The strike is over.

Note to all comedy club owners/bookers: Check your voicemail… there will undoubtedly be messages from all the writers who are comics who are now writers again– they’ll no doubt be cancelling their dates now that the strike is over!

Keep us in mind.

Thanks!

We were in between dates last week– finished with our weekend at Comedy, TN in Memphis and scheduled to be at the Punchline in Atlanta (starting Wednesday) when we got invited to come into The ATL a couple days early. We were told it was for the purpose of a showcase on Monday night, but when we asked for more details, we were told that it was all very “secret.” All we were told was that it would be worth our while. Very vague. But intriguing enough to get us to forego a couple days of relaxing in Nashville.

We got to the club on Monday night to find a camera set up in the rear of the club (a nice one, too– an Ikegami or its equivalent… enough to make us think this might actually be something important). The only clues we had up until show time was that it was network, there was a V.I.P. in the building and we were to do five clean minutes. The Female Half declined. The Male Half readied a set.

Punchline owner Jamie Bendall emceed and brought up ten other comics: Derrick Tennant, Tim Gaither, Mia Jackson, Josh Sneed, Special K, Scotty K, Cory “Zooman” Miller, Dan Mengini, Matt Davis and Keith Terry.

When each had done a set (for a surprisingly large crowd for a Monday night), Bendall brought them all out onto the stage and let the audience (and the auditioners) know the identity of the secret celeb that had been up in the rafters all night. To the obvious delight of the crowd, he brought out LCS host Bill Bellamy.

Bellamy took the mike and let the audience in on the ultimate purpose of the evening’s show– two of the eleven would be flown to NYC for the Gotham LCS audition, with no waiting in the cold, no string-pulling, no hot dog suit. After announcing that Special K and Josh Sneed were the fortunate two, he then read through some of his notes and had very nice things to say about all the comics. (Of the Male Half, he said, and we’re quoting from memory– “Y’all got to go to school to keep up with his stuff!”)

Atlanta audition winners Josh Sneed (l) and Special K

Bellamy very graciously stayed on and posed for pictures with fans and comics. He offered words of encouragement for the runners-up and words of advice for Sneed and Special K. It was revealed that Bellamy was off the next evening to Raleigh for a similar, secret audition show, as part of a multi-city tour. We’re not sure where else he went, but we know he was in Miami just prior to heading to Atlanta and there was some talk that he had just attended a similar showcase in Denver.

It is believed that some of the tape from the showcase will be used on early episodes of the show. (We’re speculating that each comic will receive a second– literally– in one of those quick-cut montages, with Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax” as the music bed. But we’re just being cynical. Perhaps the auditions will be treated with dignity. It’s a reality TV, so it’s a crapshoot!)

Left to Right: Mia Jackson, Dan Mengini, Punchline principal Chris DiPetta and Scotty K

Bellamy also inquired as to whether the Male Half was going to be near any of the other announced auditions. He urged him to contact LCS producers to nail down a slot in a future audition city, should one fit into his schedule. (So far, only Tempe or Nashville fits into the schedule. The Male Half has a V.M. into the talent coordinator. So far, nothing has been arranged.)

Special K being interviewed by camera crew, post-audition, at the Punchline.

We would have posted about this earlier, but we were asked to hold off (“embargo” is the fancy, journalism word for it) on any posting until the tour was over. Then, one of the secret audition clubs put out a press release recapping their event. After that, we figured the cat was out of the bag and we felt free to write about the experience.

That the producers sent Bellamy around to real clubs to look at real comics in an authentic performance setting is a good thing. Perhaps all the auditions should be conducted this way– secretively, with little notice, in A-rooms all over the country. The producers would, necessarily, have to trust the club owners to choose the talent wisely. And some favoritism (and conflicts of interest) would be inevitable. But the resultant footage would probably be entertaining and the whole affair would actually seem more like a quest to “find the funniest person on the planet” (or whatever it is they say in the promos). We’ve become so accustomed to the unnatural way in which LCS has surveyed talent that we’ve forgotten just how bad of an idea it truly is. We recall our horror when, while watching the first season, we realized that comics would be “auditioning” in an empty room, in front of three “judges,” while the sun was still up!

Between the two of us, in 40+ years of standup, we’ve only done it that way three times. We both went up at the Santa Monica Improv in a horrendous cattle call to qualify for the Johnnie Walker Comedy Competition, circa 1992. (And the Male Half auditioned for the bookers of an open mike night at a hotel in Ft. Washington, PA, in 1982.) All three were miserable, artificial experiences.

We were watching a special on the Kennedy assassination when we saw a promo for “History of the Joke,” a two-hour special hosted by Lewis Black, which will feature George Carlin, Shelley Berman, Robert Klein, Kathleen Madigan, Penn & Teller, Kathy Griffin, Dave Attell and other top comedians who’ll discuss the origins of the joke and how they discovered comedy was their calling.

It airs Monday, February 18th at 9:00 PM and four hours later on February 19th at 1:00 AM, on the History Channel.

FOS Becky Reed sends along a link to this Craigslist posting, from the Minneapolis/St. Paul, TV/Video/Radio Jobs section:

Funny/ Wacky act and people for NBC!!!

—————————–
Reply to: Ramseycasting@gmail.com
Date: 2008-02-08, 7:05PM CST

Funny/ Wacky act and people for NBC!!!

Auditioning Funny/ Wacky act and people for NBC!!!

We are auditioning people for Last Comic Standing and we need more visual comedy. THIS IS NOT AN OPEN CALL BUT IF YOU HAVE A COSTUME YOU CAN TRY OUT.

Auditioning Funny Wacky people. We want people who are going to make us laugh. Do you have a wacky thing you do? Are you funny? Are you wacky? We are casting Last Comic Standing and we need more visual comedy.

Do you have a costume? Do you juggle? Do you have props or a special act? How are you going to make us laugh?

Email: ramseycasting@gmail.com

Thanks,

Ashton

– – – – – – – – – – – –

This does not bode well.

Of course, this could all merely be for the purpose of creating some early-episode window dressing– quick cuts showing folks dressed like hot dogs and Vikings and Boba Fett– to ham-handedly drive home the notion that comedians are a zany lot who dress up like hot dogs and Vikings when they’re trying hard not to drag a razor across their wrist because they didn’t get that last spot at the open mike last week. Oh, those comedians are a complex bunch!

An appreciation of Steven Wright appears in The Sunday New York Times. Written by FOS Peter Keepnews, the article quotes Mike Birbiglia, Wright himself and The Male Half of the Staff:

Brian McKim, who once opened for Mr. Wright and now offers commentary about the comedy scene on the Web site sheckymagazine.com, praised him for rewriting the rules of the game.

“After him,” Mr. McKim said, “a comic didn’t need transitions, didn’t need to address or even acknowledge the crowd, didn’t necessarily have to appear to be enjoying himself. Wright made it O.K. to have no unifying theme other than the comic’s mind, his thought processes.”

A short, free registration is required to view the article here

From some SHECKYmagazine spies/correspondents at the NYC evening showscase, comes word that the following made it through:

Louis Ramey
God’s Pottery
Stone & Stone
Dan Naturman
Esther Ku
Aparna Nancherla

Not making it through were John Fisch, Josh Sneed, and Costaki Economopoulos

The information is filling in on the NBC.com page. Most of the judges for the main auditions are set.

Toronto auditioners will be insulted… er… judged by Kid in the Hall Dave Foley and actor Richard Kind.

Minneapolis judges will be Brian Baumgartner and Kate Flannery of the NBC series The Office).

In Houston, the judges will be Neil Flynn of the NBC series Scrubs (he’s the janitor) and actor Alfonso Ribeiro.

So far, the only announced judge for the Tempe audition is Leslie David Baker from the NBC series The Office.

San Francisco judges are Josh Gomez of the NBC series Chuck and actor French Stewart.

Nashville will be judged by former Cheers stars George Wendt and John Ratzenberger.

Joel Haas, XM’s Satellite Radio’s Comedy Director, is also a comedy producer and recording engineer who quot;has recorded over 150 live comedy shows in venues that seat 25 to 2500″ and “mixed, mastered and produced over 30 commercially released CD’s” according to the bio on his website, hahaas.com.

Hahaas is a stand-up comedy production and distribution company. We produce and distribute stand-up comedy recordings digitally and pay artists 66% of all income. These recordings are for sale at iTunes, CD Baby and dozens of other digital retail outlets. Since there are no physical CD’s to produce, our costs are minimal. This allows Hahaas to pay artists more money than anyone else in the comedy industry…66% of all income from sale #1.

Contact Joel if you’re considering the recording or distribution of your recorded comedy. Go to his site and click on the link that says, “What is HaHaas?” to get most of your questions answered. We can say, from personal experience, that Joel does good work.

FOS Sharilyn Johnson captured some video of the line on the street this morning in NYC, waiting to get into Gotham for this year’s Last Comic Standing. The clip is 1:24 and Johnson apologizes for her shaky camera work.

Pay careful attention to the clip at the 0:45 mark, as a confident Joe Devito strides by– Joe DeVito doesn’t have to stand in line, am I right, ladies?!? (Inside joke for Joe DeVito.)

Get ready for the onslaught of (negative) reviews of Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, the theatrical release starring Vince Vaughn, Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco! Not all of them will be negative, of course. But, even the positive ones will have backhanded compliments and the reviewers won’t be able to help themselves from making ghastly comments. They’re ingrained prejudice against comedians will ooze out through the cracks of their assessments.

Take this piece of gar-BAZH from Ann Lewinson, writing for the Fairfield Weekly, which, we assume, is an alterna-rag that covers Connecticut’s Fairfield County, weakly. We haven’t seen the film yet. But we wouldn’t be surprised if Lewinson cranked out some of the paragraphs before having seen it, so palpable is her distaste for modern standup.

As comedian Bret Ernst observes at the beginning of the film, stand-up isn’t what it was in the ’80s. Then the comics on this tour would have had their own sitcoms, but now “we’re in headliner purgatory.” Perhaps that’s because the public has tired of jokes about how women are this way and men are that. The upside of the elimination of meals of flights means there are no more jokes about airline food, but they’ve merely been replaced by jokes about airport security.

Ernst’s assessment of the current state of standup is questionable, but Lewinson’s grouchy and ludicrous conclusion is evidence of someone who just hasn’t done her homework. She’s come to the keyboard armed with a set of tired cliches and fifty-cent words from her (no doubt recent) comparitive lit class at Fairfield Community College and the resultant review is a waste of her time and the reader’s.

…Scratching the surface of frat-boy culture, it finds narcissism, insecurity and an almost paralyzing fear of anything that does not fit within its discourse of trite observation and bourgeois complaint. Now if Vince Vaughn can just channel that into his comedies, he might really have something

Read the rest here if you absolutely have to.

We’re going to try to score a review copy– if for no other reason than to see the footage of Buck Owens shortly before his death. (The Male Half received the spectacular “Dwight Sings Buck” CD for Christmas and it was in constant play at SHECKYmagazine HQ before we embarked on our current road trip!)

P.S. Note to Lewinson: That’s “Yoakam,” not “Yoakum.”

We got an email from an anonymous tipster that said that the producers of Last Comic Standing are seeking to cast “funny people in NYC that have typical NYC Jobs, Cab Driver, Fire fighter, Pizza Tosser, road construction, sewage worker, hot dog vender (sic), etc.”

We are casting Last Comic Standing and we need people who can make us laugh. We want to do a special on a few New Yorkers.

Don’t worry worry if you have done comedy or not if you are willing to try a two min set then we can talk.

You read that correctly– Don’t worry if you have done comedy or not!

Why don’t they just hire actors and fake the entire show? Do away with comedians altogether!

And what is with this “typical NYC jobs” nonsense? What they seek is “stereotypical NYC jobs,” specifically stereotypical NYC jobs that make for the ironically named “great TV.”

This is ludicrous. It would be like Top Chef were to seek out contestants and said, “Don’t worry if you can boil water or fry an egg or toast bread without burning it– if you’re willing to appear on camera, and you have an interesting day job, we want you!”

Why this focus on non-comedians with visually interesting day jobs? Sure, the segment shot at PizzaRama or at Doggie Shampoo Hut will be peppy and possibly rollicking, but when the Assistant Cocker Spaniel Washer hits the stage, the result will be excruciating. A decent segment producer could shoot and edit an interesting package on a real comedian’s hobby, his hometown, his daily routine, his bathing habits– anything! How bankrupt for ideas could they be that they not only feel compelled to go for people with colorful day jobs, they feel compelled to recruit non-comedians with colorful day jobs?!?

Why this focus on non-comedians?

We need hotties!

Another casting call seeks “comedy judges.”

What they are looking for are people to fill the audience for the evening show at Gotham. Why they call them “judges” is a mystery.

The description of the “role” says:

Audience for last comic standing (we need hotties)

Hotties, indeed! Of course, any comic will tell you that a crowd filled with “hotties” is quite possibly the best audience you can ever face!(Note: The sarcasm light is flashing.)

We need very attractive people. All you have to do is watch a comedy show and laugh when it’s funny. This is the callback part for last comic standing.

This is a trainwreck waiting to happen.

We’re not disparaging attractive people (or falling into the trap of saying that all good-looking people are dumb), but, when the focus in your search for an audience for a comedy show is narrowed to “hotties,” the dynamic will be horribly twisted. Instead of a roomful of comedy fans who just want to laugh and have a good time, you’ll have a group of actors who just want to get on TV. This does not a good audience make.

Fearne Cotton is her name and the British tabs caller her a “telly babe.”

She was on The X Factor, a talent show across the pond, and the Sun says that she jetted out to Los Angeles this week to “start filming the auditions.”

She has already scored her first gig in the US, for NBC– one of the top four channels.

She will co-host Last Comic Standing– a talent trawl for some of America\s funniest comedians.

Our new favorite phrase– “talent trawl!”

And, in other Last Comic Standing news, this clip, from Acccess Hollywood, shows a brief interview with LCS host Bill Bellamy. Stick with it to the 3:30 (time remaining) mark and, when asked if there is anything new this year, he says, “…last year I made about ten cities, this year, I make about 92!”

This Time magazine article compares the current WGA strike to the Comedy Store strike of 1979. Richard Zoglin calls it “the first comedy strike.” Interesting, because this current strike is a writers’ strike and not necessarily a comedy strike. We suppose that when people hear “writer,” they automatically think “comedy writer.”

The Hook: The ’79 strike was a “cautionary– and formative– experience,” for Leno and Letterman.

But first, The Setup, in paragraph four:

That walkout was the culmination of a decade in which stand-up became the voice of the counterculture generation. Like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and other pioneers of those years, the new stand-up comics were not just anti-Establishment rabble rousers; they were intimate, populist artists who got their power by convincing us that they were ordinary folks, with the same gripes and anxieties as everyone else. They joked about furnishing their tiny apartments and riding the subways and trying to get girls. The strike against the Comedy Store, the leading comedy club in Los Angeles, reinforced their real-life status as working-class crusaders…

The article then relies heavily on quotes from Jay Leno, David Letterman and Tom Dreesen— comics who could hardly be described as “the voice of the counterculture” or “working-class crusaders.”

My, what overheated language (emphasis ours) Zoglin packs into that graf! He no doubt had to bring the rhetorical heat when pitching the story to his editors. Elsewise, it’s just a story about comedians! And, as we all know, if comedians aren’t saving the world with their comedy, they’re misogynistic, bigoted “monkeys,” (as Tom Shales so nicely put it!)

UPDATE: Commenter “Steve” astutely point out that Zoglin takes the tack that he does because he is seeking to promote his book, “Comedy At The Edge,” and examination of how comics in the 70s changed standup comedy. For a review of that book, click here

Comics Dax Jordan and Jake Iannarino have collaborated on a fake documentary, detailing the exploits of “Chip Seinfeld,” the ostensible brother of Jerry, as he attempts to get stagetime and breach the security at the recent Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.

We took my camera and interviewed comics such as Bobby Lee, Carrot Top, Marc Maron, Matt Braunger, Tom Clark, Brent Weinbach, Susan Rice and a host of up and comers, all giving us hilarious made up road stories about Jerry’s awful, angry, drug addled, unfunny, pariah brother Chip.

Surf on over to Funny Or Die for the first three installments. (The one we linked to features Marc Maron.

BTW, the comic identified in Installment Number One only as “?” is Philadelphia’s own Keith Robinson.

The Male Half flanked by Sammy Martin (l) and John Marks after a rousing week of comedy at the relatively new Comedy, TN comedy club in Memphis. (Photo credit: Traci Skene)

The pair, comedians both, started the club about 18 months ago, filling the void in this town in the southwest corner of the Volunteer State.

The club is, as Martin says, “designed from the stage out” and is a tremendous experience for the comedians and the audience members.

The Male and Female Halves co-headlined this past weekend and proclaim Comedy, TN, to be a great setup!

The Male Half onstage, first show, Friday (Photo credit: Michael McCommon)

We heard that yet another of the coveted red envelopes was handed to the comic below, at the recent L.A. auditions. His name is Chris Fairbanks. (Actually, that’s DL Hughley, who eventually introduces Fairbanks on Premium Blend.)

These five, from the Los Angeles auditions, have made it to the semi-finals, from what we can piece together:

Eddie Pepitone

Esau McGraw

Jackie Kashian

Ron G

Erin Foley

One of our “correspondents” says the following, following the latest LCS audition in Los Angeles last night:

Making it through to the showcase was Ben Glieb, Ruby Wendell, Thai Rivera, Bob Purkell, Rosie Tran, and Tom Clark .

There is some uncertainty as to the last comic, Clark, making it in and there may have been more comics than listed here.

We also hear that the number of well-known comics will be kept to a minimum this season, and that there may more of a focus on the backstories of the comics on the show, due to the WGA strike. (We’re not quite clear on how that works, but there it is.)

CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS: Now we’re hearing that neither Clark nor Purkell made the cut.

And we’re hearing that Jackie Kashian, Eddie Pepitone and Esau McGraw were advanced to the big show. Ruby Wendell is mentioned as possibly advancing. Anyone know for sure? Drop it in the comments!

Back in April of last year, we posted about the scene in Jamaica. Now, we learn, via an article in the Jamaica Gleaner, that a promoter in Jamaica is bringing U.S. acts to Jamiaca.

According to Daley, the overseas acts are like ‘well-oiled machines’, as “they have a very deep culture of comedy in the U.S., they are more free in their subject matter and a lot more X-rated. Our audience can’t really take what pushes the borderline. Our comedy needs to graduate in terms what our audience is used to, but it takes time to build that understanding.”

Acts such as Will Sylvince and Shang have made the trip.

The importation will lead to exportation, says comic/empresario Christopher “Johnny” Daley.

Daley believes that the link will help the comedy community overseas to be more aware of Jamaican performers. “We want to push that link so that we too can go overseas to perform,” he elaborated. He agrees that the Jamaican comedic community welcomes international acts with open arms.

Shang says they’re ready for primetime.

They’re calling it the “Trump Comedy Series,” which, we suppose, means that it will be a regular thing at the Trump Marina. On Saturday, Feb. 2, they’ll bring in Mitch Fatel, Pete Correale and Lynne Koplitz for one show at 9 PM.

That’s not the only comedy the Trump folks are bringing to the Jersey shore– Mike Birbiglia will perform at the Theatre at Trump Plaza on Saturday., March 8, and Trump Taj is bringing in Larry The Cable Guy in May.

Maybe the Borgata’s heavy emphasis on standup– both in their 7-night comedy club and their heavy booking of such standup comics as Kathy Griffin, Jim Norton, Norm MacDonald, Lewis Black and Kevin James— is so successful that it’s inviting imitation.

CORRECTION: Mitch Fatel has cancelled, or so the Trump VP of Entertainment has emailed us. The site still has Fatel listed… Although the Trump Marina website can’t be relied upon for decent information– under the Fatel/Correale/Koplitz show, they have several paragraphs about Greg Giraldo and Christian Finnegan?!? WTF?!

In an article on the changing nature of entertainment booking in Atlantic City, Vegas and other gambling spots, Michael Pollock of Spectrum Gaming Group, a Linwood-based casino industry advisory business, says that country music acts are now a viable booking choice for casinos.

The nature of the gaming industry and its customer base is changing, and that is reflected in and driven by its entertainment offerings.

It’s not just Shecky Greene anymore. It is a reflection of the fact that destination resorts are becoming more a part of the mainstream entertainment industry, and entertainment is an effective way to target your demographics and position your property in the marketplace.

Was it ever just Shecky Greene? (We know that, at one time, Greene was one of the highest paid, highest profile acts in Las Vegas, but Pollock’s choice of Greene as emblematic of casino entertainment is… curious.)

On the rare occasions when we’re paid for a standup engagement via PayPal, we are moved to sing that method’s praises. No hauling around gobs of cash, no humping a check to the bank and waiting for it to clear, no waiting for a check to arrive in the mail. It’s so 21st century– sending cash via email!

We’ve been paid via PayPal on a dozen or so occasions over the past two years. There are drawbacks– PayPal takes a point or two for their trouble (have the club/booker tack on the difference!) and transferring money from one’s PayPal account to one’s bank account is not instantaneous. It is certainly not ideal for all situations. But the benefits outweigh the negatives as far as we’re concerned.

We had been wondering if Ant and Kathleen Madigan and Alonzo Bodden would be back as celebrity judges this year.

At the Feb. 7 auditions in New York, two of the judges for the auditions will be Steve Schirripa and Richard Belzer.

This will be interesting. Note to performers: Do not start your set off by addressing the judges as “Bobby Bacala” and “Detective Munch.”

Addendum: As Kaplan points out, it is indeed on the nbc.com site, right under the announcement for the Gotham audition.

Angela Kinsey and Oscar Nunez are listed for tomorrow’s Los Angeles audition.

Has anyone heard of other new judges? Perhaps a new judging system?

Here are the rest of the audition cities/addresses/dates (from nbc.com):

Toronto, Canada – Feb. 14th
Yuk Yuk’s
224 Richmond St.
Toronto, ON M5V
416-967-6425

Minneapolis, MN – Feb. 19th
Acme Comedy Club
708 N. First St.
Minneapolis, MN 55401
612-338-6393

Houston, TX – Feb. 22nd
Houston Improv
7620 Katy Freeway, Space 431
Houston, TX 77024
713-333-8800

Tempe, AZ – Feb. 26th
Tempe Improv
930 E. University Ave.
Tempe, AZ 85281
480-921-9877

San Francisco, CA – Feb. 29th
Cobb’s Comedy Club
915 Columbus Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-928-4320

Nashville, TN – Mar. 3rd
Zanies
2025 8th Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37204
615-269-0221

Who knew that the Commissioner of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was Charles Bronson? We have a script idea for Death Wish IV: A New York architect becomes a one-man vigilante squad/consumer advocate after his wife is murdered by street punks.

We googled “Charles Bronson quotes” in order to get a Bronson quote that might enhance this posting. Maybe something from one of the Death Wish series… or maybe a good one from “The Great Escape!” We found the following on ThinkExist.com, a website whose tagline is “Finding quotations was never this easy!”

We’re not playing games, we’re not giving warnings, … If somebody’s out there price gouging, they are going to be charged, and if it is a criminal offense, we will get the attorney general’s office to carry those charges on to court.

Charles Bronson quotes (American Actor, 1921-2003)

The moral? Never send a robot to do a living, breathing human being’s job.

We’re in Georgia. We’re at the Loft in Athens tonight and we’re looking forward to it. Doug Benson was there last week and he had a good time.

Then we head to Memphis, for a weekend at Comedy Tennessee. We haven’t been in Memphis since about 1988 or so! The club has set up a busy media schedule for us. How about that? A club that aggressively hustles for media coverage! How 1988 of them! It should be a blast.

Stay tuned. After that, we’re headed to Atlanta, West Virginia and Detroit.

Congratulations to our winners:

John Markham
Jason Marcus
James Blumenfeld

Roseanne (Barr?) is apparently used in a stunt in an episode of the UK version of Big Brother. According to this BB fan site, the “American comedienne” hijacks the house and sets them up for their latest task:

The hijacker asked the housemates to get into pairs and each prepare a stand-up comedy show for her in two hours’ time. Roseanne told them that the funniest couple would be the winners, but warned them: “I’ll heckle you if you suck.”

Comedians are becoming more ingrained in the pop culture. Sure, it’s England, but there’s much cross-pollination.

At the top of the Cleveland.com page (the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s website) is this series of items, by Mike McIntyre, who is identified as “Plain Dealer Comedy Reporter.”

The PD has a comedy reporter? This is certainly good news.

There’s news of comedy-related happenings in Cleveland, Cuyahoga Falls– in the clubs and elsewhere and there’s a mini-interview with Dom Irrera on the occasion of his stint at Hilarities. Irrera ponders the differences between message comics and just plain comics:

I saw George Carlin last week. He is absolutely brilliant. I think he is a level or two above anyone I have ever seen as far as just being brilliant. But the bad thing is he’s lecturing so much that I’m thinking I understand why people would want to go see somebody just to make them laugh.

Read the whole thing.

Gina Serpe writing for Eonline.com tells of the resolution of the lawsuit that Leno (and NBC and a gaggle of other comedians) brought against joke book author Judy Brown. The deal involves cash (going to charity) and an agreement from the publishers to cease the distribution, manufacture and sale of the 19 joke books that were published by three different publishers.

“I thought it was important to make it clear that jokes are protected like any other art form,” Leno said of the case. “On behalf of the tremendous and talented group of writers we have at The Tonight Show and many other hardworking comedians, I’m very glad we’ve been able to stop this practice once and for all.”

Leno’s lawyer said:

The settlement sends a strong message that the intellectual property rights of comedy writers must be respected.

We missed this. But SHECKYmagazine contributor Bill Bunker certainly didn’t.

So now he’s among the ten Chicago comedians competing in the Chicago’s Funniest Video contest, which is part of the RD’s Funnfest. Other comics include Haji Outlaw, Patrick McGann and Julianna Forlano.

Bunker dropped us a line and cautioned that the folks at RD “seem to think that standup is best presented by one person alone in front of a camera, sort of al Quaida hostage style.” (His way of preparing us for the spectacle of all the comics’ clips– they appear to be performing in a vacuum! It’s eerie– They’re all floating among a backdrop of inky blackness!)

Anyway, hop to it and vote for Bunker! He’ll win 500 clams!

And, when you’re done there, hop on over to here and check out the Nashville finalists.

If you answered yes, then hustle on over to TurboTax’s YouTube page, set up to harvest solicit videos for their TaxLaugh contest.

Jay Mohr is the face of this project. The winner gets a $10,000 (minus, we suppose, 40 or 50 per cent to pay federal taxes) and “a chance to open for Jay Mohr.”

Hit the rules here.

Last year’s figurehead was Vanilla Ice, and the contestants were asked to make a rap video about taxes. This year, it’s a humorous video, not necessarily using rap. (You can view last year’s winner– and the runners-up– by clicking on the “Most Viewed” links in the lefthand column.

America’s Got Talent is looking for victims… er, auditioners. They’re coming to Orlando (Jan. 26), Nashville (Jan. 30) and Charlotte (Feb. 2).

They’ll look at (and feature on the show) comedians. You’ll recall last season’s dust-up between celebrity judge David Hasselhoff and standup comic Ricardo Aleman.

See the application and details here.

A friend sent along an email speculating on just what’s transpiring in the spooky photo above, taken last night at the Brokerage by comic/photographer Rob Cioffi (up on Cioffi’s Picasa page here).

The Female Half seems to be cowering in fear as the Male Half lectures/admonishes/menaces her. Of course, it’s a trick of the light, an illusion, a strange convergence of expressions, posture and lighting that conveys an unreality.

Eerie!

The guest of honor, Melvin George, II (Photo credit: Rob Cioffi)

Last night, we trekked to Bellmore, NY, on Long Island, to the Brokerage where 17 friends, associates and/or colleagues participated in the ancient art of the roast. The guest of honor was Melvin George, II.

For two hours plus, the crowd of friends, relatives, fellow comics and other (quite possibly horrified!) onlookers watched as host Peter Bales brought up Chris Monty, Paul Bond, Alex House, Joe Starr, Rich Walker, Joe Bronzi, Rich Minervini, Harry Freedman, Joey Kola, Dan Wilson, Ray Grins, Ed Ryan and Steve O to say the most vile and insulting things about George and about the other roasters. Also contributing to the thrashing were non-comics Bill Jaye (George’s attorney), Tom Ingegno (George’s agent from Omnipop) and Brokerage owner Mark Lund.

Steve O and Dan Wilson (Photo credit: Male Half)

The irony of “roasting” a black man on Martin Luther King Day was not lost on anyone present. George, a comic for three decades and a fixture on the comedy scene on Long Island (and the nation), is, it safe to say, beloved by the many comics who have had the pleasure of working with him. So it was that nearly every roaster made mention just how hard it was to come up with something nasty to say about such a fine and fun-loving gentleman as George. Of course, they all managed to do so. And the results were hilarious.

Harry Freedman (l) with Joey Kola (Photo credit: Male Half)

Bales is the consummate roast host– his familiarity with all those on the dais and his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of comedy on Long Island combined with his innate ability to craft pithy and razor-sharp put-downs make him the obvious choice. He kept it moving as all 16 roasters took a whack. And never did the show lag, even though nearly 2-1/2 hours had passed by the time the victim took to the podium to make his heartfelt closing remarks.

It was fascinating to see how many different approaches were taken. Some went old-school Dean Martin, some adopted a conversational style. Props, music, photos– nothing was out of the question. And nothing was out of bounds.

Melvin George, II, approaches the podium to a standing ovation (Photo credit: Male Half)

The show was produced and tirelessly promoted by Chris Monty. And whoever determined the order was either exceptionally insightful or lucky or both– the flow of the show was seamless and it never lagged. Special props go to Steve O– even though he hadn’t been onstage in 14 years, he delivered a rollicking set and essentially closed the show (Attorney Jaye and agent Ingegno went on after, but O was the last pro to go on.)

Among other comics in attendance were John Trueson, Billy Garrin, Richie Byrne, Eric Tartaglione, Stacey Prussman and Tim Homayoon.

Partial shot of the dais– Monty, House, Starr, George, Kola, Bronzi(Photo credit: Rob Cioffi)

We’d like to thank Rob Cioffi for providing some of the above photos. Check out the rest of the pics here!

We are giving away three 2008 Mitch Hedberg Fan Art calendars! Send in the following information to tmskene(at sign)hotmail.com:

NAME
MAILING ADDRESS

And put the words “Hedberg Calendar” in the subject line.

Do that by 11:59 PM, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2008 and we’ll pick three winners at random.

For details on this lovely calendar, click here We’ve got one and the drawings, photos and graphics by the Mitch fans is high-quality and quite imaginative.

The Boston Globe’s Nick Zaino writes about Conan writer Brian Kiley‘s return to Boston this past weekend. Kiley, like other striking writers, has been hitting the road doing standup because the WGA action has meant no paycheck for the past ten weeks.

“I’ve been pretty lucky doing stand-up, getting pretty good gigs,” he says, “but now I’m taking everything and sometimes it’s like, oh, that gig sucked. That was a long drive. I’m remembering now, I forgot how hard stand-up is.“[…]

His style of comedy also makes headlining a bit more difficult. He is a gifted one-liner comic, which means he has to write a lot more material than a comedian who tells longer stories.

“The nice thing is, if you get on TV, you have a bunch of quick punch lines, which is what they want,” he says. “The bad thing is, in the clubs sometimes they’re like, oh, can you do 10 more minutes? It’s like, oh, what, 40 jokes? That makes it tricky, believe me.”

We had the pleasure of working with Kiley in NE many times, before he became employed in late night television 13 years ago.

He nutshells nicely the dilemma of the setup/punchline comic.

“Stand-Up Guy: John McCain’s Campaign Trail Comedy” is an ABCNews.com analysis (by Ron Claiborne) of the standup of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain.

The analysis is so even-handed (and, at times, insightful) that we can forgive the graphic, which depicts McCain with an arrow through his head, holding a microphone in one hand, with a rubber chicken in the other.

(We suppose Steve Martin shares some of the blame for this. Although, Martin use of the arrow through the head was “postmodern” (or should it be regarded as a “meta-joke?”) In any event, the MSM didn’t quite “get” Martin 100 per cent, so now, we’re all stuck with the arrow through the head. We would wager that half the graphic artists who use the rubber chicken have no idea of its origins or what it symbolizes.)

The Telegraph (U.K.) has a similar article “by Tim Shipman in Aitken, South Carolina and Philip Sherwell in Las Vegas” which is a re-working of the ABCNews.com piece.

There’s also an AP article about how Barack Obama is using humor on the campaign trail, this time, in his appearances in Nevada. The “jokes” Obama uses are less like the gags that McCain employs and more like monologue material. And, while we haven’t seen any video, in print the alleged jokes fall flat. Perhaps his style depends more on delivery– nuance that can’t be conveyed via the page/monitor/browser.

Is this a trend? Two major candidates portrayed as “comedians!”

Huckabee is getting plenty of mileage out of the “If they tell us what to do with our flag, we’ll tell them what to do with their pole!” line. Out of all the candidates, the former Arkansas governor is most adept at sliding obvious material into his “panel” appearances.

This focus on appearing funny, on appearing to have a sense of humor, is all about appearing human, approachable, real. (Odd since, these same qualities– appearing funny and having a sense of humor– when exhibited by a standup comic are sometimes cited as obstacles to appearing human, approachable and real.)