remember?) And we saw them as dripping with opportunity:

The back page of the HRSCI was purchased by Laugh.com. Half of the lobby is dominated by comedyworld.com’s “cybercast” corral and banners hang overhead touting thefunniest.com and pop.com. The folks at humorvision.com (a division of fastband.com) purchased a quarter-pager and playboy.com has dispatched a representative or two. And, of course, SHECKY! (sheckymagazine.com) is present in the form of editors Brian McKim and Traci Skene. There is an explosion of dot-commers here at the festival this year. Much more so than last year. And there are many more business cards with email addresses.

What does all this mean? We overheard one comedian, when the plethora of dot-commers was brought to her attention, say that there were “too many dot-coms” here at the Festival. What the hell does that mean? There can never be too many movie production companies around. There can never be too many talent agents milling about. There can never be too many network executives present. How ever can there be too many dot-coms? The internet represents opportunity for comics. Can we all agree that there can never be too many opportunities? Although SHECKY! might be a dot-com, we are proud of our sub-motto: “We’re not making any money, but we’re not losing any, either!” (Apparently that’s something that many of the dot-comsters cannot claim!)

And we were correct: Within a year or so, many or all of the dot-coms we mentioned were tax write-offs, investment black holes, smoldering wrecks. Some claim they were victims of the bursting of the dot-com bubble. But it wasn’t that investment dried up, it was their model that doomed them. Some tried to make the internet into a movie studio or a distributor. Others tried to make their domain into a radio studio. Others into portals or clearinghouses. None survived.

There is a certain irony here. Way back when, folks were up in arms and ready to write their congressman to pass laws to protect the WWW– “If we don’t do something now, the Web will be dominated by Time-Warner! And General Electric! And Rupert Murdoch! And Starbucks! And Archer Daniels Midland! And high-fructose corn syrup!” Little did they know that the WWW needed no defending– it’s big and sprawling and wild and untameable, we would tell anyone who’d listen. The “newshole” is infinitely large, the network is “scalable,” it reaches hundreds of millions. And that is what attracts Hollywood to it… and that is what also confounds Hollywood when it tries to make it do tricks.

We heard from FOS Jason Pollock that Jake Johannsen was in town, just across the river at Helium.

This set off a fortunate chain of events.

Before that, we heard that Lord Carrett and Nick Cobb were headed down the NJTPKE to do a private party in Center City Philadelphia.

And Pollock told us that he was headed over the bridge Friday night to catch the MST3K live show at the Trocadero (featuring Joel Hodgson, Frank Conniff and the whole gang), and that afterward, he was intent on heading across town to catch Johannsen’s second show. And The Male Half had a gig (at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Bucks County) on Friday night as well.

That’s Lord Carrett and Jake Johannsen in the green room at Helium Friday night.

So… we all converged on Helium at about the same time, just before the second show of the evening, where we also encountered local comedian John Kensil, emcee/opener for the weekend Vince Patterson, the weekend’s feature (and Wednesday evening’s Helium headliner) Bernadette Pauley and local (transplant from Cincinnati) comedian Geoff Tate. We were soon joined by the aforementioned Pollock, Carrett and Cobb.

It was a regular comedy party, a mini-fest. A rarity in these parts, and a delight to participate in. Introductions all around, met a few people we hadn’t met before, caught up with a couple we hadn’t seen in a while. The sort of thing we imagine goes on in NYC all the time, but something that happens in Philly on an irregular basis.

That’s Bernadette Pauley talking to John Kensil while Nick Cobb: A. snoozes… or B. is listening to the conversation and thoroughly disgusted… or C. is merely the victim of a bad photograph? The answer is “C.” We found Nick to be a splendid individual– energetic and slow to disgust.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether Best Week Ever is gone for good. The blogosphere is reporting, in one or two places, that it’s gone. But VH-1 is saying it’s gone until January 2010 but even they’re not sure. But Tompkins himself, via his Twitter account, is saying:

Thanks to everyone who stayed with Best Week Ever with me as the host. Please watch tomorrow night. I am not taking questions. Thank you.

and

And, in the absence of any word to the contrary from VH1, it’s safe to assume the very last Best Week Ever with Paul F. Tompkins.

And, for pure, Tompkins-hating bile (complete with Tompkins’ name spelled wrong), check out TheInsider’s re-run of a hacktastic blog’s rundown of the entire matter:

Admit it, you’ve seen the show go off the deep end once they took away every funny comic and left us with the creepy and strangely hairy Paul. You probably even stopped watching entirely because every joke he delivered was as bad as his wardrobe choices.

Ouch! Bonus: TheInsider carried the misspelling over to their re-run! Complete with a graphic that spells his name correctly! (Knowing Tompkins, that probably pissed him off more than any cracks about his relative hairiness!)

Flint, MI, comedian/radio host Rusty Thomas hipped us to the Wikipedia entry on the term “Deadpan,” because there at the bottom, under the heading of “Notable Deadpan Comedians,” is none other than “Brian McKim, American stand-up comedian and writer.”

Listed first, no less!

Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or facial expression, usually speaking in a monotonous manner.

Etymology

The term “deadpan” first emerged as an adjective or adverb in the 1920s, as a compound word combining “dead” and “pan” (a slang term for the face). It was first recorded as a noun in Vanity Fair in 1927; a dead pan was thus ‘a face or facial expression displaying no emotion, animation, or humor’. The verb deadpan ‘to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan’ rose in the early 40s, it stems from journalism rather than theatre. Today its use is especially common in humor from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It is also very much appreciated in France, South Africa and Finland.

We love the fact that, among those countries where deadpan “is especially common in humor,” the United States of America is not listed… which might explain why The Male Half is working only Friday (and not Saturday) this weekend.

We’re thrilled that, further down the list, is Todd Barry, Mitch Hedberg, Bob Newhart, Steven Wright and Jackie Vernon! Pretty good company!

All these years, The Male Half has had to struggle against the “low energy” rap. This was laid on him by ignorant club owners and clueless bookers. It’s “deadpan,” you morons!

Sean L. McCarthy‘s Comic’s Comic blog reports it here that Michael Roof, the comic popularly known as “Chicken,” has died. Buzz is that Roof took his own life.

We recall that Roof made quite a splash (literally and figuratively) at the 1999 (?) Just For Laughs Festival, signing a development deal at the fest after taking a dip in the fountain on the Terasse de la Jardin at the Delta Hotel during one of the parties held there.

“Preparation, confidence and creativity can give you an edge in effectiveness,” is the theme of a book aimed at CEOs, written by Roger Edward Jones, called “What Can Chief Executives Learn From Stand-Up Comedians?”

Jones doesn’t strike you as someone with a comedic streak. His book’s title, What Can Chief Executives Learn From Stand-Up Comedians? is not exactly a thigh-slapper. But he’s got street cred. He was on the train back to his office two years ago after leading a coaching session when the thought struck him that he needed to follow his own advice and move out of his own comfort zone.

He spent the next couple of months going to live comedy gigs and studying comedians like Bill Hicks on YouTube before signing up to do a live stand-up performance himself at a local comedy club. To make sure he didn’t back out, he invited 30 of his corporate clients. They all came.

We’re available for any CEO retreats, seminars or refreshers. We would welcome the chance to put some execs up on the stage and whip them into comedy shape.

We have one question: If chief executives can learn so much from standup comics, why aren’t more comics CEOs? (We suppose they are– they’re chief executive officers of their own corporations.)

We finally got around to watching the John Landis documentary “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project.”

We urge all to watch it, even if you’ve seen it already.

It’s the kind of movie that makes one happy to be in the entertainment business.

And we figure that if every comic in America watches it between now and Friday, the shows in each and every comedy club and college and country club and private function will be that much better because the comedian mounting the stage will feel as though he’s part of something vast and timeless and special.

It’s on Hulu.com and it’s free. Fire up the web browser, pop the popcorn, and click here.

Here’s the last graf from Dee’s UK Guardian review of Comedy 104 (from Topeka, KS, via the internet):

You’d be hard pressed to find a radio format less conducive to carrying on with your normal life to than a relentless attack of standup comedians. It doesn’t work with writing (well, typing), it doesn’t work with washing-up or gardening. In fact, the only thing listening to standup comedy works with is drinking. The laughter and cackling of a room full of drunks in some 80s New York club is an odd juxtaposition when you’re listening in daylight, going about your everyday crap – it’s like a little window into some hellish universe where people have got nothing better to do with their time than lounge around all night laughing their crazy heads off like it’s the first time they’ve ever heard a grown man say the word “cock”. I’m going to have to spend the whole of tomorrow with Classic FM to cleanse my soul.

Not so sure it’s a good review. It’s like sending a vegan to review a steakhouse.

Tom Rhodes is making travel videos again. We were first aware of his “Tom Rhodes Rhode Scholar” travelogues a while back when we saw his brief account of a trip to Arizona.

His latest is a tour of Rome.

While it lacks the production values of his previous videos of Dublin, Dayton, Paris, Berlin and a few dozen others, it’s still interesting and it’s a good dose of raw Rhodes as he acts as a wiseguy tourguide (a wiseguide?) through the ancient Italian capital.

Hop onto his Kingofhaha Youtube channel and check them all out.

The “computational knowledge engine” known as Wolfram Alpha has made quite a splash among eggheads the past few weeks. (We saw a couple online articles a few weeks back when it was launched and we heard an interview with the creator, Stephen Wolfram on a computer show on KFI in Los Angeles during a May 16 drive through the Mojave.)

It’s a fancy search engine and it’s being hailed as the next big thing. That’s right, it’s a thing… and it’s big. It’s supposed to out-Google Google by a factor of… a googol.

Anyway, we got a URL dropped into our inbox by FOS Aaron Ward (who, by this time, might be considered some sort of contributing editor) that linked to a page on Gizmodo that was titled, “Wolfram Alpha is actually a frustrated standup comedian.” The page contains a dozen or so examples of screen shots that resulted from some wiseguys out there trying to elicit wacky responses from the much ballyhooed search engine. Some of the responses are odd, some are funny.

Actually we concluded, after reading a few of the responses, that W-A isn’t so much a frustrated comic as much as he/it is merely subject to an extraordinary amount of… heckling.

That’s pretty much what the back-and-forth on Gizmodo reminds us of. “Audience members” throwing anything it can at the overly-hyped, bubble-brained know-it-all application, trying to get a laugh at its expense.

It also reminds us of how Mark Twain or other of his contemporaries might have felt when they brought their “act” to less sophisticated backwater venues in the days before radio, when the lecture circuit was one way of bringing the message to the masses. We have no doubt that Twain and others might have been besieged with a fair amount of taunts and wisecracks in an attempt to rattle.

In most cases, it seems, Wolfram Alpha did just fine. And we don’t anticipate any backlash from the even-tempered answer-bot.

Yeee-OWCH! But mandatory reading!

Her setup:

Which is worse? Network execs too scared to change a successful formula. Or network execs too willing to turn everything on its head. It’s clear that Conan’s version of NBC’s cash cow The Tonight Show is just more of the same old/same old. And that’s how O’Brien’s longtime exec producer Jeff Ross and boss Jeff Zucker want it. But while they were golfing together this weekend in a foursome at Riviera Country Club (Ross, who just moved out here, is the better player, while Zucker has a 14 handicap and can barely keep up), they both worried how to prevent primetime’s The Jay Leno Show from cannibalizing Conan’s late night show this fall. And my info is that it’s already getting ugly.

Read the rest.

Okay… this is twice in one month that we’ve linked to Nikki Finke and actually agreed with some of what she’s written. (Only remarkable because we’ve called her all sorts of awful names in the past.)

We like her advice. And we especially like this:

Zucker and Silverman keep spinning how NBC is now the Comedy Network. Fine, then make The Jay Leno Show into the Comedy Hour, not the Talking Heads Hour. Yes, Leno is so insecure that he abandoned The Tonight Show’s long and noble tradition under Johnny Carson of spotlighting the kind of raw stand-up talent who went on to become household names: Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Garry Shandling, Drew Carey, Louie Anderson, Steven Wright, Rita Rudner, Gallagher. (Well, everyone but him…) Bring back that segment. Lengthen it. Reassure Jay that this isn’t an audition for his hosting spot in 2012.

Okay, we could do without the gratuitous Gallagher dig, but you get the point.

And we like how she advises the producers of the show to raid the talent of other shows on NBC and its competitors to come in and do skits and appearances and videos for a week at a shot– “These young and old and quirky types will be like swigs of Red Bull for the mainstream audience.” Did she say “old?” Talk about thinking outside the box! This kind of talk could get her killed.

Okay, a lot of what Finke is saying might be total horseshit. It wouldn’t be the first time she “amplified” something to grab unique visitors– its part of what she does. And she is way too hard on Leno (and a bit too effusive in her praise of Don Ohlmeyer). But we have been speculating for some time that Leno dropping into primetime might have a positive effect on standup comics… especially standup comics with a bit of experience. As the majors compete with cable and gaming and the internet, the demo narrows and sharpens into somewhat more… experienced viewers. (Nothing like CBS, though– they’re acknowledged in the industry to be the one net that specializes in old people and their parents.)

So… it oughta be interesting to see how the new show in the new time slot, with the paranoid suits influences the booking policy and the sensibilities of the new show.

(Choose carefully which of Finke’s commenters to read fully… some of them are just atrocious!)

We received a few emails trying to assuage our anxiety over the demise of ABC’s Better Off Ted, one of the funniest sitcoms in a long time. FOS Alan Kaye sends along word that the remaining eight episodes of B.O.T. will air this summer. Warm up the VCR, or the Tivo… or the Happauge HVR 950Q!

A Reuters article says that Japanese government officials hope that standup comedy “will soften the stiff image of bureaucrats.” American bureaucrats are pretty rigid and humorless, can you imagine Japanese drones?

More than 100 transport ministry officials in their 20s got tips this week from professional comedians as part of training in communication skills.

Good luck with that.

The attorney who defended Larry Flynt and Ike Turner died Wednesday after a fall hiking above Machu Picchu. He moonlighted as a comedian.

Kahn began moonlighting as a standup comedian in the mid-’90s. His business card read “Kenny Kahn. World’s Funniest Attorney.”

His comedic explorations began after a brush with death in 1987 when he was stabbed in the chest with an ice pick in a Torrance courtroom by a man he had defended for assault on a police officer.

Isn’t that how we all started?

By the power vested in us as editors and publishers of SHECKYmagazine.com, we hereby declare June to be Drop A Comic Off At The Airport Month!

That’s right: There’s nothing that will endear you to a standup comic more than taking him/her to the airport. He saves money on parking or shuttles or car rental, he sleeps an extra hour or so, he just feels good about the world. And, he will most likely be willing to return the favor when next you are needing a ride to the airport. (Think about it– who has a better schedule for taking a friend to the airport? Provided that there’s no bookings to get in the way, that is.)

Shuttles are a bitch– Some shuttle rides we’ve been on have been real nailbiters– “Are we going to make it? Why is he going that way? Who are these people?!” And the only time we ever took public transportation to the airport, we almost didn’t make the flight– we ended up banging on the door of the jet at the end of the jetway! (You couldn’t get away with that these days, no sir!) And Philadelphia International (perhaps the least customer-friendly airport in the country) has just jacked up their long-term parking rate to $11 a day! Pirates! Sometimes, we get a decent one-way rate between our local Budget Rental office and the airport, but other times, for reasons having to do with yield management or fleet management or the vagaries of the Budget computer system, the rate is unrealistically high.

So, this month, drop a comic off at the airport! (We’re talking to comics, too, not just civilians!)

And next month we will declare July to be Pick Up A Comic At The Airport Month!

Well, you better. And if you don’t, had better apply yesterday. The government reports that:

As of (Sunday May 31, 2009 ), we are processing requests for expedited service, that include overnight delivery to and from the Passport Agency, about 2-3 weeks door-to-door*.

Routine service is taking 4-6 weeks, so that’s pretty much a no-go for someone hoping to go to the fest. (Of course, you could try, but it will be a nail-biter.)

Go to the State Department’s site and follow the directions. Good luck!

The Female Half was discussing, via email, the recent beefcake pic of Dane Cook (See below) with FOS Lisa Corrao, a Florida-based comedian.

Corrao said, “I hope Dane doesn’t make pubic hair photo shoots as trendy for comics as he made MySpace.”

The next morning, Corrao sent along the link to a rather disconcerting photo of Carrot Top (See below), saying, “It’s important to trace back the history of comics with peeking pube photos. Only the ultra-famous ones are doing it, so it must be part of the recipe for success.”

The Female Half countered that, since both Carrot Top and Dane Cook seem to have incurred the wrath of their fellow comics, does that mean that there’s a pube-exposing pic of Larry The Cable Guy out there?

This morning, The Female Half’s inbox contained the photo below with the note from Corrao, “Okay, in a roundabout way, you asked for this.”

Please, do not send us any photos of Carlos Mencia— real or Photoshopped.

The author of the article, a six-page profile of Zach Galifianakis, is John Wray.

Here, he downshifts into the first turn of the piece with this tired bit:

Perhaps more than anyone else in the business, Galifianakis embodies the rebellion against the outmoded Comedy Club circuit– the exposed brick, the two-drink minimum, the indifferent audience, the “regular guy with an attitude” routine– which has come to be labeled the “indie comedy” movement.

In this, his setup paragraph, Wray inserts the obligatory dissing of the “outmoded Comedy Club circuit.” It’s something we’ve come to expect from the hackiest of newspaper reporters. It’s now in the Paper of Record.

And it fits the modus operandi of nearly all those who attempt to write about the alt or indie “movement” or “revolution”– it tears down in order to build up. It paints the comedy club as a dreary place, each one just like the other, each packed with patrons who are variously drunk, hostile or, in this most recent example, indifferent.

Trouble with that characterization is that it’s not true. It may well be a somewhat accurate description of a bad, poorly-run comedy club. But it more accurately describes a bad one-nighter. And the distinction is worth pointing out. Good, capable comics– indie, alt or otherwise– eventually stop doing such dates. It’s partially a matter of economics, but it’s also to preserve sanity and self-respect– and to eliminate some of the more egregious barriers to the continuous honing of the art and the craft of standup. So one of the main badges of honor among the alt/indie crowd– that they absolutely had to seek out venues other than Comedy Clubs — is actually somewhat misleading.

We’ve seen Galifianakis– he’s funny, he’s clever, he writes great material and he possesses a certain playfulness and unpredictability that would go over very well in almost any venue. Including those of the outmoded comedy club circuit.

The same is true for (alt saint) Patton Oswalt and others in their cohort. When we hear their lamentations that they had to seek out venues that were more accommodating, more hospitable, we are unmoved. It’s something we all (or most of us) do to a certain extent. And when, on their way out the door, they heap scorn on the clubs and the audiences that we find to be perfectly acceptable, we take issue.

And when we see their willing accomplices in the MSM swallowing whole their version of events, we are doubly frustrated. It’s all so unnecessary.

This quote, from Galifianakis, is particularly egregious.

If you’re going on right after a guy with suspenders and a skinny, 1980’s-style comedy tie, who’s been striking crazy poses– doing the same type of material that worked in 1991– there’s no space for trying unconventional stuff.

To which we reply, when you’re painting a picture of a comedy club using clichés that were dated twenty years ago, you had better get some new material.

Doubly ironic is that Wray, when laying the foundation for Galifianikis’ hagiography, cites Steven Wright and Andy Kaufman, a valid comparison and one which we’re certain Galifianakis wouldn’t quarrel with and neither would we. But those two comics were at their most influential more than two decades ago. Wray also says that Galifianakis incorporates slapstick and “solemnly tacky musical interludes” into his act. Perhaps he should have cited Victor Borge, Ernie Kovacs, Ed Wynn and Steve Allen as influences.

Our point is that Galifianakis, despite his contempt for comics “doing the same type of material that worked in 1991,” is doing the type of material that worked in 1991… and worked in 1981… and worked in 1951. And, if we were to be hyper-catty and youth-oriented and cyber-savvy about it, he’s using “flip-board messages,” so he’s using material that worked in 2001. (See here.)

Comedians, more so than almost any type of performing artist, are adaptable, pragmatic. And they have a blank canvas to work with. We’re fortunate in that we can do anything we want to get a laugh. We can do several things at once, we can do two different things, we can narrow it down to just one thing and do that one thing very well. As long as it makes a roomful of people laugh. Our motto should be: “You do what you can, you do what you want, you do what you have to.”

We’re baffled by the revolutionary label and we’re baffled by the refusal to appreciate “conventional” (or non-revolutionary) comics. We’ve often considered writing a parody of a New York Times article– about ourselves, of course– which is just as fawning and obsequious as this one and which invokes the late masters of the craft and delves into the “psychological subtext” of our acts. It’s easy! Try it at home! Extra points for working in the term “zeitgeist!” Double plus extra points for describing your beard as “an organizing principle for (your) career, a useful dividing line between (your) formative and mature periods.” We maintain that we could write such an article without trashing any of our contemporaries.

Another troubling aspect of this piece (and of nearly every other piece every written on the alt scene) is the dredging up of stereotypes regarding standup comics.

Since the early ’60s, a multitude of clichés have accrued around the professional comic– the drug use, the womanizing, the fits of self-destructive rage, the angry-clown persona– that a few prominent talents, like John Belushi and, more recently, Chris Farley, seemed to embody. But none have been more tenacious than the belief that the gift of comedy is developed, or at least refined, by a traumatic childhood.

Uh… Belushi and Farley weren’t standup comics. (Galifianakis is, primarily, a standup comic, so the distinction is worth making.) We’re puzzled as to why Wray didn’t cite Richard Pryor. Or Lenny Bruce or Jonathan Winters or Freddie Prinz. Or, if he really wanted to make the reference even more pointless and ridiculous, Joe E. Lewis. And we hasten to point out that those examples are all 25 years old or more. Perhaps, in an article about a standup comic that mentions the standard stereotypes, the reason that Belushi and Farley are cited is because there are no recent examples that can be cited.

Odder still is the fact that Galifianakis goes on to say that he had a happy childhood. So, bringing it up in the first place was just for the sake of bringing it up… it must be mandatory. It’s a companion to the opening of the first paragraph, which describes the TriBeCa venue as…

…host to a stand-up comedy show, but you’d never have guessed it from the goings-on backstage. The only people in the modest, disconcertingly spotless greenroom were the opening acts: two smartly dressed, well-spoken, polite comedians in their early 30s, both of whom could have passed for architecture students, or graphic designers, or even grass-roots organizers for the Obama campaign. No entourage was in evidence; marijuana was alluded to, but never actually smoked; gourmet hummus and He’brew ale were partaken of, but only in moderation.[…]

Why, we’ve never been so surprised in our lives! Every green room we’ve ever been to has been a shit mess populated with comics dressed like homeless dudes, smoking dope, drinking Old Milwaukee and eating fried mozzarella sticks! These alt comics, they sure are smart… and they eat healthier! And they insist that the venue stock beer that even has a funny name!

You get the idea.

While hangin out with comedians in Vegas and Los Angeles last two weekends ago, we managed to glean some information about stuff in the biz.

We were hanging out with Tom Cotter in Vegas and he told us that, after he was done with his gig at the Riviera Comedy Club, he was flying to Los Angeles to tape an appearance on a new show produced by Byron Allen that would feature standup comics. How about that? A show featuring standup comics… doing standup!

When we got to Los Angeles (specifically to the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach) we ran into another comic who was preparing for the show– Charles Viracola.

And a comic on the Comedy & Magic shows– Brian Kiley— is also a writer for Conan, so we learned that all but a handful of the Conan staff is making the trek west when the show takes over the 11:30 timeslot on NBC. (We were wondering if there would be some defections, some folks who just couldn’t bear to make the transition from NYC to LA, but it turns out that there weren’t many at all.)

And, although we already posted it in our original C&MC posting it bears repeating: Former HBO exec J.P Buck will take over as the talent coordinator for the new Tonight Show. We hung out with Buck briefly at the JFL fest a couple summers ago and found him to be personable, approachable and an all round swell guy. And we suspect that will not change when he occupies his new position.

And on our flight from Salt Lake to Los Angeles (on our way to Kona last week) was none other than John Henton, one of the last comics to be called over to the panel by Johnny Carson, just before he turned the show over to Jay Leno.

Exhausted from our 20+travel ordeal over a good portion of the last two days, we decided to veg out and watch a rental. In this case, “Paul Blart Mall Cop,” starring Kevin James.

We vowed back in January that we would one day rent the flick. We did.

It was well done. It wasn’t “Citizen Kane,” but then again, some folks aren’t all that convinced that “Citizen Kane” was “Citizen Kane.” To put it another way, it was a ridiculous, fluffy movie that entertained and was worth a buck.

As the Female Half says, “It had plausible implausibility.” It was goofy, but at least it wasn’t stupid. And some folks delivered great performances– Keir O’Donnell, Jayma Mays, Raini Rodriguez, Maya Blart, Shirley Knight, Stephen Rannazzisi, Peter Gerety, Bobby Cannavale.

And it was packed with cameos by standup comics– Jim Meyers, Richie Minervini, Jackie Flynn, Adam Ferrara (actualy a rather beefy role as the head cop) and a most bizarre performance by Gary Valentine. We won’t tell you which one he was, we’ll let you figure it out.

We’re in McCarran right now… boarding soon for flight to SLC… then home to PHL after a 20-hour ordeal from Kona to home!

In SHECKYmagazine offices on Friday!

We’re in Kona. On the Big Island, posting from the Ali’i Marketplace (free internet!), it’s about 82 degrees with low humidity and it’s sunny and it’s… Hawaii!

We’re at the Royal Kona where internet access is expensive and spotty… plus we’re on vacation… so we won’t be posting regularly.

We will now exhort our readers to post anything item that is relevant to standup comics and standup fans in the comments section of this post. It’s what the other bloggers call an “open thread,” we think.

Just be nice, don’t run anything that a nasty or “actionable” (as our lawyer friends say) and everyone will get along just fine.

We’ll be back soon.

Aloha and mahalo!

It was splendid– soldout room at the Suncoast. A good number of the attendees were intimately familiar with Shecky from his years of living in and dominating Vegas– people in the biz, folks who lived/still live in Vegas. The rest were familiar with him because he was in their living rooms on a regular basis by virtue of his appearances on television. Many had seen him live at nightclubs in their hometowns.
We went to the Will Call window to pick up our tickets. While we were just a few feet from the box office, examining our tickets and trying to determine where we’d be sitting, the man himself strolled by and warmly greeted a gaggle of women and escorted them away (old friends? relatives?). We briely considered collaring him right then and there, but we sensed that this was a sort of a homecoming and that the old pals from Chicago or Vegas took precedence over a couple of whacky kids with an internet magazine.

We grabbed a couple of Maker’s Marks and found our seats in the showroom.
Shecky was backed by a three-piece band (standup bass, piano and drums). With an offstage mike, he did his own intro, then strolled out onto the stage to a warm reception. Attired in a suit and tie (of course!), he was in fine voice and exhibited lots of energy. And his first joke was… topical! Who goes to see an 83-year-old comic and expects to see topical material? The set was tremendous– a stream-of-consciousness combination of reminscences, songs, impressions, story-telling, Yiddish, dialects, messing with the boys in the band and messing with the audience. He would leave a story at one point if it intersected with another (or if he happened to deem a second third or fourth story more worth pursuing at the moment), sometimes returning to the original thread, sometimes not. A few old jokes were thrown in, too. At times it was old school, at other times, it was contemporary. On one occasion he did an impression of Johnny Cash singing “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. (Alternative? Yes! For an 83-year-old comic, certainly.)

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Wayne Newton, Juliet Prowse, Sammy Davis, Jr.– all were invoked during his set. He elicited audience reactions at the mention of the Copacabana, the Latin Casino, his hometown of Chicago, the Riviera, the Sands, Dallas, TX, Palm Springs and Cicero, IL.

What was truly amazing is that, at one point or another, he used just about every device known to comedy to elicit a laugh– song parody, impression, singing impression, crowd work, street joke, setup/punchline, physical humor (dancing, funny walks, etc.), self-deprecation– and it all worked together seamlessly. He drew the audience in and held them for just over an hour.

Marty Allen and Shecky Greene at the party backstage.

And in the audience for this, his last show of the three-show engagement (his first gig in Vegas in ten years!), were a few other entertainers paying their respects– David Brenner, Rich Little, Cork Procter, Fielding West, Nelson Sardelli, Marty Allen, Johnny “The Great Tomsoni” Thompson. At about the hour mark, he pulled nearly all of them onstage to do a little time. Each performer also paid tribute to Greene. It was like a roast without the x-rated barbs.

Fielding West, The Female Half, The Male Half

At one point he repeated a joke. Trust us, it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he turned 83 years old on the 8th of April. He blamed it on the fact that he did a 20-minute set earlier in the day at a benefit show for Italian earthquake victims. We howled when he acknowledged it– as did the audience– and we also related to his explanation. And he conspired with the band to “recover” from the gaffe by doing a song. (We could relate– as he said to the crowd, and we paraphrase, “Sometimes, when you do two sets you can’t recall if what you’re doing now is what you did earlier!” Been there, done that! Especially on the rare three-show night!) We should all be so lucky to have the energy and vitality to do two shows on a Sunday at the age of 83!

He ended on a song and he received a spontaneous and obviously heartfelt standing ovation. We gotta figure that all three shows this weekend got a standing O. It was obvious that the booking was a rousing success and we suspect that, if he is so inclined, he’ll be back to Vegas again soon.

For some time after the show, a large knot of fans gathered at the doors just off the showroom to snap pictures with Greene. The atmosphere was like a reunion, a celebration. (Someone brought along a smashing photo of Shecky in high school, posing with his basketball team!) It reminded us of the time Shelley Berman performed at the Chicago Comedy Festival back in about 2001 or so– his first performance in his hometown in forever– that show, too, was attended by an army of old neighborhood friends, schoolmates, relatives and entertainment associates. A small backstage party gathered beyond the doors.

It obviously meant a lot to Shecky Greene. We were thrilled to be a small part of it.

David Brenner, far left, leaving the party backstage.

The Male Half did two shows tonight at the Comedy & Magic Club– Part of the 20 Hot Comics series. There were three total over the weekend and about a 20 per cent difference Saturday over Friday. Performing Friday were Kevin Biggins, Danny Cole, Daniel Tosh, Chris Porter, Brian Kiley, Charlie Viracola, Heath Hyche, Diane Nichols, Chuck Martin, Matt Fulchiron, J. Chris Newberg, Clinton Jackson, Suli McCullough, Megan Mooney, Eddie Gossling, Bruce Fine, Mike Siegel, Jeff Cesario, Kirk Fox and Owen Smith.

Saturday night saw most of the above and Dom Irerra, Dan Greuter, Elon Gold, Michael Loftus, Kermit Apio, B.J. Novak and Dana Daniels.

Owen Smith and Heath Hyche, in the hall, just east of the stage door.

All three shows were packed and all three crowds more than held up their end of the bargain– responding enthusiastically from the first act through the last, unflagging and appreciative.

Jeff Cesario and Brian Kiley patiently waiting their turns.

We exhort any comedy fans who live in SoCal (or are planning a visit to Los Angeles) to set aside one night to attend the Comedy & Magic Club– regardless of the format of the show or who is on the bill. Of course, the 20 Hot Comics Show is our favorite. It’s well over an hour-and-a-half of veteran comics, solid newcomers, road comics, comics famous from starring in television sitcoms, comics who are writers on network talk shows or sitcoms– an appetizer plate, a pupu platter of comedians, none of whom are doing more than five minutes at a time (advertised as “twelve cents per joke” in LA Weekly, but we think their math is off… it might be far less!)– all within the confines of a jewel of a showcase club in a splendid seaside setting.

Tomorrow, we head back across the desert– early– to catch the final show of Shecky Greene’s weekend engagement at the Suncoast in Vegas! We’ll try to get a “grip and grin” pic of the Halves of the Staff with the great one! Stay tuned!

We heard that J.P. Buck (formerly of HBO) has been hired as the talent coordinator for the new Tonight Show incarnation, the one hosted by Conan O’Brien. We had the pleasure of taking in a couple of shows in Montreal at the Just For Laughs festival with Buck back in ’07 (when he was Manager of Talent for HBO’s Aspen Fest). He tells us that he’s excited about the opportunity and we believe him.

Then back to Vegas… then to Hawaii!

That’s Tom Cotter, Arthur Gaus and Vinnie Coppola in front of the ass-laden Crazy Girls poster outside the entrance to the Riviera Comedy Club.

We flew into Vegas Thursday afternoon and, after dining on a classic (underpriced) steak dinner at Terrible’s Casino at Paradise and Flamingo, we swung over to pound down a drink or two and catch the late show at the Riv.

We’re currently in El Segundo– the perfect place to base yourself when performing at the Comedy & Magic Club just down the road. The Male Half is doing the 20 Hot Comics show there on Friday and Saturday.

We were hipped to SoundExchange.com by an email from Rabbi Bob Alper. He’s been played a lot on XM satellite radio. His bits make it onto multiple channels. He never received any compensation.

Then he found out about SoundExchange.com He told us that he downloaded a bunch of forms from their website, filled them out, sent them back in and, a few months later, he got a nice fat check. And it cleared. It’s legit.

So, knowing that our stuff has popped up occasionally on XM over the years, we decided to give it a whirl and, we’ll be damned! It worked. We didn’t anywhere near the check Alper did, but we got one.

Go here and type in your name and it’ll tell you how often you been played recently on XM.

Go here to read about the latest SoundExchange doings.