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It should go without saying that I have some issues with today’s Golden Globe nominations.  We will keep this between the best picture and best televisions show categories.

 

Best Picture – Drama

The Descendants – agree, one of my favorite movies of the year.

https://jlcauvin.com/?p=3074

The Ides of March – agree, one of my favorites.

https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2952

The Help – A good movie, but a best picture nominee?  Oh right, this year’s white guilt/white power entry (admittedly much better than The Blind Side).  Absolutely not a best pic nominee.

Moneyball – a good movie, went long though.  This is the “thank God they did not nominate Drive” slot.  I would not have nominated it, but it was solid for the most part.

https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2915

War Horse – haven’t seen it yet. Not out yet.

Hugo – bored me to fu*king tears, but it is a movie by Martin Scorsese and is masturbation material for cinephiles.  Might be the most overrated movie of the year.  I fell asleep. Only the second time in my life that happened,

BESY DRAMA SNUBS – Thank God Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was not nominated (who knew the spy world was so fu*king dry and boring).  The only movie I really loved that is not nominated in this category was Rise of the Planet of the Apes.  I know it had no chance, but the movie was great (I thought it might have a shot at a District 9 type nomination)

Best Comedy Picture

This is the category that the Globes force every movie they want nominated into the category.

50/50 – one of my top 5 movies of the year up to this point.  Really good movie and very respectable choice

Bridesmaids – a good comedy, but in the year of “Females Can Be Funny” articles this is a no brainer. My only complaint on this one was that many of the jokes were over done (i.e. 4 punchlines – hilarious, 7 punchlines – diminishing returns). No beef with the nomination (though in my reivew you will see me bash the preview for Warrior, which turned out to be really good)

https://jlcauvin.com/?p=2434

The Artist – will see this and will definitely win based on all the buzz

My Week With Marilyn – have not sen it. Will see it. Not a comedy or musical. Foreign press is stupid.

Midnight In Paris – a nice movie, but pales in comparison to Woody Allen’s bleaker views of humanity (it is no Annie Hall on the comedy scale and it is definitely no Crimes and Misdemeanors – my favorite Woody Allen flick).

SNUBS – Where the fu*k is Crazy Stupid Love?!!  My favorite comedy of the year.  Great heart, great comedy, great performances, not a dull moment.  One of the best movies of the year.

BEST TELEVISION DRAMA

Game of Thrones – second best show on television – damn right!

Boardwalk Empire – no problem here

Boss – this is the show with Kelsey Grammer on Starz.  No idea, but someone should penalize Kelsey Grammer for Frasier – the most overrated comedy of all time.  Apparently he plays a corrupt mayor with cancer – ahem I guess they won’t forget the best show with a guy with cancer, right? Or did they pick the wrong show with a terminally ill lead?

Homeland – everyone is masturbating to this not-quite-early 24 Showtime show.  A great premise but episodes have been hit and miss for me and Clare Danes is a shit actress (her bug eyes have been vying for an Emmy every second she is on camera).  The show is not bad, but I think people are a little too gaga for it.

American Horror Story – had no interest in this, but will catch up on it – I have heard good things.

SNUBS – Where the fu*k is Breaking Bad?  Golden Globes never nominated The Wire, so you are in good company BB.  The best show on television by an Usain Bolt margin.

BEST COMEDY SHOW

Enlightened – new HBO show – I will now do some serious On Demand watching to see if it is good

Modern Family – slipping, but still very funny – no problem

Episodes – GREAT – really really funny show on Showtime – good choice

Glee – seriously, get the fu*k out of my face – I’d gladly accept Louie in its place. 🙂

The New Girl – Zooey Deschanel is a pair of brown eyes from being homeless – I loved 500 Days of Summer so she has some credit in the bank with me, but the New Girl is not very good (the best episode by far was the pilot which had Damon Wayans Jr. – who then went to Happy Endings) – it feels like a hipster comic was asked to write a sitcom for CBS – that weird blend of quirky and crappy.  There are people who Hollywood have been inexplicably trying to make a star – one is Ryan Reynolds, two is the lead actor on Hawaii Five-O and the third is Zooey. Stop it.

SNUBS – Parks and Recreation, Two Broke Girls could and should replace Glee and The New Girl.   When Community is good it is great, but every third episode falls flat for me so not consistent enough.

TOMORROW CHECK OUT MY REVIEW OF THE NEW SHERLOCK HOLMES MOVIE AND THEN MONDAY I WILL RECAP MY ADVENTURES IN SAN ANTONIO.

I was on a show at Bar None in Union Square in NYC on Friday and it was a typically frustrating ten minutes.  There were a few comics sitting and laughing in a supportive fashion and a couple of people deciding whether to stay and watch the clearly irritated madman in XXL-Tall flannel on stage.  The only audience that stayed throughout the show was a table of three people, 1 girl, two guys and they did not shut up.  Every comedian knows that sometimes you ambush a group of people with comedy and it is not their fault if they do not want to partake in the activity if they are out to socialize.  However, these three had selected a back room of a bar, which was in use because of the comedy show, not in spite of it.  But if you think their talking or heckling irritated me most you would be wrong.  It was the fact that they were objectively not funny.  But they did not know it.  They kept saying either incredibly hacky things or incredibly dumb things and then laughing because we now live in an era where humor is completely in the eye of the beholder.  And the beholder is stupid.

Something I have noticed is that Twitter and Facebook may have devalued humor more than they have even devalued personal relationships.  Sure we can connect with more people, but the content of our art is being devalued.  Everyone can make or steal jokes and as long as one of their equally or lesser minded “friends” or “followers” thinks it is funny they will receive validation in the form of a “like” or re-tweet.

An extension of this is the fans who more and more seem to come up to me after show with a back-handed compliment.  I distinctly remember one guy coming up to me in Indianapolis after a good set and saying: “Man you were funny.  You know I got a buddy I work with – I think you should meet him – I think you’d get a kick out of him! He is funny as fu*k!”  Is there any job where you are allowed to go up to someone and tell them a good job by saying someone else you know, with no experience at that job, is someone that that person might want to meet so they could show that person a thing or two?  Maybe his friend is funny, but it just goes to further the idea that comedy is becoming a thing that everyone thinks they can do.  Just consider this my weekly reminder that stand up comedy is dying as an art form.   You may laugh at us now def poetry slammers, but one day when cable launches channel 19,644 “Def Poets Central” and every other asshole with some oddly-cadenced speech wants to kick a rhyme to you at a party you will feel my pain.

And since I mentioned joke theft I should point out that the hack that has a man crush on me “Bob Hellener” has, despite his insults to my humor and career, stolen tweets of mine and posted them as his own.  So in addition to being a joke, without any respect from anyone in the comedy world, as well as a liar and a delusional guy who has not updated his “material” since 2002, he is also a joke thief, which is actually unforgivable.  I thought his cowardice was most despicable – hiding behind fake names, but he is a disgrace to comedy. I can accept weakly formulated insults, but when you steal my material, even a fu*king tweet, in the words of Don Corleone, “This I do not forgive.”  So I guess I can be thankful for Bob.  At least I know someone out there is still not actually a comedian.

Today I saw an early show of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which may be the crowning achievement of this year’s Hollywood theme – a bunch of movies that receive critical praise and do next to nothing.  The previews for this film said it was “based on the novel that re-imagined the spy thriller genre.”  Probably because if the book was anything like the movie, no one ever envisioned a spy thriller being so old, dreary and boring.

I can appreciate an understated film, but over the last few years my favorite movies have been Munich, District 9, The Dark Knight, Eastern Promises, Inception, the Social Network, etc.  I like movies that are well made, but can actually entertain as well.  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has an all star cast and has received rave reviews so I sat with extra diligence so as to not be caught off guard by any subtle cinematic brilliance.  My diligence was rewarded with two (or was it four) hours of water boiling.  The movie is so boring they might as well double feature it with Hugo and call it “Now you can euthanize the whole family with this coma-inducing, boring double feature.”

The plot of the movie is about how a recently, forced into-retirement spy played by Gary Oldman has to find a Russian mole in the upper ranks of British intelligence.  A couple of dead bodies show up, but nothing, not camera work, not score, not acting can save this from being what it is: an incredibly boring movie.  They took spy work and espionage and gave it the pace of an early 90s Merchant Ivory film.  I kept expecting to see Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins sneaking furtive glances at each other.

Hollywood seems to have made a clear divide this year – either you can be entertaining and pretty mediocre or it can be extremely well made and completely useless.  Like going to a bar that only serves $1,000 bottles of wine and Four Loco.

By the end of the movie, which I assume since it was a spy thriller was supposed to have some mystery element to it, you learn who the spy was and I was amazed at how little I actually cared.  I was not surprised, but I had not predicted it either. It just was.  Perhaps in our current era of massive self-absorption and trite sensibilities we crave to have things that are serious.  And TTSS delivers that. It just doesn’t deliver anything else.

Final Grades – For Film-Making – B+, For Entertainment Value – D+

 

My headlining stint was a rousing success at Joke Joint in Lilydale, MN (a few miles from St Paul – one of the twin cities, so Lilydale is like the chick that St Paul has sex with when Lilydale thinks it is actually having sex with Indianapolis).  Of course on this blog, the phrase “rousing success” is a relative term.  It means I had three really excellent shows, one decent one and one that was eh.

Joke Joint is a comedy condo club, meaning that you live in an apartment that the club owns or rents, versus a hotel.  But unlike most condos, the Joke Joint one was pretty damn cozy.  It features a full kitchen stocked with snacks (and tons of bottles of 5 Hour Energy – in case the headliner is a raging douchebag), a television and DVD player and two bedrooms – one for me and one for soon-to-be dead hookers.

Being a big walker and non-owner of a car I like when accommodations are near eating and shopping areas.  Well, the condo was a mere 1.7 miles from a Walmart/Panera Bread/etc. and considering that I once walked 4.1 miles each way in a suburb of Denver to see a movie each day, this was no problem.  Except that was Denver in springtime.  This was Minnesota in Winter (think Game of Thrones and how terrified those dues are of Winter).  Each walk would start with me having a penis and by the time I arrived at Panera Bread I was using the women’s bathroom and removing a finger dead from frost.

I managed to see one movie while in Minnesota.  The feature – a woman named Wendy – was given the unenviable task of chauffeuring me to and from the shows each night agreed to bring me along to the movie she was seeing with the two teenage daughters of a friend.  Of course this felt like some sort of set up.  I thought I was getting Silvio Berlusconi’d.  But something far more offensive was to happen. We went to see Hugo.

I was lukewarm on Hugo.  On the plus side it was directed by Mr. Eyebrows Martin Scorsese and has been receiving rave reviews.  On the downside I had no real fu*king interest in it.  But the critical mass was so good that I decided I wanted to see it.  Whoops.  Here in as concise a fashion as possible is my summary of Hugo:

• Well acted
• Boring
• Really boring
• Fell asleep boring (literally)
• Nice looking movie
• Takes place in Paris, every actor (both English and American so it was intentional) using British accents
• Long
• Too long
• Never cared very much about the characters
• Every revelation of past events that have led our characters to be the way they are fails to deliver as much significance – it is as if JJ Abrams decided to direct a boring family movie (and critics – please stop calling this a family film – no kid, let alone a kid from the ADD 21st century will enjoy this or have the patience for your ode to cinema)

But the point of this whole trip was not to see movies or experience shrinkage on an unprecedented level – it was to do comedy, or as I described it to the crowd to run a Ponzi scheme on myself.  And the crowds were really good.  The Thursday crowd and the two early Friday/Saturday crowds were great.  Enthusiastic, smart and great laughers.  The late show Friday was tough and featured a lot of Usain Bolts (this is what I call a person who sprints out of the showroom, for fear that even looking at me may force them to acknowledge my existence or buy a CD).  The Saturday late show was tough, but still a net positive.  Here is one of my favorite newer bits I dropped on the crowds:

So I managed to sell a few CDs, got a lot of laughs, avoided junk food at the airports (Midway one of the underrated airports in America – can’t beat Potbelly for airport food!), did not get arrested, did not die in a plane crash and immediately sent every penny I made to the credit card, phone and cable companies!  Comedy!  Thank you to the fellow comics, staff and audiences at Joke Joint.

A fun week (I hope) started yesterday as I flew from New York to Minneapolis via Chicago.  I am headlining the Joke Joint just outside of Minneapolis tonight through Saturday, but to sweeten the pot the booker for Joke Joint also booked me to headline the Black Bear Casino, a small, but nice casino located a mere 11,000 miles from Minneapolis.  The Black Bear show turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The Travel

I flew Southwest from LaGuardia to Midway to Minneapolis.  I always used to assume O’Hare was the better of the Chicago airports.  I just assumed Midway was a place where prisoners were transported and rats and abandoned animals fought for the  pleasure of waiting passengers.  Turns out Midway is nice.  First off, unlike O’Hare, I’ve never experienced awful delays at Midway and more importantly they have a Potbelly sandwich shop, which allows me to eat a large healthy turkey sandwich that I know tastes good, instead of my usual airport diet of $13 dollar half pound bags of peanut M & Ms and shame.

The flight from Midway to Minneapolis was uneventful.  But the earlier flight to Midway from NYC was much creepier, both because of my occasional urine spritzing when we travelled over a storm system and because of the people behind me.

Sitting behind me was a skinny, fairly attractive woman (she had a clear look of cu*tiness which made me instinctively downgrade her) in the window seat and a scruff looking guy about 12 years her senior sitting in the middle seat.  And for about 20 minutes before take off he just kept whispering words to her like “pussy,” “fu*k” and “bitch.” If she had been engaging him back I would have been less worried, but she just kept looking out the window.  Because I do not need any more reasons to feel nervous on a plane I just assumed he was a crazy person, probably not a terrorist, but possibly some sexual pervert who would make our flight awkward and possibly force it to be diverted.  But just be before I was about to push a call button she finally responded!

And for the next 45 minutes they spent cursing at each other (I think she may have fu*ked someone else, or she was a cu*t and he was angry and possibly crazy, probably because he had reached that point where a guy realizes he is with a hot chick, but he hates the fact that she is an awful person and resents her and himself for being in a vicious circle of cu*titude).  Then the lady tapped out of the argument by… wearing a sweater over her face for 30 minutes.  The guy then lifted it up and whispered something to her and then put a sweater or jacket over his head.  But he grew bored of this and left his seat and went several rows back for the last hour of the flight (possible ad campaign for Southwest’s open seating policy!).

When we finally arrived in Minneapolis I had a bit of a wait for my ride, so I ate a yogurt and blueberry parfait (I will not allow airports to destroy my fitness dammit) and the Marty showed up.  He is a young comic from Minneapolis who agreed to drive me the 19 hours back and forth to the Black Bear Casino in exchange for a guest spot and a room for the night at the casino.  Now that is dedication.

The ride was really only about two and a half hours, but what shocked me was that until we were about a mile from the casino I had not seen a single sign for the casino.  With that kind of reach I fully expected the casino to have at least 30 people in it (or however many immediate neighbors the casino has in the empty darkness that is Carlton, MN).  Turns out I was right.

The Show

So Marty and I walked into the casino and I could see that we had just increased the audience total by 20%.  We checked into our rooms, which were nice and luckily equipped with Nintendo 64 controllers, in case I found a time machine and want to invite 14 year old me to play some games.  After dropping my bags off I checked out the casino.  It is basically slot machines, a black jack table and the room for comedy/music.

When I walked in there were 4 people sitting (room seats probably 100-120) and 8 people at the bar with their backs to the stage watching hockey – I am in Canada basically.

As the show progressed more crowd came in which was nice, but I was still not sure of the crowd.  Especially when the following exchange occurred:

Emcee – “… Maybe Herman Cain should just wave the white flag”

Angry bar heckler: “As long as it is a black flag”

Emcee (slightly later) – “Herman Cain was found with a another woman!”

Angry bar heckler: “And her name was Ginger White – how ironic is that?”

Yes it is ironic if miscegenation laws are still on the books in Carlton, MN.  Otherwise it is not ironic UNLESS you are coming from a non-ironic stance of racism.  And the “black flag” comment was just dumb.

The it was time for me to go.

And the set actually turned out great.  Other than the guy who answered his ringing phone (if you are a man and you have a cell phone and it rings you are not a real man – vibrate or silence – save the rings and ring tones for women and Puerto Ricans on NYC buses) 8 feet from the stage. But I felt awesome during this show, with every minute surprising me.  I riffed about 30% of my set and all the material that I prepared worked.  I really felt like I had accomplished a victory.  Granted it was a moral victory.  And granted moral victories are usually the result of an actual loss, but I still felt good.  Sure I handed out only 5 cards and sold zero CDs, but the moral victory of not sucking (and even having a good set) in the middle of nowhere in front of a bunch of people that think Obama was born on Mars felt pretty good.  Sure I had to split my meal ticket with Marty (I won’t big time a guy who drove two and a half hours and pull the diva move of “This $14 meal card is for closers only!”), but it still felt good eating a prepackaged grilled chicken salad after a job well done.

The show taught me a valuable lesson – I was in a room of mostly conservative, some racist, white people in the middle of nowhere, but these people had what some liberal crowds and some conservative crowds don’t have – the ability to let go for the sake of a comedy show.  I insulted various members of the crowd and their town repeatedly in between bits.  Now they may not have known that Hawaii is a state, but they knew that when you come to a comedy show you come to laugh and have a good time.  So even though they may be beating their wives or committing hate crimes today, I am glad that they were a good audience last night.

Joke Joint tonight – spread the word to people.  Check back tomorrow for the movie of the week (if I can find a movie theater) and Monday for the full Minnesota recap.

The news started the way news seems to start these days – with a Tweet or two.  The initial hope was that it was a false rumor or something, because those things do happen in the era of Twitter and Facebook and the 24 Hour News Cycle.  But as the tweets started to roll in it seemed that they were true: Patrice O’Neal was dead.

Patrice suffered a stroke not too long ago, which sent justifiable shocks through the comedy world.  He had just had his best and most high profile year yet.  His Elephant In The Room special was an instant classic in February on Comedy Central and then his off the cuff performance on the Roast of Charlie Sheen, which was a welcome change from the neatly polished and predictably mean-spirited jokes that litter those roasts now, elevated him to another, more mainstream audience.  And then he had a stroke.

And now he has died.

 

Until a few years ago my favorite comedian in the world was Greg Giraldo.  A brilliant, but accessible comedian, Giraldo was exactly what I aspired to – a lawyer-turned-comedian who was in the top class of comedians – popular and respected.  But then he died too early, at 44 years old, in a hotel in New Jersey.  He, like Patrice, had finally achieved a step into the mainstream with his appearances on Last Comic Standing and his undisputed closing status on Comedy Central Roasts – he was like the Mariano Rivera of comedy.

And then he died.

As if filling a void for comedy hero in the wake of Giraldo’s parting, I was lucky enough to work with Patrice O’Neal at the DC Improv.  The first time I worked with him was a true gift.  It really felt like being a fan again.  All the cynicism and jealousy that goes with being a comedian went away because I was watching someone practice comedy at such a high level that all you could do was admire and clutch your stomach in pain from laughing too much.

But the single greatest honor I have received was when Patrice asked to have me emcee his shows in DC the next time he was in DC.  And I remember him telling me that the emcee is important and that I should not demean it.  See to a lot of comics they would consider emceeing beneath them at the 7-8 year mark of their career, but this was one of the titans of the art form telling me that what I did was important and important to his show.   This was because he was a true comedian.  It was not about status or fame – it was about the show.  And no one currently in my opinion, other than maybe Bill Burr, put on a show like Patrice O’Neal.

And the fact that my shows opening for Patrice earned me some of my most engaged Facebook fans tells me that not only did he enhance comedy as an art, but he attracted true fans of the art.

But the death of Patrice O’Neal reminds me of something quite ominous for comedy.  Comedy is not producing any new Patrice O’Neals.  Or at least is not promoting any.  What disgusts me about comedy is when I see greats like Greg Giraldo and Patrice O’Neal taking 20 years to become household names.  The advantage of that is that their skill set and world view are so damn developed that they are practically forces of nature by the time they break.  But does that mean it is right?  Didn’t Patrice deserve to be bigger (only 1 hour long special on comedy central?) than that?

But beyond the personal tragedy of Patrice O’Neal’s death is what it means for the art of comedy.  Greg Giraldo and Patrice O’Neal are not being replaced by similar younger talent.  For me there is a generation that includes Bill Burr and Jim Norton that still represent the truest form of stand up (their careers were not built through savvy social media campaigns and sitcom roles, but on stage night after night).  But like manufacturing jobs that disappeared in America or rock stars more concerned with pilates and yoga than with partying and making great rock songs, the “comedy soldiers,” as Patrice once referred to himself and Burr, seem to be a dying breed.  Telegenic and marketable seem to be more important than true comedy genius in today’s comedy market.  That is not to say there are not great young comedians with real points of views and insightful thinking in their material.  There are.  But at some point places like Comedy Central need to take some responsibility.  They have monopolized  the comedy business, in some schools of thought have ruined live comedy (imagine Broadway had a basic cable channel called “Broadway Central” where you could watch Broadway plays – it would diminish ticket sales as well as the allure of live performance), but do not necessarily keep the art in the highest esteem.

I do not know the solution, but it reminds me of cable news.  Instead of doing longer, in-depth stories, cable news tries to meet the consumer half way (more like 80% of the way) and give them what they want to hear.  But at some point the news station has to give us our vegetables.  Stop serving up what people want or the lowest common denominator (Lindsey Lohan’s name should never appear on CNN except on their entertainment show).  Same for comedy – all due respect to my young friends (and to my own sputtering career) but when I turn on comedy central I should be seeing Pryor, Carlin, Giraldo, Hicks, O’Neal, Burr, Wright, Rock, Seinfeld, etc. a lot more than I do.  These are among the Shakespeares of our art and people should be schooled and respect the classics.

When Patrice’s special aired I told everyone to watch it with the same vigor that I tell people to watch Breaking Bad – nonstop with a 100% guarantee of enjoyment.  Afterwards I had friends saying “I never heard of him, but man that was great!”  This is not a failing of Patrice O’Neal, this is the failing of the comedy business.  Comedians suffer and struggle and hustle to be worthy of the platform that late night television and Comedy Central provide, but once they have earned it, as Patrice did many times over they deserve at least as much air time as Dane Cook or Larry The Cable Guy.  Comedy programmers are not supposed to just be a reflection of people’s taste – they should be enriching it.

The loss of Patrice O’Neal is huge, but what makes it annoying to a super fan like myself is that it is not actually bigger.

There will be no more working with Patrice, watching Patrice or looking forward to new opportunities for Patrice.  And I am sad for the loss to comedy and his family and friends and angry at the injustice that that symbolizes.

So Patrice died one week before his birthday fits the comedy business perfectly – he almost got to be celebrated the way he deserved.  But it is nice to see all the comedians and hard core comedy fans celebrating him.  The best way to honor him going forward, at least in comedy I think, is to not settle for anything less than what he brought to the table.  And that was a whole lot.

This past weekend I was at the Brokerage Comedy Club in Bellmore, Long Island.  I had performed there once before and it would have been a very forgettable weekend for anyone who is not a grudge holding comedian with a great disdain for Long Island.  So I went to the Brokerage, post Thanksgiving, prepared for verbal warfare.  Turned out the shows went really well, although they sort of had a downward trajectory.

FRIDAY

The emcee was Meghan Hanley a young white woman bursting with smiles, and the headliner was Steve White, a black guy bursting with smiles, so I had a critical dual role in the show: I was meant to ease the crowd into a darker skin tone and to present a darker world view, in case the emcee and headliner gave them the perception that everything was OK.  And the crowds did a good job in easing me into a darker and darker mood.

Friday’s show went off without a hitch.  Really great reaction from the crowd, though more than one person approached me after the show to verify that my Dad was black (and not a clever comedy trick I use to talk about Haitian people). Oh Long Island!  You and your white flight Jews and Catholics!!!

SATURDAY

Saturday’s shows started great, and by started great I mean I was able to say approximately 40 words until some Italian Napoleon decided to interrupt my bit on Big and Tall Stores:

Napoleonzo – “Hey, my buddy is 6’7″!” pointing to his friend

Me – “Ok – cool.  Thanks.”

Napoleonzo – (Raising his hand to interrupt me) “So you are probably 6’5″ if you guys stand back to back” (because that is how you measure height – not by rulers apparently)

Me – “OK – Hey everyone I just got challenged to a height off by a friend of a guy!  (Pause) You know what Fuck that Joke!  No it had a punchline and everything, but it was made so much better by a dick interrupting to have a conversation.”

And herein lies the problem with being my size.  If I was 5’7″ dude I would be a snarky guy.  Instead as an angry looking 6’7″ no matter how sarcastic (or how right I am in complaining) nothing can halt comedy momentum like me attacking an audience member.

The show continued, mostly without a problem and the post show response was pleasant.  My favorite post show interaction was with a 52 year old divorced Mom who informed me that she felt like I was wasting so much potential (I told some bits about having been a lawyer).  She had a look of such sadness that it started to depress me.  And she was a divorced Mom attending an over 45 singles event at a comedy club!  As we talked it eventually turned out she was dragging me down because she was really projecting lost life opportunities of her own.  I then asked her if we had been engaged at some point, but it turns out we had not been.

The second show on Saturday was going really well, but about 16 minutes into my set some older drunk gentleman definitely said something disparaging in the corner.  Now the Brokerage is a small and cozy club so if you are talking in anything above a small whisper it is audible.  I looked at the guy and realized I was not good at dealing with hecklers.  The guy looked like a drunk Ted Kennedy and my instinct was to say, “Listen to me you ruddy, drunk Irish fuck – say something again and I’ll bury you at the bottom of a lake with your shit family you Ted Kennedy looking bag of shit.”  Of course my better angels tell me not to say that, but because my temper is so out of control, my better angel cannot come up with more acceptable ways of dealing with hecklers – it is either drop a nuclear bomb or say nothing.  Throw in the fact that I am the size of a defensive end and I am forced to just take it.

Post show though I still got lots of compliments, handshakes and the club paid me so it all ended well.  Thanks to everyone who came out, except for the friend of the tall guy and the Ted Kennedy looking guy.  I hope you both have horrible lives.

I am headlining a casino in the middle of Minnesota on Wednesday.  Then I am headlining the Joke Joint in St. Paul Thursday through Saturday.  See you there, no one that reads this blog!

There are many popular things in America that make no sense to me – Twilight, Neil Patrick Harris, Jeff Dunham, the 2nd Amendment.  There are also many unpopular things whose unpopularity make sense to me – Jerry Sandusky, the WNBA, Arbys.  But lately I have been perplexed by two things that seem to be very unpopular without sufficient reason.  One is the band Nickelback, who performed yesterday at halftime of the Lions-Packers Thanksgiving game and the other is Jon Huntsman, the Republican candidate for President.  The vitriol aimed at Nickelback seems very aggressive, if one were to read my Facebook comment stream, whereas the Huntsman unpopularity seems to come more from apathy.  But the two have very similar stories.  I will make my case for why they don’t suck (quick plug – my weekly podcast RIGHTEOUS PRICK, will be launching January 3rd on iTunes, will do the opposite – making a case, in debate form, for why something popular actually sucks).

Early Success

Nickelback burst on to the American rock landscape with their hit song “How You Remind Me.”  This song’s post popularity phase is right there with the decade following Ice Ice Baby in terms of people afraid to admit liking a song that was wildly popular.  For a reminder here it is:

Now sure the lead singer looks like a Super Jewish Bee Gee and the lead guitarist is a little to excited to finally be in a music video, but is that a reason to hate these guys?

Meanwhile Jon Huntsman was an extremely popular, two time governor of Utah, a very Red State (but perhaps religion haters need to start acknowledging that for all their quirks mainstream Mormons feel like a less hateful and dangerous bunch  than mainstream Evangelicals) and a CEO of a multi-billion dollar chemical company.  So in other words he is a Republican wet dream on paper – leader, businessman, rich, white and popular.  For God’s sake his name even has “HUNT” in it!!!  Yet he is polling around 3%.  Now as  Democrat I almost definitely won’t be voting for Huntsman if he made it to the general election, but it says a lot about a political party that cannot rally behind one of their own like Huntsman

Foreign Experience a Plus or a Minus?

Nickelback is Canadian. Is this why we hate them?  Jim Carrey is Canadian, we don’t hate him.  I don’t buy it.  Probably neutral here.

Huntsman was the ambassador to China for two years and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.  Those should be enormous positives.  In the coming decade and beyond, relations with China will be of paramount importance.  To everyone except the “City on a Hill” Republicans still stuck in the 17th century.  Alas he was ambassador under President Obama, which is the same to many Republicans as finding their daughters under President Obama.

Trying To Do The Right Thing

Now sure Nickelback has had many awful songs, but still How You Remind Me, Savin’ Me and Burn It To The Ground are pretty solid rock songs – or if you are absolute haters, they are at least good efforts at rock music.  As a huge fan of Guns N Roses, the last great rock band we have seen, I appreciate any group that at least makes an effort to keep traditional rock alive.  You may think they suck, but heavy bass and drums, big guitar licks and solos and screeching power vocals are missing from music.  Perhaps that is why they are popular despite the critical and cool kid negativity surrounding them.  Because rock used to be common and popular, but now every popular song is just some bastard child of hip hop and Britney Spears (for example why is Pit Bull not a bigger fecal dump on music than Nickelback – if Nickelback were anything besides 4 regular looking white dudes they would not get hated on as much).  So I salute Nickelback – maybe not most of their final product, but at least the effort to keep traditional rock alive, even if only on life support.

Huntsman, like Nickelback has been at least trying to do the right thing, even if mired in the intellectual and moral wasteland that is the Republican Party primary.  Huntsman is a believer in evolution, climate change, but is also a pro-business Republican.  As a billionaire businessman it at least makes sense – he and his family have had success and he had success as a governor.  He is pro life, but has articulated exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.  Sure this is still unacceptable to the left, but it is a morally reasonable pro-life position.  He at least appears to be a reasonable and intelligent man.  That is why if President Obama were to be a one term president I would prefer Huntsman to the other Republican alternatives.  Perhaps that is why Huntsman is so unpopular – he believes in science and reason (and that may mean he is open to the most dreaded thing of all – compromise).  And sure Huntsman makes some corny jokes sometimes, but given the success of CBS comedy (with the exception of Two Broke Girls which is blessed by both good writing and good cleavage) you would think bad joke telling would help, not hurt Huntsman.

So for Nickelback and Mr. Huntsman I leave you with this inspiring message from Nickelback:

For a while I was thinking that the Oscar race had begun and ended with Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Crazy Stupid Love this summer and The Ides of March this fall.  J Edgar, though not bad, was disappointing and I just have not seen too many movies that I would call “great.”  However, The Descendants is the first movie I have seen since the usual start of Oscar rush that I think has a rightful place to be an awards contender.

 

The movie focuses on Matt King (George Clooney), a successful attorney, and trustee of a $500 million track of Hawaiian real estate who is dealing with a tragic boating accident involving his wife.  Her prospects of a recovery seem slim and King’s problems are compounded by a bitchy 17 year old daughter and the revelation that his wife was having an affair.

This movie combines great everyday humor with end-of-life, gut-wrenching, soul searching.  It never lets you forget the tragedy through excessive comedy, but it never gets you too sad without inserting some levity, which for the most part feels fairly realistic.  Clooney is terrific, but so are the actresses that play his daughters and the actor that plays his older daughter’s friend and travelling companion (think of a dumber, surfing over football, less brooding version of Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights).

I was wary of the movie simply because too often these types of films tend to fall in love with their own quirkiness and “realness,” while in the process forsaking plot and dialogue.  This is not one of those movies.  It is well done and thoroughly entertaining.

Final Grade – A-

Sorry I have not been writing recently (have not even seen a movie this week!), but the good news is that I have some major things in the works so please stay updated.  Here’s the run down:

TOO BIG TO FAIL – this incredibly ironically titled CD will be released in the next month.  The actual tracks are all ready and now it is time to work on the CD artwork.  There will be a big Internet release event (where I want everyone to buy and/or review it on the same day) which I will amply promote/annoy you with.

LAWMAGEDDON TOUR – Me and my five amigos at www.ComediansAtLaw.com have been working really hard to put together our kick ass tour and we are excited to have booked several of the country’s top clubs.  If you are in one of these cities or even better a lawyer, law student or other person involved with the non-convict side of the law, please be sure to check out the site and follow us on Twitter (@ComediansAtLaw).

• Feb 22 – DC Improv
• Feb 29 – Zanies in Chicago
• March 22 – Hollywood Improv
• March 28 – Helium in Philadelphia
• April 3 – Gotham Comedy Club
• Boston – TBA

So obviously this is a major effort so any support you can provide will be greatly appreciated.  Tickets will go on sale soon.

MY NEW PODCAST – I am very excited about this podcast.  I know every other human being has a podcast, but I have worked for a while on developing a novel concept to mine.  I do not want to disclose too much, but it will be weekly beginning January 3rd (Tuesdays) and if you are a fan of my somewhat aggressive and argumentative style of writing and behaving then you will enjoy it for sure.

So next week I will be back to writing about various thins, but wanted you to know I am still busy with stuff.  Bye bye.