Our extensive network of spies has fed us bits and pieces of information. We are fairly confident that we have accurate information regarding the 12 acts that have made it into the house for this season's Last Comic Standing. (That's right, there's a house this season.)

Here are the names and links of the twelve (thirteen, if you count both members of the comedy team):

God's Pottery
Adam Hunter
Jeff Dye
Ron G
Paul Foot
Iliza Shlesinger
Marcus
Jim Tavaré
Esther Ku
Louis Ramey
Sean Cullen
Papa C.J.

Foot made it in from the group who was flown from London to Miami. Marcus is the "good looking tattoed impressionist," as identified in our Feb. 29 posting. God's Pottery is a team that we saw perform in Montreal last July. Hunter made it in from the Tempe auditions. Ron G auditioned in L.A. Papa C.J., says his website, possesses, "the energy and attitude of an Indian Chris Rock." Sean Cullen "entered into the public eye in 1988 as a member of musical comedy group Corky and the Juice Pigs," says his Wikipedia entry. Esther Ku made it to Vegas via the Gotham auditions. Louis Ramey is well-known in the industry as a solid, experienced club headliner. Shlesinger is the "winner of the Myspace 'So You Think You're Funny' contest." Jeff Dye, says the copy on his Myspace, "doesn’t use profanity but is very edgy and creative humor takes you in his mind that some have described as a charmingly twisted experience." Adam Hunter "is one of the hottest young comedians around today." (We swear that's what his bio leads with.)

CORRECTION: We received two emails from helpful readers providing us with the proper name of Jim Tavaré, the British actor comic who is among the 12 finalists. (He plays the violin. He's not that guy who usta play the cello, is he? There was a British comic who played the cello and was hot here in the U.S. about 1992 or so, with appearances on Frazier. (or was it Cheers? We recall him only because he won International Star Search in 1992 and, as such, won the right to compete on the first episode of the following season of the U.S. version of the talent competition. Of course, that was the episode that featured the Male Half. The Male Half... losing, that is, in spectacular fashion to Canadian comic Herb Dixon.)

If it is him, that would give Tavaré the distinction of having appeared on both the original Star Search and Last Comic Standing. We're not sure anyone else can claim that!

We have tallied up the results so far, then re-checked our calcuations. The Female Half surged ahead of the Male Half after the weekend's games! It was the contests involving the Elite Eight that enabled TFHotS to pick up 16 points and obliterate the slim lead TMHotS had. It now stands at 97 to 87.

The only hope for the Male Half is if Memphis meets Kansas and crushes them in the final. The Female Half correctly predicted the Final Four. The Male Half put too much faith in UConn and Tennessee.

Now we wait!

Left to right: Ken Reed (Joke Joint proprietor), Brian McKim, Traci Skene, Dwight York

Dwight York showed up on the first night. We had a swell time watching York at one of the Chicago Fests in 2002 and we've heard him pop up with frequency on XMRadio.

And comedian Matt Ruby emails us to tell us that he has thoughtfully fished for the interviews on Rose's site and organized them in one convenient posting on his blog, Sandpapersuit.com.

Click on the link and enjoy Google Video interviews with Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, Ricky Gervais and many others.

Thanks, Matt Ruby!

From last Saturday's Toronto Globe & Mail is an article about the lawsuits that are flying back and forth between Yuk Yuks founder Mark Breslin and the folks who own the two former Yuks clubs in the province of Alberta.

Chrysi Rubin and Bill Robinson, owners of the Calgary and Edmonton clubs that now operate under the Laugh Shop banner, have been sued, as has Judy Sims, the former head of the western offices of Funny Business (Breslin's booking agency). Sims broke away from Breslin and Funny Business last year, taking some Yuks acts with her.

Breslin's latest salvo, a memo that has been circulating by e-mail this winter, and addressed "to all comics," outlines his attempt to bring a "diplomatic resolution" to the situation involving the owners of the Calgary and Edmonton clubs: Bill Robinson, and his successor, Chrysi Rubin. "As of now, Bill and his daughter Chrysi, acting like common thieves, have stolen our two clubs," he wrote.

Breslin suggested that comics should "refuse to work" with the "rogue clubs," urging loyalty to the Yuk Yuk's brand. "We spent 20 years developing them out West, and I'm asking you to respect this," he wrote.

The memo got under the skin of some comics, who saw it as a veiled threat to their Yuk Yuk's livelihoods.

Robinson and Rubin saw it as "interference with economic relations" and filed a lawsuit of their own.

We suppose it's up to a judge now.

We've worked in Canada sparingly over the past two decades-- multiple times in Montreal at the Nest, once at a short-lived venue in Ottawa, once at a Yuks competitor in Toronto and once during a trip to the Calgary Fest. The country (and, by implication, Breslin's Yuk Yuks chain and his Funny Business booking agency) is virtually impenetrable for most U.S. comics.

Disputes broke out in the 1980s when comedians complained they had to be booked through Funny Business, the talent agency set up by Breslin to service his clubs and touring shows. Comics complained that if they found gigs through other agencies, or performed at outside venues, they weren't welcome at Yuk Yuk's.

The federal Competition Bureau stepped in to investigate, and concluded in 1991 that Breslin's empire controlled the supply of standup comedy and engaged in anti-competitive acts that could lessen the competition for standup-comedy services.

Breslin somehow claimed it a "clear victory for our system," but promised to stop doing the things the comics groused about, and thereby avoided a full-blown hearing before the Competition Tribunal, which could have resulted in fines or seen his businesses broken up. The Laugh Shop's lawsuit alleges that Yuk Yuk's is not living up to its 1991 pledge.

The Competition Bureau? Sounds fierce!

But, if Breslin has gone back on the agreements struck with the Competition Bureau, we can't imagine they would like that. We could witness the breakup of the chain, increased competition and maybe even higher wages. Stay tuned!

Backstage at the Ritz Theatre, Oaklyn, NJ, last night, from left to right: Kevin Downey, Jr., Geno Bisconte and Mark Riccadonna. Together, they are billed as "The Average White Guy Tour." We stopped by last night briefly, as the venue is only .8 miles from SHECKYmagazine.com HQ!

They're gearing up for the super-duper elimination round, where they pick the final ten comics that go to Los Angeles. The comics are sequestered at the Bally's and at Paris.

We know for a fact that the producers chose many more comedians than they needed in the various casting calls that they conducted around the country earlier this year. We understand that it's prudent to leave yourself a comfortable margin when producing a show-- schedule conflicts arise, old arrest records surface, etc.-- but from the sound of things out there, a lot of people who got red envelopes were told that they weren't going to Vegas.

So far, all we've heard is that Bryan Kellen has been eliminated-- we're not sure why. Kellen made it through from Tempe.

The shows take place sometime soon, probably this weekend. We'll try to get the scoop and let you know as soon as possible. (We're bringing the laptop to Minneapolis.)

An article in the Connecticut Post relates the story of a local Stratford, CT, boy, attending GWU, who has earned a spot in a comedy contest being conducted by an online standup comedy clip aggregator.

Travis Helwig doesn't like jokes. He finds them pedestrian, quaint and often anticlimactic. That's a little strange, because Helwig, 20, of Stratford, has been interested in performing comedy for much of his life.[...]

Helwig made his school's standup team, even though he's not a big fan of the format. That's because he finds conventional standup-- and jokes in general-- a bit dull.

"There's a set-up and a punchline and you know what's going to happen and it's never as satisfying as you'd hoped," he said.

Instead of taking the stage and rattling off one-liners, he developed an act more akin to performance art, adopting the persona of an awkward man terrified to be onstage.

An awkward man, you say?!? Terrified to be onstage?!?

Why... in all the history of standup comedy we can say without hesitation-- with absolute certainty-- that this has never been done before!

I suggest that we all have a meeting and try to determine if there any-- ANY!-- reason why any of us-- all of us, each and every one of us currently doing standup comedy-- should remain in the business of standup! So ingenious, so perfect, so positively unique and exquisitely wonderful is this Helwig's concept that it would be folly for any of us to continue.

All hail, Travis Helwig! He is our new Comedy Leader! Before him, we are but greasy pieces of dust, unoriginal and slovenly, not worthy of inclusion in the category that includes him!

It is indeed a shattering experience to realize that all of one's efforts have heretofore been but piddling and pathetic attempts-- mere precursors to that which is the splendor of Travis Helwig. But we shall console ourselves with the fact that we will no longer embarrass ourselves with our pedestrian bleating. And we will forever take delight in his actions. (Click on the story to behold his clip.)

But, seriously, folks: Our tiny friend displays that painful combination of hubris and jaw-dropping ignorance. What's the old saying? If you wanna break the rules, you gotta know the rules. And, if you're going to pass yourself off as The New Comedy Messiah, you had better come up with something better than "awkward man terrified to be onstage," something that has been done (and, in nearly all instances, abandonded quickly) by countless open-mikers since the dawn of (funny) man.

It's disrespectful. It's embarrassing. And the reporter ate it up.

There's an article from the Washington Post, authored by Neely Tucker, which appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer that talks about blackface. (And, oddly, doesn't mention Sarah Silverman!)

We're not sure it's worth reading the whole thing, as it contains sentences like this:

Since we're all supposedly postracial, some white comedians think it's allowable to use makeup to portray black characters with empathy or just for laughs.

Allowable? We wonder to whom comedians are expected to apply for permission to do certain things. Is there an official Board of Questionable Taste?

Though the burnt cork and garish lipstick seem consigned to the bin of bad taste, there are different levels of subtlety in whites playing black dress-up. Maybe it's becoming possible in an era when interracial friendships and romance exist much more freely for whites to do impersonations of black characters well and affectionately, and vice versa. Billy Crystal's take on Sammy Davis Jr. on Saturday Night Live several years ago was spot on, but Crystal was gifted enough to make it more about celebrity and friendship than about race. It had the critical assets of being (a) funny and (b) not at all caustic.

Ah! We're getting a clearer picture now. It must be funny! That clears things up. And it must be below a certain level on the "caustic" scale. Perhaps the Board of Questionable Taste will set aside Mondays to Relative Funniness and Causticity Determination Day. Submit your sketch scripts early, as there may be some suggested changes.

Sentences such as this:

Goofy can work, although it's tricky. The rule is that the joke has to be on the white character, not the black one.

Rules? It gives us the heebie jeebies. The article's full of such ridiculous pronouncements.

There's a reference early on in the piece to "Chuck Knipp (who) does drag as a black Southern woman, Shirley Q. Liquor, the "Queen of Ignunce," in clubs and on video-sharing sites." Then later, there's this:

The new spin: White actors play characters so hip they can say whatever black people do, and it's OK because nobody would ever think they're racist, get it? This is apparently what Knipp is trying to get at in his portrayals of Shirley Q. Liquor. His character has 19 "chirrun" and is on welfare and talks about "labesians" and "homosexicals." It's like Daddy Rice and Jim Crow brought back from the grave. Rolling Stone called Knipp "America's most appalling comedian" last year.

Jabari Asim, author of "The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why," says comedians like Knipp prove society is just not that far along.

"We all wonder what it would be like to walk in someone else's skin," says Asim (a former Washington Post editor now at Crisis magazine). "But to put it out there in public, or in a feature film, is a combination of [boldness] and stupidity."

Don't you just love the title of Asim's book? We're certain that it's supposed to merely provocative (we hope!), but it's still rather... authoritarian.

We were utterly unfamiliar with Knipp, we decided to Google him to see what all the fuss was about. From what we can tell, he's some sort of a performance artist who does several characters, the most popular of which is Shirley Q. Liquor, "a cariacature of a black southern woman" featuring Knipp in blackface.

His Wikipedia entry says Knipp is "a citizen of both the United States and Canada, active in the ACLU and Libertarian Party and was nominated as their candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000."

It gets better: Knipp, it seems, performs mostly for gay male audiences.

Performances by Knipp have been canceled in West Hollywood and in Hartford, CT. And, "an appearance in Boston which was scheduled for October 18 was cancelled by order of Jerome Smith, acting as agent for Boston mayor Tom Menino." He was actually banned in Boston! In this century!

He is often greeted by protestors and, just last year, he was the object of at least one campaign by a "gay rights activist" named Jasmyne Cannick, the goal of which was "encouraging nightclub owners to cancel Knipp's act."

Of course, as so often happens with such efforts, it brought even more notoriety to Knipp and his alter ego Liquor.

His characters, his performances are wildly popular with gay, male (and, we assume, gay, male, black) audiences. But his notoriety (indeed, his very existence) has engendered much intense criticism, pitting gay rights activists against Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, drawing the ire of BET commentators and gay non-profits whille gaining effusive support from Ru Paul. He's been defended by the Southern Poverty Law Center but condemned by GLAAD.

The tempest surrounding Knipp illsutrates one thing: Comics can and should do pretty much whatever they want.

And the amount of support Knipp has (and the diverse crew that lends such support in the face of the vehement criticism he's received) should render the above cited article by Neely Tucker (and the bleating from assorted academics and busybodies) totally impotent and ultimately irrelevant.

Tip of the hat to sharp-eyed reader Terry Reilly!

Actually, Bloomington, but you can see Minneapolis from there! We're going to be appearing together (Both Halves! Male and Female!) at the Joke Joint this weekend, THU, March 27 through SUN, March 30! (It's The Male Half's return engagement at the Joint and The Female Half's premiere! That's the Male Half in the photo at left, onstage during his first trip to the Joke Joint, in September!)

ATTENTION, MSP Residents: If you mention the "SHECKYMagazine Discount," you'll get two bucks knocked off admission to any of this weekend's shows at the Joke Joint. That's right-- Astute readers of SHECKYmagazine.com can learn about the world of standup comedy and SAVE MONEY!

Stop on by and say hello to the editors and publishers of the WWW's most beloved magazine about standup and see a rollicking standup comedy show in the intimate confines of the Joke Joint!

...Things get interesting.

The Female Half surged yesterday. She had Tennessee, Louisville, UNC, Texas and Memphis. As the points puff up (two per win in this round!), she was able to come to within nine of current pool leader The Male Half. (His Sunday was dismal-- backing Oklahoma, Miami and Mississippi hurt him badly.)

On Saturday The Female Half picked up ten, while The Male Half picked up a respectable eight.

In the the next round, each win nets four points. At least according to the NYT.

Careful readers of this publication know that CBS in-studio sports anchor Seth Davis did standup for a year in NYC. ("It was 98 per cent a hobby," he says. "But I held up hope there'd be a network exec in the audience who'd insist on giving me a sitcom." -- USA Today, 2/28/06)

But it was analyst Clark Kellog who takes the prize for perhaps the funniest comment (and quite possibly the most obscure reference) of the tourney: When his colleague (Was it Billy Packer?) commented that one of the players resembled Jimi Hendrix, Kellogg, without missing a beat, said, "Now the question is: Is he experienced?" Hardcore Hendrix fans (and viewers over the age of 48) were thrilled.

Behold the inanity of this paragraph:

Stand-up comedy is kind of dead right now, if you ask some people. Sure there are still plenty of comedy clubs out there doing their thing, and Jerry Seinfeld makes a killing whenever he sets foot on a stage, but the rising stars all seem to be coming out of sketch or improv. It's hard to be edgy these days when you stand up at a microphone and make joke after joke. Well, unless Dane Cook is your definition of edgy.

It is the lede of an article by CinemaBlend.com's "Chief New York Correspondent" Katey Rich on the proposed documentary based on Richard Zoglin's book "Comedy On The Edge."

You'll recall that we posted on this last week (scroll down, or click "More Than Just A Documentary About Comedy").

Why is it that when someone like Rich comments on standup comedy, the default attitude is dismissive or derisive? What manner of disease is this? Her opening graf isn't just wrong, it isn't just stupid, it's... mean. Are we offended? Hurt? Angry? No. We just marvel at the spectacle of someone so eager to display her ignorance and so eager to deliver it with such empty malice. We're also weary of the supreme hackiness of her trotting out of the "Dane Cook isn't very edgy" meme.

She's writing for a "snarky, fun, and informative" website about movies (their words, not ours), but she utterly fails to provide anything fun or informative over and above that which was contained in the original Variety piece that prompted the posting in the first place. Plenty of "snark," to be sure, but snark without any substance ends up being boring petulance.

Her sole attempt at contributing something meaningful to the discussion, "It seems a topic worth exploring, especially since the legacy of these comics keeps fading as time goes on," is howling, barking stupidity. The legacy of all these comics (if Time-Warner has anything to say about it-- and they most certainly will) is going to be preserved, packaged, marketed, licensed, uploaded and downloaded tens of millions of times over the next few years. And that which is not sliced, diced and served by the folks at Time-Warner will be special-ordered through the myriad other channels of distribution. (Has Rich not heard of The Long Tail?)

From his obituary in the International Herald Tribune:

Al Copeland, who became rich selling spicy fried chicken and notorious for his flamboyant lifestyle, died Sunday at a clinic near Munich, Germany. He was 64.

The founder of the Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken chain had been diagnosed shortly before Thanksgiving with a malignant salivary gland tumor. His death was announced by his spokeswoman, Kit Wohl.

What they don't mention in his obit is that he pumped a bunch of cash into the Improv in Melrose and started the wild expansion of the Improvisation chain.

From a June 1999 interview on Bnet.com, with Budd Friedman:

I have been doing this for 36 years and the day-to-day stuff is a pain in the ass. 1 still am involved in booking acts at gaming venues; I still book the cruises I go on. I'll be there and still maintain an office at Melrose. But we're finalizing a deal with a New Orleans restaurateur, Al Copeland, to run the Melrose club. He runs a series of family-style restaurants in Louisiana and Alabama, 40 of them. called Copeland's, and a higher-level chain called Straya. He will be my chief franchisee and he wants to open two clubs a year around the country.

From our coverage of the Just For Laughs Festival on June 22, 1999 (our third ever dispatch from the JFL):

MONTREAL--The buzz here (or one of the many buzzes) is that Budd is opening a colossal chain of comedy clubs in the not-too-distant-future. He'll do it in partnership with a fellow by the name of Al Copeland. You've never heard of him, but you may have heard of his chain of restaurants called Copeland's.

This guy Copeland throws a mean party. In the ballroom near the back of the Delta, Messrs Copeland and Freidman threw a New Orleans-themed party to let everyone know about this little venture. At least, we think that's what is was for. The food was great--lots of blackened this and creole that. And the booze was free as well. Everyone was there: We spotted Andy Kindler for the first time. We're thinking of pissing him off so that he'll mention us in his State of the Industry address on Saturday afternoon...stay tuned.

Copeland's death was sudden. His illness only lasted for just over 100 days. It is reasonable to speculate as to what his passing might mean to the chain.

From the Al Copeland Investments website, is this paragraph from his profile (which seems to have been written in 2002 or so and not updated since):

In 1999, Al took an ownership position in three Improv Comedy Clubs located in the Los Angeles, California area (Hollywood, Brea and Irvine) and has since opened additional clubs in Baltimore. MD and Ontario, CA. Plans are proceeding with opening clubs in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, San Jose and the Newport/Cincinnati area, in 2002, with even more to come across the US in 2003!

From his Wikipedia profile, which contains an update sentence referring to his death:

Copeland owns several restaurant chains, including Copeland's, Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro, Amor deBrazil, and Sweet Fire & Ice, as well as the Improv comedy clubs located in California and Pittsburgh, PA, and three hotels, one of which is in New Orleans.

One of our dopiest short films ever. (Featuring the music of Irving Berlin and Mr. Acker Bilk and the singing of Judy Garland.)

After last night's 16 games, things got bloody! The Male Half incorrectly called four games-- He failed to foresee 'Nova beating Clemson and he had Vandy beating Sienna. And he erroneously figured that Drake and UConn would easily advance. He's still 29 out of 33.

The Female Half also called the UConn, Vandy and 'Nova matchups wrong and misplaced her faith in the Hoosiers, Miami and local faves St. Joe's. And who can blame her for picking Gonzaga to advance?

We hasten to emphasize that the reason she's getting hammered in the office pool is not because she's a chick. (Her choices-- most of them-- are based on knowledge of NCAA tourney history that would put most penis-bearing creatures to shame!). And is is interesting to note that her Final Four consists of Memphis, North Carolina, UCLA and Kansas-- a scenario that is just as plausible as any!

Postscript: So far today, The Male Half is 1-0, having correctly predicted Duke's elimination at the hands of WVU. "A lucky guess," says he. "Somebody big's gotta get upset here and there." He may be brought back down to earth quickly, as Xavier is getting its ass kicked in the first minutes of their contest with Purdue.

Ben Smith in The Politico had the reaction from Hillary Clinton on Sinbad's claim that HRC is fudging the truth a bit when she trots out her tale of derring do in wartime Bosnia.

He's a comedian, you know.

Thanks to reader Daniel Liebert for the belated heads up!

Anyone in the mood for a big pile of dumb? Click here for Brian Lowry's Variety article, "Why standups are sitting out primetime" in Friday's online edition.

Lowry speculates on the reason that there are no more sitcoms starring comedians:

Everyone eventually learned that building concepts around standups is trickier than it looks, especially because most acts don’t lend themselves to becoming the template for a weekly series. Many comics were given shows despite slim resumes, and lacked the necessary foundation to survive the transplantation process, chewing through all their best material in a matter of weeks. Hell, it even took multiple tries to capture Cosby’s rumination about the vagaries of parenting, which yielded a payday sizable enough to keep a good-sized country up to its eyeballs in Jell-O pudding.

Ultimately, the lure of TV proved too intoxicating, and the talent pool wasn’t equal to the demand.

This nimrod thinks that when comedians star in a sitcom they "chew through all their best material in a matter of weeks." Has someone hacked into the Variety site and posted this to embarrass Lowry and his publication?

He also seems to think that the reason there are no comics starring in sitcoms is because the talent pool is shallow. As if Hollywood is efficient! Is he actually this naive? Does he also think that American Idol finds the best singers in America and Last Comic Standing actually finds "the funniest people in the world."

According to his bio, Lowry "has been a media columnist and chief TV critic at Variety since September 2003" and wrote for seven years for Los Angeles Times.

Yet he thinks:

1. That the networks have exhausted the standup talent pool

2. Tom Arnold, Sinbad, Greg Giraldo, Paul Rodriguez, Lenny Clarke, Kevin Meaney and Paula Poundstone are "second-tier comedians."

3. When a comedian hosts a primetime, network gameshow (i.e. Howie Mandel, Bob Saget, Dennis Miller, Drew Carey) he has been "relegated" to hosting said gameshow.

4. After a comic has had his shot, he goes "scurrying back to the clubs."

5. A comic gets only one shot!)

We suppose that, in 1983, Lowry would have regarded Cosby as a second-tier comic who had his one shot and had scurried back to the comedy clubs. After all, it had been 13 years since the cancellation of his two-season, 52-episode The Bill Cosby Show failure.

To be fair, the troubles besetting the sitcom can’t merely be explained by the deficiencies of comedians.

To be fair? To be less than moronic, perhaps.

The "troubles" that the genre is currently experiencing have nothing to do with the "the deficiencies of comedians" or a shallow talent pool, and everything to do with a hopelessly and fatally flawed business model, network executives who display jaw-dropping cowardice and an industry that can't seem to wean itself from its current reality television addiction.

The pilot fish in the MSM (like our dullard friend Lowry here) watch from the sidelines and dutifully perpetuate ridiculous bromides like "the sitcom is dead." All the while, broadcast television leaks millions of viewers every year and the antique publications that Lowry and his colleagues work for are helpless to stop their rapid slide toward extinction.

Somebody's got a credibility problem.

No, that's not a description of comedians.

That's how laughter is described by Will Durst in the article by Steven Winn, on SFGate.com (the SF Chronicle's online component), which delves into who laughs/doesn't laugh at what, and why/why not. It's well worth reading the whole thing.

Stand-up comedian Will Durst knows it as well as anyone: Laughter is a delicate, elusive and unstable thing.

"So many factors can affect it," Durst said by phone recently from Florida, where he was getting ready to entertain a group of lawyers. He ticked off some of the threats-- wrong sound system, too much light on the audience, a ceiling that's too high or absorptive to bounce the laughter around and a crowd's lack of shared references with the comic, not to mention its collective blood alcohol level.

"And oh yes, whether you're funny."

There's a lot of quotes from theater types, comics, scientists and professors.

Wallace Chafe, a research professor of linguistics at UC Santa Barbara and author of "The Importance of Not Being Earnest" says the desire for laughter is so strong that humans had to invent humor to justify it.

"Laughter, physiologically, is an expelling of air spasmodically from the lungs," he said by phone, comparing the feeling to that provided by sex or drugs.

Astute readers will notice that this is our second reference to UC Santa Barbara today. The first being in a post about comedians Mo Mandel (scroll down), who studied creative writing at UCSB. Hmmm... it is a small world indeed.

Documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler has purchased the rights to Richard Zoglin's "Comedy On The Edge" book, says Variety.

While the film is in the very early planning stages, Cutler said Zoglin has access to several decades' worth of archival footage as well as relationships with many of the key comics examined in the book. Cutler is also working on ways to make the film more than just a history lesson, though he wouldn't get into specifics about whether he was planning a reunion of some sort to serve as a focal point for the pic.

A reunion of some sort? That'll be just the beginning.

Time-Warner, owner of Time magazine, for whom Zoglin was a senior editor, also owns:

AOL LLC.
Time Warner Cable
Home Box Office
Turner Broadcasting System
New Line Cinema
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
Time Inc.
UBU Productions

Time-Warner board chairman (and former CEO) Richard Parsons has been famously quoted as saying that "synergy is dead," but this is going to be a mini synergy orgy! A "Syn-orgy!^TM" And at the heart of it all will be the comedians that millions of boomers grew up on. This documentary-- and all the hoopla and promotions and events that surround it-- will further cement standup as a huge and necessary part of the entertainment industry and of the culture at large.

And Bloomsbury, the publisher of Zoglin's book is doing pretty well for themselves lately. They published those books about the wizard kid.

And the movies they made about the wizard kid? They were made by Warner Bros.

From item on CMT.com:

Clint Black is the latest country artist to star in a reality TV show, joining the cast of Secret Talents of the Stars. The series will premiere April 8 on CBS. Judges will critique the live performances of 16 celebrities who will showcase their unknown talents, and viewers will vote for their favorites.

Black's "unknown talent" is standup comedy.

Is there a template that journalists use to create this stuff?

This time, it's a profile of comedian Mo Mandel on JewishJournal.com, written by "Jay Firestone, Contributing Writer." (We put it in quotes because we suspect that it might merely be code for inexpensive software that enables editors to craft an article in a matter of minutes about any comedian merely by inserting the name and other pertinent facts.)

It opens with:

Between finding ways to rebel against his family and being the butt-end of anti-Semitic jokes by rednecks, the young social outcast eventually learned to channel his anger and frustration into comedy.

It ends with:

For Mandel, performing in front of 200 people is more comfortable than talking face to face with someone. He considers stand-up a complete high, better than sex.

It is a cliché sandwich.

Of course, part of the blame lies with the comedian. We're supposed to be creative people and, for the most part, we are. But we should give some thought to what we're going to say to a reporter when, inevitably, he/she asks the same five or six boilerplate questions and be ready with something that doesn't sound like all the other answers.

1. How/why did you get started in standup?

2. What kind of comedy do you do?

3. What's it like being up on the stage?

4. When did you know you wanted to be a comedian?

5. Were you the class clown?

Approach the interview as a writing exercise. Concoct answers that are as interesting and off-kilter as the material in your act.

And if you think you're too new at standup or you're aren't going to attract the interest of the media, think again. Both the Male and the Female Halves were the subject of interview within 18 months of their standup debuts. (The articles were each rather sizeable and in each case they were the sole focus of the piece.)

And, says the Female Half: "If you think standup is better than sex, you haven't had very good sex."

The Male Half of the Staff is leading in the SHECKYmagazine.com office pool. So far, he has accurately predicted the winners of the first 16 games in the annual NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, known as "March Madness." He is 17 for 17 if we count the "play-in" game that saw Mt. St. Mary's beat Coppin St.

The Female Half has correctly predicted 13 of the 17 games played so far, earning her second place in the office pool.

Of course, since there are only two people in the office, this puts her dead last.

The Female Half has tried to shame the Male Half by pointing out that, in order to secure a perfect record, The Male Half had to favor Michigan State over his alma mater, Temple University. Says he, "If there was one thing that Temple taught me, it was to examine reality and act on that, rather than to act on sentimentality or emotion."

Tomorrow: Sixteen more games!

Duh! We forgot to include the name of French's blog... and we forgot to link to it! It's called IncrediblyTightShorts!

Here's a sample:

I've had three full-time staff jobs on talk shows -- The Best Damn Sports Show Period on FOXsports, The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn on CBS, and Dennis Miller on CNBC. I get asked quite a bit about those jobs -- mostly hey, how do I get that job?

For many months/years Dan French was one of our most popular SHECKYmagazine columnists. His columns, under the "What Works" title, afforded readers a rare look into the inner workings of the writing business in Hollywood and a peek inside one of the sharpest minds ever to analyze standup comedy and its relation to the larger entertainment world.

He wrote eloquently about his move to Los Angeles and his climb up the writing ladder, from one writing job to the next. And SHECKYmagazine.com readers were lucky enough to look over his shoulder as he progressed.

French is blogging from ATX, Silicon Hills, Austin! The capital of Texas and the capital of cool in the Southwestern U.S. It's called IncrediblyTightShorts

This week, over the course of a few posts, he'll be uploading his entire writing packet-- the series will include the material that he used to get his gigs at such shows as Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn and The Dennis Miller Show.

It is sure to be fascinating for anyone who has wondered what it takes to get hired onto the staff of a television show!

Then come back here to read (or re-read) his "What Works" columns!

FOS Ron Reid sends word of an article from the Independent (UK) about an upcoming series of plays on the BBC which "will revisit the shambolic lives of (Tony) Hancock, (Frankie) Howerd, the two lead actors of (long-running British television series) Steptoe and Son (Harry Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell) and Hughie Green. The comedians are all well-known to viewers of British television. Terence Blacker of the Independent grows weary:

Every time another play, biopic or drama-doc about a sad comedian comes off the production-line, the same tired question is asked: what made men with the gift to bring happiness through laughter so miserable in their own lives? Here is another, rather more interesting question: why do we care? This need to be told over and over again that a funny man was really not funny at all, but an alcoholic/ cheapskate/ bully/ depressive/ pervert reveals more about us than the subject.

Seems like they're doing it on the other side of the pond as well.

Blacker continues:

Presented under the title The Curse of Comedy, it might just as well have been called The Lure of the Cliché. At a time when interesting plays are almost impossible to find on TV, the only projects that appear to get through on the nod are warmed-over versions of the tears-of-a-clown story, set in the world of British showbusiness over the past 50 years.

These plays provide a sort of comfort food for viewers too discerning to watch reality TV. Ordinary, unfunny people are reassured by the terrible mess that the extraordinary and the funny so often make of their lives. The story of sad, dead comedians provides a much-needed final act to the morality plays enacted for us by the famous in their private lives.

The man behind Boston's Comedy Connection is bugging out of his current location... maybe. There's this, from an article in the Boston Globe's Business section:

Comedy Connection owner Bill Blumenreich will lease the shuttered Wilbur Theatre in Boston's Theater District for live theatrical shows-- or possibly as new space for his club, now located at Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

The Female Half recalls performing there, in 1992 or so, when the Connection folks opened up a room in the basement of the Wilbur and called it Duck Soup. Back when the area had three clubs within sight of each other (The Connection in the bottom of the Charles Playhouse, Nicks just up Warrenton St. and Duck Soup across the way). Blumenreich seems less than happy with his lease at Faneuil Hall:

Blumenreich declined to talk about his situation in Faneuil Hall, but in 2006 he told the Globe: "Twenty-five years ago, people were dying to get into Faneuil Hall. Today, people are dying to get out." His comedy club lease expires in a few months.

We will tell you this: It's wicked expensive to pahk thea!

Good to see a club owner responding to the theater trend by... buying a theater!

H/T to alert reader Don Munro for hipping us to this article!

This time, it's Michael Granberry, writing for the Dallas Morning News, in an interview with two-year veteran (that's not a typo!) Peter Barrera.

The fact that the DMN would profile someone who has been onstage fewer than 200 times is probably not setting right with the comics in the Big D, but we can understand how an assignment editor would salivate over the story-- he claims to have lived, until the age of 4-- in Bobby Vinton's mansion! (His mom was the Vinton family's nanny.) How can you not send out a reporter when that comes across your desk.

What really must frost them, though (and what is pretty revolting as far as we're concerned) is the nauseating pontificating of the fledgling comic at the end of the piece:

"I would say," he says, referring to comics, "that 99 percent of us have major issues."

Having reached his mid-30s, he felt his life needed a wake-up call.

"I wanted to be in the public eye, to be seen, to make people laugh," he says.

But he would not be entirely truthful if he failed to admit to the deeper, more psychological motivation.

"I want people to like me," he says. "Like a lot of comics, I'm looking for approval, validation ... something I didn't get as a child. I want to make my kids proud, my wife proud."

Oh, boy! Here we go again.

A bit further on, we get a two-fer, when a fellow comic lays the Funny Man's Burden on him:

"I want to go all the way," he says, "but I have a lot to learn. Ravi told me once, 'Your jokes are good, but you need to write more material that comes from within you. That's when you're really good.' "

Then, the big finish, which could have been written by David Seltzer:

He feels the highest highs, he says, "when I hear the laughter. When I tell jokes, and it's something I've created. When I look down and smile and they're smiling back at me. When I'm standing here after I come offstage, and they say, 'That was great! That was so cool!' "

On the night he opened for Richard Lewis, a couple asked if they could be photographed with him. "I said, 'You realize it's not worth anything?' And they said, 'Oh, no, it will be. One day, it will be, and when it is, we're going to have that picture.'

"Do you have any idea how that made me feel? Driving home, I felt like crying. 'Somebody believes in me! Somebody believes in me!' I kept saying it over and over. It felt so good, because a lot of times in my life ... I just haven't felt that way, not even remotely."

I think that last quote was lifted directly from a Lilah Krytsick monologue!

Will comedians be moving to India to pursue the many TV gigs there? Check out this article on IndianTelevision.com-- it seems that standup is hotter than ever on that continent's networks:

On the other hand, Sony Entertainment Television (SET), which had a fairly better stint with its stand-up comedy show Comedy Circus last year, is also bouncing back. Produced by Optymistix, the second season will feature some of the winners of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge.

Sources also inform that INX Media's Hindi GEC 9X is hunting for talents as they are looking at the possibility of launching a stand-up comedy show soon.

It's like 1989 all over again! Only in India!

The real reason that the JFL folks are holding a fest in Chicago (in fall of 2009) is on the second page of this National Post article from last Thursday:

"The problem with America [is] if we don't have a festival in the States, we'll never be on American TV," Rozon says.

Hence the announcement last month of a Chicago edition of the Just For Laughs festival, to take place in the summer of 2009. The company has joined with U.S. channel TBS to turn Just For Laughs: A Very Funny Festival (as the event is billed) into four specials. Ellen De-Generes will host.

"When our brand is well-known throughout Chicago, which I hope will happen within a couple of years, Just For Laughs is going to mean more as a stand-up franchise in the United States," says Bruce Hills, the company's chief operating officer, "maybe bringing us back to where we were when we were on HBO and Showtime all the time."

The Chicago shows represent the second attempt by JFL to crack the U.S. market. "We had a great stretch in the glory days of stand-up," says Hills, referring to the Seinfeld bubble of the 1990s. "We had major prime-time specials on HBO and Showtime and even Fox."

The specials lured U.S. networks' talent scouts north to Montreal to schmooze potential sitcom stars. "That's when networks were paying a lot of money for stand-up," Hills says. "And then the boom died. Big thud, and no one wanted stand-up on television, let alone a festival from Montreal."

It's the television, stupid!

(The fest organizers face the same dilemma that Canadian comics have faced for the past 25 years-- If you want that American TV exposure, ya gotta relocate to L.A. or NYC! In this case, Chicago will do just fine. Or so they hope.)

Will this mean that Montreal will cease to exist? Probably not. But it will probably shift its emphasis to Canadian and international acts (U.K., Australia, France, etc.)

We're on the fence as to whether we'll attend this year's fest in Montreal. We've been there every year for nine years (NINE YEARS!) and something quite extraordinary would have to happen for us to show up north of the border this year. (Actually getting booked to perform in it? All our rowdy friends are included in this year's version? We stumble over a bag of unmarked 100's and there are no witnesses?) Stay tuned.ashley baia

Tim Rawal, columnist for the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times ("The Voice of the Mountains"), sets up his March 14 column, "The popularity of Dane Cook is killing comedy," by boldly brandishing the axe and commencing with the grinding:

For most of my childhood, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. No, seriously. Then I realized it involved being considered humorous by more than just your brain-dead friends and having the ability to tell jokes that had beginnings, middles and ends.

Then Dane Cook became famous, and I reconsidered my dream.

Oh, yeah. It's personal.

Most comedians (real comedians, not imaginary ones), when they recall the incident that made them get into comedy (or think or believe or imagine that they could/would/might be one some day), tell the story with a sense of awe or wonder, or at the very least, in an upbeat manner.

Other people, like our Mr. Rawal here, are embittered, downbeat and disappointed. Their experience turns them not into comedians, but hecklers. And Mr. Rawal's "column" here is nothing more than a lengthy, 537-word heckle from waaaay back in the rear of the theater.

He should be ashamed. Apparently, his personal enmity has gotten in the way of any worthwhile analysis. If Mr. Rawal is the astute observer of standup comedy that he claims to be, he could observe standup that may not make him laugh and still be able to discern the structure, the timing and the skill set that makes it palatable (and often intoxicating) to large segments of the population.

The money quote:

He (Cook) and a handful of other new comedians who claim their humor comes from a happy place are ruining the honesty of great comedy (see Andy Samberg).

Of course, there is no evidence to support this preposterous assertion, Mr. Gloomy's petulant whining notwithstanding.

Our favorite quote, however:

Comedy comes from a dark place. There were only three seemingly happy comedians who ever told good jokes; Billy Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Newhart. And even those cats weren't ecstatic about life. But they were intelligent and articulated universal feelings that made semiboring human quirks seem more enlightened and interesting than they actually were.

But they were (Attention: STILL ARE!) three of the most enormously successful and inflential American comedians of the latter half of the twentieth century!

Comedy should not necessarily come from a "dark place" or a happy place-- it should come from a funny place.

Kid Dave Miller returns to the pages of SHECKYmagazine.com today! It's been some time since Miller composed a column for us, and we're happy he's returned for one more.

We met Dave a few years back at the Punchline in Atlanta. After the show, we retired across the parking lot to Cafe 290 for a few beers. The three of us kicked around various ideas and philosophies related to the art and business of standup and swapped stories. (Like the time Dave worked with Frank Gorshin!?) We agreed that Dave had a lot of stored knowledge about the road and he had an interesting way of imparting it.

Thus, "Road Worthy" was born.

He decided to write another one because it has been 20 years since he gave the day job the ol' heave-ho.

Twenty-two years ago, I was working on a ranch in a very rural part of the Texas panhandle, wondering If I was going to spend the rest of my life repairing windmills and dehorning cattle. Then I moved to Ft. Worth, stumbled into standup comedy, and, well, here we are. The following is a brief reflection on the my 20 years in standup comedy.

Congratulations, Dave! And we're honored to have you back onboard. Dave's column is 20 years of sage advice from someone who's been there and done that.

And if we had that Quicktime plug-in working, we'd listen in live tomorrow morning. Attention all Indianapolitans: Dave's headlining this weekend at Oneliners in Greenwood! Stop on by and say hey and "Happy anniversary!"

"Why Patton Oswalt is no alt-comedy snob" was the title of yet another chat with Patton Oswalt, this time in Vancouver's Straight.com. (The piece appeared on Feb. 28, but it only popped up on our radar today! It was penned by FOS Guy MacPherson and the occasion was a remarkable comedy weekend in Hollywood North-- Patton Oswalt, Doug Benson, Comedy Death Ray, Paul Provenza, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Janeane Garofalo and Lewis Black all appearing at various venues over a long, leap-year weekend! Could Vancouver be the hippest comedy town in all of North America?!)

One item that stood out to us was the quote at the tail end of the article:

The last eight years have been a gold mine for comedians, but the current U.S. administration is no joke for Oswalt-- at least, not anymore. He's done his fair share of Bush-whacking, but feels the topic is now verging on hack.

"Pointing out that George Bush sucks is the least edgy thing you could do on-stage," he says. "Isn't he, like, at an 18-percent approval rating or something?"

(Actually, depending on who you read, it's 31.3 per cent-- Pollster.com, AP/Ipsos, CBS/NYT, ABC/WashPo-- pretty much everyone says it's in the low 30's. Congress, on the other hand, is enjoying a 19 per cent favorable rating. Perhaps the gags should shift in focus to Pelosi, Reid, Lott, et al.)

We declared it to way beyond the verge back in July, in our final Just For Laughs post, when we declared the following:

...precious few of the attempts at getting a cheap laugh by bashing Bush got so much as a weak, oftimes uncomfortable, laugh. Perhaps even folks who might be predisposed to laugh at a W gag might be sensing that it's played out.

But the most striking feature of the Oswalt interview is his (for lack of a more precise word) egalitarian message (presaged in MacPherson's title):

"I don't have any guilty pleasures in comedy," he says, meaning that if someone is funny, there's no reason to feel shame. "I don't look at comedians as mainstream or indie. I just look at whoever's funny. There's plenty of amazing, hilarious mainstream comedians, just as there are plenty of amazing so-called indie comics. I just don't divide it up. I'm not like, 'I only want to see people that are like me.' I want to see people that are nothing like me."

San Francisco standup blog sfstandup.com has the details on recently announced Dave Chappelle appearances in that city's Cobb's Comedy Club and Punchline. Says the blog, "If you’re looking for a regular length show, go to one at 8:00." A reference to the comic's tendency to "go long" when there's no reason to vacate the stage.

He'll do an 8 and an 11 on Friday and Saturday at Cobb's, then an 8 at Cobb's on Sunday, then an 11 at the Punchline later that same night.

Watching Fox News Channel. They just teased a piece in which "Sinbad is getting serious about Clinton and foreign policy." Huh?

Mystery solved: It's a reference to a Mary Ann Akers "The Sleuth" column in today's Washington Post:

Sinbad, along with singer Sheryl Crow, was on that 1996 trip to Bosnia that Clinton has described as a harrowing international experience that makes her tested and ready to answer a 3 a.m. phone call at the White House on day one, a claim for which she's taking much grief on the campaign trail.

Harrowing? Not that Sinbad recalls. He just remembers it being a USO tour to buck up the troops amid a much worse situation than he had imagined between the Bosnians and Serbs.

In an interview with the Sleuth Monday, he said the "scariest" part of the trip was wondering where he'd eat next. "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place.'"

Sinbad, an Obama supporter, apparently could remain silent no longer.

FOS and frequent SHECKYmagazine contributor Paul Ogata (pictured above right with DL Hughley) taped his segment of Comedy Central's Live At Gotham this past Sunday night in New York City.

He then slung us the following account of the evening

The scope of human effort that goes into producing a television taping of a live show is mind boggling. Now multiply that by eight and you have a sense of what went into making the third season of Comedy Central's "Live at Gotham." The production probably involved more computer and electrical hardware than there was in all the Apollo missions combined. That's how mind boggling it is.

I was scheduled to tape my episode on Sunday night. The first of two that evening, and the seventh of eight in the upcoming season. Live At Gotham is unique amongst live stand-up television programs, in that it is shot in as close to a real club setting as possible. There is an audience ordering drinks for which they have to pay, and, yes, that also means there is a dreaded "check drop". Luckily, or so I thought, I was going first. The reason was that there was a warm-up comic (KT Tatara from L.A.) and a hugely popular and funny host in DL Hughley. All the hosts for this season (Jeff Dunham, Jim Norton, Ralphie May, Tommy Davidson, Kevin Hart, Rich Vos, DL Hughley and Daniel Tosh) are damn funny, but I really like DL and was happy that he was hosting my episode.

At the pre-show meeting, I met the other comics on the line-up: Myq Kaplan (frequent SHECKYmagazine.com commenter!), Josh Homer, Liz Miele, Shane Mauss and Theo Von. Then I heard that DL wasn't feeling well and would be arriving a little closer to show time. Oh well, I thought, DL is the man and he can do this on auto-pilot.

Among the myriad crew members hustling around was a guy who was in charge of getting our introductions and material bullet points correct for the teleprompter. (There's a teleprompter! What? You heard me, a teleprompter.) I thought he looked very familiar, then I noticed the name on his production binder: Joe Bolster. No way! Joe freaking Bolster! Before I started stand-up Joe Bolster was everywhere on TV, and now he's helping to make those shows on TV. Joe Bolster was, it seemed, the poster boy for stand-up. And the game could not have had a better representative: Joe was always clever, original and hilarious. He was one of the people I'd see on TV and think to myself, "Holy crap, is that awesome! I wanna do that someday!" Great to meet such a veteran and to see that he's still involved in the sweet science of comedy.

DL arrived with time to spare, and that put me at ease a bit. But that was just a false sense of security into which I was lulled. It was just like on the Apollo 13 mission when everyone was thinking nothing could go wrong because everyone involved had done this many times before. DL took the stage and killed. I waited anxiously at stage left. He read my intro and said my name, "Please welcome Paul Ogata!" Then he walked off the stage. With the only microphone. Stage right.

Hughley, we have a problem.

I saw it happening in slow motion, but there was nothing I could do about it. The stage manager didn't notice the missing mic and shooed me to the stage, "That's your cue. Go!" So I headed to the stage trying to figure out a game plan. I clowned around with the empty mic stand for a few moments until DL brought the mic back and apologized. Fortunately, I have a bit about things not going according to plan, and put that in play once I got the mic back. What will it all look like in the end? The way I see it, there are three possibilities. They can leave in the botched mic hand-off, showing a natural side of live shows (ie. the occasional screw up). They can cut from DL's intro to a crowd scene then back to me with a mic. Or perhaps they will just scrap the entire set. I vote for one of the first two scenarios! In Apollo 13, they fixed those CO2 scrubbers and got the crew home safely. On the other hand, Jim Lovell did come home, but never got to walk on the moon. Man, I suck at metaphors.

We'll find out this summer what happens. The new season of Live At Gotham, from what I hear, is scheduled to start airing on the Friday after Memorial Day.

The Classic Las Vegas blog is "Helping Preserve 20th Century Las Vegas," by commenting on the ongoing dismantling of the mid-century landmarks, signage, buildings and charm of the desert metropolis and organizing the folks who are seeking to halt or slow the process.

It's a great site if you like mid-century architecture and/or if you are at all familiar with/enamored of Las Vegas prior to 1988 or so.

We first hit Vegas in August of 1988 and we've performed there off and on over the past 20 years, noting with some dismay the changes that have been wrought. The latest crisis is the demolition of the El Morocco and the impending disappearance of the Peppermill! (We're scheduled to work the Comedy Club at the Riv in July... those two establishments are/were right next door!)


The above photo, of Vegas legend Shecky Greene, is part of Classic Vegas's history of the Riviera Hotel in the 1950s. (Click onto page 3 for the link!)

We have been going through our archives, sorting the various papers, documents, boxes of VHS tapes and artifacts (a particularly difficult task when we hit a vein of material from the mid- to late-90s-- not good times!) and we came across the video below.

It's a 4-minute clip of Australian daredevil Vincent Silvestro who stood on the frame of his harness racing sulky, held the reins in his teeth and set off fireworks while being pulled at 30 miles an hour by his trusty horse, Hand Me Silver.



We were part of the team that brought Silvestro to America for several performances in 1997-- some time after our radio gig in Philly had exploded and just before we plunged back into comedy. We were in charge of publicity and also served as the act's advance team. We eventually left the operation when full-time standup beckoned once again.

That's comedian Dwayne Perkins on the national Verizon Wirless commercial-- the one where the guy is walking out of the store, with the entire Verizon Wireless network in a giant pack behind him. It is truly a remarkable feat-- he delivers his lines while walking (and staring into the camera), through a door, out into the street. (And quite a directorial feat as well, with lots of crucial activity occurring in the periphery and a tracking shot that gives way to a crane shot! How many takes did this one take?!) Job well done, Perkins!


That's Perkins on the right, with Jimmy Dellavalle, taken at the '04 JFL.

Jon Stewart will host and Kevin James, Rosie O'Donnell and Susie Essman will be among those on "Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Benefit for Autism Education" on April 13 at the Beacon Theater in New York, say the AP article.

It will air live on Comedy Central.

It's the second such benefit and was organized in part due to Robert Smigel, whose son, Daniel, is autistic. Smigel's most famous character, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, will also be attendance.

The first one raised $2.6 million.

Downloads will be available for $1.99 the next day via popular download sites, with the proceeds going to charity, of course.

The Reuters article talks about the promotional gimmick surrounding Doug Benson's documentary, "Super High Me." The tortured money quote:

Starting March 10, fans can register at the film's Web site to "roll" their own screenings by requesting a free DVD copy of the film, which will be sent out on its theatrical start date of April 20, a sacred date in the stoner community.

Was this written by someone who just lit up? Sounds so.

From what we can tell, Benson made a documentary (a parody of Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me) which depicts the comedian abstaining from smoking pot for 30 days, then smoking it all day for the next 30 days, with medical tests set up along the way. (Benson claims to be a card-carrying medical marijuana patient.)

The promotion scheme is a rather odd combo of high, low and medium-tech and a borrowed idea or two-- Offering a DVD (low-tech) hard copy of the flick, which has a digitally enforced 24-hour shelf life (high-tech), via the website (medium-tech), delivered via USPS (low-tech), to be viewed on 4/20 (idea that was previously used to promote "Before the Music Dies" in 2006 and the film "Totally Baked" last April). It is hoped that word of mouth will make the film a hit when it opens in theaters. (Perhaps it was asking too much of potential fans of the movie to actually download a film from the internet. "I was supposed to hit 'Accept' but I got totally paranoid that it was a virus or something... then I got distracted by that LOLCats website... Are you gonna eat that?")

Of course, they're depending on stoners to spread the word. Now, if they can only remember to tell their friends...

Regardless, it has Benson in it and behind it. It will probably be hysterical, with our without herbal enhancement.

In an interview with alt rag The LAist, Matt Belknap (creator of website ASpecialThing.com) perpetuates the trite nonsense that comics have "an above average need for attention," which "might come from childhood neglect," and that comics came to their skills by trying to "gain the attention of an otherwise distant parent."

We grow weary of this.

Can we finally put this moronic, hackneyed set of hypotheses to rest? Who buys this shit but people who are predisposed to dislike comedians in the first place? Who benefits but those who wish to feel superior to standup comics (i.e., reporters, the envious, the utterly humorless, people who depend on clichés to order their world)?

It's particularly disheartening to hear this psychobabble coming from someone who has set himself up as an expert on standup. (The reporter loves it. The reporter comes to the interview believing it. And even we have been guilty-- in the dark, distant past-- of saying something merely because we are sure the reporter wants to hear it. This stems not so much from a need to please, but a desire for publicity.)

But Belknap says it more than once:

I would guess that all performers of all stripes have an above-average need for attention, so that's the first ingredient. This might come from childhood neglect...

And

A lot of people think comics must have had fucked-up childhoods. Some do, but I think that assumption is backwards: I think those comics are people who survived fucked-up childhoods by using their humor as a shield. The comics who didn't have notably fucked-up childhoods are just people who like the feeling of making people laugh (and the attention that comes with it).

And

...a comic has either spent his whole life feeling like he needs to perform and make people laugh to get the attention he craves, or he's gotten a taste of the highs of live performance and can't resist chasing that feeling.

It is quite clear: Proficiency at making folks laugh is a pathology. It is somewhat akin to heroin addiction or chronic masturbation. It's often rooted in a malformed childhood. Or it's a palliative for a painful childhood or a failure to connect with a parent.

This fantasy is right up there with the overbearing mother/distant father formula for gayness. Haven't you heard the news? Freud is sooo last century.

The second quote offers some clue as to why this garbage is peddled. We thoughfully boldified the money quote, and we repeat it here:

The comics who didn't have notably fucked-up childhoods are just people who like the feeling of making people laugh (and the attention that comes with it).

If your humor doesn't come from pain (and if your motive is purely to make people laugh), your standup has no hope of achieving the status of art. Conversely, if your humor derives from pain (and you are a tortured soul), congratuations, you are an artiste. And the corollary: If you had a happy childhood and you become a standup comic, you're an attention whore. If you had a "fucked up childhood" and you become a comic, you deserve all the attention you can get.

Earlier in the article, Belknap flatly states that "all standup comedy is art." But in the next sentence, he dismisses a good chunk of standup by saying that "a percentage of it is striving to be nothing more than escapist entertainment, a mindless reaffirmation of commonly held beliefs." Just what percentage of standup is "merely escapist" or mindless Belknap doesn't say.

An article in the Allentown Call-Chronicle affords the reader a peek into the strange world of Leo Gallagher (or Gallagher 1, as we like to call him). Many facts stuck out, among them that Gallagher has a degree in chemical engineering and that he has never had an agent or a manager.

Gallagher has been involved in a number of projects throughout his career. In the '80s he did seven television specials. In 2003 he ran for governor of California.

He still produces videos, one of which illustrates his idea to use helicopters for clearing accident vehicles off the freeways in case of a terrorist bio-attack. His latest shows him dressing as "Uncle Earth" to speak about ecology.

We enjoyed watching some of those specials back in the '80s. There's lots of interesting stuff in between the fruit/veggie carnage. We heard a chunk of his new material on XMRadio and it's well-written socio-political commentary that's right up there with any other similar material.

We saw him live once at Congo Room at the Sahara (the same venue that Louie Prima played in his prime) and the show didn't go very well. It was disappointing. The year was 1996. Perhaps the crowd was ornery. (How many of them came to the show having just heard a snide Gallagher comment or two in the MSM or in the pop culture? Imagine swimming against that tide every time you set foot onstage!)

Maybe Gallagher himself was "off." (Even the seasoned pros have the occasional hinky show.) We'll try to catch him again some day.

On Tuesday night, the Male Half was among 15 comics who did six minutes before the camera at Philly comedy club Helium. The tape was made at the request of Just For Laughs Festival officials. The audition by mylar was one of several held, or to be held in clubs across the U.S. and Canada.


L to R: Pat House, Ed McGonigal, Chip Chantry at the Helium bar

The auditioners, in order of appearance:

Laurence Mullaney
Tim Grill
Pat Barker
Chris Coccia
Andy Nolan
Robin Fox
Roger Weaver
David James
Brian McKim
Steve Gerben
Anton Shuford
Joe Bublewicz
Pat House
Ed McGonigal
Chip Chantry

A hearty and healthy crowd saw each act do six minutes (and not one comic, to our knowledge, went over). Coccia came out at the end and did another ten minutes to absorb the "check drop"

It was a miniature Philly comics' reunion, as a substantial portion of the PHL comedy community was present! Even Keith Robinson was hanging out! (Robinson produces a show a the club once a month.)


Anton Shuford, Tim Grill at the Helium Bar

The Nashville LCS showcase (the one that the Male Half was planning on performing in... if Page Hurwitz had returned my call. Thanks, Page! No returned call, even though Bill Bellamy himself told the Male Half to call?) just concluded a few hours/minutes ago. Here is who made it into the next round, according to our spies

Heath Hyche
Erin Jackson
Taylor Mason
Mary Mack
Dale Jones

In the opening few paragraphs of what must be the ninth or tenth profile that VF has done on Mike Nichols, Sam Kashner writes about the breakup of the comedy duo Nichols and May:

Then they walked away from it all. It was Elaine May's idea. She wanted to devote more time to writing and she also felt, with Kennedy just installed in the White House, there had been a seismic shift in the country's mood, and the duo’s uptight, Eisenhower-era targets were no longer relevant. On July 1, 1961, they gave their last performance. "I stopped being a comedian," Nichols now says, not the least bit wistfully. "Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks."

You mean, like... a director?

Uh... it doesn't turn all of us into control freaks. (Ever notice how the only people who piss and moan about control freaks are... control freaks?)

Thanks to FOS Al Romas for pointing us toward the article!

FOS Terry Reilly sends along a link to a Wall Street Journal article, written by John Paul Newport, that ponders the phenomenon of the golf joke.

A few theories are kicked around as to why, even though traditional jokes seem to be in decline, the golf joke is bucking the trend.

But humor theory suggests an additional reason. Old-style joke-telling, which probably had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, was popular because the jokes didn't reveal much about either the teller or the listener. They were clever but safe and impersonal, which fit the times. Since then, however, the culture has moved into a more emotive phase. People feel more comfortable wearing their hearts on their sleeves. And golf jokes-- the good ones, at least-- tap into the emotions that all golfers share, particularly those created by the game's maddening difficulty.

There's a mention of T.P. Mulrooney, a former club comic who has carved out a niche for himself as a "golf comedian," touted on his website as "the official comedian of the Senior PGA Tour."

Dave Attell, Louis C.K., Pete Correale, Nick Di Paolo, Greg Fitzsimmons, Artie Lange, Kevin Meaney and Jim Norton will headline the The Gerry Red Wilson Foundation Comedy Benefit on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 8:00 PM at Town Hall, New York, NY.

The Gerry Red Wilson Foundation is an organization dedicated to raising awareness and fighting Meningitis. The Foundation was created by friends and family to keep alive the memory and spirit of Gerry Red Wilson, a rising comic and television star who succumbed to Spinal Meningitis on November 21, 1998 at the age of 37.

Tickets are on sale now.

Anyone interested in making a donation to the Foundation directly can mail a check payable to The Gerry Red Wilson Foundation to 17 Battery Place, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10004.

We heard from some folks from the Bay Area. "All the SF winners were pretty good looking and on the younger side," said one report. We detect a trend. Producers are displaying a passion for non-comics in wacky costumes (as cannon fodder-- no one expects any of these "acts" to eventually compete), we hear that the choices for eventual advancement to Los Angeles are skewing young and attractive.

The comics who advanced out of the nighttime showcase:

Mike E. Winfield
Andy Haynes
Iliza Shlesinger
Jeff Dye
CORRECTION: We incorrectly reported Elian Drakefield as getting through... we are now told it was Drennon Davis
Whitney Cummings
Meehan Brothers