Rascals in Cherry Hill, NJ, has two more shows tonight, then it shuts its doors for good. The folks at the Crowne Plaza are turning the space into a spa, making standup comedy exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.


From left: Paul Bond, Rascals manager Jason Pollock

Rascals, the company, is dead. Deader than dead. No one will open a club called Rascals in this century. Creepy bookers and other unsavory types are circling like sharks. Will there be another, similar club to serve the comedy needs of South Jersey/Philly metro standup fans? (Well, we certainly hope so. We grew quite fond of the idea of having a club six minutes from our house. We are now without a "home club.") It is our fervent hope that a decent room opens up and soon. This side of the Delaware River is packed with too many standup fans with oodles of disposable income for it not to have a top-notch comedy showcase that presents a varied slate of national touring headliners and solid regional pros and local up-and-comers.


From left: Vinnie Nardiello, Pat Breslin and Rio (unpictured) rounded out this weekend's bill

Such a room, hooked up with a radio station with a sweet (and appropriate) demographic, with a reasonable budget for advertising, would obliterate what little competition there is over here and would erase the effects of a decade or more of lame-o "B rooms" (and "C rooms"... and "D rooms!) that have operated in these parts since the bust of the early 90s.

Photo credit: Dan Rosenberg

FOS Dan Rosenberg was also present at the bash in Brentwood. Take in his account, then scroll down and drink in the blow-by-blow of FOS Steve Ochs, also in attendance! If you consider yourself a standup comedy fans (and an SHECKYmagazine fan), you'll read both!

Before the event, there was a red carpet... Okay, it was more of an area rug, but red nonetheless. The performing comics weren't the only stars in the house. Hugh Hefner, and all of his blonde girlfriends took up the whole first row. Also spotted were Rob Reiner, Budd Friedman, Fred Willard, Mark Schiff, Wayne Federman, Kent Emmons and Max Alexander to name a few.

With close to a thousand years of comedy experience in the building, the evening started out with a no-show-- Larry King was still recuperating from the Paris Hilton interview and couldn't make the show. Jack Riley (Mr. Carlin from The Bob Newhart Show) was a great replacement. He said he was only doing the show so that he could have a credit in this decade.

The first act out was Jonathan Winters and it was the beginning of several standing ovations that night. Next was a video tribute by Woody Allen that was, well, very Woody. Shelley Berman came out, and did a classic phone call routine of his, after asking why he was there. "If I am so important, why am I not too busy to be here?"

Next came Albert Brooks wearing all black because he misunderstood the PR guy and thought that Mort Sahl had died. He read the eulogy he had prepared and it was hysterical. Drew Carey came out with his classic suit and black framed glasses and killed. Geroge Carlin made a "surprise" appearance (he was on the list given to the press) and he gave Sahl credit for making his career what it was. When Mort guest hosted The Tonight Show before Johnny was hired, he put on a young Carlin that had only been a solo act for about three months. He had only recently parted with partner Jack Burns)

Norm Crosby followed with some great material. Jay Leno who said he was nervous performing for one of his idols. Richard Lewis was dressed like "Captain Kirk's Cantor" and was at the top of his game. Bill Maher said that he aspired to be Mort Sahl. He said that if you take the jokes out of Mort's act you would still have a great speech that made good points, but that Mort always had the jokes.

Harry Shearer came out and was a special guest emcee to introduce Kevin Nealon, who was great. Don Rickles appeared, via video, and it looked like he was sitting in a park in Santa Monica. He quipped that the producers would pay bus fare and that is why he couldn't make it. Paula Poundstone was the final guest comedian and she worked the crowd and ended up talking to the man that started the Mort Sahl fan club in 1956.

Then, the man of the hour (actually the 2-1/2 hours) came out to the final standing ovation of the evening. Mr. Sahl, in his trademark red V-neck sweater was fantastic. He spoke of helping Woody Allen and Dick Cavett sneak into the Copa when he was performing there. Someone in the back of the near sellout crowd called out "You talk about JFK, what about 9/11 and that conspiracy, talk about that, Mort!" Who knew Michael Moore was in the house?

Hanging outside after the show, Improv founder Budd Friedman noted that the line-up, other than Jonathan Winters, was in alphabetical order, and that it worked out "just fine that way."

Overall it was a once-in-a-lifetime show that only those in attendance got to witness. It was not video- or audiotaped and it was a great experience for a comedian or any fan of comedy. The Heartland Foundation plans future shows with equally stellar lineups.

From left: Rob Reiner, Dan Rosenberg (Photo credit: Dan Rosenberg)

Check out this TVSquad item from June 22, about how Jerry Seinfeld, during promotion for his upcoming "Bee Movie," said the following:

Bees have the only perfect society on earth ... They have no crime, they have no drugs, they have no rape. A little rape, but it's not that bad.

Offensive and shocking is how the professionally and perpetually offended and shocked described it. Click on Radar Online for the sputtering, the indignance and the harumphing.

I don't find anything funny about rape. I was only referring to the insect world. I'm sorry if anyone got upset.

"Rape is not a joke," says an earnest one. "It's the most violent crime a person can live through. It is an incredibly traumatic experience that should be seriously treated and never made light of."

Never? Even if, like Seinfeld's joke, it isn't really about rape?

Click on The Male Half's YouTube video and wait for the joke that starts at the 2:00 mark. For the record, he isn't apologizing.

Tip of the hat to Randy Masters for the heads up!

As promised, a rundown of the activities at last night's Mort Sahl 80th birthday bash at the Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood, from FOS Steve Ochs.

Last night at the Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood California, there was an all-star tribute to Mort Sahl for the Benefit for the Heartland Comedy Foundation. My graphic artist at HERO and I designed the promotional materials, so I was gifted with a few tickets. It was a pretty amazing night!

The host for the evening was Jack Riley, whom many of you will remember as Elliot Carlin from the Bob Newhart Show. I also had the pleasure of putting words in his mouth while writing for Rugrats on which he voiced Stu Pickles. Not a young man, and a little shaky-legged, he brought a great sardonic presence to the evening.

His first task was interviewing Jonathan Winters, who came out in the character of an old major league relief pitcher with a penchant for physically harming other players. If this were Japan, Winters would be declared a National Treasure.

The other old timers of the night were Shelley Berman and Norm Crosby (Woody Allen and Don Rickles both made more maudlin than funny appearances on video). Berman took some odd directions with his set, but he's Shelley Berman for Christ's sake! Yes, he did a phone bit. Crosby is clearly keeping himself sharp on the condo circuit. He brought the old-school, Catskill shtick and delivered like the veteran he is. When was the last time you saw a comic deliver a joke with a perfect Yiddish accent? A total treat.

My wife never quite understood why we comedy types all love Albert Brooks so much. She gets it now! He came out complaining about the event publicist's poor communication skills. Apparently, he was led to believe he was attending a memorial. Prepared for only that, he went on to eulogize the still very much alive and present Sahl. My God, he's funny!

George Carlin was the evening's surprise guest. His appearance amounted to the expert recitation of a lengthy, well, kind of "rap" about himself and his connection to various things. I'm guessing he's done this a time or two, so his fans probably know what I'm talking about. He then showed a clip of himself doing a Mort Sahl impression on a 1962 appearance he made on the Tonight show when Sahl was acting as temporary host.

Kevin Nealon, introduced by a spectacularly mutton-chopped Harry Shearer, provided a steady set about his too-normal existence. Paula Poundstone did a silky smooth job as the only comic of the night to work a guy in the audience. The perfect capper landed in her lap when he turned out to be the founder of the first Mort Sahl fan club formed in 1956! Bill Maher came prepared with fresh jokes about the news of the day. My favorite bit of his addressed how slutty many women dress these days, "I feel sorry for the whores! How do you know they're selling the ass?!"

Drew Carey and Jay Leno each came out dressed in suits and delivered tight, short sets of audience tested material. If you loved Leno back when but don't really adore what he does on the Tonight show, you probably forgot how perfect a standup he is. I know I did.

The evening was closed out, appropriately, by a set from Mort himself. Older (as in 80), but as spry as any of us could hope to be at that age, he delivered some heartfelt thanks and perfectly Sahl-esque observations. When a heckler in the balcony had the balls to confront him, Sahl blew it off. When the douchebag yelled again, it was Budd Freidman who turned around from the fifth row to yell, "Shut Up!" How can you not love that?

But, though I don't recall precisely where he fell in the line-up, it was Richard Lewis that took the room by storm, delivering a set a set that could have been constructed specifically to take the fuck-saying record back from Louis CK! Holy shit, was he funny! For those of you who don't remember how eighties comedy was done by guys like Lewis, Rich Jeni, Paul Provenza, etc. this was more than just nostalgic; it was a persuasive argument to return to those days. Capper after capper, non sequitur stacked on non sequitur; I literally missed tags that were drowned out by my own laughter. To be honest, I didn't show up with him on my "can't wait" list, but he really delivered. If he comes to your town and you don't mind hearing about his ever-growing balls (ball?), Shaq's unbelievable dick and how his bad back forces him to fuck in limited positions, GO SEE HIM!!!

Okay, that was just on stage. In the audience you could find a couple of different categories of comedy pros. I expect to lose some younger readers here. The late seventies and early eighties were sort of a stand up renaissance in the NY, NJ and PA area. Many of the guys who were doing the precious few weekend rooms and hell gig one-nighters in those days have gone on to appear on TV, film or as writers, or both. A rare group of them turned out for Mort. But cross-generationally, comedy and comedy adjacent were both well represented.

I spotted Mark Schiff, Wayne Federman, Max Alexander, Steve Mittleman, Jonathon Solomon, Hiram Kasten, Don McEnery, Mike Rowe, Steve O. (not him, me), Carrie Snow, Rick Overton, Kira Soltanovich, Rick Segal, Greg Lewis, Dick Van Patten, Gary Owens, Rob Reiner, George Schlatter, Fred Willard, Tommy Chong, Hef (and some beautiful young woman, I assume a niece or something), Kent Emmons, Ed Krasnick, Pat Buckles, Ross Shafer, Howard Storm and Marc Price.

I'm sure I missed dozens of people. Apologies to them, but really, who cares if they're not mentioned here; they caught the show of a lifetime.

We'll have more, maybe! We wish we coulda been there!

Witnesses say that Ricardo Aleman got decent laughs during his set at the New York leg of the reality talent competition America's Got Talent, but, as is the right of the producers, they edited the appearance to make it seem as though it was less than rollicking!

View the 21-second YouTube video in which Aleman remains calm and delivers crushing blows to two of the three judges during his appearance on AGT, turning what could have been a short march to obscurity into a brief but effective network television smackdown! Notice The Hoff's reaction to his fellow judge getting pounded!

Also worth checking out is Aleman's weight loss videos (long and short versions) here.

Bill Muller of the Arizona Republic spoke to Janeane Garofalo who voices Colette in "Ratatouille." It's not the first time she's done voiceover work for an animated feature.

She says she can only judge her performance on the basis that she wasn't fired, as she was from Shrek. She did voice work over five months for Princess Fiona, a role that eventually went to Cameron Diaz.

"Luckily, Shrek didn't do any business and nobody's ever heard of it, so... " she said with a laugh. "No one ever told me why. And it hurt my feelings so much.

"I never spoke to anyone again from the studio. There was a message left with my manager from somebody's assistant that (said), 'She's fired.' I don't know why. I can only assume it was because I was not good. I accept that. But I don't know, nobody ever . . . told me.

"I felt like a failure. It reminds me that I fail sometimes, so I never have been able to watch Shrek."

Hooray for Hollywood! Where else can one be fired, via voicemail, with no explanation? (We suspect that the fat paycheck she received in return for her five months of V.O. was little consolation, especially after seeing Diaz on the red carpet. But, if initial reports on the cooking rat movie are any indication, Garofalo and Oswalt will be co-presenters at the next Oscars.)

Chortle, "The UK Comedy Guide," has a story (original, we think) on comic Liam Mullone who is rebelling against "extremists and safety fascists who are sucking the soul out of Britain."

The Times of London obit writer who once dug graves for a living plans to offer rides around town in his customized hearse-- where smokers can light up if they want to.

He calls smokers "the new Jews" and he adds, "I don't actually smoke myself. But now that doing so is such an act of rebellion I think I'll start on July 1."

A brief obituary of 25 year-old Carlos DoSouto of New Bedford, MA, contains this in paragraph five: "He was a standup comic in Boston and Providence."

It's been a rough few months for that area's comedy scene, having lost another aspiring comic, Paul Rudeen, last October.

From The Smoking Gun.

We can hear the thunder, faintly at first, as the front approaches from the west. And WCAU, the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, is running the weather alerts every so often, preceded by the beeps.

We sit down to watch Last Comic Standing at 9 PM EDT and, every few minutes or so, that weather thingie, the band that crawls across the screen, comes on and blocks out the names of some of the comedians! So, if we get a couple names wrong, or if we can't give the name, that's why! It happened in Minneapolis, but we knew the comics. When it happened in London, though, we were stumped once or twice.

Onto the update!

Joke One: Where does the general keep his armies?
Punchline Number One: In his sleevies!

Too easy.

We were going to make another crude joke about Ant. But he's obviously stressed out, so we're not going to pile on. He was weeping in his video blog the other day. Something about a breakup. Today or yesterday, in his most recent vidblog, he's shirtless. SOMEONE TAKE AWAY ANT'S VIDEO BLOGGING PRIVELEGES! How much tsuris can the Ant Colony be expected to bear?!?!?

We're going to do some video blogging where The Female Half goes topless and the Male Half cries. Or will we do it the other way around?

Tonight it was London, then Minneapolis. It's the last installment for two whole weeks. And don't forget (of course, we'll remind you) that the next episode starts at 10 PM, July 11, so that NBC can kickstart that atrocious Singing Bee at 9 PM. (How many times can one laugh at someone singing, "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy?" Is that so Morning Zoo, or what? We predict one and done for Singing Bee.)

Speaking of singing, this viewing of LCS was made bearable (and future episodes will be made bearable) simply by singing (to the tune of "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" It's from The White Album. Google it.):

Hey, Bellamy Bill
Where did you kill?
Bellamy Bill!

Hey, Bellamy Bill
Where did you kill?
Bellamy Bill!

Every time Bill Bellamy appears on the screen. Kinda like a drinking game without any alcohol.

And speaking of Bellamy Bill, where was he when the crew descended upon Minneapolis? Nowhere to be found, that's where! Cherry picking his cities, he is! Disgraceful!

What did the producers of the show have against Buddy? The one-named eccentric comic who addressed Ant as "Francis?" We weren't big Buddy fans, but did you see the package they lashed together to show Buddy bombing horribly during the evening's show?

Sure, we know that other comics have bombed on those nighttime showcases. We've heard it from our various sources. But the producers never show it. Or if they do, it's inferred, rather than shown. But this was explicit! This was worthy of Scorcese. Quick cuts showing audience reaction, tight shots of chagrined faces and at least three well-framed shots of Buddy himself as he spun ineffective joke after ineffective joke. Why did they take such pains to convey that nuclear bomb that was Buddy's set? Puzzling to say the least. Could it have been because Ant was against Buddy, but the other judges overruled him? How much input/power does the Antmeister have over the producers?

Buddy wasn't particularly arrogant. Sure he was totally full of crap when he said he wasn't taking the audition seriously, but why did they take it out on Buddy?

Moving onto Los Angeles from London are:

Matt Kirshen (but you already knew that!)
Ava Vidal
Spencer Brown

That Spencer Brown was channeling Steve Martin. Is "Let's Get Small" just hitting the shelves in the U.K.? Or hitting it again? (Hey, it wouldn't surprise us. When we were in Sydney, in 1992, the country was all atwitter about The Village People and Abba. And the halftime show at the huge rugby championship was Grease-themed-- for some reason, the Aussies were weak in the knees for Grease and all things Grease-related some years after that play/movie had faded from our consciousness.)

Also getting major mugtime from London on:

Josh Howie
Bennie Root (?)
Rick Kiesewetter
Tiffany Something (?)

The names with the question marks were the ones whose names were obcured by the weather ticker. Please, if you know their names, leave them on the comments!

FYI: Kiesewetter is a Japanese-American. We just thought we'd point that out. His website, which is under construction, offers no more info than that. Go instead to his MySpace site.

Onto Minneapolis.

One can garner tons of facetime without advancing to the next round. Bob Zany and John Evans are two examples. They were used heavily in the promos for the week leading up to this week's show, yet, as we learned tonight, they didn't advance. (Evans was the one who did the immigration joke, in case you don't know. And Zany, well, if you don't know Bob Zany, there's little we can do for you. All right-- he's the one who did the airport security/prostate joke.)

During his daytime audition, when faced with just the three judges, Zany opened with, "Last time I played here, I had the same turnout!" Will Acme proprietor Louis Lee see that as a classic self-deprecating Zany gag? Or will he issue a hit on the comedian for dissing his room? We'll keep you posted.

Making it through to Los Angeles from Minneapolis:

Tracey Ashley
Tommy Johnagin (Audience Favorite)
Doug Benson

Benson, who failed to make it through when auditioning in Los Angeles, travelled to MPLS to give it another shot. From what we could piece together (At 9:35 PM, our cable went OUT! For about 90 seconds!), he was passed on in L.A., mainly because he failed to impress Ant. Benson, delightfully major smart-ass that he is, goes right at the Ant in his daytime audition. And he deadpans, afterward in the bar, while clutching the red ticket that "All that matters to me is Ant's approval." For those of you watching at home, possibly unfamiliar with Benson, we will tell you that the sarcasm light is flashing when Benson makes statements such as these.

Getting major facetime in Minneapolis:

Lil Rel
Auggie Smith
Dan Cumming

We hear that there'll be 32 semi-finalists in Los Angeles. In two weeks, they'll show the Tempe audition, but they can't stretch that into an hour. So, they'll probably show the Tempe audition, then set the stage for the following week with lots of fisheye shots of palm trees and gals in bikinis and that rollerskating guy in Venice Beach. ('Cause it's right here in the Hack Manual under "stock shots to set the scene for things that take place in Los Angeles!") So far, we've seen 28 auditioners get the red ticket. That means that either they will award four more crimson tix in Arizona... OR...

Or what?

Who knows. We heard that at least two people who got the red tickets gave them up after the producers made demands that the ticket-holders wouldn't/couldn't meet. We wonder if those same producer did the right thing and subsequently awarded those surrendered spots to other "alternates?" Imagine if you're the person who was "next in line" when a red ticket didn't get used!

Last week's episode finished second to the second half of So You Think You Can Dance, according to one website. It finished in fourth place according to another. How hard is it to report the Nielsens?

Hey, Bellamy Bill
Where did you kill?
Bellamy Bill!

Hey, Bellamy Bill
Where did you kill?
Bellamy Bill!

Sing it with us!

Blogrolling: If you'd like to bathe in LCS coverage/analysis, click on the blog of FOS Raven Snook, who is blogging for the folks at TVGuide.com. And if that's not enough, you can also check out the tag team blogging of comedians Paul Goebel and Jay Black as they labor under the TVSquad/AOL banner here.

NOTE: We received word that the two names we couldn't see because of the weather crawl were Benny Boot and Tiffany Stevenson. Thanks to U.K. reader, Matt Kirshen, for sending us the info!

Reality TV feeds America's insatiable appetite for embarrassing moments, tacky behavior and freaks. In between, there's actually a shred or two of genuine entertainment.

We drove by the car wreck known as America's Got Talent last night. We watched last week, too. Oddly fascinating. And deliciously illogical when you consider the title and try to reconcile that with the fact that it features David Hasselhoff, Sharon Osborne and Jerry Springer. America may have talent, but do Osborne and Springer have any disernible talents? And have you ever heard "The Hoff" sing? No further questions, your honor.

We didn't see any comedians on last week's installment. Last night was a different story.

They showed an entire (but necessarily brief) set by a comic named Philadelphia Plowden, who dwelt mostly on Hurricane Katrina. He was loud, he was in command and he was confident. And he advanced to the next round.

They disposed of the other comics by showing them in short clips, with lots of quick cuts and sound effects. Edited mainly to show the comics in a bad light, and to demonstrate the quick wit of the judges. And to elicit laughs... but at the expense of the comedians.

One such victim of the aforementioned treatment was Ricardo Aleman, a NY-based comedian, whom we had the pleasure of working with at the Funny Fest in Calgary a few years back, when he was going by the name of Rick Mann. Aleman, though very funny and more than capable, was, from what they showed last night, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Comics be forewarned: If you are at all subtle, AGT is not the show for you! You'll be following bad knife-throwers, fat chicks in fishnets, delusional cross-dressers and aging jugglers who drop shit! Not the easiest gig in the world. It's like performing on a discount cruise ship. (Mann did manage to get in a pretty good dig at The Hoff! And the editors left it in! Surely an indication that the producers are none too happy with Hasselhoff's multiple *TWI offenses!)

The Three Redneck Tenors were highly entertaining. They'll probably not win the million bucks, but they should land a permanent gig in Branson or Tunica.

* TWI: Taping While Intoxicated

Apparently, comedy is hard. And dying, it turns out in this case, is pretty easy-- especially with the able assistance of the Oklahoma Corrections Department! From the CNN.com article:

Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight was executed Tuesday evening for the deaths of an Amarillo-area couple without delivering on a promise to tell a joke in his final statement.

Knight had been soliciting jokes in the mail and on a Web site, sometimes receiving as many as 20 a day.[...]

After expressing love to some friends, he said, "I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke. I deserve this."

With an act like that, he's gotta close.

Randall County Sherrif Joel Richardon said it best:"Despite all the hype about his joke, it turns out he's not much of a comedian," he said. "He's simply an executed cold-blooded killer."

AP is running a story by John Rogers on the occasion of Mort Sahl's 80th birthday. In it Sahl is reminded that he was once "comedy's angry young man." Sahl denies it, offering that he might have been disappointed or heartbroken, and that, "'Since I talked about social and political hypocrisy I guess that was considered angry,' he says now."

Or, since the media made up their minds that you're angry, then, by golly, angry you shall be! (In fact, the Daily Southtown headlined the story, "Once-angry comedian looks at life at 80." Nice!)

We saw Sahl perform a couple years back at the State Theater in Easton, closing out a show that featured Bill Dana, Dick Gregory, Prof. Irwin Corey, Shelley Berman and was hosted by Dick Cavett. He closed and it was as fine a standup performance as any we've seen.

From the AP interview:

He also helped break the mold for standup comedy, taking it from what actor-comedian Albert Brooks calls "the world of Henny Youngman and badda-boom" one-liners to a topical form in which comics suddenly began talking about things that mattered.

"Every comedian who is not doing wife jokes has to thank him for that," says Brooks. "He really was the first, even before Lenny Bruce, in terms of talking about stuff, not just doing punch lines."

Unfortunate that Brooks cites Youngman as someone whose approach might somehow be considered inferior to Sahl's. Why the new(er) style must supplant the other-- and mustn't be allowed to co-exist-- is puzzling.

To this day, Sahl excels at making both sides laugh, an art that seems to be lost. Or perhaps purposely discarded.

"Every comedian who is not doing wife jokes" certainly may have Sahl to thank, but every comedian who is doing wife jokes, owes a debt to both Sahl and Youngman. Let's face it-- nearly all of us are descendants of both, hybrids so to speak.

From Gerald Nachman's "Seriously Funny" comes this quote from Woody Allen:

Allen, who expresses "tremendous affection" for the Borscht Belt school of comics, explained his method: "I always said I was doing wife jokes and coward jokes and the same jokes Bob Hope or Henny Youngman were doing-- exactly. I'm doing the same thing as "My room's so small you had to step outside to change your mind." I would just do my version of it-- it could be the identical joke. But I would say it in a way as if I'm conversing with someone-- other than like some guy who's sitting across from you at Lindy's giving you the one-liners with a cigar."

SHECKYmagazine will have a correspondent present on Thursday evening when Mort Sahl is honored in Brentwood.

Legendary comedian, pundit and author
Mort Sahl's 80th birthday will be celebrated with an All Star tribute
and salute on June 28th, 2007, at the Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood.

Among the many stars appearing are Woody Allen (who will appear on tape), Shelley Berman, David Brenner, Albert Brooks, Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Kevin Nealon, Paula Poundstone, Jack Riley, Drew Carey, Norm Crosby and Jonathan Winters, plus many surprise guests.

The evening is a benefit for the Heartland Comedy Foundation, with tickets ranging from $100-$200. For tickets and general information: (213) 365-3500 or Ticketmaster or purchase tickets at any TicketMaster outlet.

Check back here for pics and text!

Lewis Black, at a press conference in anticipation of his appearance at the Bonnaroo Festvial in TN last weekend, confessed his admiration for many of the acts and expressed a desire to open for some of them, particularly Gov't Mule. He apparently arranged to "interrupt" a midnight performance by the group, mounting the stage and mock complaining about an instrumental piece's lack of words.

Apparently, someone in attendance just doesn't like standup comics in general or Black in particular as a pair of YouTube videos shows Black getting zinged in the side of the head with an unidentified object. The videos are each shorter than two minutes.

Click here is video from closer to the stage and here is from the back of the "house." (Listen to the drunk nitwit who says, "Kick his ass, Warren!" (referring to Gov't Mule's lead vocalist/guitarist Warren Haynes) The video from the back has better sound, but the close-up one has a better shot of the object hitting Black in the head.

Black goes off on the tosser and signs off by saying, "You're lucky to be here tonight, you're in the presence of God. Take care, you little pricks!"

We're still having email trouble. However, if you send (or re-send!) email to us at bmckim(at sign)mindspring.com, it'll get to us.

Thanks for your patience!

We just love reading about comedians who live and work in other countries. The Standard.net, a site providing news and views on Kenya, ran Offstage With Kenya's Funny Men... and Woman, which profiled Tony Njuguna, Walter Mong'are and Aisha Khabere among others. Get a load of the final paragraph:

At the final tally, trust comedians to make outrageous remarks. Makokha of Vioja Mahakamani thrives in these. He says: "I never eat chicken bred in Nairobi. Besides the pollution, they never get enough sleep and so I don't want to be involved with them."

Certainly! Most outrageous! My sides, they hurt with the ache of a thousand suns! These Kenyan comedians-- they murder me totally!

We kid! We kid! The true humor is no doubt lost in the translation. Seriously, though, anyone who can make just one person laugh in a country that has Sudan on one side and Uganda on the other is working miracles.

Read the whole article, if only for the mysterious reference to "celebrated American comedian Bernie McGrenahan."

That's Country Music Television. They've been running a comedy showcase series for a few months now called Comedy Stage. The next episode, to air at midnight on July 10 (to be followed immediatly by several more older episodes), features Robert Hawkins, Trish Suhr and Killer Beaz.

We were aware of the show, having been alerted to it by FOS Kelly Terranova (who appeared earlier in the season), but it fell through our editorial cracks and we neglected to post about it.

Now, it seems, the show is on the bubble, renewal-wise and there's an internet campaign currently being waged to save the show. Nashville comedians are urging folks to email Lewis.Bogach(at sign)cmt.com and let their feelings be known. In a nice way.

In anticipation of her upcoming turn at the Lyric Theater in Baltimore, the Sun ran a mini-interview with Kathy Griffin.

Griffin says the comedy business is especially tough on women, rejecting Chris Rock's notion that stand-up is the ultimate meritocracy.

"Chris Rock is a man," Griffin says. "You're absolutely held to a different standard as a woman.

"On the other hand, as opposed to regular showbiz, you can be Joan Rivers and still be performing into your 70s. People don't care if I gain five pounds. They just want to laugh."

She's there Wednesday.

Israel-born comedian Avi Liberman has, for five years now, produced a comedy tour of Israel which benefits Jerusalem's Crossroads Center, an intervention program and community center targeting at-risk English-speaking teens.

The Jerusalem Post says this year's bill boasts Gary Gulman (Tourgasm), Craig Robinson (The Office) and Dwight Slade.

The Jerusalem Post spoke to Robinson, who recently appeared in the hit film "Knocked Up," while he was exploring the flea market in Old Jaffa. So far, the trip has been an eye-opening experience for the comic. Though he had not seriously considered coming to Israel before receiving Liberman's invitation to perform, his short stay has already transformed him into a devoted shwarma fan and a Zionist with plans for a return trip. "After being here," said Robinson, "I will be a Zionist now. I am for Israel, and for the life of Israel."

Wow! And we thought our first trip to Vegas was life-changing!

Joe Rhodes of the New York Times interviews Patton Oswalt on the occasion of the release of "Ratatouille," in which Oswalt voices the title character.

Oswalt makes great points in response to a question that is so totally squaresville it makes the eyes water:

Asked whether he worries about losing his antiestablishment aura or, worse yet, being accused of selling out, he said: "I think it depends on what you do with your success. I'm not doing comedy so I can get out of comedy. I'm doing movies and TV shows and writing screenplays so I can have freedom to do more comedy. And now I have the money to produce my own tours and showcase other comedians.

"So I don't look at it as being a sellout," he continued. "I think King of Queens was a really funny show. And as long as I'm out there doing stand-up, what difference does it make what else I do? That's like someone saying they can't listen to Richard Pryor's old albums ever since they saw "Superman III." Really? Well, you're an idiot then. 'Cause those albums are amazing."

Shouldn't the NYT be "over" the concept of selling out? Are they really that wired into that segement of the population that even cares about such matters? We would guess that only 15-year-olds (and those that think like them) would be so utterly ignorant of the way the world works that they could muster any indignation over their favorite artist "selling out."

There, on asahi.com, amid headlines like "Chartered flights between Tokyo and Shanghai to start in October" and "JVC, Kenwood OK merger terms" is an item on the waning political influence of comedians in Japanese politics.

"Those who voted for comedians in the past were people who cared about 'motherhood and apple pie' issues, things close to their own lives like social welfare and pensions," said Junichi Kawata, professor of political science at Osaka University.

"It is still very possible that a comedian or other well-known personality could step into the fray and create a big wave of anti-establishment fervor against established parties and a government that has done little to rein in negligence in the Social Insurance Agency," Kawata said.

Still, some observers think the era of clowns leading the way has ended, at least in Osaka.

The "clowns" in Japan, actually ran for (and attained) public office. In the '80s and '90s, comedians Knock Yokoyama and Kiyoshi Nishikawa were elected to various posts, the former attaining the office of governor of Osaka prefecture and the latter serving three consecutive terms in the upper chamber of the Diet. (For those of you who weren't hooked on stateside re-broadcasts of NHK's Today's Japan, like we were for a while, "prefecture" is a fancy Japanese term for "state" and the Diet is their legislature.)

Here in America, Pat Paulsen was a habitual candidate for the office of the presidency. Doug Stanhope is a Libertarian candidate for pres in '08. And, in Minnesota, Al Franken is challenging Norm Coleman for his U.S. Senate seat, but is trailing by 20+ points in early polling.

The death of Bernard Manning also brings out this column by Howard Jacobson. In it, he compares the knighthood of Salman Rushdie and the condemnation of Manning and makes some interesting points along the way.

And I am not just referring to his timing, which even his detractors admired. It was the unapologetic, deliberately charmless relish he took in the incorrectness of his jokes that made them work so well. He did the anathema thing. Ugly as a toad, incorrigible, impervious, a man seemingly incapable of spiritual refreshment, he stood before his audience as though in defiance of every decency, and returned to them the brute they harboured at the bottom of their souls and were ashamed of. "This thing of darkness," he seemed to say, "you had better acknowledge yours, because it's no one else's."

But not, of course, in quite that language.

Jacobson is a comic novelist who "also writes a weekly column for The Independent newspaper as a chronicler of the 'dumbing-down' of Britain." (Wikipedia)

The entire column is worth a read. And, owing to the compound sentences, worth a second read as well. (On the Not Immediately Comprehensible Scale, if Hitchens is a 9, this guy is an 8.5!)

Comedian Kevin Downey, writing for UsedWigs.com, embarks on a debauched evening of thrifty drinking. And lives to write about it.

Then I spied "Graveyard Special 2-6 am Can of Schlitz and a shot of ass-juice-$4," and bingo was my name-o! I ordered the special and asked the bartender, "What's ass-juice?" He held up a container of it and said, "This stuff." I then asked about puke insurance. He directed me to the bouncer who pointed to a sign that read, "House rule, you puke, you clean it." He then went on to say, "If you buy puke insurance, you don't have to clean it. But if you puke and try not to clean it, I clean it with your clothes."

Entertaining writing, and a public service! Comics in Vegas are always looking for good places for cheap hooch, are they not?

We were down for about 90 minutes this morning... in correcting the problem, some posts were temporarily lost. They have been restored. Carry on!

Spotted the following listing under "Comedy" in the Vancouver online mag
Westender.com (ultra-cool, ironic, minimalist punctuation theirs):

stand up for mental health Evening of stand up comedy performed by people with mental illness. June 21 at Sunrise Hall, 1950 Windemere, 7 pm. $5 from

As so many in the media believe that all standup comics are mentally ill, this might actually be an ordinary standup comedy show.

If you're looking for our Last Comic Standing bloggage, just scroll down a bit and you'll see it.

Thanks!

Just received an email from comedian Karen Rontowski, who is seeking comics' CD's and DVD's for Comedy For Our Troops.

Operation Gratitude just sent out their millionth care package to the troops in Iraq and they're getting ready to up another million!

They are looking for all kinds of CD's and DVDs to put in each care package and I say we show them how much the comedy industry cares!

Just send your CD to my office:

Karen Rontowski
5915 Hazeltine ave
Suite 3
Van Nuys, CA 91401

You can send 1, 2, 5...as many as you would like or can spare. Also if you would like to sign them or send a note that would be great, too.

We're sending along some copies of "Pleasant & Gross."

Rascals Cherry Hill will close soon, its last show will be Saturday, June 30. It was originally supposed to last until July 28, but the folks calling the shots at what is left of the chain decided to pull the plug early. (Recent events, as recounted in the Newark Star Ledger, detailed all manner of financial and fiduciary scandal, culminating in a judge appointing a trustee to oversee the slow, excruciating dissolution of the mini-chain that started out with the original Rascals in West Orange.)

Which sucks for us, personally, because we were looking forward to our farewell area appearance at our "home club" July 12-14. To say we're disappointed would be putting it mildly. It was a decent club, six minutes from our house.

Another great club, Comix Cafe in Buffalo, is gone as well. A tersely-worded email just came into our inbox from Randy Reese, the Cafe proprietor, which merely stated that the club was closed and apologizing for the inconvenience. The Cafe, readers of this magazine may recall, was one of the clubs we mentioned in the USA Today article that asked us to name "Ten Great Places to Sit Down and Watch Standup comedy."

Which sucks for us, personally, because we were looking forward to our return engagement, November 29- December 1.

To recap: Rascals is gone. Comix Cafe is gone. We are seeking to book July 12-14 and November 19- December 1.

L.C.S. Joke of the Day: What do you give a pig with a sprained ankle?

Ant's phone number!

(We're getting a lot of hits from cheapskates seeking the punchlines to those goofy jokes they run just before the commercial breaks. Sooo... we figure we'll give them _a_ punchline. Not _the_ punchline, mind you. If the bastards are too tightfisted to pay the fifty cents or the $2.99 or whatever it is, they'll hafta be satisfied with this.)

It was the Los Angeles and Sydney auditions.

Not much else.

First-- The Raw Data!

Making it through to the semifinals from Los Angeles:

Thea Vidale
Sean Rouse
Dwayne Perkins
Sarah Colonna
Jon Reep
Dante (Audience Favorite)

Making it through to the semis from Sydney:

Gina Yashere
Fiona O'Loughlin
Adam Vincent
Lawrence Mooney

And, once again, the producers couldn't persuade any sponsor in Sydney to cough up a grand for an Audience Favorite. Or Capital One's contract says they don't have to fork over the dough on foreign soil. (But wouldn't it be worth a grand just to have your company's name mentioned that many more times?) It just makes America look cheap! How about the Jay Mohr Audience Favorite? A tribute to past hosts! Or how about the Yahoo Serious Audience Favorite Award? Or maybe Anthony Clarke could peel off ten Benjamins for the Count Shake-ula Excellence Grant?

In Hollwyood, at the Improv, the following got major face time without advancing:

Stephen Glickman
Lizzie Cooperman
Alycia Cooper

Hey, was that Craig Shoemaker in the background, onstage at the end, when they were announcing the winners? And wasn't that Tig in the front of the pack as well? And no face time for either of them? What gives?

Ant must cease saying, "You better come back tonight and you better bring it!"

We know it's a TV show and we know they're cooking miles of tape down to 43 mintues or so, but the way they edit this thing, they're making the judges look alternately inconsistent, tyrannical, simple or just plain unfair.

We know for a fact that Sean Rouse is one of the funniest comics out there. Saw him kick mighty ass at the Chicago Fest in 2000. And his set was one of the highlights of the Dave Attell special. And we thought his brief joke on tonight's show was funny. But he had to be bleeped.

But he got through to the semis anyway.

We have no problem with that. But, mere moments before, the judges were castigating some poor auditioner for not having clean material.

And Rouse took his sweet old time getting to his punchline.

And we have no problem with that, either. But Ant and the other judges have little patience when other comics don't get to it quickly. They were cutting other people off who took half as long as Rouse did to get through a setup.

(Sure, we know Rouse probably had "special dispensation"-- management or representation that "guaranteed" (wink, wink) a spot. And we know that his rep probably preceded him. (Hell, Bodden or Madigan have probably worked with him at one point or another.)

But Mr. and Mrs. Average TV Viewer doesn't know this stuff. Somebody is making somebody look bad. We can tolerate a lot of negatives when it comes to being in a contest. But inconsistency is just too much. And we can tolerate a lot of negatives in a reality show, but bad editing is just too much. We suppose what we're saying is that they might take a little more care in making the playing field appear level. (Or, to put it like Det. Sipowicz, "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining!") Is full disclosure necessary? No, certainly not. But this hamhanded editing and the spectacle of the judges pretending not to know other comics who have 20 years in the business is ludicrous.

We have a suggestion: Since this is a reality TV show... How about a little REALITY?!? How's that for a novel concept?

Why is there so little real information about the comics? You'll learn more about Sean Rouse if you merely see him introduced at a showcase in Houston. But there is not one bit of information on the comedians, other than the "hometown" they superimpose over each and what little they reveal of themselves if/when they're interviewed on-camera. How about, "This next comic started doing standup while a student at Baylor. She moved to Los Angeles in 2005." Anything would be better than pretending that these folks have no history whatsoever.

And those montages! They have a purpose, to be sure. It breaks things up a bit and it's a good way to convey just how many comics are seen, etc. But, once in a while, an actual, professional, good comic ends up in one of them. It must be an embarassing moment for that act. Just because a comic makes a funny noise in a setup or a punchline, he or she has that one moment extracted and inserted into the middle of a montage with a bunch of amateurs making funny noises! What way to go! Oh, the ignominy!

What was that whole thing with Bodden and Madigan and the eye-rolling when more than one comic happened to do a bit about dating? Excuse me? We're not just judges now, but we're premise police are we? Sorry, but there's going to be some overlap, judges. If you can't distinguish between a good, well-written joke about dating and a poorly written and delivered joke about dating, then we have a problem with calling you a judge now, don't we? Get ready for some tough days ahead-- Very few of the comics have been working on their material about the Crimean War or Avogadro's Number. (It's 6.02 X 10 to the 23rd power, by the way. And, no, we did not peek.)

And, for Chrissakes, stop STOP playing the kid card. My kid needs shoes! My kid needs tuition! I miss my baby! I want to watch my kid grow up! Wah, wah, wah! We all know what you're up to. It worked for Fantasia Barrino, but this is comedy, not singing. Dream up an original way of milking this sympathy thing. Stop exploiting your kid(s)! Or do it an be funny! You're a comedian! Getting teary-eyed is not becoming!

On to Australia and the comedy club that's way too far away and therefore probably too expensive for Mitzi Shore to sue-- The Comedy Store!

(The Male Half and The Female Half actually took in a show there once, back in about 1992 or so, while visiting Sydney!)

They opened up with a reel of zany, slapsticky Aussie comics with a voiceover by Ant saying that "Australian comics must think that comedian means "court jester." Then, for the rest of the segment from down under, they showed a strong lineup of comedians doing (for the most part) well-written, thoughtful material. Again with the inconsistency!

Other comics who got face time down under:

Michael Williams
Claire Hooper
Sam Bowring

Gina Yashere said, and we're paraphrasing, "Working in the U.S. is every comic's dream." She's right. Even comics who live here have that dream.

Claire Hooper said that there were no female comedians to watch when she was growing up. Hmmm... Either she's 100 years old and she looks really good for her age... or, judging from the fact that three out of the seven comics that night in Sydney were female, it just plain doesn't matter who you're modeling yourself after.

Thea Vidale is the second (at least the second!) auditioner to have starred in his/her own ABC sitcom. (The other, of course, being Ralph Harris.) Her series ran for one season in 1993 and it was named Thea.

If you ask us, Bob Zany (seen during the credits tonight in brief clips of what must be next week's Minneapolis auditions) should have been a judge this season! Now, that would be entertaining!

NOTE: This posting was revised at 11:15 EDT. Thanks!

The U.K. Independent, for reasons that are unfathomable, features a pathetic 1,762-word rant by British comedian Alexei Sayle. All you need to know is contained in the sub-head, which, we're fairly certain, was provided by the Independent's editors:

Sour. Self-pitying. Cowardly. These are the defining characteristics of the stand-up comedian, argues Alexei Sayle.

The Independent has found a self-hating comedian to do their bidding. He proceeds to generalize about comics, and, in the end, turns out to be as sour, self-pitying and cowardly as anyone.

The occasion for such vitriol is the death of 76-year-old Brit comic Bernard Manning. Sayle's essay is an anti-eulogy of sorts.

Paragraph three:

I never met the man, nor wanted to, but have met and studied many like him, largely because his generation of old-time comedians present a frightening object lesson in the perils of what being a stand-up can do to you if you don't take care to ameliorate its more malevolent effects.

Emphasis ours. Sayle was no doubt tapped by the Independent for his unerring ability to take the perceived qualities of one individual and extrapolate it over an entire population. (Which, it would seem, is precisely the rap laid on poor Bernard Manning in his latter years.)

We've seen serial killers get a better send-off.

What makes this doubly frustrating is that the bottom third or so of the column contains decent, insightful analysis of standup. Why Sayle found it necessary to assail a dead comic is beyond us. Perhaps it was a requirement for publication in the Independent. No serious treatment of the artform unless it's prefaced by hackneyed, vicious stereotypes that play to our readers' worst instincts!

Read the rest here. If you come away with anything positive from this screed and feel compelled to write to us and defend it, save yourself the keystrokes and lie down until the urge goes away.

Return to SHECKYmagazine.com this evening-- We're going to drop a load of blog after the airing of Episode Two of LCS, sometime around 10:30 PM EDT. "The international search continues as the talent scouts go from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, in the search for the world's funniest new comic," says NBC.

Kevin Burke will perform Rob Becker's "Defending The Caveman" at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas six nights a week.

When we were in Vegas last, performing at the Riviera in February, Burke stopped by. He was in town to make final arrangements on the pending opening of DTC.

It opened June 1, and there are performances every night at 8 PM (Dark Tuesday ), with a matinee at 3 PM on Saturday and Sunday.

Go to the Montreal Just For Laughs website and click on the link to "Festival," then click on the link to "Toronto Festival."

There's going to be a three-day Just For Laughs... in Toronto, July 26-28 just after this year's fest in Montreal.

Hmmm... first the host hotel shifts a few blocks over and down to the Hyatt, now the fest continues on for another three days in another city.

We called the exodus of the Aspen fest from Aspen. Might the JFL be inching toward exit in Quebec? Or is it a pre-emptive strike? Something to forestall anyone from starting a rival fest in that Ontario burg? (They're bringing in heavy hitters-- Craig Ferguson, George Lopez and Howie Mandel-- so they mean business!)

Stay tuned!

The El Paso Times is reporting that Damon Wayans walked on a room full of fans five minutes before the second show Friday at the Comic Strip in El Paso, TX. According to the Times, Wayans got huffy when...

...5 minutes before his second show, two female friends were not immediately allowed into the club.

TMZ.com ran the EPT story as well, adding their own snarky comment.

We were treated poorly at the very same club once over a decade ago-- if we had it to do all over again, we woulda walked five minutes before showtime, too. So, we're curious as to Wayans' side of the story.

Ben Grossman, writing in Broadcasting & Cable, says that an unnamed source says that some NBC suits met with Jon Stewart and his agent.

"They just made their interest known in finding a way to do business together if Jon was ever available," says the source, who categorized the talks as "exploratory."

It gets interesting further down the page.

When the dust settles, the whole affair might make the Johnny/Letterman/Leno baton handover conflagration look like a shift change at the local mini-mart.

The network has some major decisions to make in the wake of its announcement that Conan O'Brien is scheduled to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in 2009. Leno is still printing money for NBC, and the show's profitability is even more important now, given the network's primetime struggles.

While NBC may decide to keep Leno and give O'Brien a reported $40 million payout...

Conan to Fox? Kimmell to the Home Shopping Network? Our world, it is rocked. Read the whole thing here.

Someone wrote to us and asked why the producers of the program didn't show Pete Dominick advancing to the next round. He was shown, however, on the premiere episode, during the Gotham tryouts. In fact, he was the first one chosen to advance, the first comic awarded the Red Ticket. But, mysteriously, the part where Dominick got his ticket was not in the final edit.

Turns out Dominick was asked, as a condition of his promotion to the Hollywood portion of the competition, to give up his two daily Sirius Satellite Radio shows. Dominick weighed the pros and cons and decided to keep the radio gig and forego the network television exposure.

Both shows are on the Raw Dog comedy channel. Comedy By Request airs weekdays, noon to 1. Getting Late airs weekdays at 11:15 PM.

Meta Wagner, writing in her Vox Pop column for PopMatters entitled "Surrender yourself to the attack of the comedians," seems somewhat surprised that comedians...

...through a combination of smarts, talent, and chicanery, have managed to infiltrate and conquer just about every field of entertainment, where they were once relegated to the role of "funnyman," and have even made inroads into the media, where they were once only the subject of reviews.

We've maintained all along that comedians have, since the days of vaudeville, acquired and maintained plenty of power. With the explosion of media choices via the internet and other modern doo-dads, their power has grown proportionately.

We're thinking of Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Danny Thomas, Milton Berle as examples of some, among many, who, from their notoriety in radio or television's early days, were able to roll it up into power, wealth and influence. Even in the days before standup was fully formed as it is today, Charlie Chaplin was one of the United Artists who ran a studio and Will Rogers dined with kings and presidents.

Wagner seems to think that the power derivers from some fanciful "speaking truth to power" formula. "It may at first seem absurd and more than a little frightening that comedians—people who tell jokes for a living—would have such sway in our culture." she says. It's hardly absurd and not at all frightening. But it's not as complicated and heavy as she makes it sound.

It's all about the funny. Babies can smile at birth and smiles have been spotted on babies in the last trimester of pregnancy, says an article on the Parenting website. Would it not make sense that people who specialize in provoking smiles-- and out and out laughter-- might wield tremendous power in the business of show?

Sorry. We couldn't come up with anything less blasphemous or more clever.

Anyway, this post is about a pair of upcoming tapings (in Nashville, TN, on the 23rd, and on Murfreesboro, TN, on the 24th) that will be edited into a full-length, theatrical release that will attempt to duplicate the success of the Blue Collar movie.

Only this time around, it's with "four of the funniest professional Christian comedians," Jeff Allen, Brad Stine, Ron Pearson and Anthony Griffin.

That there is a pretty strong lineup, no matter what your religious persuasion.

Read the entire article on "The Apostles of Comedy" in the Christian Post.

Comedian David Steinberg has a book out, called "The Book Of David." The Toronto Star calls it a "non-linear, blithely anachronistic and not always factual faux-biblical memoir of his life in the business."

"If this book gets me out there a little bit, then maybe I'll put myself out there again. I wouldn't go to the same venues again because I like to get in my jammies a little earlier than I did when I was younger, but maybe on the lecture circuit or something like that."

Read the Star's interview with Steinberg here.

Rex Morgan, Tom Wilson, Legendary Wid, at the bar at Helium (PHL) Friday night (Photo credit: Patricia Wall)

We found ourselves idle on a weekend and home, so what did we do? We visited a comedy club, of course. FOS John Kensil emailed us that he was in town and working with Tom Wilson at Helium, the Philadelphia comedy club that is just a train ride away.

Also on the bill was Chris White, whom readers may recall from his brief appearance on the premiere episode of LCS. (And, though the chyron said he was "from Washington, D.C.," he actually hails from Media, PA, making this bill, with Villanova's Wilson and Kensington's Kensil, an All-Philly-Area extravaganza.)

We were hanging in the green room when Rex Morgan and Patty Wall (with their adult child, Rachel, in tow) rounded the corner. (Morgan is a member of the comedy troupe Mixed Nuts, who rose to prominence at the Comedy Works at the exact same time that Wilson was honing his craft in anticipation of his eventual migration to Hollywood. Wall, as readers of this magazine know, is the person responsible for badgering the Male Half into doing his very first open mike, thus setting him on his current life/career path.)

Just when we thought the green room couldn't get any more raucous, The Legendary Wid entered the room. Wid also rose to prominence during the abovementioned era, making this evening a bizarre, historical Philly comedy confluence.

We trained home in time to catch yet another Philly comic-- on Conan. Paul F. Tompkins appeared on the late night NBC show in conjunction with his week at Comix in NYC.

Other Philly comic items? The issue of Maxim that's on the stands (the one with Sarah Silverman on the cover) mentions Todd Glass and Tompkins. The mention is in response to the question, "Who are your favorite comedians today?"

For readers in the Pacific Time Zone, be advised that NBC is re-running the premiere episode of Last Comic Standing on this very evening (Sunday). We're not sure if they plan to re-run every episode-- it might make good, cheap, summertime programming sense-- but tonight, you can catch it again... or for the first time, if you missed it.

And, if you're just now finding us, you can read our analysis of LCS by scrolling down a few posts on this very page.

And, if you're planning to watch the entire season (provided the ratings hold up and NBC chooses to air the entire season), stop back here Wednesday night and catch our analysis of the next episode, too!

The Minneapolis Star-Turbine has an obit for William Fleming, who died June 6, at the age of 79, from pneumonia. The first few grafs pay attention to his work as an attorney and his involvement with MPLS-area theater and his work as a playwright.

Then, there's this, in paragraph six:

...His dry, droll comedy hit the national scene when routines he had penned such as "Hi There, Fun Seekers" and "Look Back in Dullness" were performed by Jackie Vernon on the Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Ed Sullivan shows.

The Male Half often cites Vernon as a very early influence. He recalls seeing Vernon actually doing the Fun Seekers bit on Sullivan, but remembers little else, other than it was hysterical, even to his single-digit-aged sensibilities.

Just got a comment on our giant LCS wrapup posting. It goes like this:

Letting the pros in on this is a flawed concept. I want to see people trying to get their first break-- not a bunch of people I know are getting paid and don't really need the money-- just more exposure. Who would have thought the execs at NBC could be so dumb. Do they think that none of their viewers have Comedy Central in their cable plans? Last year I was shocked to see folks like Gabriel Iglesias. Is NBC taping this stuff and leaving it on a shelf for a year, or what? Let's see...how many professionals have I seen on a show that's billed like an amateur contest? Arj Barker, Ralph Harris, Sabrina Matthews, Dwayne Kennedy, Amy Schumer, Doug Benson, etc.. It's like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston showing up to audition for American Idol. You know the real amateurs have NO shot. Even worse, a lot of the pros use some of their same material. It's like a pathetic rerun of routines I've already seen. If you've already been on TV, you should not be allowed to be on this show! Comedy Central already has a contest for the best stand-up of the season. Maybe they should offer prize money to lure these camera hogs away from those trying to get their first break.

Where do we begin with this big pile of dumb?

At the top.

Letting the pros in on this is a flawed concept. I want to see people trying to get their first break-- not a bunch of people I know are getting paid and don't really need the money-- just more exposure.

Watching a bunch of "people trying to get their first break" doing standup comedy would be a mixture of painful, boring and largely unfunny. How do we know this? Because the vast majority of standup comics start out as painful, boring and largely unfunny. It takes a long time to get good at it.

As for who needs the money and who doesn't, we'd like to see the magic formula determining exactly who might "need the money."

(H)ow many professionals have I seen on a show that's billed like an amateur contest?

Last Comic Standing is not now, nor has it ever been, "billed like an amateur contest." It is a reality series that seeks to find "the funniest new comedian in the world." (According to NBC's own website.) By "new," they mean new as in undiscovered or not known to the general public. Arj Barker may have had a special on Comedy Central, but the audience for a cable outlet isn't large enough to make anyone a mainstream star, especially compared to the power of a network television outlet like NBC.

To the comedy fan, Barker, Benson, Matthews, et al, may be familiar names. To the watchers of Comedy Central, they might seem to be stars, but to the average NBC viewer, they are "new" and the audience is "discovering" them for the first time, with the help of LCS.

The website also says that the three talent scouts are "traveling across the globe to find the best professional and aspiring comedians." But the word "amateur" is never used.

It's like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston showing up to audition for American Idol.

Actually, no, it isn't. The rules on Idol specify that a contestant cannot have previously had a recording contract. We believe that Ms. Dion and Ms. Houston have each been recording for the better part of twenty years. But Idol is clearly an amateur talent contest. LCS is not.

We're puzzled by the public's constant confusion of the two formats.

Let us end this posting by quoting ourselves. From a comment that we posted yesterday:

The first season featured a good number of seasoned veterans of comedy. As has each consecutive season. As does this season. In spite of the efforts of the producers to ram green comics into the process, it is the experienced ones who stand out, who make an impact in their brief turns or who eventually dominate the final ten.

If it were up to us, there would be even more experienced comics vying for the top prize. If it were up to us, this silly town-by-town "talent search" conceit would be replaced by an invitation-only process, based on review of video tapes, submitted by comics themselves or by their representation. But that somehow goes against the already calcified conventions of reality TV-- a genre that, though only a decade old, has already veered into self-parody.

FOS Nick Zaino promises to dedicate some of his new blog, The Optimistic Curmudgeon to comedy.

His first such posting details the baffling LCS appearance by Boston-area comic Chris Coxen who failed to advance to the evening showcase at Gotham during Wednesday night's premiere. His Combat Dancing character was met with... puzzlement.

Zaino writes frequently and eloquently on the subject of standup for the Boston Globe.

In an interview in the Santa Clarita Valley Signal with Alonzo Bodden, the Season 3 Winner continues the ruse:

Commenting on season five of Last Comic Standing, Bodden was vague.

"I can't give away any inside information. But don't make any bets with me because I know who they picked," he said.

Okay. Make bets with us, then! We bet the top ten chosen are:

Gerry Dee
Deb DiGiovanni
Amy Schumer
Dante
Jon Reep
Ralph Harris
Matt Kirshen
Doug Benson
Lavelle Crawford
Gina Yashere

So far, only a handful of websites out there have driven some traffic to our Deluxe LCS Spoiler Info-Nugget, most notable among them being FOS Raven Snook's TV Guide LCS Blog. For them we are grateful. As for the rest of you out there, what is your problem?

P.S.: Just as we predicted Wednesday night, "Mel Silverback" is the most googled name out of all the names from the premiere of the series.

Also: Zap2It.com says that the first hour of LCS came in third behind the second hour of So You Think You Can Dance on ABC and CBS's Criminal Minds. The second hour finished with respectable numbers finishing second to CSI:NY.

However, since the numbers can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, James Hibberd of TVWeek.com says that the show "gave NBC its best Wednesday evening since February." So, it looks like, at least for now, NBC's not going to Bodden* anybody this year.
__________

* Bodden: v. to disrespect by not airing the final episode in which one is announced as the actual winner of a several-weeklong reality series.

An article on NewKerala.com, a news and infotainment cite covering India and the region, tells of a new series:

Comedy Circus, a new reality-based comedy format show to be aired on Sony entertainment television from tomorrow, will have popular television actors... team up with seven well known stand up comedians in their bid to make the viewers laugh.

Watch for it to migrate to American television soon. Retitled So, You Think You Can Kill, U.S. producers will give their version a slight twist or two, adding a dunk tank segment, partial nudity and limiting the competition to celebrities who have been in rehab within the last 36 months. And celebs will be coached by comedians Dustin Diamond, Andy Dick and Ant. Because it just wouldn't be standup comedy without humiliation, freaks and the faint whiff of failure.

Steve Heisler, writing for TimeOut Chicago, interrogates Patton Oswalt, giving him a chance to say some interesting things about the alternative vs. mainstream debate.

But also keep in mind a lot of, um, 90 percent of mainstream comedians are just boring people and 90 percent of alternative comedians are bad comedians. You know? Alternative comedy came out of comedians who'd been doing it so fucking long that they just got bored with it and started fucking around and getting more personal and more experimental. So a lot of these comedians that just started off just as alternative comedians never went through the "just becoming good comedians" first. Does that make sense? It's like a chef starting out going, "I'm gonna be, like, the guy at Alinea or the guy at Moto." It's like, Well, no, you need to learn how to just cook an omelette first. [Changes voice]"Fuck that! I'm gonna do like a weird fusion thing where you've gotta wear a silver hat and…." No, dude, just... I bet the guys at Moto and Alinea, if you just gave them a pan and three eggs, they could make the best omelette you've ever eaten; but they could do it without thinking, so that's boring for them. Does that make sense?

The omelette metaphor (or is that a simile?) is perfect.

We recently came to a tentative conclusion that a lot of agents and managers abused the "alternative" label, passing off their clients as alt acts to provide a sort of cover for their client's inexperience. (An alternative stage was one venue where a comic's seemingly offhanded delivery and/or lack of slick was perceived as an asset rather than a liability.) Of course, in the case of many of the early alt acts, that delivery was achieved through years of working at standup in the traditional way, then deconstructing things. To put it another way, it was a studied and intentional lack of polish. Less than 48 hours later, we read Oswalt saying basically the same thing.

Somehow, FOS Lisa Corrao discovered that she and an animator at an outfit called 4EyedAnimation shared the same last name. One thing led to another and she ended up with this nifty animated short that married a bit of hers with the quirky, Crickfalusian animation that the Brooklyn-based studio incorporates into Flash animation, websites and Shockwave games.

The Male Half is envious. Some years ago, he discovered that he and a hotshot artist-producer at Disney share both a first and a last name-- look it up, "Brian McKim" is in the credits in nearly every animated Disney project from Little Mermaid to the present-- yet the eponymous animator answered not one email.

Let's all breathe deeply... Innnnn... Ouuutttt...

Once more... Innnnn... Ouuutttt...

Let's go to our happy place.

Ant is a judge. Ant is telling people that they must come up with something original.

Let's just leave that hang in the air for a second or two.

Innnnn... Ouuuutttt...

So far, no Buck Star, no strippers.

Auditions in New York, Montreal, San Antonio.

First the raw data:

From New York (taped at Gotham):

Lori Chase
Amy Schumer
Joe DeVito
Arj Barker
Dwayne Kennedy
Jane Condon (Capital One Audience Favorite)

From Montreal (taped at Kola Note):

Mel Silverback
Deb DiGiovanni
Gerry Dee

From San Antonio (taped at the Rivercenter Comedy Club):

Andi Smith
Sabrina Matthews
Ralph Harris (Capital One Audience Favorite)

Of course, NBC couldn't help but ratchet up the geek/freak quotient, but, hey, that's reality television for you. You gotta give the people what you've conditioned them to expect, after all!

Ant didn't come off nearly as bitchy as we were told he was in reality. He was positively serene. (We loved Madigan's slam when Ant got itchy and tried to ditch an auditioner just a little too quickly-- "Your hair's on! You're sitting down, c'mon!")

But we still have trouble with Ant being a judge, a talent scout, whatever they call them. San Antonio auditioner J.R. Brow got in a nice dig when Ant told him, "We'd love to have you come back tonight and bomb." Brow replied, "Okay. I'll do your stuff." Bang! Zoom! Right back at you, segmented one!

(One thing we can conclude is that comics are basically nice people. How do we conclude this? Well, flash back to the first few episodes of each of the last six seasons of American Idol. Lots of bitchiness, arguments, feuding. Lots of diva-like behavior and more than a few, "Oh, yeah? Well, you can just go fuck yourself Simon, because I'm going to come back some day and piss on all y'all!" So far, the only blood drawn was by Brow's smackdown-- and that was delivered with the idiot grin/bemused look that comics effect when they know they're delivering one below the belt! When comics are ascribed all those nasty attributes, perhaps it's singers they have in mind, not us comedians.)

But we come back to it: Ant telling comics to come up with something original? As the Female Half astutely points out, Ant wouldn't make it past Ant!

And any regular reader of this magazine probably cringed when the Talent Scouts were depicted throwing fruit at the target on the front of the t-shirt of one NYC auditioner. Throwing fruit at the comic! A timeworn cliche if there ever was one, probably dating back to before vaudeville! It matters not that he was wearing a target on his chest. Someone-- everyone!-- should have known better.

Big Issue: What is the producers' obsession with inexperienced comics? When Bodden said to Montreal aud DeeAnne Smith, "You're funny, but you're not ready." he summed up our thoughts well. We wonder why the producers don't heed this sage advice. What good is a Bravo special going to do someone who is in this for three years? Or four, even? They'll be forced to buy material, lots of it, but they'll still hafta deal with the annoying gestures and the quirks and the overdone facial expressions that eventually disappear when folks get experienced and confident. Some folks might find all that endearing, but audiences would probably not be charmed over a 30- or 40-minute set.

Compare some of the greener comics to Phil Palisoul, Roy Wood, Jr. or Costaki Economopoulos-- they're polished, they're calm, they've crafted jewel after jewel which they've woven into lengthy sets that have been road-tested in front of countless crowds or at innumerable showcases. How does youth and or good looks trump that when you're searching for "The Funniest Comic In The World?"

Hey, why didn't Capital One give out $1,000 to the Audience Favorite in Montreal? They could actually have saved a few bucks and given out $1,000 Canadian!

And why didn't they mention that Montreal is host to the largest comedy festival in the world every year? And considering that many of the fest's events are held in the very venue that L.C.S. taped in for the Montreal portion of the show, the omission is even more screwy.

We didn't recognize any of the Montreal comics, except for Scott Faulconbridge. There are a lot of great Montreal comedians. Sad not to see them at least scurrying around in the background on those greenroom/backstage shots!

Mel Silverback (aka Dan Licoppe) is giving everyone conniptions, apparently. They let a guy through wearing a gorilla suit, goes the main theme of the whining. We gotta say, though, that the guy, er, the ape actually made us laugh. We honestly don't think that a gorilla would take the whole enchilada, of course, but letting him through to the next round is no more ridiculous than promoting someone who does, say, a character. Like Larry the Cable Guy... or Jose Jimenez. Would anyone be inclined to watch a gorilla in a club for 45 minutes? Stranger things have happened.

We gotta say that Mel's act, strange as it may have been, was better-constructed and more carefully written than a lot of folks who weren't wearing a gorilla suit and a tuxedo.

(We predict that our stats will be filled with google searches for "Mel Silverback" He'll make one of the larger cyber-splashes. Of course, a good number of them will be for "Mel Silverberg," from people who don't get half the joke. Other Google monsters will be Devito and Harris.)

The Joke of the Day. What was that? It should be called, "Are you funnier than a fifth grader?"

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Lame-ass jokes for $2.99 per month Standard Text Messaging Rates Apply open to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older.

Lame-ass jokes for $2.99 per month Standard Text Messaging Rates Apply open to legal U.S. residents age 18 and older who?

Orange you glad I didn't say banana? Hysterical!!!

The first punchline is "A bucaneer." For the third joke, "What's orange and sounds like a parrot?" the punchline is, "Kathleen Madigan!" Jussst Kidding!

Other comics who got major face time:

In NYC:

Pete Dominick
Victor Vornado
Big Jay Oakerson
Wali Collins
Michelle Buteau
Chris White
Costaki
Calise Hawkins
Matt Kazam

In Montreal:

Richard Ryder
Ryan Belleville
Graham Clarke
Alan Park
Trevor Boris
DeAnne Smith
James Cunningham

In San Antonio:

Bob Biggerstaff
Robert Hawkins
Roy Wood, Jr.
Phil Palisoul
Billy D. Washington
Dean Lewis
Johnny Elbow

Host Bill Bellamy is inoffensive and not much of a factor so far. (And has apparently struck such a sweet deal that he didn't even have to travel to San Antonio or Montreal. Even Seacrest has to hump his ass to Birmingham every year!)

And a shout out to Philly boy Ralph Harris! (The Female Half and Harris were in the same open mike class over the river, back in the mid-80s!)

Once again, for those of you who have scrambled aboard only recently, the ten finalists for this season will be:

Gerry Dee
Deb DiGiovanni
Amy Schumer
Dante
Jon Reep
Ralph Harris
Matt Kirshen
Doug Benson
Lavelle Crawford
Gina Yashere

Stay tuned.

An article in USA Today by Gary Strauss features the previous seasons' winners and does a "Where are they now" number on them.

We were on the horn with Verizon this morning... we've been having some connectivity problems since... well... since we signed on with Verizon. Before that, it was problems with Earthlink. This DSL thing should've had all the bugs worked out by now, right? No matter. If need be, we'll rent a hotel room and blog from there, so determined are we to weigh in on this conflagration known as Last Comic Standing. Just thought we would let you know. Just so you don't wonder if there's a delay.

The countdown begins... or continues. No matter-- we are going to be watching the new season of the hit NBC reality show Last Comic Standing starting at 9 PM EDT.

Sometime after 9 PM (We're not quite sure when), we'll hammer out our inimitable commentary on the show-- who did what, how does it reflect on standup in general, what might happen in future episodes, etc.

We have competition this year... sorta. NBC says that the show's host, Bill Bellamy, will immediately be "blogging" after the show. (We suspect that the ultra-cool producers-- or newly hired PA's-- will be the ones who are doing the actual blogging.)

Either way, bookmark this site and come back in the next 26 hours or so to see what we think. And you folks in Mountain Time and Pacific Time will be advised that the potential for spoilers is high!

Comedian Brian Mann is producing a series of shows at the Long Beach Playhouse that books nothing but clean comedians over the age of 40. In an article in the Press-Telegram, Mann says:

Mann found it at the Playhouse, when he called (LBPH Managing Director Gigi) Fusco-Meese to see if she might be interested. When he got the go-ahead, he started lining up comics. The main caveat: keep it clean.

But Mann also wanted to give opportunities to older comedians - including himself.

And so, a monthly series is born. It's the first Sunday of every month at the Playhouse.

Did anyone see Don Rickles on Late Late Show last night? Who knew that Rickles has a book on the NYT best-seller list? It's called "Don Rickles' Book" and in it, he tells how, among other things, Sinatra gave him his big break.

We couldn't help but notice that he bore a startling resemblance to someone... someone familiar... another comic? Is it Jim Norton? Jim Norton in "The Don Rickles Story?" Would that be boffo, or what?!

On another network, was Wanda Sykes, who appeared on Tonight.

A brief Hollywood Today interview with Sykes is notable only because she floats the notion of her portraying Moms Mabley in a biopic.

She sees humor in the future of the country but when asked about her next move Sykes did sincerely share the hope of portraying one of her inspirations, groundbreaking African-American comedian Moms Mabley and assured that there is more to come from her career.

That would be perfect. If they make it, we hope they don't give it to a non-comic.

Does anyone even mention Dustin Hoffman as Lenny? Movie fans don't. Standup fans don't. It's time to make another one. (The Female Half recalls that Rich Vos portrayed Bruce in American Dreams.)

It's not in Seattle proper, but Dave Dennison's new Laughs Comedy Spot is in Kirkland, just across Lake Washington. It is there, in the eastern 'burbs, the so-called Greater Eastside of the Emerald city, that Dennison is realizing his dream. It opened last week with Doug Stanhope. Click here for the saga of owner Dennison and click on the other pages to see who's coming, how to get there and what to eat.

A Meath Chronicle article
on a new series on Irish TV that follows six comedians as they venture back to their old schools to investigate what made them comedians.

Throughout the series, not only do we get to see a range of comic styles, from the laid-back story-telling of Niall Tobin to the boundless energy of Jason Byrne, but we also get a glimpse at the social mix that made up Irish schools in decades past.

We've always held that the class clowns are the ones who don't become comedians. More often than not, it's the shy, quiet ones who display a sense of humor in more subtle ways who grow into adults that, in turn, grow into comedians, at least that's been our experience.

And, conversely, the ones who say, "All my buddies told me that I'm such a card that I should try this standup thing," are the ones who, quite often, have a disastrous experience at their first (and last) open mike.

They might be surprised at what they find. Of course, things might be different in Ireland. The loud and hyperactive ones might actually be the ones who mount the stage and become the comics.

No matter what, it is interesting that a series is going to afford viewers some honest insight into six artists (comedians!), without taking the cheapshot route, without, it seems, any hostility.

Are there any TV executives here in America willing to rip off this particular series idea? That would be refreshing.

In followup AP stories, this was found:

From now until the end of September, they said, travelers would be allowed to fly to those destinations if they present government-issued identification, such as a driver's license, and a receipt from a State Department Web site showing they had applied for a passport.

Kinda important. Not sure why it was left out.

We sounded the alarm when restrictions on travel kicked in. We warned that folks who were planning to fly to (and from) Canada for JFL had better get their apps in for a passport, as that document would be needed to return to the good ol' USA.

It seems as though these warnings (not just ours, but the MSM's mostly) caused a stampede and the subsequent backlog at the passport processing centers. So, the folks in Washington have eased the requirements.

The proposal would temporarily lift a requirement that U.S. passports be used for citizens flying to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The rule, and its suspension, does not affect Americans driving across the Canadian or Mexican borders...

It's still a good idea to get that passport. It's just not as urgent as it was.

According to KCStar columnist Hearne Christopher Jr., "For the first time in decades neither south Kansas City nor Overland Park has a front-line stand-up comedy club." Fear not, say the owners of Stanford & Sons, they're opening a new one in the western burbs of Wyandotte County.

"Let's face it, that is the new entertainment district in Kansas City. It's really going to turn our city around, and we're glad to be a part of it. Wait till you see it-- you’ll feel like you're on a television or movie set."

Is chicken wire a part of the new design? (We seem to recall an audio interview (on Cringehumor.com) with Rich Vos making the rounds a while back in which he described a chaotic fistfight in the front rows of Stanford & Sons. It seems K.C. comedy fans are always up for a good brawl!)

The northern equivalent of Comedy Central has announced their 10th anniversary season slate of shows, some imported (from England or from the U.S.) and some original, like:

The Jon Dore Show stars award-winning comedian Jon Dore whose flat out crazy take on life is told through an array of real-life interviews, off-the-wall tangents and wild antics. Topics include: performing as a male stripper to help cure the blahs; getting help from a Hypnotist to squash a smoking addiction; and enlisting the services of an army drill sergeant to whip himself into shape. The 13-part, half-hour series is The Comedy Network's newest original production.

It would seem that standup comics are perfect frontmen/women for reality shows. This occurred to us as we watched Kathy Griffin's D-List premiere last night.

Has Comedy Central ever imported anything from our Canadian neighbors, besides Kids In The Hall? Or The Red Green Show?

We sent in our Festival Just For Laughs accreditation forms yesterday, so it looks like we're headed north again, for the ninth year in a row. (Nine years in a row? Whatever will we find to talk about?) Note to Comedy Channel: How about you break with tradition and actually INVITE US TO THE COMEDY NETWORK JFL PARTY? We always find out about it second- or third- or fourth-hand and we end up getting in anyway. Or, if you don't find it in yourselves to invite us, can you at least throw us out in a very public and very dramatic manner, so we at least have something spectacular to write about? (We suppose we could fake it. We could concoct a story in which Comedy Network officials discover us drinking free Labatts and eating free smoked meat and toss us out onto the concrete while shouting incomprehensible epithets in Frenglish, but that is so Hunter Thompson-ish, so 1973.)


Perhaps we could wangle an invite through our "good buddy" (and newly minted TCN star) Jon Dore (seen above with The Male Half at the 2005 Festival Just For Laughs).

Reads the headline in a fantasy world.



Witness the illustration on the front page of the NBC website (above). It's a "comic" from Australia. We suppose that a still of a white male or female dressed normally (which, we suppose would be the vast majority of the folks auditioning) is a real yawn, so the dress-ups and the screamers and the scary-haired ones make it into the website thumbnails for the video samples. And into the trailers.

"Sydney Auditions- Oz's Shining Star" reads the title of one video. The subtitle reads, "The only funny man in Australia?" So... they've managed to diss an entire continent's comedians. Nice! (We suppose they have a twist. It'll probably come out that they're only being provocative, but it's rather unnerving that they feel they have to go that route.)

In the main trailer, Bill Bellamy briefly interviews an auditioner, a female. It is discovered that it's her first time doing standup. Why she was included in the trailer is mysterious.

In the comments under the trailer, some folks weigh in on the rookie, with one, Casey R., who says, "Her name is Jamie Greenberg and she was seriously the most insane person I have ever met. One time she was drunk in the dining hall and got up on the table and screamed out 'eat my ____'"

NBC undoubtedly has good lawyers.

We suppose one of the main things we'll be keeping an eye on is how this circus-- the promotion of the show, the show itself, the commentary, the website-- reflects on standup comics and live comedy in general. So far, it's... less than positive.

Always a good time in Raleigh. It's one of the few clubs with a house emcee. In this case, it's Ray Wagner. We entertained ourselves in the green room (which was, in another life, the building's elevator shaft) by watching chunks of Wagner's DVD. It's a melange of short films, some live action, some animated, some performance.

Especially well done is his Orange County Moppers video. (Click to see it on YouTube.)


Goodnights house emcee Ray Wagner (Myspace site), though only 5'10", dwarfs The Male Half through photo trickery (and a stool). In the greenroom at Goodnights. Photo credit: Female Half

Speaking of well done, we once again enjoyed the fine cuisine from Richard, Goodnight's chef. (We regret that we forgot to bid farewell, so focused were we on exiting and heading north.)

We plan to use June to shoot and edit one, maybe two, of our short film projects. We'll be homebound for a good portion of the month, with only local or regional gigs that won't take us away from SHECKYmag HQ for very long.

Of course, we'll take breaks from our cineastic endeavors to blog on Last Comic Standing. As in seasons past, we'll do it in near-real time, meaning that we'll watch it, and post our impressions as soon as we stop spluttering and finish typing.

Stay tuned.

We can't make this shit up.

39-year-old Patrick Knight will die June 26, barring any meddling from well-meaning but misguided nitwits. He killed his neighbors. Shot them to death. They were Walter and Mary Werner. It was nearly 16 years ago.

Now, as he is snuffed out, he wants his last words to be... funny.

This hump wants to go out with a chuckle.

So far, he's received over 250 "wisecracks," as AP likes to call them.

Knight said he got the idea for a joke as his last statement after a friend, Vincent Gutierrez, was executed earlier this year and laughed from the death chamber gurney: "Where's a stunt double when you need one?"

We hope this isn't a trend. We fear it may already be.

We wonder how much he'll pay per gag. Don't take a check.

Oh, and one more thing: Don't send him any joke that has to be explained.

An article on Backstage.com ("Where Can Comics Go Without Sitcoms?") by Andrew Salomon tells of the changing landscape in Hollywood. The lack of sitcoms is creating a slow panic among agents, managers and comics. The argument is made that it is now somehow more difficult for a comedian to get a sitcom built around him. Of course it is, but only marginally so.

According to an October report in Entertainment Weekly, there were 62 comedies on the fall schedule in 1997; last season, there were 20. Earlier this month, at the upfront presentations in New York, the five broadcast networks announced there will be only 17 comedies during the 2007-08 season (21 if you count the four animated shows on Fox on Sunday nights). For the first time in 30 years, NBC -- the network of Cheers, Seinfeld, Frasier, and Friends -- picked up no new comedies.

To review: A decade ago, there were 62; This season, there will be 17.

Veteran comedy publicist and manager Glenn Schwartz bemoans the paucity of sitcoms:

"Economically, television has changed, so there are less scripted shows in favor of reality shows and game shows, and that's simply because they're profitable," said Schwartz, whose clients have ranged from Milton Berle to Lewis Black. "No network feels an obligation to its audience to say, 'Well, gee, it would be better to create the next Seinfeld... as opposed to [showing] bingo in prime time.'"

This should not come as a shock to anyone-- Networks behaving in a pack, pursuing only that which is profitable. And, as fewer sitcoms are developed, fewer pilots are shot. As fewer pilots are shot, fewer sacks of cash (or "development deals") are pushed across the table to comics and their agents and managers.

But, like we said, the odds were always thin. Now they're razor-like.

Then, there's this from comic Eric Lyden:

"The hardest thing about comedy is being where you're at and not focusing on the brass ring," he said. "The trouble is, in this business the brass ring is very, very attractive. It's TV, it's fame, it's money, and there's a very, very good chance you're not going to be the next Seinfeld... Are you okay with just being a comedian? I wrestle with that. Some days it's yes, some days it's absolutely not."

Are you okay with just being a comedian? A lot of comedians have been conditioned to answer "no." A decade ago, agents and managers were telling their clients (and anyone else within earshot) that "there's no money in personal appearances." This caused considerable discontent among many comics who felt that honing the act was a giant waste of time. Pity.

It would seem a good and smart move to hone the act, though. How many comics have made the jump to television and movies and then resumed the personal appearances? Even Seinfeld himself-- the comic by which most comics measure their lives, their careers, their worth-- returned to personal appearance. How many comics are filling theaters right now? How many have done so without benefit of a sitcom or a major motion picture role? Are we seeing a reappraisal of the "no money in personal appearances" mantra? It seems that it has always been a good idea to be the best comic one could be.

If you're a comedian, being a good comedian and making your living via standup should always be your Plan A.

We're in Raleigh, at Goodnights. It should be a good weekend-- One show tonight, two Saturday, one Sunday.

Josh Blue headlines here next week. Which reminds us-- Last Comic Standing fires up in just 12 days. Lavelle Crawford (Top ten LCS comic this season) was just here. Jon Reep, another Season V Top Ten Comic is coming in September, the week of the finale. Rumor has it that erstwhile SHECKYmagazine columnist (and son of Raleigh) Dan French will be opening for Reep.

P.S.: Check out our newly updated schedule to see where we'll be through the end of 2007!

AP tells of an ingenious publicity stunt cooked up by the Laugh Factory. They've signed Jon Lovitz to a contract to appear at the Hollywood comedy club every Wednesday night for the rest of his life.

As part of the deal, the 49-year-old Saturday Night Live alum will also write a Laugh Factory blog giving advice to up-and-coming comedians.

Lovitz giving advice to up-and-comers? How's that work? The actor comedian only recently plunged into standup, so he does have that in common with the newbies. But, let's face it, he had a bit of an advantage that most folks don't have.

Blog Entry Number One

It will help you tremendously if, before you attempt standup for the first time, you appear regularly on a late-night sketch comedy show on a major network. I chose Saturday Night Live-- You may have heard of it, it was on NBC, I think. You might have other television shows in mind. Any will do, really. That way, when you go onstage at, say, the Laugh Factory, you'll have that tiny advantage of instant recognition by nearly every person in the English-speaking world.

If you can't log several seasons on a major network television show, try imagining the audience in their underwear. Yeah... That's the ticket!

Thanks to Al Romas for the tip!