The Obama Showdown: Jay Pharoah vs. J-L

As Saturday Night Live prepares for its 36th Season with a monopoly on late night comedy viewing on Saturdays (which sometimes feels like the way the Detroit Lions still have an inexplicable and indefensible hold on Thanksgiving Day football) there has been a lot of buzz from the Huffington Post via The Comic’s Comic blog about a 22 year old comedy phenom named Jay Pharoah who claims to have (and is being claimed to have) a great Obama impression.  Now he is 22 years old so he has clearly paid the dues in the comedy business that every comedian is told they have to pay, so I don’t begrudge him his hard earned buzz and success, but I do take umbridge at his Obama impression, which is good compared to exactly one person, Fred Armisen.

Now a while back I sort of abandoned impressions because I was more interested in exploring personal matters on stage and not setting up tons of scenarios that allowed me to showcase impressions.  I had a ton of traditional and non-traditional impressions that I was proud of, but I sort of grew out of them.  But the one I still use as my closer is Barack Obama because there are no well known good ones.  It is probably the best impression I do and it kills every time.  In fact I almost got a manager based solely on the strength of it.

So I have done as much as I can to promote it without the help of a manager and the comedy bloggers, but it has not caught on beyond individual comedy club audiences and my family.

But to watch this guy do Obama is like seeing someone urinate on my comedy.  My friend comedian Jim Dodge told me he did not want to send me the clip for fear that my head would explode.  It just is not good.  To quote Zoolander’s Jacobim Mugatu, “Am I taking crazy pills?”  Of course if Jay Pharoah gets SNL, he will no doubt be groomed into the Eddie Murphy-Chris Rock mold and will receive praise for his “great impression” simply because it is not Fred Armisen.

This is not the usual “oh he did that joke and I cannot do it now” quandry that happens to lots of comedians.  This is a “I do it better than him and it’s obvious, but I do not have the means or know-how to become a ‘YouTube sensation'” situation.  I cannot fault Jay Pharoah – he is just trying to get his and make people laugh, but has Lorne Michaels become Joe Paterno in his talent evaluation?

So if Mr. Pharoah gets to do Obama on SNL, move on to a lucrative comedy career of headlining clubs, starring movies and doing cocaine with strippers I will be forced to challenge him the way Clubber Lang hounded Rocky Balboa, standing outside SNL offices demanding to know why he keeps ducking me.

And despite appearing mostly white I am much closer in resemblance to Obama (not to mention a black Dad from a foreign country and a white Mom, sound familiar) – this guy looks like a small Justin Tuck from the NY Giants.  People will rejoice because he is black and Fred Armisen is undetermined racially, but lowered expectations should not a comedy career make.

So I guess if you are reading this – I will provide you with links to my video and to Jay Pharoah’s video of Obama impressions and then write to your Congressman, your Senator and to Lorne Michaels to get me an Obama showdown.  And forward my video to people.  It’s 90 fu*king seconds for God’s sake so try to do me this one favor if you read this and let people know. Pretend like I’m Betty White or something.

Jay Pharoah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkZgHjmBlvE

J-L Cauvin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaU77LQS0VM

Patrice, Glenn & Walter White: Big Weekend in D.C.

It was a quite eventful weekend for me in Washington, D.C.  I had the honor of emceeing shows for Patrice O’Neal.  Normally I would not be jazzed to be emcceeing, but a comedian of Patrice’s stature generally draws a good and big crowd and all five shows were sold out.  Now I have opened for many headliners of different levels, but Patrice was the like playing in the major leagues after a career in the minors, with all due respect to the people I have opened for.  It was an incredible experience.  The man is so funny, raw and honest with the crowd that it is both intimidating and inspiring.  He does things that I try to do at open mics, but he has the skill, experience and courage to do it in front of 300 paying customers every show.  It is cool when as a comic you can watch the headliner and be turned into a comedy fan instantly, laughing like you’ve never been exposed to comedy before.

We were also fortunate this weekend not to draw too many Glenn Beck fans to the club.  He was holding his white power rallies at the Lincoln Memorial this weekend and I know at least on the Friday late show there was a group of women (white, obviously) who were in town for the “Enhanced Rights For Dumb, White People” event on Saturday.  But I did not see them walk so perhaps they were not as offended as I thought they’d be (perhaps a black headliner is given a little more leeway from the Beck crowd because entertainment is an acceptable job for black men, as opposed to President).

Overall the weekend was a great success.  All shows were great, all my sets went well and I never had direct contact with any of the legion of Beck-and-Palin-loving old white men and white families on the red line (the only train line deemed safe enough for the out-of-towners by the Beck-ers) in.  And then I received a Tweet at 11 pm announcing that Mad Men had won its third straight Best Drama Emmy, beating Breaking Bad for the second consecutive year.

I think the only problem with America greater than its collective stupidity is when they heap awards on shows like Mad Men because it makes them feel smart and cultured.   The show is fu*king boring!  Does no one else recognize this?  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!  Breaking Bad manages to do what Mad Men has generally failed to do – it creates realistic characters while building tension and interesting plots.  Mad Men’s cache as a glimpse into a bygone time is over – we get it – people were white, women were subservient and they smoked and dressed well.  But into its fourth season now all Mad Men is has pretentious people still boosting it because they are afraid to appear uncultured or stupid for not liking it.  It is The Emperor’s New Show.

Breaking Bad is the best show on television.  End of discussion.  The best shows on television have never won though.  Six Feet Under lost to The Sopranos and The West Wing, worthy opponents for sure, but the brilliance of SFU will outlast those other two shows.  The Wire was never even nominated, but lots of black people obviously scare Emmy voters.  Arrested Development did win best comedy once, but it should still be winning just for repeats it was so good.  But Modern Family has already taken home the award for Best Comedy Series.  It is a funny show, for sure, but it is also as if some television executive pitched it like this:

“Alright, remember that show Arrested Development?  What if we took away 60% of the subtlety, added some cop out heart felt moments and put it before Cougar Town?”

Despite that Modern Family is one of the best comedies on television right now so I cannot hate the player.  But Breaking Bad has been royally fu*ked over.  If you have not watched it you should. And if you watch Mad Men and think it is the best show on television stop fooling yourself.   People, including my mother have asked me if I own stock in Breaking Bad. No, but in the last 15 years, partly because of reality television forcing more talented writers onto fewer original shows (my theory), we have lived in a golden age of television.  But we still seem to settle for second best.  It is as if every year the Emmys give the Oscar to Dances With Wolves instead of Goodfellas or to Forrest Gump instead of The Shawshank Redemption.   You may think I have overreacted, but do yourself a favor and watch Breaking Bad – you’ll see that I am at least right.

The 5 People You Don’t Want To Meet On…

As a comedian who spends his time in front of a computer an uncomfortably large part of the day I spend a requisite hour or eight on Facebook.  Now I post a lot of things to Facebook and Twitter because sadly, in this day and age, someone of my fledgling standing in entertainment must inundate the Internet with my videos and thoughts to simply keep pace.  I hope for the day when entertainment make me wealthy (Vegas has this at 5.9% chance of happening) when I can slow down or stop all the Internet postings.  But while I am still here I thought I would share some thoughts on the world’s chosen replacement for God – Facebook.

I’ve made this point before, but Facebook is a chance for people to feel connected in a way that religion does for people and used to do for a lot more people.  But unlike religion there is no feeling of consequence or judgment for poor or questionable behavior.  People can share (or more accurately, impose) there every thought on everyone, thereby giving the sender the feeling of connectedness that a spiritual community can often provide.  But there is no real downside.

Well, if we are the in the Old Testament phase of Facebook then I think it is time for some wrath and judgment for a lot of the people that make the website an atrocious marketplace of stupidity to make themselves feel like they matter, even if only subconsciously.

My feeling is religion, whether true or not, clearly answers basic human needs and curiosities – it’s why it’s still around after millenia.  But everyone needs something to do what religion does, even if they are avowed atheists who think themselves intellectually above those needs.  Many people I know who decry the benefits of religion have simultaneously turned social networking into a crutch.  For example, in another realm, some women I’ve known who abhorred the top-down mandates of some religions, could not wait for the Fashion Papacy to declare what was “hot” in an upcoming season, even if the very same items were detested by the same women only a few years earlier.  I think Facebook is operating in a similar fashion, where lots of people who mock the idea of “an invisible man,” but still feel the need to share meal choices, thoughts, and emotions, no matter how mundane, to feel connected.

So without further ado or Internet preaching here are the 5 archetypes you should tell to fu*k off on Facebook:

1) Facebook philosophers– These are the people who drop little quotes or life lessons in their Facebook updates.  Please stop.  And perhaps even worse are their friends who reply “Amen” or “That is so beautiful – thanks for posting”.  Looking to or finding inspiration on Facebook is like finding nutrition at a McDonald’s.   Sometimes the philosophy is angry or in complaint form so it does not sound as enlightened and will usually get a few undeserved LMFAOs, but it is still useless street philosophy.

2) Comfort Seekers– Now men occasionally do this, but more often than not it is women.  You know, the vague “I know it will get better” or “Today is the worst” messages?  These are often followed by fellow women, or men who want to fu*k the original poster, with, “You can make it” or “What’s wrong?”  A few weeks I replied to a message like this with some harmless sarcasm (because it’s fu*king Facebook) and was met with a “This is not the day, seriously.”  Oh I’m sorry – did I not give your Facebook status update the requisite respect it deserves?  Huh, perhaps you should talk to an actual human being if things are actually bad and not send out look at me, horsesh*t pleas for attention.

Of course comfort seekers are a two sided coin.  There are also a boatload of comedians and entertainers who send messages seeking accolades.  One could accuse me of this, but it ain’t the case.  Besides, it’s usually the same 15 people who will tell me that my stuff is funny so I know that they appreciate it and I know the other 1600 “friends” don’t give a sh*t.

3) Terrible joke writers.  As a comedian I am friends with a disproportionate amount of “comedians.”  To civilian readers, you honestly have no idea how many bad comedians there are in the world.  It’s frightening.  I am going to begin adopting a policy of commenting on jokes that I think are bad.  You could say, “who are you to judge?” and the answer is simple – I am funny and judgmental, which makes me the perfect candidate to start telling people.

4) The All Purpose Facebook people– these people do Mafia Wars, Farm thing and also tell you how good their drink is, how delicious their food is, how nice the weather is, how glad they are it’s Friday or how angry they are that it is Monday, etc.  For the love of God/Mark Zuckerberg, have a thought without expressing it, enjoy simple pleasures without having to validate it through sharing and shut your fu*king fingers up.  And tangentially, the mock letter to an inanimate object or organization (e.g. “Dear MTA, please don’t make your stations smell like urine.” is hack (for comedians) and not cute (for regular folk)).

Really? You needed to share this with the world in picture and/or words

5) The Questioners – these people enjoy posting questions like “blah blah blah – what do you think?”  You don’t honestly care what I or others think – you just want posts and validation – stop it. How can you actually care what a bunch of people that you don’t know think about a Facebook or Twitter post?  That’s what comedians are for.  To seek validation from strangers.

So those are the 5 groups that most grind my gears on Facebook.  If you fit into one of these groups you probably aren’t reading this because you are  most likely committing one of the above listed annoyances.

The Curse of Lottery Ticket – Always Be Funny…

I should have known yesterday was not going to go as planned.  Perhaps it was the fact that Friday I secretly went to go see Lottery Ticket, the uproariously boring and unfunny film that feels one-third Friday, one-third Tyler Perry and one third after-school special all jumbled up.   For $6 the risk was very low, yet the film still underwhelmed.  Let me put it this way, Mike Epps is the funniest part of Lottery Ticket.  I did not realize that, like the old woman in Drag Me To Hell, Lottery Ticket placed an unfunny curse on me.

As Saturday rolled around I was very excited for Always Be Funny, my monthly show at the Village Lantern.  The lineup was power packed and it looked like we were going to have a big crowd.  So in preparation I plunked down for a few hours to play MLB10 The Show, the greatest sports game I have ever played.   My Yankees team had been playing .500 ball since I restarted the season (I was 20-70 in the previous season, which meant I was creeping in on irrationally murdering my PS3), but post-Lottery Ticket viewing I got swept resoundingly in a three game series.

If there were an action-horror film about comedy this would have been the point where I go, “I gotta bad feeling about this.”

The show was supposed to be an 11 pm show, but the 9pm show went late for the 1,456th straight time so we ended up starting at 1130pm.  Of course before then I was attacked verbally and physically by the cu*t of a waitress that was working that night.  Here’s the play-by-play of the pre-show encounters with the waitress:

– The Village Lantern comedy room entrance is sort of a tight squeeze as it is as the bottom of a stairwell, which leads to a narrow hallway which also has the spot for the waitress to process checks (do we call those digital panels registers?).  But there is room for a few people to stand and wait and not interfere with the waitress, if she is not a cu*t.

C.W. “Hey, could you tell people to wait before coming to the show so I have time to clean up from the earlier show.”

J-L – “Sure”

3 minutes pass – a couple of people are talking to me that I know, still out of the way, as much as possible an 4 people I do not know walk down the stairs.

C.W. (pushes me angrily) – I fu*king asked you to keep people out of here and you are just standing there talking to people (trail off into more insults and expletives)

J-L (to people on the stairs) – Sorry – please go upstairs and I will come announce when the show is beginning (inner thought) – does this cu*t know I am not her employee?

C.W. – Well if they’re already down here they can go in.

J-L (inner thought) – Were we engaged?

Now I don’t believe in hitting women, but I do hope that one day C.W. dates a man who does not share my upbringing and beliefs.  There must be something on my face that ranges between “gentleman” and “bitch ass” because this is the second time I have been assaulted (in the legal sense) by a woman at a comedy show.  Now the first time was a little understandable (but not ok) because the girl had heard my routine where I compared an ex’s vagina to a concentration camp, but C.W. was just a little flustered and she got physical (and then like a bipolar woman, also known as a woman, she apologized).  Damn you Lottery Ticket curse!

So the show began at 1130 with Sean Donnelly emceeing and doing a nice job.  First comic was Sheng Wang and he, unknown at the time, would have by far the best set of the night.  The crowd was enjoying him and I actually thought the Lottery Ticket curse may not be true.  Further confirming this was when Brian McGuiness, the second comic of the night, also did well (he updates his PS3-cyber-awarded trophies on his Facebook page so it’s not a slam dunk that someone that does that will also do well at comedy).

Then the clock struck midnight and the horse and carriage turned into a bunch of mute fu*king pumpkins.

Owen Bowness went up next and did a set that was very close to the one he did several months ago at Always Be Funny, that absolutely killed.  But on this show he could have been Daffy Duck following Bugs Bunny for 2/3 of his set.  It was as if the brains of our audience were swapped at midnight with the minds of a terrible comedy club audience in the panhandle of Florida (trust me, the worst weekend of sets of my life took place in Destin, Florida).  They suddenly became slow to laugh, slower to get punchlines and not laughing at any funny setups to funnier punchlines.

Damn you Lottery Ticket!

The bloodbath then began.  Comic after comic went up and received audience response ranging from apathetic silence to grumbling hostile silence. Sean Donnelly, as emcee continued to try to work the crowd hard.  Keith Alberstadt, a clean comic who has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, was driven to curse and call out the crowd for their apathy.  He sounded like a minister standing in the middle of a town being burned to the grown trying to plead with marauders.

Right before my set I asked C.W. for a bottle of water (hey my show packed the room, which means lots of tips you don’t deserve and the regular waitress always gets me a bottle of water if I ask nicely) and she acted like I had just asked her to blow a yak.  So she brought me a tap water, because, like I said, she’s a cu*t.  I resisted the effort to throw it in her face.

I went on after Keith and was actually happy with my set for the most part.  Probably because my first line was “You people fu*king suck.”  I think I owe Keith a debt of gratitude because he seemed to re-focus the crowd.

After me was the surprise of the night.  High school classmate and 2008 Olympic Silver Medalist Tim Morehouse (fencing, calm down ladies) did a 6 minute set (he’s been doing comedy for 2 weeks) and he was pretty good (actually off the charts for a guy doing it 2 weeks, which proves that motivational speaking engagements for terminally ill children is great preparation for stand up comedy).

Ryan Conner closed out the show nicely for the 15 people who remained.

The next Always Be Funny will be on September 11th, obviously.  I don’t know, even given the date of the show, if we could possibly match the apathy of last night’s crowd, but hopefully when I build a model of an Islamic Cultural Center on stage it will get a reaction out of people.

And in case you missed the point of this blog – don’t see Lottery Ticket.

The Expendables: The Movie That Cannot Be Spoofed

There is really no sacred genre of film that cannot be spoofed in Hollywood.  Every type of film has been spoofed, mostly by the Zucker Brothers or the Wayans Brothers or some other pair of siblings. Even Holocaust movies sort of parody themselves by the sheer volume of how many are made.   Perhaps Sylvester Stallone has harbored ill feelings towards Hot Shots Part Deux for the last 20 years when it spoofed, among others, Rambo III.  Stallone’s answer was to revive action films, not with CGI, but with loud explosions, exploding heads and uncomfortably homoerotic close ups of bulging male biceps, when he wrote, directed and starred in The Expendables, a movie so mediocre in some parts and so patently absurd in most that is impossible to spoof.  That is because it works as a spoof by itself, albeit unintentionally.

This blog will ruin and spoil “the plot” of the movei so stop reading here if you care.  However, if you are older than 9 or have seen at least 2 action movies in your life then the simplicity of the movie will spoil the plot for you as you watch it and predict its “developments” 20-30 minutes ahead of time and you should read on.

The plot involves a pack of awesome, but somewhat aged bro-dudes, led by Sylvester Stallone, who in his 60s is built like Iggy Pop on dozens of steroids.  When Stallone runs, which is not shown for very long, lest he break a hip on camera, it literally looks like an old man racing for the door of his favorite diner at 4:59 pm in hopes of not missing the early-bird dinner special.

The violence of the movie gets started in the very first scene where our band of merry steroid abusers arrives on a ship to rescue some kidnapped workers from some Somalian pirates.  Our heroes give fair warning to the pirates, but because they are crazy and evil they do not heed the warnings so they end up getting exploded by gunfire, the defining blow coming from some gun that Dolph Lundgren (Drago from Rocky IV) uses to literally blow apart the top half of the lead pirate’s body.  Probably the most violent thing I have ever seen in a movie.

This is a good time to crown Dolph Lundgren the worst actor I have ever seen. Porn included.  I wondered, how can a guy who is handsome, extremely well-built, has a degree in chemical engineering (true) not get more acting work.  Oh right, because he is beyond terrible at acting.  He and Gerard Butler belong to a small, but well known cadre of actors who are not American, but who cannot do a passable American accent so their dialogue comes out sounding like they are mentally disabled – what accent is that, “stroke?”  Dolph does not disappoint in the movie, basically delivering the same character and performance he made so forgettable in Universal Soldier.   But it is ironic that a guy who quit MIT after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to go there (true) pursued bad acting.  I mean, only an idiot would do that, but by definition he cannot be an idiot.

The second worst actor is the guy who plays the fictional (I think) country’s military leader.  I do not know his name, but he is on Dexter, which, if they traded Michael C. Hall for Dolph Lundgren in Season 1 of Dexter, they would have assembled the Miami Heat of bad acting.

There are some introspective and thoughtful moments in the movie, mostly with Mickey Rourke, as the “I got out of the team, but I am still left with emotional scars and cliche thoughts,which will be painfully obvious because there will be mandolin music playing in the background when I speak” guy.

The main villain of the movie is played by Eric Roberts.  Now he he would be the obvious choice for many filmmakers as a bad guy in spoof films, but Stallone locked him up for this one so he would not be available for The Depenzables.

There is a damsel-in-distress and a scene that I found poignant was when Stone Cold Steve Austin (trained at the Actor’s Studio I believe) playing Eric Roberts’ henchman, punches said damsel in the face.  It is nice to see that after Stone Cold was suspended from the WWE several years ago for some time for punching his wife, that Hollywood has less exacting standards for female treatment than Vince McMahon.  It did give a level of reality knowing that Stone Cold had done it in real life.  Perhaps Chris Brown can be in the sequel.  Or they could get OJ out of prison to play Jack The Ripper.  That wouldn’t be creepy.

But this movie already had one black guy: Terry Crews, who has the muscle size of 4 athletic black guys so I guess it counts as diversity.  Stallone, in another nuanced, homoerotic gesture gives Terry Crews the biggest, baddest, black firearm that vanquishes dozens of enemies at a time, but not so much that you can’t see gallons of blood pouring forth as he does it.  In one scene Crews (known for being in every other movie right now a la Kristen Wiig and for his bizarre Old Spice commercials) actually throws a bomb at a helicopter.  Like a small missile.  He throws it.  This is exactly what they did in Hot Shots Part Deux, except it was bullets. Watch the link below – I am not kidding how prescient Hot Shots Part Deux is for The Expendables.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a0L3Z1A-RM

But the real stars of this film are the dialogue and the violence.  The dialogue is basically just a collection of David Caruso tag-lines from CSI: Miami, but without The Who playing at the end of each one.  Just beefy dudes smirking at each other, amazed at their collective sense of humor.

But the violence is truly remarkable.  The action took place on a fictional small island (or perhaps real, who knows) and by my count The Expendables managed to murder 1.8x the population of the entire island, all without suffering a single casualty, except for good taste.  They would enter a room, which appeared to have 9 bad guys and next thing you know, 14 throats have been slit, 19 heads have been blown up by high powered guns and 16 necks broken.  It just didn’t seem to add up.  But don’t tell that to the ravenous actions fans that surrounded me in the theater.  No one-liner was too pithy or punny to not get a cheer or a clap.  No death was too absurd not to earn an “oooohhhhh sh*t!”  The violence in this film was so absurd that I think if a theater sees a parent with a child under 13 going into to see it they should call child services.  Making this movie simply R, instead of banning it, would be like making a film with gang bang, full penetration sex scenes R.  I am not some guy who decries America’s puritanical values (fu*k those people and their Eat Pray Love viewing this weekend).  But the violence in this movie would be harmful to a young mind.  Just look what it has done to Sylvester Stallone, and he supposedly has an adult brain.

Which brings me to the DaVinci of this Sistine Crapel: Sylvester Stallone.  Something has gone Mel Gibson wrong in this dude’s mind.  He is in his sixties, still juicing for movie roles and is making his movies exceedingly violent.  Say what you will about religious fanaticism and Mel Gibson, but even after he became fanatical he made Braveheart, Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, three very violent but very excellent films.  Stallone proves that violence without faith can make for some very sad movie-going experiences.

It is hard to say that Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal are lucky, but in this case they are.  Because they are the only two 1980s action icons not featured in this film (Jeff Speakman, A/K/A “The Perfect Weapon” not an icon, sadly).  See this movie if you must, but be prepared to either vomit or laugh uncontrollably.

OK, now I have to get back to my Play Station 3 and rape some prostitutes and kill some people in Red Dead Redemption.

The Movie Audience Is Not Alright

On Tuesday night I went to see The Kids Are Alright, starring Annette Benning, Mark Ruffalo and the redhead who ruined several episodes of 30 Rock, Julianne Moore.  The movie has been getting very strong reviews, which may only be relative to the crap that’s has been released this Summer (not including Inception, Toy Story 3 and The Other Guys).  The catch was me and my lady went to see it on Tuesday night at Clearview Cinemas, which is free movie day for Optimum Triple Play customers (my girlfriend is – when you have cable, phone and Internet from Optimum).  Every Tuesday you can get two free tickets to any movie.  Naturally these can be crowded theaters, but in a city where movie tickets cost $97.5o per person it cannot be passed up.

Sidebar – for the greatest Optimum Triple Play ad click the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EVxI0uGzeY

To put things as politically correct as possible, let’s say that free movie night is a good thing because it encourages audience members who may not generally see independent films about white, lesbian couples to see them.  Of course, this can backfire when people go blindly to see it because it is free, without having ANY idea what the movie is about.

 

As the previews start running they are, shockingly, for independent films (seriously when is someone going to make a spoof film of independent films – odd camera angles, grainy footage, guy with beard, girl in flowery dresses, quirky best friends, soundtrack from artists you’ve never heard of – done!).  The peanut gallery in the back announces after each preview: “boring.”  Then a preview for the movie “Waiting For Superman” (about lotteries in NY and DC for exclusive free schools) comes on and instead of the Madea fan club in the back, it was the condescending liberal white women behind me who kept saying “awwwwww”ing like the black kids in the preview were lost puppies.

So now that I was sufficiently angry at both black people and white people the movie started.

About ten minutes in two things became clear.  One is that the audience had the collective sense of humor of a Broadway musical audience – simple, unsophisticated and too ready to laugh at mediocre jokes.  The other is that the trio of middle aged black people in the back are not ready for a film about a gay couple.  Here are the highlights:

-10 minutes in, Annette Benning and awful red-headed actress kiss (more like a peck on the lips).

“Ewwwwwwwwwwww”

-20 minutes in, “humorous” scene with bad actress going down on Annette Benning (under covers)

“Awwwww naaaaaaa.  mmmmmm mmmmm”

-40 minutes in, Annette Benning and bad actress assure their son, who they think may be gay that they won’t judge him

“Y’all can’t judge him! Pssssshhhhhhh”

-60 minutes in – screen goes blank as the projector breaks

This is the second consecutive free movie I have attended at Clearview where the projector has broken (the first was Get Him To the Greek, when the projector broke down with 20 minutes left in the movie).  I have not seen another movie at Clearview or any other theater this year where that has happened.  I am guessing they put the C team on Tuesday nights at Clearview, figuring the people will get exactly what they paid for.

So we all sat as some people went to complain.  Then my favorite moment of the whole experience.

Diary of an Ignorant Black Woman comes back into the theater and announces: “If you go to the guest services desk they will give you a free ticket to any movie you want.”

Theater employee who is addressing the crowd from the front of the theater: “Yes, you can get replacement tickets.”

DoaIBW: “I SAID THAT – DON’T TRY AND TELL THEM THAT NOW – I ALREADY SAID THAT!”

DoaIBW leaves the theater while theater employee explains to the remaining audience that they can only get tickets for shows that night and that all shows are already sold out.  That is not a typo.

We then left the movie theater at that point.  So if anyone knows the last half of the movie please let me know if it was better than the first half.  Hollywood is starting to treat movies about gay people the way mostly white high schools treat their sparsely present black classmates – they are given an automatic level of popularity and credibility, regardless of whether they warrant it.  From the first half of TKAA it was shaping to be an incredibly overrated film.

The moral of this blog – free movies suck and so do people.

Feel Good Bad Comedy

Last night upon seeing the results of Last Comic Standing (and the fact that I had predicted the exact order of everyone except the winner, Felipe Esparza) I tweeted “I don’t understand America’s sense of humor. Felipe Esparza!”  That was greeted with a tweet from someone else in reply that said “Well said – you don’t.  He’s funny as hell.  Over your head.”

Without addressing the irony of something going over my head, is this what America thinks is “smart” comedy?  Perhaps that is why we are such a dumb country.  After all I have a feeling a majority of the country does not realize that amending the 14th Amendment to strip children, born in this country to illegal immigrant parents, of their citizenship (AKA Mexican-Americans) is only a midterm election issue.  That won’t play on a national level during a presidential race, but the point is to get House and possibly Senate seats this Fall using the hate-driven proposal.  It has nothing to do with amending the Constitution because that won’t happen.  Republicans just want to use it as a wedge issue to pick up Congressional seats now.  Unfortunately Obama’s supporters consist of too many fair-weather black voters (they did not even support him until after he won Iowa) and too many white voters who were ready to jump ship at the first sign of trouble (they had done their “I’m not a racist” duty by voting for him in the first place).  The messsage needs to get to them that the uncool white men in the Senate and House have some power too and people need to wake up and realize what is going on.  Go vote during the midterms! (end of tangentially-related political pitch)

Now perhaps in that context I should be happy to see Felipe Esparza win.  After all, he is a Mexican-American and that sends a nice message.  The only problem with that is that comedy viewers, unlike Academy Award voters (Milk) don’t take issues like that into consideration.  They want their comedy simple, but also to feel good about themselves subconsciously.  Nothing does that better than when that comedy is delivered by an ethnic comedian who plays into their ethnicity.   And entertainment is a safe place for people of color.  They can be appreciated without any discernible power (once again, Obama elected on the strength of an incredible and entertaining campaign, but as soon as he started wielding the power he was given all Hell broke loose).

Being on the road a lot more in the last two years has shown me something about America – it is that rooms full of white people are generally a lot kinder to a comedian of color especially if he does one of two things:

1) confirm stereotypes, which allow white people to laugh twice as hard – once for the joke and once for relief of their feelings

or

2) portray themselves as fish out of water – I cannot tell you how many times a black comic has killed on stage with some line like, “I must be at the wrong club.”

Felipe Esparza was easily the 5th comic out of the five on the show last night.  I thought he was more like 8th out of the overall final ten.  He was literally the only one of the five that I thought could not win.  Sadly I have also said that Sarah Palin could never win a presidential election.  But Esparza gives America what it subconsciously wants – an ethnic friend.  He delivered a quirky character.  I am not saying he played it up to some caricature, like say, Dat Phan (Last Comic Standing winner – season 1), but he gave America enough.  Perhaps the “I have a black friend” mantra can now be replaced by “I like that Mexican comedian” in thousands of homes across the country.

But that show was awful last night and not just because of the result.  Kathy Griffin was the big headliner.  To me, her success tells me that a lot of gay men and women have awful senses of humor.  She acts like she is saying shocking things (“Oh no she diiiiiiiin’t”), but she is just saying things that Jay Leno passed on in his monologues.  She is awful to look at and listen to.  And just because she acknowledges her grotesque face and surgeries does not make it any more watchable.

Also Tom Papa, “The Marriage Ref”.  Thanks for giving me another GPS-voice joke.

One highlight was Iliza Shlesinger (last season’s winner).  Someone has been doing P90X while practicing Dane Cook-esque pratfalls!  My friend John (non-comedian) only texted me twice during the final episode.  One was to say: your boy Kaplan 🙁  (when buddy and frequent vanquisher of me in comedy contests Myq Kaplan was eliminated) and the other was: Shlesinger 🙂  I guess he liked her comedy.

Another highlight was Mike Destefano,, “If you voted for me thanks and if not Fu*k you.”  I wish the show had ended there.

Dominican Woman… Stay away from me!

This weekend I attended a wedding with my girlfriend in the Dominican Republic.   We soaked up the Sun and all the Dominican culture that can be absorbed in the confines of an all-inclusive, gated-off resort community, which is significantly less than a ride on the A train.  The wedding and the weekend were all relatively normal.  I ate too much, got a good tan and did not get in trouble looking for Dominican eye candy (sorry DR, but Puerto Rican ladies are the undisputed champs of Bronx-dominating Latinas).

The only real notable highlight came at the Punta Cana airport this morning when going through security (which made me feel about as safe as having the Shoe Bomber fit me for sneakers at Foot Locker) I witnessed something so hysterical and awful that I titled this blog after it.

Two women, presumably a Latin mother-daughter combo, were trying to check-in for their flight, but had not obeyed all security protocols (it appeared they had not declared or checked certain items purchased in the Dominican Republic).  As two airport security (the Dominican equivalent of TSA) discussed this with them the women responded with dismissive Spanish.  However, the security did not let up, because they rudely wanted these women to obey guidelines, which then prompted the younger woman to speak English and say (get ready for a stereotype on steroids):

“Ok, you need to get out of my face because you are starting to fu*king piss me off.”

She then threw her suitcase to the ground and said:

“Do what you got to do.”

I was amazed.  Can you just do that?  Can you curse and threaten airport security as long as there is a stereotype that says you are crazy and passionate?  I was hoping to see them get tased.  Or at least physically assaulted.   I had alwaysthought Rosie Perez’ performance in White Men Can’t Jump was an embarrassing Latina Steppin’ Fetchit, but now it turns out that she could have made it much more extreme.

I cannot do this experience justice, but this was the funniest thing I saw on my travels so I thought Id relay it to you loyal 13 readers.  Better stuff to come soon.

In other news – while I was away a former classmate of mine from Riverdale (and Facebook friend) was arrested on charges that he murdered his father.  Deleting friend dilemma – street cred for my Facebook page, or murderer free friend list? Choices, choices…

And lastly – my predicted finish in Last Comic Standing by the way:

1) Tommy Johnigan

2) Roy Wood Jr.

3) Mike Destefano (My Mom’s choice)

4) Myq Kaplan

5) Felipe Esparza (the only one I am sure of, unless America is even dumber than I think)

Cleveland Shows (part 2) & California Gurls

Quick recap of Cleveland shows – Day 2 :

I was greeted with silence for 15 minutes for show #1 last night so after losing home court advantage Thursday night when I made them laugh quite a bit, Clevelanders came back with a vengeance giving me apathetic stare after disapproving moan.  Show 2 was a blowout, but I quickly re-grouped with Coach/Improv Manager Lee Herlands, who sadly, with the recent passing of James Gammon (a/k/a the Manager Lou Brown from Major League), lacks a clear cut favorite for casting when my book is made into a Lifetime Original movie.

He gave me a quick pep talk to be more fun and lively and to forget about the curveball and give ’em the heater ( he had already thoroughly disparaged my act earlier in the day).  I went out int he second show and won a decisive victory over the crowd, closing with a “if 9/11 rallied people around George Bush, then Cleveland is probably rallying around Kobe Bryant” bit.  Lee said to me, “now that was a good set.”  In 3 trips to the Improv this year it was the first full blown compliment I got from Lee which either meant he was drunk (very possible) or that it was a moment as touching as the janitor watching Rudy play his final game for Notre Dame.  He did follow it up saying I won’t be a headliner for ten years, so it all evened out.

So I now hold a 2-1 lead over Cleveland Improv audiences with two big shows tonight.  I can close out the series tonight with two wins because I do not want to leave my fate up to Sunday night audiences (after Church is a terrible time to hear jokes ending with tag lines like “cum dumspter.”).

Now on to the task of today as promised on Twitter, so you know I must honor it:

I am in the habit of declaring things “the worst ever.”  For example, just based on a preview I believe I successfully called Valentine’s Day the worst movie of all time.  I still have not seen it, but I am confident in that designation.   Well, I am now ready to declare the worst song I have ever heard: California Gurls by Katy Perry featuring a shell of a man named Snoop Dogg.

I must disclose I am not averse to pop music or female pop artists.  For God’s sake I have two Shania Twain albums, 4 Lady Gaga songs on my iPod and an Adam Lambert album.  And I enjoyed Katy Perry’s jingle Hot N Cold – it is a great pop song.  So I was intrigued when I saw Katy Perry’s new song, California Gurls had reached number one on the pop charts.  Now if Paul Blart: Mall Cop and George Bush’s first election in 2004 taught me anything it is that the American people can get it wrong and they can get it wrong horribly.  But Katy Perry had not yet done anything wrong on the scale of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry or trading Sammy Sosa, so there was no real warning (though her engagement to insect Russel Brand raised both of my eyebrows).

So this week, before departing for Cleveland I turned on VH1 in the morning to see what the  kids are listening to (and by kids I mean women in their 30s) and to my excitement California Gurls was coming on.

Now Katy Perry is, in my non-humble opinion, very attractive.  Perhaps that is because Lady Gaga’s mug is the only other omnipresent female pop presence at the moment, but I think she is quite awesome.  So the fact that she is about 90% naked throughout the video would only enhance my enjoyment of the video.  But then the music began. Here are the lyrics for you:

Snoop Dogg]
Greetings loved ones
Let’s take a journey

[Katy Perry – Verse 1]
I know a place
Where the grass is really greener
Warm, wet and wild
There must be somethin’ in the water
Sippin’ gin and juice
Layin’ underneath the palm trees (Undone)
The boys
Break their necks
Try’na creep a little sneak peek (At us)

You could travel the world
But nothing comes close
To the Golden Coast
Once you party with us
You’ll be falling in love
Oooooh oh oooooh

[Katy Perry – Chorus]
California girls
We’re unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We’ll melt your Popsicle
Oooooh oh oooooh

California girls
We’re undeniable
Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock
Westcoast represent
Now put your hands up
Oooooh oh oooooh

[Katy Perry – Verse 2]
Sex on the beach
We don’t mind sand in our Stilettos
We freak
In my Jeep
Snoop Doggy Dogg on the stereo (Oh oh)

You could travel the world
But nothing comes close
To the Golden Coast
Once you party with us
You’ll be falling in love
Oooooh oh oooooh

[Katy Perry – Chorus]
California girls
We’re unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We’ll melt your Popsicle
Oooooh oh oooooh

California gurls
We’re undeniable
Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock
Westcoast represent
Now put your hands up
Oooooh oh oooooh

[Snoop Dogg – Verse 3]
Toned, tanned
Fit and ready
Turn it up ’cause it’s gettin’ heavy
Wild, wild Westcoast
These are the girls I love the most
http://www.elyricsworld.com/california_girls_lyrics_katy_perry.html
I mean the ones
I mean like she’s the one
Kiss her
Touch her
Squeeze her buns

The girl’s a freak
She drives a Jeep
and lives on the beach
I’m okay
I won’t play
I love the Bay
Just like I love L.A.
Venice Beach
And Palm Springs
Summertime is everything

Homeboys
Hangin’ out
All that ass
Hangin’ out
Bikinis, tankinis, martinis
No weenies
Just a king
And a queen-ie
Katy my lady
(Yeah)
You’re lookin’here baby
(Uh huh)
I’m all up on you
‘Cause you representin’ California
(Ohhh yeahh)

[Katy Perry – Chorus]
California gurls
We’re unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
We’ll melt your Popsicle
Oooooh oh oooooh

California gurls
We’re undeniable
Fine, fresh, fierce
We got it on lock
Westcoast represent
(Westcoast, Westcoast)
Now put your hands up
Oooooh oh oooooh

Snoop Dogg:
(Californiaaa, Californiaaa)
California girls man
I wish they all could be
California girls
(Californiaaa)
I really wish
You all could be
California girls
(Californiaaa, girls)

And the beat to the song is equally awful.  And this is America’s #1 song?  Never have I heard a song that made me long for the melodic and lyrical genius of Summer songs like LFO’s Summer Girls (previously a contender for the worst song I’ve ever heard, but they came back strong with Girl On TV – very underappreciated).  I do understand Katy spelling “gurls” with a u so perhaps no one confuses the song with the Beach Boys’ California Girls, a song that is not only infinitely superior melodically, but also reads like Dickens compared to these lyrics.

And Snoop Dogg – what a bitch!  Perhaps rap stopped being authentic and hard years ago, but he managed to dig up the corpse of street cred and sodomize it with this song. Or did he already do that when he wrote and performed an atrocious ode to Sookie Stackhouse in a video following  a True Blood episode this season.

So in other words, California Gurls –  congratulations!  You made Katy Perry a little less attractive to me than even the thought of Russel Brand grinding his heroin-riddled pelvis into her.  You are the worst song I’ve ever heard.  And you may very well go down in History, along with George W. Bush, the Twilight series and ringtones as one of the things that signified the end of America’s status as the World’s leader.

And if you have this song as your ringtone I think you should consider ending your life.