My First Paid Blog Post

After blogging for two and a half years for free, I am finally getting paid to blog as a contributor for FlavorWire! Here's my first post! What a week it's been in my the blogosphere. Special thanks to Matt Ruby!

Schtick Or Treat

This show was awesome! I'd like to thank Matt Ruby and Mark Normand for having me on and I'd like to thank The Comic's Comic for giving me my first write-up:

Other highlights: Jared Logan as Kevin Meaney, Mara Herron as Janeane Garofalo, Chelsea White as a female version of Mitch Hedberg, Mo Diggs as Carlos Mencia telling the bit he stole from Cosby, Becky Ciletti as Sarah Silverman, Jamie Lee doing Maria Bamford's voices in a bit we'd both seen Bamford do live just a week earlier, and there were inspired takes on Steven Wright, Gallagher (with mini sledge-o-matic and slice of watermelon), Larry the Cable Guy, Yakoff Smirnoff

I hope to do this again next year!

Laughs On Mars

Dear reader! This seemingly fabulist anecdote may seem like a cynical cash-in on a spectacular ABC sci-fi police procedural, but please rest assured-the following actually happened.

I woke up next to my girlfriend and kissed her softly on her forehead. The last thing I remember was eating a Snicker's ice cream bar from the freezer and fwoosh! I ended up outside the Improv where Broadway Comedy Club used to be.

Wait, you say, didn't Broadway Comedy Club replace the Improv? I had a similar thought till the wind pressed a newspaper against my glasses with the date: October 24, 1973. Seems like I had become unstuck in time. What was I to do? One of the first things I noticed was that things were so much cheaper back then, I did not have to work. This gave me time to ply my craft of comedy in the style of standing up.

I overheard some comics mention an open mike at Father Demo Square. After following them on the A for five stops, I eventually shoved my way past the increasingly vexed Chinese food patrons and signed up. It was my turn to get onstage. I started by mentioning I was an Arab-American. I had plunged into a maelstrom of deafening boos. Realizing too late that Arabophobia was worse back then, a drunkard with a wispy mustache screamed "Lower our gas prices towelhead."

That's right; 1973 was the year of the oil embargo.

I tried finding another open mike. One thing: there was no BadSlava because there was NO INTERNET! What? No Apiary, YouTube, MySpace? No Facebook invites? What to do?

What anyone else would do: befriend Steve Martin.

Steve Martin was by all accounts a distant, aloof kind of guy. So what if I shared my interests in art, King Tut and rabbit ears with the then-struggling comic? What if I praised his brief appearance on Laugh-In? What if I fed him his own jokes? And if he didn't like one, I would say "Well excuuuuuse me!"

If you had a dog in this race, you would say that I rode Martin's coattails to the stratosphere. Martin talked to the great Carnac and got me a Tonight Show gig.

Had I been more aware I wouldn't have stuck to my own set list. But there I was talking about iPod stereos and YouTube.

I was an overnight smash. Stoners loved my "fake" technology. Cultural theorists who inhaled Adorno liked mountain air appreciated my unpretentious social critique of consumer culture with my fictional consumer gadgets and my send-up of timeworn showbiz cliches.

Then, on a return appearance on Carson, I told my Arab-American joke again. Old habits.

Would you believe, even lefty colleges like Berkeley and Sarah Lawrence refused to book me. Martin ignored my landline phone calls. Even the bookers at Match Game gave me blank stares.

Well bully on those who said my pop culture knowledge was useless--I decided to predate Murray Langston by three years, put a paper bag over my head and become The Unknown Comic.

The bag was not even halfway over my head when my girlfriend nudged me and said "You've never looked sexier!"

I was back in 2008! Which meant I could use Bad Slava again! I awoke from my diabetic coma an unknown comic after all.

Jesse Thorn Is GOD

This blog post on same sex marriage is articulate, stirring and inteeligent. America's radio sweetheart is now just America's Sweetheart.

One Of The Best Daily Show Segments Ever

John Hodgman goes meta in ways that make you say "Why didn't I think of that?"

Remembrance of Videos Past #60: Bell Biv DeVoe, "I Thought It Was Me"

In the summer of '91 (months before Kurt Cobain would change the guard) I introduced this song to my best friend in high school, Tom. This was the first time I had ever appreciated musical humor. An excellent modern example is a half-assed harmonica toot in the Demetri Martin track "Sames and Opposites" off his 2007 album These Are Jokes. But back then all we had was the BBD chant.

At 2:20 is the chant that kept us laughing in the pool throughout July and August.
The chant begins with a macho BBD chant followed immediately by a mousy, hurried BBD.

Typographically, this is how it goes:

B!
(pause)
B!
(pause)
D!
(pause)
bbd

So enjoy the greatest work of musical humor in R&B history.

The Best Dick Joke Ever

Whether you are in Duluth, Minnesota or in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you will hear heaps upon heaps of dick jokes. So a video called "My Best Friend Is My Penis" would stimulate your eye-roll reflex. PLEASE click on this Atom films video featuring Jon Togo, of CSI: Miami, and Will Carlough, of The Red-headed League. Not Safe For Work but it should be lunch right around now anyway. Just don't eat while watching-you WILL choke!

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Funny Animations | Upload Video Clips

Analogy-sus

If I am Lou Reed



Ed Murray is David Bowie



and Tim Warner is Iggy Pop

Saved By The Bell: Fake Stories

I got published in this interesting blog by Kevin Tor called Behind The Bell: The Funny, Untrue Stories.

The title: Dustin Diamond Addicted To Doritos

Best Of The Web

Some web archive has me listed as best of the web.
Check it out!

So SNL Impressions Were MEANT To Suck?

Well they were:

Political impersonations on “Saturday Night Live” used to be a good deal more impersonal. Dan Aykroyd’s version of President Carter had a half-Southern accent and a whole mustache. Chevy Chase’s version of President Ford was pure whimsy, as if someone had simply said, “Jovial. Clumsy. Go!” They were making fun of Presidents, but they were also making fun of Presidential impersonation, a hoary showbiz tradition that had come to seem unhip.

- The New Yorker

But later the impressions got "better."

In the nineteen-eighties, the impressions grew more precise: there was an avalanche of Reagans, and then there was Dana Carvey, who found a quirky nerd lurking within the seemingly unquirky first President Bush.

Like I said: '80s worst time for comedy.

Hug Orgy

There there, next year you'll get the Exxon sign

Those of you who know me know I can appear cold, aloof and distant. I am more likely to shake hands than give hugs-and more likely to fist bump than either. But I've run into a lovely collective of artists who hug each other all the time and now that I'm back to giving hugs, I was wondering if there were hug orgies--orgies with hugs instead of sex so one can hug friends, family and lovers.

I looked online--these events exist!

Chocolate News Premieres Tomorrow Night

I am at work and can't watch this video.

You tell me: is this worth the effort of TiVoing?

Vote in the comments!

Street Numbers As Ages

The street numbers of Manhattan seem to correspond to human development.

Lower Manhattan is like youth; full of infantile shit-eaters who can't draw or sing living off their parent's money.

Midtown Manhattan is like a financially stable middle-aged man going through a mid-life crisis and trying hard to be hip with the kids, but looking as uncool as ever. The MTV building is that man's pony tail, the Virgin Megastore the Corvette convertible with which he overcompensates.

Upper Manhattan=death.

Change You Can Believe In

Better than Bamma!

Great New Yorker Story

Andy Borowitz has an amazing piece on his request for a bailout in Shouts and Murmurs:

Why am I too big to fail? It’s important to grasp the critical role that I play in a wide-ranging but fragile web of economic relationships. If I go belly-up, I will no longer be able to tip my doorman when he gets me a taxi. This is not a hypothetical situation. I have studiously avoided tipping him for a solid month now. Consequently, he no longer has cash to spend at the liquor store after work, and the liquor-store owner no longer has money to spend on Internet porn. Given that Internet porn is the only fundamentally sound engine of the American economy, we’re playing with fire here. If that stalwart industry is allowed to fail, Asian porn companies will rush to fill the void, offering porn that is both cheaper to produce and way hotter than ours.