There’s a news item that’s linked off of Drudge about a woman who is having her gigantic breast implants removed.

Sheyla Hershey’s fight to save her M cup breast implants came to an end Thursday, as she underwent surgery in Richmond, Tex., to have them removed…

We noticed the story was from the Fox affiliate in Houston. A red flag went up. Why did this woman seem familiar?

Sheyla Hershey? Hmmm… more like Sheyla Almeida. That’s what her name was in May of 2008 when we mentioned her in the pages of this magazine.

From our coverage of Last Comic Standing, Season 6, Episode 1, on May 30, 2008:

They spent forty minutes in Houston. And they wasted about 8 per cent of that on Sheyla Almeida, this year’s Triana Gamaza. (We only mention her here because we know that folks will be searching for her. Or they’ll be searching for “big tits houston.” Either way, they’ll end up here.) We recall seeing a video package on Almeida about three weeks ago on Fox News. (We assume it was carried on a number of newscasts throughout the land.) Her publicist managed to get her plenty of coverage when she announced that she was going to enlarge her already large breasts even further. That same publicist managed to get her on NBC in prime time.

Welcome Google searchers far and wide!

“I don’t think I’m ready for comedy, because I’m a real actress,” she said at what we hope was the very last 8 seconds of her standup career.

For those of you who think that Season 7 of Last Comic Standing wasn’t a significant improvement over previous seasons of the show, we present Sheyla Almeida/Hershey as a reminder of just how far off track the show had wandered. A woman “who was trying to achieve fame for having the largest breasts in the world” was somehow able to “charm” the producers of the show into wasting valuable time on her instead of showcasing up and coming Houston comedians.

Notice that nowhere in today’s coverage of Hershey/Almeida’s plight is it mentioned that she is a standup comic. That’s because she never was. (And, of course, the folks at LCS back in 2008 probably knew this.)

Many years ago, we posted about the statue erected in honor of comedian Cozy Morley. (We theorized at the time that it may one of the few, if not the only, statue erected in honor of a comedian. Since then, we’ve stumbled upon the giant Will Rogers statue in Oklahoma… so we guess that counts as a statue erected to a comedian… and we suppose there are few more out there.)

We were on a mini-vacation the past couple days.  In Wildwood, NJ.  So, we set out Tuesday morning on our bicycles to find the statue.  We found it.  The concrete block at the base is allegedly a chunk of the front step of the original Cozy Morley’s nightclub:

Cozy Morley statue outside Westy's in North Wildwood, NJ (Photo credit: Traci Skene)

Anyway, the folks in North Wildwood, NJ, a shore town in the southern part of the state, honored Morley with the bronze likeness on the spot where Morley’s nightclub once stood. From 1959 through 1988, Morley entertained thousands. The shows are described as having had five acts, with Morley hosting, all backed by a full orchestra. The place was a classic shore dive– a clapboard exterior, patrons packed in like sardines (capacity: 1,200 people… but don’t tell the fire marshal)– but the customers were ecstatic and Morley’s legend grew. Stars often stopped by– Joey Bishop and Julius LaRosa are mentioned in any accounts of the summertime revues. The Male Half recalls tiny ads in the local daily, The Courier-Post, complete with a caricature of Morley with a packed lineup, listed in 8-pt. type, regularly appearing in that paper’s entertainment section.

The story gets weird sometime in the mid- to late-80s, when the Internal Revenue Service came a-knockin’. We vaguely recall what happened. Details are not easily found on the WWW, but, from what we recall, Morley (who allegedly owned the venue in North Wildwood, along with other property like motels) was forced to settle with the feds and it pretty much broke up the party. And we vaguely recall some sort of court order that forbade Morley from performing at his old venue. It was knocked down shortly after and an Irish pub now occupies the site.

Afterward, Morley continued to perform in the casino showrooms and lounges in Atlantic City. (The Halves of the Staff saw him perform to a packed lounge at the Trump Marina back in about 1994 or so. We don’t remember the circumstances, but we do recall that the audience was mostly seniors and the material was jaw-droppingly incorrect, politically– jokes about Irish, Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Poles, etc. And it was KILLING! Also sprinkled throughout were “naughty” gags about sex. It was a real throwback.) He continued performing in A.C. as recently as 2000, maybe more recently. We were standing up, near the bar. I think we were waiting for some other show to start, possibly Penn & Teller, in the main showroom.

We read a profile (sometime in the past six or seven years) in the Philadelphia Inquirer that was sufficiently reverent, but that also detailed how Morley was having trouble remembering his act. (The story described how he would occasionally consult his longtime drummer for cues. It was a heartbreaking account of a performer who had the will to perform but lacked certain necessary tools.)

We understand that Morley lives in the next town over, with his wife, Bobbie. We should look him up.

The man knew his way around an audience. He was comfortable as hell onstage and he had hours of material at his disposal– much of it street jokes, a lot of it probably written during the nearly three decades of taming hot, sweaty crowds of Philadelphians at the No. Wildwood club. He had a thick Philly accent and a relaxed, conversational approach. The word “institution” is thrown around loosely, but in the case of Cozy Morley, it’s fitting.

The anonymous xtranormal vidster provocateur has posted the third in the series. This one is entitled “Stand Up Comedy is NOT Pretty– Part 3– Practice Makes Perfect!” The description: “An open mic’er practices his set in front of a fellow open mic’er.”

It’s a two-shot. The fellow who utters those timeless words, “Great. That sounds fair” in Part One is back, and this time, he’s accompanied by a fellow female comic. He does 1:15 of terrible material, then solicits (and gets) very positive feedback. Then he learns that she will be emceeing the weekend shows…

Part One (and, to a lesser extent, Part Two), were inspired and well-written. Not so much with Part Three. And we’re not sure this one has much of a clear point. Is the Anonymous Video Maker trashing open mikers? That’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

(We say, let’s check in our open mike friend in a year or so… he just might have a tight 8 or 9 minutes… and he’ll have lost that backwards cap and he’ll maybe have a clear point of view. Is that not what open mikes are for? And he just might get savvy enough to figure out that, though the “stanky cooch” bit may have “killed” last week, it’s probably the bit that’s keeping him from gigging on the weekends. In other words, we’re not so sure that trashing open mikers is a very fulfilling endeavor.)

Is his point that open mikers are insincere when they encourage their colleagues? Again, this wouldn’t be earth-shattering. Is he illustrating delusional comics? Frustration at progress that happens at an uneven pace? The Schadenfreude that might run rampant throughout an amateur community? Like we said, open mikers don’t make for satisfying targets. This installment might be satisfying to other open-mikers, but for us, it’s wince-inducing… and not in a good way.

We all committed some or most of the errors that Mr. GreatThatSoundsFair commits. But, somehow or another, we all (or most of us, anyway) make corrections– either through a mentor or advice from a colleague or through studying professional comics or through trial and error– and we end up being much better comedians. (And we look at old videotapes and wince! And we can’t believe how unpolished we were when we started… and this makes it hard to bring the hammer down on open mikers. And we much prefer to bring the hammer down on the folks who run the open mike stages– folks who wield the power– rather than the folks who struggle to find themselves on those stages– the powerless amateurs.)

Is the object of the video to trash “writers’ meetings?” Having never attended such a thing, we’re not familiar with what goes on there. (And we’ve never done our set in front of an audience of one, in a loft, in front of a bunch of musical instruments.) Maybe we’re missing something.

We got a cryptic message from the author (the “director?”) of the videos. Stay tuned for the “reveal.”

The following post was supposed to appear on August 22… but, for some reason or combination of reasons, it was saved as a draft and not published.

We trekked up to Doylestown last night. Our aim was to do six to eight minutes of new material… or to “re-purpose” old material or generally try out new modes and methods… and to do so in a setting that closely resembled comedy club conditions. (So we secured spots at that town’s Comedy Cabaret, on Saturday evening’s 9 PM show.)

Don’t misunderstand: In years between our respective open mike phases and the recent past, we have certainly written new material. But our method of breaking it in– of refining it and editing it and finding a place for it in our presentations– has been to simply perform it in the middle of a regular set, to introduce it somewhere in the midst of an actual combat situation, i.e., during paid gigs.

In August, however (as we posted last week), we decided to get onstage in a variety of venues and in a variety of situations– Like open mikes or weekend guest sets– and plunge head first into the writing process.

Last night, we had varying degrees of success and we learned some things. But other things still confounded us or remained a mystery. On the ride home, we kicked things around, came to some conclusions and marveled at the fact that, even with a quarter-century of writing and performing under each of our belts, it was still so difficult to conceive of a bit, write it out (in our heads or on paper), do it… and get laughs immediately.

What is it that makes the conception and delivery of new stuff so devlishly hard? So perplexing? Why doesn’t it just come out our mouths fully formed and with as much confidence as the stuff that’s already broken in?

An hour later, we were pulling into the parking lot of the Crowne Plaza (we decided to stop by Monster Mania and hang briefly with Jason Pollock) listening to a re-broadcast of The Dennis Miller Show on a local AM station when Miller recounted his experience with a recent theater gig. He said that the show was sold out, with an audience of 1,200. He said that he was keenly interested in breaking 15 to 30 minutes of new material for an upcoming HBO special. However, he said he realized, as he was doing the new material, that these 1,200 people were fans and that, though the material was doing well, they were there to see Dennis Miller and that they no doubt expected to see him kick the kind of ass they were accustomed to seeing him kick. He said that he realized that he wasn’t doing the new material with quite the same confidence that he does the more familiar stuff. So, he made an executive decision. He “called an audible,” and decided to pull out at about the fifteen minute mark and “turn on the burners” a “fire up the Millennium Falcon” and kick the proceedings up a notch or two by abandoning the experimental bits and going back to the tried and true.

We needed to hear this. So often during our recent experimental sets, we found ourselves torn between appearing competent and appearing tentative. So accustomed to mounting the stage and immediately and efficiently kickstarting an audience, it felt somehow wrong or awkward or to behave in a way that was counter. It doesn’t help to start out the exploratory set with a couple surefire jokes… that only makes the ensuing transition that much more jarring. We experienced a feeling that we hadn’t felt since those early, often gut-wrenching days of open mikes. If someone of Miller’s caliber and experience and stature gets similar feelings, then why, we wondered, were we being so hard on ourselves? Apparently, it’s the nature of the standup beast.

The Female Half turned to the Male Half and said, “It never ends, does it?” The Male Half replied, “Why should it?”

What we do is hard.

In the early days, one is both distressed– but ultimately and oddly comforted by– the expectation of suck. That is, in the early days, it is not expected that a budding standup comic will kill… quite the opposite, it is expected that he or she will eat it more often than not. It is that “nothing to lose” mindset that lends itself to experimentation, to exploration, to prodigious output. There’s plenty of latitude for suckitude. But that narrows, more and more, as the bombs thin out and the kill takes over. At least in our experience.

Some folks, seasoned professionals, have nerves of steel. They can stand up there for minutes at a time– at a “workout night,” at an open mike, maybe even during a paid gig– and polish a work in progress, risking great stretches of silence, maybe even incurring the wrath of a great portion of the audience. We are not those people. It is not in us. We are cautious. Overly so? Perhaps. We’re cautious and analytical. Eventually, we get there, it just takes us longer.

“Sofla” is the portmanteau– or is it simply a contraction?– that’s short for South Florida. And it refers to the community of comedians who toil in that region roughly bound by West Palm on the north down to Miami on the south.

We theorized that the video mini-phenomenon “Stand Up Comedy is NOT Pretty” came from somewhere in Florida, specifically from South Florida. While investigating that connection, we stumbled upon the whole Crackenberry phenomenon.

There’s a person calling himself “Harold Crackenberry,” who is, in the words of one comedian, “terrorizing” the comedians of that market, through a series of Facebook status updates, videos and personal appearances. He’s also put Harold Crackenberry stickers on cars and in other places and has, according to one member of the community, “come up with creative ways to tell South Florida comics that they suck.”

A typical Crackenberry Facebook posting:

Here’s an idea for all of you aspiring South Florida comics…walk away. No one would notice except for a few friends that would get over it faster than you would like to admit to yourself.

There follows the embed of the now-famous “Stand Up Comedy is NOT Pretty” xtranormal video we posted about on the 23rd of August. Says Crackenberry of the video: “The clubs have to use techniques like this because you suck.” (He follows up with the cryptic message that he has “made a deal with the Improv for my very own show. I’ll let you… know when the show is so you can experience what real entertainment is like.” The Improv referred to here is the one inside the Seminole Hard Rock Casino, also known as the Ft. Lauderdale Improv.)

Theories abound. One has it that Crackenberry is not merely one person, but a group of people.

He (or one of his co-conspirators) even went so far as to appear at one open mike show, wearing the head of a fox (ostensibly as “Harold Crackenberry’s lawyer”), and mount the stage to play an audio tape (ostensibly from Crackenberry himself) which insulted comics and contained a filthy, confrontational poem.

We’re mystified as to why the emcee didn’t just reach over and rip the fox head off of Crackenberry!

Not all the comics are terrorized, however. Some admit that many of the stunts and postings are clever and that they demonstrate a knowledge of the scene and it’s denizens. At least one comic wrote on Crackenberry’s FB wall and practically begged the hoaxster to review his set and “give me your worst. I mean, your absolute worst.” So, it seems that one’s annoyance level at Crackenberry may depend on how long one has been plugging away at standup or how much confidence one has in one’s act.

One Sofla comic, Johann Luna, has even posted an answer rap, called “Crackenberry’s A Little Soft Bitch,” which challenges the Foxheaded one to reveal his identity or at least get up onstage and do some jokes.

It’s been going on since February. We only found out about it recently.

One Sofla comic, Will Lopez, going by the name of “Soflunny,” posted an “answer video,” using the Hitler Downfall format:

We must say this might be one of the strangest things we’ve ever seen in standup. We also must say that we’ve never been fans of anonymous criticism. We can only hope that, after some time has passed, that Crackenberry will reveal his true identity and “take the heat.” As it now stands, the entire hoax is causing the Sofla comics to speculate as to who Crackenberry is and accusing this comic or that comic of being the man behind the vitriol. It’s never a good idea when a person or persons is falsely accused. But we suppose that people need someone to blame. The idea of an anonymous, seemingly omnipotent entity that appears to know everyone– and has no compunction about saying mean things about members of the community– is disconcerting. And it has the potential to cause deep, permanent riffs in what seems to be a healthy, somewhat vibrant scene. It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that the perpetrator is a member of the community he is tormenting. Rather like an arsonist who is a member of the fire department and who seeks great pleasure in not just setting the blaze, but witnessing the aftermath and helping to put out the fire. What fun would it be to cause such turmoil among the comics if you weren’t there to see and hear the results of your handiwork?

Why doesn’t this guy go the route of Patrick Milligan of CringeHumor.net? Milligan says the most ghastly things about the comics he doesn’t like. But then he fiercely promotes those acts that he enjoys. And he produces shows that feature those acts.

We just hope that Crackenberry doesn’t have plans to franchise the venture. Something like this has the potential to destroy some of the less robust open mike/up-and-comer communities around the continent.

UPDATE: In the comments, reader Spike Rizzo provides the ABC News item, via Associated Press, that confirms Schimmel’s death.

UPDATED: Schimmel’s death was confirmed early this morning via his Jeff Schimmel’s Facebook page. Jeff Schimmel is, according to IMDB, the brother Robert Schimmel. So far, however, there doesn’t seem to be any confirmation elsewhere. As of 9 AM EDT, his Wikipedia page hasn’t been updated to indicate his death. None of the wire services have confirmed the death. One site, Zap2It.com, “confirms” his death, but doesn’t cite a source.

It could be that there’s a lag time between the word getting out from, say, a family member, and the wire services because we’re in the middle of a holiday weekend. But, so far, Facebook seems to be the only source for confirmation of the story. There seems to be a bit of confusion. There are a handful of sites, but they’re not credible media sources.

As soon as AP or a Phoenix or Los Angeles paper reports the death, we’ll link to it.

From our post last night at 9 PM EDT Friday:

We are hearing that Robert Schimmel did not recover from the injuries sustained in a car accident Thursday, August 27.

We are working to confirm the report of his death. We have information from only one source so far.

We’ve noticed the information being posted on various Facebook status reports.

Stay tuned.

That’s the title of a recent Paul F. Tompkins blog entry. Is he planning to form a group of warriors to follow him into battle against Persian “God-King” Xerxes?

No, not at all!

“300” just happens to be the number of people Tompkins will go out of his way to perform for.

Tompkins explains:

I’ve become fed up with the comedy club system for reasons that would cause you to self-murder should I elaborate. I don’t want that to happen. I have long thought, There’s got to be a better way than this. But I had no idea what that way could be until my experience in Toronto.

So here it is: you provide the audience, I’ll provide the show.

There follows rather detailed directions on how Tompkns enlists the manpower of rabid and resourceful fans to produce himself into a show through their use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media (and maybe even cellphones… maybe even landlines!).

The proposition is simple: If you can get 300 people in your city to commit to see Paul F. Tompkins at a small theater or nightclub, he’ll fly in and do a show.

It’s “DIY,” with a dollop of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” if you absolutely insist on having things explained to you using titles from Peter Gabriel songs and Beatles songs.

As with most brilliant ideas, this one is simple and elegant. And Tompkins, via the blog post, tells everyone how to do it!

The genesis of the Tompkins 300 Method was a booking at Atlanta’s Laughing Skull Lounge. Tompkins had great plans for the gig, including videotaping all the shows at the intimate, 74-seat room for the purposes of a television special. One problem: Ticket sales were nearly non-existent!  Panic city?  No!

Tompkins tweeted about his predicament (and requested that the tweet be re-tweeted) and, before long, he had the requisite number of people attending his shows. So far, it’s just a rather ordinary, “Ain’t-social-media-great?” story, but it gets better when a fan from Toronto, a comedian named Bob Kerr, contacts Tompkins, asking him if he’s going to perform in Toronto any time soon.

And the method was born.

He spells it out in some detail.

His update says that he’s booked six more shows using the method.

Is “PFT300” for everyone? No. It is only realistic for someone who is at least somewhat of a draw. It’s not for the mid-level headliner who hasn’t any recent television credits. Those comics can, by tapping into their modest Facebook or Twitter followings, augment the turnout already generated by a comedy club’s own marketing effort– should there actually be one!– but it takes a bit of drawing power to work Tompkins’ Twitter magic.

But the implications are awesome.  You can read dozens of inspiring articles in Wired or on Boing Boing or CNET or Gizmodo on the splendor and the wonder of social media.  But those articles never seem to turn the corner from theory into real, tangible, anecdotal illustrations of just how the Brave New World works in practice.  Sometimes it takes a story like this one– that takes place not just in the real world, but in the real standup world that we’re intimately familiar with– to finally drive home the practicality of the newfangled media.

There were dozens of stories of how Dane Cook tapped his legions of Facebook friends to pack arenas, but the numbers always seemed so… overwhelming.  This is different… the scale is manageable and realistic.

In a previous post, we lamented the fact that so few comedy club websites offered clear contact info and instructions on what materials to provide and how to provide them.  And we’re dismayed that so few comedy club websites fail to take advantage of something as simple as posting a YouTube clip of “This Week’s Headliner” and “Next Week’s Headliner.”*

So we’re not optimistic that the venues will be adopting social media in any meaningful way any time soon.

So it falls to the talent to implement the new technology.  And it’s schemes like Tompkins’ that fire the imagination and lead the way.
_ _ _ _ _ _

* Part of the blame for this falls to the comedians for not offering a decent clip– a brief, well-framed video with clear audio.  It has become far more important than the  headshot… or will become so soon enough.  But, again, technology is making such things as clear video with good audio practical and affordable.  Flip cams, inexpensive editing software, cheap, compact digital stereo recorders put the video well within reach of most comics. And, with quality printers and inexpensive inks, color headshots– cranked out on an as-needed basis, or offered via the websie in a PDF format (for downloading and printing on the comedy club end)– there’s no excuse not to offer a color headshot.

It’s called “Dealing With Agent.” It’s the latest in a series of videos that are popping up that seek to illuminate the complex relationship between talent and venue or, in this case, between venue and talent’s representation.

It’s created by Marshall Chiles, a comedian and a booker who books Atlanta’s Laughing Skull Lounge and The Funny Farm.

Coincidentally, we received an email from Bert Haas of Zanies in Chicago, who asked if anyone was booking a comedy club the old way– offering quality standup comedy and only occasionally offering big-name talent. That letter and our thoughts are below the video.

Bert Haas, Executive Vice President, Zanies Comedy Clubs, Inc., writes:

I am just curious if anyone books comedy clubs anymore?

By that I mean a club that people attend because of the club itself and not to see a particular comedian?

In the 80’s and early 90’s there were entire chains (Zanies, Funny Bone, Punchline, Laff Stop) that were attended by customers that wanted to be in the club. This allowed the club to book great comedians that were not necessarily that well known.

Every four or six weeks the club might bring in a celebrity to oil the publicity machine.

Now it seems as if every club is booking “name” acts every week.

What happened to comedy clubs that sold tickets on their own and did not depend upon the headliner to sell tickets? It strikes me that these new rooms are just venues with no identity or individuality.

Any thoughts or explanations?

To which we reply:

We’ve been wondering this for quite some time (and we’ve written about it once or twice in the pages of this magazine).

Back when the business collapsed (1993 may have been the nadir), many wondered if standup comedy was “over.” Of course, this was ludicrous. It was just a provocative meme that various panic merchants and media types liked to peddle. Standup comedy, we said, was enjoyed too much by too many to simply disappear. It had become too much a part of the pop culture over the previous 20 years (or the previous 40 years, if you go back to the Lenny Bruce/Bob Newhart/Shelley Berman era… or the previous 80 years if you go back to the vaudeville era!) to simply go away as a fad or a passing fancy might.

We predicted (and with eerie accuracy) that it would come back in the following form: The stronger comedy clubs would remain and get stronger. Small 100- to 150-seat rooms would book mid-level comedians on theri schedules in addition to booking, say, folk acts, indy label singer-songwriters and other musical acts. Larger venues in the 750- to 1,200-seat range would bring in the comics who established themselves in the 80s and 90s via exposure on cable and network television. Well, whaddya know. That’s precisely what happened.

Now, of course, the transition hasn’t been smooth. And that has resulted in some quirks, like that which is contained in Mr. Haas’ letter– conventional comedy clubs that book “name” acts every week. These hybrids– these conventional comedy clubs that cough up a steady and wide stream of cash in order to present a (rather top-heavy) bill, week in and week out– are something that we couldn’t have foreseen. (And, from what we hear on the street, the formula is meeting with varying degrees of success.)

We are puzzled, as is Haas, however, at the seeming demise of the comedy club that offers as its main product Good Solid Standup Comedy. For some time, we have wondered exactly what has happened to the business model that depended on a certain sort of trust– a pact between club and patron– that was, simply stated: We offer good standup from people you may not have heard of, but you can rest assured that we offer the very best that we can find. The corollary was: We know our customers and we know what our customers like and they trust us. It takes some energy and imagination. The booker isn’t so much a talent booker as a curator. He watches DVDs, he attends festivals (and actually attends some shows!), he asks trusted acts if they know of anyone who might appeal to the club’s crowds. He also considers offers from agents, but carefully.

The other pact– that between club and talent– states that the club treats the talent well, pays them fairly and seeks to make the experience of performing a pleasant one, in a room that is above-average technically and aesthetically.

We like that model. Of course, there’s a certain degree of self-interest at work here: We fit right into a club with that policy. Notwithstanding our recent appearances on primetime network television, we still can’t be considered a draw in any meaningful way. But, due to our lengthy and extensive experience performing in a multitude of venues and locations, we are certain to deliver in such a venue. And, we are eminently marketable– that is, we have a good story, a “hook” upon which any decent marketing people can hang a decent press release, often resulting in ink in the daily paper or a hit in the local free weekly or a spirited radio appearance, all of which serves to not only get people in the house on that particular week, but makes thousands of other impressions which raises the profile of the club in the mid- and long-term.

It would seem like a sound strategy to take three-quarters of that money spent on comics with major television credits and pump a good portion of it into marketing and advertising– in radio, or in the dying local newspaper– and build up the customer base. We seem to recall that people who go to comedy clubs are prone to a certain kind of low-level fanatacism– Once they get hooked, they show up over and over again, rather like sports fans. And they proselytize. (“A satisfied customer is our best advertising.”)

We don’t know all of this for a fact. It’s mostly conjecture.

Does there exist, out there, any hard data on these matters? Has any club ever taken marketing so seriously that they’ve gone to the trouble of actually surveying their customers and finding out any information about them regarding frequency of visits, income, etc? Has any club ever polled the audience beyond “How did you hear about us?” or “Who would you like to see appear at the Comedy Club?” (We suspect that much of the decisions are based not on data, but on anecdotal evidence.)

We suspect that the “superstar” model (for lack of a better term) is viewed as a legitimate way to do business and that it is supported by a complex spreadsheet that takes into account the number of seats, the ticket price, the number of drinks sold, etc. (As for the idea that those clubs are lacking in identity, we would counter that, if they’re in a market where there is competition, then their “identity” is that of “the club that brings in name talent.” And that no further defining is needed.)

Of course, in the battle for hearts and minds, after all the gobs of cash spent on comedy stars, it quite often comes down to the battle of YouTube clips. No matter how much money Club X paid for their Comedy Central darling, Mr. and Mrs. Comedy Club Patron are more and more frequently making their spending decision on who is funnier in the YouTube clip on the respective comedy club websites. We hear it and see it when we hit the road. (We’re not bragging here, just making an observation.) Perhaps the internet will be the catalyst. Perhaps, if the customer has more autonomy and more information, the power will shift, there will be less of what the economists call “friction” in the transaction between customer and venue. (Of course, clubs can only benefit from the data if they collect it, analyze it properly and then act on it properly. It’s a long shot.)

If they’re in a market with no competition… and they’re still spending a fortune on big names… we’re not so sure that’s wise. Perhaps it’s a preemptive measure designed to keep competitors from even thinking about coming into the market.

In any event, it seems as though the word on the street is that some comedy clubs are growing a bit leery of the big-ticket acts. Either because they don’t sell tickets or they don’t deliver once onstage. Or both. In this economy, the old model might be looking better and better.

Or not. We hear more stories like the one in the video… which end with the club agreeing to the exorbitant fees and demands… and ultimately being dissatisfied with the results. (And then we hear of yet another club doing the same. And then another.)

It’s part 2, from the anonymous person who created the xtranormal video we posted last week. This time, it’s from the club owner’s perspective. (It’s a bit more nuanced than Reed’s “How to get booked at a comedy club.”) We especially enjoyed the moment, at about the 4:00 mark, where there’s a two-shot and the exasperated (but still very patient) club owner breaks the fourth wall. He almost seems sympathetic in this one.)

We’re posting a lot about booking and promotion and “bringer” shows lately. Hmmm… Stay tuned.

There’s absolutely no reason why a comedy club shouldn’t have clear, detailed booking information for comedians on the comedy club website.

We’re stunned by how many comedy clubs don’t provide this for comics seeking work.

We got to thinking and talking about this recently. And we focused on it even more when we watched the robot video “How to get booked at a comedy club” (See posting below). We pondered the relationship between a club booker and the talent. Not for the first time, mind you.

Since we’ve never had an agent or a manager, we’ve always had to scare up gigs on our own. We have had to interface with club owners and bookers on a regular basis since the 1980’s. Part of dealing with the inevitable frustration has been an attempt to get inside the mind of the bookers, to anticipate their thought processes and their business practices (and we use that term loosely) so as to wring a date out of them. It’s frustrating to deal with them. They don’t exactly make the task easy.

Of course, it’s somewhat of a two-way street.

We imagine the booker might just identify with that dude with the shotgun in “Night of the Living Dead.” (The comics, in this analogy are, of course, the zombies, constantly banging on the door, constantly seeking entry, coming from all sides, moaning.

You have something we want. We don’t just want it… we need it.

But… you need what we offer.

But there’s a way of dealing with this adversarial relationship. We’ve seen bookers/clubs deal with this dynamic in dozens of different ways. Some are brilliant in their simplicity, their streamlining, the exquisite manner in which they simultaneously: 1) minimize contact between booker and comic; 2) clarify the process and ground rules for contact between booker and comic and 3) efficiently provide a)the booker with what he wants and b) the comic with what he wants.

Why can’t all bookers/clubs be this way?

We recall a conversation with a booker years ago. This booker had a system. Let’s say it was, “I only book on Tuesdays between 10 AM and 2 PM.” You’d call between those hours and she wouldn’t be there! Or you would call during the designated hours on the designated day and she would inform you that she had done all her booking on the previous day! (We would eventually secure bookings from this person… so, it wasn’t a case of us being purposely lied to or just us being jerked around. But it was a case of a booker who, in an attempt to simplify the process– and perhaps minimize any animosity or frustration– abandoned her own rules and, in the process, complicated matters and ratcheted up the hard feelings and frustration. Comics love rules. Comics hate it when the rules are subsequently turfed.)

One day we called and she said, “I’ll tell ya… if I have to talk to one more fucking comedian today, I’m going to scream!” And she said it without a hint of irony or humor.

What does a comedian say to that? (The imprudent thing to say would be, “If I have to talk to one more fucking booker today, I’m going to scream.” Instead, the response was, most likely, “Ya got anything in August?”)

Another club owner would engage The Male Half in seemingly endless conversations in which he would piss and moan about how bad the business was, how much he hated the business, how miserable his life was made by comedians, etc. This went on, over the course of months (years?)… without a booking. Eventually a booking came. And the Male Half discovered that working for this gentleman was actually far worse than not working for him. Lesson learned.

We’re in the midst of the grinding process of filling in the holes in our 2010 schedule and booking the 2011 schedule.

We’re conducting most of our booking and correspondence via email. Email has been the dominant way to conduct this kind of business since about 2005 or so. And we pretty much ceased sending out physical (or “hard copy”) press kits in late 2007 or so, instead opting to drive people to our online press kit. We like to conduct business in this manner.

We still call some clubs if we have an existing relationship. No problem there. But calling someone we don’t know is… awkward? Excruciating? (For both booker and comic.)

Lately, we are very partial to obtaining an email address. Then we can send along a letter of introduction, provide links to our kit or to our latest YouTube clip, provide upcoming schedule information and get the ball rolling on a future booking. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Why is getting an email so difficult? Why is communication in general so difficult, such an imprecise swamp of murky missed connections or outright obfuscation or confusion?

We get a phone number from the website. We call. “Debbie” answers. (Or “Justin” or “Katelyn” or “Jessica.”) We get the name of the booking contact, but not the email address. We get a “better” phone number. (Aaaarrgggh!) Or we get a “better time to call.” (Double aaaarrgggh!) Or we get shunted off to voicemail… where we leave a message… and our call is rarely returned. (But then, why should the booker return the call of someone he doesn’t know?)

One wonders if the booker is purposely building a wall between himself and the talent. If that is the case, one wonders why?

(And if the booker is intentionally building a virtually impenetrable wall between himself and the talent, then isn’t it time for the club to hire someone else? Or, if the booker is in-house, isn’t it time to shift the responsibility to someone else? That’s a discussion for another time.)

But all of this could be resolved through the judicious and conscientious use of email. (We swerve dangerously close to “telling someone how to do their job.” To which we reply: Have you met a booker who is deliriously happy with the way it’s currently going?)

We understand a booker wanting to minimize his contact with the talent. Let’s be real: If he didn’t, he could quite conceivably spend 18 hours per day/five days a week doing nothing but fielding phone calls from comedians seeking work. That would be stupid and wildly inefficient– for all concerned. But there is an elegant way to minimize that contact while still making it clear that the comedian isn’t spinning his wheels, shouting into a void, wasting his time.

And that way turfs the phone and embraces email.

Make the booker’s email address readily available.

Make clear just what information should be included in any booking email.

Make somewhat of an effort to acknowledge receipt of said email. (Even if it’s an automated response, followed occasionally by a real one.)

(That last one is crucial. It sends a message that the comic’s time isn’t being wasted. We have never understood why it’s a capital crime to waste a booker’s time, but it’s perfectly fine and dandy to waste a comic’s time. We acknowledge a certain imbalance of power, a certain slant toward a “buyer’s market,” but hasn’t the business matured to the point where certain of the rules of the business world at large might now apply to the business of standup comedy? Is that asking too much?)

Many sites offer an email form. (A javascript that allows the sender to enter his email address, a brief message and hit “send.”) It’s often the same form that potential customers are urged to use if they have a question about birthday parties or to “make suggestions,” so pardon us if we’re somewhat skeptical that our pathetic entreaties will ever find their way to the appropriate pair of eyeballs via the impersonal (“Handy!”) email form.

We have an what we think is an impressive online press kit– it provides a club with decent resources for promotion and it clearly spells out who we are, what we do, what we’re capable of doing for a club. While we certainly don’t expect someone to return our phone call when they have little idea of who we are, we would at least like to have an opportunity to get the link to that press kit into inboxes so that we have a fighting chance to start a dialogue, to initiate talks that may lead to a booking. We want what every comic wants: To get past the clutter, to get our message in front of the person who can make a decision and do so in an efficient manner that benefits both the talent and the venue.

It’s the answer video to “Stand Up Comedy Is NOT Pretty,” an anonymous xtranormal video that we posted about last week. (Click the link or just scroll down to see that one.) This latest is called “How to get booked at a comedy club” and it’s the creation of Becky Reed, half of the team that brought us the Joke Joint comedy club in Bloomington, MN, and St. Paul, MN.

Channel 6 is on the case!

Three people were shot when a stand-up comedian opened fire in a crowded Marion sports bar early Saturday, police said.

Rodney Carter is the alleged shooter. And he’s the alleged comedian. He got in a man’s face at Yeakle’s Sports Bar in Marion, IN, at just about closing time (when things always go to hell) and fired several shots at the man’s legs, hitting him three times. (He also probably was exhorting the man to “Dance! Dance! Dance like the chicken shit you are, motherf***er!” We made that part up. But why else do you fire several times at a man’s legs unless you’re engaging in a little Evil Roy Slade action?) He also winged a couple of female patrons. Everyone’s been treated and released.

Carter fled. Marion is about 80 miles or so northeast of Indy. He’s still at large, from what we can tell.

Though the victims have all been treated and released from the hospital, police are still searching for the shooting suspect, 44 year old Rodney Carter. Carter has been trying to make a name for himself as a standup comic since 2002. He goes by the stage name “Dirty Red,” and has several online profiles promoting his work. Now police hope someone will recognize him and turn him in.

That’s from Fox 59’s Kent Erdahl. (Kent must be a journo student. That first sentence is pretty humorous. Do cops only hunt down shooters if the wounds are serious enough to require hospitalization?)

The subhead on the story says, “Marion police hope standup comic’s notority(sic) will help lead to arrest.” Yeah… good luck with that.

We’re pained that they insist on referring to the shooter as a comic. But, hey, it makes for a better story.

We’re also not so sure that they have the right guy. Something’s puzzling us. Check out this clip of “Dirty Red”:

Then check out this pic that accompanied the Channel 6 story:

Is there any way they’re the same person? Any way at all? We don’t think so.

The suspect has supposedly performed at Yeakle’s. So someone at the bar ID’ed him. But the guy in the pic doesn’t look like the guy in the video. So… either there’s someone impersonating Dirty Red. (Or Dirty Red doesn’t look at all like his “eight by ten,” which is true for so many comics!)

But someone purporting to be a friend of Carter’s– and presumably the man who ID’ed Carter as “Dirty Red”– is quoted in the Fox story. Maybe there’s been a mixup at the cop station and the wrong pic is circulating. Or the folks at Fox 59 have bad info. (They did, after all, spell “notoriety” wrong.)

Stay tuned.

We predict that, when Carter is sentenced, he’ll say, “Great. That sounds fair.”

WISH 8 didn’t identify Carter as a comedian. (They also say it happened outside the bar.) We suppose we shouldn’t take umbrage that the various news orgs are seizing upon Carter’s avocation. As the Female Half points out: “If his hobby were the trapeze, they’d be playing that up. And the video would be all over the place!” She speaketh the truth.

We saw this posted as Isaac Witty‘s Facebook status update.  The creator is comedyisnotpretty10.  We don’t know who that is.

Our new favorite catchphrase is, “Great.  That sounds fair.”

We were just talking the other day about how evil bringer shows are and how we should berate those who produce them and shun those participate.

We just finalized our travel arrangements for next month’s trip to Vegas for the World Series of Comedy. It’s going on September 20-25 and it’s the brainchild of comedian Joe Lowers. It’s the second time he’s done a WSOC (the first time, he did it in his home market of Pittsburgh), and this time, he’s promising to hand out 30 weeks of feature work to the winners. (From our calculations, upon observing the front page of the WSOC website, it looks like he’s got 32 clubs promising 75 weeks of work!)

We’ll be in attendance as Exalted Ones. Not quite sure what our capacity will be. We’ll be kinda like Jimmy Carter observing the elections in Nicaragua. We’ll be at the Alexis for nearly the entire affair (after arriving late on the 20th). There’ll be a golf tourney, a poker tourney, a headshot session, so-called “breakfast roundtables” for bookers and agents and meet-and-greets where the bookers and agents are forced to reckon with the comics in attendance… which will probably be far less excruciating than the bookers and owners think it will be. And, of course, a ton of shows to determine the winner– out of 101 comedians selected to compete. (There will even be a show for “Registered Comics”– comedians who are in attendance, but were not selected as one of the lucky 101.)

If we understand it correctly– if we really “get it”– it’s a great idea.

Who pays any attention to feature acts? Who pays any attention to aspiring feature acts? Nobody, that’s who. Oh, sure, everyone goes gaga over the closers, the headliners, the marquee players– they have festivals in far-off exotic locales and industry fatcats and agents and managers flock to them and the floor is slick with slobber and deals get made and whatnot.

So… why not have a bunch of acts who are hungry for work (and, God knows there are a ton of them) come out to the desert and show their stuff (in a lengthy contest format) and hang out with club owners and bookers and agents and maybe come away with a full calendar? Sounds like something The Industry should have been doing all along.  Although, with such innovations as YouTube and Facebook and email and DVD’s, you’d think that gatherings such as this one would be obsolete.  It’s kinda retro, in a way.  People getting out of the office, flying to Vegas and actually eyeballing comics in a club setting for the purpose of assessing their talent.  How 1984!  Maybe it’s the wave of the future.  With the emergence of Southwest Airlines, has it ever been cheaper to actually get off your ass and actually prospect for talent, Mr. Booker Person?  The colleges do it.  It’s been their modus operandi for as long as anyone can remember.

The  club owners and bookers (primarily from the heartland of America) and comedy clinics and seminars will afford everyone plenty of opportunity for… “bonding.”

We organized something similar back in 2001. Only without the shows… or the agents… or the bookers… or the seminars… or the golf or poker. (We basically just told comics to come to the desert for three days and eat and drink and eat and drink some more and just celebrate the fact that they are/were standup comics. We ended up with about 135 or 150 people at the Union Plaza in Glitter Gulch and everybody had a swell time.) This should be similar… only with the added pressure of a competition. And a bunch of agents and bookers and club owners. Come to think of it, it won’t be similar at all.

But it will probably be fun. And, if  the quality of the acts is anywhere near decent, it will probably happen again next year. (Like we said, this is the second time.  Why such a gap between WSOC’s?  Between that one and this one, Lowers moved from PGH to LAS.)

We assume the first one was a success, otherwise, how could Lowers have convinced all these clubs to give up a week or two or three for his crazy scheme?

We hope there’s another one.  It’s probably good for the business.  Had there been something like this when we were featuring, we would have been all over it.  Stay tuned.

We have long held that it’s ghastly to inflict children doing standup on a comedy club crowd.

It was Robert Heinlein who said, “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”

We have a new one: Never try to teach a kid standup. It wastes your time and it annoys the audience.

We went over to Helium last night to work out some material on their open mike night. (Helium was nice enough to spare us the sign-up ritual. We were given the last two spots on a lengthy bill.)

The Male Half stayed in the bar and went over notes while The Female Half monitored the room during the show, which was a combination of newcomers and experienced acts.

Up until this point, any child we’ve seen performing on a standup stage has at least had the decency to work clean… or relatively clean. Last night, however, was the exception. A 13-year-old (some said he was 12; he looked 11) went up at Helium and did a cringe-inducing adult set. He paced the stage as if he were performing in his own HBO special. He did “jerking-off” material– enhanced with brief visual re-enactment. He mentioned “tits and ass.” And, when the light came on, he said, “I’d like to stay, but I have to get off because of this damn light.” Nice.

The Male Half missed it. The Female Half was furious. (Such was her anger, she says, that she should have left then and there, lest her anger get the best of her.)

And, if that weren’t enough, Junior took a seat with dad– in the audience– in the third row which, because there was no one seated in the first two rows, was technically the first row. Can we all agree that it’s bad form for the open mikers to take a seat in the audience? Has there been an open mike that hasn’t banned that practice (or at the very least, discouraged it)?

It’s bad enough having a kid in the audience. The violence it does to the audience dynamic is incalculable. Take that and multiply it by a thousand when it’s tween kid whose just been onstage doing masturbation jokes.

The kid got no genuine laughs. It was all shock laughs, cheap stuff. What kind of parent not only allows but encourages this kind of freak show? One feels as though one is witnessing the creation of a self-esteem monster of unparalleled proportions. (The self-esteem monster won’t necessarily make miserable the lives of the comics or patrons at future shows– the kid will most likely wash out, comedy-wise, when the thrill wears off and the laughs dissipate– but his outsized pride and arrogance will fester and balloon until he’s unbearable in nearly every facet of his life.)

The crowd had been stiff and judgmental all night. A roller-coaster for all concerned. Never any momentum.

The Female Half went on next to last and, after about three minutes, attempted to jiggle them out of their complacency by threatening to bring back the child comic for more jokes about masturbation. The response was startling, especially considering that he had gone on much earlier in the night– 17 or 18 comics had gone on between boy wonder and The Female Half. (The spectacle was clearly on everyone’s mind… and not in a good way. It was something that might have been addressed immediately afterward by the emcee. Or by the comedians who followed. But, as most of those who followed were first-timers or very new, none did– none dared deviate from their alloted three minutes, and understandably so. And none of the more experienced comics who came after saw fit to make mention of the trauma. It made for unnecessary tension that needed defusing, but which never got defused.)

She looked over to see Super Dad playfully punching Sonny Boy in the arm saying (loud enough for all to hear), “I’m proud of him!”

The Female Half’s blood pressure skyrocketed. She hammers the kid a couple of times more. Then it’s onto the rest of her set.

She fully admits that she allowed her anger to dictate her actions and momentarily deviate from the night’s mission. But the attitude and the posture (head on the table!) of the juvenile open miker was an affront that was insufferable. What was also galling was the fact that both parent and child seemed oblivious to the rudeness they were displaying.

As she winds up her set and says her goodbyes, the kid leaps up, approaches the stage and, while ostentatiously proffering a slip of paper in the direction of The Female Half, announces loudly to the assembled, “Here’s my number!”

The Female Half halts the proceedings and says, “Hold on… If he thinks I’m touching that piece of paper after he’s been up here telling everybody he masturbates, he’s out of his mind.” The reaction is mixed. She exits.

A comic should never (NEVER!) approach another act while that act is onstage. Never. Not at the beginning of the set, not in the middle, not at the end. That is pure bush league. It’s unprofessional. It bespeaks a colossal arrogance. It is indicative of a thundering ignorance of the ways of, for lack of a less pretentious term, “The Theater.” As seemingly informal as the standup millieu might be, there are still some unspoken rules and regulations. Not the least of which is you don’t insinuate yourself into someone else’s act– not physically, not verbally– unless you are asked to do so. (And the “Ick Factor” of a 12-year-old giving his number to a 44-year-old woman is off the charts.)

We hope this kid doesn’t get any more spots. For every one of the 20 or so spots that were given out last night, there might be three comics desiring that same spot. Which means that a couple aspiring (adult) comics went home last night disappointed, while this precocious twerp soaked up a precious slot.

It got us to thinking about the art of emceeing. In an above paragraph, we note that the incident could have been ameliorated, the tone of the evening recalibrated, by the emcee. However, the emcee at this particular open mike is at a distinct disadvantage– he’s sequestered in the green room just off the stage and can’t clearly hear (or see!) what’s transpiring onstage. And, since many of the sets are three minutes in length, it’s not practical for the emcee to monitor the acts by leaving the green room to watch from the showroom. There should be a monitor back there. Sure, situations like this one arise only occasionally, but proper emceeing– emceeing that keeps it moving, that occasionally comments on moments of shared experience with the audience, that offers a running commentary on the progress of the show– practically requires that the emcee be familiar with what transpires onstage, not sequestered backstage.

And by that, we mean that the average age of the Big Four television networks is getting higher.

The Hollywood Reporter delivers the news. Is it bad news? We suppose it depends on how you deal with it. Kinda like aging itself.

…ABC’s median viewership aged one year last season — to 51. CBS also grew a year, to 55. NBC gained two years, to 49. And Fox stayed the same, a relatively nubile 44.

Compare this to a decade ago. ABC was 43, CBS was 52, NBC was 45 and Fox was only 35.

So… it looks like the folks who were watching ten years ago… and who were older then… have continued to watch. But fewer youngsters have adopted the TV viewing habit. And TV is having a devil of a time competing for eyeballs and attention against such newfangled technology as the internet and video games.

The report, cobbled together from Nielsen data, also says that:

Comedies tend to be the youngest-skewing shows. In the fall of 1999, there were 45 broadcast sitcoms. Last fall there were just 20.

Conversely, procedural dramas are among the oldest-skewing genres. A decade ago, there were only five. Last fall there were 20.

So, television’s way of dealing with the death spiral is… to throw their lot in with people who are between the ages of 45 and dead. Run away from the youngest-skewing shows (and nod sagely when the TV critics declare the sitcom genre dead) and heap on more CSI‘s, NCI’s and Law & Orders. Oh… and develop programs that don’t do well in syndication… and minimize the chance of a scoring big with a Seinfeld or a Cosby.

Has Big TV become an offshoot of the Hemlock Society? Their swan dive into demographic death is quite something to behold. Maybe it’s several layers of entrenched executives who are loath to learn new methods and/or adapt to the new landscape. There’s a similar phenomenon going on in publishing. Entrenched publishing execs are, much to the consternation to the younger folks in the layers beneath them, determined to hold fast to the old business model. The theory is that they’ll resist change, continue to draw their salaries, get what they can out of the business, knowing full well that it’s circling the drain. The up-and-comers are tearing their hair out and wondering if there will be anything left for them to salvage.

And, like we’ve been saying for eleven years or so: It’s strange that there aren’t more sitcoms. Most sitcoms stars are men and women in their late 30s/early 40s. You’d think the networks would be attracted to a genre that had funny, appealing stars that are right down the demographic middle– between the youngsters and the seniors.

Three years ago, The Female Half, in her regular “Keep It Tight” column, recalled the passing of her grandfather, who coincidentally died one day after Elvis Aaron Presley. It’s a sweet, sad and insightful remembrance of her grandpop and a look into the jumble of feelings inside an 11-year-old as she reconciles her personal grief at the passing of a loved one with that of a nation grieving over a cultural icon. The Female Half linked to it off of her Facebook page today (it being the anniversary of Presley’s death) and folks seemed to enjoy reading it!

Then I thought about Lisa Marie. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to mourn the loss of a loved one while complete strangers– a whole country full of them almost– mourned him as well. Just like Elvis did, my grandfather died on the bathroom floor. How awful it would have been if I had to listen to the whole world speculate as to why.

Read the whole thing.

From the Facebook status update of Costaki Economopoulos:

I’m about 9 sets in to understanding comedy in Scotland, and I did the Late N Live show tonight (1:20-3:00 AM) It’s a big deal here. Been “vetting” jokes for several shows to get ready. This joke flies here, this one doesn’t, etc. I put together the set- and I didn’t “kill,” but as far as MY part of it goes- I fucking rocked! Feels good to embrace a nutty comedy exercise and come out on top. Yay me!

Yay, indeed.

This particular “essay,” short though it may be, speaks volumes. We absolutely love this sentiment.

Regardless of how long you have been in the business, it’s a good thing– a very good thing– to take on a task that you’re not 100 per cent sure you can master, or that will even turn out good. An observer (a non-comedy observer) might think that merely going up at a comedy club, with a healthy crowd, on a weekend evening might be a challenge (and he would be right), but choosing an exercise that is far outside one’s comfort zone, while it may be fraught with “danger,” has benefits that are huge– it rearranges the brain, makes you think differently; it often bolsters confidence in areas where there might still be insecurity.

Failing at such an endeavor can make you work harder. Or… it can help you accept limitations– which might have the positive effect of enabling you to focus on your strengths. In the long run, it’s nearly always a win-win, even if, at the time, it feels like a trainwreck.

We’ve enjoyed similar benefits in the not too distant past. A year or three ago, we got the opportunity to perform in country clubs. Now, it may not seem like a big deal or much of a stretch to do country clubs– as opposed to comedy clubs, casinos or nightclubs- but, initially at least, the differences were stark– we were forced to work clean, we were required to dress differently, we had to appeal to a significantly older and more affluent crowd. And the adjustments necessarily had to take place all at the same time and immediately. After an initial period of adaptation, it can be said that we mastered it. Now, these gigs are some of our more enjoyable engagements. And– bonus– what we learned while acclimating to the country club or private party dates has positively affected our presentation across other venues and situations. Initially, however, they were stressful. Very stressful. There were times (when we were onstage) when we glanced at our watch and wondered if doing our allotted time would be possible– without resorting to our edgier, forbidden, R-rated material.

But, we persevered. And we did so because we were convinced that there was some sort of vague, possibly far-off benefit to be had.

We’ve got all of August off. Instead of taking it easy, we decided to take advantage of the downtime to hit some open mikes or talk our way onto various weekend stages and do some five-minutes sets.

During the Last Comic Standing audition and showcase gauntlet, The Female Half realized that her five-minute set muscles had atrophied. She felt wholly unprepared for the initial audition and subsequent showcase set. Relying on years of experience, however, the sets went well… but her feeling of unpreparedness nagged at her. And she fully admits that, had she advanced to Hollywood, she could have been in deep trouble. Her act had become a 30- to 45-minute, club act. One might think that adapting those skills to doing a set that only lasts five minutes would merely be a matter of getting off early! But “doing five” is an entirely different beast, requiring a whole different set of skills and nerve and mindset. But it’s important to be able to do both.

Thus, our August offensive.

The Male Half, on the other hand, had been practicing “the five” (or, to be precise, 4:30, the ideal length, the industry standard for a late-night spot) for eighteen months prior to the LCS auditions. So, he was greased up for the brief set. He hasn’t mastered it, but he’s farther along than he was at the outset of his experiment. (And far better off than, say, four years ago, when he was absolutely paralyzed at the prospect of assembling the 4:30, remembering the set list, and delivering it without any deviation.)

We find ourselves working on multiple, simultaneous tracks. The Female Half, in addition to working the “sprint muscles,” is also focusing on the story-telling approach to delivering and writing material– a devilishly difficult endeavor, as it entails adopting a radically different pace, different punchline-density, etc. She may well find that she does not excel at such an approach. However, failure, like we said, may have benefits.

The Male Half, with an eye toward corporate and cruise work, is desperately trying to marshal the various scraps of material, ideas, premises and bits that have gathered over the years and categorize them in an effort to determine what’s clean and what’s not. The hope is that he’ll be able to compartmentalize and call up whichever material is needed for whichever situation he finds himself in. (For some acts, this has been Priority Number One since Day One. We say, “God bless them.”)

How do we find ourselves in this place? We don’t like the word “lazy.” Instead, we’ll say that we’ve been “complacent.” The opposite of complacent is “anxious.” Which is exactly what we’ve felt on more than one occasion over the past few months/years when confronted with certain challenges. So, our efforts are meant to eliminate– or at least minimize– the anxiety. Anxiety can get you places. It can be a great motivator. But, at some point, being prepared– having confidence, which is the exact opposite of being anxious– is a saner, happier route. We may be mistaken, but we think that the vast majority of comics swing from anxiety to complacency– with varying frequency and amplitude. And that most comics, most good ones, are aware of when they’re operating from uncertainty and when they’re operating from contentment. And that they bring on the challenges with the knowledge (or the vague intuition) that doing so will undoubtedly redound to their advantage.

Costaki Economopoulos is a tremendous comic. And he’ll no doubt master the art of “playing Scotland.” And it doesn’t matter if he ever performs in Scotland again. But we have no doubt that he’ll be an even better standup comic for having risen to the challenge.

Predictably, we’re getting a lot of comments on our posting on the final episode of LCS. In rare cases, we find it interesting to bring a comment “topside.”

Unidentified weasel “HT” commented:

Read coverage of LCS before and after the halves were thrown a bone. The tone is remarkably different.

To which we replied:

Our tone is remarkably different?” Perhaps our tone is different because the show is different. Perhaps our tone is different because the comedians weren’t forced to perform in a laundromat. Perhaps our tone is different because the comedians weren’t dressed up as jesters and made to perform at a Renaissance fair. Perhaps our tone is different because the producers vowed to treat the comics with respect and highlight the performance of standup comedy rather than set up situations where the comedians heckle their colleagues or wash a car or are transported on a short, yellow bus.

How’s this for a remarkably different tone? Go fuck yourself.

The implication is that we trashed the show in seasons past and that, now that we’ve been “thrown a bone,” we’re all sweetness and light when we post about the show.

Our short answer is above.

Our long answer is that HT displays a stunning lack of reading comprehension. Our analysis of the show started in earnest with the second season. We said very little about season one. We took a dim view of the show, mainly because we were skeptical that a primetime reality show (which was, keep in mind, a relatively new phenomenon back then) was the proper way to present standup comedy. It was long time ago (June of 2003) and our focus at the time was on news coverage of standup, standup news and columns.

We hadn’t yet formally switched to a “blog” format until June of 2004. In fact, our decision to switch to a blog, using Blogger technology, was driven by our growing interest in analysis and commentary– specifically, our desire to “live blog” Last Comic Standing‘s second season. And our desire to live blog LCS was driven by the fact that it had become a phenomenon and that Season Two featured one of our columnists, Bonnie McFarlane.

Our coverage of seasons two through six were brutal.  We did not hold back.  There was a lot to loathe and we went into it in great detail.  And when there was something that was praiseworthy, we pointed that out as well.  Why, we ask, would anyone read that coverage and “throw us a bone?”   In fact, there was every reason to lock us out of the process in perpetuity because: 1. There was no reason for anyone to believe that our negative coverage was motivated by bitterness over not being included in the show or 2. There was no reason to believe that our positive comments on the show was an attempt by us to curry favor with the producers (otherwise, we would have merely praised the show and spared it our scorn), so 3. Our inclusion in the show might be seen by the producers as a gamble that was nowhere near worth taking and that 4. Our participation in the show might be seen by us as a gamble nowhere near worth taking, as we could have been portrayed as unprofessional or worse, or that our credibility might be damaged beyond repair.

In addition to dismal reading comprehension, HT betrays an unhealthy suspicion of our motives. We have always tried to be honest and above-board about what we think and why we think it.  Those are the rules in the brave new world of journalism (in the era of the WWW).   People who blog– and who blog honestly– know that they must get out in front of any conflict and lay it all out on the table.  Which is what we endeavor to do with each and every adventure.  LCS was no different.

And our coverage of this season (the season that we appeared on!) was, in many ways, just as critical as that of previous seasons. And, like we said, our tone may have been somewhat modulated by the fact that the show actually has made improvements. Regardless of our participation in the show, we would have followed our previous policy of praising it when praise was due and savaging it when the show made missteps. But we were on the show! Which must make our negative comments on this season’s show all that much more counterintuitive. Were we “thrown a bone,” our comments would have been uniformly upbeat and positive, with nary a cross word.

It’s incomprehensible that anyone could read our first-person account of our experience with LCS and conclude that we were “thrown a bone.”  We had no special treatment– our auditions, at 11 in the morning, were just like all the dozens (hundreds?) of others that took place that week (and in previous weeks) in New York and Hollywood.  The grueling  11-hour day was the same for every comic who made it into the evening showcase.  And, the three-day taping in Glendale was an arduous gauntlet of interviews, strategy, tactics, plotting and performing.  Which is not to complain. But, from our perspective, it doesn’t resemble being “thrown a bone.”

Bone-throwing implies that the reward is a token, and/or that it’s undeserved or that the intentions of the giver are less than honest or that there might exist a quid pro quo.  It implies appeasement.  If giving two comics– each with a quarter-century of stage experience in a variety of venues (Clubs, colleges, casinos, television, radio, etc.) — an audition for a television show is “throwing them a bone,” then either the commenter is unfamiliar with the meaning of the phrase or he is, like we said, suspicious of the motives of not just us, but of all those involved.  We suspect it’s the latter.  Which is why we say, “Go fuck yourself.”

While we’re talking about comments, we recommend the comments under a previous post in which LCS Finalist Laurie Kilmartin defends herself and the LCS process against rather thin criticism from one of our readers.

Congratulations to Felipe Esparza!

He’s this season’s “Last Comic Standing.”

It must be tough– unbearably tough– to come so close to $250,000 and not get it.  Our hearts go out to Myk Kaplan, Mike DeStefano, Roy Wood, Jr., and Tommy Johnagin.

And, while a quarter of a million bucks might seem like a large sum to someone who has been making the standard road money that’s available out there, it’s small change in the larger entertainment scheme of things.

But the confetti hadn’t even hit the Alex Theatre stage before rumors ricocheted around the WWW about how this season was “rigged,” because Esparza is managed by New Wave… and New Wave is headed by Barry Katz… and Barry Katz is one of the executive producersof the Last Comc Standing.

But we have to ask: Is the fact that he’s managed by New Wave the sole reason that Esparza won the competition?

And, conversely, if management by New Wave were the sole prerequisite for winning the competition, wouel not all of the show’s past winners be comics who are managed by New Wave.

So… not all the winners have been managed by New Wave.  And not all the finalists have been New Wave clients.  So, if you’re going to “fix” the show, and you’re going to expose yourself to all kinds of enmity (or legal challenges), then why not just go whole hog and fix it real good– ensure that all ten finalists are under the New Wave banner and make damn sure that your company benefits from managing the winner, the five touring comedians and the ten folks who get the most primetime network television exposure– week in and week out– over the course of a long summer.

All of this talk of “rigging” and “fixing” only makes sense if we select which bits of data to pay attention to and ignore a lot of other data.

A prime example of this selective focus is illustrated in the speculation that’s making the rounds centering on tortured language from the NBC website.

The heart of the controversy seems to stem from the following passages in the “Voting Rules” section. The same basic rules are then restated in the Voting FAQ. (Note: “The Administrators” are “NBC Studios, Inc., NBC Universal, Inc. and/or Telescope, Inc. and their respective parent, subsidiary and affiliated entities and persons”):

These rules are subject to change at any time at the sole discretion of the Administrators. Notification regarding any such change will be posted at NBC.com.[…]

5. Conditions for Voting:
Administrators reserve the right to disqualify, block or remove any votes from any individual who votes by any electronic, mechanical or automated means, or otherwise tampers with the vote process, or for any other reason, as determined by Administrators in their sole discretion. Administrators are not responsible for any damages to voters’ device(s) that may occur from use of service. Administrators reserve the right, for any reason and in their sole discretion, to modify, suspend or discontinue the voting service without prior notice.

Administrators reserve the right to modify the show’s contest rules, and the terms and conditions of this voting process at any time in their sole discretion.

The amateur detectives conveniently leave out this paragraph, however:

Caution: Any attempt by an entrant or any other individual to deliberately damage any online service or website, tamper with the voting process, or otherwise undermine the legitimate operation of the voting is a violation of criminal and civil laws and should such an attempt be made, Administrators reserve the right to seek damages and/or other remedies from any such person to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Emphasis ours. We’re no legal experts. But this sounds like it bursts the conspiracy theorists’ bubble. It initially reads like something that’s inserted to aid the Administrators in preventing fraud. But we maintain that it could also prohibit fraud on the part of the Administrators. It could subject them to prosecution should they be tempted to manipulate the peoples’ vote.

The other conspiracy theory revolves around the idea that the show is cast. The theory is that the producers of the show very carefully and deliberately manipulate the early rounds of the show to determine who ends up among the forty or fifty “contestants” who vie for the ten Finalist spots.

Of course they do!

Is there an objective way to determine the fifty funniest people in America? Is there a special, magic “Applause Meter” out there somewhere that would precisely and correctly calibrate audience reaction during the evening showcase (ignoring, via some sort of algorithm, the applause from the people that contestant number three packed into the audience through his carefully orchestrated Facebook and Twitter campaign)? Is there a Standup Comics Registry that calculates and maintains rankings via a finely tuned system, like those of the USTA or the USGA?

If the show weren’t “cast,” what means of stocking the show would the conspiracy theorists recommend? Perhaps they have in mind a Blue Ribbon panel of experts. Who, then, would determine the makeup of that august body? Perhaps it would be a carefully chosen panel of universally respected agents, managers and talent coordinators that would submit candidates for inclusion in the showcases. Good luck finding anyone who would fit that description.

And even if great care were taken to pick the hopefuls– using whichever fantasy method you can concoct– could we find two comics who would agree on the legitimacy of even a handful of the choices? No matter which way were chosen, controversy would exist and theories would abound.

There’s no perfect system.

It’s Chinatown, Jake. It’s television. It’s comedy.

And the same data that some folks use to prove the illegitimacy of the contest might be seen by others as proving its legitimacy. One case in point: “Look at the winners over the years! That proves that the wrong people won. That proves that America’s votes were ignored! That proves that those most deserving were shafted!”

Actually, one might look at some or all of the winners and could just as easily claim quite the opposite: “Look at the winners over the past seven seasons! That proves that the right people won! That proves that America’s votes were taken into account! That proves that those most deserving were elevated to the status of America’s funniest comedians!”

Everybody’s all over the map!

Comedy, we might remind everyone for the thousandth time, is subjective. And that tiny sliver of the people who watch the show (and who care enough to go to the trouble to vote for a winner) vote in ways which seem to many people to be illogical or capricious or just plain wrong. Perhaps everyone else in the top ten have fans who aren’t the kind of people who vote ten times on the phone, then cross the room to vote ten times on their computer.

All of which is not to say that Felipe Esparza didn’t deserve to win. No one “deserves” to win. Expunge that word from your vocabulary when discussing this phenomenon. Esparza won. There are people who are ecstatic about that and there are people who are groaning about that. But that would have happened no matter who won. And the people who groan shop around for bits of “evidence” that they (and their favorite) have been somehow wronged.

We are of the opinion that such controversy is good. We stated privately that each of the five remaining finalists were competent enough and handled themselves professionally enough during the finals so that enough of the viewing audience might have voted in such a way as to make any of them the ultimate winner. And that is good for standup. Were there a clear winner– were there no doubt that one comedian was superior and the rest were merely also-rans– it would have been a dark day for comedy indeed, for it would have meant that the contest was a failure and that standup comedy (at least as reflected in the makeup of the finalists) was in a sorry state.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Any of the five could have won.

Are we saying all this to suck up to the producers? Certainly not. (Besides, we’re not so sure there’s any payoff in doing so.)  We’re just trying to introduce a little reality into the analysis of a “reality show.”

As far as the rest of last night’s finale goes, the musical numbers in general (and Gloria Gaynor’s number in particular) were painful. We were particularly nauseated by the shots of the judges “grooving” to the beat and the clutch of remaining finalists “grooving” in the wings. Couldn’t that time been better used to show more comedians? Instead of handing over a bronzed rubber chicken to Kurt Metzger, how about letting Metzger do a tight five instead? We’re not clear as to the connection (other than Craig Robinson’s musical avocation/alter ego) between these musical numbers and standup comedy. (And what was the theory behind dressing the Finalists up in their “Sunday-go-to-meetin’ ” clothes? They looked like some sort of awkward, religious boy band, more suited to entertaining at spiritual retreats or peddling across the country recruiting for the Latter Day Saints.)

And we were struck by the editing of Kathy Griffin’s set. There are rumors swirling that her set was… “enhanced.” There is speculation that the audience reaction was, in television producion parlance, “sweetened.” It certainly seemed (on our 26-in. Sanyo,viewing the local NBC affiliate in HD), that the visual often didn’t match the audio– when an applause break was happening, the wide shots didn’t show a whole lot of people putting their hands together. Indeed, early on in the set, the bursts of laughter seemed too neat and tidy to be real. Three times (at least!) the visual didn’t match the aural. We’d love to know the story behind that!

As for the judges performances last night: That was an untenable situation… as we are fond of saying: “No good can come of it.” The bar was set so high, the expectations so blown out of proportion, due to the previous ten weeks of acting as “judges,” that no comedian could have possibly come out of that experience unscathed.

Unlike a number of our peers, we hope there’s a Season 8 of LCS. There are so few slots on network primetime television for standup comics (doing standup comedy) that we’d hate to see this one disappear. And it certainly keeps people talking about standup.

And, of course we have a personal connection to the show, having appeared on it this season– both Halves of the Staff on June 21 and The Male Half on July 5). People have been asking us if the show has done us any good. We’re not sure how to answer that… yet. At this point, the intangibles outweigh the tangibles. But it also depends on what we do with this credit and this exposure. And that applies to everyone who has appeared on the show– even if only for a second or two or three. Will we do it again next year, if the opportunity arises? Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. There are a lot of comics asking themselves that question right now.

We hope to hang out with the Touring Five when they come to Princeton or Wilmington (each venue being equidistant from SHECKYmagazine.com HQ). (We won’t be able to join them for their Philadelphia-area appearance at the Keswick, as we’ll be gigging in Hilton Head that week.)

We’re exhausted.  We just spent several hours on the beach (Island Beach State Park… very nice!) with the Vos/McFarlane’s, and, although we have plenty to say about tonight’s episode (The Finale!), we’re going to sleep for a while and pour out a posting tomorrow (Tuesday).

From a Sahara Hotel & Casino’s Facebook update:

Sahara Hotel & Casino Sahara’s spreading the summer love by extending its $39 weekend room rates promotion now through Labor Day! Select the “Spread the Summer Love” tab at the top of our page, book a stay + receive 1 free show ticket or roller coaster ride pass with every reservation!
20 hours ago

The folks staying at the Sahara have such a dilemma: Should I go on “Speed– The Ride” for 45 seconds… or should I go see Jay Black, Tina Giorgi and Anton Shuford do standup comedy for an hour and fifteen?

Only in Las Vegas is one faced with such choices. Have the folks in the desert elevated the state of roller coaster art to such a high level… or have they downgraded the level of standup to such a low one… that a choice like this one makes some sort of marketing sense?

Sadly, some folks will choose the roller coaster.

Strngelilblkgrl tweets:

Apparently, America likes its comedy white, male, & heterosexual #lastcomicstanding

Apparently?

It’s not apparent at all.

What is apparent is how frustrating it must be to produce a show like Last Comic Standing when there are morons like this in the viewing audience. This is why the producers shouldn’t even try to cast the show in attempt to be all things to all people.

We have a final five that contains Felipe Esparza and Roy Wood, Jr., and a viewer concludes that America likes its comedy “white.”

And among the final five, only one of them has been depicted in the Up Close and Personal reels as having a girlfriend– and he regularly makes jokes about how everyone thinks he’s gay. And three of the others were shown not with a girlfriend, but with their mothers… and the other one lives alone. So, if we were to indulge in some stereotyping, we might conclude that  all four are gay.  Yet, a viewer concludes that “America likes its comedy… heterosexual.”  So, our tweeting viewer is seeing what she wants to see.  (Disclaimer: We’re not saying that any or all of the final five are gay– not that there’s anything wrong with that– but we’re also not saying that there’s a preponderance of evidence that they’re straight. What we are saying is that strngelilblkgrl is making quite a leap in order to prove some sort of ridiculous point.)  We’re not sure just what exactly that sexual preference has to do with standup comedy.  But what can you say about someone who watches the show and concludes that all five remaining contestants are white?  (Or that sixty per cent is an unacceptable level of paleness for a competition that purports to find the funniest person in America.)  The show makes no claims as to diversity, only that it’s seeking to find the funniest person in America.

Sure, the final five are all males. But there were a good number of females in the semifinals. And there were two females among the top ten. So… until a few weeks ago, America liked its comedy just fine when it was seasoned with some estrogen.

Perhaps she meant Ron White… in which case, she should have capitalize the “W.”

We didn’t watch America’s Got Talent last week. We’re boycotting the show after they put through the old lady who whistles through her hands. (Her and the psycho opera singer are this season’s “Boy Shakira.”)

So we missed what one of our readers described in an email as “Chipps Cooney’s meltdown.” (Watch the full episode on Hulu.com here, or jump to the 51:00 mark, endure one more commercial and you can see Cooney’s segment.)

In the appearance, Cooney does one “illusion,” then does a Chippendale dancer routine, after confessing to having “run out of illusions.” The bit falls flat, Cooney gets three red X’s and his run on AGT ends ignominiously.

The strangest aspect of the entire run might be the inability (or refusal?) on the part of judge Piers Morgan to “get” Cooney’s act. He refers to him as an “imbecile” and an “idiot.” We’re not sure why Morgan doesn’t get the act. It’s quite clear what Cooney’s doing. And we’re doubly perplexed as to why Morgan stubbornly clings to the notion that Cooney is merely a “bad magician,” even after having it explained to him… most forcefully by fellow judge Howie Mandel.

It’s okay– perfectly okay– if Morgan doesn’t think the act is funny. But this idea that he doesn’t understand the act is mystifying.

But what we witnessed on Hulu.com was not a meltdown, but a simple case of a performer making a bad choice when it came to material. We’ve seen Cooney do the Chippendale thing. It’s part of his act. We’re not sure why he justified it by saying that he’d run out of material. (That might be the justification in his club act, but, on national television, when you’ve done a number of appearances, perhaps a better conceit could have been worked up.)

He also didn’t take the judging very well. When attempting to advance on a reality show, one must be prepared for that nearly inevitable point where one is ejected… and faces “criticism” from the judges. Taking it with grace and/or humor might mean the difference between a lasting and favorable public impression or …an unfavorable impression.

Philly comic Doogie Horner is still alive and will appear on tonight’s episode. (Amazing, considering just how autuomatically and irrationally hostile AGT crowds are to comedians.)

One more to go!

Jonathan Thymius GONE!

It must be awful to get that close to the tour– the lengthy, 60-city tour– and then get booted off.

As much as everyone wants to win Last Comic Standing, with its $100,000 (after taxes) prize and its “development deal” and its bragging rights, everyone still wants that delirious gig where you get to hit four- or five-dozen cities (often in a nice, downtown, meticulously restored, vaudeville-era theater) and fall off that 20-minute-set-log every night in front of a thousand or so standup comedy/television fans. How life-affirming must that be? You get to stick a thumb in the eye of every two-bit booker who ever routed you from Sioux Falls to Minot to St. Cloud to Tampa (in one week) and– win or lose– you soak up some ink in every Picayune and Bugler and Enquirer in the land while expensing nice breakfasts in a succession of Embassy Suites and Doubletrees and Crowne Plazas in towns that heretofore paid zero attention to you when you were featuring there under John Fox.

Life is sweet for those five. And all the comedy fans who show up for those dates will experience an intoxicating night of concentrated Comedy Kill that will rearrange their brains for weeks or months or years to come. This is a strong handful of comics that will plane/bus/drive throughout North America and dazzle people with all the material they held back on, all the material they kept in their back pockets due to the constraints of Standards and Practices. The producers of this season need not worry if they’re doing any damage to Standup. The rest of the Standup Comedy Community can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that no one will be walking out on this crop of comics as they do their Comedy Ambassador thing on the highways and byways of Standup America. And if the decision as to whether there will be a Season 8 rests on the feedback from the upcoming tour, we can expect to see announcements and entreaties and schedules regarding auditions in New York and Los Angeles come this January.

Who will win? Who cares? It will be splendid to see the show no matter who wins. (And we expect to be in the house when they hit the Keswick or the Tower or whatever venue they have in mind when they hit the Philly area. We just hope it’s on a weeknight. Otherwise we’ll be working… we hope.)

We saw Ryan Hamilton’s mug (in a loving closeup) during tonight’s broadcast. What is up with that?! We saw Fortune Feimster in the crowd in a previous episode. But when The Halves show up at the Alex, they get… NOTHING! Were we not laughing enough at Tommy Johnagin’s set? (Even though we had seen it four or five times the previous weekend when he ironed out the bugs at Comedy & Magic in Hermosa Beach?!)

Good for Mike DeStefano for doing a joke that involved a homeless person! It was a great joke that made a point and reinforced DeStefano’s persona and point of view. And kudos to Judge Andy for keeping his trap shut! (See our previous posts on LCS if you have no idea what we’re talking about.)

Ron White was, to use one of Judge Greg’s favorite words, hilarious! One of the things we liked about this season was that they didn’t hesitate to put up a few “adults” in the competition– people who are maybe greying at the temples, maybe a bit weary from the road, maybe… experienced– maybe even very experienced. A lot of guys and gals who know their way around a mike stand and who are primed for the opportunity represented by a shot on primetime network television. Who represents them all better than “Tater Salad?” He may have been the perfect choice for the guy/gal who comes on at/near the end of the whole ordeal and powers through a set of signature material that demonstrates why he’s packing them in in every zip code and time zone in the English-speaking world.

White’s an inspiration. We hung out with him for a week in Atlanta back in early ’01. He had just come off the tour. The Tour. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour. But he had not yet “blown up.” He was, at that time, still doing the four- or five-night week at the Punchline. (In other words, he hadn’t the juice to just jet in and do the Friday/Saturday thang. He was drinking the scotch that the folks in the cheap seats drink. He wasn’t yet “RON WHITE.”) A few months later, he ventured north to Montreal and dominated JFL ’01. And the rest, as they say, is standup comedy history, sociology and anthropology. This blow-up thing can happen like lightning… and it can happen in the strangest ways. Which is not to say that it doesn’t take a lot of creativity and poise and hard work… it does… but the avenue from obscurity to celebrity is nearly always tortuous and the turns nearly always unexpected.

Tommy Johnagin posted a bunch of lovely photos from our Bulleit bourbon-fueled, impromptu party at the Glendale Hilton on the night of the second Last Comic Standing semifinal competition. The bars were all closed, so The Halves went up to the room and fetched a bottle or two of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and comandeered the shuttered Hilton bar and carried on until 2:50 in the AM. Judging from the shots on the elevator, we have a feeling that the party (Parties?) continued until way into the morning.)

Semifinalists Jesse Joyce, Kurt Metzger, Tommy Johnagin at the Hilton "After Hours" Bar.

Comedy Totem Pole (from the top): Nikki Glaser, Joe List, Tommy Johnagin, Ryan Hamilton, at the Hilton "After Hours" bar.

Tommy Johnagin and The Halves at the Hilton "After Hours" bar

From top left: Shane Mauss, Roy Wood, Jr., Ryan Hamilton, Tommy Johnagin, Nikki Glaser, in the elevator

We headed north, up the 110 to sit in the audience at the Alex Theatre in Glendale for the taping of episode eight of Last Comic Standing— the third episode of the Finals! One comic was eliminated. They’re down to six. One more will be eliminated on August 2nd, then a winner will be chosen from the lucky five. (The five then go on the monster LCS Tour! We hear it’s 60 cities and ends sometime in February.)

The Female Half was familiar with the drill– she was in the crowd during the Male Half’s semifinal taping back on July 5. This taping was much more enjoyable, as it was shot in real time and only took an hour!

One thing we didn’t expect was that other audience members would be excited to see us! (Duh! We should have expected it… after all, the folks in the audience are standup comedy fans in general and LCS fans in particular… and we appeared on LCS, so… we wound up being celebrities in the audience! And we had some nice contact with fans.)

Saleem Muhammed (known popularly as “Saleem”) handled the warmup quite ably. He is a commanding presence, a large, imposing man who is also extremely likable. It a combination that makes for a good warmup comic. The crowd was excellent– especially considering that they lined up at 11 in the morning and the taping didn’t start until noon. Comedy in the daytime? It’s do-able.

East Coasters will discover the outcome in about an hour. West Coasters, about three hours later.

For now, we will say that the show was enjoyable and the taped “Let’s find out more about…” pieces were funny, well-conceived and well-edited.

Of the six who were allowed to perform tonight, they all seemed to be much more confident, much stronger, than in past episodes. The sets seem to be getting tighter as the end approaches. Perhaps it’s because they all now know what’s expected of them. In the earlier stages of the competition, it was sometimes unclear as to just how long the sets were to be. Let comics know what’s expected of them– and when it’s expected– and the results will automatically be better. Tell them how many sets they will have to concoct and how long each set will have to be, and the comics will respond by sorting through material (or purchasing it!), devising sets that fit the criteria and practicing those sets in club settings. (We’re of the opinion that, had the acts all had such precise information– In an email? Prior to the morning auditions way back in February or March?– they would have been able to craft appropriate sets for each step of the way. It’s that uncertainty that causes stress and degrades performance.) In seasons past, some of the finalists showed signs of cracking or fatigue by this point. The sequestering of the contestants in The House cut into prep time… the uncertainty of not knowing if there would even be a performance– it all added up to less than optimum performance.

We had the pleasure of performing (The Male Half) and hanging out (The Female Half) at the Comedy & Magic Club this past weekend. We watched Tommy Johnagin do two, 2-1/2-minute sets there over three nights (and Mike DeStefano doing five-minute sets on that same stage over two nights).   The idea was to do two sets at once– one for this week and one for next week.  Is that presumptuous?  No. It’s being prepared.  It’s good to be prepared in the event that you advance. And the comics wouldn’t be able to do such preparation if they were in a house or if they didn’t know how many sets were coming up or if they didn’t know how long the sets would be. We’re not sure why the producers of a precision-engineered television show– that is often taped down to the minute– can’t let the contestants know exactly how long their sets will be. Or why the times will be set at one length at one point and then– in a seemingly arbitrary fashion– be changed to a different lenght at another point down the line.

This way is better. And it allows the contestant to engage in a bit of strategy. The sets are tighter. America gets to see these thoroughbred performers perform at their very best and the country gets the idea that comedians– professional comedians– are pretty damn good at what they do!

We’re down in Redondo now. Our plan, though, was to meet up with some of the contestants over a bottle of bourbon and celebrate and recap the hourlong taping. But they were still being held captive for post-show interviews, so we packed it in and headed south. (We don’t leave until Wednesday afternoon, so there’s still hope for some sort of get-together.)

We participated in Dick And Darren’s Podcast last night in Studio City. It was a spirited hour or so of conversation and hilarity touching on REO Speedwagon, radio, Last Comic Standing, Yugo ownership and lots more! The Male and Female Halves of the staff joined Dangerous Dick Spenneberg and Darren Carter (“The Party Starter!”) under the capable engineering of Randy Wang. Click on the above link to listen to it or download it!

Dangerous Dick Spenneberg, Randy Wang, The Female Half, The Male Half, Darren Carter

Oh, God… another one. Another article on joke thievery. This time, it’s in a theater blog attached to a British newspaper, the Guardian, and the amateur sleuth is James Kettle (who writes about comedy a lot and fancies himself an expert on the subject).

“Has Keith Chegwin been stealing comedians’ jokes on Twitter?” is the question posed in the headline. And the answer seems to be “Yes.”

But we don’t have a problem with pointing out that Chegwin is a joke thief. Because “Cheggers” seems to be a serial joke-stealer. And he also seems curiously unrepentant.

What we do have a problem with is many of the assumptions that Kettle makes. And many of his pronouncements about standup just serve to perpetuate ridiculous myths about standup comics and standup comedy in general.

Among the gags retold by the one-time player of pop were identifiable jokes written by a number of contemporary standup stars, including Milton Jones, Lee Mack and Jimmy Carr. And what Cheggers presumably envisaged as a warm-hearted bit of fun has stirred up a sizeable amount of bad feeling within the comedy community. One comedian, Ed Byrne, even took Chegwin to task on Twitter, telling him he was wrong not to credit “working comics” for the jokes he was using.

Now, you could be forgiven for reflexively assuming that the standups are being a little bit precious about this (and that’s the line Chegwin has taken, telling his followers with apparent glee that he’s managed to upset the “ususal [sic] bunch of jealous comics”). And to be fair, a lot of people have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the concept of intellectual property. But it surely can’t be that hard to grasp the principle that whether you’re in a building site, an office or browsing on the internet, finding out that someone is passing off your hard work as their own is not exactly on– especially if you’re working freelance, as pretty much every comic is.

Kettle goes on to say that such a cavalier attitude might not have been out of place back in the days before “alternative comedy” took hold in England. It refers to a break in style and approach, the two factions being represented by Bernard Manning (old school) and Ben Elton (new school).

The idea that a comedian had outright ownership of his material seems to have taken root in this country once (Bernard) Manning et al gave way to the Ben Elton generation. For the original alternative comedians, simple gag-telling was far less important than presenting a fully-formed original perspective on the world.

(Of course, their use of the term “alternative” differs from ours. A similar changeover occured here in America twenty years earlier.)

The article is interesting and useful for it’s window into the history of the evolution of British comedy (and for the knowledge of the British comedy scene it imparts). But we’re afraid that it’s not very helpful when it comes to definitively coming down hard on real, certifiable joke thieves– The language used is a bit too mushy for our liking, e.g.: “…Jimmy Carr threatened to sue Jim Davidson for copying a routine the Channel 4 star believed was his…” Believed? Oh, no– If Jimmy Carr goes to the trouble of suing, Carr is certain (and we are, too) that the gags are his. Let’s give original and prolific comedian/writers like Carr the benefit of the doubt, okay?

And that’s the trouble with all these articles about joke thievery (and about the public airing of grudges and the conduct of informal joke-stealing trials via YouTube and Twitter and other social and mainstream media)– they make theft seem like a much more pervasive problem than it is. And they turn the public into annoying, ill-informed sleuths. (Just check out the comments that inevitably follow these kinds of articles… the accusations are ludicrous and sickening.)

And check out some of the tweets related to Last Comic Standing. We were horrified to read some of them. After each airing of an LCS episode, there are tweets that accuse this comic of ripping off that comic. We reached the end of our patience when one weasel tweeted that DeStefano had “totally ripped off” a bit from Jim Gaffigan. WTF?!! It soon became a parlor game at SHECKY HQ– see if we could top that one! “WTF? Bill Hicks totally ripped off Phyllis Diller!” or “OMG! Doug Stanhope so stole that bit from Shields and Yarnell!”

We warned folks early on, when this trend was just gaining some steam. We cautioned everyone about taking this kind of thing public. The genie seems to be out of the bottle. (We totally ripped off that turn of phrase from Barbara Eden!)

We flew into LAX on Monday morning. The Male Half will be at the Comedy & Magic Club through Saturday. Both Halves hung out at C&MC last night. It was “16 Comics for $16.” (The crowd got a bonus two comics last night!)

Mike Siegel, Rob Paravonian, Tommy Johnagin, Becky Pedigo, at the Mermaid

Mike Siegel, Rob Paravonian and Tommy Johnagin were on the bill last night (as was The Male Half) and afterward, we all retired to the wonderfully seedy Mermaid bar (with Becky Pedigo, above right) at the end of the pier in Hermosa Beach for drinks and lively conversation. (Pedigo will read from her book at the Improv Lab next Thursday… sadly, we will not be here to see it!)  Also on the bill were: Alan Havey, Dwayne Perkins, Diane Nichols, Charles Viracola, Darren Carter, Jimmy Brogan, Lamont Ferguson, Quinn Dahle, Jim Short and many, many more!  (We forgot to write the names down!)

We’re here in SoCal until next Wednesday. We plan on going to the LCS taping on Monday morning. Stay tuned.

We’ll limit our observations to this: Of the contestants sent home tonight, we accurately predicted the demise of two of them (won’t say which ones) and we predicted (privately) the other one would be eliminated next week.

Gone are James Adomian, Laurie Kilmartin and Maronzio Vance.

We predict that we’ll go four-for-four when the dust settles (just not in the exact order we predicted).

BTW: When we predict someone will be out, we do so without any personal enmity. We are totally divorced from emotion or personal preference when we calculate our predictions. We employ cool logic and data scraped from the Twittersphere and other sources. We are rather like the bookmaker who determines the spread and whose business would be ruined were he to make his picks base on any sort of prejudice.

Also: We wondered (aloud… on our blog… in “print”) where the judges were last episode. This week, the judges were restored.

Also: We wondered (aloud… on our blog… in “print”) what the deal was with Craig Robinson and his reluctance to touch the contestants. Hmmm… in tonight’s episode, Robinson quite deliberately clapped a hand on each and every one of the contestants after they completed their performances and awaited “judgment.”

All right… that’s it. We’re not offering another word of analysis of the show (over and above any sort of rudimentary commentary that one might find on any other popular standup comedy website) until we’re put on retainer as consultants to NBC’s Last Comic Standing. It’s about time we parlayed these eleven years of blood and sweat and tears into a paid gig!

The skies opened up and what appeared to be straight-line winds whipped through and tore the street festival asunder! The Place des Arts, just across Rue Ste.-Catherine, was, until that moment bedecked by two great red horns and, together with the giant eyeballs, it made the modern edifice look just like Victor, the green creature who is the Just Pour Rire mascot/ambassador. The mighty wind came and took one horn away. Shortly thereafter, crews removed the other.

The buildings have eyes. They turned the Place des Arts into a giant Victor. Yesterday, one of Victor's horns blew away!

On more than a few occasions over the past four days, we told people that we were absent from the ’08 and ’09 JFL festivals. And on more than a few occasions, we were told that we didn’t miss anything last year. This is meant to imply a number of things: Attendance was down, Industry didn’t show up in very large numbers and JFL seemed a bit smaller, a tad less intense. (We theorized that maybe U.S. Industry types chose to sample the recently launched Chicago version of Just For Laughs… and who wants to attend two festivals in the same year?)

Joey Elias (l) and Steve Patterson celebrate the end of a grueling festival week, at the Hyatt

On the flip side, this year’s fest seemed like old times. (We suppose this means that Chicago was found wanting.)

Or was it like old times? We’re not sure. We know that many of the usual suspects were up here performing (Festival favorites like Dom Irrera, Jimmy Carr, Christopher Titus, Andy Kindler and Harland Williams to name a handful), but were the Industry people here? Sad to say, we’re not sure… we’re dismally bad at ID’ing the Juice Dispensers, the Power Brokers, the Importantes, the Ones Who Sign the Checks.

The lobby bar at the Hyatt– the circular schmooze circus that rages every night from midnight to 3 or 4 AM– certainly seemed crammed. So there’s that. But we have no way of knowing if JFL is still the be-all/end-all for running into the people who can make or goose a career.

Left to right: Jimmy Carr, Bo Burnham, Noel Fielding

Part of this year’s JFL was the Comedy Conference… or was it called the Insiders Series… or was it the Comedy Conference/Insiders Series? We’re confused. It was supposed to be a bunch of panels and discussions and such. We only caught one small slice of one of the installments of the Pitch ’til Your Sides Split. And we caught a small hunk of Web Face-Off: Comedy Kingmakers. (A lot of the Comedy Conference events were held in the morning. At 10 AM, we were only capable of hustling down to the breakfast buffet and hurrying back to the room to file our analysis for our readers. So we missed all the “fun” (we use that word advisedly, thus the quotes). Heck we couldn’t even budget our time to catch the Networking Lunches! That was free food! Why didn’t they call it “Let’s Do Lunch?” (Does Pat Riley own the rights to that, just like he owns “Three-peat?”) Well, what do you expect from the gang who cooked up the ungainly “Pitch ’til Your Sides Split?” (Maybe it was named something mellifluous in French that just didn’t survive translation.)

Apparently, “Late Night: In the Writer’s Room” was well-attended. (But The Female Half had a bad case of “the whirlies,” so we had to pass on that gathering.) And though attendance may have been good, we can’t help but think that it might have been better had the description not been this:

Back by popular demand and after a tumultuous year in the spotlight, the world of Late Night television is on the hot seat in this panel.

Such a tortured sentence could not have been written by anyone who ever spent any time in a writer’s room. We question the credibility of the presentation… after all, there was a woman on the panel (Allison Silverman) and everyone knows there are no women in the late night writers’ rooms!

(The Whirlies, BTW, is a condition often brought on by malnutrition, fatigue and dehydration. It is easily cured by a honking plate of cuisine Indienne, a ninety-minute nap, an Extra Strength Tylenol and a snort of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.)

That Comedy Kingmakers presentation could be summarized as dealing with the issue of why comedy is popular on the web. Various execs from CollegeHumor.com, the Onion.com and other online comedy initiatives made up the panel. From what we saw, it was five guys sitting on a stage telling the audience that “that doesn’t make money,” and “this doesn’t make money” and “well, we tried that and we won’t know if it will make money for a couple or years or so” and “it’s terribly difficult to make money doing that.” Lots of talk of “insustainable models” and “revenue streams” and occasional dreamy speculation as to how the WWW might some day be just like television. (Weren’t they supposed to put television out of business? Where’s your pluck? Man up and get out there and shift the paradigm fer chrissakes!)

The Male Half poses with a SHECKYmagazine fan at the Hyatt last night at about 3 AM

We spent our Saturday evening dining at the legendary Dunn’s Famous Deli with the Vos-McFarlanes and Jim Norton (who was between shows, having just completed a “Bubbling” and on his way eventually to an 11 o’clock Best of the Fest at the Comedy Works). Also joining us later was Norton’s manager, Jonathan Branstein (who is rare among comedy management types in that he has… a sense of humor!)

Norton is a delightful dinner companion in that he is knowledgeable, introspective and passionate when it comes to discussing standup.

Had we actually attended any shows yesterday, this is probably what we would have taken in: “The CBC Radio’s The Debaters.” Hosted by Steve Patterson, “the festival’s best talent facing off in a verbal slug-fest of facts and funny. Attendees saw Andy Kindler vs. Harland Williams, Kristeen von Hagen vs. Pete Zedlacher, Pete Johanssen vs. David Hemstad, Mark Little vs. De Anne Smith and Andrew Maxwell vs. Michael Mittermaier. It was held at 2 in the afternoon… hmmm… something like that would be so much more fun at 2 AM, don’t you think?

Or we might have watched a bit of the Not Inappropriate Show– a Bob Odenkirk project– which is billed as a family-friendly (read: clean) sketch show for people 8 years of age and up. How odd and refreshing that a festival would even think of offering such a thing. And how fascinating that it’s Odenkirk who dreamed it up. Might clean become hip soon? Don’t bet on it.

Does it sound like the Fest is engaging in a bit of innovation? Attempting, perhaps, to shake up things a bit? Another show that sounded interesting was Comedy Leagues– a team standup comedy competition featuring the best comics form the top four cities in the northeast. NY, Boston, Montreal and Chicago were represented by Ryan Hamilton, Mark Normand, Ophiria Eisenberg, Bethany Van Delft, Joe List, Lamont Price, Eman, Mike Paterson, Tim Rabnett, Allison Smith, Darin Rose and Eddie Della Seipe. We hear that Team Boston led going into the final round, but were eventually defeated by Team NY. Ryan Hamilton (Last Comic Standing, Season 7) was MVP and was rewarded for his performance with a spot in Saturday night’s Bubbling With Laughter.

As always, there were standup- or comedy-related movies exhibited this week. SHECKYmagazine readers are already familiar with “I Am Comic,” the Jordan Brady-directed doc featuring Ritch Shydner. “Exporting Raymond” sounds like a must-rent– it tells the tale of the exploits of “Everybody Loves Raymond” producer Phil Rosenthal as he prepares the long-running sitcom for syndication… in Russia! “American: The Bill Hicks Story” is a movie that recounts “the amazing tale of Bill Hicks.” And Ahmed Ahmed directed “Just Like Us,” which features an international lineup of standup comics in live performances. One movie company held a sneak preview of the not yet completed movie’s trailer– “Eat Drink Laugh, The Movie” tells the story of the Comic Strip Live. The famed NYC club celebrates it’s 35th anniversary next year and Chris Rock executive produced the documentary that features Ray Romano, Judah Friedlander, Bill Maher, Colin Quinn and Paul Reiser among others. (And, of course, McFarlane and Vos were actually shooting some of their upcoming movie while up here. They, and the producers of the Comic Strip Live movie, hope to have their films completed by next year and, of course, are hopeful that their flicks will be in the lineup for JFL 2011.)

There’s always a buzzy gala, the one gala of the week that everyone anticipates or talks about because of the host. This year, it quite possibly could have been the gala hosted by Pamela Anderson, but it was nosed out by the Steve Martin gala. (Actually, there were two Steve Martin galas!) The lucky ones who got to be on them were Gerry Dee, Jack Whitehall, Nick Cannon, Jared Christmas, Steve Patterson, Rove McManus, Mike Birbiglia and Joe Koy (early show) and Godfrey, Tom Wrigglesworth, Todd Barry, Andrew Maxwell, Mark Little, Orney Adams and Whitney Cummings (late show).

And Dane Cook flew in from Utah (where he’s shooting a movie) and dropped in as a surprise guest. Cook told us he always wanted to share a stage with Steve Martin. Mission accomplished.

Cook came back to the Hyatt afterwards (which is where we encountered him). Near the end of our conversation, Cook said, to The Male Half, “You need to do me a favor… I always see pictures of you with comedians… so could you take a picture of you and me?” (Since 1999, no one has uttered anything close to the words to The Halves. Cook says he’s checking back to make sure we run it. Ha!)

Dom Irrera (on the left, missing one antenna) and Rich Vos, at the Hyatt

We left the Hyatt lobby bar at 4 AM. And, although last call was announced nearly an hour earlier, the party was still proceeding at a pretty good pitch when we departed. (It’s always a frantic party on Saturday night, due in part to the fact that many attendees are doing the dreaded “Stay Up”– the ol’ “My plane leaves at 7 AM, and I have to leave for the airport at 5, so I might as well stay up!“)

To which we reply: NO! Don’t do it! (But by that time, it’s too late. They are doomed to a hellish, hungover airline experience.)

We were on the elevator with McFarlane yesterday and she said, “You guys didn’t do anything today, what’re you going to write about?” Vos pipes up, “If McKim drops something on the floor, there’s five-hundred words right there.” The ticker at the bottom of the WordPress window reads “Word count: 1838.)

We caught the last fifteen minutes of Just For Pitching… we usta accidentally call it “Pitching It.” Now they’ve changed the name of it and they’re billing it as “Pitch ’til Your Sides Split: TV series pitch session.” There were only three pitches scheduled. That guy from Banff Television with the clipboard wasn’t running it… is he not involved this year? Steve Patterson (comedian from Toronto) emceed it this time.

We got there in time to see “NNN News,” one of three sitcoms pitched at the afternoon session. We didn’t take any notes, but we do know that Omnipop’s Bruce Smith was one of the pitchers. And the pitchees were the usual suspects– execs from Canadian and (maybe) US television. The trailer was slick, no doubt about that. But the verdict from one of the suits was that it skewed too old (as least for his network) and the others were just confused. But, of course, they each took turns explaining exactly why they were confused– using exquisitely opaque ExecSpeak! We theorize that heavily compensated television executives endeavor to demonstrate their salary-worthiness by speaking. Words– spoken words– are their most important product! And you thought it was television programming! No, no! Their most important product is their artfully spun web of ponderous speech– decorated with delightfully arcane catchphrases and buzzwords that serve as shortcuts to their main points. It’s totally modular! They build giant delicate word castles of lacey, fluffy nothingness! They hold forth for a good five minutes on this pilot or that sitcom project– that’s 300 seconds– when the elusive word they search for– “No.”– takes only about three-hundredths of a second. That’s a ratio of about a thousand to one! Such waste! We suspect that somewhere, deep in their contracts, they’re paid by the word. They are each a modern Charles Dickens!

We missed today’s Pitch ’til Your Sides Split. Darn. We need a refresher course in ExecSpeak. (We haven’t heard anyone use the word, “interstitial” in years!)

Who knew Donald Glover ("Troy on NBC's "Community") is adept at rapping?

Andy Kindler’s State of the Industry Address was scheduled for 4:30! Huh? No coffee? No danish? No spread of gooey chocolate chip cookies and sugary soda pop? And why so late? It’s Friday evening and a lot of people are getting ready for their Friday 7:30 shows! This kind of timing tends to suppress attendance. It was held upstairs. Or was it downstairs? The Hyatt’s layout is not… linear. Rather, it is an architectural funhouse with two elevator banks that don’t agree on anything and secret passages and salons and levels and… a shopping mall! (Press the wrong button and you’re launched into a brightly-lit, late 20th century, atrium shopping mall!)

We got to the address in time to catch Harland Williams‘ wacky intro. (Williams is a surrealist!) We’ve seen Kindler’s address ten times now. And this one was not his best. It never got rolling… it lacked momentum. Without getting into the particulars, there was only giant applause break. It’s usually a non-stop, rollicking roller coaster affair– in which even the valleys are funny. This time, it was… even.

Specifically: He didn’t get to Last Comic Standing quickly enough! LCS was the giant, 1,000-lb. elephant in the room. Right? Andy Kindler, Alterna-God, goes over to The Dark Side of Network Television. Isn’t that the theme this year? Admit it: When you heard, “Andy’s going to be a judge on Last Comic Standing,” didn’t you think, “Hey… maybe LCS might be good this year!” and then, “Geez… I wonder how he’s going to handle this in the State of the Industry Address?”

Well… we did, at least.

He got to it. But he took his time getting to it. And when he got there, he didn’t hit it hard enough.

Man, that Classic Comedy Radio bit was Classic Comedy! Kindler mocked the fast-talking patter of hacky radio deejays but inserted sly and often vicious references to Lisa Lampinelli, Wayne Cotter and Etta May.

Since we were planning to hover around the Vos/McFarlane juggernaut all night (starting with a 5:45 shuttle call for the 7:00 Gala show hosted by Cheech & Chong), we hadda leave before Kindler go to the closer– his “Jay Leno material.” (What’s a SOTI Address without some Leno bashing?) Now hear this: It may have appeared that we were walking out in protest– some sort of statement in solidarity of Team Leno– but we assure one and all that was not the case… it was a simple matter of scheduling!

We’re still puzzled as to why they videotape the address every year. It doesn’t seem to be up online. Is it up on iTunes? Is it going to be released in a boxed set some day? (Physical media… so last century!) It has a shelf life– pretty soon references to some of Kindler’s favorite targets are going to evoke not belly laughs but momentary confusion as the celebrities slip out of the public consciousness. We say: Put them all up online! Let us all have at it! There’s gold in them thar hills of snark!

There are bootleg audio copies floating around out there. In this day and age, it’s best to get out in front of that and offer it via digital download!

On the left: Ben Roy (New Faces) On the right: Fortune Feimster (New Faces, Last Comic Standing)

It was fascinating hanging out in the narrow hallway at the Theatre St. Denis during the aforementioned gala. It’s a show… a big show. And it’s a television taping, too! So it’s controlled chaos– lots of clipboard-toting gals and guys and camera/sound crews crabwalking past while clumps of comics and their “crews” huddle throughout the warren of dressing rooms. At each end, plasma screens display the program and each performer is greeted with applause upon returning to the backstage area.

McFarlane was scheduled for the middle of the lineup that included Jay Malone, Jim Jeffries, Noel Fielding, Bill Burr, Joey Elias, Chris Hardwick, Pete Johanssen and Lavell Crawford. Cheech & Chong’s bits were interspersed throughout.

We don’t review comics. But MAN is that Bill Burr in some kindofa zone these days! He makes us howl! He dug himself a hole (by his own admission) with the somewhat judgemental gala crowd by starting off with a bit about how skeptical he is that “there’s never an excuse to hit a woman.” (“Really? Really? Never? I can think of seventeen!”) But he powered through and killed mightily with a lengthy bit about his girlfriend “rescuing” a pit bull. It’s so funny, it makes one fear that the laughing muscles may have sustained permanent damage.

In the many backstages we’ve hung out in this year, there seems to be a looseness… less of a militaristic, tightly-controlled striving for a precision, down-to-the-minute production. It seems to be left up to the comics as to how and when the show might proceed. It’s relaxing! (Of course, the Gala, since it’s taped for airing on Canadian television, is, by necessity, scripted and timed. But even so, it didn’t seem very tense back there. For a TV taping, it was pretty laid back.)

If only the audiences were similarly laid back. We’ve seen a few instances of audiences being judgemental, stiff, a little too quick to jump on a comic after hearing only a setup or a premise. That is soooo 1996! People, you’re at a comedy festival! Give the joke a chance… we can pretty much guarantee you it’s going to be funny once we all arrive at the punchline! We can guarantee you (if that is what you require) that you’re not going to be offended. And, if you are offended, we would (not so) respectfully request that you keep your trap shut and hide your discontent! (No booing, please. It’s the eventual manifestation of the premise police and the political correctness disease that swept the continent over the past decade and a half– people feeling entitled to voice their displeasure… at a comedy show! And too many of these goofs are offended at the setup! Huh? Are these people ADD, perhaps? Unable to wait until the rest of the gag is unspooled before they get all judgemental? It’s rude, it’s stupid, it’s unwanted.)

The Male Half consented to man the video camera and tail McFarlane as she rustled her tot during the shuttle ride, straightened out a false eyelash controversy down in makeup and did the curtain call. We’re sure some of the footage will be usable.

Kristeen Von Hagen and Jo-Anna Downey at the Funny Or Die party

We hit Ernie Butler’s Comedy Nest on the other end of town, at the Pepsi Center (the old Forum), for the Comedy Night in Canada show. (Featured were Jo-Anna Downey, Daniel Tirado, Eddie King, Graham Clark, Pete Johanssen, McFarlane, The Doo Wops) It was bittersweet– we’ve performed at the Nest on two occasions in the past, but this was the first time we’d set foot in the joint since the passing of Butler. (We last saw him at the ’07 JFL, just weeks before he succumbed to cancer.)

Rich Vos and The Male Half at the Funny Or Die party

We stopped back to the Hyatt to mix up a batch of Manhattans and chill on some modern lobby furniture. We engaged the occasional passing comic (“Hey! You’re Greg Hahn!” “As a matter of fact, I am!”) and share networking tips with Kevin Meany— “You look like you’ve put on weight,” Meany says, then, “I’m going to say that to everyone!” Yes, Kevin… that’s an idea that so crazy, it just might work.

Then it was off to hang backstage at the Nasty Show. It’s a raucous and densely packed, subterranean bunker that doubles as a green room– Greg Giraldo (host), Jimmy Carr, Jim Norton, Rich Vos, Tiffany Haddish and Andrew Kennedy are present as the Club Soda crowd upstairs is treated to nastiness. Agents, managers, publicists and others drift in and out. It’s a party atmosphere. So much so that most don’t leave for the free-liquor/free-food bash just up the boulevard (the one hosted by Funny Or Die) until 2 AM!

A ten-minute shuffle up Boul. Ste Laurent gets us to that bash. Up four or five floors and the elevator doors open and the throbbing techno rattles the ribcage. In past years, we’ve sought refuge from the decibels in the room off to the right side. But this year, even that sanctuary was uncomfortably loud. What sense does it make to force a bunch of comedians to scream themselves hoarse… at a party… at a festival… a festival at which those same hoarse comedians will wake up on the next morning sounding like Kathleen Turner after drinking Drano… and who will then have to perform on Saturday night?

We hung… we ate a delightful smoked meat sandwich (Thanks, Funny Or Die!) and huddled and shouted for a bit before heading back to the Hyatt.

While shouting and drinking, we heard an amazing story from Jo-Anna Downey, who runs a free-wheeling and respected open mike/workout room in Toronto. Irwin Barker, the Canadian comedy legend who passed away last month at the age of 57, often performed there, says Downey. Barker is quoted as saying, “Cancer has my body but not my spirit, and I’ll continue to make jokes, not so much about cancer, but in spite of it.” In this case, Barker walked the walk– Downey says that Barker showed up the room just two weeks before his death… and did a set of new material. (Such a story is inspirational… and it might just motivate us to get off our asses and seek out a stage somewhere and break in the stuff that’s been hiding in notebooks and lurking amid the scraps of paper on the desk.)

The view's not always spectacular... check out the guy in the middle of the frame, wearing a speedo... and little else... in broad daylight.

Gloomy day. Windy, too. There’s a giant slab of crappy weather just south of us and oddly enough, it’s shaped like Philadelphia (but 20 times the size). It’s moving north/northeast, so we might escape it’s wrath. 

Last night was typically hot and muggy. A perfect night for holding a party in a carwash. 

The carwash gang just getting warmed up.

That’s Doug Stanhope down there somewhere. That’s a carwash (Lave Auto Centre-Ville!) just across Jeanne-Mance from the Hyatt. And Stanhope rented it out for a party. Round about ten last night, The Halves and designated cetacean Bonnie McFarlane swam over (through the soupy, humid Montreal air) and checked out the scene– It’s a carwash… and it’s set up like a party, with beer and vodka and a sound system and a mike in one corner. Stanhope’s idea is to jam a thumb in the eye of the Just For Laughs fest. On his Facebook status from Wednesday, he said he intended to “set up camp right outside their camp. And get drunk with the good ones.” Attendees were given a “Doug Stanhope Festival Survival Kit,” which was a small nylon zippered pouch containing mints, caffiene energy gum, adhesive bandages (popularly know by the proprietary name of “Bandaids”), Aleve, Blistex, antacid, Wet Ones, a “No Screwing” tattoo and a condom. (The Female Half says that, with the exception of the condom and the tattoo, everything’s going straight into her purse. She puts Boy Scouts to shame with her desire to be prepared. She would end up with a whopping prize were she to appear in the audience of Let’s Make A Deal.) 

Stanhope is filled with more than the usual amount of rage in his most recent (July 12) journal posting– “Comedy Death Camp,” in which he savagely trashes those who profit from training others in the art of standup. People who teach the occasional comedy classes are “loathsome enough but don’t create much damage.” But he reserves particularly poisonous venom for those whose marketing skills enable them to “make a career out of it–folks like Comedy Bible author Judy Carter and JFL talent coord Jeff Singer. And he is particularly galled by Kyle Cease (he calls Cease a “fucking rotten, soul-plundering asshole”) for joining forces with Louie Anderson to create Comedy Boot Camp. Is reading Stanhope the best thing for us to do before filing one of our JFL updates? Man, can that boy pump out the bile! Even at our most vicious, our prose reads like the minutes of a romance novel book club meeting compared to Stanhope’s barbarous essays. 

In the course of trashing those who teach, he also holds up Michael “Chicken” Roof as symbolizing everything that’s wrong with The Industry in general… and festivals in particular… and JFL if you want to go even further. So, his carwash show/party is a pointed response to the fest. It reminds us of the comparitively gentle counter-fest that was mounted many years ago by a gang of Boston comics who set up a mini-fest of their own one year on a boat in the St. Lawrence River near Vieux Montreal. Their attitude was congenial (and betrayed more of a desire to be included in the fest than a desire to wound the fest). 

* * * * * * 

Bonnie McFarlane and Joe List at a party honoring Jay Roach, director of "Dinner For Schmucks"

Speaking of being included/excluded: That’s Joe List (next to Bonnie McFarlane) in the picture above. Our readers will recall that List was “disapeared” from Last Comic Standing– he “got through” from NYC to the semifinals in Los Angeles, performed on night number one of those semifinals, but his likeness was expunged from the final cut of the show! We asked him how it felt to vanish like that. He reminded us that not only did he end up on the cutting room floor, but so did Tom Shillue, Stuckey and Murray, David Cope and Jeff Maurer. In our updates, we mentioned all but Mr. Maurer… so Maurer has the distinction of not only being dissed by LCS, but he was also hosed by SHECKYmagazine.com! We forgot! Honest! (Fer Chrissakes, could we JUST STOP WITH ALL THE REFERENCES TO LAST COMIC STANDING?!) 

List said he “didn’t get the call.” He said that he never pursued the matter… never phoned up Hollywood and asked what, if anything, he did to deserve such an ignominious fate.  He added that it wasn’t fellow comics who busted his chops about his absence on the show but… friends and relatives!

(We never considered the “friends and relatives” angle. Perhaps because we have few friends and our relatives have the rude habit of dying a lot.) 

That's Adrienne, Adrian and Adrian (Iapalucci, Mesa and Cunningham, respectively) at the Hyatt

Patrice O’Neal was supposed to be here this week. We heard the tix were selling like hotcakes. But the shows were canceled and the tickets were refunded. (He’s been a fixture up here for a few years.) We heard that O’Neal was turned away at the border. We found out that he attempted a second time to fly into Montreal but was again “red-flagged.” It seems that an old legal matter, stemming from a 1987 charge when O’Neal was a callow youth of 17, somehow has resurfaced and is making things like crossing borders devilishly difficult. (Initially, we were reluctant to report on the matter, but we were encouraged to do so by O’Neal’s management– it’s better that O’Neal’s absence be revealed as beyond his control, than have his fans think that he merely stiffed them, goes the logic.) 

Angelo Tsarouchas greets Godfrey in the lobby of the Hyatt

Check out the above candid shot: Zoom in on the hands in the center of the pic… it’s the moment of “shake!” 

Shaking hands with comedian Godfrey is Angelo Tsarouchas— the Canadian comedian/actor who stars in a film we’re keenly interested in seeing. It’s called “Fred and Vinnie,” and it tells the tale of the relationship between comedian Freddie Stoller and the late Vinnie D’Angelo. D’Angelo was a founding father of Philadelphia comedy who passed away after moving from his native New Jersey to Los Angeles. We knew D’Angelo from our days in Philly comedy. He is missed. Tsarouchas approximates D’Angelo physically (especially with the matching facial hair which is absent here). 

* * * * * * 

The single most satisfying moment of the festival so far? That would have to be catching the last fifteen minutes of Lewis Black’s Keynote Address. (We were working on yesterday’s update… we blew off the first 30 minutes.) 

Black’s speech was part of the Comedy Conference, an amorphous program if there ever was one. But, from what we saw, Black’s tirade was well-formed. 

You know that vein that sometimes throbs on someone’s forehead when they’re outraged? Well, put a jacket on one of them and that’s what Lewis Black is. He spent the last third of his talk dealt with his frustrating (and numerous) encounters with television executives. It’s delicious to watch/hear Black eviscerate TV suits– while a bunch of them are present! 

And the climax was when Black told a story about when he was younger– in his late 30s– and a friend of his scored a deal for a television show with MTV. The friend wanted to use his buddies on the show… on a regular basis. Black was among the people he wanted to use. The exec told Black’s friend that the friends “skewed too old” for the intended audience. The friend countered that, when he was little, his comedy idol was Groucho Marx and that Marx was not only old… he was DEAD! (Imagine the line barked out in the patented Lewis Black manner! It was priceless! It was inspirational! It had all the satisfying emotions and implications! It was logical! It was insightful! It was satisfying in that it laid bare the TV executives and their blinkered, Philistine pig-ignorance! And, of course, it’s something we’ve been bleating about for 11 years!) 

Michael Kosta (Host, New Faces) and Ryan Hamilton (Last Comic Standing)

How about that Twitter? And that Google? And all that internet stuff that enables people to find information? We’re in awe of the technology. Ever more so when we hear stories like that told to us by Michael Kosta (above left). We posted yesterday that we were greatly amused by Kosta’s command of the two-leveled Cabaret venue as he hosted the 7:30 New Faces show Wednesday night. Hours after we hit “Publish,” we encounter Mr. Kosta in the lobby bar last night and he tells us that he was working out earlier in the day when he received a .txt message from his sister who lives in Ann Arbor. Turns out sister keeps tabs on brother’s comings and goings by means of a tailored Google search which pushes new Google citations of “Michael Kosta” to her desktop. And whaddya know, she gets word that the nice people at SHECKYmagazine (which she spelled wrong in her message!) said something nice about her brother! Just hours it takes for word to ricochet from Montreal to Ann Arbor back to the gym at the Hyatt Regency!! 

Kosta nearly didn’t make it to the show, he says. He commandeered a shuttle from the Hyatt lobby in plenty of time to make it to the 7:30 show. But, since Rue Ste. Catherine is all chewed up due to a beautification project, a trip which would normally only take five minutes now takes double that. No matter, there was still plenty of time. His driver, a young lady whose French was way better than her English got a little… lost. Minutes later, Kosta says, he finds himself headed over the Pont Champlain, headed for Brossard, Quebec, with the city of Montreal getting smaller and smaller out the back window. Panic city!! 

Kosta was patient. They eventually made it, but it was touch and go– and the venue had someone lined up to replace the missing Kosta in the event he never arrived! (We consider the driver to be one lucky gal, as we have seen some rather ugly, narcissistic flare-ups during past festivals– managers or agents or talent screaming (literally screaming!) into the face of a hapless driver whose only offense may have been to arrive a minute late to a pick-up or show up without enough room for a client.) 

Stiltwalker, from our window at the Hyatt Regency

Holy Crapping Jesus! Who could predict that the acoustics in a tent would be so awful? We entered the 2010 Variety’s Ten Comics To Watch Cocktail Reception and slammed into a cacophonous wall of music and chatter and yelling. It was like a thousand vuvuzelas pumped through a CB radio and re-pumped through a Marshall amp. We grabbed some red wine and a Blue and headed back out into the sunshiney terrace. We watched as, one by one, the Comics To Watch exited the tent, dazed and clutching their framed Variety citations. The Male Half jokes (in Kindler-esque fashion) that on one or two occasions, he hasn’t been a Comic To Watch even when he’s onstage. In no particular order, they are/were: 

Hannibal Buress
Deon Cole
Lucas Cruikshank
Brett Gelman
Chris Gethard
The Imponderables
Kyle Kinane
Kate Micucci & Riki Lindhome
Chelsea Peretti
Jack Whitehall 

We have a lot to say about this article… but not enough time to say it right now. (Perhaps when we return to Jersey, decompress and unpack… then re-pack for our upcoming trip to Los Angeles… we’ll read some Stanhope and spin out some white-hot blog napalm about it. For now… a cleansing breath or two and we move on.) 

We encounter a wide variety of Industry and Media people. We marvel at McFarlane’s ability to say a wildly inappropriate thing with a smile… and we marvel at the reactions and we are particularly fascinated by the (sometimes) excruciatingly long pauses that take place before the recipient of said thing puts it all together and realizes that… it’s a joke! Example: We encounter Al Parinello. Al introduces himself and tells us he’s the Executive Director of the Andy Kaufman Award. McFarlane smiles and says (totally innocent and totally believably!), “Oh… How is Andy these days?” The Excruciatingly Long Pause ensues. The Realization occurs. The Female Half pipes up, “You know… you really should have an answer for that question.” Which is true. He should. On this day, he does not. (For anyone who thinks that’s cruel, we counter that Kaufman– and anyone looking after his legacy– has only Kaufman to blame. The man– and his fans– perpetuated the notion that he faked his death and gleefully went along with the gag when Kaufman played very elaborate and very public tricks with his identity and his existence… indeed, some believe that the man lives on to this day.) Eventually guffawing ensues. 

* * * * * *
The above photo is what we see out our window today. The JFL people have shifted some of the street performance from its old home on Rue St. Denis to the plaza just outside our hotel, in front of the Place des Arts. We’re not sure, but we think it will crank up to full throttle starting tonight. But, during the day, we look out and we see only the occasional oddity– giant papier mache heads (Carnival-style) of the Marx Brothers or ghostly, floating characters lit from within and filled (we assume) with helium. And, as pictured above, the occasional stilt walker. The Female Half says that, were she to walk through a crowd on stilts, she would bark out, “Please! NO PICTURES!” She might even go all Marlon Brando on them and hiss, “Get that f***ing camera out of my ankles!”

We got an email:

Hi Shecky,
I have enjoyed reading y’all through the years…keep up the good work. Though I do have one little “gripe” if you could call it that. It seems like all of your recent posts have been about Last Comic Standing.It’s cool that you’re covering it, but it feels like the page has become a LCS exclusive. I don’t mind to sound “nit-picky,” …I guess I was just hoping to find some other Stand-Up news on here as of late. Are you guys going to be covering the Just For Laughs Festival this year? That would be cool. Anyway, that is all. Keep up the good cause in promoting the wonderful art and craft that is stand-up comedy.

Guilty as charged!

Of course all of our recent posts have been about Last Comic Standing— as have most of our recent private conversations… and a good portion of our emails. Indeed, since securing the audition spots back in January, even a good portion of our dreams have been about Last Comic Standing.

That’s just the way it goes when you step on the Primetime Network Merry-Go-Round… or is it a roller coaster? Or a Wild Mouse (a Wildwood reference for all you Jersey Shore people… the real Jersey Shore, not the creepy, stereotype-laden, reality show Jersey Shore Jersey Shore)?

To answer the question: Yes, we will be covering the Just For Laughs festival this year. In fact, we’re typing this from our room at the Hyatt Regency, overlooking the intersection of Ste. Catherine and Rue Jeanne-Mance in downtown Montreal.

What is that? We think it's people dressed like tongues. Huh?

Our first observation: There are a lot of comics in this year’s festival who appeared on this season’s Last Comic Standing!

Ha! See what we did there?

Speaking of Last Comic Standing, when we attempted to cross the border into Canada yesterday at about three yesterday afternoon, we crawled up to the booth– the one containing the border patrol dude who asks you where you reside and what you intend to do on your visit to Canada– and the following exchange ensued:

Border Patrol Dude: What is the purpose of your visit?

Us: We’re going to the Just For Laughs Festival.

Border Patrol Dude: Are you there to perform or to attend?

Us: We’re going to attend.

Border Patrol Dude: (Pausing as he inspects our passports, then) I saw you on TV.

Us: (Laughing hysterically and saying, in unison) Then call the festival up and tell them to put us in!!

And they let us into the country anyway!

The Female Half, Kristeen Von Hagen, Luciano Casimir, Bonnie McFarlane, out back of the Comedy Works

This week, we are unashamedly Vos-McFarlane barnacles. We are attached to one or the other for the duration of the festival. Wherever they go, so shall we. It is in this manner that we will gain access to the inner recesses of the fest and consequently gain valuable insight into the inner workings of this, the largest comedy festival (still) in the English-speaking world.

Sounds passive. Well, it is. We took the last two years off. We’re out of practice. We’re exhausted. (You know, from our Last Comic Standing experience… did we mention that both Vos and McFarlane were featured in previous seasons of Last Comic Standing?) But we’re always looking for a different way to experience the fest. One year, we hustled– sweaty and panicked– hither and yon, snapping pictures and jabbering about the magazine to anyone who had ears. Another year, we merely planted ourselves in one corner of the Delta Bar and let the festivalgoers wash over us. This year, we brought a suitcase full of booze and we’ve turned off our cellphones– Verizon’s Canadian coverage policy is murky… so why take chances? It’s our tenth year here since 1999, so we dream up different ways to cover it.

Jason Weems (Last Comic Standing) and Lavelle Crawford (Last Comic Standing)

We met up with Rich Vos and Bonnie McFarlane (the cetacean to us anthropods) in the lobby of the Hyatt. And don’t you know Harland Williams is there, too. And don’t you know the first thing he says (to The Male Half) is, “Hey! I saw you on Last Comic Standing and I really enjoyed your set!” Swear. To. God.

The Male Half just wants his life to go back the way it was. (Sarcasm light is flashing.)

Williams is hosting Bubbling With Laughter, McFarlane is on the show. (Around here, we just call it “Bubbling.” It makes us sound and feel like television executives.) We eventually abandon the idea of grabbing a shuttle in favor of walking the two or three blocks to Club Soda. Ste Catherine St. is torn up– a beautification project– so the sidewalks are hemmed in by piles of gravel and saggy chain link fences. We enter through the rear. We descend into the subterranean green room where we hang with fellow Philadelphians Dom Irrera and Brendon Walsh. Also present (and due to mount the stage above us) is Eric Andre, Michael Ian Black, Jimmy Carr and look– it’s Last Comic Standing’s Natash Legerro! (She acknowledges The Male Half… but completely ignores The Female Half… apparently, The Female Half is not “the bee’s knees.”)

Mike Vecchione (Y-town!) and Josh Wade (Freehold, NJ)

The Male Half is distressed and disoriented by the lighting in the green room, so we decide to head up St. Laurent to Cabaret, where we manage to catch the sets of (among others) Last Comic Standing’s Mike Vecchione and Adrienne Iapalucci, barely missing the set of Last Comic Standing’s James Adomian. (We’re not even bothering to italicize Last Comic Standing any more… it’ll save us hundreds of keystrokes over the course of the next few days.)

Doug Stanhope is here... and so is Jon Dore

We also watched Josh Wade, Karl Hess, Ben Roy, Adrian Mesa all hosted by Michael Kosta. (That Kosta is a heckuva emcee. Kept it moving. Did time when it was merited. Busted the balls of a stonefaced patron in the upper deck.)

As they’re loading in the crowd for the second New Faces show of the evening, McFarlane pops in (fresh from her spot back at the Club Soda), while we’re chatting with J.P. Buck (erstwhile Aspen T.C., former T.C. for Tonight, future T.C. for Conan’s upcoming TBS resurrection). McFarlane and both Halves decide to walk back to the Regency to catch a shuttle to the Comedy Works. (It is there that hubby Vos will be hosting the marathon Best of the Fest.)

From left: Godfrey, Tom Green, Bill Burr, Hannibal Buress and someone named "April!"

We good-naturedly badger the folks at the logistics desk for a shuttle ride… they disappear for a while, trying to figure out just where all the shuttles are… we take the opportunity to stock up on the free whoopie cushions… McFarlane spies the hockey game sign-up sheet, grabs a pen and signs up David Feldman and Dan Naturman (We threw our heads back and laughed and laughed at the idea of either comedian skittering around on skates, checking Brent Schiess into the boards!)

All the shuttles are at the airport.

Adrienne Iapalucci and Brian McKim were robbed! (according to the Twittersphere)

We embark on The Just For Laughs Death March– Jeanne-Mance to Bishop St– stopping along the way for food and refreshments.

The Works is packed… and hot… and the crowd is hot as well. We catch McFarlane’s set from the hallway in the back of the house, then hang out on the back stairs for a bit before comandeering a shuttle for the return trip to the Hyatt. By the time we enter the Lobby Bar, the party is in full swing. The vast majority have arrived within the past 18 hours or so. It’s (PHL) homeboy Ralph Harris! (Wasn’t he on Last Comic Standing, Season 6?) Over there is Fortune Feimster! (We met her in Glendale in April, during the taping of the Last Comic Standing, Season 7 Semifinals!) And that’s Bruce Smith! (He manages Last Comic Standing judge Andy Kindler!)

Ralph Harris and The Female Half at the Hyatt

We exited at about 2:30. We had been up for about 21 hours by that point. Some things never change. We kick off our five days here by digging ourselves a sleep deprivation hole.

There will be hundreds more words and dozens more pictures.

For those keeping score at home, there’s about 18 references to Last Comic Standing in this post. Nineteen if you count this one.

If you’re looking for a link to aaaallll our coverage– each and every word and pic we’ve ever posted from Montreal, from 1999 through 2007, click here.

Hey! Good for Fortune Feimster for sitting in the audience at the taping of last night’s episode of Last Comic Standing. All of Standup America gets a lesson on how to be a gracious loser (while getting valuable primetime network facetime)! Where were all the others? You can bet you’ll see our smiling faces in that crowd– we’re on the guest list for the Monday, July 26 taping at the Alex. It’ll be one of the highlights of our upcoming week in Los Angeles.

* * * * * *

Somebody give Craig Robinson handshaking lessons. Or block out the show so that no one gets near him. The Male Half notes that he never got within several yards of Robinson during his taping. Not sure why they’re letting people near him at this stage of the competition– especially since they don’t seem to have established any kind of protocol for contact. For the first few comics, it seemed as though the rule was, “Let Mr. Robinson touch you, but do not touch Mr. Robinson.” And it might have been Tommy Johnagin who got stiffed– the classic, cringe-inducing hand hanging out there in mid-air, waiting for the shake, but never receiving it… arrrgggh! It wasn’t until Mike DeStefano— who practically forced a shake through his use of body language, eye contact and, quite possibly, good ol’ fashioned intimidation– that Robinson actually consented to a shake. We began to wonder if Robinson hadn’t been CGI’ed into the taping, so unnatural was the interaction between host and comedian.

* * * * * *

Oh, that new set! Those giant 15-ft. high letters spelling out “C O M I C!” Could they be too bright? Laurie Kilmartin looked like a photograph, like she was 2-D, instead of 3-D. The contrast was non-existent. Subsequent comics looked only slightly better (Did the director adjust the lighting? Did our eyeballs adjust?) but they all looked flat or washed out. The lighting during the taping of the semifinals was gorgeous. Last night’s episode looked like a different show with a different feel, a different palate. We were thrown by the new look.

And the comedians seem somewhat off-kilter as well. Could they feel the heat from all those bulbs behind them? (Not unlike walking through downtown Vegas– you can feel the heat from all those tiny incandescent bulbs!) Perhaps the crowd threw their timing off. A significant portion of the audience in the Alex was made up of screamers and hooters. Sometimes enthusiasm among the crowd members can be a curse and not a blessing. Nearly all of Kilmartin’s punchlines setups were met with outright screams and WHOO-HOO’s! That kind of thing is potentially deadly to a comedian. She handled it like a pro. The audience wrangler might have cautioned against such behavior. It’s a fine line to walk, though– you run the risk of deadening the response if you try to engineer the response.

When the Male Half went out onto that same Alex Stage– in the number one slot– the Female Half was momentarily worried that the audience that evening was too hopped up. The warmup dude had been throwing candy and making audience members dance– typical audience warmup tactics, but perhaps too much for a comedy show. Perhaps the same warmup dude was working last night’s taping. (We must ask: When so many audience warmup dudes are actual, working standup comics with an explicit understanding of comedy crowd dynamics, why aren’t those people tapped for this assignment? They know what’s good for a comic… they also know what’s disastrous.

They remained volatile for the next few acts.

* * * * * *

Where were the judges? We know that in past seasons, the judges have disappeared by this stage of the contest. But this year, the format has been jiggered to be pure competition– no house, no jester outfits, no car washing– so it seemed odd that the judges were gone. (And we didn’t notice their absence until long after the show was over!) If you’re going to have a competition– a pure competition– all the way through the run, why not have the judges in there? Sure the ultimate judges are the folks at home, voting via txt or online, but might not the judges have been carried along through the rest of the season?

* * * * * *

One of the questions rippling through the social media (and the MSM) is “Where’s the house?” A lot of viewers are surprised that there’s no house, no contrived, reality-show laboratory as a backdrop for experimentation on the comedy rats. Did the show drop the ball as far as educating the public as to the format changes on this season’s show? Heck, even the Baltimore Sun’s reality TV blogger, Sarah Kelber, seemed mystified by the absence of the house. A reality show specialist, for a major daily is confused.

I haven’t always been a devoted Last Comic Standing watcher, but I’ve seen enough of it to be a little perplexed by the format we saw in last night’s live show.

Didn’t they used to live in a house and do challenges — and then perform live sets? I can’t quite recall how it used to work, but I was surprised that last night’s show felt like an open-mike night hosted by Craig Robinson. I guess they’re going the American Idol route … but no judges’ commentary? It was all a little odd.

What’s odd is that either Kelber didn’t get the memo… or there was no memo.

* * * * * *

The ratings dipped by 6 per cent from last week. A single-digit drop can be made up by Hulu. It’s holding steady… third behind reruns of Big Bang and Men (we would bet money that’s what the suits call it!) and The Bachelorette. But they beat out original episodes of The Good Guys.

Next week, according to Robinson: They eliminate three comedians. That’s 33 per cent! That leaves seven! This thing will be over quickly! August 9 is the date of the finale.

The article on SportsBookGurus.com was written by “Bonnie.” It is entitled, “Last Comic Standing Betting Odds List Tommy Johnagin As Fan Favorite.” We’re not sure where they get their data from (probably from a number of sources and probably very secret), but they’re offering odds on who will be the last comic standing.

Contestants of Last Comic Standing are really bringing out the big guns for the semi finals. It is turning out to be a close race. It is no surprise that funny man Craig Robinson is the highlight of every episode, but he is closely followed by some of America’s up and coming professional comedians. There was a challenging round of semi-finals, but after Tuesday night’s episode, America now has their top ten for season 7 of Last Comic Standing.

This kind of thing has been going on for years. Similar sites have offered odds on all sorts of things, like US political races and, of course, sporting events. These fellows offer odds on LCS, World Cup and who will replace Larry King!

Tommy Johnagin +300
Maronzio Vance +400
James Adomian +450
Roy Wood Jr. +450
Myq Kaplan +700
Felipe Esparza +900
Jonathan Thymius +900
Mike DeStefano +1200
Laurie Kilmartin +1400
Rachel Feinstein +1400

According to Wikipedia, these are moneyline odds or “American” odds. To find out just what you’re getting into, we offer Wikipedia’s explanation of moneyline odds:

To convert fractional odds to decimal, you take the fractional number, convert it to decimal by doing the division, and then you add 1. For example, the 4/1 fractional odds shown above is the same as 5 in decimal odds. While 1/4 would be quoted as 1.25.

To convert moneyline to decimal odds it depends on whether it’s positive or negative. If it’s positive, you divide by 100 and add 1. +400 moneyline is the same as 5.0 in decimal odds. If the moneyline is negative, to convert, first remove the minus sign, then instead of dividing by 100, you take 100 and divide it by the moneyline amount, then you add 1. For example, -400 moneyline is 100/400 + 1 in decimal, or 1.25

Got that?

Neither do we.

Sometimes, Wikipedia doesn’t help at all.

But this much we know: If you put money on Tommy Johnagin, and he wins, you win some money. If you put money on Rachel Feinstien or Laurie Kilmartin and one of them wins, you win a lot of money.