Our technical difficulties are a thing of the past. Scroll down on this post to find out what's happening with Last Comic Standing, what happened on our trip to Orlando and how our recent trip to Brooklyn turned out!

(We were unable to post here for the past 15 days or so. In that time, we were at least able to keep in touch with some of our readers and friends and associates via our myspace page and myspace bulletins and blog. BTW: If it ever looks like we're down for any length of time, our myspace is a good place to find out what the problem might be and a good place to find any interim or emergency posts.)

1. Last Comic Standing RUMOR

SPOILER ALERT: If you don't want to know what happens in this season's Last Comic Standing, look away from your screen now!

Kicked out of house so far:

Stella Stolper
Joey Gay
Bil Dwyer
April Macie
Gabriel Iglesias

Sorry to ruin the suspense. Hey, we were just cited in the Rocky Mountain News as a source for a story on "local comic Josh Blue," in a column by RMN columnist Penny Parker, so we're digging the traffic. This is the inevitable collision of reality television and the internet: The producers of the show can't keep a lid on the "surprises" because of the immediacy of the internet and because of their inability to figure out how information eventually makes its way to the blogs. Hmmm... too bad.

2. Vacation Mode!

We devised a convenient way of reminding those in our vacation contingent that we were in "Vacation Mode." The V. and the M., crudely formed and flashed, gansta-style, instantly conveys the message that, "We are 1,000 miles away from the hustle and the bustle of home-- Enjoy yourself!" It works. Try it yourself next time you're on vacation. We even got the little kiddies to do it... or at least try to do it. (See illustration below)


Flashing signals from the happiest place on earth! (We're protecting their identities so they don't get "capped" by rival princess gang members.)

3. Holy Mattress-Mony in Brooklyn!



With hardly 24 hours to recover from our return from Orlando, we were expected in Brooklyn Monday night, to appear on the bill at Pete's Candy Store, as part of the Holy Mattress-Mony Show. FOS Lord Carrett joined comedian/producer Jen Dziura in marriage (in what we hear was a lovely ceremony at the legendary CBGB's!) the day before.



Unfortunately, the Female Half was unable to represent the magazine-- the untimely victim of a bug of some sort (no doubt distributed by a member of our Princess Posse. See illustration above). The Male Half had a swell time at a well-attended show, sharing the bill with the newly-minted couple (see other illustration above) and not-so-newly-minted couple Leighann Lord and Jim Mendrinos, and special guests Margo Leitman and Mark Day. The quirky performance space that is Pete's Candy Store resembles that of a vintage rail car in its dimensions. (We wouldn't be at all surprised if it actually was a rail car in a previous life!)

That's right, The Male Half of the Staff and the Female Half of the Staff will be appearing APRIL 24 at 7:30 PM with the newly-minted couple, Mr. & Mrs. Jen Dziura, at Pete's Candy Store, 709 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg (Brooklyn), NY. Also appearing will be comedy couple Jim Mendrinos and Leighann Lord. Special guests Margo Leitman and Mark Day will also appear (although, we're sure they're not married to each other)!

It will be a special evening! We exhort all Tri-State Area SHECKYmagazine fans to consider attending! (And, it will be the first time that the Male Half has worked with The Lord Of Laughs since a zany week at the Columbus Punchline (with Ward Smith!) way back in 1985 or so! We've been cackling to Lord's snippets on XM lately, so we look forward to the evening!

It hits the stands Saturday. Esquire will run a 10-page interview with Dave Chappelle on why he walked.

"The bottom line was, white people own everything, and where can a black person go and be himself or say something that's familiar to him and not have to explain or apologize?"

We suppose there's some truth to this, now that even BET is owned by Sumner Redstone (and folks don't get much whiter than Sumner Redstone). Television executives only see one color: green. But even the casual observer must conclude that, when you're Dave Chappelle, you spend a lot of time explaining yourself to a lot of people, not just white folks. ("I was invited to lunch the other day with Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman... so you know I did something wrong." --Chappelle on stage at Wiley's Thursday night.)

Winnie the Pooh just got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The animated pantsless bear is enshrined on the Walk. It's all about the Benjamins, we suppose. $6 billion in revenue in '05. But he's not real. (We suppose the same could be said for many in Hollywood.)

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Also shaky was the performance of another midseason series, the ABC comedy Sons & Daughters (3.2 million, 1.2/3), which pushed ABC to a historic low in the Tuesday 9-10 p.m. period.

We commented a couple weeks back on the infuriating way in which executives and the MSM fawns over "improvised sitcoms."

Why all these wistful daydreams about a world in which we don't need writers, the actors are all triple threats and the genre that brought us The Honeymooners, Mary Tyler Moore and Seinfeld is a flawed model tossed unceremoniously on the scrapheap of television history?

Sons & Daughters (See dismal ratings stats above) was one such atrocity-- the Lorne Michaels-created sitcom was frequently cited as a largely improvised, edgy, experimental, ground-breaking, wickedly funny, watershed, blah, blah, blah.

From an interviw with the show's creator, Fred Goss, on blogcritics.org:

What's innovative, though not entirely unique, about the show is its use of improvisation to create naturalistic dialogue. "I wanted to do a show where we used improvisation more like an Altman approach, where we use improvisation as our creative process, but we don't necessarily need you to know that it's improvised," Goss said.

ABC made sure viewers did know, however, by beginning the show with a verbal and written message that the dialogue was partially improvised-- a "warning" Goss wasn't fond of. "It either looks like an apology or bragging," he laughed.

It's bragging, all right.

An LAT article (free reg. req.) says that only a small fraction of Stern fans followed him when he made the switch from terrestrial radio to Sirius.

The self-proclaimed King of All Media once commanded a national audience of 12 million daily listeners before jumping to satellite in January. But since then, his kingdom has shrunk to a small fraction of that size. Meanwhile, the shock jock's main replacements thus far have failed to hold very much of the former flock.

Were the numbers puffed out by the various local and national radio station sales forces? Were there a lot of self-identifying Stern fans who weren't sufficiently dedicated (or not actually listening in the first place)? Just how reliable was this 12 million figure to begin with?

When we first heard that Howard was headed for the bird, for a giant bundle of cash, we crunched the numbers (which we thought were legit) and figured it was worth Sirius' hard-earned cash. Now, of course, we admit we were wrong. The over paying of Stern might bring Sirius down, or, at the least, it may force them to merge with XM. XM's bid to lure O & A listeners failed, but the price tag was a fraction of that for Stern.

As for the other local and/or syndie Stern subs not holding any of Stern's old audience, we called that one. We still maintain that once the current crop of subs washes out, there will be local, unknown, but original, personalities or teams that will step up. They've been waiting for Stern to get out of their way for a decade or more, all the while honing their radio skills. Of course, radio execs with hazy memories think that all one has to do is "introduce" or "announce"the next big radio star and off he takes!

Bob & Tom will benefit. As will John Boy & Billy. And, along with them, standup will benefit, as each emphasizes comedy (the former moreso than the latter). Humor in general, and standup in particular, has been a big part of morning radio success. The collapse of Stern's base might indicate that genuine humor is winning out over shock, cruelty and irony.

XM's comedy channels, we hear, are among the most popular of their channels. O & A's show, initially a premium offering, is now available for free. Further evidence that comedy is winning out over shock? When folks overcome their reluctance to pay for radio-- and when they discover the richness of the offerings thereon, the numbers will puff out bigtime. No amount of marquee names or stunts will push them into satellite radio. And when those puffy numbers get even puffier, there will be even more comedy channels, exposing standup and standup comics to ever more listeners. Full disclosure: Four clips from the Male Half of the Staff's act have been added to the XM 150 rotation and The Female Half of the Staff recently did battle with a crowd full of rambunctious O & A fans during a recent set.

When we pulled into Mesquite last week, we heard a local broadcast, perhaps out of Vegas, that was running "Five O'Clock Funnies," or some such feature-- a short snippet of recorded standup, sponsored this day by the Comedy Club at the Riv. We were somewhat annoyed that they didn't back-announce the comic. One of the beauties of XM is that they often identify the comics beforehand and, right there on the radio unit, the name (and the name of the bit) appears on the LCD readout during the bit. If you don't think that's significant, consider that, on a recent evening, XM jock Joel Haas siad that he's been getting a lot of requests for Tom Hester's "Fistful of Pills" routine. Comedy fans who display that amount of savvy are nothing but good for business.

Bankrate.com interviews Jeff Foxworthy about money. After he tosses out the obligatory gag or two, Foxworthy gets serious (if somewhat vague) about money:

Bankrate: Presuming you have crossed this threshold, when did you decide to "get serious" about your money? What is your personal risk level?

Foxworthy: I got serious pretty early because I didn't know how long I would last in this business. I have had a financial adviser for over a decade. We discuss allocations and he understands my rather conservative financial nature.

These Bankrate.com people like to talk to comedians. We cited one of their mini-interviews with George Carlin some time ago. If you scroll down on the page, there are links to that one and to chats with Jeff Garlin and David Spade:

Bankrate: From a business standpoint, between movies and TV, is one more lucrative than the other?

David Spade: I think I always just try to take what's right for me. I turned down tons of money in the sitcom world this year to do shows because nothing seemed right, and then I took way less to do the Comedy Central show because it seemed like the right kind of thing. So at this point, once I can pay my rent and have a car and help my mom out, then it's like, "OK. I can't make decisions based on that." I wouldn't do commercials unless they were funny, and Capital One, I like. If more came up that I didn't like, I wouldn't do it. It's case-by-case.

Bankrate: So you're in a comfortable enough situation where you can have some discretion?

David Spade: Yes. Sometimes, I order two Diet Cokes, and I don't even drink one. That's the way I roll.

Well, it came at us via ComingSoon.net. We figure it came from the NBC.com media dump (and, recently, we've developed the reflex of ditching the giant emails from nbc.com... we should probably open them every fourth one or so...), buried at the bottom of a posting about the debut of two other NBC series:

the return of the standup comedy competition series Last Comic Standing (Tuesday, May 30). The announcement was made today by Craig Plestis, Senior Vice President, Alternative Programming.

Anthony Clark (Yes, Dear) hosts the lively laughfest, which begins with a nationwide talent search for professional and aspiring comedians. Then once the selection is narrowed down to 12, the series will follow the comedians-- both male and female-- as they live together and compete for the ultimate prize - an exclusive talent contract with NBC and a comedy special on Bravo. Last Comic Standing is produced by Peter Engel Productions, Magical Elves and NBC Universal Television Studio. The executive producers are Peter Engel (Saved By the Bell, City Guys), Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz (Bravo's Project Runway and NBC's Treasure Hunters) and Barry Katz (Action, Dane Cook's Tourgasm).

Premiering Memorial Day Weekend? This should be interesting.

We're back... already... the Sunday show at Wiley's was cancelled due to intractable plumbing problems. It was a weekend full of quirks and oddities.


This isn't one of the quirks or one of the oddities, it's emcee Ken Ferguson and The Male Half of the Staff (in one of those self-portraits that the Female Half of the Staff despises).

We had a tremendous show on Thursday, capped by a drop-in set by local comic Dave Chappelle. Then we had a power outage just before the first show Friday. Emcee Ken Ferguson gamely tackled the task of performing in a blackout. The power came on during his set.

Saturday went splendidly and Mr. Chappelle came in again and, much to the delight of the second show crowd, did an hour of material/Q & A immediately following the Male Half's set. It's a kick to see the reaction of the audience when the emcee tells them the erstwhile Comedy Central franchise player is in the house and will grace them with his considerable presence.

Minutes after the start of the second show Saturday, The Female Half of the Staff's zipper broke (on her pants)-- a recurring nightmare of hers come to life! A safety pin was procured and a crisis averted. Oddity or quirk? Who is to say?

Our bird friend disappeared some time Saturday.

And, while preparing for Sunday evening's show, we got a call from proprietor Rob Haney that the show would be called due to the aforementioned plumbing woes.

Curious. But a memorable weekend-- for us, for the crowds.

The cover of Issue #582 of US Weekly is dominated by a large photo of Jessica Simpson (no surprise there), but inserted into the upper right corner is a boxed photo of "sexy comedian Dane Cook." Inside the mag, there's a piece that has quotes from each camp's publicist/spokespeople (or, as US would have us believe, "onlookers"). Surprisingly, it's Simpson's people who feel the love and Cook's people who are cautiously downplaying any relationship. The two are shooting a movie together ("Employee of the Month"), so, in true Hollywood fashion, there are attempts to link the leads romantically, so as to goose box office.

Hers: "I would not be shocked if they become a couple."

His: "Dane is pretty much all business. I don't think there's a romance."

Let's all think back and try to recall the last time a male comedian was described as "sexy." This could open the floodgates to all manner of horrific trends. Could sexy be the new funny? Or is funny the new sexy?

We were entering the building where we're staying this weekend, a high-rise apartment tower just off the downtown, when we spotted him. He was pristine, he was in good shape, he was far too good-looking to be just a street bird. "That there is a professional," said the Male Half of the Staff to the Female Half. (The Male Half can spot a fellow professional entertainer, an artist, when he sees one. "He belongs to someone... a magician or something.")

We inquired at the tower's front office, just inside the front doors, off the lobby. "Do you have any magicians living in this building?" we asked. Connie, the building GM, said, "You mean the pigeon? They released a bunch of doves at the Dragons game last night. (The local minor league baseball team, a Cincinatti affiliate has a stadium just off the center of the city.) We called the Dragons office and they told us he'd fly home as soon as he got hungry."

Well, it's day three, and he's still hanging around. We have dubbed him "Dave" (after Dave Chappelle), because he has chosen to walk away from what must have been a lucrative show business deal... and he lives in Dayton. Stay tuned.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Your Season IV Last Comic Standing comedians:

Bil Dwyer
Gabriel Iglesias
Chris Porter
Ty Barnett
Joey Gay
Josh Blue
Stella Stolper
Roz
Michele Balan
Rebecca Corey
April Macie
Kristin Keys

Near as we can tell, this information is real. Those that are funny colors are linked to their websites.

It's Shecky Greene's birthday. Sheldon Greenfield was born on this day in 1926 in Chicago. We wish him a happy birthday.

We had about 18 hours off "turnaround time" between landing in PHL (from LAS), so we decided to push off for Dayton after Wednesday's evening rush. After an overnight in "driveover country," we arrived in our destination, Dayton, OH, in plenty of time for our show.

Wiley's is one of Ohio's longest running comedy venues. They share a substantial brick building, in Dayton's Oregon Historic District, with a handful of Clear Channel radio stations.

It's a classic comedy club and, so far as we can tell, it's a tremendous room, even when it's only partly filled with a Thursday-night, local, slightly-above, college-aged crowd.

So it was a pleasant surprise when we learned that a local and somewhat renowned comic expressed an interest in coming in squeezing in a set after the Male Half of the Staff's set. The comic in question lives in nearby Yellow Springs. His name: Dave Chappelle/Chapelle.

Halfway through the Male Half's set, "The Crazy One" shows up and gets near-horizontal on a rear banquette. After the Male Half finishes, Chappelle/Chapelle proceeds to do a controlled and rollicking and "they'll be talking about that one" set for nearly 40 minutes.

Chappelle/Chapelle talked about kissing Jessica Simpson, private eye to the stars Anthony Pellicano, and appearing on Oprah. He also addressed his sojourn to Africa, his departure from Comedy Central and the pressures of picking out clothes when you're "representing the entire black race." He did some material that we've seen quoted in various AP accounts of some "drop-in" sets, but he also did some Dayton-specific material as well.

Chappelle/Chapelle really loves doing standup. That much is obvious. He is very proficient at doing standup. To our mind, he's very much like Franklyn Ajaye. It's the perfect synthesis of jazz and humor. He's relaxed, he's personable, he's in command, and the crowd is with him on every note.

So nice to be part of a legendary node on the timeline of comedy history.

We neglected to mention that, on our way out of the Comedy Stop at the Trop on Monday night, we spoke briefly to a robust Kevin Knox. The Boston comic assures one and all that he is healthy. We concur. (We have received inquiries here at the magazine about his health, as he was recently diagnosed with cancer-- and, from what we hear, a rather virile form of the disease.)

He appeared to us to be spunkier and more full of pep than 99 per cent of the people we encountered in Las Vegas over the previous 36 hours. He casually mentioned that he ran four miles that day. (This four-mile thing only scratches the surface. He gives mini motivational speeches on the importance of diet, exercise and positive mental attitude with just the slightest provocation. There can be no doubting his veracity. He is obviously motivated and he is obviously beating cancer.) Coming to a comedy club near you, Kevin Knox.

We stopped by last night at the Stop, hanging with comics Scott Bruce, Bob Seibel and Ron Shock. The previous night, we hanged (hung?) at the Trop's Harbor Bar (We all know it as the "Fish Bar") with Kathleen Dunbar.

We're at McCarran now, taking advantage of their free wireless access, checking emails, getting business done. One of the emails was from FOS Dr. Will Miller, who was down the Strip, doing a corporate gig, but unable to hookup due to his schedule! He attached this pic, though! (Identified only as "Dr. Will and his posse.") Dr. Will was Nick at Nite’s resident television therapist and the host of their "Why We Watch" segments for five years. We know him from the old days at the Comedy Factory Outlet in Philly

Instead, the organizers have called it "Eye Care for Erica Show." (Which, we'll concede, might actually bring in more people than our clever but obscure reference.)

Regardless, it's a benefit show April 6th, 8 PM at the Steve Allen Theater, and the admission is $25. Call (323) 666-9797; the theater is just west of Vermont. For that you see Louis CK, Dana Gould, Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, Naked Trucker and Andy Kindler. All of this is hosted by Jimmy Pardo.

It benefits "L.A. comedy darling" Erica Doering who is having an emergency vitrectomy, to prevent her eye from going blind. And you'd be hard-pressed to see such a spectacular comedy show for such a paltry price for such a good cause.

In case you're wondering, a vitrectomy is "the removal of the vitreous gel through very small (~1.4mm) incisions in the eye wall... The vitreous is removed with a miniature handheld cutting device and replaced with a special saline solution similar to the liquid being removed from the eye." Procedures like this are moderately tricky, and therefore, not inexpensive. So all donations will be accepted at the door, and online here.

PS: For those of you following along at home, vitreous humor is "The clear, gel-like mass that fills the space between the lens and the retina."

This would be The Female Half of the Staff on the Navajo Bridge, a footbridge spanning the Colorado River near Marble Canyon, AZ, off of Alt 89.

We found ourselves with an entire day to get from Flagstaff, AZ, (where we performed at Northern Arizona University on Friday night) to Mesquite, NV, (where we were to perform on Saturday night). We could have just as easily boomeranged back into Vegas, then shot back out through the desert to Mesuite. That would have been efficient, but somewhat dull.

We opted instead to forge northward out of Flagstaff on Rte. 89, through the Navajo Indian Reservation. The map indicated that the entire second half of our 320-mile trek had dots next to the road-- the AAA code for "Scenic." As we rounded the bend out of Flagstaff and headed north at 75 mph through the Reservation, listening to Navajo-language radio and taking in the spectacular scenery, we wondered just what a location's gotta do to get that dotty designation.

Our questions were answered later on in the day when we were dazzled by the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument and the Kaibab National Forest, eventually making our way through the switchbacks and tunnels and canyons of Zion National Park. Kaibab, Vermillion and Zion deliver.

The whole trip delivered-- "scenery overload" relieved only occasionally by the lightly settled towns and trading posts, decorated with the rusting cars, propane tanks, truck stops and "assembled homes" that are the trademark of small towns all over northern Arizona, Southern Utah and the Southwest in general.


This would be The Male Half of the Staff perched on a rock, with the vast expanse of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument behind him, again, off of Alt 89.

We are back in Vegas now. We fly out Tuesday night. Vegas, as always, is the same. And changing constantly.

(Sometimes God or fate is the best comedy writer: Upon arrival at the Trop, the Male Half of the Staff ducked into the Men's room to see two Japanese men changing their clothes near the sinks while "Puttin' On The Ritz" blared over the PA system. Can you say "incongruous?" Hilariously so?)

Carrot Top is "indefinite" at the Luxor. His opening acts, on a revolving basis, will be John Padon, Charles Viracola and Carole Montgomery. Louie Anderson is also in an open-ended engagement at the Excalibur. While waiting for the light to change at the corner of Tropicana and The Strip, we noticed that Ron White and Dane Cook are both scheduled to appear at Mandalay Bay, though on separate occasions. If you think that such booking would make Mandalay Bay the most comedy-friendly casino in town, you might get an argument from someone who points out that the Mirage has bought the back page of the Las Vegas Magazine and is trumpeting the upcoming bookings of Jay Leno, Brad Garrett and Wayne Brady. (And, you'll recall that David Spade, in a recent interview cited in this very publication, seems to be contractually married to the Mirage as well.)

George Wallace, who is four-walling a room at the Flamingo, is advertising David Brenner as his special guest for the month of April.

The Palms is touting Playboy's Hollywood Comedy Tour in their Lounge venue, welcoming Jeff Richards and Dan Naturman (last night) and a new pair of comedians a week later.

At the Comedy Club at the Riv are Dennis Blair, Joey Elias and Robin Cee (through tonight) and, starting tomorrow night, Stanley Ullman, Scott Faulconbridgeand Brad Steward.

Here at the Trop, at the Comedy Stop, through tonight are Kevin Knox, Mick Lazinski and Christine Stedman. Starting tomorrow are Ron Shock, Bob Seibel and Scott Bruce.

At the Improv at Harrah's are Jeremy Hotz, Tom Simmons and Frazier Smith ending tonight and Shelley Berman, Sulie McCullough and David Gee, Tuesday through Sunday. Dom Irrera will hold court on Monday, as part of a "Month of Mondays" all this month, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Improv in Las Vegas.