We missed this comment, at the bottom of Joe Stender's piece in the Eagle Eye (see posting from earlier today, below). The commenter calls himself "Franklin Delano Roosevelt," so we initially suspected it to be a gag. After reading it, we're inclined to believe that the idiot is sincere. We run it here in its entirety.

Yes. Laughter can be wonderful for those experiencing the laughing, however, your article has completely failed to acknowledge the suffering and humiliation experienced by those being laughed at! To them, anything ranging from mild chuckles to hearty laughter can be an extraordinarily terrorizing experience.

Put yourself in this situation: You're a 13 year old middle schooler. Its lunch time and your the quiet type. However, unbeknownst to you, your about the be the focus of 250 of your peers! You gather your lunch onto your tray, get one of those chocolate milk cartons and pay the lunch lady. This is very routine for you. Typically you would advance to a corner table and sit with your head down until your food is consumed and the bell rings, but today my friend, today is a-typical. The lunch lady suddenly gets an itch just above her ankle but instead of bending down to scratch it she bends as the knee raising her foot from the ground. Just then you catch your leg on it and before you have the chance to react you find yourself on the floor with sloppy joe in your hair, JoJo potatoes behind your left ear and apple sauce covering your face. The entire room beings to laugh at you! According to you, this is just another phenomenal experience in which all 250 peers get the chance to laugh in unison and exponentially increase their happiness! Hurrah!!!

However, now we turn our attention to the subject of this wonderful laughter. Unfortunately we discover that this child has not only abandoned his delicately spiced sloppy joe and potatoes but he has left the cafeteria humiliated, crying and severely emotionally impaired. This child will become more reclusive (which unfortunately can lead to "lashing out" behavior, which can be extremely destructive and dangerous on many levels) and potentially remain impaired for a large portion of their lives.

I ask this of you:

Is laughing such a wonderful thing that we can appreciate it knowing it has permanently damaged the lives of good people? I think not!

Of course, the commenter is a total moron. Nearly every joke has a victim or an object. Otherwise, the joke is weakened, the laughter diluted, the humor and purpose lost.

The commenter here is utterly humorless. He looks at the world in a narrow and unhealthy way. For him, laughter is bad and painful. Life is miserable.

We're glad we don't live in his world.

We're piecing together what went on in Tempe at the recent (Tuesday) LCS auditions there at the Improv. We haven't gotten a large data dump on Tempe like we did on all the other audition cities. (And, although we've run into Bill Bellamy on two recent occasions, we weren't there oursevles!)

So far, we've gleaned the following info:

From an (unnamed) comedian's blog, we learned that, "A large Black pretty women, A Veteran to the craft, A good looking tattooed impressionist, A tall high energy Jewish guy, and a Good Looking guy that made it past the rounds in another season of LCS were all picked." (He's remaining unnamed because, after all, he didn't actually name anyone who got through! Hereinafter, he shall be referred to as "the diminutive, high-energy, Midwest comic.")

This much we know:

Adam Hunter
Alycia Cooper

Got through. Our educated guess is that Cooper is the "large Black pretty women (sic)" and Hunter is "a Good Looking guy." (Hunter doesn't make the "Jew-y" needle jump.)

Now, all we have to do is nail down the "good looking tattoed impressionist," the "tall high energy Jewish guy," and the comic who is described only as "A Veteran to the craft." (We've noticed that the diminutive, high-energy Midwest comic is extremely "lookist!" And he has an allergy to punctuation!)

UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that Adam Hunter in indeed Jewish. So... that means that he has been switched to "tall, high energy Jewish guy." And now, we must figure out who "a Good Looking guy" is.

It is rumored that "a Good Looking guy" might be Josh Wolf, who, you'll recall was one of the two comics presented in a previous season of LCS as winners of the online component of the competition. He was beaten by Theo Von.

The "good looking tattoed impressionist," it has been speculated, is Marcus. Just one name. Marcus.

We apologize to Mr. Hunter for denying his Jewish heritage. (Actually, we didn't think he looked as un-Jewish as he looked un-tall.)

UPDATE 02/29: We found out that tall high energy Jewish guy is Bryan Kellen and Phil Palisoul is a Veteran of the craft. Now... is it possible that the Josh Wolf rumor is simply that?

An article in the Eagle Eye, the online newspaper of Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania entitled "The Funny Thing About Laughter" contains the following quote:

But it got me thinking about how great it must feel to be a comedian. I mean seriously, they get to go up on stage for an hour to tell jokes and make fun of people, and they get paid for it. Heck, I do that with my friends all the time and I don't get a single nickel for it. The pleasure that these guys get from their job must be awesome.

The article's author, student Joe Stender is reflecting on seeing Jim Gaffigan perform this past Friday night, an event he describes as "one of the most hilarious times I have ever had in my life."

We excerpt it and link to it here for multiple reasons. It reminds us of just how thrilling it is for most audience members to be in that audience, in the dark, watching a solo performer bathed in light executing what must be one of the most puzzling and exhilarating tricks in all of show business-- making a roomful of people react in unison, with hearty laughter, to nothing more than the spoken word.

It makes us recall our first time in a club. It is sometimes difficult to connect with that feeling, that sense of awe we felt when the lights went down and the comic walked out and we surrendered to the jokes and we were transported. When the secrets, the mechanics, the glare of the hot lights, the feel of the wave of laughter hitting us in the chest was all still a mystery.

The writer experiences this same classic, simultaneous attraction/repulsion-- I must do this... There is no way I can attempt this!

And then we contrast the feelings and emotions we experience when we're onstage our selves with that initial impression as a novice audience member. Are we overcome with the joy of making people laugh? Are we acutely aware of just how "awesome" it is to "tell jokes and make fun of people, and... get paid for it?" No, not really. We appreciate it, but no to the point of being overcome. We're conscious of it, but not overly so. But this is not some sort of tragedy. It is a natural progression.

The Female Half likens it to the inevitable (and necessary) evolution from the torrid, bumping-into-walls infatuation of courtship into the solid, loving, dependable (but no less desirable) love of a great marriage.

It serves us well to recall the feeling we had when we were just starting out as performers. And it is also useful to try to remember what it was like when we were merely fans.

From a column by The Male Half:

I went to a live comedy show for the first time. It was a cheap date: $2 to get in, see eight comics (eight!), give them another $2 and you could stay in your seat and see eight more! I saw a rapid-fire lineup of eight of the founding fathers of Philadelphia comedy doing 10-minute sets. Clay Heery, Mike Eagan, Rameesh Kajirian, Stuart Roberts, Sam Hollis, Bob and Bob, Ben Kurland and one other comic, whose name escapes me, put on a tremendous show in the intimate confines of the Jailhouse. The building is no longer standing. I was hooked on live comedy after that.

I went to two more live shows in the next 18 months. I saw Eagan again, Adrian Tolsch, Steve Young and Tom Wilson in two separate shows at the Comedy Works.

The Female Half, at the tender age of 12, accompanied her grandfather to a show at the famous Steel Pier in Atlantic City and saw the legendary (at least locally) comedy team of Fisher & Marks. The pair had to stop several times during their performance to mock her, as her laughter was so loud and disruptive.

Readers: Feel free to share your experiences in the comments!

Tomorrow night through Saturday, the Black Comedy Project will present a series of shows at The Tank, 279 Church Street, NYC (Btn Franklin and White).

NYC Based comedians Baron Vaughn and Elon James White have reached out to comedians across the nation to finally let the world know that there's very different voices within the community. Let us bring them to you.

Hit their blog to see clips of the featured performers.

The show is called "A Night for Knoxie, Raisin’ Money- Raisin’ Hell!" and it's at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, NH, Sunday, March 9 at 7 PM. It's a charity event to raise money for Kevin Knox (see previous posting here).

If you live in New England and you've never been to a Boston Comedy Club (although we can't imagine such a thing), you can see an outrageous cross-section of the Boston Comedy Scene in just one evening:

Kevin Flynn
Bob Seibel
Gary Gulman
Tony V
Jimmy Dunn
Steve Sweeney
Robbie Printz
Mike McDonald
Jim Lauletta
Frank Santorelli
Lenny Clarke

The description of the event also promises "some special guests," although we can't imagine many more special guests than are on the above list. Hop onto the Palace Theatre site.

Even though he's technically not allowed to cut any deals for another two years, Jay Leno is, according to the NYT, being courted by a number of entities.

Sony Pictures Television has made an approach through intermediaries to let Mr. Leno and his representatives know that as soon as he is allowed to discuss his next move, the studio will make him a rich offer for a syndicated late-night show that would make him the highest-paid host in late-night television, put his name on a new theater on the Sony lot and give him a financial interest in Sony music artists who appear on his show.

Fox and ABC are said to be in the hunt as well.

DirecTV has announced ten episodes of a new series, The Supreme Court of Comedy.

Premiering on DIRECTV’s original entertainment channel The 101, the series is a takeoff on the popular courtroom television genre. The courtroom will feature comedians serving for both the court's judge and as council for the plaintiffs and defendants.

Starring Dom Irrera, the series will feature real people settling their small claims cases with comedians in there to mix things up. Stars being promoted include comedians like Jamie Kennedy, Sinbad, Paul Rodriguez and Tom Arnold.

Promoted as being "unscripted and totally unpredictable" the show will be presented in HD. Judge Dom Irrera will preside over real disputes. Each side will be represented by a comedian serving as legal council. Head-to-head match-ups are scheduled to include:

-Jamie Kennedy vs. Paul Rodriguez

-Tom Arnold vs. Sinbad

-Joe Piscopo vs. Elon Gold

-Victoria Jackson vs. Tom Papa

-Thea Vidale vs. Gerry Bednob

The courtroom will be set at the World Famous Laugh Factory located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The show will also involve the audience by allowing people to comment on the cases being settled. Audience members will also be able to have "quickie cases" settled in front of Judge Irrera right then and there. Decisions in the cases will be final and case winners will be awarded according to the judgments rendered.

Sounds like it would have made a good challenge on an upcoming Last Comic Standing.

Our Houston spies are letting us down! So far, all we have is:

Andi Smith
Chris Voth

Are two who made it through. And we heard an (unconfirmed) rumor that Bob Biggerstaff made it through. That sounds plausible, since Biggerstaff was one of the comics who got major face time in San Antonio last year on Episode 1.

More details: Fourteen comics performed in the evening showcase. We hear that Houston comics Keisha Hunt, Billy D. Washington, Sarah Tollemache and Danny Rios were among them and that Tom Hester from Austin also went up.

Still more details: Paul Varghese of Dallas and Saleem Mohammed were among those advancing.

"We all know who the freaks are..."

Juanda Mayfield has posted a "YouTube video response" to the clip that we uploaded (shot by FOS Sharilyn Johnson), which recounts her experience in 10:18.

The sound is a little garbled, but if you wanted a detailed account of the auditioners' day in Houston, this is it.

Go here to listen to a lengthy and spirited interview with the Male and Female Halves of the Staff conducted by Punchline proprietor Jamie Bendall during our recent swing through Atlanta.

We touch upon a multitude of subjects such as turning over material, the internet's effect on standup and the care and feeding of the WWW's most beloved magazine about standup.

It's approximately 30 minutes long.

That's FOS Gabe Abelson shaking hands with Ed McMahon... in Tom Green's house. Gabe explains: It's the set of the "first simulcast TV/Web talk show, Tom Green's House Tonight."

Green has built a 9-camera HD, 16 X 9 studio in his house. Abelson says, "It's a test-run-- we're only on in four, small U.S. markets, but we're on nationally in Canada right after The Daily Show on their Comedy Network."

Watch it through next week at 6 pm West Coast time, at tomgreen.com.

Duh! A USA Today article confirms what we've said for some time now.

On the occasion of the debut of the Dennis Miller-hosted Amne$ia, the article quotes Miller, Mandel and others on the comedian/game show host trend.

Look for more stand-up comics as hosts. "Their experience with a live audience is invaluable," says Deal or No Deal producer Scott St. John, a veteran game show runner. "They're relaxed and at ease with who they are. And they're adept, because they've dealt with hecklers and know how to handle unexpected situations."

The piece makes the case that comics have been hosting game shows forever. They cite You Bet Your Life and two short-lived shows hosted by Johnny Carson... during the Eisenhower administration.

For the next fifty years, it was Bill Cullen and Jack Narz and Wink Martindale and the Tom Kennedy and a cadre of professional game show hosts, some of whom also co-produced their shows.

We're not sure why this shift has occurred, but it certainly raises the visibility of comedians and it quite possibly might endear them to the public. Comedians will be seen as people who dress nicely, are in control and who hand over a sack of cash to a screaming suburbanite every half-hour or so.

It's a donnybrook! Mere hours after the folks at Just For Laughs announced their festival plans for Chicago in '09, comes this press release (Click on "Press") from another faction, planning a comedy festival in Chicago in the fall of this year:

It's that rich legacy that prompted veteran film and television producers Jason Brett and John Davies (About Last Night, Run's House, Comic Relief Presents) to create the Chicago Comedy Fest, a national entertainment event currently slated for Fall, 2008 with three days of performances at Chicago's landmark Navy Pier, two broadcast specials to be taped live as part of the Fest and a comedy film series event in partnership with National Lampoon.

We sheared off the top sentence (it was a real snoozer!), but the above graf tells you all you need to know.

So far, they haven't named any names, talent-wise, but they're promising the standard festival fare-- "...over 100 performers on three stages over three days at Navy Pier, the producers expect some of the biggest names in entertainment to participate. The Fest will celebrate the diversity of comedy by offering a variety of comedic voices and genres from stand-up and sketch to musical satire and improvisation."

The "high-profile Blue Ribbon Advisory Board" sounds a little heavy on the improv/acting side of things, but, from all indications, there'll be a lot of standup.

Stay tuned.

This puzzling article in Time Out Chicago by Steve Heisler was written after Heisler attended opening night of the Comedy Zone at the Dave & Buster's location in Chicago and interviewed the owner of the club, Joe Doria. The publication date of the weekly is listed as Feb 7. But the opening graf says this:

After this story went to press, we learned that Comedy Zone Chicago had been indefinitely shut down and all its shows were "cancelled until further notice."

There's a link in that paragraph that goes to the Time Out Chicago blog that explains (or at least tries to) the situation with The Comedy Zone, Dave & Buster's and Doria.

I called Joe and got the skinny. He admits right off the bat that he's been left in the dark as well-- he simply got a call today from Comedy Zone telling him that the club was shutting down. Apparently, Dave and Buster's is severing its tie with the Comedy Zone, but only in Chicago. Other Dave and Buster's locations around the country will keep Zoning it up. Joe had put in a number of calls and emails to the powers-that-be, but no one has given him any more information.

Doria is getting the runaround from the Zone and D & B. He says he's scouting around Chicagoland for a new location.

Chicago is their target. The folks at Just For Laughs sent out a bulletin today at 2:39 PM announcing "Just For Laughs: A Very Funny Festival." Then, there's this, from the Gazette, on Canada.com:

Just for Laughs and the U.S. cable station TBS are collaborating to launch a new comedy festival next year in Chicago, home of the world-famous Second City comedy troupe.

The five-day Just For Laughs: A Very Funny Festival will include the taping of a TBS stand-up comedy special starring comedian and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, assorted stand-up, improv and sketch shows-- including a Second City appearance-- and a film component, the organizations announced today.

The details, they say, will be announced this fall. No further details on the date, other than "next year."

Got a bulletin from comedian/friend Max Alexander:

It's 100 per cent safe and healthy to donate a kidney-- Google to find out-- and it will give me back my life to help others and to make people laugh. Almost impossible to do on dialysis. Please spread the word. Giving me the gift of life will be greatly appreciated in many ways. My insurance covers every thing. Please spread the word if you don't mind.

Sincerely,
Max

Contact Max via his Myspace profile.


That's Max on the left, with Joey Elias. (From JFL 2006)

He speaks the truth. From the New England Journal of Medicine:

In the five decades since the first renal transplantation from a living donor took place, in 1954, donating a kidney has become common; according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, 6647 people became living kidney donors in the United States in 2004. Indeed, donating a kidney is sufficiently safe that the emotional benefits to the donor generally far outweigh the risks. During my career as a pediatric nephrologist, I have discussed kidney donation with scores of potential donors, helping the transplantation team to explain to the potential recipient and donor the procedure and its associated risks and benefits.

We just got a recap of the Minneapolis auditions from an anonymous source:

Last Comic Standing has come and gone through the frozen tundra of Minneapolis. I only bring up the frozen tundra as the LCS team took every opportunity to point out how cold it is here. They had some guy carving an ice sculpture out on the street and every interview in the LCS photo booth was about "how do you deal with these crazy cold temperatures?!" The line wasn't ridiculously long, although there were a few crazy souls that camped out overnight. Which seems eve more ridiculous considering how quickly the line moved in the morning, they were taking in about 5-6 at time to audition for a PA and were told they would be called if they made it to the afternoon "celebrity judge" round.

The "appointment people" were seen one at a time in front of two producers in the actual club. About 25 folks, including the costumed and wacky, were seen by the celebrity judges from The Office.

Roughly 18 moved on to the night show in front of a packed house at ACME. Bill Bellamy hosted and the show was great! I can think of several folks that received genuine applause breaks within their 3 minute sets. Some of the 18 in the showcase were: Tim Harmston, Doug Mellard, Mary Mack, Tracey Ashley, Bengt Washburn, Greg Warren, Darlene Westgor and Chuck Bartell. I am sure I've spelled some names wrong and I know I've left out several very talented folks, but congrats to everyone in the showcase. It really was a great show.

At any rate it was a pretty good day and some very funny folks moved on. Moving on from Mpls are Pete Lee, Dan Cummins and John Evans.

We know Boston comic Kevin Knox from our days in that city's comedy clubs. For four years now, he has been battling a recurrence of an earlier bout with cancer.

We ran into him in Vegas two years ago and, in a posting on this magazine, we described him as "robust." Knox said that he was dealing with his condition with diet and exercise. Indeed, he seems to have become somewhat of an expert on nutrition.

Recently, it's come to our attention that he's had a series of setbacks including pneumonia and anemia which has left his immune system weakened. He's currently in Florida working on getting himself healthy.

Click here to find out how you can help Knox in his effort to get healthy again.

And on March 22, fellow comedian Johnny Pizzi is going to walk from Saugus to Tyngsboro (Knox's hometown) to raise money for the stricken comic. According to the posting on the Comedy Studio Kvetch Board, "He's going to start at some ungodly hour of the morning (4:30 or 5) and walk 25 miles.

If anyone is interested in either pledging money for the walk or walking with him, please contact Johnny at 781 420 1036 or JohnnyPizzi-at-hotmail."

If wealth is measured by friends, the comics of New England are among the wealthiest.

This just came in over the cyber transom, from a reader in England, and it seems to be credible.

About three weeks ago, thirty or so comics were flown from London to Miami for 2 days. It had all the glamor of a cattle call. Acts were hauled out of bed at 6:30 AM just so they could wait around for hours and hours.

Stage one: All the acts did their five minutes to the producers. (It really felt like they were casting a reality show rather than looking for the best comics.)

Stage two: Those chosen went on to perform for the judges and then to a competition in a comedy club in the evening.

Shazia Mirza
Stephen K. Amos
Toju
Paul Foot

We noted in a previous post that, just after we encountered the travelling talent trawl in Atlanta, we Googled Bill Bellamy's name and the only thing we could find in the news section was a mention of him shooting some B-roll at a Miami Heat game. Hmmm... that would fit the time frame.

Traci Skene has uploaded her 100th post to her rollicking and thoughtful weblog, Road Atlas Shrugged. 100 posts ago, The Female Half decided to create a personal blog, giving readers an almost-daily dose of "profound analysis mixed with sheer idiocy!"

Bookmark Road Atlas Shrugged and check back in often for Traci's thoughts on pop culture, current events and insight into the life of a standup comic in 21st century America!

That's Marty Butler and Crystal P flanking Last Comic Standing host Bill Bellamy in the green room at the Comedy Castle in Royal Oak, MI, at precisely 8:30 PM Saturday night. The pic was taken by The Male Half. That's right: We crossed paths with Bellamy and his traveling talent hunt for the second time in 12 days (on Monday, Feb. 4 at the Punchline in Atlanta and last night at the Castle!). We swear we didn't plan it this way.

Four hand-picked Detroit-area comedians went up and did their five clean minutes in front of a seething, Saturday first-show crowd of 400+. Keith Ruff, Gary George, Marty Butler and Crystal P unknowingly participated in yet another secret LCS audition with Bellamy in the back of the house.

Bellamy taped some "B-roll" outside the club just before showtime, shivering and making light of the single-digit temperatures, as customers streamed into the suburban Detroit club.


The Male Half and the Female Half flank King of the Castle while Jeff Altman and Gallagher look on

Castle proprietor Mark Ridley popped out onto the stage after the four performed and let the crowd in on the gag. And the audience went batty when Bellamy came through the door. Once again, Bellamy enthusiastically praised all four performers and then, almost apologetically, he announced that only two would be flown to the Minneapolis LCS audition on Tuesday.

After the shocked "contestants" and Bellamy retired to the green room to take pics and sign releases, The Female Half and The Male Half went up and finished off the rabid crowd.

It was our first time at the Castle. We've been aware of its existence for a quarter century, but we only got around to working there in 2008. Ridley might just be one of the nicest comedy club owners in the land. And, against all odds, he seems to honestly enjoy being in the comedy business and spending time in the club.

The club is just off the semi-bohemian downtown of Royal Oak, a compact and charming northeastern suburb of Detroit. The Detroit metro area in particular and Michigan in general is packed with clubs-- one-nighters and long-running weekend rooms-- and consequently, the state is home to many experienced comedians. Detroit has burped out many famous comics-- Tim Allen, Dave Coulier, Robin Williams-- and it might be one of the better markets in the country for a young or transitioning comic to locate.

Addendum, Feb. 18: Speaking of relocating comics, Tony Vinh stopped by to say hey to The Male and Female Halves of the Staff. A year ago, Vinh moved to Detroit from Kansas City. He's been an avid reader of the magazine and we had a splendid time chatting with him on Friday and Saturday nights! Always a kick to meet a reader in person!


Keith Ruff, Marty Butler, Gary George, Crystal P and Bill Bellamy onstage, via the monitor in the green room.

Another report from the Toronto LCS audition:

I, along with about 120 others, stood in line in sub-freezing temperatures for up to nine hours Thursday in Toronto to audition for LCS. I arrive around 7 AM and there were about fifty ahead of me in line.

As expected, the more experienced and/or better represented breezed by for scheduled audition times. No problem. We knew that would happen when we decided to audition.

Doors were to open at 9 AM, but it seemed none of us moved forward for hours. We did get into the requisite shots of the line with people waving and hooting for the cameras and briefly being a background for Bill Bellamy on a horse in a mountie costume (yes, the usual cliches for Canada were marched out). We learned anew why the show is called Last Comic STANDING since that's mostly what we did.

The press showed up from local and national Canadian TV interviewing people in the line and both Gerry Dee and Deb DiGiovanni from LCS season 5 were there interviewing comics for entertainment news shows.

Finally in the afternoon, we got a chance to be funny six-at-a-time for a production assistant, who would point to each of us and say "give me your best minute" or "tell me a one-liner." Then we got to answer some questions in what they called the Funny Booth, you know-- the booth they use for "I'm funnier than..." on the show. In the booth we were encouraged to be as funny and silly as possible and to quote the director, "whether that's your style or not." I'm told one comic was encouraged to wear a cowboy hat for no apparent reason. From the above screenings, if you were chosen you would receive the phone call to come back to audition for two minutes for the celebrity talent scouts (Dave Foley and Richard Kind). That audition would either get you, or not get you, a spot in the evening showcase.

The best part of the day was seeing the comics in line, hearing and enjoying the camaraderie. Very encouraging group and, despite some impatience and irritation, generally everyone took it all in stride.

Feel free to use any of the above you like, use my name too. It was an interesting day, bloody cold and I’m glad I did it but I wouldn’t do it again.

FOS,
Jim Tice
Aberfoyle, ON, Canada

Thanks, Jim! We felt like we were there!

One of our readers sends word that the Toronto acts who advanced were:

Sean Cullen
Winston Spear
The Williamson Playboys
Brian Lazanik

Our spy says that Lazanik was set to advance last year from Montreal but he was "dropped from the show and was never included in it."

Top ten comics from last season, Gerry Dee and Debra DiGiovanni were both "doing interviews behind the scenes."

"Comedians who auditioned but did not advance included Ron Sparks, Pete Zedlacher, Richard Ryder, Sabrina Jalees and Trevor Boris.

"LCS representatives were asking some of us in auditions if we would go out and buy zany costumes then come back. Sometimes they had specific costumes in mind. Many without audition times (like me) waited outside in the freezing cold for hours and didn't even get to go before the judges. it was a horrible experience."

Comedy Central Presents will present 30 minutes of standup from Bonnie McFarlane at 10 PM EST and then present a half-hour of standup from hubby Rich Vos at 10:30 PM. Check your newspaper/newsreader for local listings!

The strike is over.

Note to all comedy club owners/bookers: Check your voicemail... there will undoubtedly be messages from all the writers who are comics who are now writers again-- they'll no doubt be cancelling their dates now that the strike is over!

Keep us in mind.

Thanks!

We were in between dates last week-- finished with our weekend at Comedy, TN in Memphis and scheduled to be at the Punchline in Atlanta (starting Wednesday) when we got invited to come into The ATL a couple days early. We were told it was for the purpose of a showcase on Monday night, but when we asked for more details, we were told that it was all very "secret." All we were told was that it would be worth our while. Very vague. But intriguing enough to get us to forego a couple days of relaxing in Nashville.

We got to the club on Monday night to find a camera set up in the rear of the club (a nice one, too-- an Ikegami or its equivalent... enough to make us think this might actually be something important). The only clues we had up until show time was that it was network, there was a V.I.P. in the building and we were to do five clean minutes. The Female Half declined. The Male Half readied a set.

Punchline owner Jamie Bendall emceed and brought up ten other comics: Derrick Tennant, Tim Gaither, Mia Jackson, Josh Sneed, Special K, Scotty K, Cory "Zooman" Miller, Dan Mengini, Matt Davis and Keith Terry.

When each had done a set (for a surprisingly large crowd for a Monday night), Bendall brought them all out onto the stage and let the audience (and the auditioners) know the identity of the secret celeb that had been up in the rafters all night. To the obvious delight of the crowd, he brought out LCS host Bill Bellamy.



Bellamy took the mike and let the audience in on the ultimate purpose of the evening's show-- two of the eleven would be flown to NYC for the Gotham LCS audition, with no waiting in the cold, no string-pulling, no hot dog suit. After announcing that Special K and Josh Sneed were the fortunate two, he then read through some of his notes and had very nice things to say about all the comics. (Of the Male Half, he said, and we're quoting from memory-- "Y'all got to go to school to keep up with his stuff!")


Atlanta audition winners Josh Sneed (l) and Special K

Bellamy very graciously stayed on and posed for pictures with fans and comics. He offered words of encouragement for the runners-up and words of advice for Sneed and Special K. It was revealed that Bellamy was off the next evening to Raleigh for a similar, secret audition show, as part of a multi-city tour. We're not sure where else he went, but we know he was in Miami just prior to heading to Atlanta and there was some talk that he had just attended a similar showcase in Denver.

It is believed that some of the tape from the showcase will be used on early episodes of the show. (We're speculating that each comic will receive a second-- literally-- in one of those quick-cut montages, with Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax" as the music bed. But we're just being cynical. Perhaps the auditions will be treated with dignity. It's a reality TV, so it's a crapshoot!)


Left to Right: Mia Jackson, Dan Mengini, Punchline principal Chris DiPetta and Scotty K

Bellamy also inquired as to whether the Male Half was going to be near any of the other announced auditions. He urged him to contact LCS producers to nail down a slot in a future audition city, should one fit into his schedule. (So far, only Tempe or Nashville fits into the schedule. The Male Half has a V.M. into the talent coordinator. So far, nothing has been arranged.)


Special K being interviewed by camera crew, post-audition, at the Punchline.

We would have posted about this earlier, but we were asked to hold off ("embargo" is the fancy, journalism word for it) on any posting until the tour was over. Then, one of the secret audition clubs put out a press release recapping their event. After that, we figured the cat was out of the bag and we felt free to write about the experience.

That the producers sent Bellamy around to real clubs to look at real comics in an authentic performance setting is a good thing. Perhaps all the auditions should be conducted this way-- secretively, with little notice, in A-rooms all over the country. The producers would, necessarily, have to trust the club owners to choose the talent wisely. And some favoritism (and conflicts of interest) would be inevitable. But the resultant footage would probably be entertaining and the whole affair would actually seem more like a quest to "find the funniest person on the planet" (or whatever it is they say in the promos). We've become so accustomed to the unnatural way in which LCS has surveyed talent that we've forgotten just how bad of an idea it truly is. We recall our horror when, while watching the first season, we realized that comics would be "auditioning" in an empty room, in front of three "judges," while the sun was still up!

Between the two of us, in 40+ years of standup, we've only done it that way three times. We both went up at the Santa Monica Improv in a horrendous cattle call to qualify for the Johnnie Walker Comedy Competition, circa 1992. (And the Male Half auditioned for the bookers of an open mike night at a hotel in Ft. Washington, PA, in 1982.) All three were miserable, artificial experiences.

We were watching a special on the Kennedy assassination when we saw a promo for "History of the Joke," a two-hour special hosted by Lewis Black, which will feature George Carlin, Shelley Berman, Robert Klein, Kathleen Madigan, Penn & Teller, Kathy Griffin, Dave Attell and other top comedians who'll discuss the origins of the joke and how they discovered comedy was their calling.

It airs Monday, February 18th at 9:00 PM and four hours later on February 19th at 1:00 AM, on the History Channel.

FOS Becky Reed sends along a link to this Craigslist posting, from the Minneapolis/St. Paul, TV/Video/Radio Jobs section:

Funny/ Wacky act and people for NBC!!!

-----------------------------
Reply to: Ramseycasting@gmail.com
Date: 2008-02-08, 7:05PM CST

Funny/ Wacky act and people for NBC!!!

Auditioning Funny/ Wacky act and people for NBC!!!

We are auditioning people for Last Comic Standing and we need more visual comedy. THIS IS NOT AN OPEN CALL BUT IF YOU HAVE A COSTUME YOU CAN TRY OUT.

Auditioning Funny Wacky people. We want people who are going to make us laugh. Do you have a wacky thing you do? Are you funny? Are you wacky? We are casting Last Comic Standing and we need more visual comedy.

Do you have a costume? Do you juggle? Do you have props or a special act? How are you going to make us laugh?

Email: ramseycasting@gmail.com

Thanks,

Ashton

- - - - - - - - - - - -

This does not bode well.

Of course, this could all merely be for the purpose of creating some early-episode window dressing-- quick cuts showing folks dressed like hot dogs and Vikings and Boba Fett-- to ham-handedly drive home the notion that comedians are a zany lot who dress up like hot dogs and Vikings when they're trying hard not to drag a razor across their wrist because they didn't get that last spot at the open mike last week. Oh, those comedians are a complex bunch!

An appreciation of Steven Wright appears in The Sunday New York Times. Written by FOS Peter Keepnews, the article quotes Mike Birbiglia, Wright himself and The Male Half of the Staff:

Brian McKim, who once opened for Mr. Wright and now offers commentary about the comedy scene on the Web site sheckymagazine.com, praised him for rewriting the rules of the game.

"After him," Mr. McKim said, "a comic didn't need transitions, didn't need to address or even acknowledge the crowd, didn't necessarily have to appear to be enjoying himself. Wright made it O.K. to have no unifying theme other than the comic's mind, his thought processes."

A short, free registration is required to view the article here

From some SHECKYmagazine spies/correspondents at the NYC evening showscase, comes word that the following made it through:

Louis Ramey
God's Pottery
Stone & Stone
Dan Naturman
Esther Ku
Aparna Nancherla

Not making it through were John Fisch, Josh Sneed, and Costaki Economopoulos

The information is filling in on the NBC.com page. Most of the judges for the main auditions are set.

Toronto auditioners will be insulted... er... judged by Kid in the Hall Dave Foley and actor Richard Kind.

Minneapolis judges will be Brian Baumgartner and Kate Flannery of the NBC series The Office).

In Houston, the judges will be Neil Flynn of the NBC series Scrubs (he's the janitor) and actor Alfonso Ribeiro.

So far, the only announced judge for the Tempe audition is Leslie David Baker from the NBC series The Office.

San Francisco judges are Josh Gomez of the NBC series Chuck and actor French Stewart.

Nashville will be judged by former Cheers stars George Wendt and John Ratzenberger.

Joel Haas, XM's Satellite Radio's Comedy Director, is also a comedy producer and recording engineer who quot;has recorded over 150 live comedy shows in venues that seat 25 to 2500" and "mixed, mastered and produced over 30 commercially released CD's" according to the bio on his website, hahaas.com.

Hahaas is a stand-up comedy production and distribution company. We produce and distribute stand-up comedy recordings digitally and pay artists 66% of all income. These recordings are for sale at iTunes, CD Baby and dozens of other digital retail outlets. Since there are no physical CD’s to produce, our costs are minimal. This allows Hahaas to pay artists more money than anyone else in the comedy industry...66% of all income from sale #1.

Contact Joel if you're considering the recording or distribution of your recorded comedy. Go to his site and click on the link that says, "What is HaHaas?" to get most of your questions answered. We can say, from personal experience, that Joel does good work.

FOS Sharilyn Johnson captured some video of the line on the street this morning in NYC, waiting to get into Gotham for this year's Last Comic Standing. The clip is 1:24 and Johnson apologizes for her shaky camera work.



Pay careful attention to the clip at the 0:45 mark, as a confident Joe Devito strides by-- Joe DeVito doesn't have to stand in line, am I right, ladies?!? (Inside joke for Joe DeVito.)

Get ready for the onslaught of (negative) reviews of Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, the theatrical release starring Vince Vaughn, Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco! Not all of them will be negative, of course. But, even the positive ones will have backhanded compliments and the reviewers won't be able to help themselves from making ghastly comments. They're ingrained prejudice against comedians will ooze out through the cracks of their assessments.

Take this piece of gar-BAZH from Ann Lewinson, writing for the Fairfield Weekly, which, we assume, is an alterna-rag that covers Connecticut's Fairfield County, weakly. We haven't seen the film yet. But we wouldn't be surprised if Lewinson cranked out some of the paragraphs before having seen it, so palpable is her distaste for modern standup.

As comedian Bret Ernst observes at the beginning of the film, stand-up isn't what it was in the '80s. Then the comics on this tour would have had their own sitcoms, but now "we're in headliner purgatory." Perhaps that's because the public has tired of jokes about how women are this way and men are that. The upside of the elimination of meals of flights means there are no more jokes about airline food, but they've merely been replaced by jokes about airport security.

Ernst's assessment of the current state of standup is questionable, but Lewinson's grouchy and ludicrous conclusion is evidence of someone who just hasn't done her homework. She's come to the keyboard armed with a set of tired cliches and fifty-cent words from her (no doubt recent) comparitive lit class at Fairfield Community College and the resultant review is a waste of her time and the reader's.

...Scratching the surface of frat-boy culture, it finds narcissism, insecurity and an almost paralyzing fear of anything that does not fit within its discourse of trite observation and bourgeois complaint. Now if Vince Vaughn can just channel that into his comedies, he might really have something

Read the rest here if you absolutely have to.

We're going to try to score a review copy-- if for no other reason than to see the footage of Buck Owens shortly before his death. (The Male Half received the spectacular "Dwight Sings Buck" CD for Christmas and it was in constant play at SHECKYmagazine HQ before we embarked on our current road trip!)

P.S. Note to Lewinson: That's "Yoakam," not "Yoakum."

We got an email from an anonymous tipster that said that the producers of Last Comic Standing are seeking to cast "funny people in NYC that have typical NYC Jobs, Cab Driver, Fire fighter, Pizza Tosser, road construction, sewage worker, hot dog vender (sic), etc."

We are casting Last Comic Standing and we need people who can make us laugh. We want to do a special on a few New Yorkers.

Don't worry worry if you have done comedy or not if you are willing to try a two min set then we can talk.

You read that correctly-- Don't worry if you have done comedy or not!

Why don't they just hire actors and fake the entire show? Do away with comedians altogether!

And what is with this "typical NYC jobs" nonsense? What they seek is "stereotypical NYC jobs," specifically stereotypical NYC jobs that make for the ironically named "great TV."

This is ludicrous. It would be like Top Chef were to seek out contestants and said, "Don't worry if you can boil water or fry an egg or toast bread without burning it-- if you're willing to appear on camera, and you have an interesting day job, we want you!"

Why this focus on non-comedians with visually interesting day jobs? Sure, the segment shot at PizzaRama or at Doggie Shampoo Hut will be peppy and possibly rollicking, but when the Assistant Cocker Spaniel Washer hits the stage, the result will be excruciating. A decent segment producer could shoot and edit an interesting package on a real comedian's hobby, his hometown, his daily routine, his bathing habits-- anything! How bankrupt for ideas could they be that they not only feel compelled to go for people with colorful day jobs, they feel compelled to recruit non-comedians with colorful day jobs?!?

Why this focus on non-comedians?

We need hotties!

Another casting call seeks "comedy judges."

What they are looking for are people to fill the audience for the evening show at Gotham. Why they call them "judges" is a mystery.

The description of the "role" says:

Audience for last comic standing (we need hotties)

Hotties, indeed! Of course, any comic will tell you that a crowd filled with "hotties" is quite possibly the best audience you can ever face!(Note: The sarcasm light is flashing.)

We need very attractive people. All you have to do is watch a comedy show and laugh when it's funny. This is the callback part for last comic standing.

This is a trainwreck waiting to happen.

We're not disparaging attractive people (or falling into the trap of saying that all good-looking people are dumb), but, when the focus in your search for an audience for a comedy show is narrowed to "hotties," the dynamic will be horribly twisted. Instead of a roomful of comedy fans who just want to laugh and have a good time, you'll have a group of actors who just want to get on TV. This does not a good audience make.

Fearne Cotton is her name and the British tabs caller her a "telly babe."

She was on The X Factor, a talent show across the pond, and the Sun says that she jetted out to Los Angeles this week to "start filming the auditions."

She has already scored her first gig in the US, for NBC-- one of the top four channels.

She will co-host Last Comic Standing-- a talent trawl for some of America\s funniest comedians.

Our new favorite phrase-- "talent trawl!"

And, in other Last Comic Standing news, this clip, from Acccess Hollywood, shows a brief interview with LCS host Bill Bellamy. Stick with it to the 3:30 (time remaining) mark and, when asked if there is anything new this year, he says, "...last year I made about ten cities, this year, I make about 92!"

Sure, it's old (June 2007), and there are some points made which turn on the situation surrounding the Don Imus Affair (which has since been resolved somewhat in Imus' favor), but this essay by Roger Scruton raises some interesting issues regarding general humor, offense, ethnic humor, the role of humor in assimilation and religion.

It seems to me that we stand in need of a repertoire of religious jokes and a bold habit of expressing them. However, many Muslims have an exaggerated capacity to feel slighted, and there is scarcely a humorous remark to be made about Islam that will not instantly be read as an expression of hostility. Here too the censors are hard at work, depriving humanity of its natural way of defusing conflict, and forcing upon us all a kind of tiptoeing and apprehensive deference that is in fact far closer to hostility than any robust guffaw. Of course, religion is a sensitive topic, and the traditional British response, that it should therefore never be mentioned in polite society, is understandable. But in a world of increasingly belligerent affirmations of faith, the British solution is no longer available. Satire of the kind directed at Tartuffe by Moliere is surely what our mullahs deserve. By satirizing them, we come to terms with them; we also distinguish their ludicrous self-righteousness from the gentle path of accommodation that ordinary Muslims want and need.

Back in May 2006, we posted about some of the issues raised by Scruton a year before they were raised in this piece. Paul Saucido, a Mexican-American comic, caught hell for creating "horribly offensive" ringtones. The United Latin American Citizens forced apologies and leaned on the parties involved. We condemned them and their tactics.

We asked the question then and we think it needs revisiting: "Is this drive to protect certain groups from even the slightest discomfort from mockery counterintuitive, and ultimately counter to the process of assimilation and acceptance?"

This Time magazine article compares the current WGA strike to the Comedy Store strike of 1979. Richard Zoglin calls it "the first comedy strike." Interesting, because this current strike is a writers' strike and not necessarily a comedy strike. We suppose that when people hear "writer," they automatically think "comedy writer."

The Hook: The '79 strike was a "cautionary-- and formative-- experience," for Leno and Letterman.

But first, The Setup, in paragraph four:

That walkout was the culmination of a decade in which stand-up became the voice of the counterculture generation. Like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and other pioneers of those years, the new stand-up comics were not just anti-Establishment rabble rousers; they were intimate, populist artists who got their power by convincing us that they were ordinary folks, with the same gripes and anxieties as everyone else. They joked about furnishing their tiny apartments and riding the subways and trying to get girls. The strike against the Comedy Store, the leading comedy club in Los Angeles, reinforced their real-life status as working-class crusaders...

The article then relies heavily on quotes from Jay Leno, David Letterman and Tom Dreesen-- comics who could hardly be described as "the voice of the counterculture" or "working-class crusaders."

My, what overheated language (emphasis ours) Zoglin packs into that graf! He no doubt had to bring the rhetorical heat when pitching the story to his editors. Elsewise, it's just a story about comedians! And, as we all know, if comedians aren't saving the world with their comedy, they're misogynistic, bigoted "monkeys," (as Tom Shales so nicely put it!)

UPDATE: Commenter "Steve" astutely point out that Zoglin takes the tack that he does because he is seeking to promote his book, "Comedy At The Edge," and examination of how comics in the 70s changed standup comedy. For a review of that book, click here

Comics Dax Jordan and Jake Iannarino have collaborated on a fake documentary, detailing the exploits of "Chip Seinfeld," the ostensible brother of Jerry, as he attempts to get stagetime and breach the security at the recent Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.

We took my camera and interviewed comics such as Bobby Lee, Carrot Top, Marc Maron, Matt Braunger, Tom Clark, Brent Weinbach, Susan Rice and a host of up and comers, all giving us hilarious made up road stories about Jerry's awful, angry, drug addled, unfunny, pariah brother Chip.

Surf on over to Funny Or Die for the first three installments. (The one we linked to features Marc Maron.

BTW, the comic identified in Installment Number One only as "?" is Philadelphia's own Keith Robinson.

The Male Half flanked by Sammy Martin (l) and John Marks after a rousing week of comedy at the relatively new Comedy, TN comedy club in Memphis. (Photo credit: Traci Skene)

The pair, comedians both, started the club about 18 months ago, filling the void in this town in the southwest corner of the Volunteer State.

The club is, as Martin says, "designed from the stage out" and is a tremendous experie