Bill Brioux, writing for the London (Ontario) Free Press, offers a fascinating examination of the current state of the sitcom. It’s not dead, it’s hiding on Disney and Nick.

“Something is happening in comedy. It’s not hip to be funny anymore,” says Brent Piaskoski, creator of the made-in-Canada Family Channel series The Latest Buzz. “Edge has replaced jokes,” he suggests. It’s why Conan O’Brien gets more respect that Jay Leno, “who’s a human joke machine,” says Piaskoski.

If we catch his drift, Piaskoski is trying to explain his “banishment” (our word, not his) to family television. It is not true that edge has replaced jokes, but, to the veteran sitcom writers toiling for cable outlets like Disney and Nickelodeon, the death of the joke and the ascendance of snark would neatly explain their current predicament.

Something is always replacing funny– awkward is the new funny, edge is the new funny. Wry, arch and ironic have all taken a stab at replacing funny over the years. All of them failed, or will fail.

Let’s look at “respect” as measured by the number of zeroes on the paycheck. The human joke machine makes three times that of O’Brien. (Letterman makes more than either of them, but no one can agree on whether he is funny or edgy… and some folks maintain that he’s neither.)

(While we don’t find Leno wildly funny, his facility with a setup and a punchline is clear and it cannot be disputed that he’s going for the joke.)

We suppose that the tastemakers and the critics would have us believe that O’Brien commands more respect and that he is deserving of same.

But, we digress. It seems that sitcoms– half-hour shows that boldly go for the gag in rapid-fire fashion– are big with kids!

Edge has no edge over jokes in ‘tween TV. While not entirely an irony-free zone, shows such as Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana and The Latest Buzz score with kids by being about kids but also by going straight for the funny.

But such a formula (either geared toward kids or adults) is a tough sell to the nets because, as Brioux puts it, “savvy, jaded viewers tune out the seen-it-before genre.”

Television viewers are savvy and jaded? Pure fantasy.

Will this love of rat-a-tat/setup-punchline shows translate into a comeback for the sitcom as the tweens grow into teens and then into adults? It will be very interesting.

Some folks maintain that the adolescents will grow weary of the obvious jokes and eventually graduate to snark and sarcasm and eventually embrace The Edge. We predict that they’ll be leery of The Edge, that they’ll not abandon their love of the gag. (After all, The Edge is what Mom and Dad like. And, as we all know each generation utterly rejects that which the generation before it champions.)

Kim Brown, writing for Tulsa World, conducts an interview with Joel Hodgson, on the occasion of the release of a box set of his series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I’m just so grateful. I’m just thrilled. When you’re a comic, you have to be really careful about what you do because you can really look bad. For a period of time they’d bring me in on SNL as a variety act. I remember (cast member) Joe Piscopo got off stage one night and said, “You’re so lucky to get to do your own stuff. I have to go on whether it’s funny or not.” I’ll always remember that. I really took it to heart. “Mystery Science Theater” gave me an opportunity to do that, if you don’t think dressing in a red jumpsuit and talking to robots is bad.

The MST3K juggernaut continues on– RiffTrax is now sweeping the nation.

(Mike) Nelson, along with Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, create RiffTrax, audio downloads of them heckling popular A-list movies such as “Iron Man,” “300” and “Road House.” People play the MP3s along with the films to get the funny effect. The group also offers an online forum for fans to post their own riffs and has performed live.

This is from an article on Hodgson and the current crew that appeared in the Oklahoman. Hmmm… what is it about Oklahoma? Why do the boys from Minnesota break all the good news about their projects in the Sooner State?

We heard about RiffTrax from the writings of James Lileks, who is friends with Mike Nelson and who is involved in some of the upcoming RiffTrax.

Again, to reset the Import of the Momentousness: I watched MST3K since whenever, enjoying every show from the first shot to the last whaaaang on the guitar; I thanked the First Amendment and the Teachers of America and I circulated the tapes, and I thought, and still think, it was one of the most consistently brilliant, ingenious and hilarious shows ever written. And now I’m in the booth and I’m doing that thing. But! Since we are doing that thing, you have to do it; no time for glowing in the moment. We managed to finish the movie fairly quickly – only had to back up and run at the lines again about 15 times or so; if it sounds spontaneous, that’s because it was. Took one break, drank lots of water, and had a grand time. As grim as the read-through was – it’s no fun, you’re sick of the frickin’ movie, and you’re reading other people’s lines for the first time – the actual performance was a joy to do.

Read the rest for some insight into how the new shows are produced.

The following comedians will perform on Sunday, November 9, in a benefit show for Max AlexanderShelley Berman, Elayne Boosler, Norm Crosby, Jeff Garlin, Dom Irrera, Kevin James, Carol Leifer, Jay Leno, Larry Miller, Kevin Nealon, Ray Romano and Fred Willard plus special guests.

Did they say special guests? Who might be more special than the folks listed above?

As readers of this site know, Max battled kidney disease and was the recipient of a kidney from his brother, Rabbi Moshe Drelich.

The show will be a the Directors Guild, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. Tickets are $50, $100, $250 and $500, and are available by calling (310) 285-1411. Tickets are tax-deductible. For additional information, visit ComedyToTheMax.

It doesn’t sound like there’ll be any lockers for the comedians in this one.

The film is about a comedian named George Simmons, played by Adam Sandler. He’s been successful, “the women want him and the guys want to be his friend,” but he’s “a very miserable and self-involved person.” The story starts when he learns that he has an untreatable blood disorder and has less than a year to live. In steps Ira, played by Seth Rogen, a deli counter worker and aspiring comedian. He performs for free at a small stand-up club but hasn’t figured out his persona and, as Peter describes, is “what Seth Rogen would sound like if he were a stand-up comedian.” After Simmons’ shows up one night at his club and screws up his performance, he decides to hire Ira because he “sees something in the young comedian.”

Read the entire article on FirstShowing.net for all the juicy details.

We wonder if we can get a review copy?

And, from Nancy Groves, writing in the UK Independent comes a story on “the craze that’s taking over comedy clubs.”

Storytelling.

That’s right. It’s taking over comedy clubs. Because, for God’s sake, something needs to take over comedy clubs. They can’t just have comedy there. How… vulgar! It’s about time something took over the comedy clubs. It’s about bloody time!

So what differentiates a storytelling night from your average Jongleurs set? Haven’t comedians always mined their own lives for material? “Yes, but what we’re doing is taking it back to the original story the comedian starts with, before that story is turned into stand-up,” Lederer says. “It’s a dopey analogy, but it’s like the bare fir tree before it becomes a Christmas tree. Stand-ups put all sorts of decoration on the branches to make it shinier. And that can be beautiful. But what about the goodness of the tree as it stands in your own backyard?”

Let’s see if we have this straight: Storytelling is “taking it back to the original story the comedian starts with, before that story is turned into standup.” Hmmm… so it would be… the story… without all that annoying jokey stuff, the stuff that makes people guffaw and exhale and gasp and tear up and, you know, laugh! Laughing is so… gauche. And actually going for the laugh is, well, it’s unseemly.

Conversely, holding back and being all coy and reserved and artsy is proof that one has “mastered complex languages of metaphor, symbol and meaning.” And, well, I guess we can all conclude that all this makes storytellers much better than comedians.

Of course, that’s all nonsense.

Some of our best friends are storytellers. We’ve enjoyed watching some shows in this format ourselves. Not all storytellers are as pretentious and as blowhardy as the ones in the Independent article. Because they know that what they’re doing (or attempting to do) is hard, it’s entertaining, it’s catching a lot of buzz. But they don’t think that automatically makes them (or what they do) more virtuous than standup comics or what they do.

Why, we ask, can’t the two exist simultaneously? Why must one suffer if/when the other “takes over?” Why do these people exist in a zero-sum artistic/aesthetic contest where one form will obliterate another… if there’s any justice in this world.

Why, we ask, is the subject of standup even introduced into articles like this one? (Aside from the obvious fact that some of these storytelling events are held in comedy clubs.) Unless of course, the intent is to set up some grand artisic endeavor championship, some unification of the title, like in boxing. It is a curious thing to witness folks clawing and scratching and climbing over each other to prove that this art form or that discipline is somehow “better” than standup comedy.

Read the rest of the article (if you must). It’s recycled clichés from all the other articles from the past twenty years about how storytelling and poetry slams and spoken word nights are going to crowd out standup once and for all. (Does the name Henry Rollins ring any bells?) Another in long line of pieces that simultaneously touts storytelling as the most ancient of arts and heralds it as The Next Big Thing.

As the Halves of the Staff were pulling away from baggage claim at Kansas City International Airport, we spotted someone who looked suspiciously like Gabriel Iglesias standing on the curb, pecking away at a Blackberry.

Turns out Iglesias appeared last night at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lawrence, KS, forty miles away.

Small world!

On any given Wednesday, in airports in major cities across America, there will be comedians.

No doubt Eric Schwartz also passed through yesterday (appearing at Stanford & Sons this weekend) and Jim Short will probably arrive today to commence his engagement (through Sunday) at the Kansas City Improv.

We’re at Famous Johnnys in Overland Park, through Saturday night! Stop by!

Harry Hurt III, writing for tne New York Times, takes the plunge and delivers a detailed account of his maiden voyage on the stage at NY’s legendary Comic Strip.

“A Columnist Walks Into a Bar …” is notable because it captures those terrifying, intoxicating moments just before the first time and the exhilarating aftermath.

Even so, I keep fixating on the perversely irresistible challenge of doing stand-up, which is neither as easy nor as unstructured as it often looks. It’s not only about timing, it’s about time itself. “Your goal is to get as many laughs as you can as fast as you can,” D. F. (Sweedler) tells me in our first training session. “It’s crucial not to overtalk. You don’t want to add any unnecessary details or extraneous incidents to your monologue because that just means that there will be more time between laughs.”

Sound advice from Hurt’s coach, veteran New Yorker, D.F. Sweedler. (We recall Sweedler from our early days doing standup in Philadelphia, as he was one of a dozen or so comedians who regularly made the trek southward from NYC to take advantage of various one-nighters and weekend dates in the Delaware Valley. As fledgeling comics, we learned from him and his cohort. Turns out Sweedler continues to educate young comics– he’s been conducting classes for the past 14 years and Hurt’s one of his most recent students.)

Read it all and, if you’re thinking about hitting that stage and making the funny in your hometown, print it out and read it just before your debut!

The Las Vegas Sun profiles Kevin Burke, following him as he wraps up a performance of Defending the Caveman then trots from the Golden Nugget to Fitzgerald’s to do a second show consisting only of his standup act.

” ‘Caveman’ is a play,” Burke says. “It looks like stand-up, but like any play, each line has to follow each line. I can’t cut a bit. But my stand-up comedy is my show. I have two hours of material to pull from. If an audience wants to go in one direction, I can go that way.”

He has found a way to still do standup while doing the extended run of Rob Becker‘s battle of the sexes playlet. His Caveman runs through January.

We just got word that the Cleveland Comedy Festival is a go for next month. It will feature performances and seminars and all the stuff that festivals usually feature, with, of course, a heavy emphasis on the fine comics that call Cleveland home.

The Festival will take place over 3 days and is a celebration of the comedic talent here in Cleveland. We have 4 stand-up comedy showcases on Friday Nov. 7th and Saturday Nov. 8th with 40 of the best comics in Cleveland. Some of the featured performers in those shows include JD Sidley, Bill Benden, Chris Hegedus, Mike Polk, Jim Tews, Joe Howard and Jeff Blanchard — all from Cleveland. We also have our good friend from NYC, Lord Carrett as a special guest headliner.

Check out the video below– it’s “Mike,” the Fest mascot promoting the upcoming events.

The three-day celebration will culminate in a TV special taped by the local PBS affiliate featuring national headliners with ties to Cleveland– Mike Veneman, Mike Cheselka, Tammy Pescatelli, Marc Jaffe and Basile.

When we headlined the Cleveland Improv in July, we had the pleasure of meeting and hanging with a good chunk of the Cleveland comedy community, before and after our shows. They’re enthusiastic about the market and they’re looking forward to making this first fest a success. We commend them and their DIY spirit.

Dolemite is dead. Back on June 23, 2006, we posted that Rudy Ray Moore, aka Dolemite, was ill.

It sounds like Dolemite (the name comes from his monster-grossing cult film, which spawned a monster-grossing 1976 followup) has the necessary fire to come back from his current health troubles. We wish him well.

From the Dolemite MySpace page, comes this:

Legendary actor, filmmaker, comedian, singer, Godfather of Rap and King of the Party Records, Rudolph Frank Moore better known as Rudy Ray Moore or Dolemite has left this earthly plane.

A 60 + year veteran of the stage, the first x rated comedian, one of the first African American filmmakers and the third most sampled man in the world, his self made comedy records and films have inspired and influenced generations from a thousand walks of life and a hundred nations.

He had recently finished work on “The Dolemite Explosion” with longtime friend and costar Jimmy Lynch (his first self made film in 30 years), an album of soul ballads called “Let Me Sing To You Before I Drift Away” with his daughter Yvette “Rusty” Wesson, and had been Highlighted by Hadjii in an episode of “Somebodies” on BET and was looking forward to a resurgence and a country album.

After a long battle with diabetes and obscurity, he passed peacefully on Sunday at the age of 81.

He was a good God fearing man who loved his friends and family.

USAToday has the full story here.

The lengthy press release announces Comedy Central’s new venture into producing live comedy shows and names the guy who will spearhead the operation, Mitch Fried. It contains this money graf:

In addition to increasing COMEDY CENTRAL’s presence on the stand-up circuit and, through strategic partnerships, its visibility on the comedy festival circuit, Fried will also spearhead the network’s efforts to maximize live performance exposure and revenue across already established business lines. Serving as a liaison among talent, their management and other COMEDY CENTRAL divisions including the Grammy® Award-winning COMEDY CENTRAL Records® label, COMEDY CENTRAL Home Entertainment® DVDs and on-air COMEDY CENTRAL Original Stand-up Specials, Fried will seek to expand the business partnerships between the network and the talent community through overall package deals with top comedians that could encompass any combination of a nationwide tour, a one-hour, on-air special, a DVD release and a CD release.

Sounds like the beginnings of a horizontal monopoly. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What’s that you say? Comedy Central is already into the live standup biz? Yes, they are. It was called Comedy Central Live! But this is a new beast. A “division,” called Live Entertainment, “that will focus on building upon its leadership position in the live comedy industry.”

The former was CC’s “standup comedy business.” This is a DIVISION! We’re not clear on the subtle differences. Rest assured, however, that the new entity “has been steadily growing and expanding out of our viewers’ living rooms and into their everyday lives!” That’s an actual quote from CC’s president, Michele Ganeless. Sounds ominous. How long before the brand totally engulfs the local diner? Where’s Steve McQueen when you need him?

FOS Sharilyn Johnson took the blog plunge last month. Her blog, From The Back Of The Room, is explained in her first post. Here are the money grafs:

As a lifelong supporter of comedy, it’s been my personal mandate to present comedy as a serious artform. As a journalist I covered comedy for print (remember print??), and for three years hosted my own radio show about comedy. After this, I turned to performing on a semi-regular basis, and confirmed what I already knew: this shit is hard.

Comedians themselves are typically reluctant to wax poetic on the merits of what they do, and often dismiss their profession as being a convenient alternative to a “real” job. The truth is, punching up a script is tougher work than punching a timeclock. And comedy serves an invaluable function in society, which is too often taken for granted.

Whether covering standup, writing, film, clown, improv… this blog will, first and foremost, treat comedy as something to be respected.

Sharilyn has been a longtime reader of SHECKYmagazine.com and we finally met her at JFL a few years back. Her love of all things comedy is unquestioned. And, though she be a journo, she’s actually sucked it up and gone up onstage and experienced those hot lights. This gives her a certain credibility and it informs her writing.

Check out her blog on a regular basis. Her current front page includes a wistful memoir on the Winnipeg comedy scene, a wrapup of the New Yorker Comedy Festival and a thorough tongue-bath of Stephen Colbert. (She is, perhaps, the biggest and least apologetic Colbert freak on the planet.)

Here’s a time-honored tradition. A story that is oft-repeated.

We’ll set it up for you: Some of the local comics don’t like to perform at the local comedy club. So, they start up their own one-nighters in the area. With an able assist from a reporter at the local paper, they grind their axe and do their best to portray themselves in the best light possible and take multiple cheap shots at the local comedy club, the comics they book and the patrons who come through the door.

This time, it ‘s Madison, WI.

Katiusa Cisar, the reporter, seems to have swallowed some pretty big chunks of horseshit. She (he?) spews them rather matter-of-factly throughout the copy. Check this out:

In general, comedy clubs have a stigma attached to them. Most sprung up in the ’80s when stand-up was booming, and they soon gained a reputation for being sleazy joints. The stereotype is the club that operates as a money-laundering front for the cocaine trade, has a corny name like Crackers or Giggles, and is located in a run-down Dubuque or Appleton strip mall next to a nail salon.

Is there an editor at the Capital Times? Do they have attorneys? Has their revenue dwindled to the point where they can’t afford one or the other or both? We’re sure that the owners of real live comedy clubs named Crackers and/or Giggles are not at all pleased about this “stereotype.” And the folks at the Skyline are probably not ecstatic.

How about this one:

Comics often joke about the B-circuit stand-ups that these clubs attract: recently divorced middle-aged men who break out a well-oiled repertoire of Bill Clinton jokes and dream of finding “rebirth” through a career in comedy.

That’s the opinion of one of the local twentysomething comics, as paraphrased by Cisar.

Hmmm… we wonder how Shane Mauss or Isaac Witty or Eddie Gossling or Steve Hoffstetter would feel about being characterized in that manner. And we wonder how the folks who run The Comedy Club on State feel about the Capital Times describing their business model in that manner.

“Underground comedy is real and it’s the truth. It’s First Amendment with jokes,” says one of the disgruntled, local, twentysomething acts with a day job.

It’s “underground comedy” now, dontcha know. And… it’s The Truth!

That’s it– It’s The Truth! What those other schmucks are doing onstage at you-know-where bears no resemblance to be The Truth! How can it? The audience… is laughing! Where are the awkward pauses? Where is the uncomfortable shifting in the seats? Where are all the walkouts when the comic touches upon a subject that is strictly taboo?!?!?

That’s it! America wants awkward! “What’s in vogue in comedy these days isn’t stand-up, but awkward ‘found comedy’ that works better on video than live onstage,” according to another disgruntled, local, twentysomething comic with a day job. Excuse me, ladies, who ordered the sour grapes?

In the comedy clubs, says yet another disgruntled, local, twentysomething comic with a day job, “you’re going to get what’s watered down because people are going to be afraid to say what’s on their mind. It’s almost like you gotta crack a joke and then look at your lawyer.” (Wow! The local paper doesn’t have attorneys, but the comics do!) What a curious place Madison is!

While we admire the comics who strike out on their own and develop a stage or two where they can dabble in standup or performance that uses unorthodox methods or that addresses subjects not commonly thought of as fodder for standup. But we’re baffled by the hostility and the general pissiness that they so often display when making their case to the public via the press. They may be developing their entrepreneur and impresario skills, but they should brush up on their diplomat and publicist skills as well.

There are some comics (trapped in the middle of the Madison scene) who see the merit to both The Comedy Club and the “underground” stages. But the disgruntled crew (and their enabler at the Capital Times) should find a better way of differentiating their product from the others. Or maybe they should just move the 237 miles to The Cities.

Read the entire piece, if you must.

Sam Arif died yesterday from liver cancer.

So we learned in a brief a email from Steve Young, the proprietor of the defunct Comedy Works (the club that was over The Middle East Restaurant in Old City Philadelphia from approximately 1982 to 1992 or so). Young called Arif, “The best Wednesday night open stage coordinator EVER.”

When The Male Half decided to try comedy for the very first time, he did the open mike at the Works on a Wednesday night in mid-October 1981. The man who wrangled the talent and handed out the spots was Sam Arif. He was kind, wise and gentle. Eventually, he fled to Florida and turned over the Wednesday night duties to Jim Levi, a member of the local comedy group Mixed Nuts.

The Male Half saw Arif one more time. It was during one of his first road gigs, at the Comic Strip in Lauderdale. Arif showed up and watched a show. And, of course, offered some constructive criticism afterward!

Arif was also was among eight acts on the first live standup show that The Male Half ever attended.

Variety reports on the Canadian Comedy Awards. They handed them out in Regina last weekend.

Canadian TV comic Gerry Dee won awards for stand-up male comic and TV taped live performance.

Russell Peters won large venue comic of the year; Nikki Payne won stand-up female comic; Peter Anthony won stand-up newcomer.

That newcomer name rang a bell.

Back on December 8, 2004, we posted this, about the introduction of a new column. It was to be penned by a Canadian comic by the name of Peter Anthony.

(We seem to recall that Anthony got a lot of heat for the initial column and decided that holding forth on the Canadian comedy scene was not a good way to endear himself to the powers that be. Pity. Understandable, but still a pity.)

Readers may recall that Gerry Dee was a finalist on 2007’s Last Comic Standing. We encountered Dee at the Hyatt Regency a year ago this past July, up at the Festival Just For Laughs. He was introduced to us and, when he made the connection between us and SHECKYmagazine, he went mental on the Female Half, citing the supposedly harsh treatment he suffered at the hands of our one-time correspondent Dobie Maxwell. Maxwell filed what we considered a rather even-handed and reasonable commentary on the events surrounding the San Francisco Comedy International Comedy Competition that both he and Dee participated in (and which Dee won).

We had a heck of a time finding the SFICC wrapup. But we eventually located it via the Wayback Machine. Turns out the account was from the 2002 contest and Dee was nursing a nearly five-year-old grudge. Yeesh!

Speaking of past Last Comic Standing contestants who hold a grudge, we were told a delightful story recently about three LCSers– from the most recent season– who were visiting the Comedy Stop at the Trop in Vegas. (If you’ve never been there, proprietor Bob Kephart has lined the corridor with framed 8 X 10’s of all the folks who’ve performed at the Stop(s) over the years.) The threesome were gazing upon the headshots and picking out the folks who were no longer with us. The story goes like this:

Comic One (Pointing at pic of deceased comic): Dead.

Comic Two (Pointing at photo of another deceased comic): Dead.

Marcus (Pointing at headshot of The Male Half): That’s the guy from SHECKY… I wish he was dead!

How about that!

From the Hartford Courant’s interview with Canadian Jeremy Hotz on the occasion of his appearance at the Hartford Funny Bone, comes this, when asked if he’s noticed any changes since the writers’ strike:

I’ve benefited. There’s nothing good on TV. More people are coming out to the clubs to see something funny.

Read the whole thing.

We’re of the opinion that regular folks caring about such matters as box office is just as pointless and geeky as rotisserie baseball. Getting overly concerned about per-screen averages and platform releases (and trying to work such nuggets into conversation) is akin to a movie mogul version of fantasy football.

Having said that, we direct your attention to BoxOfficeMojo.com, which has the data on last weekend’s box office in America. We only point it out to our readers because there are two movies that premiered last weekend that feature comedians.

You’ll notice “Allah Made Me Funny” came in 52nd, grossing $38,867 on 14 screens and Bill Maher‘s “Religulous” came in 10th, grossing $3,409,643 on 502 screens. Azhar Usman, Preacher Moss and Mo Amer are the performers in AMMF, which is a live standup comedy concert film.

Check out their new and improved website.

Attending festivals this year takes more energy than we currently have. (Unless, of course, HBO and TBS slide press creds and a sack of cash across the cybertable to us. Like that is going to happen!)

Shows for the NYUCF go through Sunday. In New York. The city.

Paul Ogata!

What’s that you say? He was the winner in 2007? You are correct.

But that’s the only information we can get from the Competition’s official website!

The finals were Saturday night at 8 PM. What kind of a hangover are they dealing with over there?

We found this:

FINALISTS in the 33rd Annual San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition include, front, clockwise, Tylr (sic) Boeh (Boston), Derick Lengwenus (Wyoming), Steve White (Los Angeles), Leif Skyving (Idaho) and Brent Weinbach (San Francisco).

It’s a caption from a photo in the Times-Herald (“Serving Solano and Napa Counties since 1875”), accompanying an article that profiles Jack Gallagher, who hosted the final show. The article contains the obligatory recitation of past finalists who’ve gone on to fame and glory– “Dane Cook, Ralphie May, Patton Oswalt, Rob Schneider, Ellen DeGeneres, Kevin Pollak and a guy named Robin Williams“– but this year’s contestants are relegated to 9-pt. type in a caption… with one of their names spelled wrong.

Even Gallagher says, “he has no idea who the final finalists are and hasn’t seen whoever they are before Saturday.”

They should change the name of the competition to the Rodney Dangerfield Open. Because none of the contestants gets any respect.

We found this, from SFStandup.com:

Here are the final results of the competition:

1. Steve White
2. Derick Lengwenus
3. Tyler Boeh
4. Brent Weinbach
5. Leif Skyving

Congratulations to Steve White!

Google is ten years old today. They’re celebrating by driving people to their oldest available index here. Pump in a phrase and see what Google would have slung back at you in January of 2001.

Click this to see our front page from January 2001 and swim around in vintage SHECKYmagazine.com!

And a nasty letter to Suck.com from The Male Half of the staff!

A coupla years ago, we had the pleasure of working with Murv Seymour for a week at the Punchline in Atlanta. Seymour was charming onstage and professional off it. (And vice-versa, as if that needs to be said.) He came to comedy from a television news background. Recently, he produced an instructional DVD which contains “more than two hours of content guaranteed to jump-start a career in comedy and inspire comics at every level.” For the standup fan (and we know they almost all want to try doing standup!) the DVD offers an exclusive look inside the world of laughter.”

From the RoadToStandup.com website:

This documentary style instructional DVD can help anyone unwrap the gift of laughter by providing training and building confidence before ever stepping foot on stage. Come along for the ride as these comedy heavyweights take you on a candid journey down the Road to Standup.

The “comedy heavyweights” Seymour refers to are Billy Gardell and Alonzo Bodden

We urge our readers to take a moment and click the RoadToStandu.com banner at the top right side of the page. Thanks!

He’s the star of “Shaun of the Dead” and he’s promoting his latest film, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,” by giving interviews like this one, to Canada.com.

Here’s the slice that caught our attention:

“I think comedy is underrated as an art form. People readily acknowledge a piece of theatre as art, but not standup, and not comedy. I have a hard time with that because I think standup is the most immediate form of performance you can get. But it will never get respect, and comedies will never win the Oscar,” he says.

“But think about it. When you tell a joke, people either laugh, or they don’t. The way to gauge success is straightforward. In a play, it’s not so easy to tell if your audience is with you or not, and in a play, you can hide behind objective criteria for a critical opinion,'” says Pegg.

A Sept. 19 article in NJMonthly.com has only some of the details of the last couple years of the Rascals chain as it descended into insolvency and eventually crashed.

It was a little over a year ago that the last remaining Rascals (in Cherry Hill, NJ, only 7 minutes from our apartment) closed its doors. We recall the incident clearly, as we were scheduled to headline there the following weekend.

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.

Lots of folks took the closing to mean that the business was faltering. If the allegations in the piece turn out to be true, the failure of Headliners (the parent company to Rascals) was unrelated to the health of the business in general or any business trends.

From our perspective, our regular headline dates at the Cherry Hill location were nearly all well-attended. We managed to get local press on nearly every occasion (owing somewhat to our local roots) and, as a result, had healthy, energetic crowds.

And we’re of the opinion that someone with deep pockets and a sound business plan could come into this area (Cherry Hill, South Jersey, call it what you will), open a comedy club and mop up.

TMZ.com is reporting that Dom Irrera got arrested for driving under the influence in Los Angeles. Dom might even think some of those comments are funny. (Pretty good, though, that, after 30 years in the biz, this is only his first brush with the law!) The item says he’s being held on $5,000 bail. We would hope that someone would’ve ransomed him by now. H/T to Kensil!

We received a heads up from comedian Bruce Baum on the rollout of his new comedy-centric networking site TheOuterNet.com. From the press release:

From the guy who brought you BabyMan, Dimples The Cow, Chiaman, and of course, literary phenom, Ted L. Nancy, now comes TheOuterNet.com, a uniquely friendly comedy destination that features original content videos, along with shorts and blogs from the TheOuterNet community of “nuts” (friends). TheOuterNet.com also features games, off-beat profiles, and a burgeoning community of creative outer-there “nuts.”

Designed by Bruce Baum and web-designer extraordinaire Jack Douglas, TheOuternet.com is a very happy hangout for your head. In fact, several doctors have suggested that visiting TheOuterNet.com several times a week, couldn’t hurt.

Baum was among the video artists in residence at Fox’s “The Sunday Comics” television show in 1991 and 1992. (Others included Gilbert Gottfried, Rich Hall and Ric Overton.) He did similar work at ABC. We worked with Baum for a week at the Riv in Vegas a couple years back.

Much of Baum’s work from his Fox days is included among the video offerings on the site, as are his new productions like “Bald Like Me.” Those wishing to join (or become “nuts,” in the site’s vernacular) need only fill out a short form and commence to uploading pics, videos and other materials. (We were assured by Baum that the artist retains all rights to his works.)

Are niche networking/video sites like this the future of the internet? Only time will tell. We’ve been pondering the direction of business/social networking sites lately and we have come to a few conclusions:

1. MySpace is in danger of flaming out. The novelty has worn off. The initial enthusiasm has been replaced by a feeling of obligation. It’s one more site that has to been maintained, checked, pruned, tended to. We’ve noticed that the bulletins seem less exciting, less useful, more predictable. Even the simple communication function seems to be utilized less. What was so wrong with email, anyway?

2. There are too many social and/or business networking sites competing for our membership. The Male Half and the Female Half currently have invitations to LinkedIn, Hi5, Plaxo and FaceBook. So, sooner or later, a decision must be made as to which are worth working with and which are not. There are, after all, so many hours in the day.

3. Can anyone tell anyone else exactly what the practical purpose of LinkedIn is? As an experiment, The Male Half took the LinkedIn plunge. And, after many months and many invitations accepted, he still can’t honestly say what practical advantage can be had by joining the network and maintaining it. And he was relieved to know that others are similarly perplexed. (And the foggy, mushy mystery of the usefulness of that network is the subject of many a vicious blog posting across the internet.)

4. The same goes for FaceBook. As an experiment, The Female Half created a FaceBook profile. As a social networking site, it might be peachy, but as a marketing tool it is an utter failure. (“If you have to be friends with someone to view his/her profile, what good is it?” she asks.)

None of these complaints can be filed under “Crotchety Oldsters Who Don’t Understand The Internets”– we’ve been online for 13 years as of next month, so we’re familiar with the conventions of the WWW and we’re savvy when it comes to user interfaces and the general thrust of most online initiatives. (Indeed, we’re semi-familiar with most or all these innovations before they become cultural phenomena.) But we eventually crunch the numbers and examine the ratio of time spent in maintenance to benefits and, for a lot of these sites, the numbers don’t add up.

YouTube is successful because it is so useful. It does something for you that you couldn’t do yourself (host a video and exhibit it simply). But it is so vast, and its offerings so diverse, that you must do the marketing. It is up to you to drive people to your video or to your channel. TheOuterNet takes that concept and narrows the focus and has a more sharply defined mission.

Baum’s narrowly-focused site is, of course, an excellent vehicle for promoting his own video output, but it also hopes to highlight the work of other comedians. And he insists that the site’s personal touch– with Baum himself regularly touting newly-added clips on the front page– will be what differentiates it from other corporate sites like Funny Or Die, making it more of an online television show than a sprawling aggregator site. “Other sites are trying to be WalMart,” Baum says. “We’re trying to be Trader Joe’s.”

On EasyReaderNews, by Andrew Wantuck.

I think that the first thing comedians, actors, musicians, painters, and a lot of people disagree with me on this, but the first and ONLY thing we should all do is entertain. That to me is a very honorable word; it’s not a shallow word. It’s very, very deep. Whether it’s drama or comedy, I think there is great honor, passion, and light in entertaining people. I think, in particular with comedy, people are kidding themselves when they think “I’ll be an engine for change.” (laughs) I don’t think that’s ever going to occur anyway. At that point the comedian is probably making a mistake. You understand that I am not talking about political material– that can very often be hysterical. ‘Cause again, funny is funny, but that’s just another topic for me. Like dating or parents or loneliness or football. I don’t think change should be involved. First of all, the problem is that you are telling half your audience that they are stupid. I don’t want that. When the lights go down in a room, I would like everyone to think “this is a safe place and I am ready to be entertained. I can just feel like a kid again.”

On the occasion of the impending recording of his DVD at the Comedy & Magic Club this weekend. Miller says he’ll close the DVD with an updated “Five Levels of Drinking” bit. That is a classic.

Apparently, he was green before green was cool. As was Amazing Jonathan. And Penn & Teller. And Sammy Davis Jr. And Shecky Greene was the first of all of them to hunker down in one location. And his name was “Greene!” That makes him the firstest and the greenest!

Bette Midler has announced (to firm up sagging ticket sales, perhaps?) that she is “quitting touring to save the planet.” So she says in a Sky News article in which she justifies hunkering down in Vegas for two years (at $6.5 million per year) by saying that she will no longer be humping around her act in 14 tractor trailers.

Of course, she could’ve just slimmed the act down to an acoustic set.

Instead, she takes a deal from Casear’s (a time-honored tradition for 50 years now) and claims the moral/environmental high ground. And, in the process, she implies that anyone who continues to travel around the country (from Pearl Jam to The Jonas Brothers to the road company of “Cats”… or Ron White?) are eco-criminals for not settling down in one location and letting their publics come to them.

And, of course, she fails to factor in that, in the old days, when she was humping her road show around in all those fossil-fuel-burning “lorries,” she was bringing the show to them, one city at a time. Now, however, anyone wanting to see her show must fly to Vegas (or drive across the desert) to see it.

Is she a gas hog/fossil fuel hypocrite now? We haven’t run the numbers. Does it matter? No. What does matter is this incessant and rather embarrassing tendency for folks to climb over one another to claim green superiority. And a goofy willingness on the part of an unquestioning press to grant it. It’s starting to resemble a religion or a cult.

How long before the adherents to this cult survey the landscape and begin to “re-examine” the model? How long before all the traveling acts are seen to be polluting far out of proportion to their contribution to society?

The obituary, from Fischer’s publicist:

New York, NY – Marty Fischer, CEO of Goldstar Entertainment, COO of National Lampoon Comedy House and former President of the New York Improv, passed away on Monday, September 22nd of a heart attack.

Marty specialized in comedy management for more than 15 years. His clients, including ventriloquist Michele LaFong and Ron Palillo (“Welcome Back Kotter”), appeared on television networks and shows including Comedy Central, VH1, Showtime, HBO, Oxygen, “The Late Show with David Letterman”, “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”, as well as commercials, radio, theaters, casinos, cruise ships, clubs and colleges.

Marty also produced shows in Atlantic City, New York and Las Vegas as well as fundraisers and corporate events. In 2006, he produced the Original Las Vegas Comedy Festival which spawned the inaugural New York Comedy Expo.

Marty was at the helm of The Las Vegas Comedy Festival again in January, 2007 and brought the second annual New York Comedy Expo to the Broadway Comedy Club in May, 2007. Marty produced the Laugh Across America event at The Laugh Factory during NATPE TV Producers Boot Camp in 2006, a fundraiser for NY Families with Autistic Children in May, 2007, and a benefit for actor/comedian Ray Garvey in May, 2008.

Friends with Joey Reynolds (“The Joey Reynolds Show”), Danny Aiello (“Moonstruck”), Jimmie Walker (“Good Times”), Jackie Mason, Shelly Berman, Soupy Sales, comediennes Karen Dunbar and Kira Soltanovich, comedians Jonathan Winters, Ron Tobin, Uncle Floyd, and the Most Brothers, Saranne Rothberg (Founder/CEO of ComedyCures), Al Martin (The Improv), musician Gari Powder, Kevin James (“King of Queens”), Frankie Cee (La Mela Ristorante in Little Italy) and many other notables and celebrities, Marty was a kind and generous man who will be terribly missed by all.

When we first fired up SHECKYmagazine.com, back in 1999, we cooked up various ways to generate content, different features that gave our readers insight into the lives of standup comedians.

One of our better ideas was The Big Move was hatched during a conversation while waiting for a hell gig to start in Schenectady, NY. The opener on the bill was local comic Rich Williams, who was plotting a move across the country to Los Angeles. We asked him if he would mind filing a monthly dispatch that would allow readers to look over his shoulder as he navigated the stages and interviews and lunches in Hollywood.

Over the course of 16 installments, Williams afforded an unprecedented view into the life of a comedian who did what so many comics dream of doing– moving from their small-town market to the big city. If you want to check out Installment Number One, it’s fascinating reading. And, with a little tricky navigation and skilled use of your back button, you can read all 16!

Williams hit the ground running and, in rather short time, he landed a staff writing gig! Subsequent Big Movers included Tom Ryan, Tommy James and Paul Ogata.

They all reside in the Internet Archives in their original (rather rickety and sometimes ghastly graphic) form. Pardon the missing art and/or jpgs!

Has this much common sense been packed into one short article in the history of short articles about standup?

It’s called “Writing for stand-up” and it’s written by Richard Herring and Josie Long and it appeared on the Guardian.co.uk.

If you want to start writing stand-up, try not to feel like there are any conventions you have to subscribe to. There are no established rules as to what your show should contain.

This is but one of the simple nuggets contained in the piece. For open mikers (or those contemplating taking the plunge), click to it, print it out and commit it to memory.

Where were these courses when we were in college?

This press release gives an overview of the history of standup comedy. It’s… we’re not sure exactly what it is, really. It’s a release that’s bought and paid for via Media-Newswire.com and it seems to promote Jerry Zolten, an “associate professor of speech communications and American studies at Penn State Altoona.” He teaches a “popular undergraduate course on the history of stand-up comedy.” Exactly why a university in the middle of Pennsylvania would be pumping out a press release to promote one of their courses is beyond us. Perhaps that’s how it’s done these days.

In the days of vaudeville, Zolten noted, comedians had to watch what they said. Some vaudeville theatres even posted signs backstage of prohibited words ( including “golly” and “darn” ). During a time of intense immigration, vaudeville comedians also popularized humor based on ethnic stereotypes.

“In addition to the restrictions on language, comedians completely avoided controversy. It was more about making fun of people and their differences,” Zolten explained, “which ironically wasn’t considered controversial back then. The gist of much of the comedy was, ‘Gee, aren’t we glad we’re not like them.’ ”

We suppose one can’t pack too much into a single press release, so we’ll let that last bit go without comment and say that we hope that the excellent “No Applause– Just Throw Money” by Trav S. D. is required (or, at least, recommended) reading. This excellent history of vaudeville is exhaustive and enlightening. (Available for $10 plus shipping on Amazon.com)

Actually, he is one of the stars.

ABC’s Dancing With The Stars has thrown Jeff Ross into the mix this season. But not for long. Watch the clip below and try to predict just how long he’ll last before being tossed.

He’s holding up his end well in the comic relief department. Every season has at least one oddity– a lead-footed, non-dancer that provides a few OMG moments and makes some of the mid-level celeb-dancers look good by comparison– and this season the role is shared by Ross and restaurateur Rocco Dispirito. We predict one of them will be gone soon after the show opens this evening. Cloris Leachman is safe for the time being. We’ll be tuning in tonight at 8 PM EDT.

Ross with The Male Half of the Staff at Just For Laughs (2005)

Comedians are always up for performing at charity events. Giving up our precious time is a great way to contribute to a charity. Perhaps the second most precious thing we can contribute would be our blood.

Blood banks all over the country are low on the red stuff. It’s easy as pie to set up an appointment at your local donation center. (And so many comedians have off during the day– when there are almost always times available on weekdays– we are perfect for serial blood donation!)

The Male Half just gave up a pint of AB+. Took about 20 minutes or so. And the apple juice and cookies afterward are delightful. (The Female Half has a tendency to go ashen and fall over when asked to bleed on command. Something about low blood pressure. The last time she attempted to donate, she bled so slowly, the result was a half-filled, unusable bag of blood. They asked her not to come back any more! Pity, since she’s sitting of a nice reserve of the good stuff– O Neg!)

Hop online, make an appointment and give up a pint! The folks in Galveston will appreciate it.

Some comics are meticulous when it comes to time. Open mikers are especially concerned about time, as going over might be getting disinvited from next week’s open mike. Some wear a watch. But glancing at the watch is frowned upon.

Some comics have hit upon the solution: A vibrating timer. There are a few models out there. One version is sold through a website that specializes in products for the blind. They tend to be a little pricey, and a few models use expensive button or specialty batteries that are also inconvenient.

One solution is to purchase a Kyocera K127 phone, sold via Virgin Mobile as the Marbl. (No, that’s not a typo. Virgin likes to misspell things. It’s cool, we suppose. We currently use their Kyocera KX9D, which has been dubbed The Oystr.) Currently, the Marbl is available at major retailers (Target, WalMart, etc.) for $12.99. And is available at the reduced price of $9.99 throughout the Rite Aid chain.

It’s lightweight, small and unobtrusive in a back pocket or clipped onto a belt or on a waistband. It’s possible to set five different alarms. And, using the included charger, it’s quickly rechargeable, using a sturdy and fairly long-lasting LiIon battery.

Revision: The battery on the unit we bought might be a little weak in the longevity of charge department. We charge it and get maybe two uses out of it. Still pretty good, considering that one can use the AC charger to recharge the battery. And the charger is pretty compact.

The Honolulu Weekly’s cover article is all about the ups and downs of the comedy scene in Honolulu and the neighboring islands. We vacationed recently in Hawaii and The Male Half did a phoner with the author of the piece, Adrienne LaFrance.

Something’s stirring in the local comedy scene. After a decade of dormancy, new clubs and shows are cropping up all over the island, troupes are forming and major headliners are coming back to perform in greater numbers. In a business where success is notoriously elusive for comics and clubs alike, it remains to be seen if any of this will stick. But while we wait to find out, there’s not much to do but sit back and laugh. […]

It wasn’t always like this. In the golden age of stand up, an era when audiences were fresh off seeing Eddie Murphy break profanity records dressed head-to-toe in purple leather, mainland comedian Brian McKim said Honolulu was one of his favorite circuits to play.

“There was this great spot, Honolulu Comedy Club, and we used to do that every couple of months,” he said. “You’d do that club, then two nights on Kaua’i, three on Maui, two on the Big Island, it was great while it lasted, but then business went soft. Almost everyone went down around ’95.”

We did that tour five times between 1989 and 1993, booked by Elaine at the Ice House in Pasadena. The shows were produced by Eddie Sax. We returned in 2000, for a different booker, but the shows weren’t nearly as well produced. The article gives a rundown of the current gigs and has quotes from local comcis and producers.

Our recent trip in July was our first visit to Oahu in eight years. We declined an offer to perform at the Princess Kaiulani, opting to keep our ten days in paradise work-free.

Christopher Sprigman and Dotan Oliar of the University of Virginia School of Law have authored “The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy” The abstract begins like this:

In this paper, we analyze how stand-up comedians protect their jokes using a system of social norms. Intellectual property law has never protected comedians against theft. Initially, jokes were effectively in the public domain, and comedians invested little in creating new ones. In the last half century, however, comedians have developed a norms-based IP system. This system serves as a stand-in for formal law, and regulates authorship, ownership, transfer, and the imposition of sanctions on norms violators. Under the norms system, the level of investment in original material has increased substantially. We detail these norms, which often diverge from copyright law’s defaults. Our description is based on interviews with comedians, snippets of which we include throughout the paper.

Allow us to translate:

Rather than rely on conventional means to copyright or protect our original material (like mailing in a cassette recording of our act with a fee to the proper authorities in D.C.), we rely on less formal means of policing the joke stealing. In the past, comics pretty much took the jokes they wanted from other comedians and no material was safe from thievery. Lately, though, comedians have come to be protective of their material and they’ve cooked up a system whereby we can regulate the purchasing, borrowing, selling and transfer of material between and among comedians and we’ve figured out various ways of preventing comics from stealing from other comics.

We here at SHECKYmagazine became aware of this paper when we were contacted a few months back by Sprigman. The Male Half consented to a lengthy phone interview with Sprigman and Oliar, which resulted in a handful of citations (of both SHECKYmagazine generally and of The Male Half specifically) throughout the paper.

We love the phrase “norms-based IP system!” It takes in activities like going on Stern and calling someone out as a thief, jacking someone up against a wall in the greenroom and emailing club owners and letting them know that you’re not happy about an open-miker who’s doing Shandling’s entire first Carson set. This kind of activity is covered and it’s couched in academic language. Wildly entertaining!

Compare post-vaudeville stand-up with the modern incarnation of the form. Appropriation in stand-up is now regulated by an informal IP system. Under the current community-based regulation, the text is protected—not perfectly, but the norms system does raise the cost of appropriation. And in line with what we might expect when the cost of appropriating text goes up, we find that comedians invest more at the margin in innovation directed at the text. Creators in today’s stand-up community invest in new, original and personal content. The medium is no longer focused on re-working of previously-existing genres like marriage jokes, ethnic jokes, mother-in-law jokes or (heaven forbid) knock-knock jokes. At the same time, it is perhaps also true (at least it seems so to us) that comedians today appear to invest less in developing the performative aspects of their work; indeed, many stand-ups today stand at a microphone, dress simply and move around very little, compared to the more elaborate costuming, mimicry, musicianship, and play-acting that characterized the post-vaudeville comics.

We haven’t read the entire paper, but we intend to (it’s 53 pages long), and we encourage others to do so. (And the authors would be quot;grateful for whatever input we can get from the stand-up community at large.” Hop onto the SSRN website, register (it takes about 15 seconds), retrieve your password from your inbox about 30 seconds later, then go back and either email the paper in .pdf format to yourself or download the .pdf file and read it right there. You’ll notice the contact author’s info is at the bottom of the SSRN page.

Read the article in the Chicago Trib called “Black, White, Funny.” It’s about the book entitled, “Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White” which chronicles the all-too-brief ride experienced by Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen as America’s first (“and last,” says Dreesen) black-and-white comedy team.

The two are on a tour to promote the book, with multiple appearances in their native Chicago, including a party at Gibson’s, a steakhouse on Rush.

…There were also ghosts, for Gibsons sits on the site of what once was Mister Kelly’s, arguably the city’s premiere nightclub when Tim and Tom were in their brief, heady and unique heyday.

“I saw Richard Pryor at Mister Kelly’s on New Year’s Eve in 1969, and I said, ‘I want to do that,’ ” said Reid. “Two years later, Tom and I were on that stage.”

They’ll be coming up on Letterman soon and will also appear on Tavis Smiley’s PBS talk show next month.