We’ve been hearing about how Facebook is surging in popularity. How it’s leaving MySpace in the dust and how folks are abandoning MySpace at an alarming rate and there’s wind whistling through the cyber halls of that venerable social networking site.

We weren’t convinced.

Well, if you need any proof that MySpace is over, look no further than MySpace Comedy, the “Official Channel For Comedians On MySpace.”

That’s right– providing support to Featured Comedian Robert Schimmel this week (as one of the “More Comedians,”) is Brian McKim, The Male Half of the Staff!

Are we ungrateful? No, not at all. We’re thrilled, actually. But, we’re feeling very Eeyore-esque around SHECKYmagazine HQ this week.

Pardon us, while we sort through the thicket of New Friend Requests (a total of ten so far!) and deal with the press inquiries!

In a totally unrelated note, did anyone notice the ad in the upper right corner of all the MySpace home pages?

You might be eligible for spelling lessons as well!

It’s a scam-ular enterprise from one Kevin Hoeffler who “went from being broke to completely paying off my debt in 30 days by spending a few minutes filling out a form online that qualified me for a Free $12,000 Financial Aid Check from the US Government.”

This would make him the Matthew Lesko of the new millennium!

Now, if he could only spell… or use some of his new-found cash to hire people who can.

Have you noticed the vote totals on ComedyCentral.com’s Comedy Showdown? They swing wildly. The Female Half was logging on regularly to watch clips and vote for a friend here and there. Some of the contestants would surge. Nothing extraordinary there– a radio appearance, a high-profile shot on a television showcase, maybe a large theater show.

But then she noticed that some of the contestants started to lose votes.

What is up wit dat?

We’re not a big fan of online, interactive polls that determine the winner of this or that. Because we’ve faired poorly on a handful of such competitions? No. Not really. We have, to be sure, been massacred whenever we’ve found ourselves at the mercy of internet voters, but we never actually expected to do well in the first place. So it’s not that.

We just think that, at the very least, when you open things up to interactivity (using the wonders of the WWW!) and you leave it up to the fans and viewers to choose their favorites, you should at least try to create the illusion that the folks on the backend of the website know what they’re doing and there’s no hanky-panky. Elsewise, the folks who vote will think they’re wasting their time. (Oh, certainly, a lot of the core audience have nothing but gobs of time– as they’re not employed or anything, or their trying to avoid studying or, in rare cases, they’re avoiding their boss– but some folks take offense at having their time utterly flushed down the cyber toilet due to some sort of “voter irregularities.”)

And, since they’ve been conducting such cyber-plebiscites for about five years or so (an eternity in internet years!), you would think these people would either have figured out a way to make them totally legit… or refused to conduct such farces in the first place. Surely there has to be a better way of using the website, the internet, this interactivity nonsense in an exciting yet responsible way.

Is the bloom off the interactivity rose? Perhaps.

Or so he tells the NYPost, by way of ContactMusic.com:

I wasn’t always a big guy. Stand-up ruined it for me. I would be sitting at dinner at 2 in the morning after a show, and I wouldn’t wake up until 3 o’clock the next afternoon. That set a pattern that wasn’t great for my metabolism.

James is hitting the bricks to promote his new movie, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” which, judging by the trailer, has plenty of goofy, physical humor and a semblance of a plot. (And his co-star is a Segway!)

We’re not going to see it in the theater, but we might actually get it from the Redbox some day. We think James’ work on his series was underrated, underappreciated.

We’re at a lost to explain any of the hostility out there that’s directed at him. Witness the film geek for the Lancaster (PA) weekly giveaway entertainment rag:

Behold, the thing that $5 DVD bins at Wal-Mart are made of. Kevin James plays a Segway-riding New Jersey mall cop named Paul Blart. Furthermore, he’s an unfunny turd. In a one-month-too-late plot twist, the mall is taken over by a mall Santa and his helpers and it’s up to the ‘stached loser to save the day.

That’s right. He’s an unfunny turd!

We suppose it’s tough to stand out in Lancaster, PA, so being outrageous substitutes for actual analysis and commentary.

Have a peek inside the head of Mikita Brottman, Ph.D, as he explores the mysteries of laughter in a piece he wrote for FilmInFocus.com back in September, entitled “Laughter Is The Worst Medicine.”

…I do enjoy comedies, but I enjoy them quietly. This usually means watching a DVD in the peace and calm of my own home, where I am not disturbed by other people’s laughter. You’ve probably noticed that it’s almost impossible to sit through a blockbuster comedy in a movie theater without being assailed on all fronts by public yelps and hee-haws. In my case, this laughter inevitably draws attention away from the film until I find myself focusing entirely on the laughers around me, like an ornithologist identifying various birds by their song.

He’s the author of a book entitled “Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor.” It appears that it is quite possible to write a book about humor while utterly lacking the ability to laugh or tolerate the sound of your fellow man’s laughter. It’s a peculiar personality disorder.

Doctor Killjoy concludes:

Finally, anyone who thinks I should just lighten up and relax ought to bear in mind that there have been times when for a civilized person to crack up in public would have seemed as rude as public spitting (or smoking) today. In 1774, Lord Chesterfield, a connoisseur of proper social etiquette, advised his son: “loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things… A man of parts and fashion is therefore only seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.”

This cat needs to lighten up and relax– regardless of what Lord Chesterfield said. Or have a drink or three.

We just hope he despises comedy clubs as much as he hates going to a funny movie. He’s the guy who sits in the front row and doesn’t crack a smile the entire show.

H/T to Brothers Judd Blog.

The last thing we want to do is tell a club owner how to conduct his business.

Well, maybe not the last thing. Ask any comedian and he’ll tell you that there are certain things about even the greatest gigs that could be improved– a tweak here or there in the sound system, a better hotel room, seating the patrons closer to the stage, a tad more freedom with regard to the comp policy or a couple degrees higher temperature in the green room. And there isn’t a comedian alive who hasn’t had the occasional owner “suggest” a tweak here or there in a comedian’s act. So each side is guilty of meddling in the other’s business. (But, as we said in the past, who would win this contest: Take a bunch of comics and have them devise a plan to book and run a comedy club, then have a bunch of comedy club owners and have them write one of their own a comedy act. Pencils down, the test is over!)

So, it is with humility and the best intentions that we make any suggestions to the folks who own and or operate America’s comedy clubs on just how they might weather any economic downturn, locally, regionally or nationally.

And, even though we would never dare to tell a comic how to tell a joke, we have, for the past ten years, been pretty free with our opinions regarding the art, the craft and the lifestyle that is standup comedy.

But recently, we’ve been pondering the business end of things. All this pondering of dollars and cents and closings and openings have got us to thinking about the history of the business and how it went all to hell in the first part of the 1990’s. So, we’ve been recommending that comedians do– or refrain from doing– certain things so as to avoid making imprudent decisions and repeating some of the mistakes that might or might not have contributed to The Comedy Bust.

We approached the subject in a general manner last week in a post entitled “If your mother says she loves you check it out.”. In that lengthy post, we talked about the importance of making informed decisions, of not acting on bad information, of not acting out of desperation or fear.

And we also talked about the unreliability of the Mainstream Media. When they write about our business (indeed, any business), they tend to approach the task with a predetermined set of ideas, a notion of just how the story will turn out, a template if you will. Part of this is out of necessity, part of it may come in the form of marching orders from the boss (The Editor!), part of it may be plain laziness or prejudice. Often, the reporter takes a considered, rational approach that results in a thoughtful article. Sometimes, however, he/she doesn’t and the resulting article only serves to muddy the waters. And, due to the small news hole that some publications have to deal with, most articles are necessarily short and therefore they tend to raise more questions than they answer.

We know the folks in the news biz read this website. We know this because, as happened this very morning, we got a phone call from a reporter and we were asked our opinion on matters relating to standup comedy. We try and take this responsibility seriously and we try to give quotes and opinions and anecdotes which, it is hoped, are illuminating, singular and carefully phrased.

In a roundabout way, we’re saying that, in order to thrive and prosper over the next few months, folks from the comedy club side of the business and the performing side of the business might consider sharing what they know– both across the aisle and among their colleagues. And they might consider being as scrupulously honest as they can be. And we might also be just a bit more careful when dealing with the media.

As for this magazine, we want to make “Avoiding The Second Comedy Bust” a regular feature of this blog. We want to post our opinions and the opinions of our readers regarding how best to maintain a cool head, to deal with any economic aberrations.

Our inbox is always open. And the comments feature is useful, too. (But, again, we discourage anonymous comments. It’s a simple matter to register, via Blogger and it only takes a few seconds.)

We were supposed to show up with a headshot this weekend.

We have several beautiful, color headshots printed up on matte finish, photo stock– a few of The Male Half, a few of The Female Half and a handful of the “composites” that show the Halves side-by-side– and they’re in a nice manila envelope… that we left at home.

So… what to do when you’re in Lancaster, PA, and you need a headshot, preferably color, and you don’t want to/can’t possibly return home to fetch one?

Go to Staples.

For $0.49, plus $0.03 tax, they’ll print out a nice, serviceable color 8 X 10, suitable for posting outside the comedy club.

We’ve got wireless here at the hotel, and we had a thumbdrive, and we have downloadable hi-res, color headshots up on the website at all times, so minutes later we were walking out of Staples with an emergency color pic. (We assume that Kinko’s– excuse us… FedEx Office!– would offer the same service for a comparable price. Just don’t try doing it via their online component, unless you have too much hair and you’d like to tear it out in clumps. It’s best to just show up, in person, with the necessary file on a chip or portable media of some kind.)

And we would caution folks to not depend on the hotel wireless. For, although it worked out this time, we recommend having the press kit essentials– headshots, bios, schedule, maybe even a short video– on a thumbdrive dedicated solely to an electronic press kit. Have it with you at all times and you’ll not be dependent on an internet connection. The price of a 1 GB USB thumbdrive has plummeted in recent months– $10, maybe?– so it’s well worth having one.

Color headshots in minutes for a half a buck.

We live in a great world.

That’s the headline of the Hartford Courant article that we were hipped to by FOS Guy MacPherson.

“Now is the time; the economy is so bad that if ever there was a time to laugh, it’s right now,” says John Calash, entertainment director at Joker’s Wild.

Which is just one of the ways of looking at the current live standup comedy resurgence… at least the one in Hartford, CT.

The article contains lots of speculation, some horse manure and a lot of good, specific information on the Hartford market. William Weir, the author of the piece, needed a hook. The burgeoning scene in central Connecticut was it.

Should we take it as confirmation of a bulletproof standup business? Or should we disregard it as a fantasy? Neither. Regard every bit of information in it on its own merits, identify any opinion as just that– opinion– and don’t get caught up in trying to construct a narrative. This whole roller coaster is going to go on for some time, so folks should be leery of orgasmic optimism just as much as Eeyore-like pessimism.

Editors note: Sometimes we’re sloppy. Case in point– we didn’t link to Paul Ogata’s website when we posted this item.

Yes, writes roving correspondent FOS Paul Ogata:

Remember back in the day when it seemed Showtime was really committed to stand-up comedy? They had the Showtime Comedy Club Network, The Comedy Club All-Stars and all kinds of comedy specials. Then what happened? I don’t know.

But they’re back.

On January 18/19, Showtime will be shooting a bunch of programming at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. And I’ll be doing one of the shows! They’re calling it the LOL Comedy Festival.

Among the tapings:
* Hot Tamales Live – a showcase of female comics
* Indian Comedy Slam – Native American comics
* SlantEd Comedy – Asian comics
* Russell Peters Presents – Russell and 4 of his favorites
* Pauly Shore Presents – 4 funny friends of Pauly’s
* Angelo Tsarouchas – his 1-hour special

Guess which show I’m on. SlantEd Comedy tapes on Monday, January 19, at 3:30pm. Wish me luck!

More info at LOLComedyFestival

How much more info could there be? Mr. Ogata has nutshelled it well.

Any time a major cable outlet starts/resumes its affair with standup comedy, we brighten up. Television killed standup? Don’t make us laugh.

Nick Zaino’s BostonComedy blog is reporting that Bob Lazarus has lost his fight with leukemia. “Laz” was diagnosed with the disease in the summer of 2007. As usual, the comics in Boston and surrounding area put on a few benefit shows to help out with the medical bills.

We knew him from having done a bunch of one-nighters with him back in the ’80s and ’90s.

He leaves behind a wife and daughter.

In our May-June 2003 issue, he was the subject of a Question 21. Here’s #10 from that interview:

10. In the “It Occurred Offstage” category, what Bob Lazarus story is most often retold by you or others?

Oh, there’s way too many. I had to consult Bill Braudis on this one and he has yet to give me his favorite, but he told me it would have to involve my driving exploits. So, I’m going to go with the time I was driving up to the white mountains with Paul Kozlowski, back in the days when I still smoked cigarettes. I was smoking a butt, while I was driving, and I went to throw it out the window when I was done. I know that’s littering, which I abhor, but when I smoked, I felt it was dangerous for someone like myelf to look down for a split second to find the ashtray. So, in the spirit of safety, I hurled my butt out the window, and it went out fine, but the head of the cigarette blew back through the window into my ear. And I didn’t know what had happened until I smelled burning flesh, which was my ear. As I screamed out in pain, I started whacking against my head and ear to get the fire out. Paul, meanwhile, was in the passenger seat, and had no idea what was happening, but he saw burning embers coming out of my head. He thought my brain was on fire. But, then, I’m sure that’s happend to most of your readers who smoke.

Services will be held at the Stanetsky Memorial Chapels in Canton, Ma on Tuesday afternoon. We’re sure there’ll be plenty of stories like that above being told early into Wednesday morning.

The Rainbow Room is closing. Right? Wrong.

The Rainbow Grill is closing. So, what’s the difference? Here’s the difference, from Jossip.com:

…High atop the 65th floor of the Rockefeller Center building is the Rainbow Room, the storied restaurant-bar-ballroom that it’s always worth telling NYC’s visitors to stop by instead of the Empire State Building. And now, it is closing.

Well, not exactly.

Don’t get confused: Citing everybody’s excuse for failure– “the economy”– owners the Cipriani family are on Jan. 12 shuttering The Rainbow Grill, the less price-y restaurant on the 65th floor, which sits adjacent to the more formal dinner-and-dancing Rainbow Room, which will remain open. So, too, will the bar area.

Why are we running this item on a blog about standup comedy? To illustrate a few things that are pertinent to the world of standup and those who inhabit it.

1. Many of the members of the MSM– from WNBC to the Associated Press to the New York Daily News– got the story… wrong, sort of. They seem to have deliberately led the public to believe that the storied Rainbow Room is disappearing, when in fact, it is the far less famous Rainbow Grill that is shutting down. It’s an important distinction that many news organizations failed to make clear. One might get the idea that they actually want folks to believe that the larger restaurant is doomed– indeed, the art accompanying many of the stories was a photograph of the Room, not the Grill! They probably think that it makes for a much better story.

2. They seem to be emphasizing the fact that it is “the economy” that is to blame for the restaurant’s demise. The owners of the Grill, the Cipriani’s, insist that’s the reason. A good case could be made that it is indeed hard economic times that is contributing to the failure of the eatery. But many of the stories bury the fact that the landlord is upping the rent from $4 million to $8.7 million. So… on the one hand, we have the owners of the restaurant saying that the poor economy is hurting business. And on the other hand, we have the landlord (Tishman-Speyer) re-appraising the property and charging more than double for the space (and, we suspect, fully expecting to get it). The economy for the Cipriani’s is supposedly bad. The outlook for Tishman-Speyer seems pretty robust. Which is it?

At any given point in time, it is “the economy” that keeps a business thriving. And, at any given point in time, it is that same economy that causes that business to go under.

So using “the economy” as an excuse for the failure of your business tells us absoulutely nothing.

And so we shouldn’t read this story as a portent of things to come.

“The sky is falling,” has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. (Wikipedia)

The same thing goes when we hear that a comedy club has gone under. Over the past 18 months or so, we have heard of at least six comedy clubs closing. Of those six, three of them have re-opened– one in a new location, one in the same location, one in a different venue, with different owners a new name and the same managing partner as the old venue– and a fourth will re-open in the same location, but with new partners.

The remaining two are probably disappeared for good.

At one point or another, we have had people email us about these closings and tell us that it was a sign that the economy (locally or nationally or both) was faltering or that the comedy club business in particular was in bad shape. But, in every case of which we’ve had direct knowledge of the particulars, the reasons for the club’s demise was entirely unrelated to the economy, locally or otherwise.

In one case, personal problems contributed to the closing. In another, illegal activity. In still another it was a change in the venue’s business model that left the club in the cold. And in another case, problems in the parent corporation, problems unrelated to the economy at large, were a factor.

In almost all cases, the venues were thriving.

Of course, this doesn’t stop some people from gathering up the disparate facts and assembling a doomsday case that the comedy club business is heading into a situation reminiscent of 1992, when the first signs of The Great Comedy Bust started to appear. By 1994 or so, the business had bottomed out. It was a husk compared to what it had been in 1989.

Of course, this could be 1992 all over again. But then again, it might not be.

We are counseling people to not panic. We are advising everyone to take each bit of information and regard it carefully and with cool logic. Panic is everyone’s enemy. It makes people make bad decisions. It makes people say dumb shit to the press. It plays into the hands of those in the MSM who have a template for a story and are determined to write it over and over again.

If you stumble across a bit of info, an anecdote, a news story, compare it to your own situation and see if it adds up. If it runs counter to what you know and can verify, discard it or at least regard it with skepticism. In nearly every story on the bad economy (especially in electronic journalism), an interviewee will concur with the reporter’s premise– the economy is bad. Yet, in a surprising number of those items, the interviewee, when questioned about his own circumstances, will say, “Me? I’m doing good. But everybody else is in bad shape…” Of course, he has nothing to base this on, other than the dozens of stories in the media that tells him it is so. And, again, it is counter to his own experience. He nonetheless is convinced that things are bad “out there.” And he makes decisions based not on his own observable experience, but on some vague, gloomy, manufactured story line.

Are we in denial? No. Are we panicking? Certainly not. Are we concerned? Only a moron would not be.

We’ve heard about two more clubs closing in just the past week. Two in one week! Such news makes the heart beat faster, causes the palms to sweat. Or, if we consider what we know and we don’t let our imaginations run wild, we can slow things down a bit and regard the situation calmly.

There’s an email circulating that comes from Mike Diesel, a comedian who, for ten years, booked Wiseacres at the Best Western in Tyson’s Corner, VA, and is now announcing the closing of the club.

I regret to inform everyone in the comedy community that Wiseacres Comedy Club will be no more as of Jan 2009. The owners of the hotel and the club, Ditmar Corporation, felt they wanted to renovate the club and shut it down for Jan and Feb and they think they will re-open in March, but most likely, not as a comedy club.

Diesel closes the email by saying that there “are some other possibilities for me to open another room or rooms in other locations.”

In another instance, we were informed that a room in Ocala, FL, Jokeboy’s, is closing. No reason was given. The club’s website is a dominated by a “Thanks for the laughs” message and, under that, the cryptic “Keep your eyes and ears open” and “The laughs aren’t over yet.” If the club went under due to poor economic conditions in central Florida, one would expect bitterness and resignation, not the optimism displayed here.

So, what at first might appear to be more grist for the doom rumor mill turns out to quite possibly be business as usual. Clubs close all the time. It is too easy, however, within the context of the larger narrative– that the economy is cratering– to take this news as indicative of a horrendous trend. But a bit of research yields information that isolates the events.

We lived through the bust. (We refuse to refer to it as “the first bust.”) And we saw the toll it took on the business and on some of the comics in particular. After the dust settled and the business was somewhat back on track, we talked to many comics and discovered that one of the worst aspects of the downward spiral was that comics felt isolated. They felt that the all the bad stuff was happening to them and to them alone. Further exacerbating the situation was a tendency for comics to indulge in “happy talk.”

whistle past the graveyard

1. (idiomatic, US) To attempt to stay cheerful in a dire situation; To proceed with a task, ignoring an upcoming hazard, hoping for a good outcome.

We suppose we’re proposing a happy medium between whistling past the graveyard and abject terror.

Back in the early ’90s, no one had the Internet or WWW. We got the majority of our information by talking to other comics. Quite often that information was second- or third-hand or was garbled or augmented or distorted in some way. In 2009, there’s not much of an excuse for basing one’s assumptions on third-hand accounts.

We would advise comedians against operating out of fear or desperation. (And, if we may be so bold, we advise club owners in the same way.) Be skeptical of information picked up in a green room. Be doubly skeptical of hasty conclusions.

“Trust but verify.”

–Phrase attributed to Damon Runyon and popularized by President Ronald Reagan

We want to keep the discussion open. We want to keep a handle on what’s going on out there. MySpace, Facebook and SHECKYmagazine could be valuable means to prevent all comics from feeling isolated and detached. We invite everyone to use them responsibly.

From left to right: Eric Lyden, Chris Monte, Alex House, The Female Half, The Male Half (not pictured: Joe Starr)
We trekked to Alex House’s house yesterday to belatedly celebrate the new year and Christmas. Comics in attendance are picture above.

We’ve notice chatter here and there on the internet regarding Kathy Griffin’s outburst on CNN the other night that suggests that some folks are dazzled by her quick wit and inventiveness in using the “I don’t go to where you work and (fill in second half of vulgar/non-vulgar analogy here)” heckler line.

The line is at least a quarter-century old. And it’s probably older than that. We recall comics from NYC and Long Island using it frequently in the early ’80s. We suspect it predates that. The version that Griffin used was the most popular. Clean versions (e.g.: “I don’t go to where you work and slap the mop out of your hands.”) abound.

It never occurred to us to point out just how old the line was. We figure, out of all the websites out there, ours would have a readership that had heard the line at least once and would know instantly that it was ancient. Then a reader named “a” commented on our post and called the retort “hack.” And, of course, we saw the many comments on various sites that applauded Griffin for her creativity.

“a”is quite right. The line is old. And one might think that Griffin would come up with something more creative. However, out of her element (and being harangued by drunken beasts while trying to do a live broadcast), perhaps she felt justified in bringing out the big guns.

We suspect also that Griffin is not accustomed to hecklers.

Excuses? No. Explanation? Maybe.

During the Anderson Cooper’s NYE celebration, co-host Kathy Griffin interrupts The Coop with this screechy tirade:

“Shut UP! You know what, screw YOU! I’m working! Why don’t you get a job, Buddy?! You know what? I don’t go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth!”

She sounds a little drunk, but she is legendary for not drinking. Who would blame her? It was right as they went to commercial, so perhaps the little red light was off. Perhaps it was the warm sleepiness that envelopes those who are succumbing to hypothermia.

SlashFilm says that Dave Attell, Andy Dick, Norm MacDonald and Sarah Silverman. have cameo roles in Judd Apatow’s “Funny People.”

Alex Billington of FirstShowing.net says that the movie “will be the ultimate stand-up comedian movie that may be a new comedy classic.” He/She is over the top in praising the picture. We wish we could be so optimistic. We are optimistic. We enjoyed both of Apatow’s movies. (And we enjoyed “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Superbad” as well.)

But we are not so sure that it will be regarded as a classic.

Sure, it’s got Apatow at the helm. And it’s got Adam Sandler starring. (Sandler can be appealing and likable and his movies often make lots of money. But the critics despise him– unless he’s in a dramatic role and that role happens to be in “Punch-Drunk Love.”) Perhaps the combination of Apatow script and Sandler’s onscreen appeal will make for a picture that has more heft than “Zohan” or “Little Nicky”

And we’ve detected a bit of Apatow fatigue among critics (amateur and pro) even though the man only directed two films. (Okay, he’s produced or written a dozen or so others, but have you ever seen anyone get so irate and crotchety at the producer of films? His wild success has bred an unusual amount of resentment and, in some cases, outright hostility.)

We suppose what we’re getting at is that, if the new movie is in any way a sympathetic portrayal of comedians, we predict it will be universally despised. (And even folks who like it will say they hate it, such is the power of movie critics, in print and on the web and the telly.)

It’s got a lot going for it. But those same elements are also going to work against it.

We’re prepared to be pleasantly surprised– by the movie itself and by the reaction of the public and the critics. But we ain’t holding our breath.

Let’s face it, the bar for a movie about standup comics isn’t set very high.

The Boston Globe is reporting that Darryl McCauley, Dane Cook’s 43-year-old half-brother and business manager, has been charged with embezzling “millions of dollars” from Cook over the past 18 months.

Darryl McCauley, 43, is scheduled to be arraigned this morning in Woburn District Court on charges of larceny, forgery, and larceny by continuous scheme. He was arrested at his Wilmington home yesterday by State Police.

The state attorney general’s office, which investigated the case, would not identify McCauley as Cook’s brother yesterday, only saying that he stole from a national entertainer with local ties.

However, Cook’s friends and state documents identify McCauley as his half-brother and as an official with his company, Great Dane Enterprises, Inc.

What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Having someone steal millions from you? Or having a family member betray you in spectacular fashion? It’s a tossup.

Cook has had both happen to him at the same time.

It is no doubt devastating.

We had some jiggering to do to our Blogger settings. We are now fully operational!

That’s the MS Prinsendam on the left. And that’s our home for eight days on the right. They’re tied up at the dock in Bridgetown, Barbados, on Christmas morning.

We were joined in port by the Thomson Destiny and by the Ocean Dream (seen above, in the rear).

Rare was the port that didn’t host at least two ships. And we suspect that they each contained a comic! And, by golly, wouldn’t that have been fun to rendezvous and hang with a comic or two in an exotic port here or there? But, communications being what they are (and seeing as how some comics aren’t forthcoming when it comes to letting the world know they’re performing on a boat), we never did connect with any comedians in the Caribbean.

Perhaps we should make an effort to provide some sort of clearinghouse/blog for comedians who wish to make known their ports of call and arrange an occasional get-together for a local brew or a shared cab ride to the local beach or rain forest.

Perhaps a MySpace page would do the trick. We welcome any feedback.

Since it was Christmas, the streets of Bridgetown were virtually deserted save for a few folks who straggled out of some local church services and the occasional seafaring tourist seeking out a route to the beach.

The Male Half of the Staff encounters Whoopi Goldberg on deck four of the Serenade of the Seas.

Whoopi Goldberg is the godmother of the Serenade of the Seas. It’s an old tradition– designating someone as the godmother and godfather of a ship at its launch. Royal Caribbean often chooses celebs. The passengers dig it and the press eats it up.

We flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, last Friday, then boarded the behemoth on Saturday morning. Over the next week, we hit St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua, St. Lucia and Barbados before heading back to P.R. Our week aboard the 90,000-ton hotel was absolutely fascinating. The Radiance-class ship holds 2,501 passengers, according to the RCCL site and this particular week it was decked out in holiday decorations.

Our humble abode while sailing– it’s the hole in the middle! We we on the port side, on deck two.

For The Male Half, it was a working holiday– doing a Welcome Aboard Show first night at sea, and then appearing on both shows on Christmas night five days later. The rest of the time was spent eating, drinking, hiking, drinking, eating and basking in the warm Caribbean sun. It was only the second time TMHOTS has done a cruise, the first being exactly a year ago on the Adventure of the Seas.

Performing on a cruise ship presents unique challenges– keeping it clean being only one of them. All three of the week’s shows required scrupulously inoffensive material. (A 20- to 25-minute show on the first evening and a 10-minute set repeated twice on Christmas.) All three audiences had children among them, but not so many as to be their dominant feature.

Doing a cruise or two this past 365 days has given us a renewed respect for those who ply the comedy trade on the high seas. (We have always known that performing on an oceanliner was tricky. We regarded those who mastered it was a mixture of awe and mystery. And we recall all too clearly the disdain that many of our colleagues had for “boat acts.” There are many fine comedians who derive a good portion of their income from this sector. Many of them keep it quiet, perhaps for fear of peer pressure– or should that be pier pressure? Too bad. It’s an interesting and often lucrative way to do standup for a variety of audiences in what are often state-of-the-art venues. Those venues just happen to be on a ship and they just happen to cater to crowds that often contain seniors, children, non-English-speaking people and folks who might have never gone to see a comedian, had the opportunity not been offered to them just steps away from their cabins.)

So the results of a recent Tufts study on dieting may be of interest to any comics out there trying to drop pounds. The scientists say that “low-carb, no-carb diets have the strongest potential for negative impact on thinking and cognition.”

The boys at Popular Science explain:

There’s a good reason for this. The brain mainly uses glucose for energy, but is unable to store this type of sugar. The body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose and delivers it to the brain via the bloodstream. Depriving the body of carbohydrates deprives the brain of energy, and, voila: you’re repeating third grade, or at least repeatedly asking a question you first posed just ten minutes ago.

But of course!

The Philadelphia Inquirer had a followup yesterday. The indictments were handed down in the district court just across the river in Philly, we suppose because the scheme to inflate the National Lampoon stock involved a bank account in Blue Bell, a suburb of Philadelphia.

There are names in this article. And one or two of them sound vaguely familiar.

Basically, the scam goes like this. The CEO, Daniel Lakin, “accused of hiring someone to invest money in the company’s stock to manipulate the market and create the appearance of ‘steady demand,'” according to the account on the ABCNews.com site. In this way, Lakin hoped to “create better conditions for potential buyers and ‘strategic partnerships’ for the company.”

To do this, he enlisted Eduardo Rodriguez, a “stock promoter” from Linvingston, NJ. Sounds familiar. To manipulate the stock, Rodriguez enlisted the aid and cooperation of three other companies. One of those companies, Advatech Corp, of Edison, NJ, is said to be headed up by Richard J. Margulies. That too sounds familiar.

We googled Margulies’ name and found this article from the Newark Star Ledger, by Greg Saitz, and it confirmed our suspicions.

The former chief executive of a bankrupt company that ran Rascals comedy clubs has been charged with securities fraud and branded a corrupt stock promoter by federal regulators.

Criminal charges against Livingston resident Eduardo Rodriguez and six others were unsealed in Philadelphia yesterday. Federal prosecutors and securities regulators accused Rodriguez, 49, of participating earlier this year in four separate schemes to artificially inflate the prices of penny stocks.

Rodriguez faces up to 80 years in the slammer.

See our post from September, in which we quote from a September 19 article in NJ Monthly.

The former chief executive of a bankrupt public company that ran Rascals comedy and night clubs used company money to pay for at least $400,000 in personal expenses, according to a complaint filed in bankruptcy court.

Former CEO Eduardo Rodriguez used an American Express card issued to a one-time consultant of Headliners Entertainment Group to charge family vacations to Disneyland Paris, Jamaica, Cancun and Florida, the complaint filed earlier this week alleged. He then had Headliners or one of its subsidiaries pay the bill, according to court papers filed by a bankruptcy trustee overseeing the company’s liquidation.

Apparently, this was only the tip of the iceberg. Rodriguez’ activities have been keeping investigators and judges in at least two states busy for some time.

The executives who run National Lampoon have apparently all been indicted for manipulating the company’s stock.

Associated Press has a brief item here.

Los Angeles-based National Lampoon owns the rights to the “Vacation” and “Animal House” movies, among others. Prosecutors charged seven people with conspiracy and securities fraud on Monday.

Here is a more detailed account from MarketWatch.

All of the schemes involved efforts to manipulate the prices of publicly traded stocks by paying undisclosed kickbacks to individuals to purchase and hold the stock to create the illusion of market interest in the stocks. The objective was to induce the investing public to purchase a stock based on this artificial trading volume and, thus, increase the stock’s value. Most of the charged defendants, including the corporate officers described below, had significant holdings in the stock or stocks they sought to manipulate and could have made millions of dollars if they had successfully inflated the stock prices. The remaining defendants benefitted financially by receiving the illegal kickbacks to purchase the stocks.

Saturday night, in Raleigh. That’s The Male Half, Charlie Viracola, Unidentified Viracola sibling (Sorry!), The Female Half and comic Leroy Seabrooks.

We had a swell weekend in Raleigh, at Goodnights, of course. Charlie Viracola stopped in on Friday and Saturday and ran through 4:30 set, preparing for his upcoming Conan appearance (Wednesday night, technically Thursday morning, 12:35 AM EST. Check your local listings), much to the delight of the crowds.

Raleigh-based comedian Leroy Seabrooks also stopped by on Saturday night. It was a pleasure to meet him after seeing his 8 X 10 all these years.

This article is an ideal timewaster (and we don’t mean that in a bad way). The Onion A/V Club assembled a list of 2008’s best albums. They solicited responses from “truly important people.” (This is how the “cutting edge hip” refer to those they deem to be “bleeding edge hip.” Did they call them “albums?” Is this an ironic reference?)

It’s very nice that many of those whose opinions were sought were standup comics. Which is why we direct your attention to it in this publication.

Tim Heidecker of Tim & Eric Awesome Show chose:

David Byrne and Brian Eno’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

“This is such a happy record, with lots of pretty melodies and great-sounding guitars. Byrne is so optimistic, and Eno is strumming acoustic guitars, but there’s still lots of funky weirdness. Maybe I’m getting old myself, but these two old-timers made the most interesting and listenable pop record of the year, in my book.”

On this we concur. We had the privilege of getting into Byrne’s show at the Borgata’s Music Box in October (when the Male Half’s was performing in that same venue that week) and we enjoyed many of the selections from the Talking Heads frontman’s newest collection.

Around here, we tend to dig up releases from years past and beat them up pretty good. (We’ve never been susceptible to hype, preferring to let the commotion subside and then, with vague, hazy memories of what was said by whom, we stumble across this CD or that vinyl disc and we digitize it and run it into the ground.)

A constant soundtrack over the past 12 months. It is, to use an overused phrase, Dave Brubeck’s Sgt. Pepper’s. (And, it led to our downloading of some of Paul Desmond’s stuff. Priceless!)

We already had Kronikles, but this one contains still more that wasn’t included in that collection. There are 44 songs on here! Picked it up at a yard sale.

It’s a two-fer– two great artists in one package. The Bakersfield Sound is lovingly curated by Dwight Yoakam. Dwight’s obviously busted up about Owens’ passing, which makes all the songs that much more poignant.

We found a pristine copy in a thrift shop and immediately digitized it. Some of the songs found their way onto The Male Half’s mp3 player– “Oddly enough, it’s great music to run to!”

It happens rarely, but the occasional consumer of comedy will accost one of us comedians after a show (or, super-rarely, during a show!) and take him or her to task for being offensive or… just plain not funny.

We chalk it up to the occasional crank– and occasional cranks lurk in nearly every randomly thrown-together group. But we never thought the person might actually be sick. Might they have Pick’s Disease?

But a study making the cyber-rounds may explain why the odd audience member just doesn’t get it. An article entitled “Sarcasm– a diagnostic tool for dementia” an Australian study of Frontotemporal Dementia (or FTD) says that those with the disease “have trouble reading emotions and are often unable to sense when someone is being sarcastic.”

Even though FTD is the second most common form of dementia in younger people (i.e. under 65) it is often misdiagnosed as a personality disorder or sufferers are dismissed as strange, and often ostracised because FTD can lead to sexual disinhibition, rudeness and a lack of empathy.

Experts estimate as many as 5,000 Australians suffer from the degenerative condition which many do not know they have– there is also the suspicion that FTD may be more common in those over 65 than is currently believed.

According to the UNSW researchers their study could be used to help provide an early diagnosis for the behavioural form of FTD and to help manage the condition and also be particularly useful in determining which patients will deteriorate rapidly. […]

The study helps explains that they behave the way they do because they are not able to pick up the subtleties of communication.

FTD is often very difficult to diagnose because people present with changes in personality and behaviour and Professor Hodges says care givers and relatives often report that people with the disease are generally humourless or without irony and he says comedy has to come into health care.

Emphasis ours.

Wikipedia says the disease was “named after Arnold Pick, a professor of psychiatry from the University of Prague who first discovered and described the disease in 1892 by examining the brain tissue of several deceased patients with histories of dementia.” But we’re going to email the Aussie doctors and ask if they can rename the malady “Heckler’s Disease.”

Sharp-eyed reader John Wessling sends us a link to a Newser.com (?) article that contains the following quote:

“He is an actor with big movies behind him and one coming this summer,” a Jackman rep notes. “He didn’t work the last 20 years to suddenly be a stand-up comedian.”

Wessling wonders (and we can’t help but wonder along with him) if the quote from the “Jackman rep” is a snide swipe at comedians.

Is he saying that Jackman is an actor and, as such, deserves respect (and a shot at hosting the Oscars)? Is he saying that his client shouldn’t be expected to sling gags, like so many past Oscar hosts? Is he saying that Jackman isn’t some clown who makes his living by telling jokes?

Whatever he’s saying, he seems to be a bit… defensive. Hmmm… Whichever way it is analyzed, it seems that Jackman rep is trying to put some sort of distance between his client and the long line of decent, respectable artists (who happen to be comics) who have ably handled the gig before him.

Or is he trying to prep the public for Jackman being… not funny?

It all seems like a rather bizarre way of getting press for a broadcast that is attracting fewer and fewer eyeballs with each passing year.

So, why should we care that Hugh Jackman has been chosen as the host of the Academy Awards telecast? Because it’s usually handled by a comedian. And the producers usually get a lot publicity by handling all the press speculation about how offensive/vulgar the comedian-host will be (after, of course, dropping hints in the press about just how offensive/vulgar the comedian-host might be). It’s a time-honored tradition.

We’re especially fascinated by this quote, from the People article:

The Australia star, 40, who’ll be hosting the Oscars for the first time, was selected “because we want the ceremony to be fun,” says Laurence Mark, producer of the telecast.

Fun? Fun?! Fun for whom, exactly? And how does a 40-year-old Australian actor who has just been crowned “The Sexiest Man Alive” become more fun than a comedian? (Even a comedian who “offends” the delicate sensibilities of the Hollywood cranks who assemble every year for this elaborate circle-jerk?)

We’re reading between the lines here. There is a whole new definition of what constitutes “fun” in Hollywood. Apparently, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldbert, Steve Martin, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Bob Hope, Chris Rock and Johnny Carson getting up there and cracking wise about the winners, the losers, the nominees and the movies isn’t really fun. It’s off-putting, it’s offensive, it’s nothing more than an ego trip for the smug comics who simply don’t understand just how important Hollywood is and just don’t get that the product of The Dream Factory can change lives and make the world a better place.

We should’ve seen this coming. Here’s a chunk of Tom Shales’ review of Stewart’s ’06 hosting stint:

Stewart began the show drearily, loping through a monologue that lacked a single hilarious joke with the possible exception of “Bjork couldn’t be here tonight. She was trying on her Oscar dress and Dick Cheney shot her.”

That was about it– and Stewart had five months, working with his legions of writers from the Daily Show on Comedy Central, to come up with good material. It goes to prove that there’s still a big, big difference between basic cable and big-time network television after all.”

It got pretty ugly in ’06. Then they gave it to Ellen Degeneres. That was pretty awkward. But no one got offended. Then they brought back Stewart. There seems to be a tug of war going on– no one can decide on which kind of comic, which kind of humor, to use when skewering Tinseltown at their biggest party.

It’s the new Hollywood. They’re going to try it this way for a while.

We’re perplexed.

We’re reminded of the time The Female Half of the Staff went to the local library and asked if she could find the library card– it was on file, behind the librarian’s desk– “How do you spell your name?” asked the librarian.

The Female Half spelled it. The librarian searched in vain for the card and, after about a minute, turned to The Female half and asked:

“Are you sure you’re spelling it right?”

Let’s let that sink in.

So, we’re perplexed when we see our upcoming appearances heralded on this comedy club’s website or that newspaper’s website and they seem to rarely spell the name correctly. (The Female Half’s name is the one that is more often mangled. The Male Half occasionally gets “Brain” instead of “Brian,” further fueling this “egghead comic” rumor.)

How, in this day and age of the internet and multiple-tab web browsers and all manner of technological wonders, does a man or woman who is charged with crashing the information into a comedy club website manage to misspell “Traci” and “Skene” so often and so thoroughly?

We caution that this is not an egomaniacal rant which, if left unchecked, will lead to contract riders that demand a case of room temperature San Pelligrino water in the green room. It’s merely an expression of wonderment at how a venue could not specify that whoever is looking after those things be a little more scrupulous when crashing in the names of the performers.

After all, one of those technological wonders out there is the search engine. You may have heard of Google– it’s one of the more popular ones. When competition for the entertainment dollar is fierce, it makes good business sense to get the names of the comedians right so that folks who search get to the desired destination.

Sure, we know that Google gently nudges searchers with their “Did you mean…?” feature, but we suspect that only works when the searchee is someone famous like Dave Attell or Ghandi. (And Google will do the same for Traci Skene! But, she is apparently ubiquitous enough on the internet that Google will do that for her.) (Editors note: And, as one of our readers has pointed out, Ghandi is spelled “Gandhi!” So, apparently, Google doesn’t even bother to ask if perhaps we’re mistaken by doing the ol’ “Did you mean Gandhi?” when you misspell his name correctly!)

But other folks aren’t so well networked.

All technology aside, dontcha think it’d be a good idea to spell the acts’ names correctly? Just for the heck of it?

(And while we’re at it, what is with all these comedy club websites that don’t even bother to list the supporting acts? Would it kill the webmaster to list the feature and/or the opener?)

We’re done.

Variety reports that Viacom is laying off some people. Among those headed out the door is Lou Wallach, who was officially known as “senior VP of original programming and development,” we think. Variety just calls him a “programming guru.”

As details about last week’s cuts begin to emerge, it appears that some surprising names — starting with the well-regarded Wallach — were among the casualties.

We watched Wallach operate on a few of the “Just For Pitching” panels up in Montreal. And we spotted him at such high-profile events as the coming out party for Comix up in Manhattan. He was a soft-spoken dude who wielded a lot of power at the cable outlet. He was an executive producer of Comedy Central Presents, the showcase that had enormous potential to change a comic’s life.

Fifty per cent more people are watching television at 10 PM than they are at 11:30. Hmmm… Perhaps this Leno thing might work.

We’re also thinking that, if he drops down to 10 PM, he’s going to have to tweak the format a bit. At 11:30, you’re obligated to keep things just ever so slightly toned down. (Yeah, yeah, The Dancing Ito’s isn’t exactly toning it down, but the overall feel is just a notch or two lower.) Conversely, at 10, you’re allowed to be a bit brassier. Perhaps the show will be a little more like a variety show.

What’s that you say? The variety format is dead? Matt Roush said so? No. The variety show as done by Rosie O’Donnell and Dolly Parton and Mary Tyler Moore is dead, but Leno might be one of the few people on the planet who can figure out how to make it work. (As his current show is run– the framework of which was handed to him by Johnny, which got it from Paar and Steve Allen– it’s practically a variety show already. On a typical night, you got your musical act, the occasional standup comic, those kids who come in and do birdcalls, etc. All that’s needed are some plate-spinners, a couple Cirque du Soleil acts and the occasional Russian bear on a bicycle.

And, if that’s the plan, well, it’s going to be a boon for standup comics. For now they might have a regular spot on prime time. Has there been a prime time spot for comedians (doing standup) in the last thirty years? (Not counting Last Comic Standing, of course.)

Stay tuned.

On NBC. That’s what Nikki Finke is saying.

NBC head Jeff Zucker is ratcheting down expectations among stockholders and other observers by saying that maybe NBC can’t program 22 hours of network per day and maybe they’ll hafta do other things to survive and not go the way of the newspapers and the auto manufacturers and other industries that are sliding inexorably toward obscurity.

He’s wrong, of course. If he’s only now getting around to “innovative” moves like scaling back programming and stripping Jay Leno at 10 PM or questioning whether it’s wise to program 22 hours a day, then he’s way too late to make any significant changes that will enable the network to survive, let alone thrive.

Fox may survive and thrive– they’ve almost always done things differently from The Big Three, so they already don’t have an institutional inertia when it comes to all the conventions of network programming.

Will it work? Probably not. (Finke has all sorts of speculation and scenarios, but she’s blowing smoke.)

Stay tuned.

Looking for a nice gig in which to hideout while weathering the possible upcoming economic storm? How about driving the Weinermobile?

Apparently, there are benefits, a competitive salary and a clothing allowance involved while you travel the country as an ambassador of one of America’s favorite foods for one whole year. And it’s not just some donkey job– it’s got elements of public relations, advertising, entertaining and radio/TV appearances.

In our travels throughout this great land of ours, we’ve seen the Weinermobile exactly two times– Once while it was parked at the Trop in Vegas and another time whizzing down the highway in the opposite direction in… Montana, perhaps? Both times we squealed with delight! It is a site to behold!

According to Wikipedia, the position is limited to college seniors about to graduate.

Steve Macone wrote a concise review of John Wenzel’s “Mock Stars” in Blast Magazine.

(We referred to Wenzel in our publication here, in a post titled “Let’s be independent together!” Thus ensued a spirited back-and-forth between and among ourselves and our readers.)

Wenzel sent along an advance, uncorrected copy of his book to SHECKYmagazine HQ, which The Female Half just finished. We fully intended to pen a review of our own, but it’s difficult to improve upon Macone’s words which contain insights like this one:

To be sure, there are comedy clubs today that can not be called anything near mainstream. A certain club I’m partial to in Cambridge, Mass., has a bit of a reputation for cheap covers, discerning crowds and artistic freedom. And anyone can see the inherent danger of blindly extolling any indie trend: We’re not like them! We do things however we want here-no rules! Wait, where’s your band t-shirt and faux, preemptive cynicism? The same goes for pigeon-holing performers as mainstream. Last Sunday, I watched a local comic destroy with a playful, absurdist, sprawling bit about ham. It didn’t pander at all. And the audience was obviously grateful for it. It killed. Was it at a rock club full hipsters? Nope, it was a crowd of 250+ people, locals in the sense of the word that would make most comics shiver with images of impenetrable stoicism– in a place where comics traditionally do more safe material than even mainstream clubs: a Knights of Columbus hall. Sometimes it’s about being a good comedian wherever you perform.

We recommend that anyone who is in comedy (or into comedy) pick up “Mock Stars.” Because it’s always good to read about standup. And the tales of the D.I.Y. attitude that is a hallmark of the indie scene is truly inspirational and their projects admirable.

But while the book is ostensibly about a fresh, new movement in the art/craft of standup, it doesn’t take us long (Page 2 of the Introduction!) before we see:

(Indie comedy)’s for anyone who finds most mainstream comedy boring, irrelevant, insulting or worse– soul-destroying.

Emphasis ours. We’re not seven paragraphs into the book before we encounter one of our favorite indie/alt clichés! When we see an alt/indie comic take the stage on our TV, we take bets on the over/under– how many minutes into the set before he uses the phrase “soul-crushing?” We’re usually not disappointed. (It’s much like our bet on how long it takes Robin Williams to use the “You’re pants are so tight, I can tell your religion!”)

And therein lies the central contradiction of the book (and perhaps the central contradiction or hypocrisy of the indie/alt movement at large)– in their zeal to put some distance between themselves and “mainstream” (or boring, irrelevant, insulting) comedians, they are blind to their own shortcomings and unnecessarily hostile toward those who came before them.

A bit of inspired YouTube mischief by British comic Dominic Frisby. You will click “play” and you will laugh. It’s wickedly funny, even if you don’t understand the references to certain comics and their routines.

Hat tip to FOS Tanyalee Davis!

It’s Tommy Savitt (website here). Read about the victory in the Seattle Times.

It’s an opus from the New Zealand Herald this past weekend. It’s full of references to folks we’ve never heard of (and one or two we have), but it contains a detailed account of the birth, growth and full flowering of a comedy scene in a major city in fairly recent times, focusing on Scott Blanks, the godfather of New Zealand standup.

When we approached the owner he was like: ‘Live comedy? Oh, that’s not going to work’,” says De Witt. “But with Scott running things, the first night went all right, then it became regular, then it was full houses with standing room only, then we were touring and on television… You have to say Scott is responsible for stand-up comedy in New Zealand. Fact.”

It’s five pages long, but it’s inspirational for anyone who’s thinking about starting a venue… or a scene.