I love Chris Rock. And if you read my recent list of 25 things about comics, you’ll remember that we hardly like anyone. It’s a hazard of our business to dissect comedy with a more critical eye than the guy who has a couple of beers and watches it from his Lazee-Boy. So let the Critical Eyeing Commence.

I did not love his new XXX rated HBO special filmed in Johannesburg, London and New York. Starting with the editing. What has editing got to do with comedy? In my case, plenty. Roller coaster cuts interspersed with close-ups where you could see his bicuspids  takes me out of the experience. And the edits rock you mid sentence from one town to another. A sentence begins in New York, jumps to London and ends in Johannesburg. One sequence is repeated over and over and OVER in each town, I suppose to look clever. Instead I just prayed for the editor to die.

Most comics will tell you there is nothing funnier than the word ‘fuck,’ unless you use it 20 zillion times in 85 minutes. And when Chris adds the words ‘nigger’ and ‘motherfucker’ and ‘faggot’ and ‘pussy’ ad nauseum the jokes were lost in an ocean of needless swearing. The entire last 4 minute bit is about using ‘pussy’ as a bargaining chip. Not clever and not funny. I was sorry that I knew he had two little girls at home.

There’s nothing funny about the word ‘nigger’ or ‘faggot,’ words he tries to demystify with this statement “It’s not the word that’s bad, it’s the context in which it’s used that is bad.” Uh. No.

Did you read about the Florida 7th grade teacher who wrote this on his backboard about Barack Obama? C H A N G E. Come Help A Nigger Get Elected? He got suspended with no pay for 10 days whereas that idiot Imus got fired. Where did this teacher get the idea that language would work in front of CHILDREN?

Chris mentions that racism is alive and well in America. Ya think?

To be continued tomorrow. It does not get prettier in case you’re wondering.

CYA tomorrow.

1. We never laugh at anything.

2. Because we can see the punch line coming from around the corner.

3. Unless it’s from a fellow comic who we admire.

4. And there aren’t a lot of comics we admire.

5. Practically none at all.

6. Maybe 4.

7. 3 of whom are dead.

8. Friends have a compulsion to email us ‘funny’ stuff.

9. If you’re one of these friends, please stop.

10. People tell us jokes and say ‘you can use that if you want.’ If the joke was written by someone else, no, we can’t use it.

11. Ever.

12. Female comics are not called comiDIENNES.

13. We’re just called comics.

14. Or bitch.

15. If a book jacket says the book is Laugh Out Funny.

16. We know it’s going to suck.

17. If a movie is called a Comedy.

18. People need to open a dictionary and look up the meaning of that word. 

19. Socially we’re duds.

20. We’re very serious at parties and if asked what we do for a living and we say ’standup comic’, people will inhale sharply.

21. We use that moment to steal hors d’oeuvres off their plates.

22. And we don’t care.

23. About your job, your family or your new shoes because in our head we’re writing a joke about your job, your family and your new shoes.

24. And it will be funny.

25. Because that’s what we do.

CYA next week.

Rodney Dangerfield has punchlines.
Jerry Seinfeld tells stories.

Roseanne Barr has punchlines.
Dane Cook tells stories.

Jim Gaffigan has punchlines.
Zach Galifinakis tells stories.

Two different ways of delivering jokes. The story tellers have punchlines; it just takes them more words to get there.

Punchlines come fast and furious with very little downtime between them.  Extra words are edited out so that you’re left with just The Setup and The Punchline. Punchline comics do better on TV. I’ve mentioned before that with Johnny Carson at the helm of The Tonight Show, you know, when it was good, you had to have 4 punchlines per minute.

Stories demand more attention from the audience. Order a round of drinks during a story-teller’s act and you could miss most of the premise of the joke. Listen to D.F. Sweedler’s set, who’s been on Letterman. Even though the set is very funny, at one point it takes him 35 seconds to get to the punchline. If he asks any one of you for my phone number or address, play dead.

I’m going to quote my friend and fellow comic Brad Slaight. He did a show and had a younger newer comic come up to him afterwards and say, “Hey, you’re Old School.” To which Brad replied, “If by Old School you mean I have punchlines, then yes, I’m Old School.”

Comedy has drifted more towards story telling and uncomfortable lags and pauses these days. So I was thrilled to hear of this guy, who was on Last Comic Standing this year, Adam Hunter. He’s young (the bastard) and is Old School. And I’m Old School. Which means he’s a genius because you know I’m always fair and never biased. Shut up.

Who is your favorite comic and what category are they in?

CYA this Friday.

I’ll be back with more whining and neurotic rantings in a week.

Last Saturday’s cold open with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton proved that Saturday Night Live could still come up with funny material. After all, it had been since December 2006 that Justin Timberlake had written and performed Dick in a Box. So it’s been almost 2 years. They were due.

Although if it hadn’t been for the 2008 political campaign the drought might have continued, languishing once again at the bottom of your Things That Make Me Want To Kill Myself list. And if Tina Fey, former head writer of SNL, wrote it then it only proves that if you’re not on the show you can turn in some decent work. See reference to Justin Timberlake.

I know of no other job where 33 years of mediocrity is rewarded, unless you count the government. Yes, that’s how long SNL’s been on the air. The standard reply from network suits is that they have nothing else to put in that time slot. How about reruns of the test pattern from the 1960’s?

After the halcyon days of Gilda and Belushi and Murray and then later on with Carvey, Hartman and Lovitz, skits took a turn for the worse and stretched into agonizing minutes of stupefaction. The rumor was, and still is, that they were incapable of knowing when to cut off a sketch before mass suicide set in amongst its viewers. Yet WE all knew it. Didn’t they watch tapes of the show? Read reviews? Have EARS?

After the hilarious Palin/Clinton sketch, I put aside my doubts and settled in to hopefully catch the once vibrant Not Ready For Primetime Players in all their glory one more time. I lasted through the Michael Phelps monologue and one minute into the locker room sketch before I radioed Mayday to base and pulled the chord.

Unbelievably, the Comedy Issue of Rolling Stone, in an article entitled What’s Funny Now? makes this statement about Lorne Michaels:

“… his show has lasted 33 seasons, largely because he can sense what will make people laugh in any given year.” I’m guessing Any Given Year is journalism-speak for Never.

CYA next week.

I think by now you all know how I feel about Brian’s Live CD.  So if you still haven’t heard or seen Brian Regan and desperately need a laugh, then tune into Comedy Central either tonight or tomorrow to catch his new hour special: The Epitome of Hyperbole. These times are Pacific so check your local listings and set your TiVos.
 
Tue, Sep 16 10:00 PM
Wed, Sep 17 12:00 AM

I found a piece on Patton Oswald’s myspace page that also sums it up nicely. Patton is considered one of the top comics in the U.S and to read his take on Brian not only shows his generosity of spirit but also how secure he is as a comedian. In our business, people tend to be stingy with their compliments. Comedians think if you tell another comic he’s funny somehow it diminishes their own ability and means that they aren’t funny. It’s pretty much the third grade from start to finish.

So here’s an excerpt from Patton. It’s taken from a long answer he gave as to what he tells newbies when they ask him how to be a comedian.

“BECOME AN EXCELLENT COMEDIAN IN JUST ONE HOUR 

Watch Brian Regan’s special.

THEN, watch it a few more times.

THEN, try to do what he does. You won’t even come close, but your attempt to come close to the pure brilliance that is Brian Regan will, by default, make you a better comedian than you are, or could have been.

I should know. It’s worked for me.

Honestly, Brian Regan’s THE BEST stand-up working today. Period. Nothing against Chappelle, CK, Attell and Bamford. Well, Maria Bamford comes close. Oh, and I’d put Sean Cullen up there, too.

Come to think of it, Brian Regan and Maria Bamford have reached the same zenith of creativity and originality, but in wildly different ways.

Y’see, lesser comedians (like me) spend most of our waking hours ignoring the mundane, forgettable, boring and commonplace because, well, we need to think of DEEP SUBJECTS and EDGY PREMISES.

It’s the Borges idea of recognizing and preserving everything that’s not Inferno.

Except Brian and Maria are the only ones, as far as I can see, who can purchase laundry detergent, endure the presence of someone dull and unoriginal, and waste their time on trivialities and amusements, and FIND THE INFINITE. It’s the exotic bird all comedians are secretly chasing — the unveiling of an actuality. Except Brian and Maria can find actualities in annoyances.

Brian Regan’s comedy stuns me. It stuns me because he can start down the road  with a premise that every comedian KNOWS has not one scrap of flesh left on its bones, and find a new angle of attack that yields prime cuts of comedic meat. Angel fuck, that was a sweaty analogy. But you get the idea.

It took me a long, pretentious time to realize the genius of what they do.

I don’t know when Maria’s next special is — but Comedy Central ought to give her an hour. And Brian Regan ought to have an hour every year. It should be a given, like the Superbowl or the Oscars. “Oh, it’s the first Saturday in September. Regan’s got a new hour.”

Do you want to be a comedian? Then tonight at 10pm, watch what every other working comedian in the country’s going to be watching. BRIAN REGAN: THE EPITOME OF HYPERBOLE.

Then do what I do: try to be as funny as Brian Regan, fail miserably, and settle for being merely excellent.”

Patton’s an evocative writer, isn’t he? Maybe he should be blogging here but then I’d have to call him and tell him he’s funny but then it might mean I’M NOT FUNNY AND WE CAN’T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE?

CYA this Friday.

So to continue my story, I had just been dumped by my longtime boyfriend and had a show to do that evening…

That night I dragged my ass down to the Improv on West 44th Street to wait for my pickup to Long Island. A van with two comics pulled up, I got in and spit nails for the entire trip until I heard one of the guys say to the other, “Isn’t she ever going to shut up?” I heard the other one stage whisper that he heard I had just gotten dumped and suddenly they were both very sweet. Clearly they had been dumped before and knew how hard it was to have to get out of bed much less go do a show outside of Manhattan.

We got to the club and I went straight to the bar and ordered snake venom to soothe my aching throat. My agent walked in and asked how I was and I mentioned I’d been dumped and was deathly ill and he started to cry.

“I brought a booker to see you.” He said. I would have felt bad about that but I was too sick and depressed to care.

I got on stage and seven minutes into my set lost all will to live. Who cared about my stupid jokes? So I did what I always did when I got bored with my material, I started talking to the audience. A girl towards the front was very, very drunk. These are the best people to pick on since no matter what they say it’s always easy to top them. And the rest of the audience will egg you on because crowds love a bloodbath. And I was determined to give them one. If I was going down, I was taking hostages.

After a few minutes I asked her if I could go through her purse. She willingly brought it to me and went back to her seat. The first thing I found was an almost 18″ can of hairspray. So I made all the requisite dick jokes, big hair and vibrator jokes. Classy it wasn’t but she kept laughing and the audience was howling so I didn’t stop. From the stage I heard my agent apologize to the booker. And then faint.

After the show I was sitting at the bar having arsenic on the rocks when the drunken girl tapped me on the shoulder. Uh-oh, maybe I hadn’t been as funny as I thought.

“Thank you so much for making me laugh tonight,” she began, “I haven’t laughed in over 6 months.”
“Really? Why?”
“Six months ago I was driving home one night and saw an accident on the other side of the highway. When I got home my father told me it was my brother in the crash and that he had died.”

Oh God.

“And then two months ago my father passed away from a heart attack and I think it’s because he was so upset over my brother,” she continued, “and tonight’s the first time I’ve laughed since my brother died.

Suddenly getting dumped didn’t seem like such a big deal.

CYA next week.

I was the class clown. Unusual for a girl, as that distinction usually goes to boys. I remember it started in the 9th grade, when I was 30, but it might have begun earlier and I just don’t remember. I had a shrink once who asked me when my earliest memory was and I said five? Seventeen? As she scribbled furiously on her pad of paper, I asked if that was bad. She rolled her eyes, the psychological equivalent of the OJ jury listening to the prosecutor describe DNA.

I’ve been that clown my entire life. It has not endeared me to a lot of people. At my Dad’s funeral at Arlington Cemetery, I made a crack about porn to the pastor presiding over the ceremony. As the people in my group inhaled sharply and took one step back in unison, the pastor laughed. I did the same thing at a bat mitzvah only the rabbi did not laugh until the father of the child ‘explained’ me to him. I have no boundaries when it comes to joking around. I have Comedy Tourette’s. Not bragging, just saying.

Only once did it pan out in my favor. I was living in New York and dating a man I had been seeing for three years. We had our ups and downs and the latest down involved me catching him lying about where exactly he was in Los Angeles, where he was filming a documentary on Milton Berle, who was one of his distant cousins. He said he was staying at his aunt and uncle’s but when I called them they had no idea he was even in California. Great.

I eventually tracked him down at the Friar’s Club where he refused to talk to me for longer than three minutes and instead kept repeating he’d talk to me when he got home. WOMEN HATE THAT GUYS, JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING.

Back in New York I came down with a massive cold/flu/bubonic plague. So sick that I was in bed. Dying and dictating my will. While I was recuperating, the boyfriend came home and proceeded to tell me that he was leaving me for another woman. A married woman. I got out of bed and wobbled to the kitchen, where I had a bottle of Brandy that I never drank because I hated Brandy. As I proceeded to scream at him and tell him to getthefuckoutNOW, he followed me from room to room as I slugged liberally from the bottle and made faces even a mother couldn’t love.

And all I could think about was that night I had a show in Long Island. And I needed the money and couldn’t cancel.

…to be continued so CYA this Friday for what happened at that show.

Rolling Stone’s comedy issue is on the stands now and if you want to see what’s going on in the world of comedy, it’s an excellent read. The interview is with David Letterman but everyone from Sarah Silverman (has she ever been funny?) to Chris Rock (when has he not been funny?) to Larry David (is he always yelling at someone?) is discussed ad nauseum.

My top picks for late night comedy:

Letterman – I love Dave and have since he had his 10:00 a.m. show out of New York. Lord I’m old. He’s smart and was snarky before it became popular. My all-time favorite moment was when he asked Cher why it took her so long to make an appearance on his show and she replied, “Because you’re an asshole.”

Leno - Loved him as a standup back in the 80’s, hasn’t been funny since and has single-handedly killed The Tonight Show.

Ferguson – Hilarious, the best new voice in comedy. The only guy in late night who writes most of his own material.

Conan – HATE HIM. He was a great writer but is a lousy performer. AND THAT HAIR. Seriously, I can’t believe this dork has a career in front of the camera.

Kimmel – the jury is out on this one.

So Dave is my late night comedy husband. And I would cheat on him with Ferguson.

So who is your favorite late night guy? And why?

CYA next week.

You know that person who goes to parties and can rattle off a bunch of jokes?  That person is really smart. Why bother to write jokes and take your chances when instead you can rattle off someone else’s and score a hit every time? There are many, many times I envy that person. When a standup comic goes to a party and reveals what they do for a living, the first thing people say is “Tell me a joke.” And here’s where I run into trouble.

I don’t know any.

There are entire websites and blogs dedicated to jokes. An endless supply of freebies out there for the taking. I asked a question on this blog a few posts back, if audiences cared whether jokes were stolen or not. Recently I read somewhere online (seriously, the web is too big. It’s making me miss encyclopedias, and how scary is THAT?) Apparently, audiences don’t care. 

I had a comic friend, Larry Amoros, who was possibly one of the best joke writers in the business. The Tonight Show accepts jokes by fax but only if you qualify. To do that, you have to submit a page of jokes that are current, about politics or pop stars or other train wrecks on the radar. When Larry was first asked to submit ONE page, he sent in ten. Needless to say he got the gig. I once used him to help me punch up a book a psychotherapist had hired me to work on. Writing jokes about suicide and manic depression were no problem for Larry. For me, yes.

Larry also knew all the current party jokes which brings me to this story. One day I was on the phone with my boyfriend du jour and he told me this joke:

A man walks into his son’s bedroom and finds his son masturbating.
“Son, if you keep doing that, you’ll go blind.”
“Over here, Dad.”

I did not laugh. That joke is older than Hugh Hefner. It’s what comics call ‘stock.’ Stuff guys at Shriner’s conventions use. As I had just spoken to Larry and he had told me a really funny joke, (which of course I don’t remember) I repeated it to the boyfriend. When I finished HE didn’t laugh.

“What’s the matter with you? That joke was really, really funny.”
“You don’t laugh at my joke, I don’t laugh at yours.”

Apparently I was dating a fifth grader. Months later this same boyfriend and I were driving back from one of my gigs north of Los Angeles. I had a great show and this proved too much for this guy.

“Hey, did you hear the one about a man who walks into his son’s bedroom and finds his son masturbating?”

I said nothing. Maybe I drove into a tree.

“Son, if you keep doing that, you’ll go blind.”
“Over here, Dad.”

I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I drove into a tree.

CYA this Friday.