We posted last week about a book, Comedy At The Edge, that quoted several big-name comics dumping on several other big-name comics.

An anonymous FOS wrote to us to say that, during a recent episode of The View, Joy Behar mentioned the book– She particularly pointed out that the book said that Robin Williams was called out as a thief. She solicited the opinion of host (and Robin Williams’ pal) Whoopi Goldberg (real name Caryn Elaine Johnson).

Whoopi said (and our FOS is paraphrasing):

All comics steal. It’s a rich tradition.

When this was challenged by the new co-host, Sherri Shepherd, Johnson responded:

There are only so many jokes in the world, so you’re not telling original jokes anyway. If they steal your whole act, then that’s something, but if they steal a joke, that’s fine.

Shepherd, apparently unaware that Johnson should not be challenged all that strenuously in her new position as View host, followed up with, “but what if the joke is something from my experience?”

To which Johnson replied:

How do you know someone else didn’t have that exact same experience?

Indeed! How does one know?! There you have it! Surely you’ve all had similar experiences to Jim Gaffigan! Or Doug Stanhope! Let’s all get cracking and start incorporating their material into our acts!

There you have it! The ol’ There Are Only So Many Jokes In The World Defense! Johnson/Goldberg is channeling ancient Catskills comics obviously. No word on whether Behar (a real comic, last time we looked) was silent during this ridiculous blathering. We’re seeking video on YouTube. No luck so far.

We wonder how much of Johnson/Goldberg’s act was original or how much of a part of comedy’s “rich tradition” she was.

Eonline and Yahoo! are reporting that Jay Leno isn’t going quietly.

The article, citing “three people familiar with the situation,” said Leno, despite signing off on an NBC announcement two years ago to set his retirement date for 2009, “doesn’t want to go.”

This is getting good. Get ready for extreme musical chairs in late night television!

Prediction: Fox enters into late night… Kimmel is most vulnerable… he will switch.

Stay tuned.

Very few solo comics have been able to do a tour that filled (or attempted to fill) arenas around the country. Steve Martin comes to mind. We seem to recall that Andrew Dice Clay filled a few cavernous venues at the height of his powers.

Dane Cook’s 25-city Rough Around the Edges Tour kicks off in Toronto. And ends on the 9th of December in Anaheim.

Cook sold out TD Banknorth Garden in Boston and MSG last year.

A press release heralds a deal between “the world’s largest independent video sharing site” and “the global market leader in original comedy content created for wireless handsets.” Hardly a week goes by when we don’t see a similar announcement.

Check out the last paragraph in the Terms of Use on the ComedyTime site:

…by submitting Materials in any form to us, in addition to other provisions of the Terms, you automatically grant Comedy Time, and its successors, assigns, and licensees and parent, subsidiary and other affiliated entities (“Comedy Time”), an exclusive, fully-paid, world-wide, royalty-free license to publicly display, publicly perform, distribute, and reproduce the Materials in any manner and in any medium, including, without limitation, through physical copies such as still photos, videos, and CDs, by television by any means, on or via the Internet, including, without limitation, the World Wide Web, and any other two-way transmission control protocol / internet protocol (TCP/IP) based distribution network or similar networks or technologies now known or hereafter to become known, including, but not limited to, delivery via such a network to personal computers, hand-held devices, and television set-top boxes through telephone or cable lines, or wirelessly through broadband, satellite, cellular or terrestrial broadcast networks and other similar networks or technologies whether now existing or hereafter developed. You obtain no rights in any form, media, or technology incorporating the Materials.

Again, pretty standard stuff. This the punchline to the Terms. The setup makes sure that you swear on the Bible that the stuff you upload is yours and that you have a right to upload it.

So, to translate: Are you sure it’s yours? Yes? Okay, then. Now it’s ours! Thanks and have a good day! If you’ll pardon us, we must make your material “available on Sprint, VCAST, Cingular, MobiTV, Altel and U.S. wireless” and distribute it “in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Mexico, South America, South Africa, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Singapore.”

An article in the Harvard Crimson tells of a club, formed by two ’07 grads, that produces shows on the Cambridge campus and is known by its initials, HCSUCS.

In part, the level of polish some of these novice comedians display is doubtlessly attributable to the collaborative workshopping of routines– a vital part of HCSUCS.

“Stand-up can be an isolating, solitary pursuit,” says Petri. “You usually come up with things you think are funny, you go and do your set, and if you people think you’re funny, you know you’ve got some good material. If not, you walk off with your tail between your legs.”

“The Harvard community is great because you get to bounce ideas off of this little cadre of people,” Petri continues. “It’s sort of weird, that’s not the way things usually work.”

Collaborative? Yipe! Standup can be a solitary pursuit, say the Harvard novices. Standup should be a solitary pursuit, say we. One of the problems of any “collaborative approach” to writing an act is that it invariably results in a tussle over authorship. The “Stand-up” that is the SU part of HCSUCS is a misnomer– what is described is more along the lines of improv or sketch comedy.

Some of the founders of the club have struck out for NYC and have met with some success. We hope the Comedy Infrastructure doesn’t overcompensate– we have flashbacks to the mid-90s, when countless articles told of television talk shows and sitcoms that were disproportionately peopled by Ivy League grads. The diploma from Harvard went from being a curiosity– enabling the odd writer to scramble onboard this staff or that– to being a near-automatic ticket into the lucrative world of television writing. (This development was heralded by television critics and other pop culture vultures. At last, they crowed, Newton Minnow’s vast wasteland would be lush, verdant and a laugh a minute. The plethora of Crimson staffers and Yalie show runners didn’t result in an uptick in quality, rather it yielded a sameness and a predictability. It was the ’90s– Irony ruled, wit, inexplicably, drooled.)

We hope that the future doesn’t see a “degree” from HCSUCS as a suitable replacement for seven or eight years on the road or in NYC or LA, doing actual standup.

An article in the Beaumont Enterprise attempts to sort out the issues involved in the shuttering of that town’s only full-time comedy club, Comedy, TX. That club was co-owned by comedian Slade Ham, who is putting Beaumont in his rear view mirror and moving to L.A.

There’s some disagreement over what killed the club– was it the city’s ban on smoking?

“There’s so many factors involved when you own a business – there’s taxes, there’s employees and comics’ schedules,” said Ham, who spearheaded an unsuccessful effort last year to reverse the smoking ban by putting it on the ballot. “I won’t miss anything about owning a business. It’s the most overrated thing in the world. … But the smoking ban, I don’t know if it had an impact or not. Everyone that was confronted with it adapted. We adapted, we built a patio, moved our open-mic outside.”

Or was it Ham’s desire to move on to the big city? Either way, Beaumont and the comics who call it home are without a venue as of the show’s end last night.

The Male and Female Halves of the Staff did the room twice and found it to be well-run and based on an interesting business model. (And it afforded the Male Half a chance to visit with his old college roommate.) The venue moved after Beaumont was ravaged by a hurricane or two. No word on whether Lee Melton will fire up a new club.

There’s this, from a Reuters/Hollywood Reporter article on Drew Carey‘s ascension to the role of Price Is Right host:

The thing is, Carey doesn’t maintain the kind of ironic distance from the proceedings that we’d expect from a converted stand-up comic. He dives right in with earnest zeal and truly seems to be having the time of his life. When he exults over the success of the already manic contestants, it feels genuine. The incredulous fits of laughter that escape his lips carry a certain “I can’t believe I’m here– this is so cool!” quality, as if he’s stepping outside of himself to revel in the moment.

We expect ironic distance? Who is this we the author speaks of?

If we are interpreting this correctly, we expect “converted standup comics” to maintain an ironic distance and be somewhat less than genuine. Since when did ironic distance and inauthenticity become the default for standup comics? Has this opinion of comedians been unduly influenced by the likes of Demetri Martin, David Cross or Patton Oswalt?

That Howie Mandel, Jeff Foxworthy and Carey are perfectly suited to (and a large part of the success of) network game shows should come as a surprise to no one.

In pointing this out, do we appear hypersensitive? We shouldn’t. We are being very practical. One of our missions has been to point out that comedians are varied and versatile and adaptable to a multitude of situations. If we read that comedians are inauthentic or haughty, it deserves our negative attention. If for no other reason that if allowed to stand (and/or fester), such a opinion might prevent a comedian or two from being considered for a wide range of gigs– from network game show host to emcee at a local chamber of commerce banquet.

In an Arizona Republic article by Randy Cordova, the question of just why comics make great game show hosts is explored in some detail.

“When they wanted me, I wasn’t flattered,” Mandel says. “I asked them why they saw me as a game-show host because I simply didn’t see it.”

The reasons? Mandel says it was his ability to multitask. He could be funny, he could interview contestants and he could underline the drama inherent in the game.

“I would be a waste on Jeopardy,” Mandel says. “Alex Trebek is wonderful at what he does. But if I were on that show, I would just read questions and they’d answer questions. There’s no room for me in that format.”

In many ways, what comics like Mandel and Carey do is no different from what Groucho Marx did on You Bet Your Life back in the ’50s. There wasn’t much to that game, either, but Marx’s playfully naughty banter with contestants made it work.

Expect a similar story with Carey on The Price Is Right. The hourlong show gives the emcee plenty of room to goof around and get funny reactions from the contestants.

“Drew draws on material from all kinds of places,” Blits says. ” It’s a wonderful fit.”

Elon James White and Baron Vaughn, two NYC-based comics have started The Black Comedy Project.

They’ve “reached out to comedians across the nation to finally let the world know that there’s very different voices within the community.” The community of black comics, that is.

They’ve solicited essays on the subject from comics such as Baratunde Thurston, Dave Lester, Robin Cloud and Leighann Lord.

An excerpt from Lord’s “Old School”:

I started my career with the absurdly naive notion that I just wanted to be a comic; not a Black comic, but a funny comic. I wanted to be myself with all the complexities that implies. Why only tell jokes from just one facet of my experience when I’m blessed with so many? We all are. There’s color, culture, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, education, political stance, mental and physical health, height, weight, favorite color. Is any one these influences more important, valid or defining than the other? I guess it depends on who you talk to.

A club owner/manager/booker once said to me, “Leighann you’re very funny, but can you be a little bit more black?” He wasn’t suggesting I get a tan. He was telling me he’d be more comfortable with his stereotypical image of who a black person should be, rather than who I really am. I don’t know what image of blackness he had in mind. Perhaps I should have asked him to give me an example. It would have been interesting to see what influences shaped his expert opinion. Did he watch music videos? Take a black literature or history class in college? Perhaps some of his best friends were Black.

Read the rest here.

Pretty much any time comics give other comics a chance to talk about/write about standup comedy– over and above “who stole what joke” or “all comics are crazy/lazy/desperate”– it’s a tremendous thing. It’s especially good to let standup fans, the industry and the media listen in on the dialogue.

After watching The Better Half on Bravo last night (in which Ardie Fuqua and Joe Matarese taught their better halves to do standup comedy), we are pleased to award Joy Behar with the Palme d’Or for Horse Manure!

Behar, who was a judge for the final segment, said, in her assessment of the performance of Matarese’s wife, neuropsychologist Stephanie Cosentino:

“Women have moved beyond self-deprecating humor.”

Where to begin?

First of all, self-deprecating humor is not something that should be or needs to be “moved beyond.” It is one way to approach humor. It is one way to forge a standup persona. It is a time-honored way to present oneself. It is neither inferior nor superior to the multitude of other ways to craft a set, build a character, write a joke.

Behar and others are fond of saying that a comedian should (indeed, must!) reveal something of himself if he is to be considered an artist. Would not self-deprecating humor be revealing something? Foibles? Inadequacies? Insecurities, perhaps?

And what of the revered comedians of the past (and present) who have based nearly their entire identities on self-deprecating humor? Are we to believe that Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Wendy Liebman, Roseanne or countless other comedians– male or female– are/were incapable of “moving beyond” that mode? Or that they should be/should have expected to if they are to command our respect?

The message is somewhat unsettling. The clumsy combination of blowhardiness and feel-good feminism says that a female comic who approaches the funny by making fun of herself is a hack and is no doubt letting down all of womyn-kind.

To which we say: Horse manure.

We congratulate Cosentino and Matarese. Their collaboration resulted in winning the Better Half $20,000 prize.

The NYPost has a healthy slice of the upcoming book “Comedy at the Edge,” which chronicles the rise of stand-up in the 1970s, by Richard Zoglin. Of course, since the excerpts appear on that paper’s Page Six, the juicy, catty gossip is emphasized.

Maher trashes Belzer. Caroline trashes Boosler. Brenner threatens Robin Williams.

We were tickled by the incident involving Mitzi Shore.

Shore could be prickly, for sure. She told Zoglin that when a hot comic named Jerry Seinfeld came to her club in 1980, she practically turned him away at the door. “I didn’t like his attitude. He didn’t fit in,” she said. For his part, Seinfeld recalled, “Mitzi Shore didn’t like me… She told me to my face. She felt so many people liked me, that’s not good for a comedian. She wanted me to seek her counsel. She was like the kid with drugs at the school– if you want to be my friend, you’ll buy drugs from me.”

Yeah… it’s never good for a comedian if so many people like you! This is the dumbest formula for calculating the potential of a comedian ever devised. The incident is entirely plausible, as many standup comics who auditioned for Shore in the ’80s and ’90s were often told by her that they were “too jokey.”

Forbes.com’s Lacey Rose has written “The Top-Earning Comedians,” culled from the Forbes Most Powerful Celebrity List.

Note the ages of those listed– Dane Cook, at 35 years of age, is the baby among them. Note also that the Male Half of the Staff, representing SHECKYmagazine, is quoted:

Another shift since the last comedy boom, which took place in the 1980s: The tools available for stand-up acts to cultivate their fan base have grown, explains Brian McKim, editor and publisher of online comedy source Sheckymagazine.

He said a lot more, but, we’ll take the one line.

It is significant also that much of the dough earned by those on the list was gotten through actual standup– hitting the boards and appearing live before an audience. (And peddling oodles of stuff to the throngs on their way out the door, too, of course.)

Of course, we make a mistake in assuming that any thinking was going on!

Patton Oswalt, in a recent appearance in Portland, did perhaps one of the dumbest things we’ve heard of in a long time. From the Oregonian review:

Although that interaction finally went a bit too far. Oswalt was sipping a fine single-malt scotch as he talked to some high school kids in the front row, in the all-ages seating area. Things were going so well, he started offering the young dudes sips of his scotch, eventually bringing the bottle onstage. Before long, a Roseland employee scurried out to put the kibosh on it, no doubt worried about what the Oregon Liquor Control Commission would think of it all.

“Don’t boo the owner,” Oswalt told the audience. “He could’ve come up here and Tasered me.”

Indeed! Tasering would have been letting him off easy! We suspect that Oswalt got a stern talking-to from the Roseland owner. One should regard the Liquor Control Commission with the same mixture of respect and fear that one might regard the Mob. And if the “high school kids” had wrapped daddy’s Explorer ’round a pole on the way home (with Oswalt’s fine single-malt scotch mentioned prominently in the coroner’s toxicology report), Oswalt’s life as he knows it would have ended. And, as any attorney will tell you, the amount of alcohol would be inconsequential.

There is an interesting interview with comedian Teresa Roberts Logan in the Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA). In it, she tells of the path she took from artist-writer for Hallmark to clean comedian in southern Virginia.

Her Hallmark gig sometimes required her to produce orientation presentations for new artists and writers.

Afterward, a guy from the humor writing department asked if I’d ever thought about doing standup. I said, “Once, when I was in the seventh grade or so.” He said I should try it, so I ended up at an open mic night doing my little three minutes. That’s how I got into it, and I started getting enough work that it was hard to work at Hallmark and do comedy, too, when you’re out working until 2 a.m. So after about a year, I had to make a tough decision– it really was tough — and I quit my job at Hallmark.

The 46-year-old comedian has found success in mainstream as well as Christian comedy (she’s a featured comic on the Warner Bros. Christian comedy DVD “Thou Shalt Laugh.”) and she produces clean comedy shows in Williamsburg.

We applaud Logan’s entrepreneurship. But one quote gives us pause:

There are thousands and thousands of people out there who would love to go hear live comedy but they don’t envision that it’s for them. It’s not that they’re prudes. They just want to go and laugh and not worry about clapping their hands over their children’s ears.

We don’t mean to single out Logan. But we’ve seen “the kids” popping up in articles dealing with standup lately.

When did anyone get the idea that standup comedy was at all acceptable/should be acceptable for kids? (To put a spin on the popular rhetorical question, “Is nothing profane?”) We have no problem if Grandma or the Parson or the Boss wants to see– or present– clean standup comedy. But why must children be considered in the equation?

So much of entertainment has been ruined or compromised because of an illogical and counter-intutive pandering to the children. Isn’t part of the appeal (a huge part of the appeal) of standup it’s adult nature, it’s inherent maturity? It’s something that is embraced by, understood by, appreciated by adults. Why can’t it be exclusively adult?

The presence of little ones at comedy shows is a bad trend. Comedy is not for children. There should be a firebreak between standup comedy and kids. Offering clean standup for adults we have no problem with. But kids shouldn’t factor into anyone’s strategy. We should discourage this at every opportunity.

So many comics of today acknowledge that their earliest recollection of consumption of standup (via records, tv or otherwise) was clandestine, covert– it was understood that standup comedy was for grown-ups. And, eventually, one would be mature enough to handle it, to consume it openly, in an adult situation, surrounded by one’s peers. Comedy never reached downward, the consumer reached upward.

Doug Stanhope is gigging tonight in Delaware. Not exactly earth-shattering news, but the First State is one of four states that Stanhope has never played. He’s got the other three coming up on his schedule. He will finally join the 50-State Club when he’s finished– a distinction that has eluded him despite 17 years in the business.

The Wilmington News Journal interviews him and asks him why he dropped his bid for POTUS:

The deal-breaker was the FCC. Sorry, I mean the FEC [Federal Election Commission.] It’s usually the FCC. I couldn’t talk about my campaign on stage without any of the money I made being considered a campaign contribution rather than personal income. Just minor violations of the FEC could be six figures. It was too risky. I [mess up] too much in a day to chance six-figure fines.

We welcome Stanhope to the 50-state club!

Both Halves of the Staff have been members for some time now. (The Female Half snagged Tennessee back a few years ago and the Male Half added Iowa to his schedule to complete the set in 2002 or thereabouts.) Most folks have trouble adding Alaska or Hawaii. Many have trouble collecting all the New England states. Adding Montana and the Dakotas is not for the faint of heart. You’ll recall that the Hell Gig America boys did the deed in a mere 50 days. When Stanhope is done, it will have taken him 120 times as long!

Here’s how Mike Duffy of the Detroit Free Press nutshells Bravo’s new show in which one spouse teaches the other spouse how to do his/her job:

That’s not funny, honey. Two women married to professional comics– model Ciara and scientist Stephanie– try to get in touch with their inner stand-up chuckleheads in time to perform before a packed house at a famed New York comedy club. Host Susie Essman (Curb Your Enthusiasm), a longtime standup comic, should be perversely amused. But do the husbands get to heckle?

Would it have killed him to mention the comics by name? (Joe Matarese and Ardie Fuqua) Would it have killed him to mention the last name of Matarese’s wife? (Cosentino) Would it have killed him to mention the name of the club? (Laugh Factory, NY)

Matarese says the show was taped a year ago.

Essman blogs about the show on BravoTV.com.

It’s Columbus Day (Observed!) and we’re in the office!

There’s nothing going on out there comedy-wise, so we’re turning out attention to

It’s Columbus Day (Observed!) and we’re in the office!

There’s nothing going on out there comedy-wise, so we’re turning our attention to The Standup and Sling competition, going on right now at Slingbox.com (Click that to get to our entry in the contest… it’s a minute long and it has a surprise ending!)

After you’re done viewing our video (Or any of the dozens of other entries), hit the “Sign In” button, register and then VOTE FOR OUR VIDEO! We only need about 2,000 of you to hop onto the site, register, root around and find our video again, then vote for it! It’ll only take a few minutes! (And, if enough of you do it, we’ll win $10,000. We know– that doesn’t benefit you in the least! But at least you might get a chuckle out of the experience.)

We told you about this contest earlier, but we’re always too humble or stupid to try to motivate our readers to actually expend the energy to vote for anything we do. Then we get all embarassed when nobody actually does anything to help us in our effort to dominate the world or win a contest or do whatever it is we’re too humble or stupid to get done. But this time, we figured we’d make a last-ditch effort to drive a couple thousand readers to the Slingbox site!

The current leader has about 1,500 votes. All we need is for 2,000 of you from around the world to hop onto the video, register, get your password, hop back onto the site, find the video and then vote for our video. Watch it first, of course! It’s only a short vid. And it includes the Male Half’s second (partial) nude scene! (No, it is not a trend. Anything for art, we say!)

We’ve gotten a couple of positive emails from folks out there who’ve seen it! But so far, we have a pathetic SEVEN VOTES! We hope we don’t wake up Thursday morning and find out we’ve totalled only eight votes!

C’mon, people! Do it for SHECKYmagazine.com!

SHECKYmagazine columnist and FOS Paul Ogata is the 2007 SFICC winner! He writes:

What a competition! In the end, I took first for the night, ending a whole week of first place finishes to get first for the competition. Here’s the offical results for the whole thing:

1. Paul Ogata
2. David Van Avermaete
3. Mike Baldwin
4. Dennis Gaxiola
5. Kellen Erskine

Details will follow.

FOS Sean L. McCarthy won The Funniest Reporter Contest last night, held as part of the New York Underground Comedy Festival at Gotham. McCarthy, who writes for the New York Daily News and who blogs about standup comedy, was humble in victory:

These ‘Funniest Reporter/Lawyer/Federal Employee/Fill in the Blank’ contests can sometimes be brutal train wrecks, but at last night’s show, all of the reporters managed to get at least a few laughs from the receptive audience at Gotham.

The same was true at last year’s contest, which was emceed by the Male Half of the Staff (and judged by the Female Half).

For an account of the competition, click here.

Brian Donaldson, writing forthe UK website The List:

The state of TV comedy has been a subject of much negativity among critics, audiences and telly executives for a long, long time. Where’s the great sitcom? What happened to the solid tradition of sketch shows? Will we ever see a programme which treats stand-up comedy with anything less than pity? Well, fair enough, there really hasn’t been a classic show in any of those genres for a while now, but it really isn’t all doom and gloom. The lunatics many not yet have taken over the asylum (in a good way), but there’s enough very decent comedy on the box right now to at least put a smile on the faces of telly bosses.

That “negativity among critics, audiences and telly executives” on the state of TV comedy is frustrating, especially since the execs say what they say and claim to believe it, the critics repeat what the executives say (and actually believe it!) and the audience members repeat what the critics tell them the executives say, but don’t really believe it. And thus you have your current state of American (and British) television with declining viewership and a glut of reality programs which are nearly indistinguishable from one another. One big hit sitcom and the passengers will rush to the other side of the sinking ship.

Interesting peek at the current state of comedy on British TV.

The Orange County Register asks Jon Lovitz what took him so long to get into standup comedy.

Fear, honestly. I would get on stage, my heart would pound in my chest, and I never got how guys could go up there and do it for an hour. It seemed like such an unreachable task– even just five minutes up there is long, especially when one joke takes about only 45 seconds and you have to keep going and everyone is staring at you to make them laugh and there’s just nothing but you. You can’t do fancy editing tricks or cut away and no one can phone in; it becomes you alone to make ’em laugh.

While promoting his “Bee Movie,” Jerry Seinfeld makes the following curious statement in the Seattle P-I:

Seattle is my favorite city. It’s the first place anyone ever liked me. When I played the Comedy Underground in 1983 I sold out a house for the very first time. That was really the beginning of everything for me. I feel like I owe my whole career to Seattle.

Really? We seem to recall Seinfeld playing to packed houses at the Comedy Works in ’82. Perhaps we’re a little fuzzy on the details. Perhaps Seinfeld didn’t feel as though the Philly crowds were coming to see him specifically. (That club was frequently sold out back then, regardless of who was performing there.)

The Root of All Evil, in which “Lewis Black puts pop culture on trial and presides over the comedic proceedings,” will debut on Comedy Central in March.

From the press release:

Lewis Black, Scott Carter and David Sacks and are the executive producers with Jo Anne Astrow and Mark Lonow as the co-executive producers. Zoe Friedman and Scott Landsman will serve as the executives in charge of production for COMEDY CENTRAL.

So, let’s see if we understand show biz: Zoe Friedman and Scott Landsman will be the ones who constantly bother Lewis Black, Scott Carter and David Sacks as they try to produce a quality show, while Jo Anne Astrow and Mark Lonow seek to distract Friedman and Landsman, minimizing any tinkering the pair might do.

We like how the press release also adds, “Black is represented by APA. His attorneys are Jon Moonves and Loan Dang.” His attorneys? You know you’re a huge star when your attorneys make it into a press release when you haven’t been charged with a crime!

“For the love of money is the root of all evil,” is the original quote (from the New Testament, Timothy 6:10), but, judging from the release, it is not money but such entities as Paris Hilton, YouTube and Dick Cheney which will be scrutinized. “A rotating group of comedians will take the stage and argue who or what is most evil with Black making the final decision between the two.” It sounds like it could be interesting. An updated hybrid of Miller’s Court and Tough Crowd with a Politically Incorrect feel, we predict.

Don Rickles has written, with help from David Ritz, this memoir. It’s a fast read, it’s very much like listening to a comic tell stories while sitting at a restaurant after a show. It’s dispensed in short bites, and it’s all very conversational. What’s remarkable is that so many of the stories told by Rickles end with someone else besides Rickles getting the laugh or delivering the punchline. Very unselfish; not unlike most comics, really. Rare is the comedian who tells story after story which merely serve to highlight his brilliance.

Available at fine bookstores everywhere, from Simon & Schuster, for $24.00.

An excerpt:

For all my craziness, Barb never finds fault. (Well, maybe sometimes.)

My Barbara is also capable of keeping her cool.

For instance: On our second wedding anniversary, Sinatra hosts a dinner party for us at the Flamingo Hotel after my show at the Sahara. At ten o’clock, in walks the man. Talk about generating excitement! “You look lovely, Barbara,” he says charmingly.

Sinatra orders drinks. Sinatra orders appetizers. Sinatra has no patience for slow service. He tips like a king, but when he’s eating at your restaurant, you better be on your toes.

The conversation is light and polite: Frank is talking to Barbara and me about what’s happening in Vegas. The hors d’oeuvres are hot. The Jack Daniels on the rocks is cold. Beautiful evening.

A magnificent Chinese dinner is served. Frank starts in on rice and chicken followed by shrimp and spareribs. Everything’s mellow, even though the service is getting on Frank’s nerves.

One of the waiters accidentally drops noodles on Frank’s pants. That does it. Accidentally or not, no one would dare drop noodles on Frank’s pants. Without warning, Frank gets steamed, gets up and turns over the table. All of China falls on us as Frank storms out.

There Barbara and I sit, covered in won ton and rice.

Without missing a beat, Barbara points to the glass of vodka that she’s holding in her hand. “Waiter,” she says, “could I have more ice?”

I can’t believe it. I’m married to a Valium.

Next day Frank sends an apology to Barbara.

I say, “Hey, why is he apologizing to you and not me?”

“Because he’s a gentleman,” says Barbara, “that’s why.”

For the next five nights, five comics will be doing 15-20-minute sets as part of the finals in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.

Oddly, the competition’s website does not list the names of those comics or any of the comics who have participated in this year’s contest. (At least we couldn’t find any names.)

No one is sure yet. Chris Albrecht, erstwhile head of HBO, has resurfaced in Cleveland. (With the internet, one doesn’t necessarily have to be based in Hollywood or New York! With the internet, Albrecht doesn’t necessarily have to be based in Cleveland, come to think of it!)

He has ascended to the position of president of the media group at IMG, a “Cleveland-based agency best known for its core competencies in sports and fashion.”

According to a Hollywood Reporter story, IMG “has a deal with Jamie Masada’s Laugh Factory that has turned his famed comedy club into a dot-com destination for stand-up programming.” This was news to us. Then we hit the Factory website, which is in the beta stage right now.

The article said further that “IMG also has more than 500 hours of high-definition stand-up material, the largest such library in the world.” The vast bulk of it no doubt taped at the Factories in NY and LA and acquired through the abovementioned deal.

The last line: “Nobody has figured out how to make comedy an international, multiplatform business. Albrecht may be just the guy to do it.” He’s got Jamie Masada, IMG and a $250 million private-equity fund for acquisitions and investments to work with. In the new digital frontier, that’s quite a head start.

Sling Media, the folks who manufacture Slingbox, a set-top box technology that allows consumers to shift their TV signal to mobile and broadband devices anywhere in the world are conducting a contest through Monday. The winner gets $10,000 and a spot at the Improv on Melrose.

They solicited short films from comedians to explain, in a humorous and interesting way, exactly what the Slingbox is.

To view the shorts, click here. Vote on your favorite when you get there (Free reg. req.) and submit your own if you have the technology.

So far the entry from the SHECKYmagazine team has three votes! (In spite of, or because of, the Male Half’s second partial nude scene in as many months! Clickers beware! Space Ghost was correct when he told the Female Half that she was capable of talking anyone into doing anything!)

Go to the site’s home page to see a video of the king of commercials, comedian Chip Chinery, explaining the technology. (Somebody at the company must love standup comics!)

The company who makes the box was acquired last week for $380 million by the folks at EchoStar. Somebody thinks this Slingbox thingie has a future.

Mark Halper, in an article in Hollywood Reporter entitled “Nokia links up to direct-dialed video,” tells of a deal that mobile phone manufacturer Nokia has struck with several content providers.

Nokia sells a million phones a day. A small percentage of those handsets are capable of receiving video. The phone maker has struck a deal directly with some content providers to supply content accessible via the company’s N95 multimedia phone.

News Corp., Sony Pictures and CNN have struck a deal to distribute video directly to Nokia handsets, sidestepping mobile carrier decks.[…]

The media companies’ hookups with Nokia represent the latest end run around carrier decks, which media companies have complained can be crowded, confusing places that take too high a revenue share.

And then, from The Times (London) Online, there is an article that wonders, in the sub-head, “Are clip websites the future of comedy or a threat to stand-up?”

“There are many comics who are wary of performing their best material on television,” explains Marcus Brigstocke, stand-up and guest on Radio 4’s The Now Show. “They know they can get maybe 1,000 British pounds a week on the circuit, playing clubs and using the same material month in, month out. These days, comics are finding their routines appearing online, from comedy-club video cameras or even audience members’ mobile phones, and complaining that they are losing their livelihood.”

No examples are cited. The numbers probably don’t add up. No one’s entire set is being recorded by a mobile phone held aloft in a club. Only snippets– usually rather badly recorded snippets at that– make it onto file-sharing and user-gen sites. Clubs are almost always above-board enough to seek and obtain permission to videotape and comics are almost always ready to turn them down when permission is sought.

Someone uploading vast swaths of material from DVD-quality discs onto these sites– someone not authorized to do so– is another matter altogether. The author claims that DVD sales, which were initially robust, are “falling off.” No stats are provided, but this claim is similar to the one currently being made by the music recording industry. And it’s probably valid. Just as in that sector, though, the websites that offer comedy clips are also offering links which enable the visitor to purchase the DVD or other disc, encouraging consumers to not just watch but purchase the materials offered. Such is the new landscape in the world of peer-to-peer and digital quality and broadband connections.

Perhaps more worrisome is the situation that is detailed in the HR story on Nokia striking deals with content providers to feed the N95. The last paragraph of that story:

Other content contributors to N95 include India’s IBN Live, London-based mobile specialists ROK TV and San Francisco-based stand-up programr(sic) Rooftop Comedy.

Rooftop represents itself as a comic-friendly, edgy cyber clubhouse that hosts video clips and hands out the occasional cash prize for online comedy contests.

We are for comics. What if you could reach a bigger audience than The Tonight Show and still swear? RooftopComedy.com is broadcasting the best comedy from around the country, and soon the world. It’s an opportunity for comics to build their followings, establish a professionally produced video archive of their favorite sets, and win money along the way.

And each and every comic who uploads a clip to the site must, somewhere along the line, click on a button that says “I AGREE,” which gives the site permission to:

…use, distribute, duplicate, and exhibit the Recorded Performance (including your name and likeness) for commercial and advertising purposes; and

(iii) license the above rights to Rooftop’s authorized agents and licensees

Language like this is standard stuff. And we’ve cautioned folks about it in the past. Inspect the Terms of Use, weigh the benefits, use your imagination to see a couple of months or years into the future and then either click or don’t click that button that says, “I AGREE.”

Rooftop appears to be affiliated with eleven comedy clubs (“Check back for more coming soon.” says the copy) which allow the site to videotape performances, slice and dice the shows into mobile-phone-/website-sized nuggets, and then “use, distribute and exhibit” those clips. So, inspect those releases carefully when you venture into those venues.

If it seems like we’re “going after” Rooftop, we’re not. We just noticed that they’re mentioned in the HR article and their agreement is representative of a trend– The convergence of live performance, broadband access and multimedia mobile phone technology is terribly relevant to standup comics these days. And at the intersection of those forces is a giant sack of cash. And cash is always relevant.

So, read those releases carefully.

Our first time in the District in well over a decade was a blast. We were lured outside by perfect weather, so we headed out from our Georgetown hotel and walked first to the Lincoln Memorial. (What schoolchild on the eastern seaboard doesn’t recall the first time he/she stood, awestruck at the foot of that giant Lincoln statue, finally inside the building depicted on a million pennies?) It impresses even more as an adult.

We then made our way to the Korean War Memorial, then to the World War II Memorial, then we strolled through the giant C-SPAN Book Fair on the Mall. We checked out the U.S. Botanical Gardens, after which we took in the Air and Space Museum. We headed back up Pennsylvania Avenue and got as close as we could to the White House.

On the way back to the hotel, we passed the Hotel Lombardy. That location was the jumping off point for this story from an earlier visit to Washington, back about twenty years or so, when The Male Half, John Mulrooney and Dave Kelly stopped by that hotel to pick up Rich Jeni for a memorable afternoon.

All in the space of about five hours. We calculated the distance walked at about six miles. It was great to do the touristy things while on the road. Sometimes it’s easy to get into a business-only rut and ignore the wonders and the splendors that some cities have to offer.

We were working at recently-opened Riot Act Comedy Club on 14th St. with Denver-based comic Frank Schuchat and we were graced, all too briefly, with the presence of D.C.-based Roger Mursick and Tony Woods.

As The Male Half exited the stage at the end of the first show Saturday, the applause was accompanied by a (live!) trumpet rendition of Call To The Post. Riot Act proprietor John Xereas explained that the horn player was none other than Faith Dane, who had stopped by the club midway through the show. Faith (she had her name changed to just “Faith”) has run for mayor of the District multiple times and, it would seem, is never without her horn. (She was featured in both the Broadway and film version of “Gypsy!”) She was a fixture on and off stage at the D.C. Improv when Xereas coordinated the talent for that venue. Her rendition of “Gotta Have A Gimmick” from the movie and musical is cited by Paul Reubens as the inspiration for the creation of his Pee Wee Herman character!

Faith’s number begins at about the 1:30 mark. Well worth the wait!

Both Halves of the Staff will be on the Comedy For Grownups show at the New York Underground Comedy Festival on Tuesday night at 7 PM at HA! Comedy Club!

They’ll join Jim Mendrinos, DJ Hazard, Mike Siscoe, Leighann Lord, Richie Byrne, Quentin Heggs, Danny Kelly and Janette Barber.

If you’d like to get on the comp list, send an email request to Carole Montgomery at ivorygirl(at sign)att.net and she’ll put you on the comp list!

Come on out Tuesday night for a talent-packed show at the Underground Fest and say hey to the Male and Female Half!

Editors note: We accidentally put an “s” at the end of Leighann Lord’s name… we apologize to Leighann for pluralizing her.

In the Arizona Republic, Richard Ruelas profiles Phoenix-area comedian Randy Hausner, whose brother Dale was indicted on seven counts of first-degree murder.

The August 2006 arrest of Dale Hausner on scores of murder and attempted-murder charges stunned the family. But after the initial shock wore off, reality set in. Randy Hausner had to decide whether it was still worth pursuing a career in comedy.

Dale Hausner is half of the pair of serial shooters who recently terrorized the Phoenix area for 14 months, shooting people at random.

The 38-year-old Hausner is now dealing with the notoriety head-on, continuing to do standup at various venues in the Valley of the Sun. It’s a fascinating story. Read the whole thing here.

Of course they are. Reuters is cooking down the essentials of the Forbes list of television’s biggest earners. As expected, Oprah is the lede.

But Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Jay Leno and George Lopez are among the top ten. Ellen Degeneres comes in 15th with $15 million.

The top twenty is dominated by people raking in the dough via Talk and Reality. After that, there are three News people. Keifer Sutherland is the highly-paid lynchpin of an hour-long drama.

Then, there’s Lopez and Seinfeld– two middle-aged standup comics who will continue to make gobs of cash through the syndication of a situation comedy filmed before a live audience. Apparently people still want to see that kind of thing.

Go figure!

Mark Sullivan, writing for magazine PC World, has written “The 10 Funniest Sites on the Internet,” which can be read on MSN.com.

Along with sex and shopping, comedy is one of the biggest drivers of traffic on the Web. Especially now that a lot of regular people know how to post their homemade video and audio to the Web (along with clips from TV or radio), there’s an awful lot of funny stuff online. After months of exhaustive research, including lie-detector tests performed on laboratory rats, we’ve gathered a list of the funniest sites on the Web. Visit these sites and try not to laugh. Also, you’ll notice we’ve left off sites like Comedy Central and College Humor, which are funny but a little overexposed.

Yes, but they included the grossly overexposed Funny Or Die!

Although Sullivan says that the WWW is a much funnier place, “especially now that a lot of regular people know how to post their homemade video,” only one of the ten sites that were featured conforms to that model– eBaum’s World. (Funny Or Die has been, for lack of a better word, corrupted– a visit to that site displays videos featuring John C. Reilly and Bill Murray. And the original rollout, as every man, woman and child on the planet knows by now, featured the hilarious short “The Landlord,” by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, hardly regular people.)

eBaum’s World, is truer to the “regular people (who) know how to post their homemade video” ideal.

In an ideal Ten Funniest list– with care taken to avoid duplication or overexposed sites– eBaum should have made it to the exclusion of Funny Or Die.

We are in agreement with Sullivan on one site: James Lileks’ Institute of Official Cheer is a highly bookmarkable site. We stumbled across Lileks several years ago and he is a genuine wit.

Most of the sites are either good, but not funny and not intended to be funny (Found Magazine); rely heavily on irony and not so much on wit (Omodern, Mullets Galore, Engrish.com, Overheard in New York) or are mere oddities (Pictures of Walls).

One of them is produced by a giant ad agency to help Burger King goose sales of its chicken sandwiches. (The credibility of Sullivan and his list take a major hit here!) The print and electronic media, we fear, are slipping into a mindset where nothing on the WWW is worth covering if it lacks some sort of involvement from major media conglomerates or stars. They simultaneously fear it, are puzzled by it and are inclined to encourage its cooptation by the mainstream media outlets.

The article reminds us of similar ones from 1996 through 1999 when the mainstream media didn’t know what to make of the WWW. They ran one predictable feature after another that focused on such sites as The Camera Trained on the Coffee Maker at the Cambridge Computer Lab and similar sites, declaring them “hilarious!” The plan seemed to be to marginalize the internet and emphasize the frivolous and the mundane.

Of course, a lot of what was on the WWW back then was actually frivolous and mundane. But they could have dug a little deeper. We got the feeling that they were giving less than their all in the search for truly interesting sites. These feelings were reinforced when, in the first couple years of our magazine, we found it a frustrating experience to get the MSM to pay attention to our publication!

We still feel a bit of that frustration! Hey, Mr. Sullivan: If you do another similar article, include SHECKYmagazine.com! We’re not All Funny, All The Time, but we do run the occasional corker– Hitler Bunches of Oats, Cum Park Plaza– to name just a couple! (And, even though our blog contains a lot of somewhat serious contemplation of the art/craft/business of standup, we can’t count how many people have told us that they think our magazine is hilarious!?!? It seems as though the general impression is that we’re a humor site.)

We got an email from someone who said that Carlos Mencia got heckled at a huge show, attended by several thousand people, and that Mencia’s response was to whip out his dick and swear at the crowd.

Then we emailed someone who was there and asked if this was true, and that person said that, though he didn’t actually see it, he was certain that it happened.

Here’s what gives us pause: Where’s the YouTube video? A comedy concert, attended by 15,000 fans– at a venue named Verizon Wireless Amphitheater no less!– and there’s no jumpy, garbled video up on YouTube of Mencia’s alleged flipout.

Hmmm…

Watch FOS Joe DeVito tonight (in two hours, at 2 AM EDT) on Fox News Channel. He’ll be on the freewheeling topical talk show Red Eye, hosted by Greg Gutfield.

DeVito gave us a heads up– He managed to wedge an “Am I right, ladies?!?” into the conversation, just as he had promised us.

If you can’t/won’t stay up that late, check out Gutfeld’s Daily Gut blog– It’s one of the most wickedly and consistently funny topical blogs on the WWW.

MSN.com has a lame-o article that says that “edgy female comedians are crossing over, big time.” The breathless copy informs us that:

Hollywood’s bursting with a great crop of hilarious female comedians who sparkle in a variety of media… these funny girls make us laugh in everything they try: movies, TV series, reality shows, books, CDs, stand-up routines, news-show commentary, sketch comedy — even burlesque.

A modern take on rip and read– from network press releases and agent/manager faxes.

The piece, “Funny And In Your Face,” is remarkable only for the grotesque quality of 11 or so of the 14 photos that illustrate it– most look like they’ve just got done wrestling a wolverine at a water park! Who chose those pics?!

Sadly, ABC news is reporting that the body of Nailah Franklin, sister of standup comic Marina Franklin, has been found near where her car was found in Indiana.

Once again, our thoughts are with the family.

Nailah Franklin has been missing for just over a week now and news of her disappearance has been all over the cable and network news. Her family is now offering $10,000 for any information that might lead to her. We comment on it here only because, according to bulletins on MySpace.com, Franklin is the sister of comedian Marina Franklin.

Anyone with any information is asked to call the Chicago Police. The family has set up a website, BringNailahFranklinHome.com.

Our thoughts are with the family. We are hoping for the best.

Jon Stewart famously declared to Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on their show Crossfire, “I’m not going to be your monkey.” That was three years ago.

Last night, Stewart was more than happy to be Evo Morales’ monkey when the Bolivian president appeared on Comedy Central’s Emmy award-winning fake news program.

Looking a bit stiff and speaking through a translator, Morales did not seem at first to understand some of Stewart’s jokes, delivering serious responses. But he gradually relaxed under gentle questioning from Stewart and a crowd that delighted in the leftist leader’s indictments of Western capitalism and appeals for social justice.[…]

But when Stewart urged Morales to discuss his reforms, the president got free reign to extol his successes and drew wild applause with nearly every example.

One of the highlights of Morales’ standard after-dinner speech is his declaration that capitalism is “the worst enemy of humanity.” How does that square with Stewart’s position as the youthful face of the $17.5 billion behemoth known as Viacom? We suppose that is entirely compatible with “gentle questioning” and flirtatious interviews with a guy who champions coca farmers and is regularly photographed with Fidel and Hugo.

The Male Half and the Female Half will appear in Washington, D.C. (for the first time in forever!), this weekend, September 28-29, at the Riot Act Comedy Club! 1610 14th St., NW, is the address for the club, which is located in the basement of HR 57, which is described on the website like this:

HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz Blues is a non-profit music cultural center that takes their name from a House Resolution first passed by congress in 1987. This resolution (H.Con.Res 57) designated jazz as “a rare and valuable national American treasure.”

Now, in the intimate subterranean room below the jazz club– a venue started recently by John X– the rare and valuable national treasure known as standup is offered five nights a week.

This is a call to all D.C.-area SHECKYmagazine fans to stop on by the Riot Act this Friday and Saturday and say Hey! (And to make R.A. your MySpace friend.)

NOTE: The club was one of many that was recently added to our Club List! If you notice any missing full-time comedy clubs, click on the Club List Update Form and help us update the list!