The Boston Comedy Q&A: Betsy Salkind

Betsy Salkind at M.I.T. Oct 22

Betsy Salkind came to Boston to get a masters in management from M.I.T. She left having discovered she was an extraordinarily talented comedian and didn’t want to be a bank examiner. She wrote one-person shows, performed improv with The Guilty Children, did stand-up – everything you could do to be funny.

When she left, she was no less diverse, writing for the sitcom Roseanne, acting, and creating her own versatile style of stand-up that spans the spectrum from politics to an impression of a squirrel eating a cracker.

She’s added activist to her resume, speaking out on behalf of child abuse survivors (Sacramento’s SB 33 bill) and against adult ads on Craigslist. For that last one, she led a protest outside of Craigslist’s San Francisco headquarters as Craig NewPimp. Oh, and let’s not forget author of Sunday School Bible Classics (see the video below). And ventriloquist dummy for puppetmaster Dot Jones (currently the new football coach on Glee)... you could almost do this all day.

She has been limited for a while by a hypothyroid condition cause by auto-immune problems (even that hasn’t escaped her wit – see the Betsy’s Unlicensed Medical Practice link on her site), but she’ll be back at M.I.T. on October 22 for a show at her alma mater.

I spoke with her by phone in late September.

Does the condition affect how you’re able to tour?

You know, I can still get it together for a show. It’ll be interesting now, because I’m traveling a lot of September and October. Which is new. Because for years I really tried to minimize how much I traveled because it just sucked the life out of me. So it’ll be interesting to see how it goes now that I’m feeling better.



It’s also allowed you to practice medicine on your Web site.

Oh, you’ve seen that? Unlicensed Medical Practice? I’m constantly continuing it.

Taking questions from fans and things?

I probably should.

And just give completely wrong advice.

Yeah. Well, yeah. I always say, I’m not a doctor, but…

We spoke about this for the Globe in 2005. You do have that sort of mix, you can do political humor, you can do silly jokes, you can do physical humor. And they’re not necessarily talents that many people can do, or that normally fit together well in one person.

That’s true. I don’t feel anyone would steal my whole act, for sure. That would never happen. And when I record stuff for TV, they’ll always chop it up and will take like one… they’ll always leave out one of those elements. Which is always kind of upsetting for me. But you’re right, it is kind of a weird combo.

You’re someone who, you couldn’t get an idea of who you are in that five-minute late night TV set. Is that problematic for you?

If I did a few more late night five minute spots, then yeah. I did tape a new special that’s currently being edited. I taped a half-hour but they’re only going to use 15, with three other comics.

You would b a particularly bad fit for one of those package tours.

I don’t know. I don’t think that’s true. There are other comics, Julie Goldman, for example, where we sort of share a world view but couldn’t have more different stage personas and ways of dealing with the material. And it just works great together. And I have that experience a lot. Because my style is so different from everyone else that it just kind of works as a contrast, I think.

There is someone here doing a showcase for female comics because he feels they still don’t get the same sorts of opportunities. It’s a standard sort of question, but where do you think that stands, as far as women in comedy?

I think it’s like women in Congress and women on the Supreme Court. Although I think it might be worse than women on the Supreme Court, because that’s up to a third now, I think. I think it’s pretty clear from what’s on television. There’s a lot of really funny women out working in the clubs now that no one’s ever heard of. So there are certainly talented women comics out there.

The other night I did this show, and I hadn’t seen at least half of the comics on it. And there’s always some gem I didn’t know about. So yeah. [puts on a mocking indignant tone] It’s a man’s world. There’s still that idea that if you have more than one woman, somehow it’s ladies’ night.

What I like about shows that have many women on them is, [people] get over the fact that it’s a woman comic, and they see that every woman is different, and they kind of get over the gender stuff right away and just listen to the material and enjoy that. But you still see in the clubs, they don’t call it “men’s night,” but it’s all men, or maybe there’ll be one woman. And if there’s more than one woman, it’s “ladies’ night.”



Do you have any clubs or a sort of circuit that you frequent?

I don’t. Because I’ve been really focused on writing this year. I wanted to finish some projects – I’ve been writing this play – I kind of stopped pursuing the work and just kind of took every gig that came my way. Which turned out to be pretty good. I’m still working regularly. I’ll work anywhere. The M.I.T. gig will be weird because it’s actually in a lecture hall. A huge lecture hall. I think there’s over 300 seats in it.

Many years ago, my very first one-woman show was done in a lecture hall at M.I.T. It was called “Master of Science,” and it was just about all the ways that science is really fucked up. My opening act was an actual rocket scientist. Ed Crawley.

Did he do comedy?

Well, the gig that we arranged was that he would start doing one of his rocket science lectures and then I would come in and kind of interrupt and say, “What the fuck? I have this room,” and then argue about whose room it was.

Will he be making his return?

No, but I may have a special guest comedian.

That begs the obvious next question, which you probably can’t answer.

Yes. One of my favorite comics from when I lived there.

How much time do you spend on political causes like SB 33 and the CraigsList adult listings?

From 2003-2006 I lived about 90 minutes from Sacramento, so during that time I did comedy at night and spent my days organizing and lobbying the CA legislature. The Craigslist thing was just a few days this summer, but I can always find time to squeeze in whatever I want to get involved in. And I love creating comedy about political stuff. I do a lot of fundraisers and benefits so sometimes the work is all the same. One of my comedy influences was Dick Gregory, whose book Nigger was really important to me. It was about his transformation from comedian to civil rights activist and so it always felt perfectly right for me to be both a comic and activist.

Salkind as Craig NewPimp (in the tie)

Could you see yourself going into politics as a profession?

Only as an advocate. If I ever tried to run for office there'd be a lot of video of jokes I'm sure some people would find offensive and inappropriate (which might be good for my comedy career. Hmm.) I would like to be a children's civil rights organizer.



Do you find people don't realize how close to the real story your Sunday School Bible Classics are?

The ones who realize it the most are the seminary students and ministers/rabbis. The ones who heard the stories as children at church or temple or religious school find some parts surprising and might think I made them up. The ones who had no religious education at all (I've only encountered two so far) find the stories just plain horrifying and not at all funny. I guess the rest of us were so indoctrinated, that although most of us thought something was a little off about the stories, we accept them as part of the culture and now enjoy the new perspective on them.

I once debated a (religious) biblical scholar on a radio show who is not used to being confronted with some of the more obscure stories ("Jephthah's daughter," which is kind of like Abraham and Isaac, except God doesn't intervene and he actually kills his daughter; and "The Priest and the Concubine," which starts with a gang-rape and ends with genocide). His only argument was "you have to look at those stories in a larger context." I'm still trying to figure out what context is large enough to justify those things.

What else do you have in store for them?

I wrote and illustrated eight stories. Only two have been published. Three more have been adapted to video. The whole collection is being prepared for epublishing (for the iPad - which is color and hi- res). I was hoping it would be ready for the holiday season, but I don't know the epub date. The original book, however, makes a perfect
Xmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa gift. It's available on Amazon and on my site, and if you order through my site you can have it signed to whoever you like.

I'm also working on a new book which I'm very excited about, and my play Discontinuation Syndrome is in development. The play is a comedy about depression in which Depression (a character) and Eli Lilly (the maker of Prozac) battle for custody of a depressed woman in the court of Judge Mental.



Have you watched your old comedy partner Dot Jones on Glee? What do you think of the character?

I do watch Glee and am so excited for Dot. The character is a lot like her: strong, athletic, scary when she wants to be, but really a big softie with a huge heart. Doing Dot Jones & Peanut with her is among the most fun I've ever had on stage. I just found a tape of a show we did in 1997 with Deb Doetzer (also a Bostonian) that includes a spoof of Mamet called "GlenGary GlenScrabble." The video quality is terrible, but it's hilarious and I plan to post it online.

Cheers to re-open October 15

Cheers re-opens Oct. 15

According to Angie Frissore over at the Examiner, The Comedy Club at Cheers will re-open October 15 with headliner Joe Yannety. Juston McKinney will play October 16. The club, located in Faneuil Hall, went dark this spring for a summer season that is traditionally slow for the comedy club scene.

Steve Sweeney will headline October 22, after which the club will host events for the Boston Comedy Festival, including a show celebrating local veteran Bob Seibel's 30 years in comedy on November 7, and one-nighters with Kelly MacFarland and Joe Wong.

Jim McCue, who runs the Comedy Club at Cheers, is also the co-founder and current head of the Boston Comedy Festival.

Greg Giraldo Interview: New York, 1994

Greg Giraldo 1965-2010

Greg Giraldo wasn't technically a Boston comedian. He came up through the New York scene, where he was a staple for most of his career. But he was smart and sometimes rough, and he studied at Harvard Law, and we tend to accept or even claim comedians like that as our own.

When Giraldo died last week of an accidental overdose, I wrote about him for TVSquad.com. I spoke to a Boston comedian named Jessie Baade for that piece who had known Giraldo briefly while they were both comedians starting out in New York. She had an interview with him she intended to be part of a documentary on comedy in New York that never got made. It shows a young Giraldo being charming and not taking anything seriously, which is a fitting tribute to the man's approach to his comedy.

The interview is below, with introduction from Miss Robles.

From Jessie Robles (aka Jessie Baade): Greg let me interview him when I told him him I was working on a project about comics while we were hanging out at Chuckles in Mineola, Long Island NY around late 1994. It never got finished because his was the only thing that didn't turn out to be in the dark. Jim Gaffigan is there off camera which is why Giraldo kept making cracks about him. He did not, in actuality, think Gaffigan was a hack.

Myq Kaplan back in Boston with Last Comic Standing tour

Myq Kaplan at the Wilbur tonight with LCS

When Myq Kaplan was the first comic called out in the Last Comic Standing finale in August, there was an immediate reaction around Boston and wherever the Boston comedy community reaches. People Twittered and posted on Facebook, saying that Myq deserved to win. Some (and I may have been among them) even decided there was no need to watch the rest of the show.

Kaplan is thankful for that, but he’s still happy to be touring with the top five contestants, which includes eventual winner Felipe Esparza, Roy Wood Jr., Tommy Johnagin, and Mike Destefano. The tour stops at the Wilbur tonight.

If you can’t get out to see Kaplan in person tonight, take a look at this animation of his savior as octopus bit. It won’t completely make up for not seeing Kaplan, but it will help you imagine a slightly more angular and evil looking Myq. Then take a look at a few thoughts from Myq on LCS.



What were your thoughts when they called you first in the finale?

Well, since there were two people whose name start with "Mike" as long as they weren't spelling out the announcements, my very first thought when I heard the first name was "I'm glad there are two Mikes."

When I heard my last name, I was initially disappointed, but also relieved that it was over. I mean, of course I would have loved to win, but given that only one person can, I'm in good company with every comedian that didn't win. I'm just thrilled that I made it as far as I did.

There was a pretty strong reaction from Boston fans that you were robbed. Have you had that discussion a lot with friends from the Boston comedy community? Or from comedian friends in general, for that matter?

A lot of people have told me that they were surprised I didn't win, which is very nice. My friends have obviously been very supportive, though most of my comedian friends know that comedy is subjective, contests can be arbitrary, and a public vote doesn't make everyone happy (that last part is not just specific to comedy). Some fans have written to me to tell me they're positive the thing was rigged, and I really appreciate the sentiment.

It's nice to know that my comedy made so many people feel as though I was objectively the best, to the point where they disregard the fact that there is no objective reality to it. Everyone in the top 5 is great, and we all have our die-hard fans who tell us we are the best, I'm sure. Which is part of what's cool about comedy. So, to everyone who thought I "should" have won, thank you very much.

Did you see a lot of familiar faces on Lowell and Worcester?

Several comedian friends came out to each of those shows. Boston comics Josh Gondelman, Jono Zalay, Peter Gross, and Sean Wilkinson were in Worcester, and Tom Morello drove me to the show in Lowell after I spent the day in Boston, having breakfast with Renata Tutko and watching Tony V in "The Town." (To name some of the other familiar faces I saw along the way.)

Has the show or the tour opened anything up for you in terms of career opportunities since last we spoke?

I forget what we last talked about, so the answer is maybe. The show has been great because it let millions of people watch me do comedy every week, so now I have a larger base of people who know who I am, some of whom care. And that's what it's about for me now, reaching the people who do, can, and will care. As far as any more career specifics, we'll see. Thanks for interviewing me.

Improv Asylum video parodies The Town

A week after it's debut, The Town was still one of the biggest movies in the country this weekend. Add to that the local setting, and it was only a matter of time before the video parodies started rolling out. Improv Asylum is one of the first out of the gate with The College Town. The stakes have never been higher for beer pong.

The BC Q&A: Maria Ciampa on comedy and yoga

Maria Ciampa hosts Comedyoga
Saturday at South Boston Yoga

Stand-up comedy and yoga may not seem like terribly complimentary concepts. One requires a bit of chaos, the other a peaceful center. But that’s not the way Maria Ciampa sees it. Ciampa is a stand-up and improv comedian and also a yoga instructor. Tomorrow night at 7PM at South Boston Yoga, she hosts her second Comedyoga event.

The idea was to bring two of Ciampa’s favorite communities together, to find a few people that make her laugh, and see if they would make some of her other friends laugh, too. Saturday’s event includes Ken Reid, Jess Sutich, and Josh Gondelman.

According to Ciampa, the show could become a staple – the folks behind the yoga studio have been supportive, and Ciampa would like to do more. I spoke with her by phone Thursday.

Why comedy in a yoga studio?

I guess it’s three things, when I decided to do a comedy show at a yoga studio. First, I noticed at a lot of comedy clubs, at a lot of comedy shows, that it’s dark, it’s late, there’s a lot of alcohol, and I never actually needed all those things to laugh. So I thought, why not bring it to a lighter atmosphere.

Secondly, as much time as I’m at comedy clubs, I’m also at yoga studios. And they tend to be, although they’re light and happy and alcohol free, they kind of almost feel obsessed with being healthy. Like, “Ooh, we’re enlightened!” This kind of condescending feel to it. And I thought, you know what, some yoga studios, not all of them, but some yoga people and yoga studios could use a little more levity. Maybe not take themselves too serious, maybe just laugh a little now and then.

And I just love both these things, and so my third thing with it is to combine them both and do the experiment and see if it works.

So you’re trying to get the comedy people on the wagon and maybe the yoga people off the wagon?

Yeah, kind of. I don’t know, I think there’s a happy medium. And I see extremes in both realms, and I think I’m always trying to find that happy medium. I figured why not actually do it in practice.

What was the audience like at the first one? You did one a few months ago?

It was in June and we had a pretty full audience. It’s a big yoga studio, but for the amount of chairs and mats that we set up, it was very full. It was a mix. I was really happy with the mix between people that go to that yoga studio regularly for classes and people that I see out at a lot of my comedy shows. So it was really cool to see these two communities that I love come together.

Was there any natural crossover? Had you convinced any of your comedy friends to do yoga or your yoga friends to come out to see comedy?

Actually there has been that, which has been really cool. And it’s weird because you think it would be harder to get the comedians who are out drinking at all hours of the night to come do yoga. But it wasn’t. Definitely a few of my comedy friends – Al David came to
Some yoga classes with me. I feel like a few other people did. I don’t know, there’s so,e sort of interconnection between the two for a lot of people right now. And I think in the cmedy community, and I’m starting to feel in the yoga community, too. There are two other comedians in the yoga community that I know of.

But it was easy to get people to come out. The yoga people are kind of like, “Yay! Comedy! I’ll come to your show!” That happened right away.

Does doing yoga help you with your comedy?

Oh my gosh, 100 percent. When you are doing yoga, a series of poses on a mat, you need to work on your ability to physically and mentally hold center amid the conflict going on. Conflict in terms of "this is a hard pose," "I hate this teacher," "this is hurting my joints, what can I do to make it more comfortable?" "I just want to be somewhere else," "oh my god look at my stomach, I'm a fatty," and the like.

When you are doing comedy, onstage in front of people, you need to exercise that ability to hold center amid all the inevitable conflict. Here, the conflict might be internal, as in "should I tell this joke to this audience?", "oh god I'm nervous, I should have worn different shoes," or, "oh shit, I'm more drunk than I realized!", or external, like a crowd that's not paying attention, a heckler, a crowd that is paying attention but quiet for some awful reason.

So both require you come from a strong center. And yoga helps me develop that on my own, then I can try to bring it to the stage. I'm still working on it, (as I suspect I forever will be) and there are days where I feel stronger than others, both in yoga and onstage.

So as you’re twisting yourself into a pretzel you’re thinking, “Hey, what if I call my husband a little gay?”

Exactly. My best ideas… It’s weird because they are two very different ways of being, but I think they compliment each other very well.

Is there gong to be any actual yoga performed at the show?

I get that question a lot. No. It’s just a comedy show at a yoga studio. We might have surprise characters, maybe guest teachers who ask people to get on their feet. But no, it’s just kind of a situation where we’ll get together and laugh.

What's Your Major features comedy and music tonight at Church

Brendan Boogie, creator of What's Your Major

You want to laugh tonight, but you also want to hear cool Boston bands play music, and you miss the “back to school” atmosphere from college. What can you do? What? What show could possibly even address your needs? Who would even want to create a show like that?

Brendan Boogie, that’s who. He created What’s Your Major?, which plays tonight at Church Boston near Fenway. Boogie is the leader of Brendan Boogie and the Best Intentions, and he has tapped his friends from Boston’s comedy and music scenes to play the show, co-sponsored by local music blog, Boston Band Crush.

The music: Shoney Lamar & The Equal Rights, Gene Dante & The Future Starlets, Kingsley Flood, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, Low Static Romance, and Ad Frank.

The Comedy: Tim McIntire, Maria Ciampa, and Duncan Wilder Johnson.

I asked Brendan a few questions about the show, and he gave me a bunch o’ smart ass answers. Here they are, in between videos of other interviews on this subject.

Wait, McIntire was a botany major? Really?

What’s the main premise of What’s Your Major?

To learn. To expand our minds. To party. To put off any meaningful decisions to a later date. To laugh. To rock. To waste our parents' money at the bar. Basically, the same premise as going to college.



How did you winds up with such close ties to both the music and comedy communities?

My charisma transcends your foolish human boundaries. Also, you tend to burn through relationships quickly when you never pick up the tab, so it’s important for me to spread myself around a few different scenes.



How is Church as a comedy venue?

Surprisingly good. We did this event last year and set up the comedy stage nearer to the bar so the comics could perform while the bands switched over. Last year, we actually did have to toss some people for heckling and being obnoxious. They came from a wedding. They started the day exchanging eternal love for each other. They ended it getting verbally ripped to shreds by Tim McIntire and then tossed from the building in tears. I have a lot of hope for those two kids.



Do you plan to keep doing these shows?

Well, this is only sophomore year, so I'd say so. Maybe junior year abroad? What's Your Major 3 in Amsterdam? Start booking your hostels now.



How is Boston Band Crush involved?

Editor-in-chief Ashley Willard is the empress of all things Boston rock. Even when you think she's not involved, she'll be there to unite your friends and smite your enemies. It's best to just submit to her every whim.

The BC Q&A: Mike Donovan

Mike Donovan plays the
China Blossom tonight and tomorrow

Mike Donovan has been doing comedy in Boston for longer than there has been a dedicated comedy club in this town. He remembers his first paid gig in 1977, a year before the Comedy Connection became Boston’s first full-time comedy club. He’s played Boston through all of the supposed comedy busts and booms, and still plays regularly in Boston and around the country. He’s at the China Blossom in North Andover tonight and tomorrow.

Some of Donovan’s best stuff revolves around sports – his routines about doodling on his baseball cards and sports sponsorship are classics. You can hear both on Donovan’s new CD, Throwing Rocks, which is surprisingly also his first CD.

I caught up with Donovan earlier this month to talk about Throwing Rocks, sports, and Boston comedy.

What made you decide to finally release a CD?

Gas money. Plus to get Rob Steen to stop asking me, “When are you going to make a CD?”

How many shows did you cull from? It sounds like you bounce around from different shows.

I think its from at least 40 different shows. My wife Hilarie knows the exact number. She co-produced it. I think its fun to jump around from club to club, and audience to audience, and even from year to year. The second half includes some of the retro bits.

You say at one point on the CD that all comedy is mean, that no one has ever laughed at someone almost falling. Is that something you’re conscious of when you’re writing a joke? Is it an idea you write to?

No – Never think to write that that way consciously. I let a funny thought come to me and then I go from there. But the cruelty, its just the way I see it. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. The joke is on the person being told the joke. It's always funny at someone's expense.

Mike Donovan's new CD

The CD really shows off the range of your voice – do you think you’ll work in radio again? And have you ever tried to sing seriously?

I'd love to do radio again. I sang in a choir at Symphony Hall when I was 12.

The baseball cards routine is one of my favorites of yours. Did any of your collection survive childhood?

My mom threw my cards away. Bad day. There is a baseball card store in Arizona called, “My mom threw out my baseball cards.”

Which do you enjoy more, sports or history?

History. It's something that's grown in a good way. I wouldn't have said that ten years ago.

What are your thoughts on the “Yankees Suck” crowd?

It's September 4 and the Sox are drowning, so it’s a tough time to answer that one. I never chanted it. I still think the Giants/Eagles is a rougher rivalry. Sox fans have dignity now that we won two. Red Sox had more injuries this year than any football team I ever rooted for. I called them the Boston Red Cross.

You’re also working on a history book – what do you hope to communicate to people about history?

I just want to tell the story in a clear, fun, and edutaining way.

What was your first gig in Boston? Do you remember the place?

I used to host charity talent shows at the LaBoure Center in South Boston when I was 16. I did impressions and the voices did jokes. My first paid gig in Boston I think was at the Black Rose tavern at Faniuel Hall. I did sets between the Irish bands. About four Saturdays in the summer of 1977.

You’ve seen a good portion of this city’s comedy history, is there anything that has remained consistent about the scene over the past 30 years?

Some comedians steal jokes. Some don't. Some crowds are great. Some crowds aren't. Second show Friday usually blows. Cerebral comics bomb at the bowling alley gigs. Bowling alley comics bomb at the tux and gown banquets. When the blender goes on, the joke goes down. And it's usually a lot of fun, in spite of the obstacle course.

Where do you think you fit into that history?

I'll leave that one blank.

Bob Marley sets new Guinness Record for stand-up

New stand-up record holder, Bob Marley

When the next Guinness Book of World Records is released, Bob Marley will be in it. Marley set out to break the record for longest stand-up set Wednesday morning at 7AM at the Comedy Connection in Portland, Maine, to benefit the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital.

According to his Facebook page, he achieved his goal Thursday evening, besting the former mark of 38 hours and six minutes with a 40 hour set.

You can see video from the marathon performance here.

Gary Gulman CD taping at the Studio tonight

Gary Gulmn tapes a CD at the Studio tonight.

According to Comedy Studio owner Rick Jenkins, there are still a handful of tickets left for Gary Gulman's 7PM CD taping tonight. The 9PM show is sold out. The Peabody native will be taping both shows tonight for a new CD. He'll also be doing headling sets tomorrow and Saturday and taping those as a backup, in case the final product needs some touching up. Call 617-661-6507 to snatch up those last tickets for tonight.

Gulman has been tuning up for this for months, showing up at open mics around Boston and playing a number of shows, including several spots at the Studio last week.

More on Billy Bob and Maddow

Billy Bob Neck outing Maddow on YouTube

On Friday, Billy Bob Neck, a.k.a. local comedian Paul Day, was surprised to find a video of his popping up on The Rachel Maddow Show. Billy Bob can be a bit hard to take if you don't know it's an act, and despite the obvious fun Maddow has been having with his accusation that she's a "lesbian vampire," some people have been taking it seriously.

The story has been on Maddow's blog, first here, where Maddow posted a photo of herself with fake (I think) vampire teeth and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Vein-illa Les-bean. Then Maddow's bloggers found my interview with Day and posted about it again.

The folks over at Blue Roots Radio also interviewed Day Monday. You can hear it here (click on the links under the "Dates" heading on the left side).

Bob Marley goes for the record at Portland’s Comedy Connection



Bob Marley attempts to break the
Guinness stand-up record for charity.

By the time you read this, Bob Marley will most likely be onstage at the Comedy Connection in Maine. He goes on at the ungodly hour of 7AM Wednesday morning, trying to beat the Guinness record for the longest stand-up comedy performance. The current mark of 38 hours and 6 minutes was set in October by Australian comic Lindsay Webb.
Marley will try to best that at the Connection to help out the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, Maine's only certified children's hospital. The club will charge by the hour during the event to raise money (see Marley’s site for details).

Marley is a Portland native, and honed his craft in the Boston scene. I spoke with him for The Boston Globe in 2005.

Here’s Marley, explaining himself.

Billy Bob Neck on The Rachel Maddow Show

Billy Bob Neck

Boston comedy fans watching The Rachel Maddow Show Friday got to see a familiar face in the closing moments. Maddow showed a YouTube clip of fundamentalist commentator Billy Bob Neck exposing Maddow as a “lesbian vampire,” making fun of her appearance and wondering aloud why MSNBC would allow such a creature to comment on America. Much to her credit, Maddow played the whole clip, and it seemed to amuse her.

Neck, of course, is the character played by local comedian Paul Day in comedy clubs and on his Hour of Bein’ Good on BlogTalkRadio.com. And his appearance on Maddow surprised no one more than Day. He had not been contacted beforehand, and had no idea he was about to be on national television.

I asked him about it by e-mail this weekend.

First, the clip, then, the questions.



How did you find out you were on Maddow?

A friend from my days debunking some little parasite who said he blew Obama sent me an email. Mike Bent sent a message shortly thereafter.

What was your reaction?

Stunned, which gave way to frustration. Generally, MSNBC repeats Countdown and Maddow but, it being Friday, I guess the liberal viewers demand their dose of the documentary, Lockup. So I had to wait for it to get posted online. After that, I was elated. At the top of the show she talked about a “piece of tape” that had the office convulsed in laughter for more than an hour. It really doesn’t get much better than that. My wife was already asleep when I found out. I kind of nudged her and told her about it. She apparently thought I mean it was just on Maddow’s blog since she was a little freaked out in the morning.

Do you think they think Billy Bob is real?

I’m assuming not but you never know. Smarter people have fallen for it, but the whole notion that she’s a lesbian vampire because of two moles on her neck...it’s a little over the top. I think it’s one of the more blatantly THIS-IS-A-JOKE-PEOPLE bits that I’ve done. Still some people really do believe in vampires. I guess it just re-iterates the power of a book written a long time ago to influence people’s lives. ;-)

Have they been in touch with you yet?

Sadly, no. I’m hoping to get in touch with them. That’s the only downside of a Friday segment - the office pretty much closes. Obviously, it would be great to get a little commentary segment occasionally. I’d love to do an interview with Maddow. That would be a huge thrill.

The jokes on that bit were particularly harsh – are you surprised they used it?

Harsh? I thought it was pretty goofy and good natured in relation to saying that Sharron Angle believes that God had a good reason to let your father to rape you or the Burn A Koran song. On the whole, I think it’s pretty accessible. I felt a little bad about saying she had small breasts, but I think it was Newbower that said, “You can be a good person or you can be funny.”

Will Billy Bob continue to try to expose Maddow? What’s his reaction to all of this?

I thought about it. If Maddow fucks with Billy then he will certainly fuck back. I’m not sure that she’ll be a focus, though. He’ll probably just continue to rail against homos, liberals and those who shoot crack cocaine in their eye. There are far too many targets to shot at.

The BC Q&A: Inspector Hound director Diego Arciniegas

Hound director Diego Arciniegas

If you haven’t already seen the Publick Theatre’s production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, this week is your last chance. The play is at the BCA through September 25. I caught it in previews, and can say that fans of this site who enjoy English comedy – Monty Python, Eddie Izzard, Beyond the Fringe – will enjoy Stoppard and this play. You can see my review here.

If you want to interact with the characters beforehand, you can become Facebook friends or fans (find the links on PublickTheatre.com). Director Diego Arciniegas and his cast also have a few surprises even for those familiar with the play. Traditionally a one-act paired with Stoppard's After Magritte, the Publick production stands alone, with a few ingenius additions to make it a 90-minute play.

I spoke with Arciniegas via e-mail this weekend.

When did you first encounter The Real Inspector Hound?

My first exposure to the play was when I was a freshman in high school. Our Theatre Department took it to the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival.

Have you directed it before?

Yes, once, when I was teaching at a boarding school in England. It was a very different production (I still have pictures). Felicity had a can of Sprite in her hand during her scene with Simon - I don't know why now.

What made you decide to do it this time?

I wanted to do something funny, smart and full of wordplay. I think comedy is a better idea-delivery-system than drama these days. I knew there was a bigger, edgier play lurking within this play and was interested in exploring that.

Did you consider doing it in its original one-act form with After Magritte?

Actually no. I noticed that within the play there are supposed to be two intermissions (three act plays were quite the thing in murder mysteries). I actually considered having two intermissions, but then realized that as the play spirals out of control, I wanted the intermissions to get faster and faster like in a fun house.

The tea scene is the obvious beneficiary of giving the play more time – where else did you target to add some space?

The beginning of the play, the false starts. Stoppard's stage directions have Moon already in the audience and detail how he turns the pages one after another. I found that a little undramatic, so I substituted the repeated false starts. That put some time on the production. Also having Mrs. Drudge vacuuming for a good 20 seconds as the start of the play added some time.

I noticed that Stoppard, through the character of Birdboot, sets down some pretty rigid rules of theatre, and then the playwright smashes those rules. "You can't start with a pause" (the vacuuming), and yet the play starts with a pause. I detected a young playwright rebelling against the conventions of theatre and brilliantly making them work. But actually the running time of this play is normally about 50 - 60 minutes. So we only really put about fifteen more minutes on the play. It is the inclusion of an fifteen minute intermission that brings us to 90 minutes.

The Real Inspector Hound at the BCA

How did the Facebook idea come about?

It seemed the logical extension of the metatheatrical nature of the play. If we supposed that this was really happening, and that these were real people committing the perfect murder and burying it in plain sight. And if it was true that these theatre critics get caught up in the world of the play, than it only made sense that they should have a life outside the theatre as well. I also roped the House Manager and the Stage Manager into doing performative things as well. So I guess this is all a long-winded way of saying that it was part of the attempt to blurr the boundaries of what was real and what wasn't.

I don’t want to give away the surprise for the intermission, but whose idea was that?

It was the audience's idea really. I think we had confused them so profoundly that they needed to know it was safe and okay to get up out of their seats. In previews they weren't getting up because they didn't want to miss anything, and I felt it was cruel to mess with their minds too much.

Stoppard has called Hound a kind of mechanical wind-up toy, that it has lasted somehow with very little change. Are you familiar with that description? Do you agree with it?

Basically I do, but I think he gives himself less credit than he deserves. If it is a wind up toy, it is closer to the out-of-control robots might see in Terminator or some movie like that. There's a danger and a darkness lurking in the play that the term "mechanical wind-up toy" doesn't do justice to. But I agree about the mechanistic nature of the play.

Did you discuss anything else to break the fourth wall that you decided against?

Some of my actors who were dead at the end of the play did not want to get up for the curtain call. I thought that would be pompous and pretentious. The evening’s entertainment had to end after all. So the resulting compromise was the curtain call as you see it now.

Bill Burr's new special, Let It Go, debuts on Comedy Central Sunday

Bill Burr: Let It Go debuts Sunday at 11PM on Comedy Central

It’s hard to remember the last time I saw Bill Burr fail onstage, partly because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen. The closest I think I came was watching him pull laughs from a grudging crowd at The Comedy Store in LA a couple of years ago (I talked to him about that and a number of other things for FunnyGrownHere in May). But he did make them laugh, something a number of other comedians, big names and small, couldn’t do on that bill.

Burr is as solid as any comic in the country right now, and his new one-hour special, Let It Go, gives you a good taste of that. The title refers to Burr’s self-professed anger issues, over everything going home for the holidays to another man asking if he wants a cookie.

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That might seems a bit frightening, like Burr could snap at any minute, but he’s not that kind of comic. He’s not Sam Kinison, whipping himself into a frenzy, staring past the audience and screaming into the abyss. No, his tone is more self aware, and his anger is the opposite of self-righteous. More like a highly amused, “I can’t believe what an asshole I am.”

He talks about being sarcastic to his girlfriend, and even takes a shot at motherhood – “Women are constantly patting themselves on the back for how difficult their lives are and no one corrects them because they want to fuck ‘em,” he says. Bring that kind of sentiment into a normal conversation, you might want to duck.

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But more often than not, Burr is his own favorite target. He admits to thinking about suicide, maybe once every couple of weeks. And never over anything big, like a girlfriend leaving. It’s the little things that catch him, like forgetting he’d agreed to bake a pie, something he doesn’t know how to do, on Thanksgiving Dar. “Whenever I know the next four hours of my life is going to suck, I think about,” he says.

He takes a well-directed shot at male bravado, how everything smart or sensitive is “gay” to the super masculine. That’s why guys drop dead at 55 over nothing. “It’s literally from five decades of suppressing the urge to hug a puppy, admit a baby’s cute, say you want a cookie,” says Burr. “You gotta just keep pushing it down.”

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It’s these kinds of observations that keep him from marrying, and from wanting to go home for Christmas at ago 40. He doesn’t want to face questions again about what he does for a living. “So,” he says, feigning the voice of an uncomfortable relative, “you’re just going to tell jokes? Talk about disease and wish it on people?”

Hopefully, yes.

The Mehran Show: Bitch spotlights women at Mottley's tonight

The Mehran Show: Bitch at Mottley's

It’s a well trod story in the comedy world, how women have often had to work just a bit harder than men – sometimes much harder – to get the same results. There’s a scene in Fran Solomita’s documentary on Boston comedy When Stand Up Stood Out where Janeane Garofalo talks about female comics getting booked. The attitude, she explained, was that, we had a woman on last week, we can’t have a woman on this week. Gender was a specialty, like a prop comic.

To some extent, that still happens. “I get that in any show, if you add two or more chicks it's becomes labeled a chick night, add three blacks comics it's black night,” says San Francisco native and current Boston comic Chantal Carrere. “I think it is what is and it's my job to be seen regardless.”

“Most shows are sausage fest,” she adds. “All men, and they don't say, ‘Hey come to the all mens show.”

Which brings us to tonight’s Mehran Show at Mottley’s. The name of the show is Bitch, and it’s an all female lineup. Usually, Mehran picks a kind of silly theme, like Boozebag (the comics get drunk) or Dude Looks Like A Lady (male comics in drag). This one is a bit more pointed.

Mehran has been in the Boston comedy scene for a bit over three years. In that time, he has been drawn to a lot of female comics. And he’s noticed they’re not included in the social scene that is the supportive tissue surrounding the scene.

“What I'd discovered in my own personal experience was that I wasn't seeing women taken into the fold the way men take each other into the fold,” he says. “I was noticing that women who showed/show tremendous potential, be they natural performers or writers, weren't getting acknowledged or invited to writing groups or asked to perform on shows booked by other comics. Meanwhile, I watched male comics come into the scene, show half the natural funny and get carried out on the shoulders of other male comics like they were Sean Astin in Rudy.”

Bitch, then, is a way to bring that to light. And also bring lightness to it. “I like alcohol and I put on Boozebag,” says Mehran. “I like weed and I put on Weed, I like men in dresses and I did Dude Looks Like A Lady. Funny bitches are better for me than black tar heroin and I packed a show with some of my favorites ever.”

That list includes Carrere, Myka Fox, Shane Webb, Erin Judge, Bethany Van Delft, Jessica Delfino, Maria Ciampa, Phoebe Robinson, and Sarah Heggan. And while they focus on the comedy, Mehran can bring up the gender issue.

“I think I have a bit of a luxury to be biting and bitter about it on their behest. It's like that saying-- you never want to be your own broker. This is my opportunity to fight and say the bitter stuff so they don't have to. They can maintain their dignity and I get to be publicly incredulous. It's a win-win.”



What makes an issue like this difficult is that it comes down to perhaps the single most subjective criteria – are you funny? Not everyone will find you funny, regardless of gender, and that’s hard to argue. The only way to dispute it is to get out onstage and make a crowd laugh.

“I think at the end of the day you must be funny and I am so I get paid,” says Carrere. “If I was some chick trying to play off her looks or cheap female jokes then yes, I might have a different answer but I have been blessed.”

Sometimes, that means breaking a bit of new ground. “I am in the Boston Comedy Festival and I just realized not one women has ever won,” says Carrere. “I plan on changing that this year.”

The BC Q&A: Jon Fisch

Jon Fisch plays Club Bohemia at the Cantab tonight.

Newton native Jon Fisch doesn’t have any comic gimmicks. No props, no politics, no nerdy stereotypes. What you get with Fisch is just flat-out funny. Great writing, an easy sense of himself onstage, and the ability to walk into any comedy club and make people laugh, sometimes til it hurts. It’s what got him into the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, on Comedy Central, and Last Comic Standing.

Tonight he’s back in Boston, playing Club Bohemia (the downstairs room at the Cantab), for a show sponsored by Mass Hilarity, a production company created by local comics Elvis Collins and Angie Frissore looking to start its own Boston comedy blog by the end of the year.

I spoke with him by e-mail this week.

How did you hook up with Mass Hilarity to play the Cantab?

I did a benefit show a couple summers ago for Angela at the Somerville theater. A comic friend, Steve Burr booked the comics for Angela. He’s from Rochester, ny but I still like him cause he’s a sox fan. It was a really fun show that Steve hosted with Moody McCarthy, Keith Alberstadt, April Macie, Tom Simmons, James Johan and Christina Pazsitz.. Angela is a great person, a big comedy fan and we've remained in touch.

Did you ever play one of the comedy shows that popped up there from time to time when you were in Boston?

I did one that I can remember. Steve Calechman may have been behind that cantab show. I think Sam Walters was there that night and Mike Birbiglia claims that’s the night I met him and his brother Joe.

Who were the people you learned most from while you were here?

I learned a lot from watching and talking with Robbie Printz, Paul Nardizzi, Kevin Knox, Jim Colliton, Tony Moschetto, Tim McIntire, Don Gavin, and Tony V.

Where was the first place you tried stand-up?

Rick Jenkins comedy workshop graduation at the Comedy Studio.

You label yourself a “prolific monologist” on your Web site. You have a point of view, but not an easy gimmick or label, like a blue collar comic or a political comic. Do you think that means you have to work harder to make a more immediate impression?

I remember doing a set on a showcase show, I must have been the sixth or seventh comic on the show and it was one of those nights where we were all having great sets. After my first joke I heard a woman say something to her friend like “ooh this guy is different.” I let my bits and my act speak for itself and I try to be original by being personal and hope that sets me apart and make an impression. But then again, I am not a household name so maybe I should get a hook, any ideas?



It seems to me that a lot of comics have a kind of home club in NY. Not sure why that is, if you need a place to plant your flag so people will notice you, rather than getting lost playing a ton of clubs, or if it’s just a matter of a comic finding a comfortable place to play.

It’s nice to have a place that loves you. Different clubs over the years have given me love at different times. I'm fortunate to perform at the clubs that I think I fit well at. I think it's more about that, finding that place where you are comfortable.

When do the Tank seasons begin and end? Pretty organized to have actual seasons.

It’s probably less of being organized and more just in need of breaks. It can take up a lot of time so ending a season is just my excuse for taking some time off. We have started recording for season 3 with new equipment and should start posting them for our listeners starting next Tuesday.

What do you get from interviewing other comedians?

I love comedy. I love doing stand up and I love talking about stand up. I think most comics; most real comics have an interesting story to tell and an interesting perspective on stand up. I just try to provide a little time capsule for their career. There are interviews with the famous comics out there, but we all have our own insight to share. I’m a fan of stand up and this podcast is for other fans of stand up and for the fans of the particular guest.

What do I get? I guess I get to talk to other comics and I hope to draw out that nugget of wisdom that can sum up a certain part of stand up.

Who’s coming up this season?

Things happen and schedules change but looks like we’ll have Karen Bergreen, Rob Cantrell, Jim David, Gregg Rogell, Joe Derosa, Lynn Koplitz, Al Ducharme, Jesse Joyce, Allan Havey, Nick Dipaolo and Dwayne Perkins

Grownup Noise at Passim, on CultureMob.com

The Grownup Noise know local comedy well -- they were the Walsh Brothers backing band for their epic Fung Wah tribute a few years back. They are just back from a national tour and playing an acoustic show tonight at Club Passim.

I wrote about them today for CultureMob.com, a site to which I will be contributing local and national arts and entertainment stories. Read the post, and go to the show!

Chris Fleming's last Boston shows

Like many Boston comedians before him, Chris Fleming is packing up and hitting the road for Los Angeles this month. He's got a leg up, having signed with New Wave Entertainment after an audition at The Comedy Studio in January. Tonight and tomorrow are his last official shows as a Boston resident.

I spoke to him in March about how he developed his particular physical and tangential style of comedy, his background in dance, and the rooms in Boston that have been important to him.

As is the danger when you interview someone in the street, we get a little noise in the background toward the end in the form of a fairly one-sided shouting match with a musician down the street. No one was harmed. At least during the interview.

Enjoy the interview, and afterwards, a video of Fleming performing at the Studio.



At the Studio:

Gary Gulman tonight at The Comedy Studio

Comedy Studio owner Rick Jenkins has announced that Gary Gulman will be popping in to the club tonight to do some time.

Here's the rest of the line-up:
Sean Sullivan hosts Mike Abramson, Lue Avent, Jessie Baade, Thersea Condito, Shane Copeland, Janet Cormier, Tyler Fischer, Andrea Henry, Chrissy Kelleher, Corey Manning, and Matt Nazarian.

Music and Wrestling: King Hell and the Boston League of Women Wrestlers at the Middle East tonight

Former Boston comic Sam Walters is back in town tonight with King Hell, his New York-based funk metal outfit. They're playing the Middle East Upstairs, paired with B.L.O.W.W., the Boston League of Women Wrestlers. King Hell are a theatrical bunch - you can count on seeing Walters headbanging standing on an anvil and probably thrusting a pitchfork skyward at some point. But how did they get tangled up with wrestlers?

"Our space alien brothers in the intergalactic band Planetoid gave us B.L.O.W.W.'s coordinates," says Walters, "which is probably the strangest true sentence ever written."

On their Facebook event page, the band bemoaned the passing of an era in pro wrestling when the participants had colorful names like Super Fly and Junkyard Dog. So they've suggested a few new names, like Deformo the Homunculus.

So would Deformo be a good guy or a bad guy?

"Deformo The Homunculus is all things to all people, like Abraxas," says Walters, "except he blinds opponents by flinging hot oatmeal in their eyes. In that regard, he's quite singular."

The action starts at 9PM at the Middle East Upstairs.

Happy ImprovBoston Day!

In recognition of 29 years in operation, in Inman Square and now in Central Square, the City of Cambridge has declared September 9 "ImprovBoston Day." You can read the official declaration here. The proclamation provides an interesting snapshot of IB's history, going back to its founding by former Second City student Ellen Holbrook in 1982 and the fact that it once operated in a club owned by former Celtic Satch Sanders.

IB kicked off its Second Annual Boston Improv Festival last night, which will bring over 100 performers to three stages through Sunday. Acts come from all over the country, and a few, like We're From Here, WDWMKR, and Montreal Improv, from Canada.

Joe Bill also returns Saturday, but not with his usual act, the fantastic duo of Bassprov, which has played the Lowell Comedy Festival in the past. And the North End comes to Central Square when Improv Asylum brings its new mainstage show, Hungry, Hungry Hipsters to ImprovBoston Sunday.

Louis C.K.'s Hilarious

Louis C.K. is ridiculously prolific. The first season of his low-fi sitcom Louie ended last night, and he’s planning season two. He’s got a new special, Hilarious, screening tonight at the Kendall. And he’s got a whole new show ready when he comes to the Wilbur later this month.

You would think that you would recognize more material from Hilarious as premises in Louie, but no, other than a couple of random subjects, it’ll pretty much all different. Consider also that last time he was in Boston, he recorded his shows for a possible CD release (although there has been no news on that front). And there was a lot of material in that set that doesn’t wind up in Hilarious.

And just about all of it hits. Hilarious is amazingly consistent with C.K.’s previous two specials, Chewed Up and Shameless. Both of those specials were solid and inventive, and Chewed Up was a classic. Hilarious fits right in.

No comic working right now has a funnier internal logic than C.K. Most of his observations, no matter how absurd, echo someplace in your brain to make you think you may have thought exactly the same thing at one point or another and not been able to express it. The hot girl at the bar? She is three lines to C.K. – boots, skirt, and shirt. A weird seductive geometry.

Guys going out just to get laid rove in packs of nine wearing the same button-down shirts, hoping to run into nine women walking in the same formation. Technical schools, to C.K., are the places where dreams are narrowed down. “You can do eight things,” he says. “We got it narrowed down to eight for you.”

He even has his own stupidity put together in a process – he does something stupid, analyzes it, and commences with the self hatred.

One bit might seem familiar to fans who watched C.K.’s appearances on Conan, and that’s his riff on people’s impatience with technology. He expressed a lot of the same thoughts on Late Night in 2008 (see video below).



If you can’t get out to the Kendall tonight, Hilarious will be on the Epix premium cable channel on September 18. After that, it will air on Comedy Central, which will also releae the DVD, next year.

Comedy Studio Comic in Residence Interview -- Corey Manning

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Moon to Moon: The Real Inspector Hound

The Publick Theatre's The Real Inspector Hound 

About 16 years ago, I was in a college production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. I was a big fan of Stoppard’s, having found him through his film adaptation of his most well-known play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I was a huge high school Monty Python nerd (I was told by my high school guidance counselor that my “Monty Pythonish sense of humor” was a distraction to my schoolmates and thus, no National Honors Society for me).

It was an easy transition from Python to Stoppard. And I had spent enough time parroting Python sketches that I had a pretty good English accent. At least for a kid from tractor country. So I was excited to audition and show off my abilities. Alas, we did the show without accents.

I played Moon, a second-string theatre critic watching a second-rate murder mystery with a fellow critic. Hard to say much more without giving it away, but I got to literally jump off of the stage at the audience in the end, breaking that fourth wall in an utterly ridiculous way. It was as much fun as I’ve ever had onstage.

Back to the present. I noticed a couple of days ago that the Publick Theatre in Boston was mounting Hound at the BCA. I felt a wave of goodwill, and made arrangements to see it Friday night, the second night of previews.

I was admittedly excited to see the play. I realized when I got there, and started looking around the set, that I had never actually seen the play, just been in it and read it. Despite a thick fog surrounding Boston and promises over the past 36 hours of a plague of frogs, the theater was mostly full. I sometimes wonder what kind of demographic enjoys Stoppard, and it seemed like a fairly diverse crowd in terms of age and relative hipness.

The college production I participated in (I am hesitant to say it rose to the level of “acting”) was a one-act play. Director Diego Arciniegas’s program notes mention that Hound is often on the bill with other one acts. But Arciniegas has always thought the play needed more room to breathe, and this production gives it that room, as a stand-alone 90-minute play.

“Taking our cue from the playwright,” he writes, “we set about to give the play the time it deserves, placing an intermission where Stoppard suggests there might be one, and suggesting another at an appropriate place.”

One of the themes of the play is breaking the fourth wall, as the critics and the cast of the play they are watching become inextricably intertwined. Arciniegas and his cast take that one step further – the characters Felicity Cunningham, Inspector Hound, and Simon Gascoyne all have Facebook pages which, in his introduction, the director encourages the audience to join. It’s a brilliant and fun device, keeping the audience involved even after they’ve left the theater.

The show’s pacing is perfect. The breathing room is obvious, especially directly after the intermission, when we rejoin the story at tea time. Arciniegas also takes the intermission as an opportunity for a well-placed gag, not that the show lacks laughs anywhere along the line.

The cast is first-rate, especially Gabriel Kuttner as Magnus in his wandering electric wheelchair and Sheridan Thomas, who plays Mrs. Drudge with a cockney deadpan reminiscent of Peter Cook. And they do some of their best work at final bows.

Yes, there is a meta aspect to this – more than 16 years after playing theatre critic Moon, I am an arts and entertainment writer, and to top it off, I’m reviewing the play I was in. For this particular play, nothing could be more appropriate.

Quiet Desperation moves from YouTube to MyTV

Rob Potylo told his Facebook friends a few days ago that big news was coming about Quiet Desperation, his Web-based sitcom satirizing the local music and comedy scene. Tonight he revealed that the show will move from the Web to MyTV starting Christmas Eve. Here's Potylo's interview on the future of the show.