December 8 marks the debut of Dave Attell‘s latest HBO special (schedule here) is his first for that cable outlet in more than ten years. It’s entitled “Captain Miserable.”

Robert Klein is working out new material for his upcoming special on HBO. Anybody psyched for a chance to see the comedy legend in an intimate venue should check him out at the Princeton Catch A Rising Star on December 1. The room at the Hyatt Regency on Rte. 1 formerly held 250+, but now holds about 100, so it should be a great place to see Klein.

It’s the day we honor those who served.

Here’s a picture (above) of the Male Half’s father (that’s him on the far left, US Army, WWII) and below is the Female Half’s Father (US Army, 1954).

The Mitch Hedberg Calendar is “selected artworks inspired by the comedy genius of Mitch Hedberg.” The limited edition 2008 calendar is available via the Mitch Hedberg Tribute Blog. It features art by fans of the late comedian.


Comedy writer Jeffrey L. Gurian and journo/author Tripp Whetsell collected “jokes so dirty comedians and entertainers only tell them to each other.” It features gags from Alan Zweibel, Drew Carey, Tony “Paulie Walnuts” Sirico, Scott Baio and dozend more comics, actors and others.

The forward is by Paul Provenza and it’s available via Kensington Books.

“Balls! An In-Your-Face Look At Sports” is “a lovely penalty shot to the crotch of an institution rife with overblown salaries, steroids and sex scandals.” Written by comedian and Sports Illustrated.com columnist Steve Hofstetter, it’s available via National Lampoon Press. Hofstetter asks, “Where else can you see a grown man play a children’s game in a jumpsuit and complain that he’s not getting paid enough!”

Judy Carter’s Comedy Career in a Box is precisely what it says it is. It’s the “definitive interactive guide for comics, writers, speakers, actors and anyone who wants to make money from being funny” and it comes in a box that contains three interactive DVDs with six hours of step-by-step comedy instruction. Carter authored The Comedy Bible, arguably the best-selling how-to book on standup, and her boxed set is a portable, multimedia version of her Los Angeles Comedy Workshop. It contains industry trade secrets from 18 of Hollywood’s top managers, agents, casting directors, bookers and producers.

Earlier this week, the WGA went on strike, forcing many shows to go to reruns. Now, stagehands have gone on strike, shutting down Broadway.

No new negotiations have been scheduled between Local One and the League of American Theatres and Producers, so the outlook for a quick settlement looks murky.

We have a suggestion for folks seeking entertainment: Go see standup comedy live, the way it’s supposed to be experienced.

Here’s a reasoned opinion piece on the recent change in venue of a monthly comedy night in Ottawa. The monthly show, on the University of Ottawa campus, featured “unconventional stuff that may involve props, physical movement, or experimental… more intelligent humour that the mainstream crowd just simply would not understand.”

In “Sticking up for stand up,” Tina Hassannia, writing in the University’s student paper, The Fulcrum, examines the reasons for the location swap from 1848 to the Royal Oak.

Jason Collard, 1848’s bar manager, said he cancelled the monthly show because of negative feedback he received from patrons, and also that it was a business decision to focus more efforts on building the campus bar’s business. Fair enough. Organizer Trevor Thompson has been able to move the event to the nearby Royal Oak at 161 Laurier Ave., so the show will go on.

The rest is an interesting snapshot of the comedy market in Canada’s fourth largest urban area.

(We emphasize that it was probably “negative feedback” that forced the move. And, since it was a “campus bar,” it’s very possible that the negative feedback came from… students? It’s not a slam dunk that college students dig the alternative comedy… or comedy in general.)

Back in the mid-80’s, the Male Half was unparalleled among his peers when it came to predicting a downturn in the comedy business. He couldn’t imagine that Big Comedy could sustain the growth he saw around him, the expansion that enabled him to leave his day job and travel the country as a full-time comedian. Somewhere around 1990 or so, he took his eye off the ball and stopped predicting doom and even allowed for a bit of optimism.

Then, in 1993, the business collapsed.

This posting is not meant to get into the reasons, the theories, the details. This posting is to talk about the present and about the current health of live standup.

It’s good. In fact, we’re going to risk angering the Irony Gods and say that it is quite possibly nearly as strong as it’s been since just before the bust.

Some folks out there are saying quite the opposite– we’re seeing clubs closing right and left, they say. While that may be true– we have heard of clubs closing in at least three four cities– we hasten to point out that, in all but one case, the reasons for closing do not indicate that the business in general is in any peril or that the general business climate in those markets is somehow responsible for the shuttering of the clubs in question.

To put it another way: Some folks see a club close in their market (or in another market) and they conclude that the biz is sick, the Second Great Comedy Bust is nigh. What they ignore is that, in many cases, the club has foundered because of crucial errors made on the part of the owners. Or personal problems were a major factor (if not the only factor) in the dissolution of the enterprise. Or specific, isolated business matters, wholly unrelated to the economy at large, were in play. In these cases, the closure is in no way indicative of an industry-wide downturn.

We’ve cited recent newspaper articles that talk of new clubs opening with savvy game plans or old clubs being revitalized with new blood and enthusiasm. A reader sent us word of an article entitled “Northwest Comedians Are In Good Humor Now That Comedy Clubs Are Making A Comeback” in the Horizon Air inflight magazine. Sure, we hear about clubs that open and close in the space of six months, but we take each case individually and we try to discern exactly what occurred.

We have vowed to never again to make blanket statements based on vague feelings or assumptions. We monitor all facets of the business and keep our eyes and ears open. We’ve paid close attention for coming up on nine years, and we’ve been very optimistic for four or five years now.

And when we say that comedy is on the upswing, we have not arrived at the conclusion haphazardly.

None of this is license for club owners to slack off, to cease spending money on advertising or to sever the deal with the local radio station. And we’re not telling part-time comedians that they should quit the day job, or that full-timers should relax– it has always been our policy that comedians should try to develop as many different revenue streams as possible. But we are saying that folks should question any sweeping proclamation on the state of the business and subject it to a fair amount of scrutiny.

If you were watching the CBS series Without A Trace this evening, you probably saw a commercial for Geico, one of the series where they pair a celebrity to tell the regular person’s insurance claim story.

This one used “the guy who makes those funny sound effects” (we paraphrase).

,It was none other than Michael Winslow standup comic and sound effects wizard who gained fame as Sgt. Larvelle Jones in the Police Academy series of films. Winslow has been headlining comedy clubs across America the past two decades. (And just reading his IMDB profile is exhausting.)

By virtue of his inclusion in the Geico series, he has joined such august company as Bert Bachrach, Little Richard and Dan LaFontaine.

Readers may have noticed posts appearing and disappearing, along with comments. Blogger was having technical issues which they seem to have resolved in the last 12 hours or so. The front page is intact. Enjoy.

We’re not paraphrasing. It’s in the Cox News Service interview that ran in the Kansas City Star.

The fact is, most comedians are ugly.

We wrenched it out of context. But it’s not very pretty in context, either.

She weighs in on Kathy Griffin, Larry The Cable Guy, Dane Cook and others. Perhaps she was misquoted. Several times. We hope so.

Also noteworthy is the size of the pic that’s running with the article. It’s a giant headshot of Griffin… and below it are two fingernail-sized pics of Madigan and Cook. Regrettable editorial choice or HTML quirk?

For the record: If asked to name some ugly comedians, we can’t come up with any who are all that hideous off the top of our heads. (No, this is not an invitation to list unattractive comedians in the Comments section. If anything, let’s list the attractive ones… and, what the heck, let’s boost Madigan’s self-esteem and list her first.)

Tom Wilson is all over the tube tonight. He’ll appear on House (Season 4, Episode 6) as “Lou.” (He’s “Thomas F. Wilson” now… Since his Biff Tanner days, he’s elongated the first name and added the MI.) We’ll be watching, as House is a favorite program here at SHECKYmagazine HQ. It’s maintained its bite (maybe even kicked it up a notch) despite the fact that the creator has blown the show up and reassembled it.

And he’ll also be on Boston Legal (Season 4, Episode 6, “The Object of My Affection”). We’re not sure what his character’s name is, as he wasn’t listed in the expanded cast and credits. We won’t be watching. DEK has blown this show up somewhat, but the new incarnation is awful and the writing and plotlines are shrill and beyond ridiculous– even for this show.

Wilson will also be on Bones on November 27.

Busy boy!

Denis Hamill interviews Richie Miniervini for the NY Daily News and they talk about the East Side.

Eddie Murphy, Ray Romano, Kevin James, Rosie O’Donnell, Paul Reiser, Jim Carrey and director Judd Apatow (of “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” fame) all made their comedy bones in the 1980s and early ’90s in Huntington, L.I., at Minervini’s legendary East Side Comedy Club, which closed in 1995.

Students of comedy history will get a kick out of the piece.

From an interview on 411mania.com comes this quote from interviewer Tony Farinella, in response to Victoria Jackson‘s statement that bad words are “just there for people who don’t have good material.”:

Personally, I’ve always found it rather lazy. I think it takes more talent and more creativity to get laughs without using bad words. I don’t find the F word funny.

…It’s hard to be funny.

Being clean isn’t any easier/harder than being dirty. Good dirty humor isn’t automatically any funnier/less funny than good clean humor.

It’s hard to be funny.

Martinez died yesterday morning, of cancer, according to her website.

Fellow comics like Chris Rock, Andrew Dice Clay, George Lopez, Joe Rogan, Martin Lawrence, Carlos Mencia, Cheech Marin, Dane Cook, Pauly Shore, were all big fans of Marilyn. Cheech brought her on tour with him all last year, Martin Lawrence featured her on his First Amendment series for Starz this year and Paul Rodriguez had her tour with him for many years. She was one of Mitzy Shore’s favorites and one of the Comedy Store legends. Most recently she co-headlined and was able to showcase her true uncompromised talent on Showtime, in the Original Latin Divas of Comedy.

Read the rest of the tribute from Scott Montoya here.

With few exceptions, we have never gotten into the middle of the Who Steals What From Whom controversies that have popped up here and there over the past two years or so. It’s not our style. It’s seems to be a giant waste of everyone’s time. And we also have warned of the danger of airing such things too publicly, of broadcasting such grievances too widely and inviting certain parties (like the media!) in on the conversation. We’re on record as saying that the aggrieved parties are better off going one-on-one with the alleged offenders.

And when Joe Rogan went YouTube and accused Carlos Mencia of stealing the “Mexicans building the border wall” joke (and did so very publicly), we cringed. He might have cited a better example if he was going to go medieval on Mencia’s ass, we thought. That gag was the worst possible gag he could have gone after to prove his point. Credibility plummeted. Nobody came out a winner.

The debate still rages on. (The media will use it to prop up every fifth or sixth article on standup for the next decade or so. Job well done, all of you!)

The Bill Brownstein column that ran in the Montreal Gazette (ostensibly a review of Dane Cook‘s The Lost Pilots DVD release) begins by rehashing the whole Louis CK/Cook controversy. But this line gave us pause:

Comedy is a tough business. And, sure, the possibility exists that two comics can come up with the same concept for a gag– but in this ever-wired universe, it seems highly unlikely.

Emphasis ours.

This notion– that comics sit around all day checking out other comics on the television or on the internet or by XMRadio or DVD’s or CD’s– does not comport with reality. We are worried primarily about our very own acts. We are not really all that psyched about watching the work of others. Oh, sure, we’ll watch another act and truly enjoy him or her. We’ll catch this comic or that on Late Night or at a showcase in NYC or LA. But the world that Brownstein and others imagine– in which comics are frantically trying to absorb the works of others so as to pilfer material (or make sure that none of theirs is pilfered)– is simply a fantasy.

Hell, the Male Half will have to alert the Female Half to a new bit in his act, and vice versa. Which means that a married couple of comedians don’t even constantly and vigilantly watch each others’ acts!

Many of us (most of us?) have a creative tunnel vision. At least once we get to a certain level of busy. Early on it is helpful– perhaps even necessary– to survey the comedic landscape, to watch voraciously every act that can reasonably be consumed. If for no other reason than to gather knowledge of standup, to get a handle on just how vast the artform is. To get a handle on the possibilities or, maybe, on the limitations.

But at a certain point, out of necessity, that ceases. Or it shrinks down.

Sandy Cohen, writing for AP, tells of Drew Carey‘s venture into internet mini-docs. Carey causes a mini-stir by appearing in one video which makes the case for medical marijuana.

The video is one of 20 Carey will host for the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit educational group whose ideas “some people call libertarian” and whose mission is to “advance freedom,” said president David Nott.

Carey offered to produce brief documentaries on topics ranging from traffic congestion to immigration for the foundation’s Web site, Nott said.

It is a far cry from “Have your pets spayed and neutered.”

Here, at the end of the article is a list (with brief descriptions) of the 16 Seattle Comedy Competition entrants. The scrapping begins at 7:30 on Saturday and continues until November 25.

A Hollywood Reporter item tells of the film that John Landis has made about Don Rickles.

A decidedly low-budget, low-tech affair, the film breaks no stylistic ground. It is simply an assemblage of commentaries by many of Rickles’ friends and associates as well as a plethora of show business luminaries testifying to his comic genius and ability to offend everyone without being actually offensive.

“Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project” is set to be broadcast December 2 on HBO. HR’s Frank Scheck says “no Hollywood comedy in recent years has had a higher laughs-per-minute ratio.”

NBCUniversal announced that it will fold its Dotcomedy.com website into their main NBC.com site. Dotcomedy was supposed to be a destination for folks seeking out the funniest video and videobloggers on the WWW. Sound familiar? Of course it does– there are about a dozen similar sites, backed by huge corporate dollars, slugging it out with roughly the same mission, look, feel and demo. And there are maybe a dozen or more that are in the fight with private venture cap.

Writing for NewTeeVee.com, Chris Albrecht (Is that the Chris Albrecht? How many can there be?) speculates on who will be the next “online comedy initiative” (OCI) to wink out.

We’ve had our issues with DotComedy’s approach and use of pro vlogs. The site always felt muddled, like an afterthought, and it competed with NBC.com (GE) and the newly-launched Hulu. Oh, and it wasn’t funny.

So which comedy site will crash and burn next?

We predicted in our December ’06 posting on the hot comedy stories of 2006 that the rush of the major conglomerates to put up their OCI’s (and their ham-handed approach) would result in a lot of smoldering cyber-wreckage. Albrecht seems to be of the same mind. (And we were quite thrilled to learn that we attract about 35 per cent of the eyeballs of such sites as Funny Or Die and the now defunct DotComedy!)

And, in MediaWeek, Mike Sheilds

The original concept of DotComedy was to create a Web destination that housed a mix of original fare, classic stand-up performances and clips from such NBC standards as Saturday Night Live and Late Night With Conan O’Brien. Even as of May, the site continued to add new material, signing deals with several popular video bloggers to create viral videos for the site. But in recent months, NBC has begun posting more original material on its own site.

Emphasis ours. One can create a video. One can hope that it goes viral. But one cannot “create a viral video” no more than one can say (with certainty) that one will create a hit television show. The arrogance (and clumsiness) with which the TV folks are approaching this Weird Wide Web is truly stunning. Like many present-day politicians, TV execs seem to not fully understand the new media.

Nor do the Writers Guild. Craig Rubens, also in NewTeeVee.com, asks What Does A WGA Strike Mean For New Media?

It’s an especially interesting question as some online video sites are subsidiaries of big studios, like NBCU’s (GE) DotComedy, Fox’s (NWS) MySpaceTV, and AOL Time Warner’s (TWX) Super Deluxe. In the event of a strike, would writers for these sites risk their future guild membership by continuing to write? On the flip side, will independent video networks like Revision3 and Next New Networks move in to scoop up unemployed talent?

So many questions!

Rubens quotes from the WGA contract proposal:

…our philosophy is that the Internet IS television. Our approach is to minimize the differences between how writing for television is covered under the MBA and how writing for the Internet is covered.

That is not a philosophy or an approach. That is more along the lines of a prayer. Or a fervent wish. The Internet is not television.

If the WGA is approaching the strike and the negotiations in this manner to “capture” or claim the internet, not only will they not capture the internet, but they will lose television. Reality television is mushrooming. It will swamp television. And we have been linking to one story after another that quotes actors, producers and directors as saying that their shows are improvised. The implication is that television doesn’t need writers.

Television needs writers. But television doesn’t seem to think so.

The internet is vast. Mind-bogglingly so. So huge and boundless and incorrigible that has changed and will continue to change how we approach communication, art, commerce and entertainment.

Unions, guilds, call them what you will, may or may not grasp the uniqueness of the internet. But, judging from their language and behavior, they seem to not understand how utterly unlike television the internet is. This is going to get more and more interesting.

If a guild were to phone us up and tell us that, since we behave like a newspaper or a magazine and, since we essentially perform some of the functions of a newspaper or a magazine, we are hereby commanded to join a guild and be subject to their bylaws and regulations, we would laugh heartily and hang up the phone. We would continue to do what we do and no one could stop us. We could choose to join, of course, but no one could force us to– It’s the internet. We own the means of production, the “press” is ours, so to speak. We own the means of distribution. Our circulation, our audience, our readership is determined by how hard we work to increase it via promotion and hustle.

The same is true of folks who create videos or websites or other online entities that happen to capture the fancy of the public. They have a historic and unique connection to their audience– it is direct, it is unfettered, it is blessedly free of bureaucratic nonsense and committees and focus grouping. The lure of the cash and the security and consistency will always be there. But it must be weighed against the loss of control, the sacrificing of the artistic purity or vision.

This isn’t just a new media that TV, film and publishing is up against. It’s nothing short of a revolution.

When we were young comedy sprouts, just hanging out at the Comedy Factory Outlet in Philadelphia, one of our favorite headliners (and favorite persons) was Dr. Will Miller. Of course, he wasn’t a doctor back then, just “Bill Miller.”

That was four graduate degrees ago.

Now, he’s “an extraordinary keynote speaker,” and “a recognized expert in the area of interpersonal relationships, organizational health and workplace culture.” (He’s also a therapist and teacher at Purdue University where he lectures at the schools of Organizational Leadership, Management and Mass Communication on the social environment of the workplace and the impact on productivity.) He’s come a long way since the NYC-PHL-D.C. comedy club circuit and he now resides in bucolic splendor in Indiana.

The Female Half’s Brother recently attended a work-related conference in central Pennsylvania last week where the extraordinary keynote speaker was… Dr. Will Miller! What a small world we live in! The Female Half’s Brother tended bar at the Comedy Factory Outlet back in the day, so he too had the privelege of knowing Miller. They chatted on a few occasions over the course of the conference and the FHB got to see Miller’s rather inventive and entertaining presentation.

Even though he deals with some heavy (and potentially yawn-inducing) subjects, Miller has continued to keep the sense of humor front and center. His turn as resident psychologist and spokesman for Nick At Nite was popular and wildly entertaining. He carries on the tradition of using iconic television sitcom characters to shed light on our own psychological and social dilemmas on his “Pop Culture Journal,” which is the front-page blog component to his sprawling website.

This week’s entries explore, in a riotous fashion, such diverse topics as “Sue Ann Niven and Repression” and “What Does Your Halloween Costume Say About You.” A blog that’s well worth bookmarking and visiting frequently!

David Alan Grier, quoted on BostonNow.com, on the occasion of his upcoming weekend at the Comedy Connection at Faneuil Hall:

I never thought I’d do comedy in a club. I thought maybe I’d have to do it for a few weeks to get noticed and get on TV, but once I was on TV I wouldn’t need to do it any more. I really looked down on those guys until one day Damon Wayans told me how much money he made the doing standup one weekend in Buffalo. Overnight my respect for standup blossomed and I couldn’t wait to get out on the road.

Pumping the upcoming Pink Panther sequel and his recent kid’s book (which he co-wrote), Steve Martin is quoted on ContactMusic.com:

It really requires a complete dedication; you can’t just go out for a month, you have to go out for 11 months. You have to do it every night to stay fresh and hot. Whenever I would do (American TV’s) The Tonight Show I would always work the night before because I found that if I didn’t, I would be that less sharp, even after one day off.

Stephen Colbert appeared at Cornell last Friday. Read the review by Mary Thomas. Then read the comments by “Anonymous.” Thomas is the darkest of clouds writing for the Cornell Daily Sun.

You thought today’s college students were prissy, over-sensitive self-esteem engines, get a load of one of today’s college newspaper entertainment writers! She is fifty words into the review of Colbert’s appearance before she mentions the crowd’s “dog-like admiration for the comedian.” WTF?!?

They say “Never send a boy to do a man’s job.” Well, never send a humorless prig to do a comedy review. This review is a trainwreck. It’s like sending radical feminist to review the local gentleman’s club.

Another underwhelming aspect of the evening was when two hallmarks of tacky college events, the t-shirt cannon and college mascot, made appearances during Colbert’s performance. They were out of place, derivative and somewhat insulting to the intelligence of the audience.

Since when is the school mascot “insulting to the intelligence” of any college student? And what is her problem with a t-shirt cannon? What person– of any age, race, color, creed or demographic– can’t love a t-shirt cannon?

Amazing.

An article in the Columbus Dispatch from last week tells of a film written and produced by Dino Tripodis entitled “The Funny Man.” Tripodis is a comedian who also co-hosts a morning radio show in Columbus. The film premiered at that city’s Funny Bone club last Thursday night.

“I just thought, to get off on the right foot, The Funny Man should be shown at the Funny Bone,” Tripodis said.

The movie, he said, is “about a self-destructive comic struggling with where he’s at in life — not only careerwise but personally as well.”

“It’s a drama, not a comedy– even though there’s humor in it.”

Tripodis has submitted the film to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

We premiered at the Bone in Columbus last Tuesday and Wednesday night– and we would have stuck around to see the showing had we not been booked to appear in Erie the following three nights.

The Columbus Bone is a glittering, upscale club in the heart of the Easton Town Center, a sprawling complex of hotels and residential, retail, and commercial buildings constructed midway on the eastern part of the beltway that surrounds Ohio’s capital. We had healthy crowds (and a near-sellout– on a Wednesday!) and we also had the pleasure of working with Austin’s Doug Mellard and Rye Silverman (whose film, “Chasing Stroupe” was co-produced with Bill Arrundale). It was also great to finally meet 20-year-plus veteran and Cleveland native Rick Tempesta who is the house emcee. We’ve seen Tempesta’s name on countless bills over the years but never actually worked with him.

The Columbus Bone’s reputation as a top-drawer room is well-deserved. It runs like clockwork and the average Columbus standup fan has a blast. Attention all comedy club managers and owners: Spend a weekend at the Columbus Funny Bone and take extensive notes. Use this room as a template. It rarely, if ever, gets better than this.

We proceeded to Erie on Thursday to work at Jr.’s– that’s two clubs we’ve never worked before in one week. We worked with Rochester’s Ralph Tetta and the crowds are known far and wide as being attentive, comedy savvy and explosive. We will attest to that.

Jamie Lissow stopped in on his way back to his hotel Friday night, after gigging on the Penn State Erie campus. We kicked around the topics of college gigs, crowd demographics and his recent experiences on the Nobodies of Comedy tour.

This is Stanley McHale, columnist for the Liverpool Echo and allegedly a standup comic for the past decade. Her latest work is “If you don’t want job be a comedian.” We’re not sure, but we think it’s satirical. Although it’s written so badly, it’s hard to know. (But it’s so utterly vicious, it had better be satire.)

Comedy is God’s way of giving idiots as great a chance in life as regular people.

It’s a job that, by its very nature, allows you to have virtually no responsibility. I know comedians who resent having to go to a simple meeting during the day because the whole reason they became a comedian in the first place is so their entire day was free of any burdens or dependability.

She goes on to say more unflattering things about comics, comparing them to monkeys, painting them as juvenile nitwits, drunks, emotional wrecks. Nothing positive. (We were always told in writing classes to mix things up a little… provide a little contrast, a little texture, lest someone take the satire the wrong way. There’s no indication that McHale is kidding in the least. We kept waiting for the “But seriously folks…” paragraph and it never came. It’s curiously void of any humor or wit– strange, considering it’s written by someone who claims to have been a comedian.)

The punchline is that McHale is going to be a judge tonight at a comedy competition. She exhorts Echo readers to come on down and watch the freak show. We wouldn’t want to be those comedians.

We’d love to have a day or two free of responsibility. But is it necessary to move to England to achieve that?

We have our FIVE WINNERS!

James Blumenfeld, Needham, MA
Jerome Leslie, Dorchester, MA
Tom Steffen, Plymouth, MN
Dustan Birrell, Boise, ID
Wayne Hicks, Denver, CO

Thanks to all who participated!

Each will receive a copy of “Robert Klein: The HBO Specials 1975-2005!”

EIGHT Robert Klein specials! Bonus interview with Klein! All in one box! A $39.99 value!

(If you didn’t win one, click here to purchase one from Amazon.com!)

The Politico has a somewhat serious and far more detailed analysis of any possible pitfalls that the candidacy of Stephen Colbert might encounter here.

“His best bet is to avoid flagrancy,” Bauer wrote on his blog. “It appears that Colbert will flirt with violating the law,” he wrote, “but since he has hired Wiley Rein, he seems also prepared to keep to the legal side of the line — mostly. If he just walks the line from time to time — as visible as the line can be — regulators will have little appetite for challenging Colbert.”

And, according to FOS Sean L. McCarthy, the turnout at the NYC informational meeting on the Actors Fund.

Friedman wonders, though, how exactly the Actors Fund should define a professional comedian, and asked club owners and comedians “to get a dialogue going” to figure out what definition works best — whether it’s reaching a specific income level over the past few years from working comedy gigs, or whether it’s what percentage of your income comes from comedy, some combination of the two, or even, as some club owners in the room suggested, “vouching” for the comic when they request Actors Fund services.

Read the whole thing.

No doom and/or gloom in the Appleton Post-Crescent‘s article on the Skyline Comedy Cafe. In “Funny business alive and well in the Fox Cities,” Jim Collar quotes Skyline proprietor Cliff Diedrick as being optimistic and determined to run his comedy room profitably and to book it well. “Confidence remains strong as standup performance continues to show signs of resurgence,” writes Collar.

quot;There’s always room for live entertainment,” Diedrick said. “You just have to find ways keep your name in front of people.”

Diedrick refuses to pin any periodic tough times on competition.

Local comedy clubs have come and gone since Skyline opened its doors. Now larger venues are more often vying for slices of the comedy pie.[…]

“The graduation of those fortunate enough to move up is good for comedy in general,” Diedrick contends.

Comedian Mike Merryfield is quoted as well.

An interview with Aussie comic Fiona O’Loughlin is in the Chronicle Herald. She’s doing two shows in Halifax Sunday night along with Alonzo Bodden, John Wing, An­drew Grose, Louis Ramey and Kevin Brennan, as part of the Just For Laughs 2007 Tour.

O’Loughlin is from Alice Springs, arguably one of the most remote cities on the planet. The money quote:

So for me it was the hardest thing for me to do from where I was, but I guess it goes to prove that if you want to do something bad enough, you’ll have it, won’t you? The apprenticeship of a standup is to go to your local come­dy club and perfect your act at open mic nights until you’re good enough to get paid. That’s all very well, but my nearest open mic night was two-and-a-­half days on a bus.

After that, 20 cities in 26 days probably seems like a dream come true.

Christopher Cannon won the Stand-Up and Sling contest earlier this month. His win nets entitles him to close out the show at the Hollywood Improv next Tuesday night (October 30). He’ll also receive $10,000.

His short film beat out dozens of other shorts by fellow comedians such as Matt Weinhold, Will Durst and Mark Pitta. (See our submission here. Warning: Partial nudity!)

Several facets of Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert’s South Carolina-only presidential campaign puts him seriously at odds with the outfit that oversees federal elections. There’ve been a lot of campaign laws concocted since Pat Paulsen ran for president.

And readers of this magazine know that Doug Stanhope quickly abandoned his run for the White House when it became clear that a comedian running for president faces monster fines or, at the very least, lots of red tape.

Colbert’s campaign is doomed. Sure, he’ll get plenty of publicity, but Viacom probably won’t fancy paying six-figure (or more!) fines when the FEC comes a-knockin’!

“How serious can you get about running as a joke?” said Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign finances. “The Federal Election Commission doesn’t have a great sense of humor.“

Nor does Pepsico, we imagine. That company owns Doritos, who is “sponsoring” Colbert’s campaign. Corporate sponsorship of a presidential campaign is strictly forbidden!

“The life of an entertainment professional is very similar to any worker or independent contractor that moves from job to job to make their living. Work is erratic, security is fleeting and health insurance is often just a dream.” So says the website of the Actors Fund of America.

In a phone conversation last month with Budd Friedman (on an entirely different matter), we learned that the Actors Fund is going to do for comedians what they’ve heretofore done for other entertainment professionals.

It “helps entertainment and performing arts professionals in theater, film, music, opera, television and dance through a broad spectrum of social, health, employment, and housing programs that address their essential and critical needs.”

By now, many of our readers have already gotten an email second- or third-hand– a plea from the Buddmeister himself– announcing a meeting tomorrow in New York City. We’d attend if we weren’t on the road.

The Actors Fund for Comedians is being formed for the express purpose of bringing to the comedy community the same type of protection and help that actors, directors, writers, etc. all enjoy. If you are a comedian and are not also a member of a protecting union than you are left out in the cold!

But now The Actors Fund of America is setting up a division to bring all these benefits to the professional stand-up comedian. We are planning an informative meeting with potential members in New York City at CAROLINES on THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25th @ 3PM.

The Director of the Actors Fund will be in attendance to answer all your questions.

We want to get your input as to how the organization should run, so please make sure you attend and please tell all your clients and stand-up friends about the meeting.

Our West Coast ad hoc committee is Buddy Morra, Ross Schaeffer and Howard Storm along with me. We are looking to form an East coast committee.

We called the public relations firm handling the meetings and learned that whatever is set up, no one will be asked to join a union. And there won’t be any dues. As it was explained to us, certain criteria (similar to criteria used by existing organizations that assist actors or singers) will be established. When those criteria are met (and, we assume, somehow verified), the comedian will be able to avail himself of the services of the Fund– help with medical bills, assistance with housing, etc.

One of the ways that the Actors Fund pays for services is through charitable contributions from corporations and foundations and through individual contributions and fundraising galas. They plan on coordinating a big event in 2008– On a pre-determined date next year, they’ll ask all the comedy clubs in America to kick in their door receipts to the fund and ask comics to perform for free. We’ll keep you posted on the details on that when they become available.

FOS Shaun Eli takes Jerry Blavat to task. He took Blavat’s boneheaded statement in the Joey Bishop interview as a jumping off point for a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News editors:

IN JOEY Bishop’s obituary, you quote Jerry Blavat as saying, “He never used dirt or smut in his acts. Today, you can’t do that. Don Rickles is the only one left, and he’s 80.”

Plenty of comics work clean. I produce a clean comedy show, the Ivy League Comedy Showcase.

To name some prominent comedians who work clean: Bill Cosby, Brian Regan, Jim Gaffigan.

Jay Leno does 10 clean minutes of television five nights a week.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Jerry Seinfeld? Ellen DeGeneres? Robert Klein? Steven Wright?

Some comics are clean. Others are vulgar. But to claim that the youngest clean comedian is 80 is ridiculous.

Shaun Eli Breidbart

Ivy League Comedy Showcase

Pelham, N.Y.

Well done, Shaun!

We were on our way to Columbus when we stopped briefly in Washington, PA. The Female Half ventured into a Famous Footwear to peruse the shoes while the Male Half searched the nearby Walmart for tech deals.

While the Female Half is among the racks of shoes, she happens to hear the last sentence-and-a-half of a conversation between two male employees– we paraphrase slightly:

…he usta be funny but now he’s just a cranky old man like me… There’s no good standup comedy any more.

We’ll repeat that: “There’s no good standup comedy any more.”

Over the past eight years, we’ve developed a reputation for being a bit sensitive– perhaps overly so– when it comes to popular attitudes toward standup comedy and standup comics. Some folks come dangerously close to calling us paranoid.

But here we were, in a town of 15,000 people, 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, PA, and we hear the aforementioned snippet of conversation. “What are the odds?!” asks the Female Half, her voice simultaneously wondrous and weary.

Indeed! What are the odds? Or… is standup comedy the topic of conversation a lot more frequently than even we realize? Does it mean a lot more to regular people than we can even know?

To be sure, it’s disturbing that one of the few discussions about comedy we’ve stumbled across was a negative one. We have a friend who, when she mentions to friends that she has two friends (us!) who are standup comics, will get this response every time: “Standup comics aren’t funny.” We’re told that it’s delivered in a dismissive tone and with a certainty that’s startling.

Of course, being good amateur social scientists, the first question we must ask is, “Is it true?” Of course, it’s not.

But, then we must ask: Just where are people getting this notion? We contend that there not getting it through personal observation, through firsthand experience. They’re inheriting this attitude, this myth, via the media.

And this has been going on for approximately 20 years. Up until the late 80’s/early 90’s or so, comedians were considered seriously. Their performances and their art and craft were analyzed and appreciated with some thought, some nuance. Then, when comedy exploded, the default opinion was that comedy sucked– all of it– and that comedians, as a rule, were to be regarded with suspicion or outright hostility.

And yesterday we have the result of that two-decade drumbeat.

What to do? Well, starting an online magazine about standup comedy and building up the “circulation” to 65,000 monthly readers is a start. But, if you’re going to fight the big fight, you might as well fight the small ones, too. The Male Half dug out a business card from the valise and sprinted, in the rain, to the Famous Footwear. He handed it over (with a smile!) and told the F.F. guy that there’s plenty of good standup out there! (And we also told him that he should check us out at the Pittsburgh Funny Bone the first weekend in December.)

We’re not upset about this on a personal level. We long ago stopped taking this kind of thing personally. Our outrage is very practical. This kind of prevailing attitude affects our livelihood and the overall health of the business.

It’s Monday, time for Laughter World! It’s always entertaining when we see how folks halfway around the world regard comedy. Today, we take a look at a comedy tour that entertains expats in the Persian Gulf and a controversy in the Pacific sparked by one of our American humor shows.

From the Khaleej Times, “the #1 English language daily newspaper published from Dubai,” comes “Let’s Heckle A Bit,” an article by Layla Haroon whch attempts to describe a Laughter Factory show that touched down recently in Abu Dhabi.

It is known for its lunatic hecklers, who try to distract the most strong-willed comedians, keeping the audience in hysterics for an hour and a half.

The evening is usually divided into three segments with a short refreshment break between each comics set. Performances are in English, attracting a large crowd of regular comedy fans of about 400 people per show of different nationalities.

The comedians who will perform this time are Dave Fulton, Paul Tonkinson and Michael Smiley.

Lunatic hecklers? Haroon says that some of the audience members have gotten into fistfights over who was funniest. Standup comedy is enjoyed differently by the international crowds who find themselves marooned in the deserts of the middle east.

And the Phillippines are all atwitter about a recent segment on The Daily Show that parodied Perez Hilton and made light of attitudes toward female world leaders. What particularly got them riled about the Daily Show piece was when a photo of Corazon Aquino appeared on the screen with the word “slut” scrawled across it. (This is a convention of Hilton’s site. Apparently, the Filipinos are not familiar with Hitlon’s site and the subtleties of the bit were lost on them.)

Bryan Mari Argos, writing in The News Today (an English language news service from Iloilo City!), tries to explain to his countrymen that they just didn’t get the joke:

Humor can be used to gauge the intellect of a person– those who laugh at jokes that are too physical, i.e. the wart on a witches’ nose or the eczema on someone’s vulva is too dumb to understand the underlying meaning of humor. Intelligent humor is the kind of humor that involves wit, finesse, discretion, subtlety, and relevance to the status quo, i.e. GMA should not be worrying about the ZTE deal that much. If she can’t hear Garci through the cell phone easily as shown by the number of times she said ‘Hello Garci’, she probably wouldn’t like VOIP that much.

Cryptic! GMA? ZTE? Eczema on someone’s vulva? (Who can’t laugh at that, we say?!)

For background on the story, click here.) Some of the references in Argos’ story become a bit clearer if you read this one first!

Associated Press reports that a gaggle of 9/11 truthers interrupted Bill Maher‘s Real Time.

Maher was talking science during one of his weekly panel discussions when a protester in his audience stood up, held up a smuggled-in sign reading “9/11 is a cover up fraud” and shouted comments to the same effect.

Maher helped security guards hustle him out the door and that “several other protesters, sprinkled throughout the audience, then stood up and shouted.” The incident was shown live and then re-shown again in the western U.S.

Apparently Maher incurred the wrath of the conspiracy theorists last year by dismissing their paranoid ramblings in a 1:17 segment of his show that featured Cornell West, Richard Clarke and John Legend. One commenter said that Maher had shown himself to be “another tool in the propaganda machine.”

Video here.

John F. Morrison, writing for Philadelphia’s Daily News gives hometown boy Bishop the deluxe treatment in today’s edition.

Morrison seeks out quotes from various Philly luminaries, including local radio personality Jerry Blavat, who belches out this finely polished nugget of idiocy:

“He never used dirt or smut in his acts,” Blavat said. “Today, you can’t do that. Don Rickles is the only one left and he’s 80.”

Firstly, why does a reporter run with such nonsense? When the person you’re interviewing presents you with such lunacy, why do you not ask another question (or three? or four?) until you get some quote that comports just the tiniest bit with reality? (If Morrison can’t get a simple story about standup comedy right, can we believe anything we read– about matters that are far more important– in a modern daily newspaper?)

Secondly, what the hell is Blavat talking about? Rickles is the only one not using smut? How about Brian Regan? Or how about that other young Philly comic, Bill Cosby? Blavat might be 67 years old, but is that any excuse to be so utterly out of touch with popular culture? The old “These kids today are such potty-mouths” attitude is more like something that an 87-year-old might adopt. But what’s Morrison’s excuse?

We would have posted sooner, but we were on our way to Morgantown, WV.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Joey Bishop, the stone-faced comedian who found success in nightclubs, television and movies but became most famous as a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, has died at 89.

He was the group’s last surviving member. Peter Lawford died in 1984, Sammy Davis Jr. in 1990, Dean Martin in 1995, and Sinatra in 1998.

Notice how the last one of the Pack to die was the comedian!

Born in New York’s borough of the Bronx, Bishop was the youngest of five children of two immigrants from Eastern Europe. When he was three months old the family moved to South Philadelphia, where he attended public schools. He recalled being an indifferent student, once remarking, “In kindergarten, I flunked sand pile.”

In 1941 Mr. Bishop married Sylvia Ruzga and, despite the rigors of a show business career, the marriage survived until her death in 1999. Mr. Bishop, who had one son, Larry, spent his retirement years on the upscale Lido Isle in Southern California’s Newport Bay.

For all intents and purposes, a Philly comic.