Their MySpace profile describes Kamikaze Komedy thusly:

We are Lars and Powermann, two up and coming comics from Edmonton and we will be your guides to the world of local national and international stand up comedy… we are Kamikaze Komedy

The one on the left is Powermann; Lars is on the right.
The show airs every Wednesday evening at Midnight (MT) from Edmonton’s CJSR, and you can listen via the internet.

The Male Half will guest tomorrow night, starting at 2 AM EDT/11 PM PDT! Tune in! We’ll be talking about all things comedy.

From FOS Don Munro comes word of an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

Hyphens are the latest casualty of the internet age, with more than 16,000 words losing their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary published this week. Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly. And if you’ve got a problem, don’t be such a crybaby.

Doubles that have become one include pigeonhole, leapfrog, chickpea, lowlife, and touchline, while the twos include fig leaf, hobby horse, test tube and water bed.

The dictionary blames electronic communication, which favours speed over grammatical correctness. “People are not confident about using hyphens anymore,” said Angus Stevenson, editor of the new edition.

“They’re not really sure what they are for. It will probably upset a few people but the point I would make is that we are only reflecting widespread everyday use. We are not saying it should be dropped completely.”

Munro knows that we knocked the hyphen out of stand-up when we published our first edition of SHECKYmagazine.com back on April 1, 1999. We did so for purely selfish reasons– we knew that, if the magazine took off, we’d be typing that word thousands of times, so why not eliminate a few thousand keystrokes?! (Plus, while we’re pretty speedy on the keyboard and we are adept at no-look touchtyping, we still goof up the hyphen with regularity!)

Originally, the decision hurt us, as the search engines insisted on making the fine distinction between the two versions of the word– our mag didn’t come up very high in the results when folks searched for “stand-up.” Improvements in search engine algorithms and more of an acceptance of the unhyphenated version have solved that problem!

The Times-Picayune fielded this question from a reader, “Does New Orleans have any good comedy clubs, where you can have a drink and hear some good jokes?” The answer serves as a mini Market Review of New Orleans.

Sean L. McCarthy, writing for the NYDN, interviews Dane Cook. It is notable because McCarthy gets Cook to address the “backlash” against Cook, Mencia and Whitney, inside and outside the business.

Obviously, I can’t speak for Larry or Carlos. I don’t really even know them well enough to comment on how they handle their business. I know with me, people are going to gun for you when you’re going up that ladder. People might look and say, oh, your trajectory! I look and say, it’s been 17 years that it’s been slow and steady wins the race. To have people coming out right now and being in attack mode, it’s in a very twisted way, it’s flattering. Because you know that the GQ editor, there’s going to be a new guy there in a few months, and he’s going to love you and he’s going to write an article about you and put you on the cover. Then six months after that the next guy’s going to think that you’re the worst thing ever. Rolling Stone did it to me. It was like they put me on the cover said funniest guy, genius marketer, then there was a guy who wrote an expose six months later, said I’m the worst thing to ever happen to comedy. I cut them both out, I framed them and I put them in my office. That’s what a career is.

It’s a huge interview and, if you scroll through and read the whole thing, you’re rewarded with Cook addressing the whole Louis CK issue.

The Male Half has been stopped on the street four times over the past two weeks (twice today alone!) by people who notice his shirt (see shirt here if you must) that has the Just For Laughs logo on the front. He got it for free by playing in the Industry vs. Artist Basketball game at the Just For Laughs Fest a few years back.

These folks who stop him are unaware of any festival, however. They are huge fans of the television show that bears the same name as the fest and which is produced by the same people who produce the fest. According to the Nielsen ratings, the show has been a big hit this summer.

And, if getting stopped on the street is any indication, the show has struck a bigger chord than can be determined by the numbers in any ratings journals. These people are thrilled by the show. One woman, at the Walgreen’s, said it’s “one of the best TV shows she’s ever seen.”

It makes perfect sense. Candid Camera (and, before it, Candid Microphone) was a huge hit, a cultural phenomenon. The words “candid camera” and the name Allen Funt became part of the language. It disappeared eventually.

There was a vacuum. One which wasn’t filled by Punk’d or The Jamie Kennedy Experiment or Borat.

An AP item is one of the Most Viewed News Stories. It tells of an Air America radio host, Cenk Uygur, who provides evidence, via a YouTube clip, that his “debating Republicans sound like Klingons” joke was ripped off by Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert.

There is every likelihood that a Trekkie is employed on the Colbert Report writing staff (if not several!). But, there is also a good chance that one or more CR staffers listens to Air America and/or has watched some or all of the 874 webisodes of the Young Turks YouTube clips that feature Uygur’s commentary. It’s a tough call.

But, after reading some of the 151 comments left on the YouTube clip, maybe it’s not such a tough call after all. This one, from someone calling himself “Frumpy Jones,” is interesting (and, as the attorneys might say, “dispositive”):

A few things:

1) Instead of suing him you should send him a fruit basket for the thoughtful lesson in HOW TO TELL A FUNNY JOKE

2) I actually said the Klingon joke to my wife DURING the debate (And even THAT was funnier than yours). Should I sue you now?

3) I feel sorry for you that you are trying to drum up publicity for your show like this. From the snippet I’ve seen, I plan to not tune in.

As for Uygur’s attempt to drum up publicity, he has succeeded and failed– We note that the online AP story carries a photo of Colbert but no pic of Uygur. Who wins that round?

But, when one considers that Uygur’s clips normally get somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 to 3,000 views– and that his Colbert challenge clip has garnered, at last count, 15,748– perhaps that round is a tie.

Uygur may yet have his day in the sun: A CR spokesperson said Colbert, “will most likely address it on the show.” So, there is every possibility that the faux conservative pundit will have Uygur on the show for a faux grilling/showdown. If that happens, you can score one for the plucky liberal talker.

J. Ridewood, interviews Steven Wright for the UT Austin Daily Texan on the occasion of the impending release of Wright’s second album, “I Still Have A Pony,” and the tour to support same.

“I realized that there is a whole generation who was born after my last album. I thought I could reach a whole new audience.”

Writing and performing jokes is a fluid process for Wright. He explains that he is “always adding things, taking stuff off. Good jokes slowly evolve through touring.”

He does, however, employ a simple technique for rooting out the jokes. If he tells a joke three times and each time it doesn’t go over well, then he’ll scrap it. He promises that his new album consists of the jokes that stood the test of time.

Wright’s career trajectory has been unlike any other. Over two decades, he has starred in a watershed HBO special, created an Oscar-winning short, released a seminal album, appeared in small roles in another 15 films, produced another film, starred in another HBO special. It seems like a lot when it’s all lumped together like that, but when you consider that it was spread out over 22 years, it’s positively Joseph Heller-like. Yet Wright remains, mainly by virtue of his first LP and his first special, one of the most influential and recognizable comedians of all time.

It’s official. Jon Reep is the winner of this season’s Last Comic Standing. (The Male Half picked Reep to take it all from the very beginning.) We congratulate Mr. Reep and we also congratulate Mr. Crawford and all the folks who appeared on the show this season.

The two-hour finale was… two hours!

Bellamy Bill looked like a wishbone wrapped in aluminum foil. The two-hour extravaganza managed to pack about 20 minutes of actual watchable television into a 120-minute slot. It’s television magic! Bellamy Bill’s hosting was particularly mediocre tonight, making us even more depressed that he’s returning to host in ’08. The man has no sense of drama or pacing. He’s all one-note. He starts out with adrenalin squirting from his ears and, by the end, he’s still screaming, only by this time, we don’t care any more. This is the exact opposite of what a host should do.

We thought that LCS was capable of making only comics look bad. Tonight, they managed to make the USC Marching Band look bad. The USA Marching Band! How did they manage that?! They sounded like holy hell as they marched into the theater!

Carrot Top crushed! The copper-haired prop comic has been hustling lately– on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, Mind Freak, the Flavor Flav Roast on Comedy Central– perhaps it’s necessary to pack the Luxor. Whatever the reason, he crushes in each appearance and tonight was certainly no exception. He deserves credit, considering all the snarky things that are said about him in greenrooms (and even on talkshows!)– he comes out, time after time, with new material, and slays.

Robert Schimmel came out and did perhaps the darkest set in the show’s history, and, quite possibly, in the history of primetime.

Sprinkled throughout the broadcast were The Top Ten Biggest Laughs on LCS– counting down by showing ten separate bits from ten different comics. Who hell chose these bits? We’ve seen these comics do much funnier bits than the ones they trotted out tonight. We’ve seen them do them on this very show! It’s not like there was some sort of licensing problem! It is truly mystifying.

One particularly agonizing segment was the One-Liners thing they did– lining up the Bottom Eight and setting the clock at 2:00, then having each comic in turn do a one-liner. Nothing makes a comic look better, huh?! It was excruciating and pointless but, at least it made the comics look incompetent! (And that, after all, seems to be the point of the show this evening.)

To quote Ant, “Somebody has to tell the truth.” One lackluster segment had the three Celebrity Talent Scouts from this season lined up onstage on stools, being “interviewed” by Bellamy Bill, interspliced with a few video clip strolls down memory lane. The loving tribute to Ant merely re-affirmed the truth– He might be the luckiest person in show business.

Dane Cook swaggered onto the stage (after we were shown a short clip from “Good Luck Chuck”) and said some nice things about the two finalists. But… he didn’t do any standup! He’s a movie star now! This had to be delicious for him. All the abuse he’s taken from the standup community fades to a faint memory as the man is invited to appear on LCS, just before the exciting climax– representing the current pinnacle of standup success; representing standup itself!– and all he has to do is say some nice things about the two comic who “have a bright future ahead of them!” And then… Exit! Stage right!

The roast was hacked into two segments– one devoted to roasting Crawford, one to roasting Reep. It was taped September 11, so they had seven days to hack it into bits and slap it all back together again into it’s final, sorry form. The comics were all funny, but the editing ripped the balls off of the affair and sucked a lot of the interest out of it. Next time, more roast, fewer puppets!

Now… what is the deal with the fucking puppets?!? It’s the biggest night of your life… now you have to talk to foul-mouthed puppets backstage. What is with TV producers that they feel the need to wedge puppets into every other project? It’s like a sickness. Every every other project you say? Damn near. The reason you don’t see them in everything from the nightly news to the farm report is that, eventually folks come to their senses and lose the puppets. But they try. Heck, the first season of Saturday Night Live had puppets! It’s never funny and it just brings the proceedings to a screeching halt. Enough already with the puppets!

It is hoped that, lame as this season was, it inspires the folks at home to go to a comedy club (or a casino, or a theater) and see comedy the way it should be seen– Live the way it is meant to be seen. Nothing else compares to it. Sit in the front row. Go often. See your favorites, see someone you’ve never heard of before. Just go and see it.

Burgess Meredith was, of course, speaking of a boxer. But it holds true for many occupations, including standup comic.

A manager! There’s a MySpace bulletin ricocheting around the internet that contains details on a free seminar on how to get a manager.

Wednesday, September 19 at 5:30 PM

Topic: Managers and How to Get One

Panel
Chris Mazzilli, Gotham Comedy Club Owner
Ben Carrizzo, Command Performance Entertainment
Rick Dorfman, Relevant Entertainment
Tom Ingegno, Omnipop

COST: FREE

For more information please visit www.gothamcomedyclub.com or call 212.367.9000.

Gotham Comedy Club is located at 208 W. 23rd Street, between 7th & 8th Avenues.

The Minneapolis television stations are reporting that the infamous bathroom at the MSP airport where US Sen. Larry Craig inappropriately conducting himself back in June has become somewhat of a tourist attraction.

The Male Half is flying into that very airport this Friday (Jetting to the Twin Cities to appear at this Friday through Sunday at The Joke Joint in Bloomington!), so he is going to try to get a photo of the storied john either upon his arrival or his departure!

Attention all Minneapolitan/St. Paulian SHECKYmagazine.com fans: Come on out to see The Male Half in his first Minneapolis appearance in nearly 15 years! The Joke Joint is at the Ramada Mall Of America, right next to the airport.

FOS Terry Reilly forwards a link to a syndicated LAT column entitled “The Sitcom is Dead; Long Live Hybrid Humor” by Mary McNamara. She takes the occasion of the impending premiere of Back to You to ruminate on the state of the sitcom. It’s rather like a relative speculating on funeral arrangements within earshot of the patient; a patient who is still quite alive and who will most likely leave the hospital upright.

Throughout the ten-year battle that has been waged against the sitcom, one ridiculous term after another has been coined, one lame concept after another has been advanced as the successor to the sitcom. As soon as it’s… you know… dead.

We’ve had the Dramedy (a cross between a drama and a comedy!), which was so much better because, well, they weren’t so stridently and obviously going for the laughs!

Then there was the glorification of the one-camera shoot over the multicamera shoot, which was better because, well, it was less like a sitcom and, well, we didn’t have to put up with that live studio audience cheering and hooting!

Then there was the unscripted comedy, which was so much better than the tightly scripted, setup/punchline sitcom, because, well, because the laughs were subtle and the humor wasn’t so broad and the actors were improvising and… Look– if we have to explain it to you, you just don’t get it.

Now, there is Hybrid Humor.

“There’s plenty of perfectly hilarious writing and acting on television, it just isn’t marked ‘comedy,'” says McNamara. She cites the CW’s Reaper as “the test version of the new humor hybrid rising from the ashes of the sitcom.” The specific example of Hybrid Humor she trots out– a supposedly hilarious exchange between two character– is comedy for people who hate comedy. It’s all cool and ironic and, ultimately, not all that gut-busting funny.

Alliteration is about all this concept has going for it.

McNamara now champions “shows that do not pause for three seconds after the joke, shows that don’t acknowledge there’s been a joke at all.” Ah, yes! The “Aren’t we clever>” school of comedy that the critics love and the viewers go to great lengths to avoid! That’s the ticket!

McNamara asks, “So who really cares if the sitcom is extinct?… Will we really miss the irritating bray of the studio audience?”

When did the laughter of a live studio audience become an irritant? That’s twice in three days we’ve seen this. The HR’s Barry Garron said, “Only the superior acting and writing of Back To You will keep them from becoming bored by the format and annoyed with the studio laughter.” Are these TV critics all receiving talking points? Who is annoyed by the sound of human laughter? Satan comes to mind. Only the most cynical, the most crotchety are annoyed by the sound of other human beings enjoying a good yock. Only, apparently the television critics.

Perhaps that’s why they like shows that aren’t… all… that… funny!

They’re all going to look like fools when the next multicamera sitcom comes along and dominates television and subsequently spawns a long line of imitators. It will happen. It may not be Back To You that is the watershed series, but one will come along.

And, because they hate the sound of outright guffawing, their lives will be made miserable for several long TV seasons. The poor dears.

On our recent trip to Seattle, to perform in that city’s Mainstage Comedy Club, we had the pleasure of meeting and working with some of the comedians who form the People’s Republic of Komedy. They were enthusiastic about standup and they weren’t about to sit around and wait for someone to give them stage time– they produced their own weekly showcase, The Laff Hole. Along the way, they’ve learned a thing or two about the business, the art, the craft of standup. And they’ve picked up some ink– most recently, making the Organization Shortlist in the Annual Genius Awards issue of The Stranger, a Seattle entertainment alt-rag.

The Stranger described the PROK as a “four-man comedy collective” who “obliterated The Stranger’s legendary, decade-long… bias against local comedy and turned us into relentlessly vocal proponents.”

At the very least, The Stranger admits to the bias.

But the brief piece on the PROK also contains this:

Live comedy is always a crapshoot, and PROK’s weekly showcase– Laff Hole, Wednesdays at Chop Suey– isn’t immune to bombing comics. But the ultimate worth of any collaborative comedic venture can be calculated by a simple equation: Does it rock more than it sucks? Week after week, PROK’s Laff Hole rocks way more than it sucks– a small miracle that’s placed PROK members Daniel Carroll, Kevin Hyder, Emmett Montgomery, and Scott Moran at the center of Seattle’s blooming alterna-comedy scene.

Okay. A compliment… sort of. A backhanded compliment counts as a compliment. But then, there’s this:

On his own, each of the dudes is funny; together, they’re hilarious, managing the remarkable trick of being four twentysomething white guys with identifiably different comedic styles.

Now they’ve veered from being merely biased into being stunningly dumb and boorish. Can anyone explain the difference between this statement and, maybe, “All those Def Comedy Jam comics are the same to me.” or “You know, I can’t tell them Asian comics apart!”

The Stranger, for all its hipness and coolness, ultimately tends to sound like the blue-haired grandma or the beer-swilling lout, incapable or unwilling to make distinctions between hard-working artists because… well, because they’re all white and male. And you know… they’re all… the same!

We wouldn’t want to spoil what is, for the PROK, a triumph– being mentioned as a contender for a Genius Award is a major deal. But we would like to suggest that the folks at The Stranger grow up a little and not only acknowledge their hideous bias, but take some pains to actually get rid of it. All it would take is some critical thinking.

The LAT profiled Jeff Garlin because he wrote, directed and stars in “I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With.”

The piece is capped by this quote on why he continues doing standup comedy:

“It keeps me creative,” he says. “It is like the equivalent of other people doing crossword puzzles. It keeps me young and vibrant. I started doing stand-up when I was 20 years old. I never thought one of the big motivations to do it would be to keep me young.”

Check out the SHECKYmagazine Garlin interview, done in January of 2004, here.

Amy Schumer was interviewed in the Pocono Record, on the occasion of the LCS Tour hitting the Caesars location in that stubby Pennsylvania mountain range.

When asked how hard it is to be a woman in standup comedy, she replied:

I actually think I’ve gotten more opportunities because I’m a woman. It’s still hard, but it’s hard to be any minority comedian. And actually, it’s just as hard to be a middle-aged, white comedian. I have friends who get told all the time they can’t get on stage because the club already has too many white stand-ups.

This is a 180-degree turn from her Episode 10 statement, for which we took her to task.

Schumer is unashamedly flogging this female sympathy vote thing– “Women have to be twice as funny to get half the credit.” Either she believes it… or she’s cynically pandering to get the female/eunuch vote. Either way, it’s revolting.

Barry Garron, writing about television for Reuters, reviews the new Fox series Back to You.

And now, our favorite paragraph:

The multicamera format adds to the show’s familiar, as well as conventional, feel. It’s what creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd know best, but it might be tiresome to a growing number of younger viewers. Only the superior acting and writing of Back to You will keep them from becoming bored by the format and annoyed with the studio laughter. Maybe we’ve reached the point where no comedy can revive the multicamera format and the best one can do is overcome it.

Emphasis ours.

Yes that’s right: the “multicamera format” is dead, says the TV reviewer who daydreams about being a television executive. Why, just the other day we overheard a gaggle of twenty-somethings complaining about how tiresome the multicamera format is! And how annoyed they were by studio laughter! Is it any wonder the multicamera format is toast?!?

Let’s see if we have this straight– Younger viewers are mesmerized by superior acting and writing? This is what will keep them from becoming bored? The same people who watch Survivor, Big Brother and any of the dozen or so shows based on people forgetting the lyrics to songs are utterly incapable of making such fine distinctions. They are un-bore-able! The execs and the reviewers give them far too much credit. They’ll watch a funny sitcom if someone tells them to or if they find it funny themselves.

The death of the sitcom is overstated and the coroner’s report is utter nonsense. It is the pack mentality of Hollywood gone amok. Up until just recently, the multicamera format ruled television. Who declared it dead? The viewers? Certainly not. The execs did.

Sure, Scrubs, The Office, My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock are doing okay. (But only okay. On last night’s Emmy broadcast, 30 Rock creator Tina Fey said she’d “like to thank our dozens of viewers.”)

On the other hand, Two And A Half Men is kicking ass. The New Adventures of Old Christine is a top ten hit. The recently departed King of Queens was a solid performer, as was Everybody Loves Raymond. But one cannot honestly say the format is “dead” or that viewers find it “tiresome.” The television execs, with their herd mentality (and helped along by the reviewers), are the sorriest gang of timid yes-men the planet has ever seen. And once a multicamera sitcom (inexplicably?!?!) reaches the top of the ratings, they’ll scramble to be the first to say they never believed the format was dead in the first place!

And Back To You might be the one that turns the ship around. It’s got Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Fred Willard, James Burrows, Christopher Lloyd, Steve Levitan, a classic backdrop, a simple yet ripe premise.

It seems there are a lot of comics making movies these days. We decide to create a group on MySpace, a place where comics can share information about making, uploading and promoting their video creations, and we called it “Comicus Directus.”

We cordially invite any comics who have made a video (or are contemplating the making of one) to hop on and join the group!

The film below was written and directed by Rye Silverman and Bill Arrundale. As they explain on YouTube:

This video was created for the 40th birthday of Dave Stroupe, manager of the Columbus Funnybone Comedy Club, and booker for many other clubs. It originally played at a surprise roast put on at the club on September 10th, 2007. Some of the jokes are inside jokes, but a few comics have requested that I post it online, so here it is.

Silverman and Arrundale are not yet members of Comicus Directus, but we hope they join.

From AP:

A television writer and producer paid $10,200 for what an animal rights group said are notes from football star Michael Vick’s speech apologizing for a dogfighting scandal.

Carol Leifer made the winning bid for the notes sold by the Humane Society of the United States. Leifer is a writer and co-executive producer of Rules of Engagement, a CBS comedy.

The Humane Society auctioned them off after an HSUS employee “found the notes when he retrieved his microphone from the hotel podium where Vick delivered his apology Aug. 27.”

It’s Friday! We’re making our weekly plea to help us revise the Comedy Club List!

We’re keeping up with the changes that you folks have sent in! Keep those revisions coming and check back to make sure that we get the information right.

Here’s the CLUB LIST REVISION FORM

Here’s the CLUB LIST

We’re still seeking information on full-time or weekend clubs only. (And, much as we’d like to add improv clubs, our focus is on standup and standup only. And, we simply can’t add anyone-nighters.)

If you see information on a club on the list that needs updating, please fill out the form and send us the updated information!

We seek basic, important info like:

Club Name
Club Address
Club’s Website URL
Club’s Reservations Phone
Booker Contact Info

Thanks to all who send along information, we hope to make the list up-to-date and comprehensive!

A list like this one, when it’s finally updated, will be a boon to the comedy fan, the comedy club itself and, of course, to comedians.

Thanks!

The Female Half was surfing the internet yesterday morning when she responded to a MySpace bulletin offering free pairs of tickets to the Paolo Nutini concert across the river at the TLA, which the new owner, LiveNation, now calls the Fillmore at the TLA. Apparently, LiveNation does this sort of giveaway thing with some frequency, sending out bulletins to other MySpacers to create excitement and liquor sales for impending concerts.

We were only passingly familiar with Nutini, the 20-year-old singer/sonwriter from Scotland whose hit song and video, “New Shoes,” swept the world late last year. When we were staying at the Hilton in Atlanta last month, the in-house channel repeatedly played a series of interviews with creative folks, in which they talked about concepts like home, travel, creativity, etc. They then had them sing a tune– some sort of obtuse marketing campaign that marries creativity, travel, hotels and Hilton(?)– and Nutini was among the artists they grilled. During his segment, he does a rather compelling version of “New Shoes” accompanied only by his mate on an acoustic guitar. We ended up watching the damn thing about a dozen times or more, so catchy and so mesmerizing was his quirky performance.

So, when we had a chance to see the young man live, we couldn’t pass it up.

The TLA was formerly a repertory cinema on Philadelphia’s famous South Street, but hasn’t been for quite some time. (The Male Half actually performed there once, when it was still a movie house– opening for the movie “Airplane!”)

They husked it out, fitted it with a bar and it plays host to several acts a month, from Squeeze to Twiztid to Toots & The Maytalls. Next month, The Comedians of Comedy Tour comes in on the 28th. It holds about 1,000 bodies, all general admission, all standing room only.

Nutini took the stage promptly at 10. (The openers, The Virgins, did a pleasant, if somewhat perfunctory half-hour set, starting at 9.)

It’s hard to believe he’s 20. He’s got the voice (and the stage presence) of someone three times his age. You gotta give him credit for doing The Big Hit only two songs into the show. It wouldn’t surprise us if 90 per cent of the audience owned the debut album, as many of them (mainly the girls) sang along to many of the numbers.

His onstage manner is quirky, but it works. He reminded us somewhat of Mitch Hedberg, had Hedberg been a rocker instead of a comedian. The simple three-piece band is as good as any we’ve seen and he does some unexpected covers– Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talking At Me” and “I Wanna Be Like You” from Disney’s Jungle Book to name just two. (It was the latter choice that made us realize his voice is a bizarre cross between Al Green and Louis Prima?!?) He did an hour, then came out and did a ten-minute encore. Thoroughly enjoyable. From here he’s headed to Austin. He’s taping Austin City Limits, which should make him an even bigger star here in the states.

Marc Unger emailed us to stress that he is not one of the owners of Magooby’s, though the article (and our posting) may have made it appear so.

Punchlines in Parkville is the title of the Baltimore Sun article on the grand re-opening of a comedy club in suburban Baltimore called Magooby’s. Formerly Tracy’s at the Bowman, the club is launching this weekend under the new name and management.

The article tells of brothers, Andrew and Marc Unger, who saw potential in the withering venue, which had been offering comedy for the better part of the past two decades. Andrew is a radio show host, Marc is a standup comic.

Andrew Unger said Tracy’s, which has been in operation as a comedy and nightclub for more than 20 years, had some definite potential. With the help of his colleagues, he made a variety of changes to the club’s appearance, promotions and service.

“Tracy’s looked a lot like a banquet room,” Unger said. “We wanted to … give the place a more upscale feel.”

It’s a story being repeated over and over lately. If you refurbish it, they will come.

So often, comedy club owners or managers will live for many years with an acceptable level of empty seats, dismal decor and a generally unenthusiastic staff. So gradual is the decline that they fail to recognize it until it is too late. (Even comedians can fall into the same rut with regard to material or performance.)

It takes a new pair of eyes (and, often, deep pockets!) to identify the problem and realize the potential. It’s encouraging to see a venerable venue taken over and made over. The enthusiasm, regardless of whether it’s partially amped up for the benefit of the media, is good to see. The Ungers’ tale should serve as a wakeup call to anyone sitting atop a moribund comedy club.

Dan Conlin, quoted in the Peoria Journal Star article on the Jukebox Comedy Club’s open mike night:

“If a comedy club doesn’t have a place where aspiring comics can try it, I don’t know how else they could see what it takes,” he said. Comedy isn’t something you can try out in front of the mirror or in your living room; aspiring comics need to get up on a stage and see if they can connect with a crowd.

Conlin gets it. And so, apparently, does the article’s author, Danielle Hatch. Her copy is blessedly free of the usual cliches and the article is evenhanded and informative.

We’re not so sure about open miker Casey DeFauw, retail manager for a local video store:

DeFauw was on stage telling a joke and the audience went silent after the punch line.

“Get it? Get it?” DeFauw prompted, but the audience didn’t.

“I’ve told that joke before and murdered crowds,” DeFauw said after the show. “I think the crowd that night probably would have preferred if I just went up there and rehashed Larry the Cable Guy.”

Do we detect frustration and bitterness creeping in already?

But DeFauw, who is participating in the club’s annual, multi-week amateur tourney, seems more introspective later on in the story, “You just tell the joke,” he said. “When I first started, I’d get genuinely flustered. I’d freeze, would forget my next joke, wouldn’t know what to do. But you just gotta keep going.”

Cheers to the PJStar for a decent account, giving a few aspiring comics a nice clip for that important first press kit.

A press release from XM Satellite Radio trumpets their new comedy series that will feature one-on-one interviews with comedians. George Carlin will be the inaugural guest when “Unmasked” premieres on XM Saturday, September 22 at 8 p.m. ET. Future episodes of will feature Jeff Garlin, Jim Norton, Patrice Oneal, Bob Saget, Brian Regan and Carlos Mencia.

We’re a little puzzled at the title. Are we all perceived as masked? Is it a reference to the crying on the inside thing? We suppose some of us are masked. Some of us also wear capes. But only in the privacy of our own homes. And then, only in the bedroom.

Gerry Dee GONE!

They broke the bad news to him and he wept and choked out some sort of statement about the folks back home. The first contestant to weep this season.

Perhaps the only folks who should actually be weeping are those who were unfortunate enough to catch this most recent episode.

Or the weepers might be the folks who were sprinkled throughout the broadcast as the Top Ten Best of the Worst– a cheap and lame collection of short clips of some of the people who auditioned but didn’t make it to Hollywood. Fleeting clips of their audition sets were shown before going to breaks. The poor bastards weren’t even afforded the courtesy of having their names superimposed over the footage of their national network primetime humiliation. It was the least the producers could have done. These comics, some of them actual pros we’re certain, did, after all, hang it out over the edge and give it a shot. Sure, some of them were certifiably mad, but that’s no reason to deprive them of their identities.

This episode also featured guest performances by Kathleen Madigan, “International Man of Comedy” Greg Proops (Do not adjust your television set, that is how Bellamy Bill introduced him!) and Gilbert Gottfried.

Madigan seemed rushed. It was as if someone told her to knock out 45 seconds from her set just before showtime and she refused– opting instead to cram the entire planned set into her shrunken allotment. Either that, or she has changed her style recently and she is no longer waiting for the laugh. Whatever happened, she was speedy and not at all like we recall her. And the New Energetic Kathleen is not as enjoyable as the Slow Sarcastic Kathleen.

Greg Proops? Sorry. Nothing unexpected here. What would happen if there were a “black guy in the White House?” The ol’ “Bored Woman Having Sex” impression? The standard “All Dumb People Have Southern Accents” crutch? (This is the comedian constantly held up as the gold standard at Montreal year in and year out?) Perhaps the constraints of primetime network television resulted in a bland, predictable performance.

We assumed the producers went over the comics’ sets before they taped shows like this. If so, then why were both of the abovementioned guest sets allowed to mock Southerners extensively when one of the finalists (Reep) was a Southerner? Wouldn’t that be viewed as, at the very least, impolite? Unfair, maybe? They’re the contestants after all. They are the reason all of us– Bellamy Bill, the viewing audience, the studio audience, SHECKYmagazine– were present tonight. (And, technically, Crawford is a Southerner as well!) The entire episode had all the organization of a bar brawl. It seemed as though no one had any idea of who was supposed to do what next.

And why wouldn’t they have alerted Crawford that his set would be bleeped every time he mentioned Sprint? Here he is, doing his shot for the championship, and he’s bleeped no fewer than eight times!

And Gilbert Gottfried?!?!?

Calista Flockhart? Couldn’t he update that to Nicole Richie? “Witness?” We aren’t scrupulous about dropping dated bits– we believe that jokes can and should have a lengthy shelf life, especially bits that form part of a larger 60-minute set at a club. But an effort should be made to at least update the material! Especially if you’re only called upon to do four or five minutes, like Gottfried was this evening. Surely a five-minute set can be crafted that doesn’t contain 90 seconds that rely on a film that was released 22 years ago.

This episode was a disappointment as a comedy show. And as a reality show. And as a competition.

Reep’s set was coherent, cohesive, confident– it was essentially an audition. It was a monologue that had a theme, from start to finish. It was economical, it told a story or two and it involved physical humor. It was the highlight of the show. (It was odd that Reep’s set– turning heavily on accounts of his father’s snoring– could have very nearly been undermined by one of the Best of the Worst clips which showed a comic doing an extremely lame snoring bit. Perhaps the producers should look out for the contestants’ interests a little more carefully.)

And Reep’s set should hold up against Lavell’s set.

Crawford’s was not a championship set. He was all over the map, he seemed to have run out of material. He went right to food, but then he went into a lengthy bit about bad customer service that was strained and that saw him bleeped multiple times. It’s hard to capture the fancy of the home viewers with all that bleeping going on. Combined with the weakness of the material, it would be a shocker if he were to be the one who garners the majority of votes when they convene onstage a week from tonight.

What the hell was that “King of the One-Liners” competition thing at the start of the show?!? They lined up the final three comics, set a giant clock behind them at 1:30 while Belllamy Bill burbled some sort of rules and then the three in turn did one-liners. Or at least they were supposed to. By the time the whole thing degenerated into a confused mess, Crawford was doing an extended three- or four-line gag and Dee was good-naturedly yelling that Crawford was cheating. Two leggy babes in shimmering dresses came out and handed a bowling trophy to Crawford after Bellamy Bill hastily declared him the winner, based on audience response. No mention was made of Henny Youngman, so far as we could tell.

Rich Vos, Alonzo Bodden, Dane Cook, Tammy Pescatelli, Chris Porter, Todd Glass, Doug Benson, Roz and Jeffery Ross will be on the roast of the finalists, to be broadcast as part of next week’s finale.

No mention was made of the online component of LCS, so we assume that the “winner” will not be performing on the finale show. (Unless of course, mention was made in the hourlong repeat of last week’s episode that preceded the airing of tonight’s episode. We missed it.)

Early on in the process, The Male Half predicted that Reep might take it. We’ll see in a week whether he is correct.

Paul Ogata onstage at TakeOut Comedy in Hong Kong

It has been some time since SHECKYmagazine readers have had the pleasure of reading a Big Move column from Paul Ogata. The drought has ended with Ogata’s latest– a feature on the comedy scene in Hong Kong:

In the few times I’ve been there over the last three years, I’ve seen the scene grow from me being the only guy on stage in the entire country to meeting a thriving comedy community, teeming with the energy of new comics. Jami Gong now has regular shows on the weekends, as well as open mic nights for both English and Chinese language comedy during the week. He is, as he proudly proclaims, the only full-time comedy club in Asia.

Read the whole thing. Ogata will travel to Hong Kong in October to headline that country’s (and Asia’s) only comedy festival.

So says the NYT. Now we must put up with dim bulbs like Nikki Finke slagging Stewart every few weeks or so until February 24!

Get ready to hear Stewart blamed for the poor ratings. (Of course, they’ll compare him to Billy Crystal. And they’ll bemoan the fact that Crystal drew 55 million in 1998 and Stewart attracted only 38.9 million. Of course, they’ll disregard that Crystal had “Titanic” to give Oscars to. Stewart had “Brokeback Mountain.”)

Six more months of hype. Strap in.

FOS John Kensil alerted us to the Philadelphia Daily News obit.

LOOKING at Lou Marks you knew he couldn’t be anything but a comic.

Runty and bug-eyed with a funny haircut, Lou was meant for the stage, making people laugh, which he succeeded in doing for more than 60 years, mostly as a member of the famed comedy team of Fisher & Marks.

The Female Half saw the team perform at the world famous Steel Pier, accompanied by her grandpop. It was that same weekend that her grandfather died. (Read her column about his death here.) “Seeing that show was one of the last fun things I did with my grandpop,” she says.

From the obit:

They were Philadelphia’s Abbott and Costello, with Al the straight man and Lou the manic clown. They were as iconic as their pals, fellow Philadelphians Joey Bishop and Cozy Morley, for many decades of both high and low comedy.

Certainly they should. Somebody should.

There hasn’t been a comedy awards show on television for a long time.

For 14 years or so, George Schlatter Productions put together a telecast that honored the best in standup (and the best in comedy in general– movies, television, etc.) and America got to see our funniest people honor their peers. (For the definitive online article on the history of the ACA, hit this.)

It started in 1987. It limped to an inglorious end when, in the final year of the ceremony, no award was given to a standup comic for actually doing standup comedy. Ironic, considering that the whole thing started in the middle of the standup boom, when standup was becoming a cultural phenomenon and Hollywood was figuring out ways to subsume the standup business and capitalize on its popularity. Doubly ironic since Schlatter was quoted as saying, “Of all the awards, the Standup Comic Audience Award is our favorite. It is a chance to honor the performers who spend much of their careers developing their craft and working in the comedy clubs all over America.”

An examination of the winners (and nominees) over the course of the first fifteen years provides a fascinating, telescoped history of standup in the modern era. Three out the first four award for Funniest Male Standup were given to Robin Williams. In 1999, Etta May tied Felicia Michaels and Robert Schimmel tied John Pinette for the top awards, the first ties. Schlatter cited “irregularities in voting” as the reason for dropping the award the following year. After a meeting with standup comics and others at the Melrose Improv, Schlatter announced that the award would be restored the award for the 2001 ACA. But it never was. (According to this account, the “voter irregularities” occurred when one of the male nominees “passionately promoted his nomination on a nationally syndicated radio show” driving thousands to vote for him via the ACA website. Schlatter said he was forced to “choose between the best performer and the best promoter,” and thus a “tie” was declared, making everyone angry and no one happy.

It’s about time that someone– Comedy Central? E!? HBO? TBS?– started doing it again. One of the main reasons that film actors, film actresses and directors are held in such high esteem is the broadcast of the annual Oscars ceremony. The opinion of comedians would soar if a similar ceremony were to be aired.

And ratings, it is safe to say, would be stratospheric. Look at the numbers that the Comedy Central roasts get!

Head over to the MySpace site of the Andy Kaufman Award to find out sketchy details on this year’s competition.

Are you the next Andy? Beginning Thursday September 13th, show us your originality and humor by submitting your 5-minute tv-clean videos at TheAndyKaufmanAward.com or Ziddio.com/theandykaufmanaward.

Eight finalists will have a chance to perform at The Comedy Festival on Friday, November 16th at Caesars Palace and a shot at $5,000! Open to U.S. performers 18 years or older. Remember to keep it clean!

We didn’t make the above sites above links yet– there seems to be a delay in getting those sites up and running.

For now, the MySpace site has clips of past winners Kristen Schaal and Reggie Watts, “Creative comedic types who break the mold and reflect the spirit, originality, humor and courage of Andy Kaufman.” Scroll down the site further for a submission deadlines.

Also TCF-related: Ziddio reminds us that voting is under way for the online component of their Lucky 21 contest. Currently viewable are comics from last month’s New York Regional Semifinals. (Logging in may be required to view and/or vote.)

But wait, there’s more: “Jokesters who think they are just as funny or funnier than their stand-up club competitors also have the opportunity to compete through October 22. All they need to do is upload their best shtick to the Ziddio site.

SHECKYmagazine columnist and FOS Paul Ogata found the following on the On Camera Audiences website:

On Wednesday, September 12th we are taping the performance of the final three and on Wednesday, September 19th we are taping the season finale! Both of these shows are taping at The Wilshire Theater with an arrival time of 11 AM and an approximate 2:15 PM finish.

ALSO, if you love comedy roasts, Last Comic Standing is taping a roast next Tuesday, September 11th at the Wilshire Theater. The roast is hosted by Bill Bellamy and featured roasters include the infamous Jeff Ross, Alonzo Bodden and many more; ROASTING THIS YEAR’S THREE FINALISTS!

The UK Guardian reports on a study by British scientists who found that the rockstar lifestyle is bad for one’s health. What is the British equivalent of “Duh!”

By comparing the lives– and more importantly, deaths– of rock and pop stars with the rest of the population they have found that in the first five years after chart success, the mortality rate of performers shoots up to three times that of the rest of us. And living fast as a rock megastar does make you die young– of the 100 performers in the sample who died early, the average age was 42 for North American stars and just 35 for those in Europe.

One of the eggheads said, “the data could be used to prevent rock’n’roll deaths.” Accidents, overdoses and cancer were high on the list of causes, while violence and suicide were low on the list.

On the other hand, AP is running an item on a Japanese study found that getting up early will kill you.

“Rising early to go to work or exercise might not be beneficial to health, but rather a risk for vascular diseases,” said an abstract of the study.

So: Living like a rock star will kill you and living like a scrupulously responsible adult will kill you as well.

Comics seem to live a lifestyle that’s right down the middle. We’d love to see the stats on comedians. There are exceptions, sadly, but the majority seem to live well into their 80s! We’re like cockroaches! George Burns, most notably, had a career surge at 79 and lived to be 100!

They say that laughter is the best medicine, but doling out the laughter seems like a pretty good health plan, too. Of course, not everyone is convinced.

A guest column in yesterday’s Toronto Star trots out the lauging on the outside/crying on the inside/comics are suicidal horse manure. It reaches it’s low point here:

Maintaining confidence after having your success judged by a different crowd every night is like having emotional stability after being cheated on by every other partner you’ve dated.

What’s really horrific is that the column was penned by a comedian. And then we read a paragraph that begins with:

The more you think about it, the easier it is to understand the reasons some stand-ups find it hard to roll out of bed in the morning.

The case made by Sabrina Jalees (even though it’s made partially in jest) is thin and based on a shaky foundation. And, were it actually, genuinely funny, we might let the mushy premises slide. But we know comedians, by and large, at least in our experience, are not suicidal, morose, insecure or fearful. If they were, they wouldn’t be comedians. Let’s face it, the job requires the exact opposite of those qualities. We’ve grown accustomed to the folks in the press and the pop culture slagging us this way. We cringe when we see a comic joining in on the stomping.

The Male Half once said, in a column on the subject of bombing, that comedians possess a unique set of survival skills. Those that lack these skills either never attempt comedy or wash out quickly.

Other comics… will tell you, with a straight face, that they have never bombed. They are to be forgiven, for deep within the grey folds of each comic’s brain is a chemical or a process or a device which enables us to forget the truly horrific performances. It is a necessary thing and a useful one. For, if we were to remember vividly each and every awful onstage experience, however could we summon the courage to mount the stage again? This ability to forget might be the thing that separates standup comics from people who “tried it once and never did it again.” After all, the possibility of the bomb is what prevents most people from trying standup in the first place. If you can’t get past the fear of it, you never try in the first place. If you can’t get over one, you never continue your quest! And forgetting is the best way to get over one.

Perhaps this defense mechanism also serves as a shield from The Grim Reaper.

Amy Schumer GONE!

Somebody in the PR department at NBC or at Mohegan Sun goofed up! (And before you send in any HATemail, just go back and re-read our post and the comments on the post– we reiterate that we were merely speculating and that the very fact that folks might, for a second, believe that the contest was fixed indicates that the show has a serious lack of credibility. And it has since Day One.)

On to tonight’s episode!

Tonight’s theme was “Comics Are Fuck-Ups In Real Jobs!” They looked back at the final contestants and had them return to an old job. Each video package that resulted was edited for maximum hilarity– Dee as a waiter, Crawford as a crossing guard, Reep as a tire changer. From the looks of things, only Reep got paired with a decent segment producer, as his was the only one approaching funny.

We always imagine what we would do in these “B-roll” situations. Neither one of us has any semblance of a rollicking family situation to come back to ’round these parts. The Female Half has had exactly one job– delivering the Philadelphia Daily News (when she was 12!) for one year (a job that doesn’t even exist any more!) and the neighborhood she grew up in is so dangerous that even a production crew from Cops would say, “No fucking way!” The Male Half’s last legit job was (Yawn!) as a managing editor of a monthly magazine (that hasn’t existed since about 1990 or so.) In short, we’d be a producer’s nightmare!

Bellamy Bill reminded us about the You’re Funny component of the NBC website Last Comic Standing promotion where they asked regular Joe’s to send in clips of themselves being funny. And then, a winner would be chosen (somehow… we’re not sure) and that winner would then be flown to Los Angeles to (“maybe,” says Bellamy Bill, inserting multiple qualifiers) be featured alongside the final two contestants and perform on the final show of the season.

So far as we can tell, very few folks have submitted their “funny.”

“Dust off your prop trunk, dig up your rubber chicken, and videotape your best funny,” said the site. They’re hedging their bets at NBC– apparently the preponderance of clips from people doing impressions in the basement has discouraged the network from playing up the part of the prize where the perpetrator gets to appear before 8 or 9 million primetime viewers. (Perhaps it’s that release they make you sign– From what we can discern, it grants NBC Universal rights to your gag in perpetuity, on mulitple platforms, even via technology that hasn’t been invented, even if someone invents a time machine.)

While we’re on the site– it appears that you can view the B-roll that they shot of Ralph Harris that was left out of last week’s episode. (This also probably means that you’ll be able to see the unused video that they shot of Schumer sorting mail, or whatever her last gig was.)

Amy Schumer played the gender card once again. Shortly after she was eliminated, when she made a final statement to the crowd (actually, two statements were made– her first was, “Support live comedy!”). She also said, “If a girl takes the stage, give her a chance… she may surprise you!” And thousands of people who have never heard of Phyllis Diller, thousands more who think Moms Mabely was a professional softball player and still thousands upon thousands more who think that Roseanne Barr is the local lesbian pub… applauded wildly.

We’re reminded of a quote from Rusty Warren— “a girl who took the stage” in countless nightclubs, singing bawdy ditties and selling millions of vinyl records back about 1960 or so. At a breakfast in Las Vegas in 2001, when the Female Half of the Staff asked Warren how to overcome the perception that female comics shouldn’t be doing risque material, Warren shot back, with a grin, “I blazed a trail… What the fuck is wrong with you?!” The Female Half found it to be “wildly liberating.” The truth of it was huge. So… in the spirit of one generation handing down priceless knowledge acquired from another generation, The Female Half (who had been doing comedy for 18 years prior to Schumer mounting the stage for the first time) would like to tell Schumer: “I also blazed a trail… What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Josh Blue and Harland Williams were tonight’s guest sets. Blue made a point of saying (at least 2-1/2 times) that he was better than the four remaining finalists. But, of course, he was joking! Yeah! That’s it! He was having a laugh!

Williams did a bit that was very similar to a bit that The Female Half’s been doing for some time. And she’s not in the mood to give up the joke yet– especially considering that she “just wrote stuff to go around it,” says she. So, in the interest of setting the record straight, we present this clip:

(Clip removed due to technical difficulties!)

Next week’s guest comics are Greg Proops and Kathleen Madigan.

Remember this: When Kathleen Madigan takes the stage, give her a chance. She might surprise you.

Addendum: Crawford did his diabetes bit. So, we thought we would take this opportunity to educate folks about “The Sugar” by linking to this interview. It’s from Kerri Morrone’s blog (“Diabetes doesn’t define me, but it helps explain me.”) and on it, she interviews comics Bill Kirchenbauer and Brad Slaight in their Captain Glucose and Meter Boy personae!

The Male Half found a shelf-load of Brooks-Eckerd brand peanuts (“Party Peanuts!”) at the Eckerd down the road. They’re switching the Eckerds over to RiteAids, so they’re slashing prices on items like this– He paid 24 cents for a 6 oz. can! To paraphrase Killer Beaz, “Stock up!”

The Female Half decided to crack one open the other day when– Horrors!– she found an unidentified object resting atop the party peanuts! We calmed down after determining it wasn’t… organic! (Hardly a quarter passes when you don’t hear about someone finding a digit in their McSalad or a mouse in the chili!)

We poked at it and examined it and determined it was something that got shook loose during the Party Peanut Packing Process. Perhaps a machine part. A robot finger!

The lady on the other end of the RiteAid customer service line actually guffawed when the Female Half trotted out her Robot Finger Theory. We’ve been told to take the offending can and mechanical digit back to the point of purchase for a full refund and a free can of nuts!

Brian McTavish’s feature article on the sudden wealth of standup comedy clubs in Kansas City and surrounding area is thorough, comprehensive and full of insight. The Improv, a new Stanford & Sons and a newcomer, Famous Johnnys Comedy Club, are all angling for the comedy dollar in K.C., making that town one of the funniest in the country.

Brian Shields, GM of the two-year-old Improv in that town says:

“I don’t try to take their comics, and I don’t think they try to take ours,” he said. “There are enough great comics out there with enough drawing power, with TV credits and whatnot, to supply both us and Stanfords.”

The Star also links to a video that includes a brief interview with comic (and Famous Johnnys proprietor) Clint Warren about the new Overland Park venue, which opened in the space formerly occupied by Stanford & Sons.

In addition to all the usual huge names (Rock, Seinfeld, etc.), the organizers of The Comedy Festival (the HBO one, held in Vegas) are promising to bring in John Oliver, Bill Burr, Marc Maron, Zach Galifianakis, Jamie Kennedy & Nick Swardson, Artie Lange, The Sopranos star Steve Schirripa, Steve Byrne, Bobby Lee, Dr. Ken Jeong and Kevin Shea. So says the Reuters article detailing the lineup for this year’s Fest in the desert.

A phoner with Rock yielded the following:

Rock also said that thanks to cable TV, audiences feel similar to performers from one city to the next these days. “I played London, and it felt like Atlanta,” he said. “It’s cable. Everybody gets the same stuff.”

In his phoner, Seinfeld said he felt the standup scene overall was “pretty good.” Interesting that the question even came up.