Happy birthday, Martin Short.

Martin Short, probably my all-time favorite improvisational comedian, is 60 years old today. Which is all the excuse I need to stream this tune...

“A Big Black Lady Stops the Show” is from Short’s 2006 Broadway show, “Fame Becomes Me.” (The big black lady is Capathia Jenkins.)

Click here to listen.

Scandalous!

We’re in the midst of filming the second episode of “Treme” written by me. I titled it “Smoke My Peace Pipe.” (The old heads know why.)

Coolest part about being on set for this one? Chatting with Tim Reid, whom we cast in a guest role as a tribute to “Frank’s Place,” a great show about New Orleans.

Being a comedy nerd, I asked Mr. Reid about his early years in standup comedy... that is, his partnership with Tom Dreesen in a pioneering black-and-white comedy act. (They wrote a very entertaining book in 2008 – “Tim and Tom” – about those days.)

If I’d known about the YouTube video below, I would’ve asked Tim Reid about this. Reid’s big break in Hollywood came as a sketch player on “The Richard Pryor Show.”

Check out this uncensored clip from the final episode of “The Richard Pryor Show.” It is scan-do-lous! You’ll recognize not only a young Tim Reid... but Marsha Warfield and Paul “Miss Thing” Mooney. (“Spoon on the end” is John Witherspoon.)


To see the next clip in the sequence, where Richard flames Robin Williams and Sandra Bernhard, click here.

Not saying I miss ‘MADtv’...

... but this is cute.

Random hipness

Random blackness

My Tiger Woods joke

Q: What’s the most annoying thing about having sex with Tiger Woods?

A: The guy who keeps yelling “GET IN THE HOLE!!”

New jokes from Lisa Lampanelli

I am on record as being a fan of that filthy comic Lisa Lampanelli. But her appearance on “The Tonight Show” last night was pretty painful.

Lampanelli didn’t do her standup act. She was there to plug her new book... and to riff repeatedly on her fiancé’s “huge testicles.”

Conan O’Brien seemed uncomfortable, the audience was sometimes silent, and Johnny Carson probably spun in his grave. Wanna see for yourself? Follow this link to Hulu. I got the clip all cued up.

Lampanelli will be on Jimmy Kimmel’s show tomorrow... and will probably be funnier (though she’s at her best totally uncensored).

I didn’t catch Lisa Lampanelli’s HBO special in January. But the audio version of “Long Live the Queen” is available in MP3 form.

It is not a comedy masterpiece, that’s for sure. But I feel compelled to share with you her brief excursion into political humor. Click here to hear Ms. Lampanelli crack on President Obama and Sarah Palin. (Warning: The language gets rough.)

Playlist: UBM’s Latino Laffeteria

As Hispanic Heritage Month continues, let us enjoy a joke or two from some of America’s top Latino comedians. Click the track titles below to stream the funny on my Vox blog.

1. “Kids and Sports” – Willie Barcena

2. “He Doesn’t Speak Spanish” – Al Madrigal

3. “Mentos & Mexicans” – Pablo Francisco

4. “Latino Television” – Gabriel Iglesias

Another black Brit chick...

... has crossed my radar. She’s a standup comic, born in England to Nigerian parents. Her name is Gina Yashere.

Now living in Los Angeles, Gina got a big career boost last Thursday night when she performed on “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.”

Her London accent doesn’t really move me – too much bass in it. But Gina Yashere has some decent jokes. I’m gonna keep an eye out for more.

See what you think of her:

Casey Wilson goes bye-bye

Comedy blogger Sean McCarthy broke the news yesterday that “Saturday Night Live” has fired Casey Wilson and Michaela Watkins.

I always liked Casey Wilson. (Although I see on the internets that many people do not.)

Reminds me to post this “Funny or Die” video that Casey made a few months ago. Sad to watch now. Oh well...

The first Obama joke

Couple of weeks ago I was on the East Coast, and my rental car happened to be satellite radio equipped. Satellite radio is cool.

I found a political talk channel called POTUS. Dug it.

On POTUS I heard a mildly amusing interview with a comedian I’d never heard of – W. Kamau Bell. I decided to find out more about the cat.

Do you know what Kamau Bell’s claim to fame is? Kamau Bell is credited with telling the first Barack Obama joke on Comedy Central, the cable channel. He did it way back in 2005.

Given that the premise of his joke was that Obama could never get elected, perhaps Mr. Bell should not keep bragging about this.

And given that he led up to the Obama material with some ugly nasty personal putdowns of Condoleezza Rice, dude has nothing at all to be proud of, in my opinion.

Judge for yourself:

Jokes.com
W. Kamau Bell - Obama
comedians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

New jokes from Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford

Lick your lips, bitches. I’m pouring a tall cool glass of the laffy-laffy juice.

Patton Oswalt, one of the best standup comics currently working, has a new CD coming out next week. It’s called “My Weakness Is Strong,” and it’s already downloadable from iTunes.

Oswalt will be on the Letterman show tomorrow night plugging it.

Click here to hear “Obama... and Time Travel... and Coolness... and the Last Racist.”

Maria Bamford is too weird to ever become hugely popular. But I like her style. It’s so rare to find a comedian with a truly original voice.

Bamford’s latest comedy album is called “Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome.” It came out in April.

Click here for 8 minutes of randomness titled “I Miss Working in an Office.”

George Lopez has problems.

I noticed an upsurge in traffic on this blog last night... quite odd for a Saturday. So I checked my Sitemeter.

Turns out a lot of folks were googling “George Lopez” and “Erik Estrada” and “feud”... which led them to this post from 2007. (I didn’t even mention Estrada; commenter dez did.)

This alerted me to the fact that Lopez had a new comedy special on HBO last night – “Tall, Dark & Chicano.” So I decided to watch the West Coast feed.

I’m on record with my opinion that Lopez’s 2004 Showtime special, “Why You Crying?,” was a great one. But he hasn’t been hittin’ since then, for me.

Last night, he did about 80 minutes. I laughed probably eight times. (And never at one of his many fart jokes.) Not an All-Star-caliber performance.

Deeper still, George Lopez seems to be revealing more and more of his fucked-up emotional state onstage. The man is filled with contempt. Just seething with it.

I know all comedy is hostile. But the art of standup is in disguising the hostility... or at least turning it in surprising directions.

Before I get to that, let me share with you some of Lopez’s best jokes from last night.

“Sarah Palin is Latina. Pay-leen. She has an infant and a grandkid the same age. Latina!”

“Tasers don’t work on us. When you grow up poor, you get shocked by shit every single day. Toasters, lamps...”

“We didn’t have a ‘baby-proof’ house. Sometimes a 2-year-old with a hammer woke your ass up from a nap!”

And he cracked on Lou Dobbs pretty good. Dobbs hates illegal immigration... and he’s married to a Latina. Lopez said: “Just ’cause you can’t control yours, don’t throw us all out!”

Okay now... to the straight-up hostility. His relentless mockery of white people is tiresome and unfunny. (Come on, George. At least give white folks credit for inventing transplant surgery, you kidneyless bastard.)

Lopez also started and ended this live concert – in front of 14,000 fans in San Antonio – by bragging, “I sold this motherfucker out! In a down economy!”

People cheered, but I wouldn’t have. That was George Lopez expressing contempt for his audience. Dude, these people paid money to see you. Don’t congratulate yourself; thank them... and then work to please.

Anyway, at the end of the concert, he took another swipe at Erik Estrada:

“Even novelas don’t want you... and they’ll hire anybody.”

Why is Lopez mad at Erik Estrada? Because when he was 17 years old and Estrada was a star on “CHiPs,” Estrada wouldn’t shake his hand.

Thirty years later, Lopez is rich, Erik Estrada is broke, and George is still holding a grudge!

That’s. Fucked. Up.

UPDATE (08/09/09): Holy shit. It’s 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time, and it’s happening again. Google is pointing people here 50 at a time. They’re all searching George Lopez + Erik Estrada.

Must’ve just been shown on HBO again.

Que Sarah, Sarah

So. Sarah Palin is no longer the governor of Alaska. But you know we haven’t heard the last from her... or from those YouTube funsters who like to mock her.

Playlist: White comedians on race

You want “post-racial”? Not today.

1. “Cracka Ass” – Bill Burr

2. “Michael Vick” – Nick Di Paolo

3. “I Enjoy Being White” – Louis C.K.

4. “ ‘Blank’ Americans” – Ralphie May

An evening of ‘conservative comedy’

So last night I motored down to the Laugh Factory on Sunset, lured by a “conservative” standup comedy show. I wanted to see how much that would suck.

I expected a fair degree of suckitude because the organizer was Evan Sayet, a hack comic who relentlessly promotes himself on right- wing talk radio. (I blogged about him last year.)

Sayet’s Hollywood résumé includes writing for Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” and “The Arsenio Hall Show.” But I hadn’t heard a good joke out of him yet.

I was curious to see what other conservative comics would be performing.

Well, guess what? There were some decent comics. And in the midst of all the partisan knife-throwing, there were some decent punch lines.

Not from Evan Sayet, however. Dude cracked two “teleprompter” jokes within his first two minutes onstage. Seriously... is that the best shot they can take at Barack Obama? That he knows how to read a speech?

“He’s not a bright man,” Sayet said of President Obama. “He was asked about Hamas. He said it goes good with pita bread. Not a bright man, that’s all I’m saying.”

Okay... first thing: After “Bruno,” Sacha Baron Cohen owns the Hamas-hummus pun. Second: A good joke has to be grounded in some kind of reality. You cannot goof on Obama’s intellect. It makes no sense.

There was a lot of Obama-bashing last night, naturally. A woman in the corner was selling “Obaaaama” bumper stickers, with a drawing of a sheep alongside the Obama “O” logo.

Steven Crowder, a Dane Cook wannabe, mocked the fact that Obama was named one of People magazine’s sexiest men. “We’re not talking about Hugh Jackman here,” Crowder said. “He looks like a photo negative of Alfred E. Neuman.”

The audience – about 100 people, including many white-haired white folks – dug it.

My note-taking wasn’t pristine, so I forget who delivered this pip: “This country is going down faster than Barney Frank at a West Hollywood bathhouse.”

The “edgiest” comedian was Bo “Bald Eagle” Clark... whom even Evan Sayet described as a “redneck.”

Clark wore a camouflage vest with an American flag patch. He was the only comic who cursed. And his recurring punch line was “Nuke ’em.” As in North Korea: “Nuke ’em. South Korea is enough Koreans.” (I laughed.)

Clark was so over-the-top with his references to “camel jockeys” and “diaper-heads,” I half suspect his whole act is a mockery of rednecks.

The most surprising performer was Al Sonja Schmidt, a black woman who has written for such shows as “In Living Color” and “The Parent ’Hood.” Her standup act is based upon her being “ostracized” by friends and family since she became a Republican.

I say Ms. Schmidt has a future in bashing Barack Obama for white audiences. Here’s one of her Obama jokes: “Hollywood gave us the Marx Brothers, and this year they gave us a Marxist brother.”

Here’s a brief video clip of Al Sonja Schmidt:

Schwarzenegger droppin’ F-bombs

I think everyone would agree that it’s mildly amusing to hear famous people cuss. Especially when such a person is now governor of a state... and has a funny foreign accent.

Twenty-one years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was roasted by the Friars Club of Beverly Hills. Excerpts of that roast – featuring George Carlin, Red Buttons and others – were recently put on sale as a CD and a digital album.

Click here to hear a 3-minute track called “Arnold Schwarzenegger Roasts the Roasters.” After being introduced by Milton Berle, Arnold proceeds to drop five F-bombs.

He also tells a dirty joke in German. (Perhaps Michael Fisher could give us the gist of it.)

Why YouTube is better than television

Reason #28: Comedian Robert Hines.

Remember when Tracey Ullman was funny?

Like, 20 frickin’ years ago? Man, I used to think she was brilliant.

Well... the season premiere of Ms. Ullman’s Showtime show, “State of the Union,” is up on YouTube. It’s embedded below.

Weak satire. Real weak. And her blackface character, Chanel Monticello (at 6:39), would not’ve cut the mustard on MADtv.

There is one funny sketch, though, at 20:24. I can’t explain it without ruining it.

‘This Week in Blackness’

Ladies and gentlemen, Elon James White: