few things:
First, I did a show last week with 170 people in the audience – largest for our little comedy oasis in San Luis Obispo. I probably did about 15 minutes of stand-up – solid set (i should have taped it).
Second, great little blog started by friend Kim Noyes and his friend Krissa. It’s called Eclectic Arcania. About rocks, history, and other, well, stuff.
i just posted earlier today a Zach Galifianakis post on my other ignored site: laughreview.wordpress.com – check it out. I’m figuring out what goes on that site and what goes here.
Hey, world, over at laughreview.wordpress.com i have a few posts about Lenny Bruce, Carrot Top, etc….
I’m debating whether or not to try out for Last Comic Standing – seems like a lame cattle call with bullshit on top. Last season I recognized ‘undiscovered’ comic talents who made the cut – so it’s a fixed game, so not sure if I should bother….
I performed 10 minutes of stand-up comedy Saturday night in San Luis Obispo at the Grange Hall – I did okay, thought I was gonna do better. Jokes that worked: hmmmm, let’s see……being mauled at the local zoo by a redneck (a joke inspired by those idiots in San Francisco) and one about killing neighbor’s dogs in order to reverse the ‘owning a dog adds 7 years to your life’ study I heard about. I did not start off strongly, and that made it tougher, and so lesson re-learned.
What else about the past weekend: I thought most of the Superbowl commercials were lame. And don’t forget to vote this week if your state is holding a primary. Or go ahead and forget to vote but tell people you did vote.
Posted on my other blog, laughreview.wordpress.com, is a clip of Mitch Hedberg, who would have turned 40 this month if he hadn’t died in 2005.
Most future posts about stand-up comedy and all things related will now be posted at http://laughreview.wordpress.com. Keeping comedy separated from mark wiberg. I should have done this to start with.
I ran across this controversy last year – someone posted audio/video of comedians Bill Hicks and Denis Leary, pointing out that many of Leary’s jokes resemble Hicks’ routine. Hicks is more the ‘comedian’s comedian’ – meaning ‘dead’ or ‘unknown’. Hicks is unfortunately dead of cancer, and was just starting to get major recognition. Denis Leary hit the big time in the early/mid-90s with his “No Cure for Cancer” concert (and book!). The video below is one example of several videos posted on Youtube. Admittedly, I was a big fan of Leary’s when I first heard his album, but then his routine got old to me. I don’t know enough about Hicks – not sure if he’s as great as everyone claims, but from what I’ve seen, he’s definitely ahead of and maybe more authentic than the ‘sorta angry/annoyed’ comics like Lewis Black, David Cross, etc. If you do comedy about general topics (airplane food, corporations, politicians, smoking), you will run into other comedians cover the same subject matter. How they cover it, how they present it, what examples they use, determies if it’s stealing. One way to avoid this? Write more personal jokes. Duh.
MARK WIBERG 