20-word Fiction: The Comedian (1 of 10)

Greetings from Atlanta:

Saw a great stand-up comic last night. I forget his name. Had one too many vodka shots.


(This is a work of fiction; the comedian pictured is Adam Cayton-Holland. He has been featured on Conan O'Brien)......

Off the Beat and Path Quotes (5 of 6): Margaret Cho

Margaret Cho is one of the very few comedians who has performed at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro (Chapel Hill), NC, a mostly music venue that brings acts, such as Cold War Kids and Of Montreal.

Cho, 45, who is known to shock people with her candid subjects on stage, is also an actress; she is a Canadian who is of Korean heritage.

This is one of her quotes:

"I love drugs, but I hate hangovers, and the hatred of the hangover wins by a landslide every time."

The Last Ten Films We've Seen: City Films

Among the last ten films listed here, there are two with career stand-up comedians/actors: the late Rodney Dangerfield plays a dictatorial cinema manager in "The Last Projection" and the late Richard Pryor has a cameo in "Car Wash."

Other films include the western "Winchester '73" with the late Jimmy Stewart and early film appearances from the late Rock Hudson and the late Tony Curtis (billed as Anthony Curtis), Gene Hackman reprising Popeye Doyle in "French Connection II" and Jean-Luc Godard's "Made in USA," which has only been allowed for public viewing in the USA since 2008 due to a copyright issue.

Here is the list, we got the idea from "Film Comment:"

1. "The Projectionist" 1971. dir-Harry Hurwitz

2. "French Connection II" (pictured top) 1975. dir-John Frankenheimer

3. "Winchester '73" 1950 dir-Anthony Mann #

4. "Made in USA" (France) 1966. dir-Jean-Luc Godard

5. "Car Wash" (pictured center) 1976. dir-Michael Shultz

6. "The Graduate" (pictured bottom) 1967 dir-Mike Nichols #

7. "Happymorethankyouplease" 2010. dir-Josh Radnor

8. "The Avengers" 2012. dir- Joss Whedon

9. "Bridesmaids" 2011. dir. Paul Feig

10. "The Cabin in the Woods" 2011. dir-Drew Goddard

#-Films we had previously watched before

http://www.filmcomment.com

http://www.filmlinc.com

http://www.richardpryor.com

10 People Who Will Decide Election (7 of 10) A Comedian in Portland, Oregon

Well, since WGSR-TV (Star News, Reidsville, NC) seems to think showing objectivity is so yesterday, we hear at "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" are definitely worried about whose feathers we might ruffle (forgive the reference from Big Bird's comments on "Saturday Night Live"), but then again, we have never pretended to be an objective news source. And, if we owned a tv-station we can assure you that we would never air a show hosted by the very radical Rev. Johnny Robertson of Martinsville, Va.

So, as it turns out, 'Politico' has shown a tilt towards (yikes, yikes, no, no, no!) Mitt Romney. The last objective news source outside of Fox News and Radio Havana, Cuba, shows Romney slightly winning Florida, which has 29 electoral votes over President Barack Obama. Similarly, Romney, who once proclaimed to be even more pro-gay rights than the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, is winning in North Carolina by a 48-4-47.6%, which means Star News thinks that Romney will get 79-percent of the vote in the Tarheel State.

Today, we are focusing on Oregon, which we thought might be a swing state, but now only Star News would predict that Romney has a chance over Obama as 'Politico' is indicating that the president is winning 50-42 percent there.

So, we are focusing on a fictional stand-up comedian in Portland, Ore., who happens to look a lot like Robin Williams. We will call him Mort Schultz, and we will say he is 31 years old and will vote for Obama.

For those looking for actual stand-up comedy in Portland, Ore., we understand that Helium Comedy is quite the place to go!

And, for those who support Big Bird and PBS, which apparently Romney sees as some kind of heavy burden on American tax-payers, who want information that is actually impartial, the public tv-station serving all of North Carolina is WUNC-TV. We have no idea when "Sesame Street" airs on the channel as we don't have kids!


http://www.wgsr47.com

http://www.sesamestreet.org

http://www.unctv.org

http://www.heliumcomedy.com

http://www.politco.com

I Made My Standup Comedy Debut

The place was The Idiot Box, a comedy club in downtown Greensboro, NC. It was this past Friday night, and it was Amatuer Night. I was reluctant. I was hesitant. But, hey I had performed karaoke to Talking Heads songs, so why should stand-up comedy be any different?

Of course, five minutes on stage felt like the length of "Ben Hur," but I did manage to pull though it. I made jokes about Warren Beatty's love-life, being a Turkish-American in small-town North Carolina, my agnosticism--which always causes me problems and religious fundamentalism.

I made the Woody Allenesque observation that if heaven and hell existed as the world's fundamentalists think they do, then I could see myself in a line where a serial killer who had just raped and murdered 40 women would get into heaven because he accepted Jesus Christ right before his lethal injection. But, I would get sent to hell for once going to a strip club in Bluefield, WVa., when I was 23 years old.

And, the kicker was that the receptionist at the Pearly Gate would tell me: "Hey life isn't fair, so why should the after-life be any different?"

I was not exactly Lenny Bruce (pictured- yikes, I just found out he died when he was my age---40!, in 1966), but I was bit funnier than a "Gomer Pyle" rerun (I hope!).

SIDEBAR: I just found out that not only is the long-forgotten 1980 comedy film "Soggy Bottom USA" with Don Johnson and P.J. Soles, which has been hard to find for years, is not only available on DVD, you can download it for free on Netflix! I've wanted to see the film ever since I missed it at the Buchanan Theatre in Buchanan, Va., (which reopened in 2003 after being closed for close to 20 years) but I have heard it's a bit of an awful film.

The Rialto Theatre in Raleigh, NC, is also showing another film from that era as they will present Walter Hill's film "Southern Comfort" (1981) in 35-mm at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Tickets are five dollars.

Thing We Learned on Twitter This PM- There is a Comedy Duo Known As....

...........Trotsky and Hutch!

Yes, as reported by the Toronto alt weekly "Eye Weekly," there is a Canadian improv duo made up of Kevin Patrick Robbins and Sean Tabares known as "Trotsky and Hutch." For those who were not born in the '70s or familiar with the Ben Stiller-Owen Wilson cinematic remake, there was an American police action show called "Starksky and Hutch" back when Gerald Ford was president.

For those who flunked history, it should be pointed that Russian political philosopher Leon Trotsky was a leader in socialist thiking who was kicked out of the Soviet Union. Strangely enough, he spent part of his years in exile on the island of Buyukada, near Istanbul, Turkey, in the 1930s.

The Twitter site for "Eye Weekly" said that the group, returning from a five-year hiatus, is performing tonight at the Impatient Theatre Company in Toronto at 9 p.m., which is less than two hours from now!

The group, which started in Vancouver, told "Eye Weekly" that their improv is based on shout-outs from the audience about social agendas, workers' struggles and opressive petit bourgeois dogs.

Somehow, I don't see them coming across the border to perform for the Michigan Tea Party.

SIDEBAR: The lovely Sarah Michelle Gellar is 33 today. She is best-known for her lead role in the late '90s tv series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." She was also in the strange 2006 Richard Kelly film "Southland Tales" which New York film critic Nathan Lee adored. The rest of us are a bit unsure of what to make of it, but we love Gellar just the same. Too bad, she is married to the guy whose father was on "Chico and the Man!"