Will Ferrell will headline a short standup tour with what Variety calls “a trio of up-and-coming comics.” The February stunt will promote Ferrell’s new movie, “Semi-Pro,” and the online comedy venture, FunnyorDie.com.

Ferrell will hit the stage…

…with leading standups Zach Galifianakis, Demetri Martin and Nick Swardson. Event, dubbed “Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die Comedy Tour Presented by Semi-Pro,” will kick off Feb. 4 in Kansas City and serve as a promotional run-up to the Feb. 29 release of the pic.[…]

All of the comics involved in the FunnyorDie comedy tour have recently signed deals to produce TV programming for Comedy Central. Project was put together by CAA, which reps all of the talent involved.[…]

Tour will focus on East Coast and Midwest colleges, with stops in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Boston and North Carolina.

FunnyorDie tour is the latest example of Hollywood studios sending stars on the road to promote pics directly to consumers. John C. Reilly this week began touring the country in character as Dewey Cox in support of his pic “Walk Hard.”

Notable for many reasons. Not the least of which is the understanding that standup still works on college campuses.

Also notable that, in this day and age, a good old-fashioned personal appearance can’t be beat when it comes to promoting a movie. (Anyone who thought that the proliferation of broadband internet access would kill live performances or that personal appearances would be obliterated by holograms in one’s living room is mistaken.) Ferrell knows that the local media in all those markets will run short, lively commercials for his movie on the 11-o’clock newscast promoting both his movie and his website.

And one more thing: Can those three comics still be said to be “up and coming?” We’re pretty sure, they’re up and they’ve already come. (Just what are Josef Adalian’s criteria?!)

Sharp-eyed reader Paul sent us a link to the video below, with the short note, “Gov. Huckabee? It’s Shelley Berman… he’d like his act back.”

It’s always fascinating to watch a politician try his hand at comedy. Campaigning politicians rarely do anything that’s genuine or off the cuff. Often, it isn’t until after a campaign is over that we find out that this candidate or that candidate has a real sense of humor or is “genuinely funny.” That’s because spontaneity is discouraged, nearly every word is scripted. As such, even the “funny” must be scripted.

Doing schtick– or trying to pull off pre-planned, funny moments– is risky. We’re not sure if the bit below worked– the audience isn’t miked very well. One more reason to avoid comedy on the campaign trail!

Editors note: A reader has pointed out that the folks in Ghana spelled Blackson’s name wrong. It has since been corrected. Blackson’s website is here.

Check out this item on Ghanabase.com, a website that mainly deals with the music scene in Ghana. It’s about the Night of 1005 Laughs and Music on December 22 in the capital city of Accra. And one of the featured comedians will be Michael Blackson, “is rated the King of Comedy,” whose “performances are often climaxed by tears of laughter often shed by those who listen to him!” (We suspect that part of his act might involve pepper gas!)

Our absolute favorite part of the review is “Michael began to develop his comedic talent in 1992 in the unkind comedy clubs of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.” Say what? We weren’t aware that the comedy clubs of Philadelphia were “unkind!”

Also appearing with Blankson will be Klint the Drunk and Julius D’Agwu , comics who are in possession of “an amazing number of rip-cracking jokes”

Go to eBay to check out/possibly bid on comedian Larry Weaver‘s collection of ten comedy-related books. In one shot, you can have the essential starter kit-library for aspiring comics! Just under six days before the cyber gavel comes down!

Stephen A. Smith is causing quite an uproar with his rambling response to the LADN’s Tom Hoffarth’s question of whether the newspaper biz is dying. Smith is the eternally cranky ESPN TV and radio personality. Here are the money quotes:

And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is …someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts. More important are the level of ethics and integrity that comes along with the quote-unqoute profession hasn’t been firmly established and entrenched in the minds of those who’ve been given that license.

Therefore, there’s a total disregard, a level of wrecklessness (sic) that ends up being a domino effect. And the people who suffer are the common viewers out there and, more importantly, those in the industry who haven’t been fortunate to get a radio or television deal and only rely on the written word. And now they’ve been sabotaged. Not because of me. Or like me. But because of the industry or the world has allowed the average joe to resemble a professional without any credentials whatsoever.

(Would it be small of us to point out that either Hoffarth or Smith (or both) spelled “recklessness” wrong? Oops! We just did!)

Anyway, the folks in the Antique Media are cracking at the seams. Every once in a while, they accidentally say out loud what they’re thinking. And we find out that they believe that:

1. Bloggers are “dangerous”

2. We really should be stopped

3. The folks in the print media are totally blameless for their predicament

and

4. Things should just go back to the way they were…

…if they could only figure out how…

Well, how about we make the internet environmentally hazardous?

The following is a quote from Trewin Restorick (we’re convinced that’s not his real name, but merely the letters of his real name scrambled to hide his identity). Note: ICT is the Brit equivalent of our IT, or Information Technology– the broad term that takes in computers used for communication, data storage, the internet, intranets, etc.

“ICT equipment currently accounts for 3-4 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, and 10 per cent of the UK’s energy bill. The average server, for example, has roughly the same annual carbon footprint as an SUV doing 15 miles-per-gallon! With a carbon footprint now equal to the aviation industry, ICT, and how businesses utilise ICT, will increasingly come under the spotlight as governments seek to achieve carbon-cutting commitments.”

Trevor is the director of Global Action Plan and chair of the EILT. (EILT is the abbreviation for the Environmental IT Leadership Team. That’s right: You have an abbreviation inside of an abbreviation… this, no doubt, will result in a still smaller carbon footprint somewhere down the line.)

And the Global Action Plan insists that they’re merely here to “deliver tangible financial, environmental and social improvements” and that they will “make the small changes that have a big impact on the things that matter.”

They’re coming after the computers now.

Is it just us, or does anyone else feel like Kevin McCarthy in the final scene from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”

Are some IT outfits wasting energy? We’re certain that some are. But the extravagant language used by the GAP (and similar outfits) is calculated to intimidate and to stampede. (To put it another way, it might give some folks the wrong idea.)

So, to recap: Blogs, like SHECKYmagazine, are “dangerous.” And the computers they’re stored on are more harmful to the environment than gas-guzzling SUV’s or jumbo jets! We’re under assault on multiple fronts!

* * * * *

Every once in a while, we like to point out how the mainstream media misrepresents comedians. We take them to task for inaccuracies or imprecise language or the outright vilification of standup comics and the art of standup comedy. We do so with care and, most of the time, in a reasoned manner. And in some cases, we compete with the MSM when it comes to providing our readers with standup-related news or analysis or reporting. And we believe that we’ve always done so with attention to detail, accuracy and ethics. To suggest that we (or bloggers in general) are dangerous is lunacy.

As for the GAP, we’re keeping an eye on them. We won’t be blindsided!

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.

–Miyamoto Musashi

Here’s a curious item from Arutz Sheva (IsraelInternationalNews.com)

Not every new recruit can hope to be accepted for the Israeli military’s newest and very exclusive assignment. Beginning with this January’s military draft, just two soldiers will be able to become official IDF comedians. They will be deployed as early as the summer of 2008. Other potential assignments for the recruits of 2008 include IDF magician and IDF karaoke operator.

You read that right. And it’s not from the Onion or its Israeli equivalent.

We’re immediately reminded of the Monty Python’s Funniest Joke in the World sketch (available here, entitled “El chiste mas gracioso del mundo” with Spanish subtitles)!

There is some explanation:

The IDF comedian is not a completely novel position, as military bands in the past included a non-musical entertainer, as well. However, the comedians disappeared from the entertainment troupes over the years. The first official army magician in Israel, however, only appeared in 2004.

The beauty of the imaginary movie in the title of this post is that absolutely anyone could sing the title song!

The box set, the entire run of the Comedy Central series created by Tom Snyder and Jonathan Katz is available. The reviews are positive:

Dr Katz Professional Therapist– The Complete Series, is expensive, but at roughly $10 or less a disc, the laugh-per-dollar ratio is very much in the buyer’s favor considering all the comedic talent involved. If not a must-have for you, it’s an absolute must-rent.

Our own experience with the show was one of the saddest, most disappointing and most frustrating experiences in our comedy careers! We trooped up to the recording studios in Massachusetts and, for the recording session, we were asked to do something– fight like a typical married couple– that not only doesn’t come naturally but is utterly impossible… we couldn’t even fake it! It was an unqualified, uncomfortable disaster. Needless to say, we never made it onto the show.

We still like the show!

Available at Amazon.com for $111.99.

This item, about Dave Chappelle, is floating around on the internet:

The 34-year-old comedian, who broke the Laugh Factory’s endurance record by taking to the stage for six hours and seven minutes in April, topped his record by telling jokes for six hours and 12 minutes on Sunday.

“Endurance record?” When we speak of an endurance record here, are we referring to the audience?

This is starting to get a little strange. We look askance at any comic who wants to be on the stage that long. Do it once, it might be one of those once-in-a-lifetime, I’m-so-glad-I-was-present kinda things. Twice? Somebody’s got “issues.”

If Chappelle stops into the club where you’re working and asks to go on, make sure he goes on last!

The USO sent out a MySpace bulletin directing people to several sets of pics in their photo gallery depicting various celebs on recent USO tours.

Seen here (in the middle) are Wilmer Valderrama, model Mayra Veronica and Russell Peters during a stop in Greenland. The three tagged along on a six-day, six-country tour with Marine Corps General James E. Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We figure that, as USO Tours go, tagging along with the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has to one of the sweeter gigs.

There are more galleries depicting similar tours featuring Carlos Mencia and Don King, among others.

A Seattle Times article (“Seattle’s amateur stand-up comedy scene is alive and kicking”), is a nice hit for the folks who make up the People’s Republic of Komedy.

We met and hung out with and performed with some of those comics when we headlined the Mainstage back in February. (Click here to read about that experience and actually see photographs of some of those mentioned in the Times piece.)

According to the Times’ Haley Edwards, “the scene is led by a tight-knit group of young hipsters (most of them in their 20s) who perform for free at bars and cafes from Ballard to Kirkland.”

And, of course, no article on standup comedy is complete without the headscratcher quote– the statement that leaves one wondering the motivation behind it… or whether it may have been horribly mangled… or if it’s been violently wrenched out of context… or all three! Delivered by FOS Ron Reid, this one is about the recent changes in the Seattle scene:

It’s a little more indie and artsy than it’s been in the past. The shows are either free or 5 bucks, so… there’s not this push to be exclusive or ‘make it big.’ I think the hipsters like it because no one’s ‘selling out.’

Huh? (Ron, we luv ya… and we’re glad you remain a friend, even though we’re always busting your chops!)

Like we said, we met a good chunk of these comics. Some of them are good, solid, traditional standup comics (whether they want to be plastered with that odious label or not!) and they are just as interested in ditching the day job as comedians have always been since the dawn of Funny Man.

All this nonsense about “selling out” is amusing.

All you who waste your time muttering through clenched teeth about those who sell out and all those who tell reporters that you’re not interested in selling out, heed this: David Cross has third billing in “Alvin And The Chipmunks.”

The. Game. Is. Over.

KITFO with the selling out thing!

How did this happen?

A former stand-up comedian has been appointed as the new channel manager at The Comedy Channel, a Foxtel network based out of Melbourne, Australia.

Alex Ristevski is the bloke’s name.

In an interview on NBA.com with Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, we learn that the NBA Hall of Famer dabbled in magic and in standup.

I would come out and I would do slight of hand type of stuff. After we went up and found out what we were going to do for the next half, I’d come out and do some magic tricks. I remember one instance where we played the Philadelphia 76ers and Wali Jones, who was my homeboy, came out with me and I put a sword through his neck. It was always showtime with me. I did it a few times and then as the season wore on, it got to a point where we got much more serious about everything and I kind of stopped it. But everyone always remembers that about me as well as the fact that I also did stand up comedy there. I did a couple shows with guys like Pigmeat Markham and another guy named Cliff Nobles, who had a big song out during the time called, “The Horse.” So I had guys coming in from Philadelphia looking at me doing my stand up comedy act. Wes Unseld and Sonny Hill and all those guys would come in and start booing me when I was on stage doing my thing.

The occasion for the piece is the retiring of Monroe’s number by the NBA’s Baltimore franchise, making Monroe the only player in the league’s history to have his number retired by two teams.

The Male Half of the Staff recalls Monroe fondly and often emulated the guard’s syncopated, “shake and bake” dribbling and quirky playground style to limited success. Watch the Ultimate Earl Monroe Mix here (enhanced greatly by a smashing live version of James Brown’s “Cold Sweat!”):

All you need to know about Imus return to radio is on Eric Deggans’ TV and media blog The Feed.

Imus also announced two black cast members: standup comic and actor Tony Powell, talking sports, and Karith Foster (a comic who calls herself a Jewish African American Princess). Presumably, these two will keep Imus from some of his biggest problem areas, making stereotypical comments about black athletes, Jewish people and women. “It is a thrill to be here on the Tyler Perry version of the Imus in the Morning show,” Powell said, cracking wise about his addition to the cast. “It’s the Oprah-sponsored version of Imus.”

The reference is to writer/director/producer Perry, who is famous for his television show and Medea series of films that cater to mainstream African-American audiences.

We saw a lot of chatter in our stats. Some folks were googling “Joe Restivo.” We figured it was just more confusion from the story that ran a year and a half ago. Then we got an email from a reader.

The obituary in the Los Angeles Times confirms it.

Back in June of 2006, a guy by the name of Joe Restivo died. And we posted on it and on the ensuing confusion. The one who died in 2006 was a guy who dabbled in standup, but was primarily a restarateur– in fact, he owned the restaurant made famous by Robert Blake. (It was the one where he “left his gun and hadda go back in to get it” while his girlfriend was being murdered.)

We got word from Joe that he was still quite alive and that he was fielding a lot of phone calls from folks who thought he had passed.

This time, it’s for real.

The Male Half of the Staff fondly recalls a road trip with Restivo when the two had an idle afternoon while working at the Strip in El Paso.

We went over the border into Juarez. After a while, our curiosity got the better of us and we commandeered a cab to take us to a “donkey show.” We eventually got a show… but there was no donkey involved. It sounds a lot worse than it was. It’s probably only funny if you know Joe…. and me. I’ll tell it to you, if we ever meet.”

Restivo’s obit is lengthy and handled ably by Valerie J. Nelson. An excerpt:

Over the last decade, Restivo regularly performed overseas with other comedians in USO shows staged for U.S. troops.

Last year, the comedian initially found humor in the sympathy calls he began fielding after the death of another Joe Restivo, a comedian and actor who had owned Vitello’s restaurant in Studio City.

“By day four or five, it was not funny anymore,” Restivo told the Associated Press after he learned that he had been replaced in a movie because the film crew thought he was dead.

A Chicago native, Restivo launched his entertainment career at 15 by winning a talent contest, which led him to record “Summer Love” and other songs in the early 1960s under the name Joey Richards.

The son of a doctor, he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy of religion at Bradley University in Illinois. He also received a master’s degree from the American Graduate School of International Management and a master’s in religious philosophy from New York University.

While working in marketing for Chesebrough-Ponds in New York City, Restivo caught his first live stand-up show at the New York Improv, and he told The Times in 1990: “I felt like I was home.”

He’s home now. Rest in peace, Joe.

Grab your towel and swim in this pool of bile— It’s a ridiculous, delusional screed penned by Ron Rosenbaum for Slate.com. (It’s dated November 2, but we didn’t get around to reading it until yesterday.)

Rosenbaum bubbled over with white-hot rage as the “publicity-industrial complex began gearing up to force-feed us Jerry Seinfeld‘s sickeningly sweet ‘Bee Movie’.” So he used the occasion to rant against Jerry Seinfeld– while promoting the “corruscatingly obscene, vicious, bitter, self-loathing, world-hating Rick Shapiro” as the anti-Jerry.

The first 242 words of the article set up “A Tale Of Two Cities” as the theme. It’s a jumping-off point, an armature, a skeleton for his comparison of Seinfeld and his “brilliant, twisted, evil twin” Shapiro.

The rest follows perfectly the alt/indy template for pop culture criticism: Ours is great, so yours must suck.

Rosenbaum succumbs to that most piteous and hideous tendency: Denigrate before you elevate!

I was thinking about the two Dickens characters as I was preparing to see Jerry Seinfeld’s massively hyped new animated film, Bee Movie, and comparing my loathing for everything Seinfeldian—Seinfeld the show, Seinfeld the world’s worst stand-up comic, Seinfeldian “observational humor” in general, the Seinfeldian blanding-out of American comedy and culture, even the ridiculous Seinfeld Porsche collection—with the experience of seeing a far, far better comedian a few weeks ago.

A far, far lesser-known comic, the corruscatingly obscene, vicious, bitter, self-loathing, world-hating Rick Shapiro. While Seinfeld spends his billions buying up Porsches and producing insipid children’s movies that are childish rather than childlike (more on Bee Movie anon), Rick Shapiro was killing (as they say) in a half-filled comedy club called the Cutting Room in Manhattan before heading off to a prestigious series of gigs in, yes, Alaska. Frozen out of the big-money, big-time, big-name recognition game.

Even Rosenbaum admits he has made a mini-career out of hating Seinfeld. But the intensity is embarrassing. As is the mangling of facts and history.

After weepily recalling the Steve Martin/New Yorker memoir, which talked about “the birth of a new, original kind of American comedy that he (Martin) and few others were exploring in the ’60s and ’70s,” Rosenbaum spits out the following:

But suddenly almost all that died, and I blame Seinfeld and the so-called “sweater comics” he inspired for killing it off with their smirking frat-boy blandness. Their idiot “observational humor” made a religion out of self-congratulation. Most of the Seinfeld show’s humor was about making fun of anyone who was in any way “different”-— immigrants, people with any kind of accent, any kind of idiosyncrasy, any kind of deviation from the Charles Darnay mold.

All that died suddenly? He blames Seinfeld? “Sweater comics?” “Idiot observational humor?”

Let’s set aside the fact that he’s totally confusing Jerry The Comedian with Jerry The Show. This guy is not up to speed on the facts of Standup Comedy in the Modern Era.

In the world of Ron Rosenbaum, “sweater comics” obliterate all others. It’s a zero-sum game. Comics with “smirking frat-boy blandness” cancel out hip, cool alt comics. In a world where idiot observational humor succeeds, there can’t possibly exist anyone who looks at the world with a skewed view. No! It’s simply not possible! Rosenbaum lives in a world that is calculated to make him miserable. There’s just one problem– he’s dead wrong.

Take a look at the opening of an article by Mark de la Vina in yesterday’s San Jose Merc News, entitled “The Yin and Yang of Comedy in the Bay Area:

Talk about your comedy extremes.

Over the next few days, fans can sample the full range of the comic spectrum, from the stand-up-as-indie-rock flavor of the Comedians of Comedy to the arena-rock vibe of Dane Cook.

On Wednesday, Cook plays HP Pavilion in San Jose– please read our coverage of the comedian in Friday’s Mercury News– with an “in the round” set-up that’s more like a prog-rock extravaganza than a comedy-club show. But the show I’m excited about is the Comedians of Comedy at the Independent in San Francisco on Friday.

de la Vina doesn’t like all kinds of comedy, but he acknowledges that some folks like this kind while others like that kind. And he is happy to live in a world– in a market– that accomodates all kinds. And he is more than happy to wax enthusiastic about his preferred humorists, while telling others, who may not be of the same mind, about theirs.

Sweater comics didn’t ruin the comedy world. Market forces did. To be sure, some “daring innovators with a jaundiced eye and an unerring ability to speak truth to power!” had to go back to pumping gas or selling insurance back in 1994, but so did a bunch of the so-called “sweater comics” that keep Rosenbaum up at night. Comedy life sucked for almost everybody, Ron!

And Jerry Seinfeld may have served as a role model for a cohort of comics with “frat-boy blandness,” but, at the same time, Steven Wright, Andy Kaufmann, Judy Tenuta and Emo Phillips were doing quite well, thank you very much. And they, in turn, inspired an entirely new generation of comedians who… are apparently coming to the Bay Area this weekend.

It’s a big, diverse comedy tapestry out there. Rosenbaum sees nothing but blandness and injustice. He seems fixated on hype. His indignation at hype seems more suited to a 14-year-old. Why get so worked up about something so benign as hype? Dude! Turn the channel when Extra! comes on! Perhaps he thinks that the Seinfelds of the world benefit unfairly from hyperbole used in the service of entertainment publicity. (And, conversely, that his favorites dwell in obscurity merely because they enjoy no such advantage.) Oh, the injustice! (Perhaps Rosenbaum should save his hatred up not for Seinfeld, but for P.T. Barnum!)

Don’t get us wrong. We’ve got no problem with Shapiro. It’s Rosenbaum, and his cringeworthy, over-the-top (and totally misplaced) hatred for Seinfeld that’s got our attention.

But even Rosenbaum can’t say something nice about Shapiro without going and ruining the mood– he winds up the essay with this sentiment:

That’s the great thing about Rick Shapiro. He’ll never be a billionaire, he’ll always be Sydney Carton, whose fame is only posthumous…

We can’t help but feel that Rosenbaum is not so subtly rooting for Shapiro’s demise. The untimely death would make for a better story, no doubt, and he could blame the passing on Seinfeld. Why not? He blames everything else on Seinfeld.

(Thanks to sharp-eyed reader Vince Martin for sending along the link. And Ron Rosenbaum’s other far more reasoned writing can be found here.)

This is a reminder to check out The Female Half of the Staff’s new Blogspot blog Road Atlas Shrugged!

In just two weeks, she’s upped 21 posts on topics as diverse as The Evil Goodness of Fiddle Faddle, Laptops for Tots, Mangroomers (!?) and Scientific Facial Exercises.

Stop by for profound analysis mixed with sheer idiocy! And goofy graphics!

Check out a preview of “Mr. Warmth, The Don Rickles Project”

John Landis– the director behind ‘Animal House’ and ‘The Blues Brothers’– first met Rickles on a shoot as an 18-year-old gofer. Now, decades later, Landis shows the warm heart behind this famously cantankerous on-stage personality.

Then watch the whole thing at 8 PM EST on HBO. Check your local listings for show times in your region.

The XM channel, Laugh Attack (XM153), features mostly Canadian comedians. They are seeking CD’s from “Canadian stand-ups and sketch comedy troupes,” and promising “exposure to over 8 million subscribers (20 million listeners) across Canada, the United States and some parts of Mexico.”

From a comment we found on our MySpace profile:

CDs only please. Unfortunately, we cannot download/take your tracks from the MySpace players and we do not accept MP3s.

Send your CD submissions to:

Laugh Attack XM 153
175 Avenue Road
Toronto, ON
M5R 2J2
Canada

But in a good way.

Brian Regan, Demetri Martin, Nick Swardson, Dane Cook, Mitch Hedberg, Lewis Black, Kathy Griffin— these comics are featured heavily on Comedy Central. They are also among the comics cited as favorites by a group of youths that gathered recently for our most recent standup comedy seminar.

Two weeks ago, we held that seminar down the pike at the Ritz Theater in nearby Haddon Township, NJ. It was open to the Ritz’ Junior Program participants, so the half-dozen kids who took advantage of the offer were high-schoolers. These were obviously not your average teenagers– they are, after all, members of a theater group and they signed up for a seminar on standup– but it is interesting to note what their preferences are when it comes to standup. And it is worth noting that they were somewhat knowledgeable about the state of standup comedy in the year 2008.

Considering that none were old enough to drink,, we weren’t surprised to find that none had seen standup live. (Actually, two of them had seen live standup comedy on two very recent occasions– They were present for the Oct. 24 Dena Blizzard/Mike Vecchione show and the Traci Skene/Brian McKim show two weeks earlier, both part of the theater’s “Ritz Comedy Club” program.) But, their comedy tastes are driven mostly by Comedy Central.

We thought back to our early days and which comics we were familiar with and how. We concluded that, prior to cable, American kids got their standup predominantly through The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show or other talk shows. Or, depending on how old you are, you got it through Ed Sullivan and the various variety shows and specials that dotted the television schedule back then. When cable came along and late-night television exploded, there were more talks shows that featured the occasional comic. HBO, Showtime, MTV and Comedy Central offered heaping amounts of standup.

There’s been somewhat of a shakeout. Comedy Central stands out as the most influential among the adolescents.

For adults, it is influential to be sure. But the oldsters get their comedy from a wider variety of outlets– Movies, DVD rentals, DVD sales, CD sales, live in the clubs, XM, Sirius and various local and syndicated radio shows that regularly feature comedians, either recorded, via phoners or live in-studio.

What about YouTube? YouTube’s influence is overblown. There is precious little well-recorded, well-presented live standup on YouTube. Television still rules because of the quality and quantity of the programming and the convenience.

Comedy Central is doing the lion’s share of the “training” of a whole new generation (or three) of standup fans. And the young ones we encountered had somewhat varied tastes and surprisingly sophisticated appreciation of the craft.

Here’s a quote from a San Francisco Examiner article on Patton Oswalt:

Oswalt, who tours with comedians from The City, says, “The young scene that is coming up now is pretty fantastic.” The scene includes Brent Weinbach, who will warm up the crowd at Friday’s show.

These days, Oswalt is enjoying audiences across the country, which he says are growing and becoming increasingly aware about comedy in general.

“The crowds are a lot better,” he says “They are better educated about comedy and they are real connoisseurs, so it’s fun.”

Roving SHECKYmagazine columnist Doug Hecox recently found himself in the Rockies, where he was able to witness up close that slice of the Denver comedy scene that is the Tuesday night New Talent Showcase at the Comedy Works.

There may be other clubs who do as Comedy Works does, but I have never seen anything like the attention given to new comics by seasoned professionals in Denver. The Mile High City is peppered with a robust collection of venues, ranging from small ones for traditional open mike shows to Comedy Works with its competitive approach to giving new comics time before forgiving, if not wholly enthusiastic, audiences.

A snapshot of a major U.S. comedy market. Read the rest here.

Earlier this month, USA Today ran an excerpt from Steve Martin‘s autobiography, “Born Standing Up.”

I DID STAND-UP COMEDY for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success. My most persistent memory of stand-up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare– enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

There’s more where that came from. Martin says he researched the standup period of his life as if it happened to someone else. And he recalls enjoying himself!

If the portion running in the paper is any indication, Martin’s musings on standup– the technical, the philosophical, the theoretical– are some of most insightful and possibly the most useful ever committed to the page. (Thanks to reader Tom Bickle for the tip!)

Nick Zaino III writing last week for the Globe’s Boston.com says that Stoughton’s Bob Lazarus, recently diagnosed with leukemia, has a lot to be thankful for, mainly that…

…over his nearly 30 years in Boston comedy, he has made a lot of talented friends.

Many of those friends – Steven Wright, Lenny Clarke, Tony V., Mike McDonald, Don Gavin, Mike Donovan, Jimmy Tingle, Steve Sweeney, and Kevin Knox – will gather Sunday night at Giggles Comedy Club in Saugus for a benefit to help Lazarus, who has not been able to work since his diagnosis and may not be able to for another two or three months.

This one was on Sunday. There’ll be another in March. We’ll keep you posted.

An article from the Victoria (BC) Times Colonist details the efforts of mental health consellor David Granirer’s efforts to start a new branch of his national Stand Up for Mental Health program in Victoria.

Granirer has also produced a documentary, “Cracking Up,” that chronicles the story of his classes, in which schizophrenic, depressed or bipolar folks learn to become stand-up comedians. He tirelessly defends the mentally ill:

The way the mentally ill are portrayed in the media tends to promote negative stereotypes, added Granirer. He notes that Vancouver newspapers made much of a bipolar man shot and killed by police in August after he attacked them with a chain. Yet when “Cracking Up”– a good news story about the mentally ill– was aired the same month, the media virtually ignored it.

He jokes that if plumbers made national headlines every time they shot someone, then “you would be really afraid of plumbers.”

Yes. Now let’s look at what Granirer said two paragraphs earlier:

…many professional comics perceived as normal people suffer from mental illnesses. Not many regular folk are drawn to a profession that requires hanging out nightly at clubs in an environment that encourages smoking, drinking and drugging.

Here’s a man who is upset with the way that the mentally ill are portrayed in the media and how it tends to promote negative stereotypes. Yet, when he steps up to that same media megaphone, he proclaims rather clearly that many standup comics are mentally ill. And that their work environment is all about smoking, drinking and “drugging!” (Whatever that is!?!)

And, to top it all off, he advocates taking a group of bipolar, schizophrenic and depressed people and teaching them standup, so that they might one day practice their art in dens of smoking, drinking and drugging. All the while, hangin out with other individuals, many of which are, according to him, mentally ill.

Sounds like a splendid plan. We’re sorry we didn’t think of it ourselves.

Oh, yeah. There’s a comedy open mike contest, going on for two months, in Uganda. So says the article from AllAfrica.com:

The promotion, that kicks off at Punchline Bar in Kabalagala on Saturday, will set the stage for ‘talented’ Ugandans to do stand-up comedy for five minutes in selected bars.

There’s a Punchline in San Francisco, a Punchline in Atlanta… and now there’s a Punchline in Kabalagala.

Fifteen years of murder and mayhem, followed by twenty years of growth and stability produces a country and a people with enough security and perspective to laugh.

And, apparently, they like to drink beer.

Back on July 11, we posted the following, in a posting about a U.K. outfit that teaches standup to kids:

Can we stop putting children on legitimate comedy club stages? Please?

You’re setting the kid up with unrealistic expectations. Kids have too much self-esteem these days as it is without putting them into a situation where they’re going to get charity laughs (and nobody would dare heckle them). And it’s embarassing for the real, adult comics who have to mount the stage after them.

Little did we know at the time, but there was kid, Trevor Hattabaugh, doing standup in Boise. The title of this posting is a quote from him in a profile in the Salt Lake Tribune (“He’s only 12, but Trevor is as stand-up guy”).

Trevor is so fearless that he can’t wait until he gets his first heckler. He’s come up with some comeback lines and he’s salivating over the thought of using them.

Pardon us while we hurl onto the keyboard.

The article goes on to quote the tweener comic as wanting to do political humor. “I like politics,” Trevor said. “I don’t want to talk about boogers.” Great. Not only is he arrogant, but he is pretentious as well. Now comedy clubs are going to subject their patrons to a 30-minute lecture from a 12-year-old on meaningful subjects. Is there anyone on the planet (besides a child psychologist or another 12-year-old) who can bear to listen to a 12-year-old for more than three minutes? We would wager that not even a parent could take more than five minutes… even if it were his own child’s yammering he was forced to endure.

Please… stop. Please… we beg of you. Teach the kid to play the bassoon. Anything… just don’t let him do standup. We’re begging here. We mean it.

We extract this quote from an article the U.K. Independent on the dearth of female standup comics in Britain:

When I do a gig in this country, I’m usually the only woman. It’s different when I perform in America, where there are so many female stand-ups. They have a far older and richer history of women stand-up comics than we do. Women here have been more orientated towards sketches.

(“Orientated,” btw, is the current accepted use in the U.K.)

We do have an older and richer history of women in standup. What is it about American females that they attempt standup so much more frequently than British females? Or is it the culture and not the people themselves? Perhaps it’s television.

Starting in 1961, Phyllis Diller was all over the pop culture– in movies, nightclubs and especially television– so, if you place a lot of emphasis on the Role Model theory, she certainly provided one.

Prior to the explosion and dominance of television, Pearl Williams, Rusty Warren, Moms Mabley, Minnie Pearl, Gracie Allen and Mae West demonstrated quite clearly– in movies, clubs, theaters and on vinyl– that females could, if they wanted to, perform as standup comics.

Add to that the traditional American acceptance (or tolerance? or both?) of women behaving in this manner and you have the current situation where clumps of female comics are banding together and going on tours that feature nothing but comics with and extra X chromosome– Brett Butler‘s Southern Belles of Comedy, Five Funny Females, Confederacy of Cunces, just to name a few.

In one of Michael Klein’s recent Inqulings column
in the Philadelphia Inquirer is an item that details a suit filed by the owners of Atlantic City’s Irish Pub. They’re suing the publishers of A.C. Now, a publication that contained reviews of restaurants.

In the filing, they claim…

…The Irish Pub– in business since 1972 and with two outposts in Center City– was harmed by A.C. Now’s dubbing it a “dive bar,” lumping it with Tony’s Baltimore Grill and the Chelsea Pub.

“Defendant characterizes the customers… as likely to be ‘broken-down blackjack addicts and ‘self-professed black sheep of the family, ” the suit says, adding that the label will hurt the pub’s chances at further expansion.

We are huge fans of the Irish Pub. It’s just off the boardwalk and it’s a ten-minute drive from the Borgata.

During the day, it’s packed with tourists, regular folk, older couples and (from what we hear) off-duty cops. At night, there’s the cops as usual, with a sizeable number of twenty- and thirtysomething revelers. (And on some nights, two or three comedians!)

A dive? We think not. It’s more accurately described as a… pub!

We’ve tossed back many a beer with other comics after shows– both during gigs at the Borgata and after shows at the defunct Catch A Rising Star at Resorts. And the specials during the day are worth the trip. The fish and chips are cheap and greasy– just the way we like ’em! Is there anything better than a huge plate of battered and fried whitefish (or its equivalent), fat fries and a cold draft?

Not so, says the club’s manager, Pat Mac. “Whether it’s under the Funny Bone name or a different name, comedy is not leaving Boise,” he said.

That quote is from an article in the Idaho Statesman, titled “Funny Bone files for bankruptcy,” in which Bone owner Michael Kohn and attorneys for the club’s landlord are quoted.

Kohn said he sought bankruptcy protection to allow the court to settle the issue. Normally under a Chapter 11 filing, unless the court rules otherwise, the filing party remains in control of the business while the business is reorganized.

We’re scheduled to perform at the Boise Bone in March of next year, so we’re going to keep a close eye on this situation.

From Left: Frank Barnett, Spins Nitely, The Legendary Wid at New Wave

We finished with our responsibilities at our gig in York, PA, and headed back into the city in time to catch the tail end of the revelry at the New Wave on Catharine St. in Philadelphia.

It’s an annual event. The night before Thanksgiving, Philadelphia comedians converge on the New Wave and… drink? Give thanks? Catch up? Fall behind? All those things– and more!

John Kensil (l) and Richie Redding

Paul F. Tompkins is the “lynchpin,” the impetus, the driving force behind the gathering. (Although he modestly denies it.) We understand that as many as 40 comedians converged over the course of the evening. (When we arrived, at half past midnight, there may have been a quarter of that number.) It was a pleasure to once again celebrate with all those pictured here and with David P. Hardy, Big Daddy Graham, Dann Foxx, Mike Clements and Catch A Rising Star’s Kevin Kearney.

Paul F. Tompkins (l) and The Female Half of the Staff

Above are just one of the many different varieties of “The World’s Funniest Golf Balls” developed by Mike McDonald (Boston Mike McDonald, not Canadian Mike McDonald).

Comedy Golf (their motto is “Funny Game + Funny Balls = Good Time”) is the company that is hawking Ex-Husband Golf Balls, Axis of Evil Golf Balls and Hit Man Golf Balls among others.

We realize most golfers stink, but that they still want to have a good time while hacking it around. So enjoy these balls like we do and buy a sleeve or three for you and your buds.

McDonald hatched the idea of Comedy Golf during a round of golf (of course!). He’s obliquely promoting the line of balls via a series of wicked funny videos here.

This post, about how we have reached the 2000th post, is our 2,000th post!

That’s right, 2,000 posts ago, we started posting. And 2,000 posts later, we have posted 2,000 times!

It is a glorious moment!

On June 4, 2004, at 6:08 PM, we posted about how we talked to Joel Haas at the Boston Comedy Festival and asked him how our readers might go about submitting files to XMRadio. We had just jiggered our front page and configured it to use Blogger technology. We had been inching toward this kind of format for some time. About two years earlier, we made our old Like We Care page (some readers may remember that!) our front page and we took to manually updating it whenever we felt like it. It was blogging before blogging was cool!

Since turning SHECKYmagazine into a Blogazine®, we’ve enjoyed amazing traffic, increased interactivity with our readers and wild increases in efficiency and immediacy.

We would like to take this moment to once again thank our many readers throughout the world and wish you a happy Thanksgiving and a healthy and prosperous holiday season!

The inboxes of Standup America have been clogged with breathless emails referencing an incident in which a comedian received a check at the end of his work week… which subsequently bounced. Bulletins packed with fiery rhetoric and clamorous calls to action continue to circulate.

There’s a whole lot more to the story than just a rubber check, of course, but we don’t feel it necessary to go into the gory details of what transpired when the recipient of the bouncy bank note tried to collect.

But we’ll nutshell it: A comic worked at a club for a week and was paid with a check. The check doesn’t cash (and shortly thereafter the club goes under) and the comedian’s efforts to collect his wages are met with resistance, subterfuge and, at times, outright hostility. The wronged comic recounts, in excruciating detail, the chain of events in a lengthy MySpace blog posting.

We sympathize. We’ve been there. We’ve done that. And, in a case or two, we were met with the resistance, the subterfuge and perhaps some mild hostility.

Some comedians have taken the incident to mean that the business is falling apart. Some have also interpreted the incident as evidence that the comedy business is overrun with sleazy operators. Petty, underhanded. unscrupulous owners, managers and bookers outnumber the good guys, goes the narrative. The general tone seems to be that we’re all just a Sunday away from ruin. Some emails implore us to storm the gates and start the revolution now.

But, like we’ve said, we’ve been there– we’ve had five checks turn out to be “bad.” Five. In 23 years. Five checks, and in all but one case, we eventually got our money– after delays lasting from a week to maybe two weeks.

So, that leaves one check in 23 years that wasn’t righted. (It is worth noting that in the case of the bad check, the issuer covered the bounced check… with another check that subsequently bounced!)

We can recount, in startling detail, the circumstances surrounding every incidence of hinky paper. Which might be an indication of just how rare it is.

So, it might well be that all this wailing and hand-wringing is somewhat out of proportion.

Perhaps it was the way in which the incident was brought to the public’s attention (via the lengthy MySpace blog post and the strident and sprawling email blast campaign) that has magnified the injustice. But the melodrama that has ensued is precisely what has given us pause.

In the past, we’ve been scheduled to appear at this club or that, and we’ve heard rumblings beforehand that the fiscal health of the club is… shaky. Or on one occasion or another, we’ve stumbled upon information about questionable business practices at a venue that we’ve already been through. In such cases, we act in the following manner: In the former situation, we try to ascertain if the health of the club is so dire that it might result in delayed payment or worse, non-payment. Based upon that information, we then decide whether or not it is worth our time and effort to follow through with the date. And we determine if there is enough time to re-book it in a healthier venue. Is it easy to ascertain the information? Not always. Is it easy to subsequently evaluate the situation and make a decision? Certainly not.

If it’s the latter scenario, we try to find out who is coming up on that venue’s schedule and we make an effort to contact any of those performers that we know personally and apprise them of the situation so that they might make an informed decision.

Of course, there’s also the other standby piece of advice: Never walk with a check. Easier said than done. We amend that to say: Never walk with a check unless you know and trust the issuer of the check and/or you’re fairly confident of the soundness of the venue. And, if at all possible, try to clarify the method of payment prior to agreeing to the engagement.

Did someone say hindsight is 20/20? On this we can agree. It’s easy for us to pompously pontificate on what should have been done or on what might have been done wrong. But that is not our aim. And we certainly aren’t spinning out this advice to let the perpetrators off the hook.

But we’re somewhat put off by the insistence that we (all of us, every comic man, woman and child of us) take up the fight and risk life and limb (or at the very least, future bookings) in order to right the wrong and bring the perpetrators to justice.

We have no quarrel with spinning out the tale, with bringing the details to light, with naming names and letting folks decide when and how to deal with the bad guys. This method, virtually impossible in the pre-WWW era, might yield results, might force potential bad actors to think twice before attempting anything that might be the slightest bit dishonest.

Indeed, we’ve often lamented the reluctance of the Pre-Bust Comedian to share information– bad and good– with his fellows. We’ve cited that reluctance as one of the things that accelerated the bust, that contributed unnecessarily (and tragically) to the isolation that most comics felt in 1992 and 1993 and in the few years that followed.

But, we are somewhat wary when we’re asked to grab a torch and show up on the monster’s doorstep.

We’d prefer to see the victim in this case pursue any and all legal recourse and get back to us all on how it turned out. We’d also prefer to see other comics add to the advice that we’ve pompously put forth in the above paragraphs. And we’d prefer to see comedians share information more freely so that folks can act proactively, in a pre-emptive manner, instead of retroactively. Would it not be preferable for comedians to act, en masse and intelligently, in such a way as to make the passing of questionable checks so much more difficult? Isn’t that much better than seeking to enlist your fellow comics in the destruction of a major comedy chain?

And we’re skeptical of the claims that this incident indicates some sort of systemic problem throughout the entire industry. Or that such practices are unique to comedy or to the entertainment industry. Ask a restaurant supplier if he’s ever been stiffed. Ask a florist if bounced checks are part of the business. We would wager that more than one minister has been paid with a bounced check for performing a wedding ceremony. Does this make it right? Tolerable? Certainly not. Our point is that we should deal with these things calmly and intelligently and act proactively.

The Female Half of the Staff has created her own blog– Road Atlas Shrugged, over at Blogger.com– where she’ll write about all those topics that just don’t fit into the narrow crevice that we’ve created here at SHECKYmagazine.com.

Birthed at 9:46 AM on Friday morning, the new bouncing baby blog has already addressed such interesting matters as Rejected Fashion Police gags, muzzled Santas in Australia and Scientific Facial Exercises! (See illustration at left!)

The Female Half implores all SHECKYmagazine readers and their friends to check in, bookmark it and return on a regular basis.

Time magazine has a piece about the burgeoning comedy scene in Hong Kong (“How to Write a Joke in China”). Jamie Gong, “was always struck by the rarity of an Asian-American comedian,” so when he moved recently to Hong Kong, he was struck by the rarity of comedy clubs in Asia. He started the TakeOut Comedy Shop.

Comedy works for both camps as a form of therapy to bridge Hong Kong’s unique cultural gap, which, together with its everyday chaos, creates plenty of material. “The city’s hungry for this,” Gong says. “I know comedians in New York who’d kill for this kind of a crowd.” And the crowd is growing: Three of the four shows comprising the Hong Kong’s Funniest Person Contest sold out in advance.

SHECKYmagazine readers will recall that our own Paul Ogata wrote about his experience with Gong and Hong Kong back on September 12 of this year.

It was while performing in Hong Kong with TakeOut Comedy that I was witness to Jami Gong hatching his master plan for getting into the hugest untapped market of them all… China. The plan was simple, really: bring American-style stand-up comedy to the 1.3 billion Chinese. Except that it was pretty much a foreign concept there, since there was only one club which brought in comics from the West. And that was only once a month. No, to operate full-time, Gong realized he needed to have a stable of local comedians. (It turns out that airfare to Hong Kong from the US is a little pricey.)

SHECKYmagazine.com was quoted in the New York Times article on Louis C.K., (not Calvin Klein). Peter Keepnews interviewed C.K. on the occasion of his show tomorrow night at the North Fork Theater in Westbury, N.Y., and his recent sold out Town Hall appearance during last week’s New York Comedy Festival.

So while America may not be entirely comfortable inviting Louis C. K. into its living room every week (although he is developing a new sitcom for network TV), he has built a following.

“Though not a mainstream success in the traditional sense,” the veteran comedian Brian McKim, an astute observer of the comedy scene on the Web site sheckymagazine.com, said in an e-mail message, “he is a recognizable performer with a track record and a résumé that most comics would be ecstatic to have,” who has made a mark without “softening his message or delivery or persona.”

Which is good enough for Louis C. K. “I’m about as famous as I want to be,” he said. “I get recognized a lot, and it’s only by people who like me. Once you get really big, people recognize you who hate you. I don’t want that.”

That’s us– “The New York Times calls SHECKYmagazine, ‘astute observers of the comedy scene!'” Quotes available 24/7!

There was a festival last week in NYC. And there’s a festival going on this week in Las Vegas. We weren’t/aren’t at either one. We’re weary of going to festivals on our own dime and incurring all sorts of debt. Some folks have been writing to us, asking us if we’re going to be in attendance at the fests and we reply that we’re just not keen on taking off a week from work and paying our travel and lodging expenses to cover another festival.

Camille, in Slate.com, interrupts her latest opinion piece to toss in this scathing paragraph about the two prominent comedians:

On the pop front, Ellen DeGeneres‘ cringe-making on-air meltdown over a dog, leading to her overwrought cancellation of several days of her show, should get a Raspberry Award for worst performance by a lesbian icon. Following Rosie O’Donnell‘s professional collapse amid lunatic rants and operatic kvetching, this has been a terrible year for Hollywood lesbians’ public image. It’s as if when the butch mask drops, there’s nothing inside but a boiling candy kettle of infantile rage and self-pity. And now Ellen, the professed liberal, is narcissistically flouting the Writers Guild strike. Great going, gals!

Whoa! A “boiling candy kettle of infantile rage and self-pity!” That gal can write!

The mini-poster/flyer on Matt Markman’s Myspace promotes Brandt Tobler’s Backyard Comedy Festival, with photos of Brody Stevens and Morgan Murphy. And it exhorts attendees to “Bring a lawn chair.” Hmmm… perhaps this bit about being a “backyard comedy festival” is serious.

We contacted Markman and it’s true: He and comedy buddy Tobler are actually producing shows in Tobler’s spacious backyard. Five minutes from the Strip. For real.

The other night they hosted Neil Hamburger and Pleaseeasaur. Friday night, they’ll feature Murphy and Stevens. They’re talking to other comics for future shows. It’s ten bucks to get in.

Markman says the pair are “trying to build a more prominent comedy scene here in las vegas.”

FOS Jim Mendrinos has co-written (with director Jason Summers) an off-Broadway musical review called “Growing Up 70s,” described as “an interactive journey filled with colorful characters, disco, bell-bottoms, mood-rings, and unforgettable music.” It opens tomorrow (Thursday) night and stars Barry Williams, aka Greg Brady. It’s being presented at The Theater at Ha!, 163 W. 46th St., in NY, NY. Tickets can be purchased through Telecharge, or by calling (212)977-3884.

In a Variety article pumping his upcoming release “The Six Wives Of Henry Leafy,” is the following quote:

Allen still hosts the odd charity event, but he says he doesn’t get to return to his road-tour standup roots anywhere “near as much as I’d like. It takes so much prep — as much as it does to do a movie.” Plus, “A lot of my (standup) comedy came from being uncomfortable, and struggling– right now, comfort has taken away a lot of that input.”