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Road Comedy Recap: Impressions, Injuries and Deal Making in…

I have been in Los Angeles for the last five days and it was a trip befitting my social media hashtag #ComedyMogul.  I was making big media appearances, performing at stand up clubs and engineering deals with one of the biggest chain restaurants in the country.  It was one of my most productive trips to the west coast ever, even though every plural in the proceeding sentence should actually be a singular.  As I write this in an airport motel with plans soaring uncomfortably close every 10 minutes I am beaming with a sense of pride that I managed to crush it on the #1 podcast on iTunes, had a great set at a comedy club and filmed it and helped start a potential big deal between the Cheesecake Factory and a new craft beer, ALL while managing to earn exactly zero dollars while doing it all.  This is what Black Twitter would call “Peak J-L.” So here is the recap you have been waiting for.

Saturday – The Gentlemen’s Lodge

My flight out was pretty uneventful.  My legs felt good because I was in the Extra leg room seats (still unfair that in this day of trans bathrooms a tall man must pay extra to be in seats that fit) and I watched Daddy’s Home, a perfect airplane movie starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (very funny throughout, not really sure why critics crushed it, but perfect way to pass 100 minutes on a cross country flight).  I also had a 2 hour conversation with the woman sitting next to me, who happened to work for digital advertising for YouTube. We had a fun chat about politics, millennials, digital ads (I told her the kinds that I am most likely to watch – so now she has a good sample study of comedy moguls’preferences) and how I can help my content get more views. She said I should aim to get to 5000 subscribers because then I have access to YouTube studios.  With just over 1500 subscribers at my current pace I asked her to reserve me some space in 2032 for me to record some killer content.

When we landed in LA I was greeted by my buddy Nick D. in his Mercedes and he drove me to my hotel in Studio City.  Thanks to Hotwire.com I got a great deal at a place named The Gentlemen’s Lodge.  I figured the great deal I got was based on the fact that in Los Angeles, a place called The Gentlemen’s Lodge would either be a far right enclave where conservatives hunted teenage boy and girl runaways for sexual sport or it would simply be an ironically named place where gay orgies were taking place.  Well, it turns out it was just a normal hotel, despite the presence of kids named Harper and Brooklyn roaming the hallways.  The rest of the day was uneventful as I prepared for a big next couple of days.

The Gentlemen's Lodge 4th floor (my floor) featured a quote from Bruce Springsteen's worst album for some reason

Sunday – Comedy Mogul Down!

I woke up at 4:45 am on Sunday because I never adjust well to the time zone change. But I felt energized and decided to get up and go for a run like I was the Rock sharing annoying Instagram workout pics.  Around 5:45 I started jogging on a quiet and empty road. Feeling good, like I might be able to churn out a couple of extra miles I made the mistake of relaxing and feeling a moment of happiness.  Just when those feelings infected me I tripped.  I rarely trip. It’s sort of weird. I will sometimes have my foot catch on something and not trip either because of balance or gait or weight distribution but I rarely trip.  Well, about ten years of never trips caught up in one epic fall.  When I hit the ground I scraped my palms, busted open one of my knuckles, busted my knee wide open (it still has not scabbed yet 4 days later) and bruised (or worse) my ribs.  I don’t even understand how I could have fallen only once and done that much damage to so many different body parts, but at my height maybe it’s like falling from a 2nd story window.  Whatever the case I was basically a gimpy invalid the rest of the trip. But that didn’t stop me from heading to Flappers in Burbank that night.

My name in lights
Later in the month, Flappers will be headlining a comedian eve more relevant than me: Jake The Snake Roberts, a 1980s wrestler

Despite performing at 1:20 am east coast time I had a great set closing the side room at the club.  Here is a quick clip of my new material about my dog Cookie. Enjoy:

Monday –  Cage, Crushing Carolla & Cheesecake 

Monday was celebrity day for me.  When I limped to the Starbucks across the street from TGL I was on line next to the actor who plays Luke Cage (co-star of Netflix’ Jessica Jones and the start of his own Netflix series this Fall).  We both played it cool, which was refreshing – just getting treated like a regular Starbucks customer and not a Comedy Mogul.

That afternoon I headed to Carolla Studios and had a great appearance (best one of the 6 I have made).  You can listen to the episode here and also watch my new Carolla sketch video I made for the show:

But the biggest thing I did had nothing to do with comedy.  Ryan is the manager at the Pasadena Cheesecake Factory and a big fan of The Adam Carolla Show.  My friend’s girlfriend is a waitress there and when Ryan found out last year that I was the guy that did the impressions on Carolla I began to see my bills shrink exponentially at the Cheesecake Factory.  As the second biggest regular celebrity at the Pasadena Factory (Terry Crews currently holds the #1 spot) I wanted to give back and show my appreciation for being treated so well.  And it turns out that a few hours before I went on the air I learned that Ryan was hoping to get Adam Carolla’s new craft beer into the Pasadena Factory (yes I am aware that calling The Cheesecake Factory, “The Factory,” is hugely douchey).  So on air I brought up the idea of Adam getting his Endless Rant IPA into the PCF and the idea was a hit with him and later his producers when I connected them to Ryan.  So now in addition to #ComedyMogul I am also a budding #CheesecakeMogul.  I have never read Trump’s The Art of the Deal, but I am pretty sure I just wrote the sequel in Pasadena.

Salted caramel cheesecake - one of my 2 free pieces of cheesecake during the week

Tuesday & Wednesday – Sun, More Cheesecake & 2 Nicks

Tuesday was the only full day I had to soak up some Sun because, like The Nothing in The Neverending Story, dark cluds metaphorically and literally follow me.  After getting a little darker I then headed back to the Cheesecake Factory to get more free food and to soak up Ryan’s praise since he had now heard the deal get sealed on air, along with his name said on the air.  I then ended the evening watching CNN in bed because I was too sleep to check out some LA shows. I fell asleep at 9:45pm local #RockStarLife

Wednesday was uneventful – met up with my buddy Nick Cobb and met his infant daughter (I asked her if she could put in a good word with me at MTV2) and completed my trip goal of hanging with only two different friends in LA and having them both be named Nick. Now I am about to go to sleep in my Super 8 Motel with jets lodly flying overhead.  Can’t wait to get back to NYC and earn some money doing legal work, but to be fair this was as good an unpaid trip as I could hope to have.  Hoping some good things materialize in the next few weeks, but hopefully they don’t pay.  #KingOfAllUnpaidMedia

The view from my airport motel. #Blessed #HumbleBrag #WaingroFromHeatStayedHere

For more opinions, comedy and bridge burning check out the Righteous Prick Podcast on iTunes and/or STITCHER. New Every Tuesday so subscribe for free!

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Battle of the Number Twos: Kung Fu Panda vs.…

This weekend is a major showdown at the box office between two highly anticipated sequels (at least for me who appreciates both drunken adult comedies and the adventures of fat, animated panda bears.  Both Kung Fu Panda and The Hangover were surprise smash hits, each earning over $200 million domestically, which means both have incredible potential to fail miserably in their second efforts.  So here’s the breakdown from what I saw.

Kung Fu Panda 2

I first must disclose that I am a huge fan of Jack Black (I even looked favorably on Gulliver’s Travels) so that needs to be taken into account with any assessment I offer of a Jack Black film.  I loved the first Kung Fu Panda, but because KFP is not a Pixar film, but rather a Dreamworks film, I was wary of their ability to maintain the first film’s level of quality (after all they took Shrek from a classic first installment into a piece of total sh*t by the third film, thus ensuring that I would never see the 4th and final Shrek).

I got to the theater Thursday night and it was only about 40% full, almost entirely made up of Asians, with more Asians following me in.  I did not realize Kung Fu Panda was such a niche film, but I felt like I was sitting at the Asian table in a high school cafeteria.

The movie was solid, but unlike the first film this one was a majority action-oriented.  The first film was so good because, although it had a few well done action sequences, the bulk of the film was the joy of seeing Jack Black’s wit and energy translated into a giant animated panda.  The second film sort of reverses the ratio as Po, the main character, searches for answers to his birth origins, while trying to stop an evil peacock from taking over China (you aren’t sold yet?).  In animation, because anything is possible as long as you can draw/design it, it is less impressive to me to make an action packed animated movie, than to make a truly witty and intelligent animated movie.

The movie is still solid, but it is not nearly the same level as the first, despite having Jean Claude Van Damme voice one of the characters.  And given the lessons of the film, if you are a Dad with young kids, it will make a decent early father’s day trip, especially if they are not biologically yours.

Grade: B-

 

The Hangover Part 2

This movie had me laughing steadily throughout, but with about 20 minutes to go it dawned on me that the reviews I had read were spot on – the movie is identical to the first one.  So much so, that it feels as if the screenwriters just cut and pasted the original screenplay and then changed names, locations and drugs.  It is a slightly more outrageous film than the first and on its own very funny.  However, it feels slightly cheap when you realize how easy the movie must have been to write (Thailand and missing brother in law replace Vegas and missing groom as the only two substantive differences).  But judging by the previews for all the frat bro films coming out this Summer, it appears that The Hangover is spurring on other filmmakers to create their own original take on Hangover-style comedies, even if The Hangover people are being lazy about it.

Grade: B

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My First Day As A Stuntman

A couple of days ago I was asked by College Humor in partnership with the NY-based sketch group Elephant Larry to be an extra in one of their on-line videos.  The video itself is basically a re-imagining of a generic action film if the DVD commentary were actual dialogue during the movie.  I knew I was an extra because my character’s title was “Thug.”  Despite only taking acting classes for 9 months it is good to see that I have already found my niche in the acting world: silent, intimidating, large background character.  The pay was only $50, but to take a couple of punches in the background of a scene and eat free snacks in the green room, it seemed like a no-brainer.  It seemed like that because I had not met Lucas, the professional stuntman who I would be sparring with.

When I got to the warm rooftop to shoot the scene I met Lucas – a man who wore all black and looked how I would imagine Vladimir Putin looked in his physical prime with the KGB.  Sort of like a light-middleweight Taekwondo  world champion.  The Elephant Larry guys asked us if we wanted to “work out our fight sequences.” This certainly seemed like a set up for something more complicated than “I will fake punch you and hit my chest at the same time so it sounds like I hit you,” which is the level of fight choreography technique that I was bringing to the table.

So for the next 15 minutes I worked out various punch and kick combos with Lucas, with me receiving all shots to the face and abdomen (this was as much a fight as Mike Tyson versus HurricanePeter McNeeley was).  I only got punched in the face once and kneed in the face once so I guess it was not too bad, but I knew we were off the reservation when the College Humor and Elephant Larry people started looking at Lucas and the damage he was inflicting the way Steve Buscemi looked at Peter Stormare in Fargo when it was revealed that Stormare’s character was actually a homicidal maniac.

So we acted out a few fight sequences, which I was told looked great (and all ended with me rolling around, thrown to the ground on a filthy, tar-splattered Brooklyn rooftop).  At one point I actually had the real feeling of being choked and caught a kick to the nose, but overall it was quite fun and convinced me that if I really need money I could always be an MMA sparring partner.  And for future casting, Lucas will definitely be played by Jean Claude Van Damme in a humorous cameo.

Afterwards, my right arm and neck have the appearance like I cheated on Elin Woods with a Hooters’ waitress, but College Humor ponied up an extra $100 for cleaning bills and emotional damage.  I actually though this would be a great idea for a hybrid show of Jackass and Punk’d – you tell someone that they’ve been picked for a sketch on a comedy website, only to find out they are actually going to be subjected to physical punishment.

Most importantly  the shoot had an incredibly therapeutic effect on my mood, proving that sometimes getting your ass kicked can make you feel a lot better about losing in a comedy contest.

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The Return Of The Cave Man

Whenever people talk with fear about radical Islam in the Middle East they speak about how it is a fringe element of the faith that wants to bring modern society back to the 9th century.  We fear this because it comes with repression of women, suicide bombs, etc.  But the more I look at American pop culture it seems we are hell bent on doing the same, but with our own American style.

The fastest growing sport in America is Mixed Martial Arts. I know defenders of this sport will call  the guys great athletes, but that doesn’t cover up the fact that it is basically just brawling for the enjoyment of a mob.    It reminds me of the scene in Gladiator when Derek Jacobi’s character is discussing how Rome is the mob and Caesar will be applauded by the mob for giving them bloody games.  Well, I guess we’ve come full circle.  Watching highlights of these MMA events convinces me that we are less than a century away form Gladiators coming back.

Twenty years ago, prescient film pioneer Jean Claude-Van Damme did a movie called Lionheart about underground fighting clubs for big money.  20 years later the clubs are out in the open and cleaning up on pay-per-view.   Are we 20 years from the number of movies that showcase races or fights to the death (usually involving prisoners) becoming reality?

Frenemy, ginormous and staycation are now in the dictionary, so this is not just a testosterone fueled movement.  Idiots of all classes, races and genders seem to growing exponentially and continue to win.  The movie Idiocracy, by Mike Judge, shows, through two accidental time travelers over the next 500 years, society getting dumber and dumber to the point that a porn star is elected US President, popular shows on television simply involve people getting hit in the nuts and people can barely speak properly.  Judge may have overshot with 500 years.

Twitter has shown us the way to communicate with each other in short bursts.  So in 50 years perhaps we will simply communicate with emoticons or high-tech equivalents of grunts, believing technology automatically means better, but not realizing social skills have eroded to the point that we are more at ease instant messaging each other than actually communicating in person.

Last year I thought there was hope when The Dark Knight elevated a traditionally mindless genre, the action/comic movie to something artistic and elegant.  But this year’s #1 movie is Transformers 2 which appeals to the basic attraction to visual and aural stimuli with base humor and nothing else.   So after a year that gave us Obama and The Dark Knight (my two favorite things from 2008) it appears that tales of the idiot’s demise were greatly exaggerated.  Time to go tweet.

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Crank 2: A Film Ahead of Jason Statham’s Time

My comedy career began officially in June 2003 when I stepped on stage at the Takoma Station Tavern in Washington D.C. for their Monday open mic.  However, my comedy career really began in 1991 when my impression of Jean-Claude Van Damme in the movie Double Impact made me a big hit with my friends (quick synopsis of the film – Van Damme played twins separated at birth, with”such different personalities” as JCVD put it in a behind the scenes interview, but who both learned karate).

Van Damme was my favorite movie star from the years 1990-1995 (from when I saw Bloodsport until Timecop and all the films in between).  His films were mild successes, but he basically became a joke like many action stars not named Governor Schwarzenegger.  It was not until this Fall that he was able to intentionally and intelligently capitalize on his status with a funny, but moderately moving film (“JCVD”).

Well today I hope there is a 6th grader entertaining  his classmates with a Jason Statham impression.  This guy has literally taken the career of Jean-Claude Van Damme.  I have wondered (on this site, and verbally) how Statham has sustained his career.  Then I saw a preview for Crank 2 and was intrigued.  It looked ridiculous, but entertaining.  But that still did not explain Statham’s 2 franchises (3 Transporters and counting, plus 2 Cranks) and other flops (some movie about prisoners in car races, some dumb movie where he plays some ancient knight), especially since he had to have spent all his Italian Job money by now, so he can be financing his own projects.  In addition to that my old boss at the Bronx DA’s office had recommended Crank to me.

My old boss had a bad history recommending films to me.  One was The Boondock Saints, which I absolutely hated.  The other one was Norbit (I was in Columbus, Ohio with 7 hours to kill before a show – I would have been better off cleaning the Mall toilets with my tongue than watching that movie).  So when he told me Crank was good I greeted it with a roll of the eyes.

But last week I watched Crank and found it entertaining.  It is somewhere between action and parody and was entertaining enough for me to venture to Crank 2 today (and I had a free ticket to the theater).

I must say – reallly enjoyable movie.   Had me laughing a lot because the film has moved even closer to parody and if you want to go, not to watch film or even a technically “good” movie, but just to have fun, then see this movie.

Although the similarities between Van Damme and Statham are even more evident after Crank 2 (Statham has 4-5 references to his character’s large penis in the 2 Cranks and Van Damme has a reference in no less than 3 of his films to his character’s large member – see “The Idiot From Brussels” track on Racial Chameleon, my first CD).  But Statham’s films have not been as successful as even the moderate-to-low bar that Van Damme’s career set.  So the question must be asked:  Why does Jason Statham still have a thriving film career?  One answer is that Lion’s Gate films appear to be willing to produce any film.  But I think the answer is that Statham has decided (possibly) to do what it took JCVD almost 20 years to do – realize that the pure action star is almost dead as a serious franchise (the Arnolds, Stallones, etc. are sort of done), so he pre-empted the trend and made the joke his own, while still having some of the classic action features.  I don’t know if he will make many more movies, but I am pretty sure I would be in for a good laugh if Crank 3 comes out.