The first time I heard his name was at a benefit I was doing at The Laugh Factory here in Hollywood. We had to be squeaky clean because there were children present. Comics don’t like kids in an audience. Why don’t you just ask us to play for the Pope? I made the kids laugh but not intentionally. I make strange sounds when I imitate my French mother and the kids thought that was funny so they laughed over those punch lines. Thanks.

Then Dane Cook came out and made them – and the adults - laugh. On purpose. I hadn’t ever seen a comic pull that off so I was impressed. Another funny comic, John Pinette, was on the bill with us and was virtually hamstrung because his act was so dirty. At the time I was part of an online newsgroup called alt.comedy.standup. I took that story into the newsgroup and was surprised at the amount of comics who said they didn’t like Cook. But if you read my list of what comics are like you’ll remember we hate everyone.

Myspace wasn’t yet the phenomenom it has become and someone told me he had over 100,000 friends back then, in the year 2000. Today he has 2,422,976 friends, which translates to 60,575 pages. I’ve tried Googling a lot of comics from my generation and am always surprised how more than 75% have no web presence at all.

In Rolling Stone Magazine, Dane said: “The influence of the Internet on comedy is what television was to radio when it first emerged. It’s the most important tool any comedian can implement into their career. The thought that I can post a new routine and, potentially, millions of people can hear it moments later, react and share it – no more waiting for calls to appear on late-night talk shows, no more head honchos of a network plucking you out of a nightclub circuit. No more waiting: If you want to entertain people, you can. It’s up to you to gather your fans for your own personal programming. That’s powerful.”

In that same magazine, the legendary Albert Brooks is quoted as saying, “Large amounts of opinion too early in an artist’s life is like a cancer.” Meaning that you don’t want to fail in front of large crowds because that may be your only shot. Start in smaller cities before you hike to NY or LA. I think this actually applies to all careers. People never forget the first year intern who accidentally killed his patient. Thank God.

The Internet is a behemoth that is officially out of control. The New York Times pointed out the number of people watching some SNL bits. 14.3 million people watched Tina Fey’s first take on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin online vs. 10.2 million on TV.

TV should be afraid. Very afraid.

Happy Halloween and CYA next week.

I love Wanda Sykes. When you’re a comedian, people always ask you who your favorite comic is. When it comes to men, it’s easy but when it comes to women it’s a lot harder. First of all, there are less of us to choose from. But hands down, Wanda always comes out on top for me.

I’ve followed her career from The Jon Stewart Show to the current The New Adventures of Old Christine. She has a persona that is so unique, so memorable; she’s a one of a kind comedian.

I rented Mother-in-Law with Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez ONLY because Wanda was in it. However I did draw the line at Pootie Tang although I love Louis CK (director) and Lance Crowther. (star)

I’ve owned her first book for years but never read it. It was published in 2004, right before Bush was reelected and everything she says in the book is the same today, four years later. But the way she says it is hilarious.

I’ve long hated the Space Program and the billions of dollars we waste every year to see if spiders can live in zero gravity. And apparently Wanda agrees with me:

“Bush announced an initiative to spend twelve billion dollars to create a permanent moon base by 2020. That’s the first smart thing that he has proposed. He knows by the time he gets through, we will be so fucked on this planet that we’re going to be needing another home real soon. We’re not getting our deposit back on this one. We’re going to have to sneak off and move in the middle of the night. …What have we learned from our space travels? Seriously? What have we learned or discovered that affects our daily lives? Nothing. We’re spending billions of dollars in outer space for what? Why don’t we spend just half of that to find out who shot Tupac.”

I’m only sorry this book, Yeah, I Said It, wasn’t an autobiography but just a series of rants. Although she has a new book out but Amazon.com won’t let me peek inside. Didn’t they used to let you do that?

CYA next week.

This year’s winner of the 33rd San Francisco Comedy Competition was Steve White.

I’ve known Steve for over 15 years but we’re not friends, just peers. The first and only time I worked with him was in some hell hole in New Jersey or Long Island, it all runs together in my head. I even remember the line-up, Barry Weintraub was the MC, I was the middle act and Steve was the headliner. Back in those days I watched other comics’ acts. Now I run screaming into the night.

So I watched Barry and he killed, then I killed and then Steve died like a dog. At first I thought he might be trying out new material so after 5 minutes and he was still tanking, I asked Barry if it was just me or was White dying? Barry agreed he was dying.

Steve was managed at the time by Tony Camacho and Rick Messina. Messina rarely showed up at gigs but Tony was always there. I asked him why White was the headliner. I had had a lot of trouble with Rick Messina and in NY he treated me like shit. Once he saw me live. ONCE. And then cancelled 2 months of gigs on me. Not in advance, which would have been the decent thing to do to an impoverished comic, so I could try and get more work, but 4 days before each job. Week after week this happened until I asked Tony what was going on.

“He doesn’t like you, what can I say?” And since Tony had seen me first and booked those two months, this was Rick’s way of punishing Tony as well.

But none of this explained Steve White’s toilet dunking set. So I asked Tony why he was headlining and Tony said that’s how Rick created headliners, throwing them into unsuspecting crowds who had to suffer through 45 minutes of bad mateial while Barry and I fielded questions about why the last guy sucked.

All in all it was a great way to create headliners but I never liked Camacho or Messina after that. Tony’s still stuck booking acts in Jersey; Messina handles Tim Allen and Drew Carrey.

I collect comedy books. Ones either written by comedians or ones about comedians. I have about 85 of them. A lot of them are out of print and hard to track down and sometimes I’m in a used book store in Alabama and can’t remember what I own. Some of them are just hilariously titled, like This Cat’s Got 9 Lives, about Richard Pryor, written in 1982. Or Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery by Alan King, written in 1964 and autographed to “Eve, the columnist who has helped my career so much. Love and Thanks, Alan.” The original price was cut out of the book flap and I paid $8.00 for it a few years ago so you know it must have cost $1.99 back in 1964.

The man who really had the biggest influence on me was Bob Hope. When I was a little girl my dad used to talk about him, how he went overseas and entertained all the soldiers. I asked my father what exactly he did and Dad said he told jokes and sang and danced and took a lot of women on these trips with him. I’m pretty sure my mother shot him a look over that line.

“Do you think I could go with him one day? I’m a woman.”

“Well maybe when you’re a little older.”

“How much older?”

“A LOT older.” 

From his tone I could tell that conversation was over. Then he said “Can you tell jokes or sing or dance?”

“Nooooooooooooooooo.”

“Well then, you’d better learn.” 

I’m sure my Dad thought I’d forgotten that story but I romanticized Bob Hope and those nameless soldiers until I actually got to do USO and MWR tours myself. 

This is the first book I found about Mr. Hope, written in 1966 with no ghost writer and it’s hilarious. The book reads like one long set. Some of the many women he took to Viet Nam: Janis Paige, Anita Bryant, Jill St. John, Joey Heatherton, Carroll Baker undoubtedly had a hell of a time. He was such a legend, even in 1966, that I’m sure they were all treated royally. For him, until he retired, it was all about taking beautiful women to horny guys. Now they send Bruce Springsteen. 

Bob Hope was one of those comedians that all comics owe a debt of gratitude to, for many reasons. He brought laughter to war, not many people can say that. 

CYA this Friday.

(continued from Part 1)

Rappers and Rock himself, among others, have made the N Word larger than it ever was before. They’ve legitimized it. I once heard two teenage white boys on skateboards on Hollywood Blvd calling each other nigger.

To quote the founder of Q-Comedy, Aaron Yeagle, excerpted from his interview in Punchline Magazine:

PL: Is “fag” different than “faggot?”
AY: “Faggot” is a whole different matter for some reason. It still carries a lot of its negative power and I can’t tell you why. It’s really unacceptable in any conversation.

And then later on in the interview:

Take a look at the N-word. Within the community it’s an acceptable form of self-expression but outside of the community it’s completely unacceptable. The N-word, however, has not lost its power where “gay” has lost its power, moved into the general vocabulary - “That’s so gay.” - while not entirely appropriate, is completely powerless and will soon fade. “Fag” is still relegated to the gay community but may soon wend its way into the general vocabulary as a powerless word.

For me to be so removed from this special that I’m talking about technical issues and racism should tell you the jokes did not jump out and stick with me. I remember one funny group of words when he was talking about anorexic girls, “cheerio belt wearing.” I also remember one funny joke about John McCain, “John McCain old. John McCain OLD. John McCain is O L D. And he’s already hired a nurse.”

And therein lies the other annoying thing about this special. The constant repetition of set ups, a trick Jay Leno uses to drag his cold open into 18 excruciating, protracted minutes. For example, “You know what happens when a mama bird leaves the nest? Do you know what happens when a mama bird leaves the nest? Well I’ll tell you what happens when a mama bird leaves the nest, blah blah blah.” It’s a time filler and I guarantee you if someone timed this 85 minutes and removed the superfluous repetitions and endless swearing, this baby would clock in at 65 minutes. Or less.

Which leads me to this. All the slight of hand, editing tricks, endless repetitions and swearing seems like a substitute for what Rock knew wasn’t there. Killer material.

What’s really telling is that I can’t even remember the name of the special.

CYA next week.

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.

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.

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.

George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor and author who won four Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.

Carlin is noted for his political insights, his black humor and his observations on language, psychology, religion and on many taboo subjects. Carlin and his “Seven Dirty Words” comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5-4 decision by the justices affirmed the government’s power to regulate indecent material on the public airwaves.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Carlin’s stand-up routines focused on the flaws in modern-day America. He often took on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture.

He placed second on the Comedy Central cable television network list of the 10 greatest stand-up comedians, ahead of Lenny Bruce and behind Richard Pryor.[20] He was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era, and was also the first person to host Saturday Night Live.