Ed Condran of the Asbury Park Press has the following exchange with Lewis Black in a recent (Mar. 21) interview to promote Black’s new Comedy Central show:

Q: If Kindler is on the show, Dane Cook has to be one of the topics since Kindler hates him.

A: That won’t happen. We won’t be mean to comedians. That is just something I don’t want to do.

We posted earlier about Clint Black’s upcoming appearance on CBS’s Secret Talents of the Stars, in which the country singer will attempt to do standup.

He confesses to “night terrors” at the prospect of doing standup. In an interview on CMT.com, Black says that he experiences “moments of anxiety during the day whenever I’d picture the scene.”

He’s actually trying out material in a live setting at local Nashville club Zanies.

Well, the club wasn’t packed tonight. It was the second time I had gone on stage here at Zanies. The first time, it was packed, and it felt really great. Really great house. Tonight, it was a little thin, and it felt like a little bit more pressure. Maybe my expectations were different now. … But I don’t think probably I will go on stage anywhere and do this and just feel great. I just don’t. I don’t expect it.

Black’s consulting comedian Wayne Federman for help in crafting a set.

We’re impressed with the seriousness with which Black seems to be approaching the task. And we’re also surprised at just how much he appears to understand standup– and just how difficult coming up with original material is:

I can think of something, and it’s funny to me, and I’ll tell it to Wayne or another friend over the phone. And you hear the silence on the other end, look around for the crickets, and you go, “I’ll call you back.” You go back to work on it. I’ve been working on it pretty hard for two or three weeks now. I had about 30 minutes worth of material that was about 90 percent no good, and so I had to work really hard to make that 10 percent feel more like 20 or 30 percent. That’s the thing: identifying the “A” material and then expanding on that and getting rid of the bulk of what was written. It’s not working.

Of the comedy gauntlet he’ll be forced to run, Black is realistic:

Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. I’m going to have to have two minutes in the first show. If I make it through, I’ll have to have two new completely new minutes. And the thought has occurred to me that it’s not going to be easy.

Perhaps he can advise the contestants on the upcoming season of Last Comic Standing.

Nice to see someone humbled by standup. He actually acknowledges that it’s not going to be easy. (And Terry Bumgarner, writing for CMT.com, actually refrained from asking about Black’s enormous ego, his control issues or his dysfunctional childhood!)

Had Mephis hung on to their sizable lead… or maybe just not goofed up in the last minute… or sank a free throw or two, The Male Half would have taken the title. But they completely lost their fight in the OT.

The Female Half wins the SHECKYmagazine.com March Madness office pool. She rallied in the round of 16. It was a tie after that. It came down to the last game. We congratulate The Female Half!

Comedian Dobie Maxwell blogs for OnMilwaukee.com on his life as a comic and various side projects.

In a recent post, “Red Flag Lunch,” Maxwell recounts a meeting with midwest comedy booking agent John Yoder. In among some pronouncements and theories about the current state of the industry, is this:

I stopped for lunch with John Yoder today. John is a booker out of Grand Rapids and he is one of the first people I ever worked for back when I started out on the road in the ’80s. He was a staple for almost every year I’ve been a comedian as he has been for a lot of acts but now he’s really having a hard time staying afloat. He’s losing a lot of his power base.

Maxwell theorizes on the impact such a development has on him personally and to speculate on the implications for the business at large.

While we have no quarrel with this:

There are several reasons for it but the fact remains the comedy business is shifting and if I don’t shift with it I’ll be stuck in the position a lot of guys are that depended on Yoder for much of their work.

We take issue with his general pronouncements that comedy clubs are “having a harder time making it these days” or that there is some sort of significant, industry-wide demographic shift.

We’ve worked in all 50 states. In the past six months, we’ve worked in NC, MN, PA, WV, FL, TN, GA, MI, VA, OH, NY and NJ. If we go back 18 months, we can add NV, AZ, WA, CA, KY, RI, SC and MD. And among those dates, we’ve worked in many different kinds of venues– comedy clubs (of course), country clubs, private parties, casinos and colleges. It may well appear to some comics (and some unfortunate bookers) that “the comedy business is shifting,” or that crowds are skewing this way or that with regard to age, income, education or hip factor. But we can say that it has been our experience that the crowds we’ve been seeing are diverse in terms of age, income, education (we assume) and (in some parts of the country) ethnicity.

As for the raw numbers, we would say that the crowds are (with some not surprising exceptions) robust, the clubs are satisfied with their turnouts and, in cases where turnout is unacceptable, an attempt is made to determine the cause and plans are mapped out to take appropriate measures.

And, while we can’t speak for any other comics, the customer satisfaction rating (based on our unscientific and largely anecodotal evidence) has been high. It seems to us that standup comedy patrons (regardless of venue) are very satisfied with their experience.

So why would a booking agent who was once so powerful and influential be panicked (“shell-shocked” to use Maxwell’s description) and seemingly powerless to halt his decline? And what are the true implications of such a decline– for the acts whose fortunes depend upon his and for the business at large?

First the “why.” Part of it may be regional/geographical economics. Yoder’s clients may well be feeling the effects of a precursory economic downturn. But we note that clubs in Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit and other midwest cities are doing quite well.

But we suspect that one of the reasons might be that the business model that worked so well in the 80s and 90s has run up against what so many other business models have run up against– The Internet. Can we add comedy bookers and talent agents to the list of occupations whose contribution to the equation has become so minimal (and whose previous monopoly on pertinent information has been obliterated) that their clients are inclined to D.I.Y.? (Think travel agent, stock broker, real estate agent, etc.)

To be sure, many agents (some who have seen the highs and the lows over the past 20 years and some who have not) are adapting, changing, offering more of this or less of that. Some have shifted focus away from one type of venue and toward another. And, in much the same way, many comics (us included) have vowed to never again be caught with all our comedy eggs in one basket. But, we are of the opinion that the overall prospects for those who adapt– agent and comic alike– are bright.

It may well be that Mr. Yoder is hurting (and, along with him, the comics who fortunes are inextricably linked to his), but, from our perch, this catastrophe can not logically be extrapolated over the industry as a whole.

Editors note: That link above may not work the first four times you click on it. Not sure why. But, if you’re persistent, it’ll load.

From TOC’s website (on April 1, of course):

Jokeaholics Anonymous, a full-time stand-up comedy club, will open this Tuesday in one of Chicago’s best areas for high foot traffic: The downstairs food court at the Thompson Center. Shows will take place at 8pm Friday and Saturday night, as well as special matinee performances Tuesday and Wednesday from noon–1pm. Tickets are $40, and require a three drink minimum (guess comedy really does come in threes…), but include “all the bourbon chicken samples you can eat” from nearby Peking Buffet, says club owner and talent booker Mitzer Friedman.

Initially, we had trouble discerning whether this was an April Fools’ gag, as we have actually done standup in a food court. (We did a show at the food court in downtown Calgary as part of that city’s FunnyFest a few years ago. It’s no joking matter! The horror! The sense of humor is the first thing to go!)

From our coverage of the ’04 FunnyFest:

The goal becomes to get up on the makeshift stage and do as little real material as possible.

And now it was our turn in the barrel, so to speak. We met fellow victims Grant Damsgaard and Tom Gregory and, with grim determination, we all agreed that we’d do what it took to endure what is, technically and aesthetically, a hellish and unwinnable situation.

When all was said and done, Fest coordinator (and standup comic) Nick DeBrey declared this day’s Free Funny show “the best one of the Festival!” Mainly because we had all managed to escape with our dignity and– wonder of wonders– a good portion of the crowd had a good time!

What is going on out there in Comedyland? A press release from a company called Robert Wagner Marketing and Entertainment details the record-breaking performance on April 1 by a comedian named Robby Wagner.

The show was held at Toso’s Sports Grill in Phoenix, Arizona, where Mr. Wagner hit the stage at 11am and continued on until 9:07pm. “It was a truly amazing and touching show to witness,” said owner Dave De La Toso. “Robby had it from start to finish. I’m glad he held this event at my venue for I lost my father to heart disease.”

And, on CBCNews.ca, is an account of a similar incident several hundred miles north, occurring almost simultaneously:

Winnipeg comedian Big Daddy Tazz set a new record for standup comedy Tuesday, after delivering more than eight consecutive hours onstage at the city’s Gas Station Theatre.

Tazz, who began at 8:30 a.m. local time and finished at 5 p.m., wanted to break unofficial records set by U.S. comedians Dane Cook and Dave Chappelle, who have delivered seven- and six-hour sets respectively at Hollywood’s famed Laugh Factory.

In a related story, last weekend in Minneapolis, MN, Brian McKim performed a 45-1/2-minute set at that city’s Joke Joint Comedy Club. “That’s a lot of comedy for an audience to sit through. They stayed with me, even through the check drop,” McKim said, while toweling off. “At one point, I considered ordering breakfast for the entire audience. But, I got the light.” McKim said he plans to break his record this week at Knuckleheads in Toms River, NJ, possibly doing as much as 47 minutes.

That’s right. Hollywood Reporter says that NBC is including LCS on their Summer ’09 schedule. That’s what their telling potential advertisers at the upfronts.

Start looking for that special banana costume or that very special Viking outfit– those “casting calls” will be here before you know it! All you pizza tossers and hotties better get ready as well. They’re going to need ever more of you next season!

That’s when we launched SHECKYmagazine.com! Can you believe we’ve been doing this for nine years? We started out as a monthly online magazine, uploading interviews, columns and photos on the first of every month. Those early issues also included a rudimentary blog– years before the term was even coined– that contained information about contests, festivals, achievements and fluff.

In our first year, we interviewed Bob Zany, Wayne Cotter, Kip Addotta, Shelley Berman and we were the first publication to interview Triumph The Insult Comic Dog! Our early columnists included Brian Whalen, Rich Williams and Jim “Klaus” Myers.

In May of 1999, with only two issues up on the WWW, we applied for (and received) press credentials to cover the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. We uploaded five daily dispatches from Canada that July– the first-ever such coverage of the world’s largest comedy festival. And our coverage of the event over nine consecutive summers is unequaled. And our near-real-time analysis of NBC’s Last Comic Standing is recognized as the best on the web.

We look forward to providing our readers with much more of the news, analysis and snark they’ve come to know and love!

Thanks to all of you who have bookmarked SHECKYmagazine.com over the years and who have made it the place to hit on the WWW for standup comedy info and opinion!

Our extensive network of spies has fed us bits and pieces of information. We are fairly confident that we have accurate information regarding the 12 acts that have made it into the house for this season’s Last Comic Standing. (That’s right, there’s a house this season.)

Here are the names and links of the twelve (thirteen, if you count both members of the comedy team):

God’s Pottery
Adam Hunter
Jeff Dye
Ron G
Paul Foot
Iliza Shlesinger
Marcus
Jim Tavaré
Esther Ku
Louis Ramey
Sean Cullen
Papa C.J.

Foot made it in from the group who was flown from London to Miami. Marcus is the “good looking tattoed impressionist,” as identified in our Feb. 29 posting. God’s Pottery is a team that we saw perform in Montreal last July. Hunter made it in from the Tempe auditions. Ron G auditioned in L.A. Papa C.J., says his website, possesses, “the energy and attitude of an Indian Chris Rock.” Sean Cullen “entered into the public eye in 1988 as a member of musical comedy group Corky and the Juice Pigs,” says his Wikipedia entry. Esther Ku made it to Vegas via the Gotham auditions. Louis Ramey is well-known in the industry as a solid, experienced club headliner. Shlesinger is the “winner of the Myspace ‘So You Think You’re Funny’ contest.” Jeff Dye, says the copy on his Myspace, “doesn’t use profanity but is very edgy and creative humor takes you in his mind that some have described as a charmingly twisted experience.” Adam Hunter “is one of the hottest young comedians around today.” (We swear that’s what his bio leads with.)

CORRECTION: We received two emails from helpful readers providing us with the proper name of Jim Tavaré, the British actor comic who is among the 12 finalists. (He plays the violin. He’s not that guy who usta play the cello, is he? There was a British comic who played the cello and was hot here in the U.S. about 1992 or so, with appearances on Frazier. (or was it Cheers? We recall him only because he won International Star Search in 1992 and, as such, won the right to compete on the first episode of the following season of the U.S. version of the talent competition. Of course, that was the episode that featured the Male Half. The Male Half… losing, that is, in spectacular fashion to Canadian comic Herb Dixon.)

If it is him, that would give Tavaré the distinction of having appeared on both the original Star Search and Last Comic Standing. We’re not sure anyone else can claim that!

We have tallied up the results so far, then re-checked our calcuations. The Female Half surged ahead of the Male Half after the weekend’s games! It was the contests involving the Elite Eight that enabled TFHotS to pick up 16 points and obliterate the slim lead TMHotS had. It now stands at 97 to 87.

The only hope for the Male Half is if Memphis meets Kansas and crushes them in the final. The Female Half correctly predicted the Final Four. The Male Half put too much faith in UConn and Tennessee.

Now we wait!

Left to right: Ken Reed (Joke Joint proprietor), Brian McKim, Traci Skene, Dwight York

Dwight York showed up on the first night. We had a swell time watching York at one of the Chicago Fests in 2002 and we’ve heard him pop up with frequency on XMRadio.

And comedian Matt Ruby emails us to tell us that he has thoughtfully fished for the interviews on Rose’s site and organized them in one convenient posting on his blog, Sandpapersuit.com.

Click on the link and enjoy Google Video interviews with Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, Ricky Gervais and many others.

Thanks, Matt Ruby!

From last Saturday’s Toronto Globe & Mail is an article about the lawsuits that are flying back and forth between Yuk Yuks founder Mark Breslin and the folks who own the two former Yuks clubs in the province of Alberta.

Chrysi Rubin and Bill Robinson, owners of the Calgary and Edmonton clubs that now operate under the Laugh Shop banner, have been sued, as has Judy Sims, the former head of the western offices of Funny Business (Breslin’s booking agency). Sims broke away from Breslin and Funny Business last year, taking some Yuks acts with her.

Breslin’s latest salvo, a memo that has been circulating by e-mail this winter, and addressed “to all comics,” outlines his attempt to bring a “diplomatic resolution” to the situation involving the owners of the Calgary and Edmonton clubs: Bill Robinson, and his successor, Chrysi Rubin. “As of now, Bill and his daughter Chrysi, acting like common thieves, have stolen our two clubs,” he wrote.

Breslin suggested that comics should “refuse to work” with the “rogue clubs,” urging loyalty to the Yuk Yuk’s brand. “We spent 20 years developing them out West, and I’m asking you to respect this,” he wrote.

The memo got under the skin of some comics, who saw it as a veiled threat to their Yuk Yuk’s livelihoods.

Robinson and Rubin saw it as “interference with economic relations” and filed a lawsuit of their own.

We suppose it’s up to a judge now.

We’ve worked in Canada sparingly over the past two decades– multiple times in Montreal at the Nest, once at a short-lived venue in Ottawa, once at a Yuks competitor in Toronto and once during a trip to the Calgary Fest. The country (and, by implication, Breslin’s Yuk Yuks chain and his Funny Business booking agency) is virtually impenetrable for most U.S. comics.

Disputes broke out in the 1980s when comedians complained they had to be booked through Funny Business, the talent agency set up by Breslin to service his clubs and touring shows. Comics complained that if they found gigs through other agencies, or performed at outside venues, they weren’t welcome at Yuk Yuk’s.

The federal Competition Bureau stepped in to investigate, and concluded in 1991 that Breslin’s empire controlled the supply of standup comedy and engaged in anti-competitive acts that could lessen the competition for standup-comedy services.

Breslin somehow claimed it a “clear victory for our system,” but promised to stop doing the things the comics groused about, and thereby avoided a full-blown hearing before the Competition Tribunal, which could have resulted in fines or seen his businesses broken up. The Laugh Shop’s lawsuit alleges that Yuk Yuk’s is not living up to its 1991 pledge.

The Competition Bureau? Sounds fierce!

But, if Breslin has gone back on the agreements struck with the Competition Bureau, we can’t imagine they would like that. We could witness the breakup of the chain, increased competition and maybe even higher wages. Stay tuned!

Backstage at the Ritz Theatre, Oaklyn, NJ, last night, from left to right: Kevin Downey, Jr., Geno Bisconte and Mark Riccadonna. Together, they are billed as “The Average White Guy Tour.” We stopped by last night briefly, as the venue is only .8 miles from SHECKYmagazine.com HQ!

They’re gearing up for the super-duper elimination round, where they pick the final ten comics that go to Los Angeles. The comics are sequestered at the Bally’s and at Paris.

We know for a fact that the producers chose many more comedians than they needed in the various casting calls that they conducted around the country earlier this year. We understand that it’s prudent to leave yourself a comfortable margin when producing a show– schedule conflicts arise, old arrest records surface, etc.– but from the sound of things out there, a lot of people who got red envelopes were told that they weren’t going to Vegas.

So far, all we’ve heard is that Bryan Kellen has been eliminated– we’re not sure why. Kellen made it through from Tempe.

The shows take place sometime soon, probably this weekend. We’ll try to get the scoop and let you know as soon as possible. (We’re bringing the laptop to Minneapolis.)

An article in the Connecticut Post relates the story of a local Stratford, CT, boy, attending GWU, who has earned a spot in a comedy contest being conducted by an online standup comedy clip aggregator.

Travis Helwig doesn’t like jokes. He finds them pedestrian, quaint and often anticlimactic. That’s a little strange, because Helwig, 20, of Stratford, has been interested in performing comedy for much of his life.[…]

Helwig made his school’s standup team, even though he’s not a big fan of the format. That’s because he finds conventional standup– and jokes in general– a bit dull.

“There’s a set-up and a punchline and you know what’s going to happen and it’s never as satisfying as you’d hoped,” he said.

Instead of taking the stage and rattling off one-liners, he developed an act more akin to performance art, adopting the persona of an awkward man terrified to be onstage.

An awkward man, you say?!? Terrified to be onstage?!?

Why… in all the history of standup comedy we can say without hesitation– with absolute certainty– that this has never been done before!

I suggest that we all have a meeting and try to determine if there any– ANY!– reason why any of us– all of us, each and every one of us currently doing standup comedy– should remain in the business of standup! So ingenious, so perfect, so positively unique and exquisitely wonderful is this Helwig’s concept that it would be folly for any of us to continue.

All hail, Travis Helwig! He is our new Comedy Leader! Before him, we are but greasy pieces of dust, unoriginal and slovenly, not worthy of inclusion in the category that includes him!

It is indeed a shattering experience to realize that all of one’s efforts have heretofore been but piddling and pathetic attempts– mere precursors to that which is the splendor of Travis Helwig. But we shall console ourselves with the fact that we will no longer embarrass ourselves with our pedestrian bleating. And we will forever take delight in his actions. (Click on the story to behold his clip.)

But, seriously, folks: Our tiny friend displays that painful combination of hubris and jaw-dropping ignorance. What’s the old saying? If you wanna break the rules, you gotta know the rules. And, if you’re going to pass yourself off as The New Comedy Messiah, you had better come up with something better than “awkward man terrified to be onstage,” something that has been done (and, in nearly all instances, abandonded quickly) by countless open-mikers since the dawn of (funny) man.

It’s disrespectful. It’s embarrassing. And the reporter ate it up.

An article in the Auburn (CA) Journal (Comedian Turns Spotlight On Healthcare) tells of comedian, producer and booker Grace White, who has inoperable lung cancer.

Though she still has lung cancer, White wants everyone to know she still fully intends to “kick cancer’s butt.”

And she’s even more determined to shine a spotlight on the healthcare crisis.

We wish her luck in vanquishing her cancer, but we aren’t exactly onboard with the part about this country’s “healthcare crisis.”

White has insurance (her daughter purchased it for her), but she says that it’s “absurd that in the richest country in the world there are 47 million people without health insurance.”

“The best thing people can do for me is to write their Congressmen about the healthcare crisis,” White concluded. “Insurance is too expensive for even working families to afford. Baby boomers alone could change the laws if all of them would use their voice.”

Actually, Bloomington, but you can see Minneapolis from there! We’re going to be appearing together (Both Halves! Male and Female!) at the Joke Joint this weekend, THU, March 27 through SUN, March 30! (It’s The Male Half’s return engagement at the Joint and The Female Half’s premiere! That’s the Male Half in the photo at left, onstage during his first trip to the Joke Joint, in September!)

ATTENTION, MSP Residents: If you mention the “SHECKYMagazine Discount,” you’ll get two bucks knocked off admission to any of this weekend’s shows at the Joke Joint. That’s right– Astute readers of SHECKYmagazine.com can learn about the world of standup comedy and SAVE MONEY!

Stop on by and say hello to the editors and publishers of the WWW’s most beloved magazine about standup and see a rollicking standup comedy show in the intimate confines of the Joke Joint!

…Things get interesting.

The Female Half surged yesterday. She had Tennessee, Louisville, UNC, Texas and Memphis. As the points puff up (two per win in this round!), she was able to come to within nine of current pool leader The Male Half. (His Sunday was dismal– backing Oklahoma, Miami and Mississippi hurt him badly.)

On Saturday The Female Half picked up ten, while The Male Half picked up a respectable eight.

In the the next round, each win nets four points. At least according to the NYT.

Careful readers of this publication know that CBS in-studio sports anchor Seth Davis did standup for a year in NYC. (“It was 98 per cent a hobby,” he says. “But I held up hope there’d be a network exec in the audience who’d insist on giving me a sitcom.” — USA Today, 2/28/06)

But it was analyst Clark Kellog who takes the prize for perhaps the funniest comment (and quite possibly the most obscure reference) of the tourney: When his colleague (Was it Billy Packer?) commented that one of the players resembled Jimi Hendrix, Kellogg, without missing a beat, said, “Now the question is: Is he experienced?” Hardcore Hendrix fans (and viewers over the age of 48) were thrilled.

Behold the inanity of this paragraph:

Stand-up comedy is kind of dead right now, if you ask some people. Sure there are still plenty of comedy clubs out there doing their thing, and Jerry Seinfeld makes a killing whenever he sets foot on a stage, but the rising stars all seem to be coming out of sketch or improv. It’s hard to be edgy these days when you stand up at a microphone and make joke after joke. Well, unless Dane Cook is your definition of edgy.

It is the lede of an article by CinemaBlend.com‘s “Chief New York Correspondent” Katey Rich on the proposed documentary based on Richard Zoglin’s book “Comedy On The Edge.”

You’ll recall that we posted on this last week (scroll down, or click “More Than Just A Documentary About Comedy”).

Why is it that when someone like Rich comments on standup comedy, the default attitude is dismissive or derisive? What manner of disease is this? Her opening graf isn’t just wrong, it isn’t just stupid, it’s… mean. Are we offended? Hurt? Angry? No. We just marvel at the spectacle of someone so eager to display her ignorance and so eager to deliver it with such empty malice. We’re also weary of the supreme hackiness of her trotting out of the “Dane Cook isn’t very edgy” meme.

She’s writing for a “snarky, fun, and informative” website about movies (their words, not ours), but she utterly fails to provide anything fun or informative over and above that which was contained in the original Variety piece that prompted the posting in the first place. Plenty of “snark,” to be sure, but snark without any substance ends up being boring petulance.

Her sole attempt at contributing something meaningful to the discussion, “It seems a topic worth exploring, especially since the legacy of these comics keeps fading as time goes on,” is howling, barking stupidity. The legacy of all these comics (if Time-Warner has anything to say about it– and they most certainly will) is going to be preserved, packaged, marketed, licensed, uploaded and downloaded tens of millions of times over the next few years. And that which is not sliced, diced and served by the folks at Time-Warner will be special-ordered through the myriad other channels of distribution. (Has Rich not heard of The Long Tail?)

From his obituary in the International Herald Tribune:

Al Copeland, who became rich selling spicy fried chicken and notorious for his flamboyant lifestyle, died Sunday at a clinic near Munich, Germany. He was 64.

The founder of the Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken chain had been diagnosed shortly before Thanksgiving with a malignant salivary gland tumor. His death was announced by his spokeswoman, Kit Wohl.

What they don’t mention in his obit is that he pumped a bunch of cash into the Improv in Melrose and started the wild expansion of the Improvisation chain.

From a June 1999 interview on Bnet.com, with Budd Friedman:

I have been doing this for 36 years and the day-to-day stuff is a pain in the ass. 1 still am involved in booking acts at gaming venues; I still book the cruises I go on. I’ll be there and still maintain an office at Melrose. But we’re finalizing a deal with a New Orleans restaurateur, Al Copeland, to run the Melrose club. He runs a series of family-style restaurants in Louisiana and Alabama, 40 of them. called Copeland’s, and a higher-level chain called Straya. He will be my chief franchisee and he wants to open two clubs a year around the country.

From our coverage of the Just For Laughs Festival on June 22, 1999 (our third ever dispatch from the JFL):

MONTREAL–The buzz here (or one of the many buzzes) is that Budd is opening a colossal chain of comedy clubs in the not-too-distant-future. He’ll do it in partnership with a fellow by the name of Al Copeland. You’ve never heard of him, but you may have heard of his chain of restaurants called Copeland’s.

This guy Copeland throws a mean party. In the ballroom near the back of the Delta, Messrs Copeland and Freidman threw a New Orleans-themed party to let everyone know about this little venture. At least, we think that’s what is was for. The food was great–lots of blackened this and creole that. And the booze was free as well. Everyone was there: We spotted Andy Kindler for the first time. We’re thinking of pissing him off so that he’ll mention us in his State of the Industry address on Saturday afternoon…stay tuned.

Copeland’s death was sudden. His illness only lasted for just over 100 days. It is reasonable to speculate as to what his passing might mean to the chain.

From the Al Copeland Investments website, is this paragraph from his profile (which seems to have been written in 2002 or so and not updated since):

In 1999, Al took an ownership position in three Improv Comedy Clubs located in the Los Angeles, California area (Hollywood, Brea and Irvine) and has since opened additional clubs in Baltimore. MD and Ontario, CA. Plans are proceeding with opening clubs in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, San Jose and the Newport/Cincinnati area, in 2002, with even more to come across the US in 2003!

From his Wikipedia profile, which contains an update sentence referring to his death:

Copeland owns several restaurant chains, including Copeland’s, Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro, Amor deBrazil, and Sweet Fire & Ice, as well as the Improv comedy clubs located in California and Pittsburgh, PA, and three hotels, one of which is in New Orleans.

One of our dopiest short films ever. (Featuring the music of Irving Berlin and Mr. Acker Bilk and the singing of Judy Garland.)

After last night’s 16 games, things got bloody! The Male Half incorrectly called four games– He failed to foresee ‘Nova beating Clemson and he had Vandy beating Sienna. And he erroneously figured that Drake and UConn would easily advance. He’s still 29 out of 33.

The Female Half also called the UConn, Vandy and ‘Nova matchups wrong and misplaced her faith in the Hoosiers, Miami and local faves St. Joe’s. And who can blame her for picking Gonzaga to advance?

We hasten to emphasize that the reason she’s getting hammered in the office pool is not because she’s a chick. (Her choices– most of them– are based on knowledge of NCAA tourney history that would put most penis-bearing creatures to shame!). And is is interesting to note that her Final Four consists of Memphis, North Carolina, UCLA and Kansas– a scenario that is just as plausible as any!

Postscript: So far today, The Male Half is 1-0, having correctly predicted Duke’s elimination at the hands of WVU. “A lucky guess,” says he. “Somebody big’s gotta get upset here and there.” He may be brought back down to earth quickly, as Xavier is getting its ass kicked in the first minutes of their contest with Purdue.

Anyone in the mood for a big pile of dumb? Click here for Brian Lowry’s Variety article, “Why standups are sitting out primetime” in Friday’s online edition.

Lowry speculates on the reason that there are no more sitcoms starring comedians:

Everyone eventually learned that building concepts around standups is trickier than it looks, especially because most acts don’t lend themselves to becoming the template for a weekly series. Many comics were given shows despite slim resumes, and lacked the necessary foundation to survive the transplantation process, chewing through all their best material in a matter of weeks. Hell, it even took multiple tries to capture Cosby’s rumination about the vagaries of parenting, which yielded a payday sizable enough to keep a good-sized country up to its eyeballs in Jell-O pudding.

Ultimately, the lure of TV proved too intoxicating, and the talent pool wasn’t equal to the demand.

This nimrod thinks that when comedians star in a sitcom they “chew through all their best material in a matter of weeks.” Has someone hacked into the Variety site and posted this to embarrass Lowry and his publication?

He also seems to think that the reason there are no comics starring in sitcoms is because the talent pool is shallow. As if Hollywood is efficient! Is he actually this naive? Does he also think that American Idol finds the best singers in America and Last Comic Standing actually finds “the funniest people in the world.”

According to his bio, Lowry “has been a media columnist and chief TV critic at Variety since September 2003” and wrote for seven years for Los Angeles Times.

Yet he thinks:

1. That the networks have exhausted the standup talent pool

2. Tom Arnold, Sinbad, Greg Giraldo, Paul Rodriguez, Lenny Clarke, Kevin Meaney and Paula Poundstone are “second-tier comedians.”

3. When a comedian hosts a primetime, network gameshow (i.e. Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Dennis Miller, Drew Carey) he has been “relegated” to hosting said gameshow.

4. After a comic has had his shot, he goes “scurrying back to the clubs.”

5. A comic gets only one shot!)

We suppose that, in 1983, Lowry would have regarded Cosby as a second-tier comic who had his one shot and had scurried back to the comedy clubs. After all, it had been 13 years since the cancellation of his two-season, 52-episode The Bill Cosby Show failure.

To be fair, the troubles besetting the sitcom can’t merely be explained by the deficiencies of comedians.

To be fair? To be less than moronic, perhaps.

The “troubles” that the genre is currently experiencing have nothing to do with the “the deficiencies of comedians” or a shallow talent pool, and everything to do with a hopelessly and fatally flawed business model, network executives who display jaw-dropping cowardice and an industry that can’t seem to wean itself from its current reality television addiction.

The pilot fish in the MSM (like our dullard friend Lowry here) watch from the sidelines and dutifully perpetuate ridiculous bromides like “the sitcom is dead.” All the while, broadcast television leaks millions of viewers every year and the antique publications that Lowry and his colleagues work for are helpless to stop their rapid slide toward extinction.

Somebody’s got a credibility problem.

No, that’s not a description of comedians.

That’s how laughter is described by Will Durst in the article by Steven Winn, on SFGate.com (the SF Chronicle’s online component), which delves into who laughs/doesn’t laugh at what, and why/why not. It’s well worth reading the whole thing.

Stand-up comedian Will Durst knows it as well as anyone: Laughter is a delicate, elusive and unstable thing.

“So many factors can affect it,” Durst said by phone recently from Florida, where he was getting ready to entertain a group of lawyers. He ticked off some of the threats– wrong sound system, too much light on the audience, a ceiling that’s too high or absorptive to bounce the laughter around and a crowd’s lack of shared references with the comic, not to mention its collective blood alcohol level.

“And oh yes, whether you’re funny.”

There’s a lot of quotes from theater types, comics, scientists and professors.

Wallace Chafe, a research professor of linguistics at UC Santa Barbara and author of “The Importance of Not Being Earnest” says the desire for laughter is so strong that humans had to invent humor to justify it.

“Laughter, physiologically, is an expelling of air spasmodically from the lungs,” he said by phone, comparing the feeling to that provided by sex or drugs.

Astute readers will notice that this is our second reference to UC Santa Barbara today. The first being in a post about comedians Mo Mandel (scroll down), who studied creative writing at UCSB. Hmmm… it is a small world indeed.

Documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler has purchased the rights to Richard Zoglin’s “Comedy On The Edge” book, says Variety.

While the film is in the very early planning stages, Cutler said Zoglin has access to several decades’ worth of archival footage as well as relationships with many of the key comics examined in the book. Cutler is also working on ways to make the film more than just a history lesson, though he wouldn’t get into specifics about whether he was planning a reunion of some sort to serve as a focal point for the pic.

A reunion of some sort? That’ll be just the beginning.

Time-Warner, owner of Time magazine, for whom Zoglin was a senior editor, also owns:

AOL LLC.
Time Warner Cable
Home Box Office
Turner Broadcasting System
New Line Cinema
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
Time Inc.
UBU Productions

Time-Warner board chairman (and former CEO) Richard Parsons has been famously quoted as saying that “synergy is dead,” but this is going to be a mini synergy orgy! A “Syn-orgy!^TM” And at the heart of it all will be the comedians that millions of boomers grew up on. This documentary– and all the hoopla and promotions and events that surround it– will further cement standup as a huge and necessary part of the entertainment industry and of the culture at large.

And Bloomsbury, the publisher of Zoglin’s book is doing pretty well for themselves lately. They published those books about the wizard kid.

And the movies they made about the wizard kid? They were made by Warner Bros.

From item on CMT.com:

Clint Black is the latest country artist to star in a reality TV show, joining the cast of Secret Talents of the Stars. The series will premiere April 8 on CBS. Judges will critique the live performances of 16 celebrities who will showcase their unknown talents, and viewers will vote for their favorites.

Black’s “unknown talent” is standup comedy.

Is there a template that journalists use to create this stuff?

This time, it’s a profile of comedian Mo Mandel on JewishJournal.com, written by “Jay Firestone, Contributing Writer.” (We put it in quotes because we suspect that it might merely be code for inexpensive software that enables editors to craft an article in a matter of minutes about any comedian merely by inserting the name and other pertinent facts.)

It opens with:

Between finding ways to rebel against his family and being the butt-end of anti-Semitic jokes by rednecks, the young social outcast eventually learned to channel his anger and frustration into comedy.

It ends with:

For Mandel, performing in front of 200 people is more comfortable than talking face to face with someone. He considers stand-up a complete high, better than sex.

It is a cliché sandwich.

Of course, part of the blame lies with the comedian. We’re supposed to be creative people and, for the most part, we are. But we should give some thought to what we’re going to say to a reporter when, inevitably, he/she asks the same five or six boilerplate questions and be ready with something that doesn’t sound like all the other answers.

1. How/why did you get started in standup?

2. What kind of comedy do you do?

3. What’s it like being up on the stage?

4. When did you know you wanted to be a comedian?

5. Were you the class clown?

Approach the interview as a writing exercise. Concoct answers that are as interesting and off-kilter as the material in your act.

And if you think you’re too new at standup or you’re aren’t going to attract the interest of the media, think again. Both the Male and the Female Halves were the subject of interview within 18 months of their standup debuts. (The articles were each rather sizeable and in each case they were the sole focus of the piece.)

And, says the Female Half: “If you think standup is better than sex, you haven’t had very good sex.”

The Male Half of the Staff is leading in the SHECKYmagazine.com office pool. So far, he has accurately predicted the winners of the first 16 games in the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, known as “March Madness.” He is 17 for 17 if we count the “play-in” game that saw Mt. St. Mary’s beat Coppin St.

The Female Half has correctly predicted 13 of the 17 games played so far, earning her second place in the office pool.

Of course, since there are only two people in the office, this puts her dead last.

The Female Half has tried to shame the Male Half by pointing out that, in order to secure a perfect record, The Male Half had to favor Michigan State over his alma mater, Temple University. Says he, “If there was one thing that Temple taught me, it was to examine reality and act on that, rather than to act on sentimentality or emotion.”

Tomorrow: Sixteen more games!

Duh! We forgot to include the name of French’s blog… and we forgot to link to it! It’s called IncrediblyTightShorts!

Here’s a sample:

I’ve had three full-time staff jobs on talk shows — The Best Damn Sports Show Period on FOXsports, The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn on CBS, and Dennis Miller on CNBC. I get asked quite a bit about those jobs — mostly hey, how do I get that job?

For many months/years Dan French was one of our most popular SHECKYmagazine columnists. His columns, under the “What Works” title, afforded readers a rare look into the inner workings of the writing business in Hollywood and a peek inside one of the sharpest minds ever to analyze standup comedy and its relation to the larger entertainment world.

He wrote eloquently about his move to Los Angeles and his climb up the writing ladder, from one writing job to the next. And SHECKYmagazine.com readers were lucky enough to look over his shoulder as he progressed.

French is blogging from ATX, Silicon Hills, Austin! The capital of Texas and the capital of cool in the Southwestern U.S. It’s called IncrediblyTightShorts

This week, over the course of a few posts, he’ll be uploading his entire writing packet– the series will include the material that he used to get his gigs at such shows as Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn and The Dennis Miller Show.

It is sure to be fascinating for anyone who has wondered what it takes to get hired onto the staff of a television show!

Then come back here to read (or re-read) his “What Works” columns!

FOS Ron Reid sends word of an article from the Independent (UK) about an upcoming series of plays on the BBC which “will revisit the shambolic lives of (Tony) Hancock, (Frankie) Howerd, the two lead actors of (long-running British television series) Steptoe and Son (Harry Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell) and Hughie Green. The comedians are all well-known to viewers of British television. Terence Blacker of the Independent grows weary:

Every time another play, biopic or drama-doc about a sad comedian comes off the production-line, the same tired question is asked: what made men with the gift to bring happiness through laughter so miserable in their own lives? Here is another, rather more interesting question: why do we care? This need to be told over and over again that a funny man was really not funny at all, but an alcoholic/ cheapskate/ bully/ depressive/ pervert reveals more about us than the subject.

Seems like they’re doing it on the other side of the pond as well.

Blacker continues:

Presented under the title The Curse of Comedy, it might just as well have been called The Lure of the Cliché. At a time when interesting plays are almost impossible to find on TV, the only projects that appear to get through on the nod are warmed-over versions of the tears-of-a-clown story, set in the world of British showbusiness over the past 50 years.

These plays provide a sort of comfort food for viewers too discerning to watch reality TV. Ordinary, unfunny people are reassured by the terrible mess that the extraordinary and the funny so often make of their lives. The story of sad, dead comedians provides a much-needed final act to the morality plays enacted for us by the famous in their private lives.

The man behind Boston’s Comedy Connection is bugging out of his current location… maybe. There’s this, from an article in the Boston Globe’s Business section:

Comedy Connection owner Bill Blumenreich will lease the shuttered Wilbur Theatre in Boston’s Theater District for live theatrical shows– or possibly as new space for his club, now located at Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

The Female Half recalls performing there, in 1992 or so, when the Connection folks opened up a room in the basement of the Wilbur and called it Duck Soup. Back when the area had three clubs within sight of each other (The Connection in the bottom of the Charles Playhouse, Nicks just up Warrenton St. and Duck Soup across the way). Blumenreich seems less than happy with his lease at Faneuil Hall:

Blumenreich declined to talk about his situation in Faneuil Hall, but in 2006 he told the Globe: “Twenty-five years ago, people were dying to get into Faneuil Hall. Today, people are dying to get out.” His comedy club lease expires in a few months.

We will tell you this: It’s wicked expensive to pahk thea!

Good to see a club owner responding to the theater trend by… buying a theater!

H/T to alert reader Don Munro for hipping us to this article!

This time, it’s Michael Granberry, writing for the Dallas Morning News, in an interview with two-year veteran (that’s not a typo!) Peter Barrera.

The fact that the DMN would profile someone who has been onstage fewer than 200 times is probably not setting right with the comics in the Big D, but we can understand how an assignment editor would salivate over the story– he claims to have lived, until the age of 4– in Bobby Vinton’s mansion! (His mom was the Vinton family’s nanny.) How can you not send out a reporter when that comes across your desk.

What really must frost them, though (and what is pretty revolting as far as we’re concerned) is the nauseating pontificating of the fledgling comic at the end of the piece:

“I would say,” he says, referring to comics, “that 99 percent of us have major issues.”

Having reached his mid-30s, he felt his life needed a wake-up call.

“I wanted to be in the public eye, to be seen, to make people laugh,” he says.

But he would not be entirely truthful if he failed to admit to the deeper, more psychological motivation.

“I want people to like me,” he says. “Like a lot of comics, I’m looking for approval, validation … something I didn’t get as a child. I want to make my kids proud, my wife proud.”

Oh, boy! Here we go again.

A bit further on, we get a two-fer, when a fellow comic lays the Funny Man’s Burden on him:

“I want to go all the way,” he says, “but I have a lot to learn. Ravi told me once, ‘Your jokes are good, but you need to write more material that comes from within you. That’s when you’re really good.‘ “

Then, the big finish, which could have been written by David Seltzer:

He feels the highest highs, he says, “when I hear the laughter. When I tell jokes, and it’s something I’ve created. When I look down and smile and they’re smiling back at me. When I’m standing here after I come offstage, and they say, ‘That was great! That was so cool!’ ”

On the night he opened for Richard Lewis, a couple asked if they could be photographed with him. “I said, ‘You realize it’s not worth anything?’ And they said, ‘Oh, no, it will be. One day, it will be, and when it is, we’re going to have that picture.’

“Do you have any idea how that made me feel? Driving home, I felt like crying. ‘Somebody believes in me! Somebody believes in me!’ I kept saying it over and over. It felt so good, because a lot of times in my life … I just haven’t felt that way, not even remotely.”

I think that last quote was lifted directly from a Lilah Krytsick monologue!

Will comedians be moving to India to pursue the many TV gigs there? Check out this article on IndianTelevision.com— it seems that standup is hotter than ever on that continent’s networks:

On the other hand, Sony Entertainment Television (SET), which had a fairly better stint with its stand-up comedy show Comedy Circus last year, is also bouncing back. Produced by Optymistix, the second season will feature some of the winners of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge.

Sources also inform that INX Media’s Hindi GEC 9X is hunting for talents as they are looking at the possibility of launching a stand-up comedy show soon.

It’s like 1989 all over again! Only in India!

The real reason that the JFL folks are holding a fest in Chicago (in fall of 2009) is on the second page of this National Post article from last Thursday:

“The problem with America [is] if we don’t have a festival in the States, we’ll never be on American TV,” Rozon says.

Hence the announcement last month of a Chicago edition of the Just For Laughs festival, to take place in the summer of 2009. The company has joined with U.S. channel TBS to turn Just For Laughs: A Very Funny Festival (as the event is billed) into four specials. Ellen De-Generes will host.

“When our brand is well-known throughout Chicago, which I hope will happen within a couple of years, Just For Laughs is going to mean more as a stand-up franchise in the United States,” says Bruce Hills, the company’s chief operating officer, “maybe bringing us back to where we were when we were on HBO and Showtime all the time.”

The Chicago shows represent the second attempt by JFL to crack the U.S. market. “We had a great stretch in the glory days of stand-up,” says Hills, referring to the Seinfeld bubble of the 1990s. “We had major prime-time specials on HBO and Showtime and even Fox.”

The specials lured U.S. networks’ talent scouts north to Montreal to schmooze potential sitcom stars. “That’s when networks were paying a lot of money for stand-up,” Hills says. “And then the boom died. Big thud, and no one wanted stand-up on television, let alone a festival from Montreal.”

It’s the television, stupid!

(The fest organizers face the same dilemma that Canadian comics have faced for the past 25 years– If you want that American TV exposure, ya gotta relocate to L.A. or NYC! In this case, Chicago will do just fine. Or so they hope.)

Will this mean that Montreal will cease to exist? Probably not. But it will probably shift its emphasis to Canadian and international acts (U.K., Australia, France, etc.)

We’re on the fence as to whether we’ll attend this year’s fest in Montreal. We’ve been there every year for nine years (NINE YEARS!) and something quite extraordinary would have to happen for us to show up north of the border this year. (Actually getting booked to perform in it? All our rowdy friends are included in this year’s version? We stumble over a bag of unmarked 100’s and there are no witnesses?) Stay tuned.ashley baia

Tim Rawal, columnist for the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times (“The Voice of the Mountains”), sets up his March 14 column, “The popularity of Dane Cook is killing comedy,” by boldly brandishing the axe and commencing with the grinding:

For most of my childhood, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. No, seriously. Then I realized it involved being considered humorous by more than just your brain-dead friends and having the ability to tell jokes that had beginnings, middles and ends.

Then Dane Cook became famous, and I reconsidered my dream.

Oh, yeah. It’s personal.

Most comedians (real comedians, not imaginary ones), when they recall the incident that made them get into comedy (or think or believe or imagine that they could/would/might be one some day), tell the story with a sense of awe or wonder, or at the very least, in an upbeat manner.

Other people, like our Mr. Rawal here, are embittered, downbeat and disappointed. Their experience turns them not into comedians, but hecklers. And Mr. Rawal’s “column” here is nothing more than a lengthy, 537-word heckle from waaaay back in the rear of the theater.

He should be ashamed. Apparently, his personal enmity has gotten in the way of any worthwhile analysis. If Mr. Rawal is the astute observer of standup comedy that he claims to be, he could observe standup that may not make him laugh and still be able to discern the structure, the timing and the skill set that makes it palatable (and often intoxicating) to large segments of the population.

The money quote:

He (Cook) and a handful of other new comedians who claim their humor comes from a happy place are ruining the honesty of great comedy (see Andy Samberg).

Of course, there is no evidence to support this preposterous assertion, Mr. Gloomy’s petulant whining notwithstanding.

Our favorite quote, however:

Comedy comes from a dark place. There were only three seemingly happy comedians who ever told good jokes; Billy Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Newhart. And even those cats weren’t ecstatic about life. But they were intelligent and articulated universal feelings that made semiboring human quirks seem more enlightened and interesting than they actually were.

But they were (Attention: STILL ARE!) three of the most enormously successful and inflential American comedians of the latter half of the twentieth century!

Comedy should not necessarily come from a “dark place” or a happy place– it should come from a funny place.

Kid Dave Miller returns to the pages of SHECKYmagazine.com today! It’s been some time since Miller composed a column for us, and we’re happy he’s returned for one more.

We met Dave a few years back at the Punchline in Atlanta. After the show, we retired across the parking lot to Cafe 290 for a few beers. The three of us kicked around various ideas and philosophies related to the art and business of standup and swapped stories. (Like the time Dave worked with Frank Gorshin!?) We agreed that Dave had a lot of stored knowledge about the road and he had an interesting way of imparting it.

Thus, “Road Worthy” was born.

He decided to write another one because it has been 20 years since he gave the day job the ol’ heave-ho.

Twenty-two years ago, I was working on a ranch in a very rural part of the Texas panhandle, wondering If I was going to spend the rest of my life repairing windmills and dehorning cattle. Then I moved to Ft. Worth, stumbled into standup comedy, and, well, here we are. The following is a brief reflection on the my 20 years in standup comedy.

Congratulations, Dave! And we’re honored to have you back onboard. Dave’s column is 20 years of sage advice from someone who’s been there and done that.

And if we had that Quicktime plug-in working, we’d listen in live tomorrow morning. Attention all Indianapolitans: Dave’s headlining this weekend at Oneliners in Greenwood! Stop on by and say hey and “Happy anniversary!”