Stand-Up Comedy
Oct082004
Filed Under Stand-Up Comedy
Been reading the obituaries for Rodney Dangerfield and was struck by how rare he was. As he stated in his LA Times obituary:
“I’m very lucky to have an image. Most comedians do not have an image. They do, ‘Did this ever happen to you?’ or they do satire. But there’s practically none around today with an image. (Jack) Benny had an image. (W.C.) Fields had an image. An image is tough to come by. It doesn’t just happen. And people try to create it and think, ‘What’s an image for me?’ But it has to happen from your soul, I guess. You have to feel it.”
Rodney’s image was of an iconic level: the tug on the “red tie” with the declarations of no respect. He manage to keep both contradicting balls of comedy - familiarity and surprise - up in the air for so long. We kinda knew what he was gonna say, but it always pulled the rug out from under us anyway. I don’t think anyone will have such a solid image again… so much stand-up is about being real, that filtering your jokes through a persona seems ridiculous. Yet Rodney’s persona was real… it was him… a downtown comic whose demeanor was Catskills. No wonder he was a bridge between generations of comedy and why many claim he was responsible for many careers including Sam Kinison, Roseanne Barr and Jerry Seinfeld.
Here’s a collection of interesting links/obits featuring Rodney and his comedy. Check ‘em out:
Oct072004
Filed Under Stand-Up Comedy
According to Jay Mohr‘s web site, NBC has dumped the final episode of Last Comic Standing which would crown the third season victor. The winner instead will be announced at some point during a Father of the Pride marathon. The rambling note on Jay Mohr’s homepage was riddled with misspellings (including ‘thge’), so I felt the need to check my TiVo and, yep, no Last Comic Standings are scheduled. NBC also confirms the announcement of the winner during Father here.
I don’t feel the loss of the last episode… it’s filler anyway, with the finalists performing yet again with standard reality recap footage intercut to prolong what takes ten seconds to do. I’ve never been enamored with Last Comic Standing… the show has never been about being funny, but instead about showcasing personalities (or whatever passes for that) just like all reality TV does. This last version of this show naturally failed, because it ran away from why people tune in in the first place. An all stand-up version gets rather old fast because we get to know these performers’ acts and style so well, there’s no more surprise. No more surprise = not funny. The immediate followup after season 2 certainly didn’t help matters.
Season 1 and 3 contestant Ralphie May also recently claimed the show has “jumped the shark” (groan), claiming that stand-up isn’t necessarily about getting laughs but about pushing boundaries. While Ralphie May has since claimed he was misquoted, the question of how you measure good comedy (laughs vs. art) is something I’m gonna try and take up at some point in the near future.
Updated: Apparently, NBC has taken down the previous statement on the Last Comic page, promising a winner to be announced on Tuesday. According to a story on realitynewsonline, Last Comic will get a half-hour show to annnouce a winner (which again, is probably enough… who wants to draw this out including, apparently, NBC).
Oct072004
Filed Under Stand-Up Comedy
The joke of the day on October 5 from the late Rodney Dangerfield‘s web site:
“I tell ya I get no respect from anyone. I bought a cemetery plot. The guy said, ‘There goes the neighborhood!”
Sep222004
Filed Under Stand-Up Comedy
Salon published an interesting pair of articles on comedy trailblazers. The first, uses the recent Lenny Bruce box set Let The Buyer Beware as an impetus to find ten comics today who not so much carry Bruce’s torch but use it to set fire to everything wrong on this planet. Just like Bruce would. Number one turns out to be Howard Stern, which by admission of the author seems a little off. His main rationale for selecting the “King of All Media” isn’t so much funny as Stern’s current fight with the FCC and Clear Channel. With Rick Shapiro, who’s perhaps more infamous for his flameouts than his act, being second, it’s a very Passion-of-the-Christ-kind of way of looking at Bruce’s work. If you’re a comedy nerd, don’t celebrate how Lenny died, celebrate how Lenny slayed audiences.
The second article talks about a young devout Muslim female comic named Shazia Mirza. Though she can be incredibly fearless (her 9/11 bit: “My name is Shazia Mirza—at least that’s what it says on my pilot’s license"), from what I’ve heard the rest of her act is pretty tame. Though a 28-year virgin, she’ll make the same kind of jokes common to female (and male) comics about how her assets don’t seem to attract the opposite sex. Yawn. It’s cross-connects my humor wires a little. In another article of Lenny Bruce, Bill Maher says “One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade.” Shazia is definitely a tree planter, but I suspect I’m going to enjoy the shade a lot more. But I’ll reserve judgment at least until I catch a full live set. Until then, I’m TiVoing the November 12 edition of Comedy Central’s World Stands Up, which will feature her. You can preview that set here. And you can find a pre-concerns-about-integrity 60 Minutes story on her here.
Sep152004
Filed Under Records, Stand-Up Comedy
Shout Factory just put out a huge six disc set of Lenny Bruce’s comedy entitled Let The Buyer Beware. Great for any comedy completists who need to know who created the path stand-ups tread today, whether they know it or not. I admire Shout Factory for making such a (along with my blessed Freaks and Geeks DVDs. Rock!), but I wish they put longer previews of Lenny’s tracks on its web page. You see, back in the day, people were actually willing to wait through a long setup. But today, we only get a minute or so to see if we like anything. It would be nice to hear enough so unfamiliar buyers could get a real taste of the man. Still, you get a taste of Lenny’s rhythms with this excerpt of “To Is A Preposition; Come Is A Verb.” (quicktime audio file)
Sep142004
Filed Under Sitcom, Stand-Up Comedy
Louis CK’s getting a chance to helm his own sitcom on HBO. Louis’ focus is a little different, at least for now. As he describes it, along with the development deal, he’s definitely getting a new half-hour comedy special for the network. Which is what he’s really looking forward to, as it’s “concrete” and his last appearance in an 90’s era HBO Young Comedians special “left a lot to be desired.” Hard core training coming up for Louie, so expect to see him a club near you.
Hopefully the sitcom will suffer a better fate than “Saint Louie”, a pilot for CBS that never made it to air. Though it revolved around a couple and their new baby, it sounded like an antidote for audiences who hate cloying stuff about children. In this Onion interview, Louis CK described his first line in the show as “Honey, this baby sucks.” Ah well, another show for the Other Network. (For more of Louis CK’s baby stuff, check out this clip from Conan.)
Aug242004
Filed Under Stand-Up Comedy
Comic Sharon Houston popped up on The Special Thing Comedy Boards to explain her intentions behind the Fahrenheit: LCS2 video she made. She seems genuinely shocked that it’s gotten the attention it has. From her description, the screed wasn’t so much a rant against reality TV editing as much as an opportunity to tell a few jokes at LCS’s expense. Though this is comedian defense #1 when a joke of yours ends up having more backlash than you expected, she doesn’t seem to have any axes to grind. (The host of the video, cringehumor.net does. It revels in exposing flaws in LCS and particularly Dat Phan.) In fact, she’s quite willing again to admit her own faults.
She openly embraces producing another video where two version of her act appear, one the NBC-edited version and the other a full version (as I suggested here). She’s also refreshingly honest about why her bit did fail, citing “rookie” mistakes like: doing a long difficult-to-edit bit, using material even she was tired of and the perennial nerves. I agree with another point in her posts, if she hadn’t said anything negative herself, NBC probably wouldn’t have edited her bit to reflect that. It would have just glossed past without being a highlight (or lowlight) at all.
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