Demetri Martin added to Thursday's Flying Carpet

Just added to Thursday's Flying Carpet show at Mo Pitkin's: Demetri Martin.

Did Jamie Foxx rip off Richard Pryor's bit about Africa?

Check out the similarity between these Foxx and Pryor bits on the way people smell in Africa:



Not the most original idea here so I can def see how Foxx would come up with it on his own. But then again, could Foxx really not know the Pryor bit at all? It's from "Live at the Sunset Strip," one of Pryor's biggest concert movies.

Stingrays, jj's, and Flying Carpet on Thursday

Howdy you. Flying Carpet's back in action this Thursday. It'll be UPSTAIRS at Mo Pitkin's and free. Starts at 7pm *sharp* so don't lollygag.

FLYING CARPET
FREE Standup Comedy Extravaganza
Thu, Aug 30 at 7pm
Mo Pitkin's (Upstairs)
Ave A btwn 2nd and 3rd Streets
http://www.mopitkins.com/

COMICS:
Demetri Martin (http://www.demetrimartin.com/)
Joe Alexander (http://www.myspace.com/kingjaffi)
Matt Ruby (http://www.sandpapersuit.com)
Raquel D'Apice (http://www.myspace.com/theuglyvolvo)
Matt Maragno (http://www.myspace.com/mattmaragno)
Sean O'Connor (http://www.myspace.com/thecomedyofseanoconnor)
Brooke Van Poppelen (http://www.myspace.com/brookevpcomedy)
...and special guest!?



* The picture on the flyer is of a stingray. I took it at the Baltimore Aquarium. But quite a few people who have seen this flyer see something different when they look at it. They see female naughty parts. You know what I call these people? Perverts.

** That said, it would be pretty awesome if a girl referred to her jj as a "stingray." Ladies, work on it.

Upcoming shows: Flying Carpet and Transmissions

Thursday night is the next edition of Flying Carpet. We're in the upstairs room at 7pm. More details coming soon.

And you can also catch me at Michael Mattera's Transmissions show on Monday night. Details below...

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Transmissions - Monday August 27th @ 9pm

Here's the Lineup:

Colin Kane: The Village Lantern, Caroline's Comedy Club
Mindy Raf: Mo' Pitkins, Vh1, College Humor.com, The Post Show
Jamie Lee: Archers of Ha, The Village Ma
Carolyn Castiglia: Vh1, MTV, ....and pretty much every alt. room
Matt Ruby: The Comedy Village, Mo' Pitkins
Dan Soder: K-Rock radio, The Comedy Village, Stand-Up NY
Amanda Beales: The Boston Com. Fest., The Laugh Lounge, Comix

Monday August 27th, 2007 - 9:00P
"Transmissions" @ The Slipper Room
167 Orchard Street (corner of Stanton)
Manhattan , NY
Cost: $5 Cover....NO DRINK MINIMUM!

The importance of connection

Paraphrase: "It's not about the lines, it's about the connection. Connection is more important than being witty or clever or the lines you've written."

That's David Steinberg's p.o.v. on why he and Johnny Carson worked so well together. With Steinberg, Carson could abandon his notes and just go with the flow. The audience sensed that and was turned on by it.

It's true for the standup/audience relationship too. If they feel a connection with you, you're way closer to laughs. It's a good reason to be ok with abandoning written material in order to just talk to the room.

Living strong

Thank you people who buy those Live Strong bracelets. You've really made a difference. You spent a whole $1 to fight cancer. Most people think a dime or .50 is enough. Not you. You've gone all in to combat this killer. You are clearly living strong. I tip my hat to you. And I'm inspired. I'm off to fight global warming by throwing a couple of ice cubes in the ocean.

And also thank you to the people who wear those ribbons for a charity. You know, the ones that symbolize that we need to save the whales who have breast cancer and work in sweatshops in Darfur. Nothing says "we're taking a REAL stand" more than synchronized accessorizing.

Last Comic Standing is a waste of time

Enough with comics bitching about Last Comic Standing "destroying the credibility of the art of standup" or being "sick" and "unseemly" for forcing contestants to heckle each other.

First off, what credibility?

Second off, who cares? It's obvious how lame the show is: The tryout process is rigged (all contestants already determined beforehand). The judges, ex-contestants, are comics who are less funny than a lot of the auditioners. Shows are edited terribly (the routines are chopped up so bad you don't even know what's happening). The laugh tracks are way overdone and the cut-to-audience-member-laughing-hysterically takes are way fake. And some guy in a gorilla mask keeps showing up. Cuz gorilla masks are so funny!

Not even worth the attention. Moving on...

Mr. Met at Pinty and Pooja's wedding

Tim: Mr Met at Pinty and Pooja's wedding
Me: nice, like an ESPN commercial
Tim: go mets!
Me: [disappointed] i was hoping he was gonna barf or start feeling up chicks

"There are some women who..."

Mike Destefano to gal heckler who jokingly threatened to beat him up: "There are some women who are hot enough they can get away with acting like cunts. You're not one of those women."

Write more

Was chatting with a pro comic the other night and I asked him what he knows now that he wishes he knew when he was starting out. His answer: Write more. "There's nothing I'm writing now that I didn't have the insight and knowledge to write ten years ago. I just didn't work hard enough at it then." What about having to deal with a day job? "There's always time." Does that feeling go away? "I always feel I should have another hour of material more than I do."

Catch me tonight at Totally J/K at Rififi

10 things: Crocodile tears, fireflies, ZZ Top, etc.

You know who's funny? Foreigners.

Guys who wear a lot of keys on their belts are telling the world, "I'm really good at opening doors and really bad at opening bras."

I'm determined to win the oscar for Best Actor. I'm waiting for the perfect role though: A blind, gay, retarded cripple who has AIDS. During the holocaust. Can you say shoe-in?

Fake crying is called crocodile tears. This must make things tough for emotional crocodiles. "Don't even act like you're really sad that gazelle got away, Carl." How can you even tell if a crocodile is crying anyway? They live in water.

I like to write jokes that are offensive on multiple levels. Example: Why do Jewish women have such big tits? Because that's where they store all their complaints. Check and mate.

Little known fact: Everytime a firefly lights up, he's receiving a text message. Sample: "Chilling by flowers. Where r u?"

You can sum up all of American politics this way: Democrats want their mommy. And Republicans want their daddy. And right now, it's like Mommy's been on vacation and Daddy's been in charge of the house and while it was fun for a while the laundry is piling up, we're all sick of eating fast food every night, and there's a really incompetent Attorney General staying with us.

I like this argument against gays: "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Oh, I didn't know you were bringing hard science into this! This argument is pretty much the same as saying, "Being gay is unnatural because the unicorns and the dragons told me that's true! And the abominable snowman said to be pro-life, so I'm pro-life. And the Loch Ness Monster told me we shouldn't appoint activist judges to the Supreme Court either."

The best line from ZZ Top's "Legs": "She's got legs...and she knows how to use them." As opposed to "She's got legs, but she's a parapalegic"!? Is knowing how to use your legs that impressive? Pretty low standards guys. Line they almost went with: "She's got a pulse and her blood is still pumping."

I know why you're not laughing at any of these. It's because you hate freedom.

Two Simon Beauregard sets

Simon Beauregard, France's #1 comic, performs at The Shark Show at Mo Pitkin's on July 21:


Simon Beauregard at Comedy Village on July 23:

Conversations

Discussing all the crap that Hollywood puts out...

NB: People blame the industry but I get sent all the projects they're looking at. Everything out there is crap. It's hard to write good stuff.
Me: What about Curb or the British Office?
NB: Their ratings suck compared to the top 20 shows. No show without a laugh track will ever be in the top 5.

Also from NB: "Standup is the hardest thing to do. If you can do standup, you can do anything." "Whoever writes the most will be the funniest."

I talked with GG about the limitations of performing as a character. His response: "If you can come up with one funny character, you can come up with more."

Sex swings: A.D. Miles vs. The Onion

A.D. Miles does a funny bit about his divorce and an unused sex swing full of dirty laundry. In the most recent Onion, there's an article titled Butterfly Fuck-Swing Filled With Junk Mail. Hmm.

Excerpts from "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" by Steve Martin

Got my mitts on an advance copy (available in November) of "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" by Steve Martin. It's all about his years doing standup and how he got started. It's a quick read and really interesting if you're a fan. Some highlights below.

His most persistent memory of stand-up:

I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success. My most persistent memory of stand-up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the boy delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare — enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

The best opening lines he ever heard:

The best opening line I ever heard was from Sam Kinison...He said, "You're going to see a lot of comedians tonight; some will be good, some will be okay. But there's a difference between me and them. Them, you might want to see again sometime." But wait — maybe the best opening line I heard was Richard Pryor's, after he started two hours late in front of a potentially miffed crowd at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. He said simply, "Hope I'm funny."

He developed material by translating what made him laugh in life:

I came up with several schemes for developing material. "I laugh in life," I thought, "so why not observe what it is that makes me laugh?" And if I did spot something that was funny, I decided not to just describe it as happening to someone else, but to translate it into the first person, so it was happening to me. A guy didn't walk into a bar, I did. I didn't wat it to appear that others were nuts; I wanted it to appear that I was nuts.

He believed in contradiction:

Lewis Carroll's clever fancies from the 19th century expanded my definition of what comedy could be. I began closing my show by announcing, "I'm not going home tonight; I'm going to Bananaland, a place where only two things are true, only two things: One, all chairs are green; and two, no chairs are green." Not at Lewis Carroll's level, but the line worked for my contemporaries, and I loved implying that the one thing I believed in was a contradiction.

Defense against loudmouths:

I developed a few defensive lines to use against the unruly: "Oh, I remember when I had my first beer," and if that didn't cool them off, I would use a psychological trick. I would lower my voice and continue with my act, talking almost inaudibly. The audience couldn't hear the show, and they would shut the heckler up on their own.

Try to make the waitresses laugh:

There was a sign of encouragment from these early jobs, and years later I heard it phrased perfectly by Bill Cosby. He said that early in his career when the audience wasn't laughing, he could hear the waitresses laughing, and they saw the show night after night. I noticed that the waitresses were laughing.

Making an audience remember him:

At the end of my closing-night show at the Troubadour, I stood onstage and took out five bananas. I peeled them, put one on my head, one in each pocket, and squeezed one in each hand. Then I read the last line of my latest bad review: "Sharing the bill with Poco this week is comedian Steve Martin...his 25 minute routine failed to establish any comic identity that would make the audience remember him or the material." Then I walked off the stage.

What's hard is being consistent:

It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking...What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.

How he worked in new material:

When I had new material to try, I would break it down into its smallest elements, literally a gesture or a few words, then sneak it into the act in its shortest form, being careful not to dsirupt the flow of the show. If it worked, the next night I would add the next discreet packed until the bit either filled out or died. I can remember bailing out of a bit because I didn't want to be trapped in it for the next five minutes. The easiest way was to pretend I'd gotten distracted by something and then completely change track.

Other quick thoughts:

Comedy's enemy is distraction.

[On Laurel and Hardy] This is where I got the idea that jokes are funniest when played upon oneself.

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

"Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" at Amazon.

Serge Gainsbourg tells (pre-cracked out) Whitney Houston he wants to f$%! her

C'est l'amour!

Flying Carpet takes off on Saturday

FLYING CARPET
FREE Standup Comedy Extravaganza
Sat, July 28 at 7pm
Mo Pitkin's (Downstairs)
Ave A btwn 2nd and 3rd Streets

Check out this lineup!
Neal Brennan (co-creator/writer of Chappelle Show)
Larry Murphy (http://www.myspace.com/lsmurphy)
Matt McCarthy (http://www.myspace.com/howcanthisnamebetaken)
Jesse Popp (http://www.myspace.com/jwpopp)
Noah Garfinkel (http://www.myspace.com/noahgarf)
Dan Soder (http://www.myspace.com/scareddan)
Matt Ruby (http://www.sandpapersuit.com)
& more!?

...Hosted by Simon Beauregard (France's #1 standup comic!)

World champion Judah Friedlander

Seen Judah Friedlander (30 Rock) perform a bunch of times in the past couple of months and I really dig his act. It's all one joke: He's a fat slob who claims to be world champion...of everything.

This one joke is stretched as far as it can go. Sex, sports, whatever, he's the best. He's ready for anywhere the crowd takes it. You play softball? He plays hardball. And yesterday he bunted a home run. And before that he pitched a perfect game, from left field. Etc. It's all got an old-school, Rickles-ish schtick feel to it.

He sells it by not selling it. He delivers it in a "I couldn't care less about all this" tone. He's turned not giving a shit into his whole act. (Nice performance work if you can get it.) Still, he's super quick with crowdwork and totally on point with his timing and delivery.

Pros to doing something like this: tight focus, easy hook for people to remember you, anyone can get it, etc. Cons: I wonder if it feels limiting to have your entire act be about one topic?

George Bush and The Shaggy Doctrine

George Bush's foreign policy approach: The Shaggy Doctrine (i.e. the solution to being caught red-handed in a bad situation is to deny, deny, deny).

To be a true player you have to know how to play
If she say a night, convince her say a day
Never admit to a word when she say makes a claim
And you tell her baby no way

They found no weapons of mass destruction? It wasn't me. We started an Iragi civil war? It wasn't me. Butt naked, banging on the bathroom floor? It wasn't me.

George, how could you forget that you had given us an extra key?