We’re looking forward to heading to Easton, PA, next Friday (Nov. 5) to see “The Comedians,” a show featuring comedians Shelley Berman, Irwin Corey, Bill Dana, Dick Gregory and Mort Sahl! From the press release:

The evening has been described as “truly a once in a lifetime experience to see the most influential and innovative performers ever all on one stage. There has never been an event, either live or on television or film, that has brought together such a distinguished group of purely American comedy creators and visionaries.”

Can anyone quarrel with that description? We’re going to try to get some pics. It ought to be fascinating. Oh, and the whole affair is being hosted by Dick Cavett. We’re not sure if this is a tour or a one-off show. We’ll try to find out if there are any other shows like this one scheduled.

Fascinating results, so far, from our latest SHECKYmagazine.com Readers Poll. We’re not going to publish the result yet, because we want more of you to respond– the bigger the sample, the more valid the results. (Or something like that… if you’re a statistician, spare us the lecture!

Anyway, so far, it looks like 65 per cent of you have been to a comedy club within the past month! And, it seems that 80 per cent of you have been within the past three months!

It makes all the sense in the world, we suppose– readers of the WWW’s most beloved magazine about standup would be inclined to go see comedy live. But we’re amazed at how dedicated they are!

Thanks for those who’ve responded so far and PLEASE, if you haven’t yet, take 15 seconds to punch your choice!

Jamie Foxx, who is the beneficiary of some volcanic pre-release hype for his portrayal of the late Ray Charles, apparently doesn’t have to fake it in the scenes where he portrays Charles tickling the ivories. According to an item in the latest TV Guide, Foxx attended college in San Diego on a classical piano scholarship. We’re pretty sure one has to know how to play piano to get one of those!

We peruse the McPaper, whenever we get the chance, to catch items like the following:

And Steven R. Schirripa, who plays Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on HBO’s The Sopranos, has signed with Touchstone to star in a comedy based on his book, “A Goomba’s Guide to Life.”

Sopranos fans might know him as , but comics know him as “the guy you hafta call to get booked at the Riv in Vegas.”

We decided to stay in Gulfport, MS, Monday, and we seemed to recall that there was a Monday night comedy show at Comedy Magic, one town over, in Biloxi. So we hopped on down there to see who was performing. (Don’t you love it when the front desk of the casino and the box office don’t know the names of the comedians who are performing? Not even the house emcee?!) We figured maybe we’d take a pic, too. We got there to discover that house emcee Dan Saah was welcoming Jack Kearney and Mark Anthony. And we discovered that we had NO SmartMedia card in the ol’ camera! (And the one in the video cam was also gone!) We thought maybe we’d just describe each of them. Nah… How about we just direct you to Kearney’s website and Mark Anthony’s website? Much easier. And we’ll never make the mistake of forgetting our card.

Now, it’s on to Atlanta!

What’s that in the Times-Picayune (one of our favorite newspaper names!) Friday?

Comedy at Martine’s 2347 Metairie Road, Metairie. Stand-up comedy with Brian McKim, Traci Skene and Jodi Borrello, 9 Sat. $8. Call 289-6529.

Jodi Borrello, Brian McKim and Melanie Rucker at Martine’s, after Saturday night’s show. Borrello’s Running Funny produces standup and sketch comedy shows in and around New Orleans. Check out her website.

We start at the Punchline in Atlanta on Wednesday night. We urge any SHECKYmagazine fans to come on out and see us and Jon Reep this week, through Halloween!

P.S. For the past 24 hours, Ms. Rucker has been mistakenly identified as “Melanie Aultman!” Our apologies. We knew who she was, we just got terribly confused when it came time to write the cap!!! Sorry!

Jeff Charis-Carlson, writing in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, interviews Russell Peterson, a graduate student in American Studies at the University of Iowa on the subject of political humor:

As you said, these people have to have some idea of what is going on even to begin to understand the jokes being told. What people get from comedy– that they don’t get from news shows– is that comedy is all about making judgments. News coverage is supposed to be about avoiding making judgments. Journalists can present information and can say so-and-so said this and these people said that, but they are bound not to draw conclusions. Comedians make judgments all the time. They can report that same information, but then they assess that information in an easy way that makes people laugh.

Read the rest of the interview.

Paul Ogata has crafted a new Big Move. In this one, he contemplates that most elusive (and perishable) of assets, the TV credit:

Great. Just great. No sooner had I nailed my first hefty TV credit than that quitter Craig Kilborn up and ruins it. My appearance this past summer on The Late Late Show was a big thing for me. It was supposed to be my first big step into The Big Pond, the beginning of my Big Move. But with Kilborn’s announcement of his decision to leave the show, all that is in doubt.

Has Ogata made the big move, le grande voyage, el grande viaje? Click here to find out.

Charlie Viracola will be on The Dennis Miller Show (CNBC, 9PM EDT, with repeat showings– check your listings!) tonight.

Once again, Ed Will, writing in the Denver Post, demonstrates that he’s one of the people inn the MSM who “gets it.” His piece on Mitch Hedberg borders on the reverent.

“A lot of the stuff I was thinking early on was pretty much the way I think now, but at the beginning I didn’t have a clue … how to write a joke,” Hedberg said. “So that took a while, too. I found out that against all better judgment, taking words out of jokes was actually better than adding words.”

Read the rest here.

Late Show talent coordinator Eddie Brill, in Vancouver for their Festival, is interviewed on straight.com:

With the number of comics he sees each year around the world, either in person or on video, and with the limited number of spots on Letterman (no more than one a week), the odds aren’t great for aspiring funny people. But being a comic himself gives Brill a sympathetic side most talent scouts lack.

Read the rest here.

In anticipation of Dave Attell‘s upcoming Bettendorf gig, an article entitled “Not losing any sleep,” by David Burke, appeared in the Quad City Times:

“It’s pretty politically correct out there,” he said. “The audience has grown a lot, especially if you say something that’s a little blue or dirty, but people should embrace (comedy). That’s probably the last place you’ll be able to hear that stuff before the FCC cracks down on that. People should support it, for the freedom of speech. Everybody wants to hear dirty stuff, but let’s grow up already. It’s not going to kill anybody. I don’t see why there’s this big moral crackdown on all this stuff.”

We’d bet cash money that Attell said, “The audiences groan a lot…” (Understandable, since it was probably a “phoner.”) As for the authorities cracking down on the speech in comedy clubs, Attell need not worry (if that is indeed what he’s expressing here). Especially from the FCC, which has jurisdiction over broadcasts over licensed airways, not live performances in smoky bars. And the days of the local sheriff busting a comic are long gone. In fact, we’re coming up on the first anniversary of the posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce.

(Lead attorney for the Bruce forces) Robert Corn-Revere praised Pataki, a conservative Republican, for the pardon of Bruce, who spent four months in jail and botched his handling of his appeal by failing to abide by court rules.

From “Comedian Lenny Bruce pardoned” (firstamendmentcenter.org, 12/23/03)

Is this some sort of hoax? We got an email alert that supposedly linked to the following item on contactmusic.com:

WILLIAMS’ RETURNS TO STAND-UP
Contactmusic Wed, 20 Oct 2004 6:18 AM PDT
FLUBBER star ROBIN WILLIAMS’ movie career has deteriorated so much, he’s returning to stand-up performances to earn some money. The actor complains he hasn’t been offered film roles for so long, he’s been forced to return to his comic roots to cover his expenses.

But, when we clicked on it, it took us to a story about how eight people died in a private plane crash in Missouri. Hmmm… We jumped to the contactmusic site, did a search using “robin williams” and found five or six items about how he’s asked the Queer Eye guys how to remove his body hair, how he’s grieving for Christopher Reeve, how last June he found a corpse in his car, how he has his own wine made from his own grapes, blah, blah, blah. Nothing about a return to standup. (We will say this: For someone who can turn publicity on and off like a faucet, it’s hard to believe that he’s gotta go out and hump this comedy thing to make his nut. And, one more thing: FLUBBER star?!?!)

There’s a nice piece in the Daily Iowan, the student newspaper for the University of Iowa, about Dave Attell‘s pending visit to Cedar Rapids to do a couple of shows there.

“I was watching Wild-On E!— these people are beautiful people going to beautiful places, and that’s not me,” he said. “I was the ugly version of that. They made people look really stupid or competitively whorish. Everyone’s trying to get on TV. This show – well, toward the end, it got like that – but I don’t want people to eat bugs or shit – maybe that made it stand out.”

Read the whole thing.

Just got an email from F.O.S. Sharilyn Johnson, who sends along this heads up programming note/VCR alert to our friends to the north:

It’s about time they aired this thing! Just a heads up so you can let all your Canadian readers know that the Star TV hour-long special from Montreal will air this Saturday night at 8 pm Eastern. Promo doesn’t show much other than a few interview clips, but I’m sure we’ll get the usual coverage of Kindler and the parties and all the *good* stuff.

Right you are, Johnson. And there’s an encore presentation the following Saturday at noon… near as we can tell from a cursory examination of the Star TV website, where the following description resides:

Star! Hits The 2004 Just For Laughs Comedy Festival as we travel to Montreal to get the inside scoop on the comedy biz at “The 2004 Just For Laughs Comedy Festival.” This one-hour special spends a whirlwind ten days with some of the hottest comics on the circuit including Wayne Brady, Pauly Shore, Andy Kindler, Modi and Brad Zimmerman.

Please take a moment to click on your answer to our latest SHECKYmagazine Readers Poll. This one asks “When was the last time you witnessed live comedy?” We ask that any comics who respond to answer the question “When was the last time you saw live comedy when you weren’t on the bill?” The poll is over ——> there. Thanks!

In a Hollywood Reporter piece entitled “Daily Show Host Gives Satire a Serious Look,” Paul J. Gough writes:

It may be a funny role for a man who anchors a “fake” newscast, but Jon Stewart seems to be channeling H. L. Mencken these days, casting himself as a fierce critic of the journalism establishment that he skewers so mercilessly on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

Channeling Mencken now, is he? The spin and the damage control begins. We take it that Stewart’s email was decidedly negative after his Crossfire hissy fit. The effort to portray Stewart as serious-minded and equate him with Mencken and Edward R. Murrow is laughable. Here’s a quote from his recent commencement speech to William & Mary’s class of 2004, in which Stewart said:

We declared war on terror– it’s not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I’m sure we’ll take on that bastard ennui.

Of course, both “terror” and “ennui” are indeed nouns, but that, of course, is not the point. The point is that Mr. Stewart makes a fine comedian and a fine anchor of a “fake” news program, but, in his effort to recast himself as a crusader for truth and the man who will single-handedly save public discourse, we fear he may have jumped into water that’s way over his head. We rooted around SHECKYmagazine HQ, but we couldn’t locate our Mencken biography. (We know a bit about the dude. We even comandeered the television in the Atlanta Punchline greenroom to watch an hourlong C-Span interview with P.J. O’Rourke on the subject of the legnedary Baltimore Evening Sun editor.) We did manage to dig up a couple of gems on the WWW (courtesy of brainyquote.com):

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

and

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

and

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

Compare these pithy quotes to Stewart’s gems from his recent CNN appearance:

Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

and

No. No. I’m not going to be your monkey.

and

You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

As mean and cantankerous as Mencken was known to be, we’re certain he wouldn’t have had to resort to calling someone a “dick.” I guess a job on the Daily Show writing staff is totally out of the question now.

Adam Gropman has observed… and the results, as always, are humorous. Thus the name, “Observational Humor.” When we last heard from Adam, it was an opus– a lengthy and vicious reflection on his day job called, “Day Job.” This time around, in a column snappily titled “FOR THOSE ABOUT TO CONSIDER A SITUATION IN WHICH TO ROCK,” things are a little different:

I was fired for a pretty cool reason, though, one that has nothing to do with “performance.” I was fired because I let a short film crew shoot a scene in the building in which my ex-company inhabits office space. The boss was away on vacation at the time, but after he came back, building security told him what had happened and he deemed it “poor judgment” and canned me.

Read the whole thing, by all means. And Mr. Gropman is involved in other endeavors aside from collecting unemployment or performing in the New York Underground Comedy Festival. Like this:

The Passion II: Double-Crossed “edgy, smart, delightfully semi-offensive sketch in the vein if SNL at it’s best.” A Cast of eight graduates of the S.C.L.A. Training Center (including Gropman).

Fridays, Oct. 22 & 29, 8PM, at the Second City Theater next to The Improv on Melrose, Hollywood, CA. Only $5.

MIXED NUTS
By Lawrence Epstein

The readers of this magazine may be familiar with Mr. Epstein via his book, “Haunted Smile: The History of Jewish Comedians in America,” which we excerpted on these very pages and which we go back to quite frequently as a reference. Publishers Weekly says that “Mixed Nuts” is “a lively history of entertainment from early vaudeville through radio, film and television.” If you like your comedy mixed with history and sociology, this is your book. Check out the excerpt below, from Chapter 13– Comedy Teams of the 1960’s.

There were other comedy teams that emerged from improvisational comedy. Jack Burns had once teamed up with George Carlin. Burns had been a Texas newscaster when the two began to work together on a Fort Worth radio show. They went to Hollywood where, in 1960, they served as morning disc jockeys at KDAY. Lenny Bruce, among others, admired their talents. Bruce helped them, and they soon appeared on The Tonight Show. After two years as a team, Burns and Carlin decided that they wanted to end the partnership, and Carlin began his own brand of comedy.

Burns made his way to Chicago where, at Second City, he met Avery Schreiber, who, after a stint in the army and work at a theater, had joined the troupe, as he recalled, sometime in 1960 or 1961.

Burns was Catholic and Schreiber Jewish, and they, like an all-male counterpart to Stiller and Meara, took over the comedic exploration of cultural differences. Burns and Schreiber even looked gloriously at odds: Burns was thin and clean-shaven, and Schreiber had heft, loads of curly hair, and an impressive mustache.

Because Burns was generally politically and socially conservative and Schreiber more of a liberal, their personal differences, filtered through an ethnic lens, provided almost dueling stand-ups, unlike Stiller and Meara who had created more accomodating characters. Burns and Schreiber were after something darker. Stiller and Meara’s characters communicated understanding; Burns and Schreiber’s characters remained forever locked in their own individual psyches.

Their most famous sketch, “The Cab Driver and the Conventioneer.” captured their differences perfectly and, in doing so, reflected very early the emerging cultural divide that was to mark American life in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

***

Burns: I don’t care about the color of a man’s skin. I was the first guy to scream when they took Amos ‘n’ Andy off the air… By the way, your name on the nameplate there. You’re of the Judeo-Hebraic tradition?

Schreiber: You mean I’m a Jew.

Burns: Hey. I don’t go in for name-calling. But let me tell you, pound for pound Hank Greenberg was one of the greatest ballplayers who ever lived.

Schreiber: What about Sandy Koufax?

Burns: Don’t tell me he’s one of them too?

Buy the book here

That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said about us in print… even if it is a backhanded compliment (they can’t help themselves). It’s amazing how a hit on USAToday.com (not even the print edition) can result in the second highest hit-count in the history of the magazine.

We got an email about who won the contests at the L.V.C.F.: “Winner of Royal Flush (I dont know who the other top two were): A kid with cerebal palsy named Josh Blue won the $10,000… Uncle Lar won the whole thing the big $25,000.”

COngratulations to Josh Blue and Larry Reeb!

We got another email from a comic who participated. The following is but a short excerpt:

When she said “I’m a judge,” what she SHOULD have said was “I’m THE judge.” This PA or intern, or whoever she was, was THE judge. A comic, no. A booker, no. Just a festival runner of some sort with a clipboard, taking some notes and marking on a template. There was someone else giving the comics the light but she was not writing anything down. “Wow! This is a contest?” I thought surely that there would be…say…a panel of maybe three judges all with some sort of insight to comedy, or at least with a good sense of humor. Club owners, bookers, Paula Abdul, someone, anyone but ONE gal connected to the festival? Come on.

Sounds… interesting. Read the whole thing.

We here at SHECKYmagazine.com rarely have anything bad to say about the elders of the business. (Our default feelings toward them is warm and fuzzy. They deserve nothing but our respect and they’re a tremendous source of wisdom, great stories and– if they’re still gigging– it’s a real kick if you’re lucky enough to catch any of them perform live.) We reserve any vitriol for the ones who have nothing but nasty stuff to say about us young’uns. To wit, this quote from Jack Carter from an Oct. 1 piece in the Washington Times:

Industry veteran Jack Carter — best known to TV viewers as a regular standup performer on “The Ed Sullivan Show” — has a slightly different take on the quality of young comedians at the festival. He said many members of last year’s class were not ready — even if they did get work out of the festival.

“There are very few Seinfelds around,” he said. “But all of them have a sitcom right away — two minutes in show business, you get a sitcom.”

Carter said part of the problem is that performers breaking into comedy today learn their craft in venues that do not push them or challenge them to be better.

“They work in those comedy rooms and it’s a restrictive audience,” he said. “They laugh at the weirdest things. They laugh at ideas today. They don’t even need routines.”

Read the rest of the article here.

* The Wormwoods are members of the great family of Compositae and belong to the genus Artemisia, a group consisting of 180 species, of which we have four growing wild in England, the Common Wormwood, Mugwort, Sea Wormwood and Field Wormwood. In addition, as garden plants, though not native, Tarragon (A. dracunculus) claims a place in every herb-garden, and Southernwood (A. abrotanum), an old-fashioned favourite, is found in many borders, whilst others, such as A. sericea, A. cana and A. alpina, form pretty rockwork shrubs.

The whole family is remarkable for the extreme bitterness of all parts of the plant: ‘as bitter as Wormwood’ is a very Ancient proverb. (Source: Nature One Health Organization)

Just got an email from someone who was at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival who described this year’s fest as “The most disorganized cluster fuck of all time.”

Contests had, on the average, twenty or fewer audience members not counting the comics. (This includes the Comedy Club and Mainstream Picks.)

Contests weren’t even open to the public (You had to have spent $495 on the whole festival). I can see how the big-ticket events like the final final show and the seminars, and the show with names would be invite-only, but the rest of them shoulda paid someone eight to ten bucks an hour to flyer the streets around the casino.

The rules, by the way, didn’t include who was judging that night, or what the categories being judged were. As of today, none us are even sure they remembered to get judges for that event. Event organizers were in the room but seemed occupied with festival matters. The other LVCF staff members I saw that night were helping with the order, running the light or helping backstage. There was no judges “table” that I was aware of.

The Boston Comedy Auditions were supposed to be an open call to anyone in the Royal Flush (as it says on the website). They decided– the morning of– to post a list of the comics that were “invited” to it. But the list had 15 comics, and only 9 went up, because no one bothered to tell them. One comic had to drive back to his hotel and change just to make it in time.

The contest was in the middle of the day for one– yes, that’s one– audience member, plus the other eight comics. Poor Rick Corso had to host. Props to Jim McCue, for making the best out of bad situation, and to Corso, for making it fun, and to the comics who sat and supported each other in an environment where they could have turned against each other.

Winners of the Royal Flush, Mainstream, and Comedy Club categories weren’t even told that night if they had won that evening’s competition. So, if you were an audience member, it was kind of a rip to see a contest and not know the winner. Contestants had to go up to the office in the hotel the next day to see who won. Pretty fucking lame. Again it also takes away from some of the validity of judging. Also, you had to stay an extra night in Vegas (and get another night’s hotel room, etc.) just to see if you were still in the contest. Remember, that in these categories are 15-20 year comics like (Steve) Mcgrew, Dwight Slade, Uncle Lar (Larry Reeb), Peter Berman and Rocky Laporte.

Speaking of which, they had a “warmup” round of those contests the night before in one of the conference rooms upstairs at the hotel. Some of the aforementioned comics refused to go up. One comic I know said he might have gone up and been a “team player” had someone from the Festival at least acknowledged that it sucked, apologized for no crowd, and asked nicely. Instead they looked at him funny when he said he’d pass on the warmup.

I guess at the end of the day, I think of the Boston Festival– which is two guys running it out of their apartments– and what a great festival that is, and then I think of the LVCF– which is in VEGAS, where all they do is conventions and festivals and have access to a lot of people that could help them make it kick ass– and it totally sucked.

Anyway, PLEASE PLEASE put the word out. Your article last year let a lot of us know the LVCF was fucked, but I guess some of us figured maybe they’d get their shit together in another year. Because the word was that the first year producers were out, and maybe these new guys might have been off to a bad start in 2003, or whatever… The point is….

There is NO WAY I would participate in it again. If any comics ask and are thinking about going next year, I will tell all comics I know not to bother, and how it has consistently sucked.

PS: The one thing I would want to be sure to include is what a good job the Boston Fest guys do.

There it is. An unsolicited email from a Fest participant. We have no reason to doubt its authenticity. And we have every reason to believe it– considering the source and considering our experience last year!

Is Jon Stewart starting to believe his own press? The man who famously asked John Kerry, “How are you holding up?” is apparently growing weary of having the weight of the world on his shoulders– he went on CNN’s Crossfire (ostensibly for the purpose of plugging his new book) but instead took the opportunity to label the hosts partisan hacks and call Tucker Carlson a “dick.”

Where has Stewart been? Crossfire hasn’t been a serious program for a few years now. (Not since they canned Bob Novak and Michael Kinsley, hired Begala, Carville and Carlson, and went to the live audience format, at least!) And, ahem, John: CNN hasn’t been a serious network since… well for a long time. Stewart has an extremely low opinion of Joe Average’s ability to distinguish between news, opinion, spin and entertainment.

Check out the transcript at cnn.com.

From wrestling-news.com comes word that professional wrestling legend (We can call him a legend, right?) Rowdy Roddy Piper has a sleeper hold on standup comedy. (“Rowdy Roddy Piper Ventures Into Different Form Of Entertainment– Standup Comedy!”) It seems that Piper and comedian Barry Kolin “are working on a one-hour standup act.” Then the article veers (further) into fantasy. We’ll let wrestling-news.com correspondent Anthony DeBlasi take it from here:

The article also mentions that if all goes well, Piper will travel to comedy clubs all along the West Coast, then onto Las Vegas. From information I received earlier reveals this could be last a while for Piper. If this act is a success, there is a chance that he will remain in Las Vegas as an attraction for one of the major casinos.

We must find that “article” DeBlasi mentions. We can either regard this as an affront to the art of standup comedy, or a sign that standup comedy is going so well (and appears attractive as an entertainment career option) that people from other sectors of the entertainment business consider jumping in. Think back… When was the last time you heard about anyone going to standup from another discipline? (Or, maybe it’s a sign that the wheels are falling off of pro wrasslin’!)

Either way, we’re a bit disturbed about that “working on a one-hour standup act” remark. Exactly how does that work? This gives us pause. We know people who’ve been at this for 20 years who are “working on a one-hour standup act.” We’ll keep tabs on Piper’s progress. Read the rest here.

We get all sorts of emails here at SHECKYmagazine.com. This one came from Jon, Casting Associate Producer of ABC’s reality series, Extreme Makeover. We have confirmed that it’s legitimate. So, comics, if you wanna get in some of that primetime makeover action, here’s your chance:

My name is Jon and I work for the ABC primetime reality series, Extreme Makeover. We’re looking to cast fun, outgoing people, and what better people personify that image than comedians? I was hoping to find out if any of your readers would be interested in applying for the show. The makeover might include a mini-makeover involving a new look without plastic surgery. Or, go the extreme route which may include multiple plastic surgeries, a new look, a hot wardrobe, etc.

Please contact me at this email address if interested or have anymore questions jau4u2003@hotmail.com.

If you are not familiar with the show, you can also look for us online, at abc.com/extrememakeover.

Best,
Jon
Extreme Makeover Casting Associate Producer

From the Hollywood Reporter:

E! Entertainment Television is joining forces with Las Vegas fixture Wayne Newton to find the city’s next superstar performer.

The cable network said Thursday it has given the go-ahead to The Entertainer, a 10-episode reality drama series featuring Newton that’s set to debut in January.

The elimination-style series will feature 10 performers– including male and female vocalists, illusionists, comedians and specialty act performers– competing in performance challenges. Each week, Newton and a team of judges will whittle down the contestants until one winner remains. The last remaining contestant will perform alongside Newton during the series finale and also get the chance to become a featured performer in his Las Vegas show.

They’ve got ten weeks to line people up for this (if they havne’t already started). Gentlemen, ladies: Start your engines.

We thought we noticed something vaguely familiar in a Variety.com article sent along by Tommy James.

Comic DJ Nash is teaming with Kelsey Grammer’s Paramount-based Grammnet shingle to develop a half-hour laffer for NBC.

My Other Life in Brooklyn will be based on Nash’s recent real-life experience working in New York on Whoopi Goldberg’s Peacock sitcom while commuting home to his wife in Los Angeles.

During the season he spent on Whoopi, Nash lived with two single male roommates in New York five days a week, then flew home to his wife on the weekends. The dual life experience gave Nash some insights into male-female relationships that will serve as the center of the project.

Then we read the tail end of the story, where they said that Nash signed and starred in a CBS pilot “a couple years ago, not long after being voted best new face at the 2000 Montreal Comedy Festival.” Hey… wait a minute… We recalled that we once jokingly proclaimed Paul F. Tompkins to be the “Festival Winner” at the 1999 JFL. Then we also faintly recalled someone (as it turned out, it was pop.com) declared someone to be that year’s “Most Outstanding New Face!” Back then, he was David J. Nash, as is evidenced by this excerpt from one of our JFL 2000 updates:

The dotcom thing has become quite a force here. There’s always speculation at JFL about deals being signed for x amount of dollars. This year, however, the only sentences that had those three words in them also contained the words “dot” and “com” somewhere in them. Pop.com went so far as to hand out a plaque to a comic, David J. Nash, and unofficially (Non-JFL-approved!) saddled him with the rather ungainly title of “Most Outstanding New Face.” They briefly stopped the music and brought out (much to everyone’s horror) an Austin Powers impersonator to present the award. Then they turned the music back up, turned on the strobes and it was back to ignoring the cauliflower! The food was atrocious at all but one party (comedyworld.com/Thursday night You can’t go wrong with smoked meat!). Does anyone really eat cauliflower? Sushi is risky. When you refuse to eat free food, you know something is horribly askew!

Since then, of course, Nash has dropped most of the letters in his first name and the period from his middle initial. And pop.com’s domain name has been bought by a bunch of movie fans named CountingDown.com. Time marches on!

It’s in all the papers… er, it would be if they were putting out afternoon editions, at least. Oscar ceremony producer Gil Cates said, “Chris represents the best of the new generation of comics.” New generation? He’s been at this comedy thing for 20 years. Hard to believe Rock is 39. We wonder if Tom Agna will become the new Bruce Vilanch? We can only hope. If Agna (and Rock’s writers from his HBO series) are on board it will be a watchable Oscarcast– nowhere near as funny as the Letterman-hosted affair but nowhere near as tedious as another Whoopi Goldberg-hosted grate-fest.

The 5th Annual Canadian Comedy Awards are happening in the bustling burg of London, Ontario, Oct 27 through 31, 2004. Their handsome website details all the happenings this year’s ceremonies. “To recognize and celebrate Canadian achievements in comedy at home and abroad” is their mandate. The celebrity hockey game with Scott Thompson and the drummer from Barenaked Ladies sounds particularly entertaining.

As they say, in comedy, timing is everything. We spotted this ad in the Sept. 30-Oct. 6 issue of the Valley Advocate, a freebie entertainment weekly up in the Springfield, CT, area. Rodney passed away on the 5th, so the rag was already on the street. The engagement was for the 8th. We wonder if “New England’s Rodney” went through with the gig.

Aside from pissing off the L.C.S. fans who are Canadians (who don’t get Comedy Central on their cable systems), was their any other negative fallout from cancelling the last episode of the reality show? From mediaweek.com:

NBC, which yanked the season (or series) finale of Last Comic Standing 3 at the last minute for two repeat episodes of Father of the Pride, did not benefit by the move. The animated double pop was fifth in the 8 p.m. hour in both the overnights (avg. 4.5/ 7) and adults 18-49 (2.4/ 7).

Fifth?! Nice one!

In our most recent poll, asking who would win L.C.S. III, our readers chose Dave Mordal, followed by Alonzo, then Heffron, then Vos. We’re cooking up a new poll, so stand by while we figure out the details. In the meantime, you can all stop weighing in on the last one. And thanks for another successful poll!

Our readers were quick to point out that there’s an announcement on Alonzo Bodden‘s website:

Hey Everyone, its over. I am officially the winner of LCS3, the best of the best. We taped a half hour episode that will air on Comedy Central Saturday the 16th at 8 and Sunday the 17th at 11. Thank you guys for supporting, voting writing NBC and mostly laughing. I am truly humbled by fan support. This thing hasn’t sunk in yet , its sort of surreal to hear you just won 250 grand but its true. Love you guys. By the way, I will get paid NBC’s hijinks have nothing to do with that. My agent gets 10% and believe me he’s all over it. As for NBC no one knows why they jerked around the show at the final episode. Some say its ratings , others say its Dreamworks, the producers of the animal puppets have lots of clout. Animal puppets, all I can say is somewhere out there is a great salesman. I mean, how do you pitch that show and when did they thinkit might be funny. John Goodman, kiss of death. I’ll be on tour, the Comedy Central Special will be on soon and after that who knows. I’ll be out there doing the funny.

Yeah, yeah, it’s late. SHECKYmagazine.com editor Brian McKim was invaded by some sort of horrid bug, causing gastroenteritis, further causing simultaneous, multi-port ejection. Not pretty. The HazMat team should be by here later on today to police the area.

Poor Traci– she was watching the Sox-Yankees game and missed the announcement at the beginning of Father of the Pride, meaning that she was forced to actually watch an hour of that wretched show.

Can you believe that they merely announced it? What a burn job on Alonzo! On all of them! There seems to be some confusion out there as to when the whole episode will run on Comedy Central. Nothing on NBC, nothing on comedycentral.com. Hmmm…

Prediction: Comedy Central will spend a little jack and do a season IV of L.C.S. It is, after Comedy Central.

That’s all we can blog for now… feeling weak… can’t focus.

Pictured above is the actual hat that we used to pick the winning name out of! That’s right, it’s a “Blaze, World Famous Balloon-Blowing Goat” hat. Ain’t many of them around. We printed the name of every entrant on a tiny piece of paper, dumped them all into the hat, shook them all around real good and pulled out:

Patrick Melton Congratulations to our winner!

(We don’t wanna hear from any theoretical statisticians or probability hobbyists with treatises on why picking a name out of a hat isn’t truly random… or that even and odd is merely a philosophical construct… or any of that nonsense. This is the winner and that’s that!)

Thanks to all who entered! We’ll try to have similar giveaways in the future!

And, btw, if you didn’t win, and you simply must purchase one (or if you want to drop a hint to someone to buy it for you), go here.

Also: Here’s a great site to get the correct time–www.time.gov!

We were directed to a splendid appreciation of the late Rodney Dangerfield that appeared in the Tampa Tribune. Written by Jeff Houck, the piece appeared today. Here’s our favorite quote:

Dangerfield’s best professional attribute, Durst said, was that “he recognized funny was funny and never copped an attitude about whether it was loud or profane or clever or slapstick. He was the Godfather of Comedy, and he will be missed, mostly by bartenders and hookers.”

We were struck by paragraphs five and six:

Brian McKim, editor of SheckyMagazine.com, an online magazine about stand-up comedy, said Dangerfield’s success in the mid-to-late 1970s came at an age at which most comedians are beginning to wind down.

“His enthusiasm, his persona, his world-weary demeanor all meshed nicely with his advanced years and his hangdog appearance,” McKim said. “And he wasn’t merely content to be successful on his own. His Young Comedians specials, in cooperation with HBO, gave a boost to the careers of many comedians, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks and Bob Saget among them.”

Happy that we could be a small part of such a decent sendoff! Houck also does what many haven’t: he ends the whole tribute by listing about two dozen of Rodney’s jokes. Read the whole thing here.

We told you last week about a New Yorker article on Brad Stine. Well, the online version of the magazine also posted a discussion between the article’s author, Adam Green, and the New Yorker’s Matt Dellinger:

I think that much of his religion may be about his troubled relationship with his father, and trying to reconnect with him. This is prominent in the language of Christianity. It’s a patriarchal language, and there seems to be a good deal of effort within the Evangelical Christian movement to restore the father as the head of the family. That’s what the Promise Keepers is all about, how to make sure a man takes his proper place as the head of the family, which means restoring his and his own family’s relationship with the ultimate father, the heavenly father, with God, who is very much seen as a father figure. I don’t want to be an armchair psychologist, but I think that Stine’s performance is certainly connected to the desire to please his father, who moved the family to California to try to pursue a career in singing. There’s a sense of his fulfilling his father’s dreams and his father’s destiny as well.

Fascinating stuff… read the rest here.

We received the following message from Ritch Shydner:

My friend, Mark Schiff and I are doing a book on comic road stories, defining the road as anytime the comic left the house to be funny. We’re getting stories ranging from nightmarish one-nighters in Deliverance Territory to backstage Tonight Show experiences. We are also getting great stories of the comedian’s first experience on stage and they’re best onstage adlibs.

You can claim credit or stay anonymous. Be assured that we won’t publish a story involving a living comic without getting his or her approval. The story can involve fellow comedians, club owners or the audience.

If you are not familiar with us, go to www.markschiff.com or www.ritchshydner.com. By logging onto our websites you can become familiar with us and also help us justify that ridiculous monthly expense.

You can write the road story or we can tape it over the phone and transcribe it.

Please feel free to call me (818)458-8600 with any questions you may have regarding this project, or email me at rshides@aol.com.

Larry David, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, Elaine Boosler, Patton Oswalt and Jeff Foxworthy are among the two hundred comedians already contributing to this project. We really hope you will consider giving a story or two.

Shydner also tells us that there is no limit on how many stories can be submitted or how long.

The folks at eWeek, in their Sept. 27 issue, subtly recommended SHECKYmagazine to their readers via their Rumor Central page. eWeek is a Ziff Davis publication that caters to people whose livelihoods depend upon enterprise software and hardware. On the last page of their mag, they like to loosen the tie, have a drink and devote some brainpower to having a good time– a welcome relief from the IT, data, servers and Linux and the integration of this and that. We’re thrilled that they chose to hip their readers to SHECKYmagazine.com!