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Trump, Desperate for Black Vote, Declares Atlanta 2nd Best…

In a week full of controversial statements, even by his standards, Donald Trump has made a desperate, but significant play for black votes by declaring Atlanta, FX’s new comedy starring Donald Glover, “the second best show ever made, after The Apprentice of course.”  This week, Donald Trump made headlines for acknowledging President Obama’s American citizenship, but without apology and by falsely claiming Hillary Clinton as the source of the birther movement.  When that caused a predictable backlash Trump went to his playbook of “say something worse to distract from earlier bad thing” by suggesting Hillary Clinton’s protective detail abandon their weapons.  Well Trump may have finally made his first real play for the African-American vote today when at noon he tweeted out “Atlanta on FX is great. Really great.  Probably best show since The Apprentice.”

Trump is a lover of polls, statistics and click bait and he gets all three with his support of Atlanta.  Atlanta has had strong ratings for FX, especially if you read titles of articles saying “Best Ratings for an FX comedy premiere since 2011” (which really means it is less successful than Wilfred, but that is not really the point). In a study of Black Twitter, Atlanta recently finished ahead of Barack Obama, Serena Williams and Beyoncé on things black people thought were important and excellent (a metric that combines quantity of shares of content with quantity of superlatives used in those shares). So whether it is genuine or pandering, Trump’s pivot to be pro-Atlanta is the only thing right now in black social media that may have the power to cover up his birther agenda, viewed as one of the low lights of disrespect shown to President Obama during his presidency.

“Hillary keeps hot sauce in her purse? Believe me, I keep Atlanta at the top of my DVR queue. Really great…” gushed Trump outside a white power rally this afternoon.

The response on Black Twitter to Trump’s love of Atlanta has been mixed, but one popular account, going by the name “@ThotsAndPrayers” said “Trump has done a lot of bad and said a lot worse, but he is right – Atlanta is (flame emoji).”

So it seems that it may be too little, too late, but the praise for this amazing show (it is at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it is not just black social media that has noticed) as one of the greatest in television history by Mr. Trump is not falling on deaf ears.

Episode 4 of Atlanta‘s first season airs Tuesday.

Get J-L’s new stand up album ISRAELI TORTOISE on iTunes, Amazon & Google.

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Hipster Pancakes, Testicle Jokes & Jared from Subway –…

Last week I toured some of the South with members of Comedians at Law.  We never officially decided on a name for our Southern tour stops, but since we were visiting clubs in Nashville and Atlanta and Vanderbilt Law School I had thought that perhaps “Southern Places with Teeth Tour” would have been a solid choice.  I was closing the show at Zanies in Nashville on Wednesday, going up first after the emcee in Atlanta on Thursday and middling at Vanderbilt Law School on Friday.

Wednesday, after the smoothest flight I have ever been on, the three of us went to see Mama.  There were four of us in the theater.  Three comedians and a random guy who came into the theater and sat 4 seats away from me.  I know this pet peeve has been beaten into the ground, but seriously, why in a theater of 500+ seats would you have to sit within the top .5% seats away from me?  The movie had a good premise, was scary for about an hour and twenty minutes and then fell apart in the last twenty.  This is also known as JJ Abrams-ing something.

The show at Zanies was solid.  The green room was stocked with lots of delicious candies, at least before I arrived.  I ate so much candy my set list got diabetes.  The crowd was medium sized, both in quantity of people and waist-line measurements.  I had a very good set and sold a couple of CDs and a couple of “LiveANGRY” wristbands.  And the night ended with me getting a bed to myself in a two bed-three comedian situation (this was the case for two of the three nights, but when traveling with two Jews who have a combined weight of less than one massive gentile, getting the bed to yourself is a perk).

It should be noted that with two Jews and a man of (some) color driving around the South I thought “Mississippi Burning” would have been a decent name for our Southern Tour, but the other guys thought it too offensive.

The next day we headed to Atlanta for our gig at The Punchline.  We stopped in Chattanooga, TN for a late (1pm) breakfast and it was delicious.  Chattanooga, TN, as we would surmise from our two trips through the town, is basically the Williamsburg, Brooklyn of the South (they hate black people ironically).  In all seriousness it seems to be a growing town with a mix of Williamsburg and a generic college town.  The only disappointing thing about the place where we stopped, the Bluegrass Grill, was that they were out of biscuits.  We felt it was our obligation to eat some biscuits in the south and were denied.  That is like walking into a NYC steakhouse and being told they are out of rich, fat white men.

The Show at the Punchline went well, as far as I could tell.  But that is because I did my set, left to laughter and then went to IHOP on an immediate solo mission.  I was starving and the other two guys had already made their IHOP hatred known, so I knew a post-show trip was unlikely. I sat down in IHOP and ordered my usual (milkshake, sausages, pancakes and an extra large casket).  The food came and I ate happily until, towards the end of my meal, the waitress asked me something that only one other human had ever asked me:

“One of the guys wants to know if you are the guy from Subway?”

Sadly they did not mean Justin Tuck or Michael Phelps.  This mystery person meant Jared.  Fu*king Jared.  One other person has ever come up with that comparison.  There are certain factors that contribute to these rare instances:

  • I have to be wearing my glasses.
  • I have to have grown out my hair – no buzz cut
  • The person who makes this observation is incredibly stupid.
  • The person who makes this observation has nothing to live for.

So for only the second time in my life all four of these factors must have been satisfied.  So after two good shows in the South (which is now my personal record for most good consecutive shows in the South) I was immediately put in check by IHOP.  It is not enough that they kill me physically with a heart disease-diabetes 1-2 punch, but now they have brought the fight to my emotional doorstep.

But Atlanta was not quite done with their punishment.  I sold a couple of wristbands after the show, no CDs, but got a piece of incredible advice from a patron:

Patron: That was a really great set.  I  mean really great.

Me: Thanks so much. Glad you Enjoyed.

Patron: But if I can suggest one thing…

Me (internally): Fu*k.

Patron: When you do the Lance Armstrong thing, say “He didn’t have the ball…” you know… because he has one testicle.

Me: Ohhh, hahaha, ok ok.

My eyes: I will fu*king end you.

He liked my set a lot, but thought I could have used a little bit more nuance with an original take on Lance Armstrong’s one testicle.  Comedy rules!!!

The next day we left back for Nashville to perform at Vanderbilt Law School.  We stopped back in Chattanooga for lunch and went to another web-recommended spot called Aretha Frankenstein’s.  We were greeted by a short Indian woman in a knit hat and thick black glasses, a red-headed waitress with a short haircut and several neck tattoos and a cashier with a beard big enough to book him two Comedy Central specials.  The food was delicious, the biscuits (we got them!) were large and tasty and the food only took 50 minutes to prepare.    They literally took up our entire time difference in the Atlanta-Nashville time zone change with their hipster pancake tardiness.

The Vanderbilt Law show was awesome.  I have destroyed in my life, but this may have been a top ten performance by me.  And it was a good thing too, because just before the show I overheard a law student say (not recognizing me from my poster on campus), “This better be funny.” Right, because you are drinking a free beer at a comedy show that you have paid zero dollars for at your law school on a Friday evening, so if anyone is entitled to be demanding of excellence it is you.  I started my set by reminding the students that I went to a higher ranked law school and I now tell jokes and wear $50 New Balance sneakers so they should not feel too hopeful.  The show was really great though and I sold some more CDs afterwards.

And then I went back to the hotel to watch Bill Maher on HBO, to find out that that the La Quinta Inn we were staying at gets only Showtime.  That is like walking into a restaurant to find out they only serve Hunt’s Ketchup.  Other than sharing one hotel room with two other men, including one with IBS, this was the low point.  But like any comedy trip, no matter how good it always ends badly.  Either you are saying goodbye to a nice club, or being called a homely sandwich spokesman or someone is trying to insert hackery into your joke or you just sit on a bed watching Fox News for laughs because Bill Maher is not available.  But we made money, we made people laugh and did not get murdered and that is what I call a successful trip through the South.

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Atlanta – Day 4 – I smoke rocks Joe…

A trip that went overall went well ended on a sour note.  Here is the recap;

Wednesday June 16th afternoon – find out I will be headlining the Sunday night show at The Punchline (fu*king great)

Thursday June 17th morning – see that Joe Rogan has been booked to perform Sunday night. Oh well, feature for Joe Rogan ain’t bad (not too fu*king bad)

Friday June 18th evening – find out that I will be doing guest spots on Joe Rogan’s shows (a second one added because of his popularity) (oh fu*k)

Sunday June 20th – 28 minutes before showtime – Bumped off of the show because Joe Rogan (who by the way has fingers the size of Joe Torre – look it up, no wonder this guy was a world class fighter) has a two man show (fu*k Fear Factor and MMA)

Sunday June 20th 17 minutes into showtime – asked to get out of my seat at the bar so customers can sit (fu*k me)

Sunday June 20th 40 minutes into showtime – I walked outside and saw a member of The Punchline staff looking at one of my cards that I hand out (really nice, not just a business card) after shows.  I asked him where he got it and he said it was just sitting there.  So my last moment at the club was seeing one of my cards from Saturday night discarded like it was a free ticket to HA! Comedy Club (NYC reference).

Of course the Joe Rogan shows were sold out and the average age was 27 as opposed to the shows I worked this weekend which were 2/3 and 3/4 full and the average age was 47.  But them’s the breaks.  Other than that good time in Atlanta. See ya next year.

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Atlanta – Day 3

Saw Jonah Hex yesterday.  A not good movie, but it had the decency to be only 80 minutes long.

3 shows last night.  Very tiring.  Felt like I did extremely well on the 7 pm and 11 pm shows (the 11 pm show was nice enough to laugh hard when I told them “I have to practically skullfu*k myself to fit into an airline seat.”  The 9 pm show was pretty good and with a couple of Asians, several black people and a couple of “what the fu*k are you’s” it was by far the most diverse show of the weekend. Ironically with that explosion of diversity I did not feel it went as well as the other two.

Tonight – 2 shows with Joe Rogan.  Turns out I will just be doing guest spots (he brings his own feature), so the good news is I will be able to catch the replay of True Blood in my hotel room at 11 pm and then fall asleep to the replay of the season finale of Treme.  The bad news is I will only be doing guest spots.  But I will use them to film TV audition reels (full house pumped up at a big club is a good time to do this).  Then I will just have to find a member of the tribe in LA or NYC to vouch for me when I send them to television bookers. 

Back in NYC tomorrow.

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Atlanta – Day 2 – “Can a man sue…

One of the great joys of comedy is that it is not legal work.  The legal profession may be the largest group of people who have quit or given up on dreams, outside of the New York Knicks’ organization.  So naturally it is always a fun experience (it has happened more than once) when after a show, during wich I mention having been an attorney, to have audience members come up to me afterwards and ask me about the law, being a lawyer or some awkward legal question.  So I have traded a life of being a funny person at legal jobs to being a legal advisor (yikes) to comedy show audience members.  I’ll get to that in a few.

Yesterday was like any other day on the road – I went to a movie – Toy Story 3.  Very enjoyable and a very empty theater, just me a black dude and a lesbian couple.  Pixar really unites the world.

I then ate at Chic-Fil-A, which is the best fast food in America.  And the restaurants are all clean and all the employees are friendly.  And the food is delicious.  Hoping for a sponsorship or an endorsement deal at some point.

Then it was time for comedy.

The first show was fun, if you consider performing for 35 judgmental old white Southerners fun.  My first joke, which did well at the same club at the same time one night earlier, fell flatter than flat – it fell concave.  “ESPN should realize that when abbreviating World Cup teams to three letters for the scoreboard, perhaps NGA is a bad abbreviation for Nigeria.”  Nothing – I felt like Daffy Duck following Bugs Bunny in a talent show. Crickets.

The second show of the night was really good and I was happy to finally feel like I had had a show I could be proud of down here.  As I got off stage I was approached by a late 20s/early 30s Asian man who, after hearing me tell jokes for 25 minutes engaged me in the following conversation:

“So are you really a lawyer?”

“I was.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Are there laws against adultery in Georgia?”

“I’m licensed in NY, but I would not be surprised if there were.”

“Well, do you know if a man can sue another man for sleeping with his wife?”

“I don’t know. My guess is no, but I don’t know what the laws in Georgia are on the subject.”

What I really wanted to ask was, “Dude, did your wife fu*k a rich dude and you want to sue him?”

It must be frustrating for my Asian almost fan, but even more frustrating was having good show and the only reinforcement for that feeling was a guy asking me how to sue the guy who’s fu*king his wife.

3 shows tonight.  Report to follow.

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Atlanta Highlights – 1st 24 Hours

The first obvious pleasure of my trip to Atlanta was the 25 minutes of turbulence flying down from NYC that required the flight attendants to sit.  That is always a reassuring moment for someone who dislikes flying.  “We know you are nervous, but don’t worry – you are not alone because the trained professionals are uncomfortable as well.”

Arriving in Atlanta’s airport, which is apparently in the city next to Atlanta because it is a 4 hour journey to baggage claim, which looks like something organized by someone from the 3rd World afflicted with ADD.

Got Wendy’s as my first meal in Atlanta’s airport and was asked by the woman if I would like a Coke to drink with my meal.  If Coca Cola were any more insecure they’d be Kobe Bryant’s daughters after Game 7 in front of the national media (one last shot before the off season).  Coca Cola – you are one of the most well known brands in the world and Atlanta is your home.  We get it.  You don’t have to force it on us like some athlete whose glory days were in high school, but still forces you to watch highlight tapes and look at his trophies fifteen years later.  Perhaps managers of restaurants in Atlanta are required to bitch slap employees who don’t properly pimp out Coca Cola.

I took the MARTA train, presumably named after the little blond girl in School of Rock and had only an 10 minute walk to the hotel.  Unfortunately Atlanta is very warm and that ten minute walk of dragging a suitcase in blue jeans transformed me into Patrick Ewing at the foul line by the time I arrived at check-in.

The first show at The Punchline was interesting. The emcee was half Jamaican, half white, from Canada.  Obviously, the crowd might have sensed some redundancy when a half-Haitian, half-white guy with a French name took the stage fifteen minutes later.  But I felt like I had a good set (B+), until the headliner Dale Jones got on stage and absolutely murdered.  So for the rest of the night I just kept repeating my mantra for Southern shows, “At least you are not getting booed at The Stardome, at least you are not getting booed at The Stardome.”

My favorite joke of the night, for the sole reason that it was the first time I’d told it was, “I’m 31 and HIV-negative, which means I have only a year left til I break Magic Johnson’s record.”

After the show was done I watched the rest of the Lakers-Celtics game a few people from the club, the result of which obviously pleased me to no end.

Aiming for two A performances tonight.  8 pm and 10 pm tonight.

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Kobe Beef

Last night I watched the Boston Celtics get out-hustled and out-played by the Los Angeles Lakers.  As if it wasn’t enough to see Kobe Bryant have a solid game I was forced to swallow my own vomit several times as I watched Sasha Vujacic and Jordan Farmar make quality contributions.  Rumor has it in the off-season they will be filming a buddy cop flick called Euro Trash and Shrek Ears.  But as much as Kobe has played the villain in my NBA story for the last 4 years, last night it got personal.  Because of the Laker victory, they will now play Game 7 on Thursday, my first night in Atlanta at The Punchline.

The Punchline is a big club and a chance for me to atone with Southern audiences for a minor debacle in Birmingham last Summer.

Backstory – Last Summer I featured at The Stardome, a huge club owned by some nice people.  6 of the seven shows went somewhere in the B- to B+ range, but one show, the Saturday show led to only the second time I have been boo’d on stage (the other time being Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn – a disgrace to higher education and the Civil Rights’ Leader’s memory, whose student attendees thought it was “boo every comedian that dares step on stage – like Amateur Night at The Apollo, without the credit of The Apollo. To put it in television analogies – if my comedy career was the show Homicide – Medgar Evers College would be Adeena Watson).  I said nothing offensive at The Stardome – I was just neither BET nor rednecky enough for the racially diverse, intellectual bottom feeders that occupied a few of the tables at the club that night.

So going to Atlanta was to be a bit of redemption for me and I actually booked the gig on the strength of my Always Be Funny/Glengary Glen Ross spoof video, which also restored my faith that YouTube was not entirely useless for my career.

But then the Lakers won because they seemed to finally discover that Rajon Rondo has the jumpshot of Shaquille O’Neal.  So that means Thursday night’s show will be empty of just about all basketball fans.  Now my routine has very fewbasketball references in it, but there is a correlation between people who are aware of basketball and people who enjoy my comedy.  Those people will not be there Thursday because Kobe & Co. won.  So who is going to be there Thursday night?  Southern comedy fans who do not like basketball.  Hmmmmmm, I just hope after the show I don’t have to tell anyone, “In New York they call me Missssster Cauvin!”

But the obvious point is that Kobe Bryant is to blame.  (I just wish LeBron James was at Game 6 and walked up to Kobe a la Maximus to Commodus in Gladiator and said, “The Time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end.” Because Kobe should know that when the LeBron James era will begin the moment LeBron gets a teammate(s) that is/are not terrible or fu*king his Mom…

Sidebar – For those of you that do not know – LeBron James mother is rumored (strong rumors) to have slept with LeBron’s bipolar, shotgun-carrying teammate Delonte West.  However, not a word has been uttered on this by ESPN , which is rather frightening.  My theory is that ESPN has marching orders from Nike not to say another word (what would ESPN be without Nike athletes and Nike advertising dollars?).  The story was discussed all over the Internet and on The Huffington Post, but not a peep from the premier sports news network in the world about one of the 10 most famous athletes on the planet?  Just makes you think if people including “The People’s Sports Reporter” Bill Simmons a/k/a The Sports Guy can be silenced (he gave a token – “absolutely false” comment on the story even though when I was in Cleveland everyone seemed to believe the story) by corporate titans (my friend Mike told me this has all the makings of a Michael Mann sports themed sequel to The Insider), what chance is there that news isn’t corrupted all the time by even bigger corporations (obviously it is).  And if you think this has nothing to do with sports – LeBron James disappeared against the Celtics after the rumors started flying, so unlike Tiger Woods’ Blasian fallace, LeBron’s story actually has sports-related salaciousness.

Back to Kobe- Is there anything more absurd than Kobe’s wife and future stripper daughters (when your Mom is a hot gold digger and your Dad is a wealthy rapist aren’t your employment prospects limited psychologically?) standing in the tunnel at halftime to greet him with adoration before he goes into the locker room?  “Look Nike and McDonald’s I am done with the butt rape and the cheating because here is my family right here.  But at the same time I am so driven to win that I take time out of halftime to greet my family?”  Anyone else’s wives or girlfriends meeting them in the tunnel?  Did Michael Jordan have Juanita waiting at halftime? No – he was too busy thinking about winning and killing the other team.  Now he might have had sex with his opponent’s wife in the tunnel as a competitive advantage, but he would never waste time to kiss his own wife mid-game.

So now for this horsesh*t I have to see potential fans not show up tot he first show in Atlanta.  It looks like me and the Celtics are going to have to put in a strong effort Thursday to make sure Kobe does not win.  Odds are the Celtics will have a tougher time than me.