JWhiting.com

So last night, I called my buddy, to see if he wanted to head over to to check out some comedy, but he was planning on a long night of fantasizing about and couldn’t make it.

So I decide to head over to the club on my own and when I got there, was standing at the door and after reminding me that I’m not on ’til next week, tapped his heels together and disappeared to prepare the room.

Things were starting off late, which was fine with me, ’cause that meant I got to catch up with my buddy who just got back from Mexico. She gave me some strange Mexican candy.

was hosting and he brought up a two new guys that I hadn’t seen before. They both seemed like good new additions to the scene.

Then, came in and that was nice. She looked great.
Everything from there proceeded pretty much as normal, until , a “new” musical duo burst onto the scene! They are definitely *not gay* alright?! Good stuff.

I got the chance to see and then sat down and told me a crazy story about Lenny Bruce (who, inexplicably, hasn’t added himself to MySpace yet). I also gave $20 to give to his brother, who did the mascot banner for my site, jwhiting.com.

Thanks all. Fun night!

A cognitive neurophysiologist named Julia Simner has identified at least 10 people who involuntarily taste words when they hear them. (Hey comics, this gives a whole new definition to delivering a shitty set, huh?) Ha. Link here (subscription required).

Boing Boing recently brought my attention to this hilarious photo set on Flickr that’s all about quotation mark abuse.

I especially like this particular photo from Flickr’s “srhbth” who captions his photo thusly:

I hope there’s not a “Fire” because then we might have to use this “Fire extinguisher” to put it out.

I discovered Tenacious D’s Fuck Her Gently with my buddies back in the early 00’s and clambered eagerly aboard the Jack Black train of intensity. I’m still kicking myself for not roadtripping it down to Burlington to see them live when they played live at Higher Ground.

The D’s first movie, several years in the works, is coming out on Friday and I can’t think of a modern band that embodies satire more than these guys. I especially love how they take the piss out of the whole devil & rock ‘n roll connection.

The D recently sat down for an interview with the Onion’s A.V. club who asked them, among other things, “Do you think Satan is a necessary component of rock ‘n’ roll?”

Jack Black responds:

No. There are some great bands that never incorporated Satan. But it’s a bygone era where Satan really participated. And there was a while there where you knew that you were a big band if there was a priest out front telling you not to go in. That is the measure of success.

Common priests. Where’s all the love/hate these days?

Wish I remember where I’d read this before, but trust John Amato over at the excellent Crooks and Liars to pick up the ball.

Variety reports that:

Joel Surnow, co-creator of “24,” is shooting two half-hour pilots [that] he described as ” ‘The Daily Show’ for conservatives”…

Oh man, can’t wait. Nothing screams hilarity like right-wing comics and shows that promote torture. (At least Dennis Miller should be available. Since his CNBC show has been cancelled, there doesn’t seem to be much going on in his life…)

Today’s featured article at Wikipeeds is a minute dissection of Stephen Colbert’s talk at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner back in April.

Colbert is, of course, one of the English world’s greatest living satirists, consistently speaking “truthiness” to power. His talk at the Correspondents’ Dinner was hilarious, historical satire.

Initially, major news organizations failed to do any reporting on the event while the talk blew up huge online, causing a virtual YouTube meltdown and leaving news organisations scrambling to explain why they had suddenly gone silent. (A popular excuse seemed to be that the talk “just wasn’t funny” — a strange barometer for newsworthiness, but there you go.)

As the Widipedia article says, Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik thought that Colbert’s critics missed the point:

Colbert wasn’t playing to the room, I suspect, but to the wide audience of people who would later watch on the Internet. If anything, he was playing against the room.

Keep on keepin’ on S.C. You’re #1 in my books.

I stumbled across a September article in the Toledo Blade about Republican dirtbag Tom Noe getting sent to jail. I like stories where people who mess with democracy get slapped down by the law.

What struck me most about the article, however, were the Crayon-ific stylings of Toledo Blade courtroom sketch artist, Wes Booher.

I’ll give you a moment to soak in all the gritty legal realism.

(It looks like on this particular day in court, a red-eyed woman’s head emerged from a computer monitor while Judge George Burns looked on stoically… Great work Wes!)

Ever watch Geoge Stroumboulopoulus’ show The Hour? Me neither. But then me and the Jeanster stumbled across it on Wednesday night and were very impressed. George is doing a great job of distilling the news while keeping it real doing the modern equivalent of “keeping it real”.

The Hour’s Wednesday night guest was Catherine O’Hara and she gave the most genuine interview I’ve seen in a long time. Honest, insightful, excellent. She’s a great actor and seems like an equally great person.

At the top of Hour interviews, they do a little video homage. I had forgotten everything O’Hara had done, from her SCTV days to working with Martin Scorsese, being in Beetlejuice and rocking it as the mom in Home Alone.

The interview is up on The Hour’s site here.

Dudes. My comedy writing buddy and all-round swell American import DeAnne Smith is featured in the Montreal Mirror this week.

DeAnn’s one of those people that make the local scene “good and nice” instead of “lame and sucks”. Good job Deaner.

You can check DeAnne out on myspace here.

Exerpt from the interview. DeAnne talking about why she does comedy:

It’s really about communication, but on a deeper level, and I know this sounds hokey, but it’s true, it’s really beautiful to be in a room full of strangers and then make them laugh. Out of nowhere you all have this common experience—and it’s a good one.

Last night I debuted the first of what I hope will evolve into a series of funny lectures about the future.

Broadly called “Future Tense”, the premise is that I’m a normal dude who has traveled to the not-too-distant future and back. Now I show up at comedy clubs to tell everyone about the strange things they will encounter 10-20 years in the future.

I’m pretty jazzed about the idea. Think it has a great potential for hilarious satire.

In this segment of “Future Tense” I talk about how in the future a group of tree planters stumble into a Sasquatch and the profound impact that has on the entire human race. Humanity’s capacity to love is only matched by our capacity to hate. In this age of political correctness, all the nations and religions of the world will never be able to come together until we can find a common enemy to hate the shit out of.

Click on this link to download an mp3 recording of the first performance of The Sasquatch Solution. (Host, Dave Ackerflug mistakenly calls it The Sasquatch Adventure.)

(UPDATE: The audio is broken and I don’t know why…)

Like Christophe said last night, you need to use the open mic nights to work out your comedy, not just to flex in front of the mirror. I’d never done any of this material before, so I was happy that people laughed during the test run.

Now that the inagural set is done, I’m going to work on the dynamism of the whole thing. Get much higher energy with it. Have a stronger comic point of view, etc. Looking forward to fine tuning it. Thanks to Jeanne who found the perfect music for the series.

I would love to hear your feedback.

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Ever wonder what exactly being a hack comedian means? Wonder no longer my friends, because Steven Rosenthal’s great The Hack FAQ is a mere click away. Filled with wonderful nuggets like:

When comics deny their homophobia or racism before a joke, you can be sure that they are trying to soften the blow of one of the most homophobic or racist jokes you’ll ever hear. “I have a lot of gay friends…” is usually followed with something extreme not unlike “But fags suck don’t they? And they should all be put to death!”

[UPDATE: For some reason (I think because it has ‘hack’ in the title) this post generates the most auto-spam comments on the site, so I’m going to disable commenting on this post. I don’t imagine this will affect (effect?) anyone too adversely…]

I grew up on a long country road where the homes were spaced too far apart to attract a cable TV line. Those were the days before the $5000 NASA-style shed-sized satellite dishes. Long, long before the pizza-sized DirectTV jobbies. So my family had to resort to a huge antenna that towered over our house. You could rotate it back and forth with a controller that was installed in the master bedroom. For all that, we could pull down three channels: CBC, CJOH and if the weather was good, WWNY, a CBS affiliate broadcasting out of Watertown, New York. One of those three stations used to re-run some pretty great old comedies including “The Honeymooners” and “The Andy Griffith Show”. I’m glad I got to watch Don Knotts‘ Barney Fife. Hats off to Mr. Furley. He died on Friday. Don Knotts dead at 81

My buddy Dan recently moved to NYC to start writing for The Onion full-time. Before that he was a long-time Onion headline writer, working out of Montreal. You know how that gig works? You send in like 30 headlines per week and then the main Onion staff writers sit around in a big pow-wow and vote on the headlines they want to work on. If they want your headline, you get $20 for it. They used to call Dan “The Machine” ’cause he’d crank out shitloads of good copy every week.
Anyhow, in classic Onion style, Dan is posing this week as a random dude, in this case, Aaron Henschler: Voices In Man’s Head Make Great Point About Time Management

Dudes. This is equal parts hilarious and heart-breaking. Everything satire should be right? This is what’s known as reality satire, check it out…

If You’re Nervous and Hungover, Do Not Go on Live TV

Great comics, like great musicians, were raised on the audio knee of the masters who came before them. Invariably when you hear a great modern comic talking about his/her childhood, they’ll mention the albums they listened to as kids. It was as true for Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks as it is for guys like Stephen Colbert.
It goes without saying that a good way to get into the head of your favourite comic, is to hunt down the movies, albums and books that they list as influential. If you haven’t already, check out Colbert’s great interview that was up on The Onion last week.

People love the president because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?