Lambert vs. Lakers

The last night of American Idol has arrived.  Last night Adam Lambert did what he had to to defeat Kris Allen (i.e. prevent the release of compromising gay sex photos, which is the only thing that could hold off Adam last night).  His version of A Change is Gonna Come was great, with the exception of a wailing part where he looked on the verge of awwkward tears (phew – just his musical theater acting chops shining through).  Kris Allen did well, despite the John Mayer/Muppet faces he made while singing.  However, the deciding factor was the final big “I can do it, I can beat the odds, I am a champion” song that both contestants have to sing (why does American Idol insist on the first single from every season being something that sounds like it belongs on the Karate Kid III soundtrack?). Not only did the scope of the song better fit Lambert’s big voice, he also provided the best unintentional comedy for the season this side of Scott McIntyre’s fangs when he sang the lyric, “You can go deeper; there are no boundaries.”  Was this song written before or after Glambert was voted a finalist?

So I voted for only the second time in an American Idol finals (the first was for Carrie Underwood) and it took me 75 minutes to get through, which I did in between two of the harshest sets I’ve performed (I have officially eliminated every possible topic from my “off limits” comedy folder).  What is amazing is that I had to wait 90 minutes to vote for Obama.  So for the first time in 8 years we have a president who is more popular than American Idol.  Take that cynics.  Although I guess the true test will be when the American Idol front runner is a handsome black man (interestingly enough the only black man winner is one of the least popular, but probably because he is fat and sweaty).

But all the good vibes from American idol and infanticide jokes wore off late last night when I watched the Los Angeles Lakers eke out a two point victory over the Denver Nuggets.  Normally I would root against a team with as many tattoos as the Nuggets (JR Smith looks like he has a skin condition and Chris Anderson, Carmello Anthony and Kenyon Martin look like members of the world’s best prison basketball team – especially Carmello who sports a Warna Brotha (WB)” tattoo encouraging kids not to cooperate with law enforcement – the NBA, where caring happens.

But the Nuggets are playing Kobe, Sasha and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers.   To put it in perspective I look at the Nuggets like Sunni insurgents and the Lakers as Al Qaeda.   Sure I don’t like either team, but am willing to make a deal with the insurgents to defeat Laker Qaeda.  To continue this ridiculous, and possibly offensive analogy, I will now refer to Kobe Bryant as Kobe bin Laden.

So hopefully Lambert wins tonight and the Nuggets can get ther sh*t together and defeat the evildoers tomorrow.

A Night of Ridiculousness

 

The New Yankee Stadium & The Season Finale of 24

 

PART I

Last night I was engaged in not one, but two events of gross excess.  I went to the new Yankee Stadium for the first time last night and was treated to the most gaudy piece of architecture south of Newport, Rhode Island.   I began my evening at the Hard Rock Cafe where a tasteful mix of Bronx natives and aspiring actors served me some decent food in a chaotic environment.  My plan for any future games will be to go to the Court Deli (as any good Bronx native/cost conscious human being should go – they have better french fries than the HRC anyway), but I wanted to soak up as much of the new amenities as I could on my first trip.

After the Hard Rock cafe I strolled around the stadium for about an hour burning off some of the 45,623 calories I had consumed (according to the helpful/guilt inducing calorie counts in the HRC menu) admiring all the amenities of the new stadium.  Here are a few:

  • Helpful greeters before the game and people directing you to the subway after the game.  Wow – when they expect a greater influx of rich people (given the ticket prices) they really go all out.  Sure, the charm is almost completely gone and it feel s a little like the manager of Chotchkie’s is running the Stadium (Office Space reference), but that is a small price to pay for the Roman Coliseum that is Yankee Stadium.  Did people not need help getting around or getting to the Stadium last year?
  • The sushi bar and farmer’s market stands – what would a baseball stadium be without these classic additions.  Take me out to the ball game, buy me some sushi and pomegranate…
  • There is a roped off bar in centerfield.  Because nothing says classic baseball than artificially pumped up exclusivity, privilege and status.  I assume wine bars and tapas bars are coming soon behind home plate, as well as some stylish new one word named frozen yogurt place – perhaps called “Juice.”
  • There are what appear to be at least 5 or 6 large stores dedicated to selling Yankees merchandise.  It is as if the Stadium is screaming, “WE NEED TO SELL A LOT OF STUFF TO MAKE A PROFIT.  OK THAT’S NOT TRUE, BUT WE FIGURED WE GOT TAX PAYERS TO PAY FOR A LOT OF THE STADIUM – NO NOT YOU D-BAGS FROM JERSEY, JUST YOU NEW YORKERS,  SO WE FIGURED WE COULD SQUEEZE MORE CASH OUT OF YOU.”
  • There is a small art gallery in the stadium, curator included.  See #2 and realize that I did not exaggerate nearly enough.
  • Forced nostalgia.  Everywhere you walked pre-game there was epic music playing and slow motion video every fifteen feet.  It is as if the Stadium is telling the Twitter/YouTube generation, “Don’t worry about forming your own memories or nostalgia, we are beating you over the head with sentimental sensory overload so that you don’t have to experience nostalgia, we’ll simply tell you what your nostalgia is.”
  • Energy Overload – I was told that the new Yankee Stadium has a significantly larger carbon footprint than the old one (the 1700″ HD flat screen probably has something to do with that).  The comparison is like the old stadium is the carbon equivalent of an old Asian woman with bound feet and the new Stadium is Shaquille O’Neal.

Other than those things the Stadium looks great and I saw a great game (Yankees won 7-6).  So if you like your baseball like you like your trophy wife, attractive, expensive and soulless I think we have found your stadium.

PART II

And if you like your television loud and absurd then I am sorry that 24’s 7thseason ended last night.   Rumor has it that Season 8 will be the most explosive ever.  In it the writers will have condensed 14 months worth of time into 24 hours, which people will still believe if the show continues to post incongruous times on screen.  Jack, who clearly survives at the end of Season 7, will have to stop terrorists who plan on destroying 350 nuclear warheads at 350 different locations around the world.  Unfortunately the only people who can help him are Tony Almeida, who makes a deal for immunity, ex-President Logan, who has been exiled somewhere and David Palmer whose head was blown off in Season 5, but is secretly still alive.  One bomb will go off only killing competent screen writers, but Kim Bauer will be kidnapped.  Jack will have to sacrifice his life to save Kim, but only after he tracks down the the cure to AIDS, rebuilds the World Trade Center and uncovers Jimmy Hoffa’s body.  But before all this can happen, Jack must be brought out of retirement because he is at peace with himself and regrets all the people he has murdered.   And in the final twist (7 minutes left in the season) Jack realizes he has been the bad guy the whole time and must torture himself and kill himself to stop the attack.  You heard it hear first – Season 8 will be the most explosive season ever!!!!

Orlando Magic

Just got back from Orlando (wedding and a trip to Universal Studios).  A few things I learned and confirmed this weekend.

JetBlue is a fantastic airline.  The leg room, unlimited snacks and television are all great.  The old European bitch sitting near me with her poodle was the only drawback.  She got into it with a flight attendant about placing the dog underneath the seat (it was a small one), to which she proclaimed, “I travel to Europe all the time with the dog,” as if the flight attendant was supposed to reply, “Oh, you travel often… and to EUROPE, welllllll I did not know – excuse me and my provincial sensibilities.”  People should not be able to bring dogs onto an airplane unless they are blind.   At one point, as the dog started whimpering I almost shouted, “Somebody get these motherfu-kin’ dogs off my motherfu-kin’ plane.”

Caricature drawings are interesting experiences.  I had one drawn of me at Universal Studios.  As people walk by you know they are judging.  They are saying one of two things:

  1. Damn!  – that dude is fu-ked up looking and she is drawing all of it or
  2. That artist sucks and that dude sitting right there is getting ripped off.

Fortunately I think it came out well (resembling me, but funnier looking).  However, it is the first time I feel like instead of Obama-Adam Sandler my combo has come out to look like Billy Zane mixed with Milton Berle.  Enjoy:

Billy Zane's skull, Milton Berle's mouth and Jay Leno's chin
Billy Zane’s skull, Milton Berle’s mouth and Jay Leno’s chin

So this week has a lot of promise.  Tonight is my first trip to Yankee stadium and the season finale of 24 (can it possibly suck any more?), Tuesday more Laker basketball to hate and The American Idol finals to enjoy (Lambert has been the star all season and must win) and then Thursday is Terminator Salvation.  Stay tuned. Or stay whatever it is when you read stuff.

Angels & Demons: An Unholy Experience That Can Be…

In what is quickly shaping up as a Summer of ups and downs, this week, after the solid (but I would not say better than that) Star Trek the ghost of Wolverine has appeared in the new Dan Brown adaptation, Angels & Demons.  I should say that I like the book The DaVinci Code and found the film decent, but at least pretty true to the book.  I liked the book Angels and Demons better, so I was hopeful.  Well, Ron Howard crushed that hope.

In what is becoming a cinematic Christ-like sacrifice by me, I have been seeing Thursday night shows in an effort to be first to to discuss (or warn people) the big movies of the Summer.  Well, consider yourself warned – Angels and Demons is really bad.  It even has the power to offset joy at seeing the Lakers lose to the Houston Rockets.

About twenty minutes into the movie the projector burned the reel, which was probably a sign from God, not because the film contained blasphemy, but because the two hours remaining were so terrible.  Even the Catholic Church is not protesting the film as much because seeing it will actually help people believe that there are evil forces at work in the world.  To sum up the movie imagine Tom Hanks delivering a so-so performance in a movie that appears to be only the most preposterous segments of a season of 24.  The End.

I liked the book Angels and Demons and I have never seen a movie make so many adjustments to critical plot points in my life.  People may have been wondering how this film would play in terms of the religion-science divide, but it may bring those factions together in declaring this film both an unholy experience and terrible based on empirical evidence.

Next weekend is a big one with Terminator Salvation (a PG-13 Terminator?) and Dance Flick.  Is it scary that my bet is on Dance Flick delivering the goods?  Well I got a free pass to another movie because of the projector mishap, but hopefully something comes out soon that is worth a free ticket.

Adam Lambert vs. Kris Allen or as Don King…

Last night America added insult to widowery when they voted off the soulful sound of recent widower Dany Gokey.  On pure talent the finals should have been Dany Gokey versus Adam Lambert.  But like many elections, especially those involving reality shows, women flex their pop culture suffrage in greater numbers than men and Gokey could not measure up.  See, Adam Lambert is the talented gay friend that every girl, not from the Bible belt (and maybe secretly in the Bible belt – “Daddy, it ain’t a sin if I just watch him sing his songs!”) wants (think Sex and the City or Rupert Everett) .

Kris Allen is the cute boy next door that will sing a girl an acoustic song on a beach somewhere (think Owen Wilson’s take on Hutch in Starsky and Hutch).

But what category did Dany Gokey bring to the table – soulful white man on the worst rebound imaginable (think Michael Bolton or C. Thomas Howell for the 20 years in between Soul Man and Southland).  So the women have spoken and they now have to choose between The Birdcage and The Notebook.

On pure talent, Adam Lambert should run away with it.  His voice is so powerful he basically sounds like he is showing off every time he sings.  Although I think the judges are now under some hypnotic Prince-like spell with Adam where they are incapableof criticizing him, his performances of Mad World and Satisfaction this season have been the two best performances of the season.  But things that are not in his control could hurt him (Katy Perry wearing an “Adam Lambert cape before her performance?).   Sidenote: my tweets during the show got Katy Perry to follow me on Twitter.

But Kris Allen emerged as a contender with his first performance in the Top 13 when he did a great version of Do You Remember The Time by Michael Jackson.   Since then he has been the competition’s John Mayer (minus strange tattoos and complete douche-bagginess) on “Your Body Is A Wonderland” overdrive, with ooooo-ing and ahhh-ing at his awww shucks charm (which does seem genuine).   Two things may hurt him.  One is that he does not have the pure talent and showmanship of Lambert and two is that he is from what I have heard is that he is a married Christian, which will lose him the vote of physicists and alternative NYC comedians.

So who will win?  It should be Lambert and I think it will be.   If he does win I hope his album is some sort of melding of Sebastian Bach and Freddie Mercury and not some trite pop, which would not really fit him anyway.

My two funniest moments from last night’s show:

  1. A female fan in San Diego rushing Adam Lambert while removing her shirt – either she was from a Bible-based re-orientation program or she got some very bad information.
  2. The Real Sex moment.  Seeing Jordin Sparks looking quite nice singing her song and then flashingback to Adam and Kris was the equivalent of Real Sex on HBO when one minute it is the “Female Porn Stars HavingLesbian Encounters” segment followed quickly and inappropriately by “Old Men Masturbating” segment.  Not cool American Idol.

It’s Undeniable – 24 Sucks

Last night I watched the second to last episode of the seventh season/day of 24.  It became official – this show is absolutely horrible.  The 14th plot twist in 22 hours was the most absurd.   I do not want to get into all the plot twists, but one this season was that Tony Almeida, a good guy for 5 seasons turns out to be the first quadruple agent in spy history (even the Naked Gun film series did not have absurdities like that).

Last night Kim Bauer, Jack’s daughter and the Natalie Holloway of prime time, is about to get kidnapped in the season finale, meaning that she will have been kidnapped every season she has appeared in the show.  I think the weirdest part of this kidnap plot is that the terrorists expected a bioweapon to explode killing thousands, thus marking the end of their plot, but as an insurance policy for their 5th failed attack  in 24 hours, they track Jack’s daughter, who just showed up in town less than 5 hours ago, to the airport by a guy who looks like Eddie Money.

The show also has abandonedthe 24 hour – real time approach last night when a bomb that was timed to 15 minutes actually lost 3 minutes during the course of the show.  I just need to say that if you are a person who watches this show and instead of rolling your eyes at the 37th plot twist in 42 minutes, goes, “Ohhhhhh sh*t!!!!” you are a fuc-ing retard.

I think it’s Ockham’s Razor that says the simplest explanation is often the right one.  On 24 the theory is: what ever is the most absurd possibility, past the point of being clever and just being plainly ridiculous and impossible within reason and the time constraints of the show is going to be what happens. And it will happenseven times during the season.

For a preview of Season 8 of this excrement – click the link below.

The Future of 24

How Do You Know Your Career Is Stalled?

This weekend I featured at Magooby’s Joke House in Baltimore.  Some of the highlights:

  1. “My Private 9/11” is now 20/20 for killing (most in New York, but also in Detroit and Baltimore)- I keep expecting it to offend some crowd, but it keeps working.
  2. Only 2/3 of the crowd knows what pulling  “a Kobe” is, when referring to sexual proclivities.
  3. I got offered a spot this Saturday on a Baltimore radio station to discuss sports as President Obama (details forthcoming).
  4. I robbed four drug dealers.

But this trip could have been a massive failure if I had not built up tremendous mental strength in my 6 years doing comedy.  Because on Friday a friend of mine for 16 years, in an effort to possibly get me some stage time asked me a devastating question shortly before my first show of the weekend.  That question: “what’s your website so I can give the guy your info.”

This question has so many layers of disappointment in it.  The first being – here’s a hint – it’s my name, it’s on the bottom of my e-mails, on my myspace and facebook pages.  But beyond the “are you kidding me Derek?” Zoolander aspect of the question, there is a deeper, more troubling aspect to it.  That is the, if I am not marginally relevant to any of my friends, how can I expect to have any relevance to an actual comedy fan, question.  Because this scenario means that my friend either never visits my website or that my website is so banal to my friend that googling me to tell his friend my website is not worth his time or the time of his pentium processor.

I guess in comedy it’s sort of like Michael Corleone said.  Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.  Because at least your enemies know your website.

Weekend Recommendations

It’s been a slow week for me writing, but I have some recommendations for you this weekend:

Read A-Rod.  It’s a 2 day read and very entertaining.  Tall, tan, attention-craving, insecure, talented and an attraction to older women.  Replace strippers with movies, steroids with donuts and baseball with comedy and you have as close to an unauthorized biography of my life as may ever be printed.  Sports and gossip fans will enjoy the book and hopefully feel bad for the both of us after reading it.  But probably not.

Watch Star Trek.  This is not a great movie, but it is a really good Summer movie (fun, sexual suggestiveness, explosions).  It updates the franchise and makes it fun while not being disrespectful or spoofing the original.  Furthermore it features Tyler Perry, which for racists and/or people with a modicum of artistic sense will mark their first experience seeing a Tyler Perry movie.  So let me be the first to re-name the movie Tyler Perry’s Star Trek.

Magooby’s.  If you are in Baltimore or nearby come see me feature this weekend at Magooby’s Joke House.   9 pm tonight, 8 and 1015 tomorrow night.   The Yankees are also in Baltimore this weekend for A-rod’s first game of the season.  Coincidence?   Well, if we end up at the same swingers club tonight I will be pissed.

You are welcome for a fun weekend in advance.

Wolverine and A-Rod Must Pull a “McGreevey” To Save…

In case gay men were still fuming (flaming?) over Proposition 8 in California they were just dealt two more blows (can the unintentional gay puns ever stop?) in the form of Wolverine and Alex Rodriguez’s latest scandals.

Although I have already blasted it on Facebook – if you can help it do not go see Wolverine.  I am more guilty than most with going to see blockbusters.  After Batman Forever I swore that I would not see another Batman (the new franchise does not count), but there I was a couple of years later watching Batman and Robin, one of the 10 worst films I have ever seen.

Well last night, since I did not have to be up until 4 pm today for work, I went to see a midnight show of Wolverine.  This is a really really bad movie.  So many cliche moments (did he really just scream up at the sky at the death of someone?, is he really walking with CGI fire behind him? – what a badass!), such bad acting and writing have not been crammed into one film since Sophia Coppola starred in a re-make of Castaway (not true, but wanted to show how easy it is to write Family Guy-style jokes).  Now Hugh Jackman shows up jacked as ever (I question the legality of his training methods at this point), but this steroided up Rupert Everett is not enough to carry the movie beyond a rating or “piece of crap,” which is the only rating before “a Paul Blart.”

And faster than you can say gay man on steroids, here comes repressed Alex Rodriguez back into the news, with more revelations about his “doth protest too much” womanizing and his playing the Matt Damon to Derek Jeter’s Jude law in his baseball version of The Talented Mr. Ripley (does that make Joba Chamberlain the Phillip Seymour Hoffman of the Yankees?).  I have defended A-Rod, not because I think his womanizing or cheating or annoyingly overdone PR image are good, but because I am starting to think this guy is really repressing something.  I mean the guy is a pretty, tan, well-groomed Latin guy from South Beach with a taste for muscular pop singers – I am not sure if Perez Hilton is that gay?  Throw in his alleged obsession with Derek Jeter and his alleged cheesy pick up lines and you might as well not as look at his iPod because I am sure Freedom by George Michael is playing on repeat.

So I have the same advice for both Hugh Jackman and Alex Rodriguez to stem the criticism for atrocious behavior (making a bad movie, cheating on everything, respectively).  Pull a McGreevey.  This move, named after former New jersey governor and truck stop enthusiast Jim McGreevey, is when you make a shocking announcement about your sexuality to distract from terrible professional activities.

So my solution for them is that they both should come out and announce that they are gay Americans in the next week.  Sure, Hugh Jackman is not American, he’s Australian, but no one will be listening after he says gay.  And A-Rod could spice it up (Latin pun) and say he is a gay Latino-American thus adding an extra layer of minority protection to his announcement.  I think this is the only thing that can save their respective credibility.  My guess is that the entire cast of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek will have to announce that they are a gay star fleet next week.

Open Mic Lesson For Non-Comics

In an AC/DC song entitled “It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock n roll” (one of 1,145 songs of AC/DC with the word “rock” in the title) they describe the hardships of being a band on the rise.  Well if there was a comedy song describing the sad reality of being a comic on the rise (or at least thinking him or herself on the rise) it would probably be called “You can’t even see the top from the Wednesday open mic at New York Comedy Club.”

One lesson I have learned in comedy is that you cannot have any pride.  I am not talking about pride in your jokes, etc. – of course you need that, but you cannot have too much pride to say no to any space with a microphone and time for you because every opportunity is at least a chance to practice.   But sometimes there are experiences that challenge that philosophy.  Yesterday was one of those.  Let this be a glimpse, albeit an awful one, even by open mic standards, into a random open mic night.  In comedy it seems that practice makes perfect, but it also makes you hate life.

I arrived at the mic a few minutes late and observed a comic, who I will not name, but let’s say that Vegas has 3-2 odds that he has bodies buried in his basement (imagine what the Crypt Keeper would have looked like three weeks before losing the last layer of skin and muscle).   As I walk in he is saying in his characteristic delivery (think schizophrenic): “so that is when she came in my mouth.”  The 7 comics sitting laugh, more at the horror than the actual punchline.

The next comic up, who will also remain nameless, is approximately 109 years old.  Before I say he was not that great, or anything like that, I am aware that he is more likely than me to get some sort of reality series for himself, probably about an old man following his dreams, probably airing on Discovery called “It’s Never Too Late.”

Then a young man got up (the second time he had ever done stand-up).  He said he did not want to dig into sad or painful things, at which point the emcee wanted to know what they were because pain can often be a good source of comedy.  Then we learned how unfunny a miscarriage actually is.

Next up was a gay guy who had some funny lines, one of which was asking me if I was mulatto.  I told him yes, but I preferred the more modern term of half-negro.  He then had to run to a Broadway show.  Seriously.

Next to last was a comic I have known for a few years.  He got a couple of laughs from the paltry audience of comics and then it was time for me to go.

So I took the gun out of my mouth and went up and did my set.  Now doesn’t comedy sound fun??