One of the most emailed stories on the WWW this past weekend was a fluff piece entitled "Website Reveals Your Inner Celebrity Twin;" from Associated Press.

It talks about MyHeritage.com, ostensibly a website about geneaology and family trees, but one that has recently added a sexy "face recognition" doohickey that enables visitors to upload a pic of themselves, then hit a button and see what famous people they most resemble. Everyone of course hopes for George Clooney (males) or Halle Berry (females). What they get may surprise and/or annoy them. We plugged in a recent pic of the Male and Female Halves of the Staff and, well... our... face... hurts.

After the site chews on your photo for a moment or two (and displays some nifty animated graphics!), it puts up a photo of Celebrity Number One-- the famous dude or dudette who looks most like you. Be forewarned: It lists both genders! (See below) And keep in mind that you can cycle through about 8 or 9 pics-- so don't be disappointed if the one on top is not to your liking. (See below, below)

There might be something to this FR technology-- The Female Half snagged Shania Twain (whom the Male Half briefly had a crush on), Jamie Lynn Spears (little sis of Britney, whom the Male Half briefly had a crush on) and The Female half also snagged a couple guys-- pretty guys, to be sure! In addition to Ashton Kutcher, MyHeritage insists that she looks like Chad Michael Murray (star of One Tree Hill).

We also uploaded an old blond pic of TFHotS and got back, among others, Oprah Winfrey, Liza Minelli, Janet Jackson and Chad Michael Murray (again!)



We uploaded the Male Half of the Staff and got back Richard Avedon, Michael Caine, former Israeli ambassador Abba Eban (?) and Larry King. So, sensing a weakness in the software, we uploaded a pic of him, sans glasses, and got back Tony Blair, Emile Zola and Eric Idle. (Significantly, of the three attempts-- with three different pics of the Male Half, each one stubbornly insisted on a resemblance to Jack Nicholson. Which he will take. Larry King, however, we attribute to the specs.)


The above pic is what we were greeted with the very first try.

We recall an old story from way back in 1985 or so, when comic Dan Wilson, during a visit to the Male Half's swingin' bachelor pad in New Jersey, spotted a photograph on the wall and asked, "Why is there a picture of Roy Orbison on your wall?" The photo he referred to was a B & W candid shot that the Male Half had snapped some years earlier of his mother. As Paul Harvey might say, "...and now you know (6-second pause) the rest of the story."

Any particularly humorous resemblances out there? Sling them in to the Comments!

Doug Stanhope is running for the Libertarian Party's nomination for the 2008 presidential race. ("Drunk with power" is his rallying cry.) He's even created a special myspace page to promote his candidacy.

This is the official Myspace page for my - Doug Stanhope's - presidential run in 2008. I've decided to run for the nomination of the Libertarian Party.

Yes, I am very serious. Most of us know how completely screwed the system has become. Yet we shrug it off as something too deeply rooted to change. I'm tired of accepting what we have now as the best we can do and I know yelling about it in barrooms and comedy clubs isn't going to force anyone's hand.

It's a trend. Scroll down two posts and you can read about a comedian in Venezuela challenging Hugo Chavez for the presidency.

We haven't seen a comic do the "hands bit" in quite some time-- the one where the comic invites someone onstage, has him/her thread his arms through the comic's armpits while the comic tells a simple story and the audience member provides all the gestures. (There are variations-- the comic threads his hands through the audience member's pits and provides the gestures-- you get the idea.)

We would never tell a comic not to do the hands bit. (But what about that handful of comics who claim to have written the hands bit? What's going on there? Just last week, someone told us that they encountered a comic who claimed to have originated the hands bit. We hate to tell ya, the hands bit was invented some time between fire and the wheel... check that-- the hands bit is so old, it was originally "the flippers bit." And, some biologists will tell you that they've stumbled upon fossils containing single-celled creatures who appear to be inserting their cilia through another cell's contractile vacuole, much to the delight of the other single-celled creatures in the "audience.")

We have a suggestion for an up and coming festival hungry for unique programming: The Hands Bit Showdown! Comics compete to do the ultimate hands bit! Prizes will be awarded in several sub-categories: Best Gay Joke (the limp-wrist thing!), Best Crotch Joke (getting the audience member to grab the comic's package!), Best Obscene Gesture Joke (this is self-explanatory). The grand prize could be a development deal with the History Channel.

Jorge Rueda, writing for the AP, (found in the Washington Post):

Benjamin Rausseo, better known as the "Count of Guacharo," announced his presidential bid in the capital of Caracas on Friday as he registered his new party, PIEDRA, which means "rock" in Spanish.

Is the Count of Guacharo, or "el Conde del Guacharo," his country's Pat Paulsen? Or is he serious? We go for serious, because, if you run for president of Venezuela, you had better be serious.

We found two editorials ripping into Rausseo on a site called Vheadline.com, which is a bizarre Venezuelan news website that, according to the front page, "remains 100% independent of all political factions in Venezuela." (Sample headline: "My bestest birthday wish on this day I share with President Hugo Chavez")

If "el Conde" was merely a clown, why would they get all exercised like this? In an editorial by Elio Cequea (with the overheated title "Do not ask who is behind "El Conde"! An outsider with testicular insolvency!"), the following appears:

"El Conde" not only lacks votes to defeat Hugo Chavez ... obviously, he is also lacking cojones for coming up with the outsider scheme is another irrefutable sign that desperation is catching up with the Venezuelan opposition.

We're just happy to have stumbled upon the delightful concept of testicular solvency/insolvency. We're going to work it into as many conversations as we can.


That's el Conde, third from left, chillin' with "mid-to-upper class, whiter skinned snobs" (Vheadline.com's description, not ours!)

(Photo from Gentiuno.com)

SHECKYmagazine columnist Bonnie McFarlane will be on the CBS Saturday Early Show tomorrow morning. The show airs from 7 AM to 9 AM slot in most markets. She'll be on a segment dealing with insults and how to deal with them. Catch McFarlane and hubby Rich Vos at Caroline's tonight through Sunday!

John Byner, David Frye (identified here as "Dave"Frye) and Will Jordan are among the perpetrators of this Bob Booker & George Foster-produced album. It was recorded on the Verve label in New York City's Columbia Recording Studios on October 18, 1966, and is billed as a "futuristic fairy tale that takes place in a mythical country called 'The United States of America'," which "all begins in 1968."

The cover art, many of you Mad Magazine fans over the age of 40 may notice, is by Mort Drucker. Groucho Marx, oddly enough, looks more like Anwar Sadat.

One more oddity: The last celebrity impersonated on the album, in a 5:15 piece called "The State Dinner," (one of many on the album by Byner) is none other than Jackie Mason. Not only was Mason hot as a comedian in 1966, he was enough of an icon (and a vocal oddity) that he was impersonated by fellow comedians on an album that included vocal impressions of Louis Armstrong, John Wayne, Richard Nixon and Bill Buckley.

As of 1:04 PM EDT, we're back up! We assume that all the other profiles that were missing have also been restored or soon will be. There is still some instability... still getting some error messages, so it appears as though there's some problems to be ironed out, but there's been no data loss. Move along... nothing to see here. We posted the message below when our MySpace was down.

Anyone else out there having similar trouble? We tried to log on today, check out a message or two and do general maintenance. After clicking through to a comment from a friend, then clicking on our "Home" button, we were greeted with the "Invalid Friend ID..." message and our MySpace profile was gone. We are seemingly gone from MySpace. We are hoping that is just a case of a glitch. MySpace has been having trouble lately-- power outages at their main data center, mail outages due to routine maintenance, etc. But we're urging anyone that may have sent a message to our MySpace profile to re-send it to us here at the magazine.

Thanks!

So, this past Saturday night, while a huge chunk of the comedy business is having a swingin' soiree in Montreal, there's a controversy on the other side of the country, in Vancouver. Dane Cook, newly arrived in Vancouver (in town, for the next six weeks or so to shoot a movie, from what we can piece together), calls up the local comedy club (or one of them-- Vancouver Yuk Yuks) and asks if he can go on.

Jackpot, right?

Long story short, he gets there, asks to go on before the headliner, gets permission, goes on, and, at the 33-minute mark-- they play him off with Elvis Costello music and cut his mike.

We hasten to add, that, from all acounts of the Vancouver incident, Cook was doing well onstage.

Cook jokes about it from stage, the mike is turned back on and he picks up exactly where he leaves off. He continues for another 5 minutes when-- they play him off with music and cut off his mike again. He gets pissed, drops the mike and bolts.

All this is pieced together from eyewitness accounts posted on an internet forum for Vancouver comics. There are details there.

But there are larger issues, of course. Issues about professional behavior, pecking orders, club management, etc.

We were at Wiley's in Dayton recently when Dave Chappelle stopped by-- on two different occasions. On each occasion, Chappelle went on after The Male Half of the Staff (who was the HL) and did an hour or so both times. (Needless to say, the crowd was thrilled beyond belief.)

In that situation, we realized that we (the Male and Female Halves) were inconsequential at the time. We would have done whatever was asked of us by the club management. Says the Male Half, "Had Chappelle requested to go on before us, or before me, I would not have protested. It isn't an enviable position, but it's obviously of great benefit to the club. Besides, it wouldn't have been the first time something like that has happened."

Back in 1985 or so, on his first time headlining his local club, The Comedy Factory Outlet, the club got a call from the management of Bob Goldthwait, who was in town, playing the Tower Theater, with Tom Kenney. They wanted to go on a local club, the club management said, "C'mon down!"

They arrived mintues before the Male Half's set was to begin. Kenney went on. Killed. Goldthwait went on... died a horrible death. Shit happens. The Male Half picks up the story: "I went on after the both of them and died a horrible, sinking, stinking mess of a death. And I realized that it's harder to follow a celebrity comic that dies than one who tears up."

But it would have been a colossal error for the club to have cut off the Bobcat's mike. (And, in all honesty, they should have let both Kenney and Goldthwait wind it out and close the show, doing lengthy sets.)

And it would have been a collosal error for the club to care one whit about The Male Half's obligation to headline... or his ego... or the club's obligation to anyone who might have been there exclusively to see the announced headliner (the number of which was probably small. Give those people their money back, secure in the knowledge that you've just had a superstar on your stage who "dropped in" and that the buzz and excitement from such an occurence is worth far more than the admission receipts of two or three or twelve irate patrons.)

Read the whole thing(s) here and here (Note: Up until Friday at 2:48 PM EDT, the second link here was identical to the first... it has now been corrected.)

Check your paper for local listings. Read our interview with Emery Emery, the man who edited the film. Read our mini-review (Scroll down, halfway) of the film (written after we saw it in a packed theater-- along with the director, the producers and many of the movie's stars-- last year at the Just For Laughs Fest in Montreal).

It's that time of year: The HBO Comedy Festival (or "Aspen" as it is more commonly known), will be in Aspen, Colorado, February 28 through March 4, and they're currently accepting submissions from comedians for performance spots.

The release goes like this:

To be considered as a performer for the 2007 HBO Comedy Festival, please submit your materials (DVD, CD, VHS tape, press kit, upcoming performance schedules, articles, etc.) to the address listed below before November 6th, 2006.

SUBMITTED MATERIALS WILL NOT BE RETURNED.

Mailing Address:
Talent Department
HBO Comedy Festival
2500 Broadway, Ste. 400
Santa Monica, CA 90404

The Festival will begin accepting comedic features and shorts films for its Film Discovery Program from August 1st through December 1st, 2006.

Something odd is this paragraph on the front page of their website:

HBO announced today that the HBO Comedy Festival will be held in Aspen, Colorado from February 28 - March 4, 2007. Drawing upon 12 years of success through their involvement with the U.S Comedy Arts Festival (USCAF), this will mark the first year of what is now known as the HBO Comedy Festival.

Click here for film eligibility and submission docs. Click here if you're looking to submit yourself as raw talent.

From a press release on Yahoo! Financial:

StupidVideos.com, the leading user-generated video site for humorous stunts, bloopers, standup comedy and everyday laughter, and Fox Atomic, the new film division of Fox Filmed Entertainment aimed at the 17-24 year old market, today announced their partnership. StupidVideos.com will provide content to www.foxatomic.com, the company's interactive broadband channel, which announced its beta launch on July 19, 2006.

Looks like this gang is going after a slice of YouTube's action... just the goofy, loopy, funny part that appeals to 17- to 24- year-olds. This is getting interesting real fast.

As we catch up on our sleep and recover from five days of Festival (five, if you include travel, which we do), remnants of information, rumors, etc. float to the front of our brains. We sift through the pile of papers, business cards, postcards and Gazetter clips and recall various items, theories and impressions that didn't make it into our formal updates.

We heard from more than one source that the New Faces shows were strong from start to finish, front to back, top to bottom. Consistent. No grumbling about a lack of preparedness or inexperience. And we hear that their sets are going to be uploaded to MySpace.com's Comedy section. (That's unconfirmed, but we wouldn't doubt it, knowing that the Fest and MySpace.com have struck some sort of alliance.)

There was talk that the Fest organizers had flown members of Mitch Hedberg's immediate family up to Montreal so that they could see the city, the fest, the people and the places where Mitch had some of his biggest triumphs in his short life. Nice gesture, if it's true. (We had an eyewitness-- someone told us they shared a shuttle with a family member.) We speculated last year that a memorial show/tribute show was a good idea, but this sounds even better.

Speculating on the size of the Festival is a popular pasttime-- How many people are here? How healthy is the Fest compared to last year or years past? One measure is how hectic and sweaty the Delta's mezzanine gets in the midnight to 4 AM time period. This year, it was civilized-- populated, but not scarily so; festive, but not frenzied. Low attendance? Probably not. We theorized that the Fest has instituted measures to spread out the party crowd-- like holding a "discotheque" over at the Musee JFL every night to siphon off significant chunks of the Fest population. We heard that the venues were packed for the shows, so overall Fest attendance certainly wasn't depressed. (The show we attended at the Works was SRO, that's for sure.)

It sounds like it was a successful fest in every way. We forgot to listen to CJAD on the way out of town, so we didn't hear the traditional news report that recounts how much money the organizers made on this year's Festival. 2007 will see the 25th Festival Just For Laughs. And, even though the first two years of the Fest were French language only, we assume they'll still be billing it as the Silver Anniversary, (They do that in Canada, right? Silver means 25, right?) so, if we're in attendance, we're certain that we'll see special programming and whatnot.

Who was that young man with the $100 haircut and the funky Carnaby Street wardrobe? He was everywhere-- even keeping score at the basketball game! We heard it was (JFL co-founder) Andy Nulmans's son, although we never confirmed it. (In our only contact with him, we found him to be polite, professional, helpful, full of information-- It wouldn't surprise us if he ends up a Fest Bigwig some day. (If he isn't already... hmmm...)

If we think of anything else, we'll post it.

Roz is gone.

Anthony Clark is still standing... barely.

We just wasted the last hour playing guess the punchline... and we did quite well.

Maybe we're just exhausted.

At least Gary Gulman made an appearance.

And the man in charge of NBC has stated that Last Comic Standing will be back in June of 2007. (Scroll down!)

We can't get Ant's Rant to work. "Ant's Rant returns August 9th when he takes you behind the scenes of the live finale!" says NBC's website. We can't wait. (That there would be your sarcasm.) At least we know it's over on the 9th.

In a related note: Alonzo Bodden (LCS Champ, Season III), will be seen in his first correspondent piece on the Tonight Show tonight. Bodden, you will recall, won the Season III faceoff between Season I and Season II, then didn't reap the full rewards because his final didn't air on network television.

Here's our experiences at the 2006 Festival Just For Laughs. All 7,037 words and 28 photos... in chronological order. Thanks for visiting.


MONTREAL JUST FOR LAUGHS '06 (in chronological order)

WEDNESDAY

Yeah, it's Thursday, but the upload is all about Wednesday.



We got in at about 4:15 or so. Not enough time to check in, hump the equipment up, obtain our press laminates and make it on over to the inaugural Just For Laughs BBQ Bash. (Where the heck is the Club Charlot, anyway? After a cursory glance at the map, we determined that it was too far away.)

In the real world it might be hump day, but Wednesday in late-July in Montreal at the Festival JFL is the day when the pace quickens and the volume of the late-night chatter in the Delta bar is boosted a notch or two. A rather large chunk of this weekend's contingent arrives throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening.

The Delta has been refurbished somewhat. The scent of adhesive and fresh paint greets us we enter the lobby. There is new furniture in the schmooze corral that doubles as a bar. We struggle mightily to connect the facelift that the Festival HQ has undergone with the rebirth that standup comedy is undergoing. Perhaps we will just leave it at that. (We will have more to say about the rebirth of comedy in subsequent updates. Stay tuned!)

What we will say now, however, is that the WWW is a presence once more-- at this Festival in particular and in the business in general. You'll recall that we noted the preponderance of dot com entities in one of our Fest updates from six years ago to the day:

The back page of the HRSCI (Hollywood Reporter) was purchased by Laugh.com. Half of the lobby is dominated by comedyworld.com's "cybercast" corral and banners hang overhead touting thefunniest.com and pop.com. The folks at humorvision.com (a division of fastband.com) purchased a quarter-pager and playboy.com has dispatched a representative or two. And, of course, SHECKY! (sheckymagazine.com) is present in the form of editors Brian McKim and Traci Skene. There is an explosion of dot-commers here at the festival this year. Much moreso than last year. And there are many more business cards with email addresses.

And one of the entities that is branding the festival at every turn is MySpace.com, recently purchased by Rupert Murdoch and spending cash like a drunken Australian sailor. The social networking site launched earlier this year and they're determined to make their presence known.

The internet is good for comics. Bad for suits-- TV suits, movie suits, music suits. They're circling the new technology like a ten-year-old boy circles little Suzy-- oddly fascinated, yet still convinced that Suzy is, when all is said and done, "yucky." The trades are all atwitter over the new technology and how it's shaping the business. Not all the talk is good.

Some contend that the internet, through its convenience, its reach and its versatility will hurt festivals. From the Hollywood Reporter:

Instead, a growing number of comics find that they can make a decent living after appearing on NBS's Last Comic Standing and/or by promoting themselves through blogs and websites such as myspace.com and youtube.com

"Deals are being made off of youtube now," Paramount TV Senior VP Comedy Development Brian Banks says. "These days, you can't close off anyone simply because they don't show up at a festival or play the Improv."

The internet has become the ultimate launching pad for the harried agent who doesn't even have to leave his or her seat to take in a quick routine.

Stay tuned for a parade of quotes from a gaggle of TV and other entertainment execs that completely contradicts the above statement. (How about this: "Of course, the internet is utterly bloodless and cold. There's no connection with the performer. We need to see the act, feel the applause, appreciate connection between audience and performer," says Harry Dumshitz Tantamount TV VP Comedy Talent Development Wetware Division.)

There was a new feature: The Comedy Showdown ("American Idol meets Last Comic Standing meets 8 Mile" reads the official description) sounds like a clusterfuck, but, from all accounts, it worked. We suspect that the competition format ("eight comics, three rounds, one chance to win") worked mainly because they chose the judges wisely-- Andy Kindler, Dom Irrera and Jimmy Carr. And the whole thing was ably hosted by Torontonian Steve Patterson. The winner? Andy Parsons.

The Homegrown Comic Competition at the Cabaret Juste Pour Rire was won by Mark Forward, who was instantly forwarded over to the Comedy Night in Canada at the Nest. So quick was the transition that Forward didn't have a chance to savor his victory. ("They didn't even get a chance to have a beer!" was how past HCC winner David Pryde described the rush job.) Forward beat out Todd Allen, Greg Cochrane, Steve Ditata, Steven Crowder, Andrew Iwanyk, Jeff McEnery, Rodney Ramsey and Jeffrey Yu.



Above is The Staff of SHECKYmagazine.com being interviewed by Ernie Butler. This was one of two radio interviews we did in the Delta lobby. The other was for XMRadio's Canadian-flavored Laugh Attack (Channel 153). Quizzing us on behalf of XM was Ben Miner, Canadian comic. Miner is one of the many people clad in XMRadio gear-- mikes in hand, professional recorders at the ready-- who are swarming this festival and creating quite a presence for the recently-launched channel. SHECKYmagazine readers may recall that Miner was one of the many folks who appealed to the Canadian radio commission back in December of 2004 when that body was deciding just how to bring satellite radio to Canadians. We linked to a NYT piece on the hearings:

Mr. Miner is passionate enough about the technology that he appeared in November at the radio commission's hearings, decked out in his only suit - a three-piece pinstripe - and a gold tie, gold shirt, and gold pocket square, to speak in favor of allowing satellite radio in Canada.

Miner is one of many comics in Montreal this week who are up here in a capacity other than standup. When we first came up here in 1999, it felt rather odd that, though we were standup comics, we weren't up here to do standup comedy. We were here to report on the goings on.

Fast forward seven years later and there seems to be a lot of that happening-- Comics in and around the Festival not doing standup but engaged in some other creative endeavor. In the space of just a few hours last night, we ran into Jeff Rothpan and Matt Hurwitz, who were writing skits, wraparounds and other material for the Gala shows. And Scott Faulconbridge, who is doing on-camera interviews (for one of the TV nets up here), buttonholing the performers as they exit the stage at the Gala shows. Emery Emery, up here in the capacity of videographer, working on a documentary centering on standup. Brad Reeder, up here in the capacity of a club owner (Charlie Goodnights, Raleigh).

Then there's this from the Hollywood Reporter: "The networks and studios all are thinking outside the standup comedy box for inspiration," Thruline Entertainment manager Willie Mercer said. "The way the whole game has changed, they have to. You'll go to a Montreal and surf around the web, and what you'll be looking to do is sign and build a roster of young comedic writers, actors and directors. You're not just looking for guys who can tell a joke, but someone who might write a great film." Hmmm...



From left to right, that's Jeff Rothpan, Matt Hurwitz and Mike Marino (Jersey's Bad Boy of Comedy). Marino is on the Wise Guys shows along with Mike Birbiglia, Frank Spadone, Cris Nannarone and Rocky Laporte.



It's a photograph 19 years in the making! Patty Rosborough and Joe Starr smile for the camera. Starr has been trying to have his photo snapped with Rosborough for nineteen years-- we're unclear on the details of the story. (So what does he do? He squeezes the life out of her and turns the pic into a digital grotesquerie! Had not Ms. Rosborough (who is done for the week after having performed on the Nasty Shows and the Relationship Shows.) been leaving town this A.M., we would have taken a proper picture later on today.



We call this picture "Two Craigs." On the left is Craig Ferguson, who hosted Wednesday night's gala. On the right is Craig Shoemaker, who hosted the Relationship Shows. (Not sure who the bloke is in the center.)



"I think my eyes were shut," is what David Pryde (center) said, just after the flash from the above photo died down. He was right. Very right. Pryde, who normally goes about his life as a Montreal comic with his eyes fairly wide open, is flanked by longtime SHECKYmagazine contributor Adam Gropman (left) and erstwhile (and longtime) Atlanta Punchline bartender Joe Satterfield. Gropman is in Montreal representing his short film, "Insight Into The Enemy," which is part of this year's Comedia Twisted Shorts program. Satterfield made the trek north to represent his recently formed entertainment management company, TSTalent.

We planted our promotional material on the Promotional Material Buffet Table in the Delta Lobby. It hasn't gotten chaotic yet. But it will. In addition to planting our self-congratulatory postcards, we also dropped a pile of about two dozen vintage Parkhurst hockey trading cards. They were gone in minutes. (We suspect that someone, thinking that they were actually valuable, swiped them all in one shot! Too bad, sucker! They're reproductions, people-- not worth more than about 3 cents Canadian!)

We held onto Pit Martin ("The softspoken 23-year old Quebec native has a degree in French and history from Windsor College as well as a great future in goal-getting.") Adam Gropman, who spotted the stack of cards before they were swiped, thought that they were clever faux hockey cards that depicted Canadian comics! Not a bad idea, though!

A nice touch: At the rear of the Delta, around the corner from where the press and logistics rooms are situated, the interview space in the Vivaldi Room has been renamed the Allan Johnson Press Room, in memory of the Chicago Trib writer who passed away suddenly and tragically last winter. "Johnson was a respected journalist and dear friend of Just For Laughs."


THURSDAY

We took in Just For Pitching Thursday at noon in the Delta. A less than capacity crowd watched six sitcoms and a drama pitched. Pitching were Ronnie Khalil (The Garden), Kira Soltanovich & Rachel Reiss (The Cult), Nat Coombs (Dear Journal), Ian Harrison (Bangalore Whore), Dwight Slade (thirtynine), James Mullinger (Success) and Eddie Pence (A Comic Life). Catching were William Burdett-Coutts, Amy Hartwick, Jeremy Whitham, Brent Haynes, Anton Leo and
Ron West.

"Originally, it was scripted... but I thought you liked that improvised crap."

The above is a quote from Eddie Pence. He said it toward the end of the grilling he endured after his A Comic Life pitch. Grilling... did we say grilling? It was more like a mushy, Orwellian, cognitive therapy session in which the patient is being cured of the notion that he or she can create a marketable sitcom (instead of being cured of anxiety or depression). And there are six therapists. All of whom are fearful of contradicting each other... but, curiously, not at all afraid of contradicting themselves... sometimes in the course of one sentence.

There were seven pitches, and, as one of our party whispered, halfway through the proceedings, "Where is this year's Beat The Chimp?" (See last year's wrapup of Just For Pitching-- We didn't go on about BTC in any detail, but Franz Harary's simian-based game show idea was offbeat and his presentation was entertaining. Nobody was able to engage the audience in such a manner this year.)

The panel-- British, Canadian and American TV execs-- were in rare form when it came to tortuous rhetoric, but somewhat sluggish. Brent Haynes of Canada's Comedy Network, though gloomy, still got off a zinger or two. But the panel was somewhat reserved, not very enthusiastic. Perhaps even they are fed up with their own horseshit.

We actually heard one of them describe a former TV exec as a "champion of original voices." We'll let that sink in.

It took them only 35 minutes for someone to use the word "interstitial." We counted two "Zeitgeists" and a "multiplatform." We're refining a pitch of our own. We said in years past that Just For Pitching would, in itself, make a great show. Now, we are considering adding the element of audience interactivity by turning it into a drinking game, encouraging the viewers to take a shot of distilled spirits every time an exec uses something on the approved list of Suitspeak Terms or Phrases. (Other terms or phrases: "high-concept," "character-driven," "script-dependent" any adjective combined with the word "voice." You get the idea.)

After a while, we began to feel bad for the pitchers. They were all the butt of a protracted, yearlong practical joke!

Last year, the panelists declared the sitcom to be dead, dead, dead. ("The days of taking a fat guy, giving him a hot wife and building a successful sitcom around it are gone," said one exec in 2005. Note to exec: The fat guy with the hot wife just got an Emmy nomination!)

Last year, everything was high-concept, improvised and reality-based. (You know, like Curb or Reno or Arrested, they all said, paring down the show titles to one word.)

So... The pitchers gave them high-concept, the pitchers took great pains to emphasize that there would be "unscripted and/or improvised components" to their shows and that their would be at least "be some segments that would be reality-based."

So... The execs batted them all down.

In case you hadn't heard, pitch people, we execs are all on the same page now and we're "re-inventing the sitom" and "changing the face of television comedy!" From here on out, we want characters that people care and good writing. "The sitcom built around a clever idea is a misnomer," they said. "At the end of the day, it comes down to a script. I would have to see a script." We want Cheers! We want Friends! Get outta here with that improvised shit.

What a burn job!

We're considering a pitch for next year entitled What The F*** Do You Want?!

"Before we begin our presentation, we'd like to ask the panelists a question: What the F*** do you want?!? Because, oh, man, we can give it to you!"

Now, if you'll excuse us, we gotta go sneak into The Hollywood Reporter party and bolt down some sweaty cheese and a couple free drinks before anyone realizes that it was we who called the folks at The Hollywood Reporter "dusty turds." (See our review of Tourgasm from last month.)

More updates to come. We're busting them up into smaller components and posting them when we can!

Thanks for reading!



THURSDAY, Part II


Left to right: Brian McKim (Old Face), Jordan Carlos (New Faces), Adam Devine (New Faces), at the Hollywood Reporter party

No dusty turds at the Hollywood Reporter party. No sweaty cheese, either. Just high heat, high humidity and lots of free booze. (And not very much of a mob to fight through to get to it!) There was a healthy crowd, smaller than in past years, but enough for a party! Usually, somebody stops this HR party in its tracks, grabs a mike and thanks the assembled for attending. No such interruption occurred this year, though. There wasn't much of an HR presence at all. Just a lot of media types, industry people and others gearing up for the evening and gulping down a Labatts or three while deciding which show to attend.

And a handful of New Facers loosening up for the two Shaun Majumder-hosted shows at Kola Note. One of them, Omaha native Adam Devine, told SHECKYmagazine that The Female Half of the Staff and the Male Half of the Staff were the headliners on bill the very first time he mounted the stage at the ill-fated Jesters on that city's west side. (That makes two people at this fest who have that distinction-- The SHECKYmagazine staff witnessed the maiden comedy voyage of Ottawa's Jon Dore. It makes us sooo proud! What are the odds? Hmmm... don't answer that. Considering that we're both members of The 50-State Club and that we've been professional comics for a combined 40+ years... pretty good, we guess!)

This year's New Facers speak woefully (and hilariously) about the tuneup show they all performed on at the Comedy Nest earlier in the week-- the crowd was made up largely of a group sale/charity event crowd from a Lebanese church group! But at least they're putting up the NFers in much nicer accomodations-- just across the street from the Delta, too, at a place called l'Appartement. (That's right, we're taking credit... In one of our 2004 updates, we whined about the youth hostel in Chinatown that JFL used for the young 'uns that year. The one we cleverly referred to as "Gitmo du nord." Well, whaddya know, now they're billeted in a splendid suite just across Rue Sherbrooke!)


Two Petes (Pete Dominick and Pete Lee, New Faces and New Faces) at the Hollywood Reporter party

It's always something with the New Faces. This year, we were told, during the tuneup show at the Nest, the New Faces comics weren't allowed to watch the show. It is in a comic's blood (most comics anyway) that he/she is almost always interested in seeing the room in action-- especially for a high-pressure or important gig like a contest or an audition... or a festival tuneup show like this one. But such would not be allowed on this night.

Indeed, their actions were tightly controlled througout the evening. They weren't even allowed to leave the green room. (Exceptions? If you needed to smoke. Nice.) What is it with the New Faces? We suggest that, next year, the New Facers be made to wear black hoods with the eyes cut out (like the executioner wears!) in the days leading up to their big night, and then, just as the comic is introduced-- whoosh! Off comes the hood! Dramatic, no?


Left to right: Hannibal Buress (New Faces), Greg Walter (3 Arts), Steve Trevino (New Faces)

We feel a kinship with the New Facers this year. At least a half-dozen have admitted to being avid, regular readers of the magazine and some have told us that they prepped for their inaugural trip to the Festival Just For Laughs by reading (and re-reading) our archived Festival Updates from our seven previous trips to Montreal. (We extrapolated these facts to mean that we're influencing an entire generation of new comics... oh, the comedy humanity!)


On the left, Festival Buddy Dan Rosenberg (Author, "The Book On Hosting-- How Not To Suck As An Emcee"), on the right, Taylor Williamson (New Faces)

The Montreal Gazette reviewed the two New Faces shows last night (Anne Sutherland is the byline) and rated the comics on a scale of one to ten. Sutherland gave both Roy Wood, Jr. and Joe Devito a 9.5. (Only Wood, however, made it into the sub-head, "Roy Wood, Jr. gives tremendous show"'; Perhaps Mr. Devito should learn to be a little bit nicer to the members of the fourth estate-- he spied our ancient digital camera late last night at the Delta and said, "What is that?! A Viewmaster?!" Witty. Very witty. Just kidding, Joe. Just kidding. This does afford us a deluxe opportunity to make a public appeal for a new, sleek digital camera like all the kids have today. Ours was a gift from Polaroid in late 1999-- ancient history in digital tech terms-- we got it in exchange for an ad on the front page of the mag and the Polaroid logo on our Montreal updates. It is rather clunky... and every once in a while it has a stroke.)


On the left, Todd Barry (Masters), on the right, Morgan Murphy (New Faces)

In the same Gazette article, Morgan Murphy is rated a 5. ("Deadpan to the point of catatonic," was the quote.) Yet, in the July 17-23 (the one that's heavy on the comedy), Murphy is named "One of the Ten Comics to Watch." and described by Jimmy Kimmel as "One of the funniest and most unique comics I know." We only point this out to illustrate how subjective this comedy beast is. (And it also nicely illustrates why SHECKYmagazine stays out of the comedy reviewing game. There's just no point to it, really.)



Dwight Slade is on the left. Todd Allen (Homegrown Comedy Competition) is on the right.

Speaking of T-shirts-- We ventured north armed with a few dozen lovingly hand screened SHECKYmagazine T's, for the purpose of creating a T-shirt-clad army of SHECKYmagazine fanatics... a cyber-cult of Hanes-clad standup comics and industry people. We've been throwing them around freely, and we laid one on Jon Dore. Dore spotted us later on (after he had returned to the Delta from his Go West Show at Bourbon St., on the bill with Kyle Dunnigan, Laurie Kilmartin, Willie Barcena, Andy Parsons and Joe Starr) and he told us that, if we could spare it, he'd like another shirt. We asked him what happened to the other one and he explained thusly (and we paraphrase slightly):

I had it slung over my shoulder and I was at Bourbon Street, and I went to the bathroom, and I bent down to flush the toilet and I had forgotten that the shirt was on my shoulder and dontcha know it fell into the toilet and there a classic log in there, so there was no way I was going to fish it out of there, so there's a shit-stained SHECKYmagazine T-shirt in the toilet in the men's room at Bourbon St.

We howled, of course. And promptly handed over a second T. And we're disturbed by the omission of certain details, but we're not investigating further. (We're still taken by the term "classic log." Whose log? Don't know... don't care.)



Last night at the Delta, from left to right: Joe Devito, The Female Half Of The Staff (Traci Skene), Kathe Nelson, Talent Director, Comedy Boulevard.

The party continued at the Delta, of course. Not as insanely congested as in years past, as there may be some folks siphoned off by the "fun-filled discotheque" party space that has been created over at the JFL Museum on St. Laurent. The Female Half of the Staff decided earlier in the day that she would not, no matter what, have her first beer of the evening until 11 PM. However, she neglected to wind her watch (No modern, newfangled, electronic watches for her!) and, as such, she was 25 minutes late in discovering that her arbitrary start time had already passed! Deprived of alcohol for a precious 25 minutes! The moral of the story: If you're drinking on a schedule, wear a backup timepiece! Redundancy is key!

We're off to the State of the Industry Address! 2 PM Friday, at the Delta. Stay tuned!

FRIDAY

It was the eleventh State of the Industry address starring Andy Kindler. (Hard to believe we've only missed the first three!) It remains the "must attend" event of the festival. Maria Bamford kicked off the proceedings in front of a packed (of course!) ballroom, at twelve minutes past the hour.

"I don't think you realize just how much has to wrong for me to be up here every year."

Comedy classes, Red Skelton, Last Comic Standing, Bob Reade, Ross Mark, Jay Leno, Carlos Mencia, Big Brother, Dennis Miller, Aaron Spelling, Peter Bart, Peter Guber, Michael Eisner, Jill Carroll, acting workshops, Big Love, Blue Collar Comedy, improvisation, Tourgasm, Hitler, Dane Cook, Billy Bush, broadband, Deal Or No Deal, Howie Mandel, America's Got Talent, Regis Philbin, Anthony Clark, Bravo, Kathy Griffin, OK! Magazine, Mariah Carey, Entourage, Jeremy Piven, Comedy Central, Lisa Lampinelli, Jenna Elfman, Heather Graham, MySpace.com, Jason Stuart, Shalom In The Home, David Brenner, Jamie Masada were just some of the people, shows, entities, etc. that had "gone wrong"" in the 360 or so days since Kindler's last S.O.T.I.A.

Kindler was particularly hard on standup comics this year. And not just on his usual targets-- monster comics Robin Williams, Whoopie Goldberg and the like-- but Kathy Griffin ("The only comic I know who went to Iraq as a career move!"), David Brenner ("...doing material ripped from last decade's headlines") and Dane Cook ("He's worse than Hitler, because at least Hitler had a point of view.")

Kindler is wildly funny. He is at his best when he is self-deprecating ("I was in Europe for my Mixed Reaction Tour."). But we question his decision to devote nearly 25 per cent of yesterday's presentation to slamming Dane Cook. The impression was riotous, dead-on, devastating. But round about minute 12 or 13 of the 18-minute Cook roasting, the squirm factor kicked in. Perhaps there was a misjudgement on Kindler's part-- an overestimation of the amount of anti-Cook sentiment in the room. As far as this publication is concerned, we're on record as admiring Cook's generosity-- as evidenced by the fact that he brought three other comics on board in his first major project for HBO. Similar in a way to Kindler's generosity when he asks another comic to open the S.O.T.I.A. every year. The impression segment came dangerously close to crossing that microscopic line between cantankerous and bitter. We love the cranky, concise Kindler, not the broad, bitter one.

On the sad spectacle of British TV lionizing a minority woman for being in the running to win the Brit version of Big Brother:

"I believe it was Rosa Parks who was the winner of the reality show "Who Wants To Sit In The Front Of The Bus."

On HBO's dull trainwreck Big Love:

"Who would've thought that a television show where a guy gets to sleep with three woman would be so boring?"

On the laziness of TV suits and Shalom In The Home:

"Is that all we hafta do? Just come up with a title for a TV show that rhymes? How about Plumber For The Summer? I got one: Teach At The Beach! Maybe Lawyer In The Foyer!"

His bit on the Hitler's bunker series being pitched to American movie executives was Kindler at his best, a priceless indictment of the moral relativism that permeates Hollywood.


From left: Brian McKim, Drew Carey (Photo credit: Dan Rosenberg)

Drew Carey was hanging out at the Delta with a contingent that also included his Whose Line compadre Colin Mochrie. (Note the casual way in which we truncate the name of the television show, cooking it down to the bare essentials! Suitspeak, it's not just for TV executives any more!)


Left to right: Paul Provenza (Aristocrats) and Dean Cameron, Victor Isaac(Nigerian Spam Scam Scam)

The big buzz show last night was The Masters at Kola Note which featured Joe Starr, Greer Barnes, Nick Griffin, Todd Barry, Laurie Kilmartin, Vinnie Brand and Katt Williams. The show was hosted by Mark Curry. Folks were talking about the strong performance of all of the comics on board, but were particularly enthusiastic about the show turned in by Brand. And, oddly, there enthusiasm was tinged with... surprise. As if Brand, who is also a comedy club owner, couldn't possibly be expert or competent at both. At least that's our theory. We often experience a similar phenomenon-- upon learning that we are both comedians and internet magazine editors/writers, folks sometimes opine that we are somehow not talented enough or fortunate enough to be able to do both with any degree of excellence. It's a curious thing. "If you were any good as comics, you wouldn't need a magazine," is how it is expressed. Or, conversely, "You're comedians-- what gives you the idea that anyone would want to hear your opinion or read your prose?" It seems that, only after someone is well-known, is he/she afforded the luxury of being viewed as versatile.


Left to right: Vinnie Brand (Masters), Mark Curry (Masters, host), Marshall Chiles (Funny Farm, Atlanta)

Whilst chilling in the Delta at ground level, we saw John Cleese glide by, back from his Q & A at the Theatre Maisonneuve. He was dignified, distinguished, cool. (We do admit, however, to being mildly disappointed that he didn't break into a Minister of Funny Walks walk midway through the lobby. We were too intimidated to talk to him, we fully admit it. If we did muster up the nerve, though, we would ask him if he ever tires of the Python fans-- does he ever "go Shatner" on them, like in that classic SNL skit where "Capt. Kirk" implores the Trekkies to "get a life?")


Left to right: Mike Birbiglia, Joe Birbiglia (brother)

There were two Galas Friday night, both hosted by Jason Alexander, that guy from that sitcom... the one set in New York... It'll eventually come to us. Anyway, Alexander brought out Butch Bradley, Fred MacAulay, Phil Nichols, Craig Shoemaker, Maria Bamford, John Caparulo, Patrice O'Neal and Angelo Tsarouchas. In the second Gala, he introduced Pete Zedlacher, Kristeen von Hagen, Mike Britt, Willie Barcena, Laughlin Patterson, Dov Davidoff and Tim Minchin.

Speaking of Patrice O'Neal, the Female Half of the Staff spoke to the big man and jogged his memory regarding the recent O & A debacle that Skene experienced while opening for O'Neal. "Oh... right! Helium," O'Neal said, then, in a low, sweet, concerned tone, "Are you okay?" All is well.


Left to right: Demetri Martin, Wayne Federman at the Just for Laughs Museum Burlesque At Midnight party

Burlesque at Midnight was the name of the party being held at Just For Laughs Museum on St. Laurent. Thumping music... strobing, seizure-inducing lights, tidbits impaled on fancy toothpicks squired around by solicitous servers... and plenty of free liquor. The motif of this one was somewhat amorphous-- not quite sure if burlesque was the correct label, but the elevator operators on this occasion were gorgeous (says the Female Half), smokin' hot (says the Male Half) gals in tiny dresses, with cleavage to spare. (This is a far sight better than the theme a few years back that called for hunky, shirtless, male-model types to be pushing the buttons on the lift. Rather... disconcerting, to say the least.)

Many arrived late to the party-- an inevitable result of the fact that Dating It was simultaneously going on at Kola Note (with Colette Hawley, Pete Lee, Sugar Sammy, Lizzie Cooperman, Hyla Matthews, Lauglin Patterson and KT Tatara) and the Alternative Comedy Showl was also going on (in the same building, just downstairs with Andy Kindler, Stewart Lee, Howard Kremer, Nick Kroll, Reggie Watts, Maria Bamford, David O'Doherty, Matt Boylan and Morgan Murphy).

Well-attended was the party. So much so that the Delta was quiet and host to not more than about two dozen people (at least when we swung through at 3 or so). The party was the place to go. And did we mention that one of the more bizarre features of the Burlesque soiree was a woman circulating throughout the throng offering party-goers a tray of thongs. Hmmm... butlered thong panties for the taking! The Female Half declares that, as proof that she has been married for a long, long time, she initially thought that the thongs were... cloth napkins!! An elegant touch? No... underwear... for free! FOS Dan Rosenberg wore his free panties on his head-- "A Thomulke" is how he described it-- a tongue-twisting combo of thong and yarmulke. A visual gag not soon forgotten. We noticed that there was nothing written on them-- No "Hahaha.com," No "Just For Laughs," not even something wacky like "Entree, sil vous plait"-- which kinda makes it...sorta... creepy. Kathe Nelson of Comedy Boulevard summed it up nicely: "It's like I'm just holding someone else's underwear!" Indeed!

We just got an email from Vancouver journo Guy MacPherson answering our plea for I.D. in a photo we ran (see posting from yesterday):

Hey, Brian & Traci,

The gentleman to the right of Dwight Slade is Vancouver comic Todd Allen, who took part in the Homegrown Competition.

There you go.

Guy

Thanks, Guy!

Gotta hustle on over to the Industry vs. Artists Basketball game. Like Mr. Provenza, we'll do anything for a free hat and a T-shirt... only we kinda mean it.

FINAL WRAPUP

It was an historic win! The Industry beat the Artists-- the first such win by the Industry types in the history of the Artist vs. Industry basketball spectacle! (We are using exclamation points because, in the past, The Male Half of the Staff has participated in the game on the Industry side (by virtue of his media pass; even though, in his heart of hearts, he is an Artiste) for five of most recent games. Lachlan Patterson and Maronzio Vance were standouts in a losing Artists effort. (That Vance has a mini-skyhook/John Stocktonesque lane-drive thingie that is a sight to behold!)


Wayne Federman (Bar Mitzvah Show) displaying fine form at the Artist vs. Industry Basketball Smackdown

And this year saw the first Artist vs. Industry Hockey Game! (Not on ice, but in an arena, with a ball, similar to the orange, bounceless ball used in street hockey.) We encountered JFL's Brent Schiess, post-hockey, in the Delta mezzanine, still clutching his equipment. (His hockey sticks... get your minds out of the gutter!) Schiess was mightily exercised over the Industry victory. (By the same 4-point margin!) It was The RBK Ball Hockey Cup they were fighting for. (The Female Half says that "ball hockey" sounds vaguely obscene, perhaps a Canadian euphemism for masturbation... "Slap shot... Score!")

Suggestion to JFL brass: Capitalize on Industry hotshot Rick Messina's healthy obsession with whiffle ball and have a JFL Artists vs. Industry Whiffle Ball Blowout. Something that even the comics without health insurance could participate in, without fear of rupturing a tendon or losing an incisor.

We were disappointed to hear that the Comedy Network wouldn't be hosting a barbecue on the Delta's Terasse de la Jardin, as in past years. But we were alarmed to hear that they were indeed hosting a barbecue under the pristine white tents at the Club Charlot-- and we almost didn't find out! It was a ten-minute shuttle ride from the Delta (attenuated to a 16-minute shuttle ride after a delay because of the unlikely confluence of a Parade of Twins and a protest by folks sympathetic to the Lebanese... or to Hezbollah... or both... we're not sure which). The rain didn't help our progress either. (Curiously, the rain didn't dampen the spirits-- or diminish the numbers-- of parade goers or street fest participants... or the protestors.)

We arrived in plenty of time for free Labatts, free dogs (hot dogs, that is) and Comedy Network swag bags containing hats and psychedelic, battery-powered fans.


A thin sliver of The Male Half of the Staff, as he tries gallantly to snap a self-portrait with Festival mascot Bonhomme Verte. Our favorite part is the rain drops on B.V.'s giant eyeball!

It was a pleasant, civilized environment in which to schmooze with Industry, Artists, Media and Accompaneurs! Out of the rain, away from the Delta, inexplicably soothed by the 80s/New Wave soundtrack, we began to see the wisdom of having these get-togethers in a remote location, away from Ground Zero, behind the Theatre St. Denis. (Quite often, in the past, the mezzanine of the Delta resembled a Canadian-lager-fueled Andersonville after one or two of these swillfests-- especially after the midnight parties!-- dozens of the "wounded" lining the halls, evoking mild horror from the occasional church grouper or swim team member unfortunate enough to have been booked into the same hotel, at the exact same time, as the world's largest Entertainment Comedy Industry Steam Valve! Perhaps we exaggerate... perhaps not.) The addition of a shuttle ride and a geographic impediment or two makes for a more sober, much more sedate affair. But one that is no less satisfying or collegial.


Left to right: Max Alexander (Bar Mitzvah Show), Joey Elias (Montreal Show), at the Delta. (Paired because, between them, they have lost the equivalent of an entire comic in body weight.)

Saturday brings perhaps the most intense, most show-packed program of the Fest: No real daytime programming (save for the aforementioned barbecue and hoopfest) and lots of evening shows over six or seven venues. Many artists (and fans and other observers) take a deep breath before plunging into the vast array of galas, one-man's, best of's and specials that are offered. Exaltation here and there over the procurement of a Bill Cosby ticket. Excitement in anticipation of the John Cleese-hosted Gala show. Fierce determination by some to engineer a complex series of shuttle rides and catch as many performances as is humanly possible.

Us? We slept.

And then, we headed on down, in a slight drizzle, to Jimbo's Comedy Works venue to catch FOS/Festival Buddy Joe Starr as he closed out the Best Of The Fest, following Christian Finnegan, Sugar Sammy, Wayne Federman, Max Alexander and Dov Davidoff. We watched the sold-out show on the monitors downstairs, while chatting with FOS David John McCarthey.


Laurie Kilmartin (Masters), Jeff Singer (Producer, Dating It)

We've encountered a handful of people who are horrifed or bemused by our reluctance to attend any live performances at the world's largest festival devoted to comedy. But we have perfectly good explanation-- there's a whole lot more to the world's largest festival devoted to comedy than actual live performance-- we think our updates bear that out.

Also, we look at the Delta as our version of the al Rashid-- we hunker down, safely inside the "Green Zone," and await the word from the returning warriors, contractors and others. We piece together the reports from the info gleaned from the various artists, fans, agents and friends. Let's face it-- "buzz" is, by its very nature, second-hand. (If it's first-hand, it's hype!)

Besides, we're comics-- we find it difficult to sit down, cheek-to-jowl, with other audience members, and sit through a comedy show. It goes against our nature.


Greer Barnes (Masters), Roy Wood, Jr. (New Faces), at the Delta

There was no Eve's Tavern this year. (Or, All About Eve's Tavern, as we were referring to it earlier in the week... "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night!") The all-gal show was eliminated from the program. What was new? Asian Invasion, perhaps? (It happened before we even got there.) Maybe some of the slots were taken up by the Flying Solo series of shows, a bunch of shows put on by one person, a man in most cases but for Margaret Cho. Tim Minchin, Stewart Lee, Demetri Martin, Phil Nichol and Billy the Mime were the men. Patrick Combs starred in "Man 1, Bank 0" John Pinette
was a special event and Victor Isaac and Dean Cameron starred in what the organizers billed as a two-man, one-man show called "The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam."


On the left, Christian Finnegan (Multiple shows, MySpace.com correspondent), Eddie Pence (Just For Pitching), meeting for the first time

The Best of the Uptown Comics featured Greer Barnes, Gina Yashere, Mark Curry, Patrice O'Neal, Maronzio Vance, Willie Barcena, Roz, Katt Williams and was hosted by Don DC Curry.


Left to right: Jon Reep (Gala with John Cleese!), Male Half, at the Delta

We don't normally dish gossip, but we learned from good sources that, of the festival hosts that we heard about, Jason Alexander was "difficult," or "exacting," to put a good face on it, and that John Cleese was a real peach.


Left to right: Male Half of the Staff, Female Half of the Staff, at the Delta. (Photo credit: Francine Starr)

We were frequently asked the following: "What did you mean by your Tuesday, July 18, Last Comic Standing posting when you said you were 'speechless?' " (So disconcerting was our silence, to our readers and to the media, the Boston Herald's Sean L. McCarthy even saw fit to mention it in his wrapup of Episode #408 of the NBC reality show!) Well, we were speechless for many reasons, but the reason we cited most often and most diplomatically, was that the contestants seemed to exercise exceedingly poor judgement when it came to their choice of material. When one considers that they had not really had to burn through much material up to that point, their choice of such scatological material was... curious. Their showcase sets, on primetime network television, in front of millions of viewers, more resembled a set that might have been more appropriate for a second show Friday or a Tuesday night bar gig. To see people waste this golden opportunity left us unable to comment. If you don't have the material, buy the material.


Left to right: Rocky Laporte (Wise Guys), Maronzio Vance (New Faces), on the steps at the Delta

The difference between the 2006 JFL and the 1999 JFL (our first Fest) is that, back then, the conventional wisdom was that a comic couldn't make money merely by being a comic. "There's no money in live performance," was the pessimistic mantra.

Then followed a year or two or three of hand-wringing due to the displacement of the sitcom by reality programming-- a time when agents and managers seemed at a loss as to how to efficiently use the power and talent of their standup clients. Now, we are seemingly at a point where standup comics can make a living-- a good living-- doing what they do best, what they seem built for, destined for-- live standup comedy.

Wille Mercer (now of Thruline Entertainment), quoted in the Hollywood Reporter:

More comedians than ever before are making a great living performing in theaters and arenas, so whereas that was once solely a means to an end, it's an end in itself now... You might find a guy doing a sitcom to help his notoriety on the live circuit.

Left to right: The Male Half, JFL Mascot Bonhomme Verte and FOS Jenny McKenna, at the Theatre St. Denis (Photo credit: Boris, The Incredible)

From today's Wall Street Journal, Technology Section, Page 11; SHECKYmagazine is included in a boxed item, "Blog Watch" by Keith Huang; one of six blogs featured:

There's a long standing tradition in standup comedy that before a comics starts his set, he asks the audience to applaud the comic that preceded him. In standup, this form of support among fellow comedians, which often includes repeating the comic's name so the audience might remember it, is crucial since there's really no one else who's going to do it for them. In a similar spirit, standup veterans Brian McKim and Traci Skene created Shecky Magazine seven years ago as a "glorification of standup comedy."

Most of the site's content is written for and by comics, which gives comedy fans a rare, behind-the-curtain glimpse into the amount of work, travel and failure that any standup who embarks on a professional career can expect to endure. Fans also get a sense of these comics' voices through their writing; after all, most comedian's bits first take shape as a few words jotted down on paper.

Mr. McKim and Ms. Skene started the blog portion in 2004, and recent posts have included open calls for comedians to network with club owners and booking agents, while another entry contemplates pop musician John Mayer's recent turn at the craft: "Of all the Hollywood standup dabbler types, Mayer could actually make a go of the standup thing."

Here's a link to the online version, if you're a subscriber.

We've been called "the Wall Street Journal of standup comedy" on one or two occasions, so this is pretty cool. We don't think we've ever gotten a hit in the MSM that "gets us" like Mr. Huang's capsule description does.

Using a nautical theme, Hollywood Reporter reports that:

(NBC Entertainment President Kevin) Reilly announced he has invited back some of his summer shipmates as well, disclosing orders of new cycles of reality series America's Got Talent and Last Comic Standing. As was previously announced, Talent will return in January, and "Comic" will come back in June.

Perhaps it will pit Season IV finalist against the finalists of America's Got Talent, Season I. Would that surprise anyone?

The TV Critics Association get-together is still going on, that means it's preposterous statement season!

NBC also is making good on its pledge for year-round development, reviving the discarded comedy project Nobody's Watching after the pilot mysteriously popped up on viral-video Web site YouTube and began generating buzz. Watching is from Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence.

In an unusual departure from standard operating procedure, Watching will resume production immediately in the form of webisodes but also will yield half-hour scripts in anticipation of getting a primetime slot this season.

(Emphasis ours.) We predict that the series will never make it to the small screen, but will instead be a web-only phenomenon (and, it will be discovered, in an autobiography to be published in 2020, that the show was never intended to be made into a primetime series, but was instead always intended as a product to anchor NBC's experiment with YouTube)... sortofa multiplatform thing, without the other platforms.

It was an historic win! The Industry beat the Artists-- the first such win by the Industry types in the history of the Artist vs. Industry basketball spectacle! (We are using exclamation points because, in the past, The Male Half of the Staff has participated in the game on the Industry side (by virtue of his media pass; even though, in his heart of hearts, he is an Artiste) for five of most recent games. Lachlan Patterson and Maronzio Vance were standouts in a losing Artists effort. (That Vance has a mini-skyhook/John Stocktonesque lane-drive thingie that is a sight to behold!)


Wayne Federman (Bar Mitzvah Show) displaying fine form at the Artist vs. Industry Basketball Smackdown

And this year saw the first Artist vs. Industry Hockey Game! (Not on ice, but in an arena, with a ball, similar to the orange, bounceless ball used in street hockey.) We encountered JFL's Brent Schiess, post-hockey, in the Delta mezzanine, still clutching his equipment. (His hockey sticks... get your minds out of the gutter!) Schiess was mightily exercised over the Industry victory. (By the same 4-point margin!) It was The RBK Ball Hockey Cup they were fighting for. (The Female Half says that "ball hockey" sounds vaguely obscene, perhaps a Canadian euphemism for masturbation... "Slap shot... Score!")

Suggestion to JFL brass: Capitalize on Industry hotshot Rick Messina's healthy obsession with whiffle ball and have a JFL Artists vs. Industry Whiffle Ball Blowout. Something that even the comics without health insurance could participate in, without fear of rupturing a tendon or losing an incisor.

We were disappointed to hear that the Comedy Network wouldn't be hosting a barbecue on the Delta's Terasse de la Jardin, as in past years. But we were alarmed to hear that they were indeed hosting a barbecue under the pristine white tents at the Club Charlot-- and we almost didn't find out! It was a ten-minute shuttle ride from the Delta (attenuated to a 16-minute shuttle ride after a delay because of the unlikely confluence of a Parade of Twins and a protest by folks sympathetic to the Lebanese... or to Hezbollah... or both... we're not sure which). The rain didn't help our progress either. (Curiously, the rain didn't dampen the spirits-- or diminish the numbers-- of parade goers or street fest participants... or the protestors.)

We arrived in plenty of time for free Labatts, free dogs (hot dogs, that is) and Comedy Network swag bags containing hats and psychedelic, battery-powered fans.


A thin sliver of The Male Half of the Staff, as he tries gallantly to snap a self-portrait with Festival mascot Bonhomme Verte. Our favorite part is the rain drops on B.V.'s giant eyeball!

It was a pleasant, civilized environment in which to schmooze with Industry, Artists, Media and Accompaneurs! Out of the rain, away from the Delta, inexplicably soothed by the 80s/New Wave soundtrack, we began to see the wisdom of having these get-togethers in a remote location, away from Ground Zero, behind the Theatre St. Denis. (Quite often, in the past, the mezzanine of the Delta resembled a Canadian-lager-fueled Andersonville after one or two of these swillfests-- especially after the midnight parties!-- dozens of the "wounded" lining the halls, evoking mild horror from the occasional church grouper or swim team member unfortunate enough to have been booked into the same hotel, at the exact same time, as the world's largest Entertainment Comedy Industry Steam Valve! Perhaps we exaggerate... perhaps not.) The addition of a shuttle ride and a geographic impediment or two makes for a more sober, much more sedate affair. But one that is no less satisfying or collegial.


Left to right: Max Alexander (Bar Mitzvah Show), Joey Elias (Montreal Show), at the Delta. (Paired because, between them, they have lost the equivalent of an entire comic in body weight.)

Saturday brings perhaps the most intense, most show-packed program of the Fest: No real daytime programming (save for the aforementioned barbecue and hoopfest) and lots of evening shows over six or seven venues. Many artists (and fans and other observers) take a deep breath before plunging into the vast array of galas, one-man's, best of's and specials that are offered. Exaltation here and there over the procurement of a Bill Cosby ticket. Excitement in anticipation of the John Cleese-hosted Gala show. Fierce determination by some to engineer a complex series of shuttle rides and catch as many performances as is humanly possible.

Us? We slept.

And then, we headed on down, in a slight drizzle, to Jimbo's Comedy Works venue to catch FOS/Festival Buddy Joe Starr as he closed out the Best Of The Fest, following Christian Finnegan, Sugar Sammy, Wayne Federman, Max Alexander and Dov Davidoff. We watched the sold-out show on the monitors downstairs, while chatting with FOS David John McCarthey.


Laurie Kilmartin (Masters), Jeff Singer (Producer, Dating It)

We've encountered a handful of people who are horrifed or bemused by our reluctance to attend any live performances at the world's largest festival devoted to comedy. But we have perfectly good explanation-- there's a whole lot more to the world's largest festival devoted to comedy than actual live performance-- we think our updates bear that out.

Also, we look at the Delta as our version of the al Rashid-- we hunker down, safely inside the "Green Zone," and await the word from the returning warriors, contractors and others. We piece together the reports from the info gleaned from the various artists, fans, agents and friends. Let's face it-- "buzz" is, by its very nature, second-hand. (If it's first-hand, it's hype!)

Besides, we're comics-- we find it difficult to sit down, cheek-to-jowl, with other audience members, and sit through a comedy show. It goes against our nature.


Greer Barnes (Masters), Roy Wood, Jr. (New Faces), at the Delta

There was no Eve's Tavern this year. (Or, All About Eve's Tavern, as we were referring to it earlier in the week... "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night!") The all-gal show was eliminated from the program. What was new? Asian Invasion, perhaps? (It happened before we even got there.) Maybe some of the slots were taken up by the Flying Solo series of shows, a bunch of shows put on by one person, a man in most cases but for Margaret Cho. Tim Minchin, Stewart Lee, Demetri Martin, Phil Nichol and Billy the Mime were the men. Patrick Combs starred in "Man 1, Bank 0" John Pinette
was a special event and Victor Isaac and Dean Cameron starred in what the organizers billed as a two-man, one-man show called "The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam."


On the left, Christian Finnegan (Multiple shows, MySpace.com correspondent), Eddie Pence (Just For Pitching), meeting for the first time

The Best of the Uptown Comics featured Greer Barnes, Gina Yashere, Mark Curry, Patrice O'Neal, Maronzio Vance, Willie Barcena, Roz, Katt Williams and was hosted by Don DC Curry.


Left to right: Jon Reep (Gala with John Cleese!), Male Half, at the Delta

We don't normally dish gossip, but we learned from good sources that, of the festival hosts that we heard about, Jason Alexander was "difficult," or "exacting," to put a good face on it, and that John Cleese was a real peach.


Left to right: Male Half of the Staff, Female Half of the Staff, at the Delta. (Photo credit: Francine Starr)

We were frequently asked the following: "What did you mean by your Tuesday, July 18, Last Comic Standing posting when you said you were 'speechless?' " (So disconcerting was our silence, to our readers and to the media, the Boston Herald's Sean L. McCarthy even saw fit to mention it in his wrapup of Episode #408 of the NBC reality show!) Well, we were speechless for many reasons, but the reason we cited most often and most diplomatically, was that the contestants seemed to exercise exceedingly poor judgement when it came to their choice of material. When one considers that they had not really had to burn through much material up to that point, their choice of such scatological material was... curious. Their showcase sets, on primetime network television, in front of millions of viewers, more resembled a set that might have been more appropriate for a second show Friday or a Tuesday night bar gig. To see people waste this golden opportunity left us unable to comment. If you don't have the material, buy the material.


Left to right: Rocky Laporte (Wise Guys), Maronzio Vance (New Faces), on the steps at the Delta

The difference between the 2006 JFL and the 1999 JFL (our first Fest) is that, back then, the conventional wisdom was that a comic couldn't make money merely by being a comic. "There's no money in live performance," was the pessimistic mantra.

Then followed a year or two or three of hand-wringing due to the displacement of the sitcom by reality programming-- a time when agents and managers seemed at a loss as to how to efficiently use the power and talent of their standup clients. Now, we are seemingly at a point where standup comics can make a living-- a good living-- doing what they do best, what they seem built for, destined for-- live standup comedy.

Wille Mercer (now of Thruline Entertainment), quoted in the Hollywood Reporter:

More comedians than ever before are making a great living performing in theaters and arenas, so whereas that was once solely a means to an end, it's an end in itself now... You might find a guy doing a sitcom to help his notoriety on the live circuit.

Left to right: The Male Half, JFL Mascot Bonhomme Verte and FOS Jenny McKenna, at the Theatre St. Denis (Photo credit: Boris, The Incredible)

It was the eleventh State of the Industry address starring Andy Kindler. (Hard to believe we've only missed the first three!) It remains the "must attend" event of the festival. Maria Bamford kicked off the proceedings in front of a packed (of course!) ballroom, at twelve minutes past the hour.

"I don't think you realize just how much has to wrong for me to be up here every year."

Comedy classes, Red Skelton, Last Comic Standing, Bob Reade, Ross Mark, Jay Leno, Carlos Mencia, Big Brother, Dennis Miller, Aaron Spelling, Peter Bart, Peter Guber, Michael Eisner, Jill Carroll, acting workshops, Big Love, Blue Collar Comedy, improvisation, Tourgasm, Hitler, Dane Cook, Billy Bush, broadband, Deal Or No Deal, Howie Mandel, America's Got Talent, Regis Philbin, Anthony Clark, Bravo, Kathy Griffin, OK! Magazine, Mariah Carey, Entourage, Jeremy Piven, Comedy Central, Lisa Lampinelli, Jenna Elfman, Heather Graham, MySpace.com, Jason Stuart, Shalom In The Home, David Brenner, Jamie Masada were just some of the people, shows, entities, etc. that had "gone wrong"" in the 360 or so days since Kindler's last S.O.T.I.A.

Kindler was particularly hard on standup comics this year. And not just on his usual targets-- monster comics Robin Williams, Whoopie Goldberg and the like-- but Kathy Griffin ("The only comic I know who went to Iraq as a career move!"), David Brenner ("...doing material ripped from last decade's headlines") and Dane Cook ("He's worse than Hitler, because at least Hitler had a point of view.")

Kindler is wildly funny. He is at his best when he is self-deprecating ("I was in Europe for my Mixed Reaction Tour."). But we question his decision to devote nearly 25 per cent of yesterday's presentation to slamming Dane Cook. The impression was riotous, dead-on, devastating. But round about minute 12 or 13 of the 18-minute Cook roasting, the squirm factor kicked in. Perhaps there was a misjudgement on Kindler's part-- an overestimation of the amount of anti-Cook sentiment in the room. As far as this publication is concerned, we're on record as admiring Cook's generosity-- as evidenced by the fact that he brought three other comics on board in his first major project for HBO. Similar in a way to Kindler's generosity when he asks another comic to open the S.O.T.I.A. every year. The impression segment came dangerously close to crossing that microscopic line between cantankerous and bitter. We love the cranky, concise Kindler, not the broad, bitter one.

On the sad spectacle of British TV lionizing a minority woman for being in the running to win the Brit version of Big Brother:

"I believe it was Rosa Parks who was the winner of the reality show "Who Wants To Sit In The Front Of The Bus."

On HBO's dull trainwreck Big Love:

"Who would've thought that a television show where a guy gets to sleep with three woman would be so boring?"

On the laziness of TV suits and Shalom In The Home:

"Is that all we hafta do? Just come up with a title for a TV show that rhymes? How about Plumber For The Summer? I got one: Teach At The Beach! Maybe Lawyer In The Foyer!"

His bit on the Hitler's bunker series being pitched to American movie executives was Kindler at his best, a priceless indictment of the moral relativism that permeates Hollywood.


From left: Brian McKim, Drew Carey (Photo credit: Dan Rosenberg)

Drew Carey was hanging out at the Delta with a contingent that also included his Whose Line compadre Colin Mochrie. (Note the casual way in which we truncate the name of the television show, cooking it down to the bare essentials! Suitspeak, it's not just for TV executives any more!)


Left to right: Paul Provenza (Aristocrats) and Dean Cameron, Victor Isaac(Nigerian Spam Scam Scam)

The big buzz show last night was The Masters at Kola Note which featured Joe Starr, Greer Barnes, Nick Griffin, Todd Barry, Laurie Kilmartin, Vinnie Brand and Katt Williams. The show was hosted by Mark Curry. Folks were talking about the strong performance of all of the comics on board, but were particularly enthusiastic about the show turned in by Brand. And, oddly, there enthusiasm was tinged with... surprise. As if Brand, who is also a comedy club owner, couldn't possibly be expert or competent at both. At least that's our theory. We often experience a similar phenomenon-- upon learning that we are both comedians and internet magazine editors/writers, folks sometimes opine that we are somehow not talented enough or fortunate enough to be able to do both with any degree of excellence. It's a curious thing. "If you were any good as comics, you wouldn't need a magazine," is how it is expressed. Or, conversely, "You're comedians-- what gives you the idea that anyone would want to hear your opinion or read your prose?" It seems that, only after someone is well-known, is he/she afforded the luxury of being viewed as versatile.


Left to right: Vinnie Brand (Masters), Mark Curry (Masters, host), Marshall Chiles (Funny Farm, Atlanta)

Whilst chilling in the Delta at ground level, we saw John Cleese glide by, back from his Q & A at the Theatre Maisonneuve. He was dignified, distinguished, cool. (We do admit, however, to being mildly disappointed that he didn't break into a Minister of Funny Walks walk midway through the lobby. We were too intimidated to talk to him, we fully admit it. If we did muster up the nerve, though, we would ask him if he ever tires of the Python fans-- does he ever "go Shatner" on them, like in that classic SNL skit where "Capt. Kirk" implores the Trekkies to "get a life?")


Left to right: Mike Birbiglia, Joe Birbiglia (brother)

There were two Galas Friday night, both hosted by Jason Alexander, that guy from that sitcom... the one set in New York... It'll eventually come to us. Anyway, Alexander brought out Butch Bradley, Fred MacAulay, Phil Nichols, Craig Shoemaker, Maria Bamford, John Caparulo, Patrice O'Neal and Angelo Tsarouchas. In the second Gala, he introduced Pete Zedlacher, Kristeen von Hagen, Mike Britt, Willie Barcena, Laughlin Patterson, Dov Davidoff and Tim Minchin.

Speaking of Patrice O'Neal, the Female Half of the Staff spoke to the big man and jogged his memory regarding the recent O & A debacle that Skene experienced while opening for O'Neal. "Oh... right! Helium," O'Neal said, then, in a low, sweet, concerned tone, "Are you okay?" All is well.


Left to right: Demetri Martin, Wayne Federman at the Just for Laughs Museum Burlesque At Midnight party

Burlesque at Midnight was the name of the party being held at Just For Laughs Museum on St. Laurent. Thumping music... strobing, seizure-inducing lights, tidbits impaled on fancy toothpicks squired around by solicitous servers... and plenty of free liquor. The motif of this one was somewhat amorphous-- not quite sure if burlesque was the correct label, but the elevator operators on this occasion were gorgeous (says the Female Half), smokin' hot (says the Male Half) gals in tiny dresses, with cleavage to spare. (This is a far sight better than the theme a few years back that called for hunky, shirtless, male-model types to be pushing the buttons on the lift. Rather... disconcerting, to say the least.)

Many arrived late to the party-- an inevitable result of the fact that Dating It was simultaneously going on at Kola Note (with Colette Hawley, Pete Lee, Sugar Sammy, Lizzie Cooperman, Hyla Matthews, Lauglin Patterson and KT Tatara) and the Alternative Comedy Showl was also going on (in the same building, just downstairs with Andy Kindler, Stewart Lee, Howard Kremer, Nick Kroll, Reggie Watts, Maria Bamford, David O'Doherty, Matt Boylan and Morgan Murphy).

Well-attended was the party. So much so that the Delta was quiet and host to not more than about two dozen people (at least when we swung through at 3 or so). The party was the place to go. And did we mention that one of the more bizarre features of the Burlesque soiree was a woman circulating throughout the throng offering party-goers a tray of thongs. Hmmm... butlered thong panties for the taking! The Female Half declares that, as proof that she has been married for a long, long time, she initially thought that the thongs were... cloth napkins!! An elegant touch? No... underwear... for free! FOS Dan Rosenberg wore his free panties on his head-- "A Thomulke" is how he described it-- a tongue-twisting combo of thong and yarmulke. A visual gag not soon forgotten. We noticed that there was nothing written on them-- No "Hahaha.com," No "Just For Laughs," not even something wacky like "Entree, sil vous plait"-- which kinda makes it...sorta... creepy. Kathe Nelson of Comedy Boulevard summed it up nicely: "It's like I'm just holding someone else's underwear!" Indeed!

We just got an email from Vancouver journo Guy MacPherson answering our plea for I.D. in a photo we ran (see posting from yesterday):

Hey, Brian & Traci,

The gentleman to the right of Dwight Slade is Vancouver comic Todd Allen, who took part in the Homegrown Competition.

There you go.

Guy

Thanks, Guy!

Gotta hustle on over to the Industry vs. Artists Basketball game. Like Mr. Provenza, we'll do anything for a free hat and a T-shirt... only we kinda mean it.

Left to right: Brian McKim (Old Face), Jordan Carlos (New Faces), Adam Devine (New Faces), at the Hollywood Reporter party

No dusty turds at the Hollywood Reporter party. No sweaty cheese, either. Just high heat, high humidity and lots of free booze. (And not very much of a mob to fight through to get to it!) There was a healthy crowd, smaller than in past years, but enough for a party! Usually, somebody stops this HR party in its tracks, grabs a mike and thanks the assembled for attending. No such interruption occurred this year, though. There wasn't much of an HR presence at all. Just a lot of media types, industry people and others gearing up for the evening and gulping down a Labatts or three while deciding which show to attend.

And a handful of New Facers loosening up for the two Shaun Majumder-hosted shows at Kola Note. One of them, Omaha native Adam Devine, told SHECKYmagazine that The Female Half of the Staff and the Male Half of the Staff were the headliners on bill the very first time he mounted the stage at the ill-fated Jesters on that city's west side. (That makes two people at this fest who have that distinction-- The SHECKYmagazine staff witnessed the maiden comedy voyage of Ottawa's Jon Dore. It makes us sooo proud! What are the odds? Hmmm... don't answer that. Considering that we're both members of The 50-State Club and that we've been professional comics for a combined 40+ years... pretty good, we guess!)

This year's New Facers speak woefully (and hilariously) about the tuneup show they all performed on at the Comedy Nest earlier in the week-- the crowd was made up largely of a group sale/charity event crowd from a Lebanese church group! But at least they're putting up the NFers in much nicer accomodations-- just across the street from the Delta, too, at a place called l'Appartement. (That's right, we're taking credit... In one of our 2004 updates, we whined about the youth hostel in Chinatown that JFL used for the young 'uns that year. The one we cleverly referred to as "Gitmo du nord." Well, whaddya know, now they're billeted in a splendid suite just across Rue Sherbrooke!)


Two Petes (Pete Dominick and Pete Lee, New Faces and New Faces) at the Hollywood Reporter party

It's always something with the New Faces. This year, we were told, during the tuneup show at the Nest, the New Faces comics weren't allowed to watch the show. It is in a comic's blood (most comics anyway) that he/she is almost always interested in seeing the room in action-- especially for a high-pressure or important gig like a contest or an audition... or a festival tuneup show like this one. But such would not be allowed on this night.

Indeed, their actions were tightly controlled througout the evening. They weren't even allowed to leave the green room. (Exceptions? If you needed to smoke. Nice.) What is it with the New Faces? We suggest that, next year, the New Facers be made to wear black hoods with the eyes cut out (like the executioner wears!) in the days leading up to their big night, and then, just as the comic is introduced-- whoosh! Off comes the hood! Dramatic, no?


Left to right: Hannibal Buress (New Faces), Greg Walter (3 Arts), Steve Trevino (New Faces)

We feel a kinship with the New Facers this year. At least a half-dozen have admitted to being avid, regular readers of the magazine and some have told us that they prepped for their inaugural trip to the Festival Just For Laughs by reading (and re-reading) our archived Festival Updates from our seven previous trips to Montreal. (We extrapolated these facts to mean that we're influencing an entire generation of new comics... oh, the comedy humanity!)


On the left, Festival Buddy Dan Rosenberg (Author, "The Book On Hosting-- How Not To Suck As An Emcee"), on the right, Taylor Williamson (New Faces)

The Montreal Gazette reviewed the two New Faces shows last night (Anne Sutherland is the byline) and rated the comics on a scale of one to ten. Sutherland gave both Roy Wood, Jr. and Joe Devito a 9.5. (Only Wood, however, made it into the sub-head, "Roy Wood, Jr. gives tremendous show"'; Perhaps Mr. Devito should learn to be a little bit nicer to the members of the fourth estate-- he spied our ancient digital camera late last night at the Delta and said, "What is that?! A Viewmaster?!" Witty. Very witty. Just kidding, Joe. Just kidding. This does afford us a deluxe opportunity to make a public appeal for a new, sleek digital camera like all the kids have today. Ours was a gift from Polaroid in late 1999-- ancient history in digital tech terms-- we got it in exchange for an ad on the front page of the mag and the Polaroid logo on our Montreal updates. It is rather clunky... and every once in a while it has a stroke.)


On the left, Todd Barry (Masters), on the right, Morgan Murphy (New Faces)

In the same Gazette article, Morgan Murphy is rated a 5. ("Deadpan to the point of catatonic," was the quote.) Yet, in the July 17-23 (the one that's heavy on the comedy), Murphy is named "One of the Ten Comics to Watch." and described by Jimmy Kimmel as "One of the funniest and most unique comics I know." We only point this out to illustrate how subjective this comedy beast is. (And it also nicely illustrates why SHECKYmagazine stays out of the comedy reviewing game. There's just no point to it, really.)



Dwight Slade is on the left. Todd Allen (Homegrown Comedy Competition) is on the right.

Speaking of T-shirts-- We ventured north armed with a few dozen lovingly hand screened SHECKYmagazine T's, for the purpose of creating a T-shirt-clad army of SHECKYmagazine fanatics... a cyber-cult of Hanes-clad standup comics and industry people. We've been throwing them around freely, and we laid one on Jon Dore. Dore spotted us later on (after he had returned to the Delta from his Go West Show at Bourbon St., on the bill with Kyle Dunnigan, Laurie Kilmartin, Willie Barcena, Andy Parsons and Joe Starr) and he told us that, if we could spare it, he'd like another shirt. We asked him what happened to the other one and he explained thusly (and we paraphrase slightly):

I had it slung over my shoulder and I was at Bourbon Street, and I went to the bathroom, and I bent down to flush the toilet and I had forgotten that the shirt was on my shoulder and dontcha know it fell into the toilet and there a classic log in there, so there was no way I was going to fish it out of there, so there's a shit-stained SHECKYmagazine T-shirt in the toilet in the men's room at Bourbon St.

We howled, of course. And promptly handed over a second T. And we're disturbed by the omission of certain details, but we're not investigating further. (We're still taken by the term "classic log." Whose log? Don't know... don't care.)



Last night at the Delta, from left to right: Joe Devito, The Female Half Of The Staff (Traci Skene), Kathe Nelson, Talent Director, Comedy Boulevard.

The party continued at the Delta, of course. Not as insanely congested as in years past, as there may be some folks siphoned off by the "fun-filled discotheque" party space that has been created over at the JFL Museum on St. Laurent. The Female Half of the Staff decided earlier in the day that she would not, no matter what, have her first beer of the evening until 11 PM. However, she neglected to wind her watch (No modern, newfangled, electronic watches for her!) and, as such, she was 25 minutes late in discovering that her arbitrary start time had already passed! Deprived of alcohol for a precious 25 minutes! The moral of the story: If you're drinking on a schedule, wear a backup timepiece! Redundancy is key!

We're off to the State of the Industry Address! 2 PM Friday, at the Delta. Stay tuned!

We took in Just For Pitching Thursday at noon in the Delta. A less than capacity crowd watched six sitcoms and a drama pitched. Pitching were Ronnie Khalil (The Garden), Kira Soltanovich & Rachel Reiss (The Cult), Nat Coombs (Dear Journal), Ian Harrison (Bangalore Whore), Dwight Slade (thirtynine), James Mullinger (Success) and Eddie Pence (A Comic Life). Catching were William Burdett-Coutts, Amy Hartwick, Jeremy Whitham, Brent Haynes, Anton Leo and
Ron West.

"Originally, it was scripted... but I thought you liked that improvised crap."

The above is a quote from Eddie Pence. He said it toward the end of the grilling he endured after his A Comic Life pitch. Grilling... did we say grilling? It was more like a mushy, Orwellian, cognitive therapy session in which the patient is being cured of the notion that he or she can create a marketable sitcom (instead of being cured of anxiety or depression). And there are six therapists. All of whom are fearful of contradicting each other... but, curiously, not at all afraid of contradicting themselves... sometimes in the course of one sentence.

There were seven pitches, and, as one of our party whispered, halfway through the proceedings, "Where is this year's Beat The Chimp?" (See last year's wrapup of Just For Pitching-- We didn't go on about BTC in any detail, but Franz Harary's simian-based game show idea was offbeat and his presentation was entertaining. Nobody was able to engage the audience in such a manner this year.)

The panel-- British, Canadian and American TV execs-- were in rare form when it came to tortuous rhetoric, but somewhat sluggish. Brent Haynes of Canada's Comedy Network, though gloomy, still got off a zinger or two. But the panel was somewhat reserved, not very enthusiastic. Perhaps even they are fed up with their own horseshit.

We actually heard one of them describe a former TV exec as a "champion of original voices." We'll let that sink in.

It took them only 35 minutes for someone to use the word "interstitial." We counted two "Zeitgeists" and a "multiplatform." We're refining a pitch of our own. We said in years past that Just For Pitching would, in itself, make a great show. Now, we are considering adding the element of audience interactivity by turning it into a drinking game, encouraging the viewers to take a shot of distilled spirits every time an exec uses something on the approved list of Suitspeak Terms or Phrases. (Other terms or phrases: "high-concept," "character-driven," "script-dependent" any adjective combined with the word "voice." You get the idea.)

After a while, we began to feel bad for the pitchers. They were all the butt of a protracted, yearlong practical joke!

Last year, the panelists declared the sitcom to be dead, dead, dead. ("The days of taking a fat guy, giving him a hot wife and building a successful sitcom around it are gone," said one exec in 2005. Note to exec: The fat guy with the hot wife just got an Emmy nomination!)

Last year, everything was high-concept, improvised and reality-based. (You know, like Curb or Reno or Arrested, they all said, paring down the show titles to one word.)

So... The pitchers gave them high-concept, the pitchers took great pains to emphasize that there would be "unscripted and/or improvised components" to their shows and that their would be at least "be some segments that would be reality-based."

So... The execs batted them all down.

In case you hadn't heard, pitch people, we execs are all on the same page now and we're "re-inventing the sitom" and "changing the face of television comedy!" From here on out, we want characters that people care and good writing. "The sitcom built around a clever idea is a misnomer," they said. "At the end of the day, it comes down to a script. I would have to see a script." We want Cheers! We want Friends! Get outta here with that improvised shit.

What a burn job!

We're considering a pitch for next year entitled What The F*** Do You Want?!

"Before we begin our presentation, we'd like to ask the panelists a question: What the F*** do you want?!? Because, oh, man, we can give it to you!"

Now, if you'll excuse us, we gotta go sneak into The Hollywood Reporter party and bolt down some sweaty cheese and a couple free drinks before anyone realizes that it was we who called the folks at The Hollywood Reporter "dusty turds." (See our review of Tourgasm from last month.)

More updates to come. We're busting them up into smaller components and posting them when we can!

Thanks for reading!

Yeah, it's Thursday, but the upload is all about Wednesday.



We got in at about 4:15 or so. Not enough time to check in, hump the equipment up, obtain our press laminates and make it on over to the inaugural Just For Laughs BBQ Bash. (Where the heck is the Club Charlot, anyway? After a cursory glance at the map, we determined that it was too far away.)

In the real world it might be hump day, but Wednesday in late-July in Montreal at the Festival JFL is the day when the pace quickens and the volume of the late-night chatter in the Delta bar is boosted a notch or two. A rather large chunk of this weekend's contingent arrives throughout Wednesday afternoon and evening.

The Delta has been refurbished somewhat. The scent of adhesive and fresh paint greets us we enter the lobby. There is new furniture in the schmooze corral that doubles as a bar. We struggle mightily to connect the facelift that the Festival HQ has undergone with the rebirth that standup comedy is undergoing. Perhaps we will just leave it at that. (We will have more to say about the rebirth of comedy in subsequent updates. Stay tuned!)

What we will say now, however, is that the WWW is a presence once more-- at this Festival in particular and in the business in general. You'll recall that we noted the preponderance of dot com entities in one of our Fest updates from six years ago to the day:

The back page of the HRSCI (Hollywood Reporter) was purchased by Laugh.com. Half of the lobby is dominated by comedyworld.com's "cybercast" corral and banners hang overhead touting thefunniest.com and pop.com. The folks at humorvision.com (a division of fastband.com) purchased a quarter-pager and playboy.com has dispatched a representative or two. And, of course, SHECKY! (sheckymagazine.com) is present in the form of editors Brian McKim and Traci Skene. There is an explosion of dot-commers here at the festival this year. Much moreso than last year. And there are many more business cards with email addresses.

And one of the entities that is branding the festival at every turn is MySpace.com, recently purchased by Rupert Murdoch and spending cash like a drunken Australian sailor. The social networking site launched earlier this year and they're determined to make their presence known.

The internet is good for comics. Bad for suits-- TV suits, movie suits, music suits. They're circling the new technology like a ten-year-old boy circles little Suzy-- oddly fascinated, yet still convinced that Suzy is, when all is said and done, "yucky." The trades are all atwitter over the new technology and how it's shaping the business. Not all the talk is good.

Some contend that the internet, through its convenience, its reach and its versatility will hurt festivals. From the Hollywood Reporter:

Instead, a growing number of comics find that they can make a decent living after appearing on NBS's Last Comic Standing and/or by promoting themselves through blogs and websites such as myspace.com and youtube.com

"Deals are being made off of youtube now," Paramount TV Senior VP Comedy Development Brian Banks says. "These days, you can't close off anyone simply because they don't show up at a festival or play the Improv."

The internet has become the ultimate launching pad for the harried agent who doesn't even have to leave his or her seat to take in a quick routine.

Stay tuned for a parade of quotes from a gaggle of TV and other entertainment execs that completely contradicts the above statement. (How about this: "Of course, the internet is utterly bloodless and cold. There's no connection with the performer. We need to see the act, feel the applause, appreciate connection between audience and performer," says Harry Dumshitz Tantamount TV VP Comedy Talent Development Wetware Division.)

There was a new feature: The Comedy Showdown ("American Idol meets Last Comic Standing meets 8 Mile" reads the official description) sounds like a clusterfuck, but, from all accounts, it worked. We suspect that the competition format ("eight comics, three rounds, one chance to win") worked mainly because they chose the judges wisely-- Andy Kindler, Dom Irrera and Jimmy Carr. And the whole thing was ably hosted by Torontonian Steve Patterson. The winner? Andy Parsons.

The Homegrown Comic Competition at the Cabaret Juste Pour Rire was won by Mark Forward, who was instantly forwarded over to the Comedy Night in Canada at the Nest. So quick was the transition that Forward didn't have a chance to savor his victory. ("They didn't even get a chance to have a beer!" was how past HCC winner David Pryde described the rush job.) Forward beat out Todd Allen, Greg Cochrane, Steve Ditata, Steven Crowder, Andrew Iwanyk, Jeff McEnery, Rodney Ramsey and Jeffrey Yu.



Above is The Staff of SHECKYmagazine.com being interviewed by Ernie Butler. This was one of two radio interviews we did in the Delta lobby. The other was for XMRadio's Canadian-flavored Laugh Attack (Channel 153). Quizzing us on behalf of XM was Ben Miner, Canadian comic. Miner is one of the many people clad in XMRadio gear-- mikes in hand, professional recorders at the ready-- who are swarming this festival and creating quite a presence for the recently-launched channel. SHECKYmagazine readers may recall that Miner was one of the many folks who appealed to the Canadian radio commission back in December of 2004 when that body was deciding just how to bring satellite radio to Canadians. We linked to a NYT piece on the hearings:

Mr. Miner is passionate enough about the technology that he appeared in November at the radio commission's hearings, decked out in his only suit - a three-piece pinstripe - and a gold tie, gold shirt, and gold pocket square, to speak in favor of allowing satellite radio in Canada.

Miner is one of many comics in Montreal this week who are up here in a capacity other than standup. When we first came up here in 1999, it felt rather odd that, though we were standup comics, we weren't up here to do standup comedy. We were here to report on the goings on.

Fast forward seven years later and there seems to be a lot of that happening-- Comics in and around the Festival not doing standup but engaged in some other creative endeavor. In the space of just a few hours last night, we ran into Jeff Rothpan and Matt Hurwitz, who were writing skits, wraparounds and other material for the Gala shows. And Scott Faulconbridge, who is doing on-camera interviews (for one of the TV nets up here), buttonholing the performers as they exit the stage at the Gala shows. Emery Emery, up here in the capacity of videographer, working on a documentary centering on standup. Brad Reeder, up here in the capacity of a club owner (Charlie Goodnights, Raleigh).

Then there's this from the Hollywood Reporter: "The networks and studios all are thinking outside the standup comedy box for inspiration," Thruline Entertainment manager Willie Mercer said. "The way the whole game has changed, they have to. You'll go to a Montreal and surf around the web, and what you'll be looking to do is sign and build a roster of young comedic writers, actors and directors. You're not just looking for guys who can tell a joke, but someone who might write a great film." Hmmm...



From left to right, that's Jeff Rothpan, Matt Hurwitz and Mike Marino (Jersey's Bad Boy of Comedy). Marino is on the Wise Guys shows along with Mike Birbiglia, Frank Spadone, Cris Nannarone and Rocky Laporte.



It's a photograph 19 years in the making! Patty Rosborough and Joe Starr smile for the camera. Starr has been trying to have his photo snapped with Rosborough for nineteen years-- we're unclear on the details of the story. (So what does he do? He squeezes the life out of her and turns the pic into a digital grotesquerie! Had not Ms. Rosborough (who is done for the week after having performed on the Nasty Shows and the Relationship Shows.) been leaving town this A.M., we would have taken a proper picture later on today.



We call this picture "Two Craigs." On the left is Craig Ferguson, who hosted Wednesday night's gala. On the right is Craig Shoemaker, who hosted the Relationship Shows. (Not sure who the bloke is in the center.)



"I think my eyes were shut," is what David Pryde (center) said, just after the flash from the above photo died down. He was right. Very right. Pryde, who normally goes about his life as a Montreal comic with his eyes fairly wide open, is flanked by longtime SHECKYmagazine contributor Adam Gropman (left) and erstwhile (and longtime) Atlanta Punchline bartender Joe Satterfield. Gropman is in Montreal representing his short film, "Insight Into The Enemy," which is part of this year's Comedia Twisted Shorts program. Satterfield made the trek north to represent his recently formed entertainment management company, TSTalent.

We planted our promotional material on the Promotional Material Buffet Table in the Delta Lobby. It hasn't gotten chaotic yet. But it will. In addition to planting our self-congratulatory postcards, we also dropped a pile of about two dozen vintage Parkhurst hockey trading cards. They were gone in minutes. (We suspect that someone, thinking that they were actually valuable, swiped them all in one shot! Too bad, sucker! They're reproductions, people-- not worth more than about 3 cents Canadian!)

We held onto Pit Martin ("The softspoken 23-year old Quebec native has a degree in French and history from Windsor College as well as a great future in goal-getting.") Adam Gropman, who spotted the stack of cards before they were swiped, thought that they were clever faux hockey cards that depicted Canadian comics! Not a bad idea, though!

A nice touch: At the rear of the Delta, around the corner from where the press and logistics rooms are situated, the interview space in the Vivaldi Room has been renamed the Allan Johnson Press Room, in memory of the Chicago Trib writer who passed away suddenly and tragically last winter. "Johnson was a respected journalist and dear friend of Just For Laughs."

For the first time, we are speechless.

Non-news to us. According to Reuters, Yahoo! and a host of other sources, "MySpace on Tuesday officially launched a new online community designed for comedians to reach fans." We suppose the crucial word is official.

MySpace said more than 7,500 comedians currently use its new community to post tour dates, share audio/video clips and interact with fans.

Including us.

For branding, Tom and Rupert quite logically chose the Improv chain. Now they'll all set out to make MySpace Comedy appear sanctioned, certified, hip, authoritative and the place to be for comics and comedy fans. They gotta watch the language, though:

The new site also will be used to promote events, aggregate funny viral videos from throughout the site and offer comedy specific forums where members can trade jokes and talk about artists.

Emphasis ours. Trade jokes? We don't think so. Perhaps they mean the fans can trade jokes. We hope so.

There's a Toronto Sun article on third-year Toronto Argonauts (CFL) running back John Avery ("Avery's laughing it off"), who is looking for something to do now that his team has hired Ricky Williams (suspended from the NFL for smoking too much dope). Apparently, Avery has been telling anyone who will listen that he's the funniest person in the entire CFL, and that he's so funny someone should build a sitcom around him. An important step toward that goal is an appearance on a new Canadian TV show.

With his playing time cut to nothing after the arrival of Ricky Williams, Avery has had a bit more time to work on his comedy, giving him an entertaining distraction. He had his first major standup gig last night at Club V downtown and is the star of one of 13 episodes of Punched Up, which will debut on the Comedy Network in the fall.

"It (comedy) has been therapeutic as far as me giving me something to do," said Avery, who just recently broke his media silence. "When you're not involved, you're not playing, it's easy to go crazy. I thank God for giving me some other abilities to kind of vent through, so that's what I do."

The show (linked above) is "a 13-episode mockumentary series satirizing makeover programs and reality TV. The series features a crack team of comedy writers who take the average Joe or Jane and make their (sic) lives better, or at least funnier." Of course, Avery is far from your average Joe. And, we suspect that none of the folks they seek for punching up in their casting call (open until July 28) will be anywhere near average, either. (In fact, the Sun article says that the next subject after they're done with Avery will "feature an anchorwoman from the Naked News." You get the idea.)

The producers "want to turn him from a brash American into a humble Canadian. That, they think, will help Avery land a deal for the sitcom he has produced about his life, tentatively titled Avery-day Life." Because, you know, brashness never got anyone anywhere in the television business.

While they're there on the field, they should screen-test Ricky Williams... I smell big potential as the ganja-smoking sidekick! Williams confessed to the media that he was pathologically shy, suffering from a fear of people, but that he was treating it with weed and the more socially acceptable seratonin re-uptake inhibitors that all the kids are taking these days.

Normally the JFL folks are tight-lipped about who will be included among their New Faces and their Masters series. Not so this year.

This year's Masters will feature Greer Barnes, Todd Barry, Vinnie Brand, Nick Griffin, Laurie Kilmartin, Joe Starr and Katt Williams.

The New Faces for this year are Hannibal Buress, Lee Camp, Jordan Carlos, Lizzy Cooperman, Adam Devine, Joe Devito, Pete Dominick, Russell Howard, Pete Lee, Hyle Matthews, Morgan Murphy, Andrew Norelli, Jeff Short, Jacob Sirof, KT Katara, Steve Trevino, Maronzio Vance, Brett Walkow, Reggie Watts, Taylor Williamson, Roy Wood Jr. and Fraser Young

Info is from the JFL Myspace.

From UPI comes a report that the city fathers in Austin, TX, are trying to shut down a male strip club for violating certain rules governing nudity.

The club's owner, Kevin Cox, told the Austin American-Statesman the dancers do not go beyond the topless stage, with boxers or briefs covering their genital areas. He describes the dance routines as fantasies in which the strippers do standup comedy or dress up as firefighters or police officers.

The firefighters we understand... and we understand the police officer thing. But standup comics? Apparently funny is the new sexy.

Yes, you read that right: The club owner's name is "Cox." You can all make your own jokes at home.

The following came in an email, from more than one source. It details the efforts of a venue (whose name/location we withheld) which is seeking to find two comedians for a gig. Said venue has enlisted the aid of a comedian in their quest. In the email, the aforementioned comedian spells out the terms of the gig. Nothing unusual there.

Read on:

Need a headliner (bring your own opener) for a show in (location withheld) on (date withheld).

Pay is ($XXX, actual figure withheld) for the headliner and ($XXX, actual figure withheld) for the opener + hotel for both of you.

Here's the deal-- you bring your own opener, but they have to be PG CLEAN. NO EXCEPTIONS!!! And they obviously have to be funny. If you bring someone with you that sucks, you won't get paid. It's that simple. The headliner can roll into an R rated show, but the opener has to be PG clean.

Emphasis ours, of course.

This bites for many reasons.

One of the parties involved (we assume it's the venue) has attached rather subjective criteria to the deal-- No funny, no money. This is reprehensible. We're professionals. You pay us, we give it our best, professional shot. We then get paid. It really can't be any other way.

We're reminded of Donald Trump's recent tantrum on an episode of The Apprentice-- His proteges hired a professional comic for an event, which didn't go well (and it's immaterial as to whether it was or was not the fault of the comic). Trump actually suggested that the comic shouldn't have been paid!

For the venue to put this outrageous stricture on payment demonstrates their total disconnect from reality. And we can't help but wonder why the comic agreed to assist them in their quest. For him to agree to such an offensive conditional proposition is a betrayal of his fellow comedians.

He could have/should have said:

No thanks.

Or...

I will gladly help. But payment must be guaranteed and you should trust that whomever is booked will do an honest job.

If that's too much for the venue to handle, they should look into renting a karaoke machine.

We've got no problem with the PG/clean restrictions. They're often part of the business. We are appalled at payment being contingent upon such subjective and ambiguous criteria. And it's doubly appalling that the venue would tie the payment of the headliner's act to the satsifactory performance of the opener's act. This opens the door for all manner of abusive and capricious behavior on the part of the venue.

The above is the appropriate headline supplied by FOS Joe Starr for this post which links to the LA Times obituary of Red Buttons. He was 87 years old (Buttons, not Starr). And, as Starr wrote to us minutes ago, this death, coming so close on the heals of the death of Jan Murray, makes this "a sad week for those of us with a sense of history."

We're heading up to Boston for their festival this year. The last time we were in that festival was in 2003, if we're not mistaken. This year, we've got film in the Movie portion of the fest (to be shown Sunday night at Improv Asylum) and The Male Half of the Staff will be slugging it out in their competition, in Bracket 5 on Tuesday evening, September 12. (Click it and see who else is in the running.)

Gabriel Iglesias gets caught with a Blackberry. Yawn. We knew he was kicked off eventually, but we weren't sure of the manufacturer, or the model number. You get the idea.

We commented on this long ago, May 19, to be exact. (Actually, we reported generally on April 30 that Iglesias was gone fron the show.) We wrote in May that Iglesias was bounced for:

Using a communication device of some sort to inform the outside world of the LCS goings on, which is strictly forbidden in the rules and regs of L.C.S.!!

Leaks? The chatter on the internet is that Iglesias got kicked off because of what we reported on this blogazine back in the spring. The theory being that the producers knew someone had to have leaked the info to the press (or the internet!) and that someone (Iglesias) had to pay! We'd love to take credit, but we really can't. But if the MSM and the WWW would like to believe that it was us, well, have at it!

Gabriel Iglesias may have been roasted, but Kristin Key got burned. That editing job they did on her roast performance was cold!

The fake laugh that Iglesias effected was not convincing, since he used it to degrade one of the acts in the heckler competition a coupla weeks ago. So that makes it horrifying.

For winning the roast competition, Chris Porter will be "flown to Las Vegas, where he will perform with the comedy superstar Louie Anderson." (We wonder if he was lucky enough to get on the bill with Louie prior to his diverticulitis surgery... or if he had to share the bill with the surly David Brenner, who has been subbing for Anderson of late.

Kristin Key didn't know what a Blackberry was? Is she kidding? Sure she continues to beat that "I've only been doing comedy for the last 10 months or so" drum, but she's never heard of a Blackberry?! Would she have us believe she's only been on the planet for the last 10 months?

Not a good night for Kristin Key. Not a good night for Rebecca Corry. Gone, both of them! Ty Barnett was the third comic that had to battle it out in front of a live audience tonight. He wins by default. (He probably could have won merely by staring at the audience for three minutes.)

Count Clark was particularly pale tonight. And he steadfastly refused to do any of the sparkling material that his supporters have been promising! What is up with that?

Remaining:

Chris Porter
Ty Barnett
Roz
Michele Balan
Josh Blue

Find out how you can get every comic who has ever done comedy back onto the show by calling up and voting for them and then being part of their live studio audience and voting for your favorite comic who has ever been anywhere near Ross Mark and Bob Reade...

...or, we're confused about the rules.

We can't quite figure out what happens next.

Plus, we got a Myspace bulletin from Doug Benson saying that he and all the other were still eligible for inclusion in the competition. So, we're totally unsure how the whole thing will shake out. Be assured of this: Everyone associated with the show this season will be burned a thousand times worse than Alonzo Bodden ever was in Season III.

From the NBC Last Comic Standing website:

Give an eliminated comic the chance to perform on the live finale!

Vote now on the Producers' Favorite Online Comics, in a "Wild Card" Bonus Round!

The moment is almost here... On July 18, viewer voting begins. And YOU decide who will become the final three house comics!

We haven't been this confused since the final season of Star Search (the old Ed McMahon Star Search, not the one where Naomi Judd insulted Ben Bailey). We're thinking of starting a write-in campaign which will include any comic who was ever featured on Comedy Central's Standup Standup (but only the season hosted by Wali Collins or Sue Kolinski. You gotta keep the list down to a few hundred or so)!

Ladies and gentlemen, your Last Comic Standing producers:



Too cool for school, or what?

From the NBC.com Last Comic Standing blog posting from Producer Dan (the sullen one on the left, not the sullen one on the right):

Let's be clear about something. The online competition doesn't allow discarded comics to get back into the competition to be Last Comic Standing. However, the two finalists will appear in the finale episode, and if they are so much better than the comics that made it to the house I guess we will all have egg on our faces.

WARNING! WARNING! To all comics who might be included in the final episode to "appear": You are being setup! DO NOT agree to appear on the final episode! The two most powerful producers on the show have publicly confessed that they have a stake in making you look less funny than the other comics on the show! Their reputations are at stake and they have said so on the NBC.com website. Back away slowly from this trainwreck and be grateful that you were warned in advance!

Click to this Youtube video from season III of Chappelle's Show. Insiders will love the Barry Katz impression. Outsiders will just love the video for the video. Youtube is packed with tons of Chappelle's Show clips.

Thanks to Patrick from Cringe Humor.

Got the following email from a reader:

Dear SHECKYmagazine:

I'm just starting out in comedy and am pretty much lost with how the business works. I've been doing open mic's, bringers, and whatever else I could find for a little while now and have done fairly well. I definitely don't expect anything to fall into my lap after such a short time doing comedy but I'm having a lot of trouble deciding whether certain endevours are worth it or not. For instance, I did a bringer at (insert name of comedy club). I did real well and the booker called me and told me he liked my stuff, etc. He wants me to do another one, but I have no way to tell whether he really liked my set or is using me to make money off of my friends... or both.

To which we reply:

You have stumbled upon just one of the downsides of the bringer. (There are many.) Our official position on bringer shows has been that they are evil. (We never did a bringer in our lives, but Male Half started doing the open mikes in 1981 and the Female Half in 1985. And in Philly. And we moved to L.A. in 1988. So our perspective is way different from yours.)

The Bringer Show is a "bad habit" that the clubs in some markets have gotten into, possibly born of tough economic times, back when the business wasn't doing as well as it is now. And, quite simply, the clubs are asking the comics to do a portion of their work for them, in this case, advertising and/or promotion.

Our hope is that, just as market forces compelled the clubs to adopt this odious practice, so shall market forces make it unnecessary for them to do so in the future.

We are not optimistic, though. For one thing, one of the forces at work here is the desire of aspiring comedians in a crowded market to acquire stage time. Some, not all, see the bringer as a way to "buy" (or, to be more precise, "barter") their way onto stage. Of course, this method, for the vast majority of comedians, has diminshing returns-- for most, there are only so many people that they can pester before their "victims" cry "enough!"

Instead of expending all that energy and social capital to enrich a major club, we suggest directing it toward producing your own show (either through that same venue or at a venue of your choosing). In this way, you get what you want (stage time), you achieve it via the same methods (pounding the phones, mass emailing, myspace bulletins, leafletting, pestering friends and relatives, etc.) but you get it wholly on your terms. And, if you enlist the partnership of other comedians in a position similar to yours, you can pool your resources and divide the labor.

Amy Alkon, whose Advice Goddess column is syndicated to several dozen alterna-rags throughout America, fields the following question in her latest installment (spotted in this week's Reno News & Review):

I'm an unattractive guy who's overweight and socially awkward. When it comes to talking with women, I just clam up. The only thing I have going for me is a huge penis... Am I crazy to think some women would look past my faults if only they knew what I was packing?

The opening of the second paragraph of her response caught our eye:

Probably half the successful male comedians look like they fell face-first out of the womb onto the ugly stick. These guys turned their shortcomings into a living and, in turn, a way to get girls...

Has anyone noticed an increase in anti-Kevin James chatter in the Mainstream Media? Since the Emmy nominations were announced, there have been snide comments about KJ-- about his acting ability, his physical appearance, the relative quality of the show and the show's writing. And the comments are often in passing, very matter of fact, as if we've known all along that this is understood. Which is doubly perplexing, since it seems at though James and Co. have been laboring in obscurity the past several years. How does one go from being under the MSM's radar (even though one is the center of a solid hit sitcom) to being a pariah, the object of scorn, almost overnight?

The answer is: Get nominated for an Emmy... and be a standup comic, too.

But you must be in a sitcom-- so far, Denis Leary has escaped the MSM's opprobrium... then again, Leary has been catching some flack lately due to the spousal rape depicted in a recent episode of his Rescue Me. (We were amused at the fact that the boom mike appears early on in the scene, just as Leary's character throws his estranged wife to the couch. She should have just asked the sound guy to klong Leary on the head with that big fuzzy microphone, putting an end to the assault. Perhaps the boom "accidentally" appeared, so as to make the scene appear less realistic for the more squeamish viewers.)

Some of the finest websites are the ones that are the simplest. Cats That Look Like Hitler is such a site. Our... face... hurts.

(Thanks to Ace of Spades for the tipoff-- Says AOS: "One would have a much larger website if one attempted to document the millions of cats who think like Hitler.")

Former SHECKYmagazine columnist Rusty Ward sends along the following:

Join comedian Rusty Ward for the recording of his upcoming CD, together with host Susan Prekel and featuring musical guest, the
world-renowned Harry Chapin tribute band The Cats in the Cradle.

LEARNING TO TOUCH YOURSELF
A Spiritual Guide for Emotionally Ugly People
July 11 & 12 @ 9pm
Don't Tell Mama
343 W46th St
bet 8th & 9th Ave
NY NY

$5 cover and 2 drink minimum

FOR RESERVATIONS PLEASE CALL:
212 757 0788

You heard the man! Pack the place and make that CD sound like it was recorded at Madison Square Garden!

Kevin James has been nominated for a Best Actor award, as has Denis Leary. We saw James' friend John Henson (Talk Soup host, 95 to 99), who now works for TV Guide Magazine on MSNBC last night saying, and we are paraphrasing, "I'm his friend, but I don't think he deserves an Emmy nomination." Nice! Henson went on to name some actors who were more deserving... at least we think he did... we stopped listening after that statement.

We have always thought that James is a better than average sitcom actor. His series is underrated and perhaps this will get the show some notice, to go along with the decent ratings and the hundreds of millions of dollars that it's made so far, and the billions it is making/will make over the course of its prime time run and its syndication run.

A glaring omission from the nominations: Hugh Laurie, formerly a comedic actor frequently seen on British TV, Laurie is now the lead actor on Fox's House. But his performance (and the superb writing) are actually hysterical. (Perhaps the "dramedy" nature of the show is what befuddled the Academy. They seem to be so easily befuddled.)

We got a letter from J.J. Leslie, whose bio starts this way:

Currently, the Guinness Book of World Records is considering the claim of J.J. Leslie as the World's Tallest Standup Comedian. The 7-foot tall, 410-pound comic strikes an imposing figure in comedy clubs around Boston and New York City.

Initially, Leslie got a rejection letter saying his claim was not "adequately quantifiable," so Leslie, with Guinness' blessing, is on a quest to adequately quantify the claim that he is the world's tallest standup comedian. (We'd run a pic, but the pictures on his site only show him from the waist up.)

Since we're a magazine that is read by comedians and comedy fans all over the world, and since part of the quantifying process involves scouring the planet for examples that might disprove his claim, we figured we could help out. A Boston Herald reporter, Sean L. McCarthy, has blogged on it.

A quick Google search shows that Ryan Stiles and Penn Jillette both have gotten mentions as "tallest comedian," though they both hit only 6-foot-6 on the measuring stick. The late Eddie Carmel did vow at one point to become the world’s tallest comedian, and at well over 7-foot-6 (if not 8-foot-9 as he was sometimes billed!) the Jewish Giant was that. But Carmel died in 1972.

Any comedians out there taller than Leslie? Go to his myspace if you think you have a lead on a towering comic.

...it's the only thing we can say after reading the following statement from Brit TV producer Adam Tandy (the article, on UK comedy guide Chortle, is entitled "Comics Killed the Sitcom"):

Ever since the Young Ones we have turned to stand-up comedians as our mainstay of talent. It's as though if you tell a joke and deal with hecklers, that somehow makes you a comedy genius and right for a sitcom.

Read the whole, short thing here.

Tandy says that the whole reason the British sitcoms suck these days is because they keep building them around standup comics. Turns out British TV suits are just as dumb as American TV execs.

With one exception. Avalon's Jon Thoday said:

Comic timing is a difficult thing and most people would agree that comic acting is harder than straight acting, he said. Comedians tend to be better at it.

Thank you, Brother Thoday. While we stammer, Gleason-style, you frame our argument succinctly.

Thanks to FOS and Vancouver journo Guy MacPherson, for tipping us off.

...you probably didn't know they were broken.

Seems that we gooned up the archives FTP path sometime back in June... or was it May? Anyway, the blogger technology was putting the archive in a file folder that was making them inaccessible. So, if you clicked one of our archive links on the left column and got the ol' "File not found" message, that was why. The past three or four months have been unavailable. And that also means that if you googled our site, you got incomplete results because of the goofup. We have corrected the error. Happy surfing!

...is pockmarked with oodles of comedy potholes.

In the past, we've cautioned politicians and other officials to leave the joking to the professionals. Few politicians have a way with the joke... and trying to riff off the cuff while campaigning usually creates more misunderstanding than mirth.

There's a clip from the June 17 installment of C-Span's excellent and morbidly fascinating Road To The White House in which Joe Biden is depicted in Delaware, talking to a potential voter, an Indian-American. In the course of explaining how wonderful his relationship is with the burgeoning Indian-American population in The First State, he says:

You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.

The camera is tight on Biden's face as he tries to sell the joke with an eerie half-smile/half-grimace. We can only assume that the "target" of the gag is less than pleased.

(As a joke, though, it's abysmal. Aside from being offensive, it doesn't make any sense. It lacks the necessary logic that even the best jokes need to avoid being insulting. And, outside the context of a comedy club or an after dinner speech, it just comes off as... boorish. Context is everything! We can only assume that he was flying by the seat of his comedy pants, trying to appear like a regular Joe, most likely battling a focus group factoid that pegs him as "humorless." He failed miserably. Leave the joking to the pros, Joe. Or hire a writer!)

Here's a quote from Aaron Barnhart, influential TV critic, in a recent article in his home paper, the Kansas City Star:

I can't say for sure that comedy will ever make a comeback in prime time. But I do see glimmers of hope.

This from a man who makes his living watching television and writing about it. He can't say for sure that comedy will ever make a comeback! Is he serious? We conclude that he is.

It gets better. The reason for his optimism, his "glimmers of hope," are four sitcoms, two of which are already airing (It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Lucky Louie), one of which will air this fall (Let's Rob...), and another sitcom that hasn't even been broadcast or picked up by a network (Nobody's Watching).

We're not debating the relative funniness of any of these shows, nor do we take issue with Barnharts's contention that they might signal a revival of the sitcom (which would be the twentieth or twenty-fifth such revival in the history of television; see The Male Half's "Laughable Situation" column from a few years back), but we are disturbed by the fairy tale that Barnhart is perpetuating (the "backstory") concerning the up and down fortunes of Nobody's Watching.

Barnhart says that through the miracle of Youtube, the series now has caught the attention of network executives! That's right. The show was rejected by NBC, then by the WB. But-- Whoa! What's this?-- the pilot was uploaded to Youtube and was watched by 100,000 people (Young people!!) and now, the suits are panting and slobbering and climbing over each other to wedge it into their schedules this fall, or so the story goes.

Barnhart even has help telling the ridiculous tale from one of the show's creators, Neil Goldman. Says Barnhart:

But the more profound lesson is this: Viewers, especially younger viewers who have grown up on a harsh diet of crime dramas, are ready to laugh again. Indeed, Goldman suspects that one of his fresh-out-of-college assistants on Nobody’s Watching was the one who uploaded the pilot to YouTube.

Indeed!

How dumb do these people think we are?

Some pertinent facts:

1. Nobody's Watching was co-created by Goldman (one of the writers from Scrubs) and Garrett Donovan (the creator of Scrubs).

2. Scrubs aired for the past five seasons or so on NBC.

3. NBC just signed a deal with Youtube which will essentially make Youtube a promotional arm of NBC.

4. NBC owns Nobody's Watching.

Gee, golly! says Goldman, That young whippersnapper who fetches my coffee done went and uploaded my pilot onto that newfangled website on the World Wide Net or whatever it is ya call it! Garsh! And now the big-time Tee Vee folk in their fancy clothes might change their mind and have my little show on their network after all!

What an insulting load of horse manure! Why can't they just find funny people to create funny sitcoms and other funny people to star in them? And then present them to the public (who always appreciates genuinely funny sitcoms and has for about 50 years or so).

Postscript: NBC is thinking of pairing the new sitcom with... Scrubs.

If this is the television industry's idea of harnessing the power of the internet in new and exciting ways, television might just go down faster than everyone is predicting. And down with it will go the TV critics.

Some time in August, said the voice on the other end of the phone at the Sands Regency, they'll be re-opening their comedy club. And it'll have a different name, "Funny Bones." We suspect she meant Funny Bone, without the "s" on the end. Which means that it'll be booked out of... Where exactly? (Can anybody keep it straight as to who books what when it comes to the Funny Bone chain?)

The Voice said it'll be twice the size of the old club, which was booked by Jon Fox, former SF Punchline owner and evil genius behind the San Francisco International Comedy Competition.

There are two other clubs in Reno-- Catch A Rising Star at the Silver Legacy and Comedy Comedy at the Hilton out near the airport. (There's an Improv down on Lake Tahoe, too.) The Male Half of the Staff is working this week at Catch with a very much alive Joe Restivo.

Reno is going condo-crazy. At least three defunct casinos have been gutted recently and will be converted to condominiums. There should be a significant bump in the local population here in a year or two.

Flying from Vegas to Reno, we bought a McPaper to occupy our short time in the air. We scoped out their Reality Check feature, which keeps USAToday readers up on the latest developments in the various reality TV shows. They have wrapups and tables and charts that enhance reader pleasure in following their favorite unscripted docutainment.

We were struck by the fact that this issue had wrapups of three shows, but not a wrapup of Last Comic Standing! Notable because they've covered LCS in the past. Doubly ominous is that they found it worthy to comment on an Animal Planet reality series that documents the lives of a bunch of African meerkats, Meerkat Manor, but not on our comedy pals on the Queen Mary. Triply ominous is that, in their online version, where, let's face it, real estate is not at such a high premium as it is in the hard copy, they offer wrapups of a total of six reality shows, but still no LCS.

That's right: Animal Planet finds a series on a bunch of freaky ferrets to be more believable and more satisfying to watch than the standup abomination on NBC. To quote Howard Cosell, "It's... over."

FOS Neil Leiberman sends along a link to an online petition that calls for the president to award the Medal of Freedom to Jerry Lewis. Past recipients have included Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and the Pope. And Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. And a lot of other folks, too numerous to mention. If you believe that Jerry Lewis belongs in that group, sign away! There've been 156 so far. The goal is 5,000. Considering the length of his career and the amount of money he's raised for charity, it's a wonder that one didn't automatically appear in his mailbox one day.

Jerry Fink, interviews David Brenner in today's Las Vegas Sun. Brenner explains how he happened to sub for Louie Anderson, currently recovering from surgery to correct diverticulitis:

Adam Steck, who has the club where Louie performs, called my manager, Richard Super, and asked me if I would like to fill in. What I don't understand is why he couldn't have had the operation back in February, when business was good. This time of year isn't the apex of money-making for performers in Las Vegas.

Now that's gratitude! (We're pretty sure this wasn't meant as a joke.)

From the NYT obit:

Jan Murray, a stand-up comedian who became one of television's first stars, died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 89[...]

Mr. Murray belonged to a close-knit generation of New York stand-up comics who honed their craft in local clubs and successfully made the transition to the then-novel medium of television[...]

The family often shared a story about the blend of cultures in Mr. Murray's circle. Passover Seder at the Murrays was a Hollywood tradition, with a guest list of 40 on each of the two nights. Among the regular guests were Jackie Gleason, Jerry Lewis, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.

That would be one swingin' Seder. Murray's daughter said the house was always filled with comedians-- Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Shecky Greene and Buddy Hackett often gathered there for dinner and poker games. Read the rest.