Blog Archives
What do teachers make?
Cheers to all the teachers! Without you, we would be nothing. You are all heroes. Plus, doesn’t he look a little like comedian Steve Lind?
Can Heckling Be a Two Way Street?
My buddy posed a question to me yesterday morning. At first it sounded to me like he was asking why it was okay for a comedian to talk to someone in the audience, but it wasn’t okay for a person in the audience to talk to the comedian. My knee jerk response was that people pay to hear the comedian speak, the comedian never pays to listen to the audience member speak.
Mike Stanley
Mike and I take a walk down memory lane and discuss how things were different when we started and how things are currently in the open mic scene in Chicago. I think there’s a lot of really good information here particularly to the newer guys doing comedy. So I hope you enjoy and pick up something useful.
Without any huge credits, Mike Stanley has managed to become an “event” comic. When he comes to town, his loyal fan base often times sells out shows. I’ve been friends with Mike since his start in comedy and one thing he had from the very beginning was a ridiculously strong work ethic. He was always constantly writing and perfecting his craft. Years later, Mike’s work ethic has carried over to the business side of things. He’s a master of self promotion and is still continuously working on new creative endeavors in addition to his rock solid stand up.
Mike and I sat down at the Comedy Castle and talked about his work ethic, the differences between Chicago and Detroit comedy as well as the hardships of the business.
Mikey Mason “She Don’t Like Firefly”
Here’s the final version of the video for Mikey Mason’s “She Don’t Like Firefly”.
Mikey and I worked together last year in Fort Wayne and I knew pretty instantly that he and I were going to be friends for a long, long time! He’s pretty cool….in a totally dorky way!
If he’s ever in your area, do yourself a favor and go see him live. The show he puts on is one part comedy show, one part rock concert. It’s a very fun night out! You can find out when and where he’s playing at www.mikeymason.com!
What else is cool is that Morena Baccarin has already plugged Mikey’s video on her twitter and sent it to Nathan Fillion and Jewel Staite. I really hope this is the thing that breaks Mikey into the big time! At the very least, Joss Whedon should like Mikey do the theme song to his next project! Ooh, I wonder if he’d cover the Firefly theme for me next time we play together!
Oh yeah, and don’t think for a second I haven’t noticed that Mikey bears a striking resemblance to my friend Casey Orr, bassist for Rigor Mortis, Burden Brothers, Blohole and of course Gwar!
Mikey on the left, Casey on the right
Remembering Mike Destefano
Mike DeStefano died Sunday night. I never met him, but I wish I had. I first heard him on The Moth storytelling podcast. Mike had a couple stories on there that I remember. He had one that really stuck with me. It was about how he was visiting his wife in hospice. They were both HIV positive, but hers turned into full blown AIDS and she was dying. He ended up buying a motorcycle and took her for one last ride. It was such an inspiring story about living life to its fullest all the way up to the end. It was a story about love. It was a story about saying goodbye. It was a story that touched me. At the end of the stories on the Moth, the host Dan Kennedy comes on and gives a little bio about the speaker. He said that Mike DeStefano was a comedian living in New York. I had a feeling he would be the kind of comedian that I respected and strived to be more like. I had a feeling his comedy was raw, original and honest.
It wasn’t until about a year later when Marc Maron interviewed Mike on the WTF Podcast that I really sought out his work. I was glad that the same story touched Marc like it touched me. It’s a powerful story that even paraphrasing it for Christine one night brought tears to her eyes. In the interview, Mike explained how he became a comedian. He was giving AIDS awareness lectures. When people would ask silly questions, he’d give silly answers. “Can I get AIDS from my dentist?” “Only if your dentist is fucking you in the ass.” I found out Mike had been on Last Comic Standing. To me, that didn’t bring legitimacy to Mike. Mike brought legitimacy to what is essentially a game show. Mike DeStefano was the real deal.
This time I wrote a note reminding myself that I wanted to research Mike’s work and see what I could find. I ended up downloading his CD “OK Karma” off iTunes. Much like the performer himself, the CD is raw and rough around the edges. He has moments where he rants and it doesn’t really hit strong with the audience. He wraps up that rant with announcing that what the audience is just heard is going on the CD. It’s a real moment. A polished CD from a punk rock comic would sound…wrong.
Coincidentally, Saturday morning I was driving with a local punk rock spoken word artist Jimmy Doom. The night before Jimmy was talking about wanting to take a stab at comedy. His spoken word CD is raw and witty and I’m sure he’ll do great. I wanted to introduce Jimmy to DeStefano’s work because I knew they shared a similar sensibility. It always brings me joy when I can make someone laugh, whether it is from something I said or something I played for someone. Jimmy cracked up.
After the Maron interview, I found Mike on Facebook, friended him and sent him a message thanking him for sharing his story and being inspiring. He never wrote back and that’s okay. I know I’m not the only person he touched. I wish I would’ve gotten the chance to work with him. I wish I would’ve gotten the chance to share a stage with him. And I wish I would’ve gotten the chance to say thank you. We all overcome adversity in our lives. Mike overcame losing his soul mate, battling a life ending disease and drug addiction and he did it all with a smirk and a middle finger in the air. It kind of makes a lot of my problems seem small by comparison. If there is a heaven, I hope the first thing Mike said to God was, “Fuck you, I beat HIV! I win! Now where’s my old lady, mother fucker?”
Maz Jobrani: The Prince of Persia
Maz Jobrani has done it all. While you may not know his name, you probably recognize his face. In addition to being one of the nation’s premiere comedians, he’s also one of the founders of the Axis of Evil comedy tour, and has been in numerous films, sharing the screen with Ice Cube in Friday After Next, Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter and Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30. Maz first flew onto Christine and my radar in the amazing, but unfortunately short lived television series Better Off Ted as the scene stealing Dr. Bhamba.
I had the pleasure of working with him at the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase recently. Sharing the bill with comedians Kvon and Amer Zahr, Maz sold out two back to back shows on a Sunday night. Between shows Christine and I were able to sit down and pick Maz and Amer’s brains about finding your fan base, auditioning for acting roles, the hurdles of television and speaking for your people.
Am I A Comedy Snob?
It was a light week for comedy last week, but a fun week. On Wednesday I was at the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase doing a benefit for my friend Germaine’s friend Shaun who unfortunately has a brain tumor. The turnout was respectable, and we did raise some money and we had some laughs. Germaine and I started at the exact same time and I’m always glad to do any show she asks me to do. I got to see some old faces and tried to do material that was all pretty new and long form. It didn’t go as well as I had hoped, but I went to the club after a long day of filming on Deadpan and didn’t quite get where I needed to be mentally.
Michigan Film Incentives in Jeopardy
Here’s an article posted on my friend Mark’s website about the Michigan film incentives. The sad thing is, at the town hall meeting I thought the turn out and passion was so overwhelming that there was no way this thing wouldn’t work out in our favor, but apparently Snyder is standing firm unfortunately. Anyway, check out Mark’s article. Also, I’ll be a guest on his podcast soon. He’s a pretty awesome comedian who I met in Lansing last year.
She Don’t Like Firefly
My buddy Mikey Mason recorded what may be the ultimate geek love song. Warning, the song does contain a SPOILER! But really, if you don’t know that Wash dies, then you probably don’t like Firefly.
Chaplin’s: A Club
After twenty five years of business, Chaplin’s Comedy Club closed its doors for good. Chaplin’s is allegedly the place where Jeff Foxworthy riffed on stage and discovered his entire “you might be a redneck” routine. It’s been bothering me that I’m the last person to headline Chaplin’s Comedy Club.
In the year leading up to becoming a comedian I experienced live comedy three times. The entire main stage cast at Second City Detroit horribly embarrassed me by improvising a musical number about how horrible it would be to be on a date with me. Maybe that’s why I have a love/hate relationship with improve to this day! At that moment of sitting in the front row, I vowed that if I were ever on stage I would never humiliate someone like I was humiliated. Well…so much for that!
Tutu Much Mikey
Here’s the infamous Ford Explorer commercial.
A couple behind the scenes notes first. I’m probably the most uncoordinated person I know and am totally unable to flip a coin, catch it and plop it down on the back of my hand. That scene took many takes. The fact that it was freezing and I was shaking didn’t help much at all.
Cut out from the end is me trying to get out of the truck while wearing the fairy wings. I’d either forget to take off the seat belt or the seat belt would get caught in the wings. This was being shot at the end of a very long and cold day. No one was happy with me. I had so much to do in what looks like a simple shot. I had to pull up quickly to my mark in the truck. Put the truck in park. Take off my seat belt. Exit the vehicle and close the door. Walk embarrassingly down the street in my little tutu.
It all looks so simple!
Ex Machina
Imagine a world where a costumed vigilante saved one of the World Trade Center towers and how the people of New York not only turn him into a super hero, but also their mayor.
I don’t normally like super hero books. The only time I can really get into them is if they’re a different take on a super hero. Probably my favorite “super hero” series was Top Ten which was basically the Justice League meets NYPD Blue. It was about a world where a super hero police department was created to police super heroes. Powers is sort of the same idea, and another fine book.
I was resistant to jump into Ex Machina. It’s part super hero book, part political thriller. It’s Superman meets the West Wing! Comedian Jackie Kashian has turned me onto a handful of comics in the past and has yet to steer me wrong. Awhile back she introduced me to Y: The Last Man written by Brian K. Vaughan. Y was on the short list of books that actually brought me to tears. Oddly enough, just talking about Y in a bookstore recently with my friend Jeff nearly did the same thing again! So while I wasn’t initially interested in reading Ex Machina, which I dismissed as Supermayor, I decided to give it a shot based on Vaughan’s writing and Kashian’s recommendation.
I was blown away right from theget go. The storylines bounce back and forth nicely between mayoral duties and super feats.
The lead character Mayor Mitchell Hundred isn’t stiff and boring, he’s impulsive, imperfect, witty and fun. He makes me feel like how I imagine I’d handle suddenly becoming mayor based on celebrity status as opposed to genuine qualifications. He never does what’s right politically, he always does what’s right as a human…and fortunately it seems to just about always work out in his favor.
Mitchell’s best friend and head of security Rick Bradbury is loyal and devoted. He’s exactly the guy you’d want having your back. The rest of the mayoral staff from Deputy Mayor Dave Wylie to Journal and January Moore are just full rich characters. By the end of the series, I ended up much more involved in the politics of the book than the present day super stuff.
That’s the only complaint I have with the book. I jumped in because Vaughan said right from the start that it was a finite series. It was covering Hundred’s term in office and that was it. While I loved the flashbacks showing Hundred’s adventures…well…misadventures as The Great Machine, a lot of the present day Great Machine action didn’t hook me too much. I can’t really say more without giving away big spoilers.
Vaughan writes comic books like operas. I’ve read three of his books and each one ends on kind of a downer. I love that. Pride of Baghdad…there’s another Vaughan tear-jerker! If you haven’t guessed, I don’t write these things out in advance. I try to write as coherently as possible and keep it some sort of sensical thought. The point is, I love Vaughan’s work. Tony Harris’ art is crisp and dynamic. I love the artists like him and Alex Ross who use real life models in order to create realistic shots that make you feel like you’re reading a movie. You never see something on the page that couldn’t be captured with a camera in real life. I think that helps ground the book in reality.
It really is a great series. If you’re a comic reader and you haven’t checked out Ex Machina yet, I really hope you do. It’s not a long series. It’s 50 issues collected in 10 Trade Paperbacks. The politics aren’t daunting or overwhelming at all. They’re very accessible. Like a Ramones song, this book is short enough to leave you wanting more!
Chatting with Landau
Me and Dave at the Deadpan Benefit Show in 2010
I spent a good chunk of the past couple of years traveling around as far south as Florida and as far west as Oregon with my friend and fellow comedian Dave Landau. Dave has been one of those bright stars in the Detroit comedy scene who started shining a light on the rest of us when he gained national exposure on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham and two seasons of NBC’s Last Comic Standing.
Dave and I sat down together in a hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin during a week that started with the audience taking an intermission to smoke crystal meth in the parking lot and ended later ended with us not being able to get into our hotel rooms because the owner of the comedy club either forgot or assumed we would just be driving eight hours home after having performed three shows all day long for him.
I’ve traveled with a lot of comedians, but Dave has consistently been my favorite. We share the same incredibly dark sense of humor and through working with him so much and wanting to see if I could make him laugh, I started bringing more and more of that to the stage. We’ve battled personal demons together. We’ve changed more than a couple flat tires…all on my car unfortunately. I feel like we did a tour of duty together and when our discussions weren’t horrifically dark and not fit for human ears, they were informative about our chosen trade. I wanted to make sure I got the chance to share some of Dave’s words with the rest of you.
Not Bad meaning Bad but Bad meaning Good
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
I love a great bad movie and this one looks like it’s the Citizen Kane of movie turds. This thing was playing at a theater in Farmington Hills just three months ago and I missed it! Saddest face! Prior to seeing this masterpiece of a clip my favorite bad action scene was a Cynthia Rothrock car chase in which she caught up to the bad guys she was after, blew past them down the road to some hotel, took the elevator to the top floor, took the stairs to the roof, tossed a rope over the side so she could shimmy down to street level and then – while dangling from this rope – karate kicked the bad guy’s car as it zipped by, making it flip over like eleven times and burst into flames. GLORIOUS.
If you have the time, take in Part One of this clip montage, which features our Bollywood Terminator chasing down a mosquito that had bitten the female lead, getting into an argument with the mosquito and a gang of his mosquito buddies, and then forcing it to come back with him to apologize to her. There’s also an extended fight scene that reveals that the Terminator’s fists are apparently made from empty Coke bottles. I need this movie in my life.
Off the Mike 
