Star-A-Scopes: Like horoscopes, but more accurate

by Dan Cummins

It’s time Punchline Magazine provides a valuable service to its readers– beyond, of course, offering you the latest in comedy news and interviews.

So, obviously, that means we’re going to give you a weekly dose of astrology. And by “we,” I mean comedian Dan Cummins.

Dan has been studying the stars for years and is finally sharing his gift with the world. Below you will find the only horoscopes you’ll need this week. -dylan

Aries: Tomorrow, you will murder one hipster. Your lucky letter is Q.




Taurus: In two weeks, you will wake up in a cocoon, and then, after a 24-hour incubation period, you will emerge as an elderly black woman who has to take the bus to work for a white family she despises. Unless, of course, you already are an elderly black woman who hates her white family/boss. In that case, you will emerge from your cocoon looking much the same as before, except older, angrier and blacker. Steer clear of seafood.

Gemini: People have a hard time liking you. This trend will continue indefinitely. You have no lucky numbers this week.




Cancer: Tomorrow you will stumble across two corpses and a bag of cash in an alley. Don’t ask any questions. Throw away your cell phone and passport, sneak across a border – any border – and start a new life. Your kids won’t miss you. Your lucky time is 4:44 pm.




Leo: No one wants to say anything, but, you’ve been drinking too much. It used to be funny, but now it’s just sloppy and sad. Time to grow up and snort coke like an adult.




Virgo: Two strange dogs have been lurking around my shed. This week, it’s your job to figure out what the fuck they want with me. Oh, and ease up on the garlic. It’s obnoxious.




Libra: Lately, you’ve been thinking about a lot of things and whatnot. That needs to stop. Just be. No more thinking. About anything. Just be. Just be a robot. Just… be… a… robot.




Scorpio: You are about to come to an important realization. A moment of clarity. You will soon know for a fact that cats are not, in fact, tiny, furry humans, and it’s silly and annoying to make them wear clothes and ask them questions as if you expect them to answer you. Knock it off. Your lucky year is 1876.




Sagittarius: I know you may not be prepared for this, but, in three days, at midnight, you are going to become pregnant. Even if you’re a man. Get ready to break the laws of nature. You’re giving birth to an abomination!




Capricorn: A small band of nefarious lizards has been watching you for weeks. Even I don’t know what they’re up to. Be very afraid. They probably mean you harm.




Aquarius: This week, eight plus eight will equal seventeen. Next week, things will go back to normal. Invest in pork barrels.




Pisces: Good news: On Friday, you’re going to get a promotion. Bad news: On Saturday, you will be fired for money laundering. Don’t worry, on Sunday, you will discover the powers of both levitation and remote thought control. Take over a small island and show the locals no mercy. The time for action is Monday.




Dan Cummins is a nationally headlining comedian with many network television appearances to his credit. His debut album Revenge is Near was released in 2009. Crazy With A Capital F, his Comedy Central hour special, DVD and album, was released in 2010. You can get more info at dancummins.tv.

David Huntsberger: Humanitis

by Carrie Andersen

The best comedy albums usually offer us equal parts “holy shit” moments of recognition, “oh my fuck” moments — where the comic plants an image in your head you never, ever wanted to see — and of course, huge laughs.

David Huntsberger’s well written and structurally sound album Humanitis offers the former two assets in surplus while the supply of laughs feels a little light, leaving the listener with a slight case of ambivalence.

To be clear, you will laugh at Huntsberger; you’ll also accept his theories. You’ll cringe, as well. But the moments that occupy the space between uncomfortable and hilarious burn.

And Humanitis, will make you feel the burn in so, so many ways. You wouldn’t think it just from listening to the first track, though: he kicks his hour off with some fairly tame banter about drunk driving and blacking out. Standard fare for a comedy club.

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Interview with Lynn Shawcroft, Mitch Hedberg’s wife

by Jake Kroeger

With his unfortunate passing in 2005, Mitch Hedberg has gained almost a legendary status in the comedy world. His jokes are quoted constantly and the influence of his writing and delivery are undeniably stamped on the current landscape of stand up comics today. His widow, who is also a comic, Lynn Shawcroft wants to keeps Mitch’s legend alive and spread it to even more comedy lovers through re-launching MitchHedberg.net with unseen footage, notes, and more.

Preparing for a live re-launch show in LA, Shawcroft took some time to give some more details on the site as well a few other Mitch Hedberg developments including the fate of the cult movie that Hedberg wrote and directed Los Enchiladas.

In doing research for this interview, one small detail that was very interesting to me: On Wikipedia, when you type in ‘Lynn Shawcroft,’ it goes right to Mitch’s page.
I think I had a minimal Wikipedia page, but I haven’t done a lot. So, this is funny, on Twitter last year, I got a tweet from wiki-something like, “Are you Lynn Shawcroft, Mitch Hedberg’s widow?” and I said, “Yeah, why?” “Well we’re getting rid of a lot of Wikipedia pages and yours isn’t relevant, so we’re going to hook yours up to Mitch’s.”

Wow.
There weren’t being nasty. I’m sure that’s just what they do, but, yeah, I know it’s a weird thing; it just goes right to his [Mitch's page]. ‘Would Mitch be mad at me?’ is the question. I think they were just trying to link to a better comedian, I guess.

You don’t really think Mitch would be mad at you, would he?
Not at all. No, no. I was only joking. I’m going to tell Wikipedia that, “If he knew, it would be serious.” He wouldn’t care at all.

What’s your fondest memory of Mitch?
I think, from a person who loves comedy, first, seeing him do a headlining set and going, “Oh my God, he’s amazing!” You know, there’s different levels of that.

Falling in love is always great. We met and sort of fell in love; He was in Toronto. We met, then he went back to New York and I thought, “I like him.” Then, he came back and visited me and he said, “Why don’t you meet me in LA at this date in the terminal in LAX and you can come on the road for me for a bit?”

I did and we just stayed together right after that. That was a fond memory. We did a lot of things. We bought a home together, traveled together. One thing I think is amazing about stand-up, one of the gifts it gives, is you get to travel the country. I’m from Canada, but I’ve seen the [United] States so comprehensively and it’s because I was married and I worked a lot and we got to work together.

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Don Jamieson: Live and Hilarious

by Emma Kat Richardson

Seven tracks into Don Jamieson’s raucous and obscene stand-up album, Live and Hilarious, there’s an unfortunately timed bit called, “Obama, Osama, Airport Security,” in which Jamieson asserts that Obama isn’t doing enough to find OBL and end the war on terror.

The inclusion of the track, though of course unintentional, renders the album almost instantly dated; and that’s too bad, because Live and Hilarious is otherwise the best of what you’d expect from Jamieson. On the upside, this characterization almost makes for an interesting testament to the very essence of 2011-ness.

“I love Mexicans, they’re hard workers!” he booms in his sonorous style, and then proceeds to outline the myriad of ways in which sex, booze, celebrities, and the Ground Zero Mosque are all wildly relevant to his observational lens.

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Amy Schumer: Cutting

by Jeff Havens

Amy Schumer is the kind of woman who would probably smile and maybe give you a kiss on the cheek right before kicking you in the nuts.

Then she’d apologize and buy you a drink, but it wouldn’t be an expensive drink, and she wouldn’t really be sorry. That’s the flavor of Schumer’s debut album Cutting, a hysterical waltz through Amy’s charmingly filthy head.

If you think I’ve misrepresented her, you only need to listen to the first five seconds of her album, in which she thanks her opening act and then says, “I can’t believe he has AIDS.” From there Schumer manages to insult as many different groups of people as possible – gays, blacks, women, men, her own friends, Jews, Frenchmen, Swedes, I’m pretty sure I forgot a few.

Her delivery is sweet and understated – in a lesser comic’s hands it might almost come off as lazy – which makes a lot of her punch lines that much sharper and more surprising.

She reserves some of her best insults for herself, though, and they are hilarious. There are too many to list, but here’s a sample of my favorites:

“I finally slept with my high school crush. Now he expects me to go to his graduation.”

“I know what I look like. Like, you’d bang me, but you wouldn’t blog about it.”

“We are whores. I’ve taken the morning after pill the night before. But I’m really not that slutty. I’ve only slept with four people. That was a weird night.”

“I do not like the French accent. It makes my vagina shut like a steel trap. Thank God I’ve got that other hole. Party in the back!”

Schumer’s energy slows a bit in the middle of the album, and she mentions AIDS and the morning-after pill too many times. She pulls out the ‘if you don’t have that friend, you are that friend’ line once, which always annoys me. But these are very small complaints about an otherwise excellent album. Besides, as Amy herself says, “Nothing works 100 percent of the time. Except Mexicans.”

You can download the entire album by clicking the image below. Do it!

Andy Ritchie: King Ding-A-Ling

by John Delery

As if Andy Ritchie were the Mary Lou Retton of comedy, he charges down the runway, leaps headfirst into his act, and sticks the landing on the opening joke of King Ding-A-Ling, his debut CD on Stand Up! Records.

He certainly does not go splat after unexpectedly and brilliantly filleting a ’60s sacred cow, the usually unassailable activists of the civil rights movement, but Ritchie falls into several safe jokes (hey, the white guy likes rap, my clunker the car, damn, my cell phone plan sucks big bucks from me every month) before regaining his cutting form about halfway through his set.

Incidentally, the mention of Retton is intentional; it mirrors Ritchie’s curious reliance on references (including “We Are the World,” Ghostbusters) whose shelf life seemingly expired in the ’80s, a surprise tactic that distracts from the subversive imagination that Ritchie showcases in the spotlight track: “Third World, Secondhand.” His take on the thermonuclear–hot spot of the world, the Middle East, makes more sense than any analysis heard on the squawk shows.

Overall, though, gotta like an album that relieves a political headache, devises a sweet solution to our dependence on antidepressants and puts the “fun” in funeral.

To grab yourself a copy of King Ding-A-Ling, just click the image below.

Interview: Nick Cannon returns to stand-up comedy in style

by Dylan P. Gadino

Coming on the heels of the television premiere of his first-ever stand-up comedy special Mr. Showbiz this past weekend on Showtime, Nick Cannon goes wide with the digital release of the album version today (Buy here).

You’ll be able to snag the album from New Wave Dynamics in all retail stores by May 31.

And this is all while the dude is hosting his own daily morning radio show, Rollin’ with Nick Cannon on New York’s 92.3 NOW FM as well as executive producing and starring in MTV’s new reality series Son of a Gun.

We got the chance to chat with the multi-talented performer about returning to his roots in stand-up comedy, balancing his craft with being married to one of the most famous women in the world (not to mention, just becoming a father to twins) and why he’s not concerned with what the critics may think of him. Check it out!

A lot of people don’t know that you started doing stand-up comedy when you were just 15 years old. Did you feel like you wanted to do this album now, or that you had to do it make sure people knew about your history?
I’m a comic. I’ve always been a comic. And that’s what I’ve always aspired to be. So, I mean, I’ve had some successful sidetracks, you know– the acting career, music, hosting, even all of the entrepreneur efforts that have been really successful for me. So a lot of people know me for those things. And you know, even my personal life is kind of overshadowed by what my real craft is.

So, I felt like I needed to actually show people that this is what I do. And actually once you get that and grasp that, then all my other efforts and anything that I do in entertainment will probably even make more sense. At the end of the day, I’m just a comedian.

Yeah, and we get to see and hear some of your early stand-up footage on the album and special.
That was actually an audition for the Apollo I did in North Carolina. Like, the winner of that got to go to the Apollo in New York. And that was one of the first times I was on stage in front of people that wasn’t a church audience. The way I got on stage first, is you know, in front of – I was opening up for my dad, who was a preacher. So, then front that point, you know, I was probably professionally doing my thing, like you know, getting paid seven dollars a set at the Improv in Hollywood and actually traveling a little bit on the road at like fifteen years old.

When you started out, you performed with guys like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, right?
Yeah, man. And Chris Tucker. All those guys started really young, and I would see these guys and they would be like ‘Yo, why’s this kid in the comedy club?’ And then they would kinda take a minute out of their time because they were like wow, he’s fifteen and trying to do this. And they when they started, they were fifteen and trying to do it. So they would always give me little words and wisdom and stuff.

I remember I was right there on the brink when Chris Tucker just started to take off— just right when Friday popped, right after that time, and seeing him and people like know, and even Eddie Griffin and like you said Chappelle and Rock, they were always just there. Like watching their success and watching their work ethic kind of inspired me at a young age.

Was there one guy in particular that kind of took you under his wing?
Chappelle was really like that. I opened up for Chapelle when he went on the road in 2005. I mean obviously he put me on his show. I mean, he made that famous phrase “Fuck Nick Cannon. Nick Cannon’s ‘ilarious.” He kind of looked out for me on many different levels. He showing me and helped me embrace the craft of being a stand-up.

Are are you still in touch with any of these guys?
Oh, absolutely. I’m definitely in touch. You know how comedians are. They kind of live in their own world and then when you see each other at the club or at an event, that’s when you kind of catch up. Probably not every day on the phone with these guys, but they definitely still are people I admire, look up to, and every now and then will call for advice and those types of things.

Are you concerned at all with what the comedy community is going to think of your first stand-up album?
Not really, ‘cause I know I’m funny. I’ve been funny. However they take it they take it. I’ve been successful being funny for a long time. Comedy has always been therapeutic for me. And I feel like that’s the beauty of being a stand-up— is that it’s raw and uncut and you get to say whatever you want to say and once you say it, who cares? It’s like, who cares how the people, or the critics or all those type of people may see it because the proof is in the pudding.

If there’s laughter there, then you know who was funny. And that’s the beauty of comedy. It could be as subjective as you want it to be and have your opinion, but as long as you get a laugh, that’s what it’s all about. And the laughter is there, so, I welcome any kind of criticism because we all get criticized. We’ll be criticizing till we die but what’s really the point?

I like that you don’t shy away from talking about your wife, Maria, on the album.
Yeah, I mean, I definitely didn’t want it to be the Mr. Mariah Carey show, but I definitely knew that I had to talk about it. I mean, it’s my life. And that’s what my comedy is about. So, there’s going to be some things about me growing up, there’s going to be some thing about me being a husband, becoming a father, but then it’s going to also be my perspective, and my point of view on what’s going on in the world. I think it’s the same thing with every comic. Some people do their comedy about how much they hate their wife. You know? And that’s their act. I mean, mine is about how much I love my wife and that she’s my dream girl, you know? So, it’s no different from anyone else doing stand-up. You have to be real and authentic to who you are.

Does Mariah have any input as to what you say about her onstage?
My wife has the greatest sense of humor in the world. And some of the times I write my best material around her. She’s very funny, and knows how to not take life and you know all of this entertainment stuff seriously. So, she’s the coolest when it comes to that.

Yeah, it seems like she has a good sense of humor.
Right, absolutely. Yeah, she’s all into it.

Let’s talk, if you don’t mind, a little bit about you becoming a dad. I mean, obviously your life has changed drastically…
Yeah, in the last few days…

So how are your days spent now? Are you changing diapers? What are you spending the most time doing right now?
Yeah, my week’s just diaper changing and trying to get as much sleep as possible. Trying to get on their schedule. I mean, I already don’t sleep but I’ll get up in the middle of the night changing diapers and all that stuff. A lot of feeding. I really don’t take part in that part of it, I just oversee that whole thing. I can’t really do much there. I don’t have any milk.

So Mariah is breast feeding?
Yeah, absolutely.

I saw a picture of you online. You’re obviously squeezing in some time to work out.
A little bit, little bit. I gotta be able to protect my kids, man.

You talk a bit on your album about your verbal fight with Eminem. Are you guys ok now or what?
Yeah, man. I mean, to me, at this point, even when you see I talk about it in my stand-up, it’s like I don’t really take it seriously anymore. If that dude ever did have any ill will towards me or my wife, it’s like, you know, I forgive him, I love him for it. I’m supposed to love my enemies, so I can’t even be worried about that. I’m enjoying my life too much to be mad at anybody, really.

We talked about how you got started in very early. And you talk a little bit about your upbringing on the special. It sounds like you came from a pretty supportive, pretty close family. So many times, stand-up comedians get their start because they come from a dark background. But it doesn’t seem that was the case for you.
Yeah, I was reading this comedy book and they were talking about all the things you have to be like to be a good stand-up— and you could tell it was written by, I think it was written by a white female. She was like you have to have some type of hardship, you have to have an opinion, and all this stuff, and then at the last second, she says unless you’re black because – and the entire statement was all of those things come with being black.

I mean, at the end of the day, no matter how you believe my upbringing was, or how it was perceived in the media, I’m still a black man in America. There’s still that natural chip that we have on our shoulders, or whether it’s truly validated because of the way society is.

I mean, I grew up in a typical low income African American household. So, if you see my comedy, that’s where it comes from. And I think that the majority of, you know, comedians, of my generation kind of experience that. So, I mean cats like Katt Williams and Kevin Hart— we kind of all have a lot of same similar experiences.

That makes sense. So what, after the special airs and after the album comes out, what are your stand-up plans?
I’m getting back on the road. I’m ready to do another one.

So you’re not joking around. This wasn’t like a one-off thing. You’re going to start doing this again.
Yeah, once I got back in it, I was in it for the long haul so I’m ready. I’ve already got my new set together. I’m already an hour strong. So I’m ready to get back on the road and start perfecting that, get it to two hours, and, you know, do what I gotta do to get ready to film my next special.

What was it that finally got you either motivated to start doing stand-up again?
I have been doing it. It wasn’t a secret. I would always go to the Improv, or whatever comedy spot and just go up and do it. I hadn’t been on the road. I wasn’t going out booking dates. And a lot of that has to do with my schedule. This was the first time I was able to really go and rock theaters and colleges. I had to get myself in the mindset to be prepared for that and you know, just to go out and live like a regular comic lives on the road.

And at the same time, I’m married and having several other jobs, running a television network, you know, my morning radio show, all that stuff I have to do. So I had to strategically say ‘alright, I can go out you know, every other weekend. I could go do this. If I happen to be in this city, is there a club that I could go and be at?’ So, it was a lot of that. It took a while to wrap my head around that. And I had to get in that comic space; you gotta be in a certain type of headspace as a comic, and write jokes every day. I had to make sure I allotted enough time for that.

I would wish you luck, but honestly don’t think you need it.
Thank you, man. I appreciate it anyway. There’s nothing wrong with getting luck.

For more info on Nick’s comedy, check out nickcannonmrshowbiz.com. To buy a copy of Mr. Showbiz, click the image below!

Alex Koll: Wizard Hello

by Carrie Andersen

On his debut album, Wizard Hello, comedian Alex Koll immediately pulls the audience into his mystical world, presenting himself as a wizard (of course) and describing the ins-and-outs of “wizard comedy,” which apparently involves telling jokes to magical crystals.

From there, Koll takes us on a tour of the most surreal nooks of his imagination, spinning yarns about what Prince’s ostensibly dream-driven “1999″ should have described had he actually been dreaming as he wrote it (a fight with giant lobsters and chocolate shark hands, for starters), or what Sasquatch “heavy on the sass” might sound like (“Yeti or not, here I coooome!”).

There is a risk, though, in basing so much of a comedy act on constructed surreality rather than recognizable experience. He occasionally strays so far from the the traditional and albeit, tired path that it gets increasingly more difficult to laugh at what was — earlier in the album — a novel approach.

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Interview with Doug Stanhope: ‘If I could, I’d quit comedy’

by Dylan P. Gadino

The scene opens: There’s a man impaled… “on a spinning dildo. He’s in a straight jacket, hanging upside down. The only way he can keep the dildo lubricated is to drink Castor oil out of a large rat feeder, so he shits himself greasy to keep that dildo lubricated. Because if the dildo ever goes unlubricated, his asshole will start to stick to it and then his whole guts will spit out of him like cotton candy.”

End of scene.

That’s when Doug Stanhope is jarred out of his latest murder fantasy—this time the victim is an audience member at one of the comedian’s shows who has decided to film the performance with his cellphone camera, instead of just enjoying the experience of being there live and in person. Stanhope can’t stand “tourists of life.”

And on his new album and DVD Oslo—Burning The Bridge To Nowhere, he’s all too happy to tell us about some of the things that go through his head while he’s onstage; the bit above can he heard on the delightfully titled track, “Spinning Dildo.”

I got to chat with Stanhope recently about his new project and thankfully I got to delve deeper into his mind. We talked about his mother, who he says offed herself after years of debilitating disease; we chatted about the concept of love and romance and why, despite him being such a celebrated figure in stand-up comedy, he’d be thrilled to never stand onstage again.

You’ve said more than a few times during your shows that your personal life is pretty good now and you barely know why you’re even doing comedy anymore.
Yeah, the more you say that, the more people show up. In my head I’m careening toward the bottom but in reality I’m doing bigger shows all the time. I’d rather do nothing. If I could retire I would. A lot of comics will say, ‘I can’t go two weeks without being onstage.’ I can go the rest of my life without being onstage.

On the new album, you tell the audience how much you hate recording CDs and filming DVDs, but compared to most comedians, you have a huge body of recorded work.
That’s just it. I’m writing out of a sense of fear. People will say, ‘Oh I heard that shit,’ so I need to make a new DVD, people heard it. I can’t go back to London without a new hour. So, it’s not joyous at all. I got the whole Dave Attell thing –not the self hatred, but the insecurity and the judgment you think is being passed that probably isn’t even there. People probably don’t spend too much time thinking about it. But in your head they are. In your head they’re all fucking critics and they know every fucking word you’ve said before and how you’ve said it.

That’s always the worst part about putting out any kind of recording. There’s always bits that are way better now. And then there’s the old bits you were doing so long that you have to get rid of them on tape, so that you’re now re-learning them so you can put them on tape, but you’re bored of them. Then you forget half the punch lines because you haven’t done them in eight months and you’re like ‘damn, everything sucks now!’ You don’t worry about that with a regular gig. You don’t sweat the gig. But this gig we did for the album we did it on 36 hours notice so I didn’t have any time to sweat it.

Yeah, I feel although all of your albums are pretty raw, this one is even more raw.
Yeah, it’s even more raw because it’s fucking Oslo and you’re just weeding through the material that will even work there. Half the shit you do doesn’t work in Europe even though they speak the language. In the States, if I’m going into a hole I could pull my head out of the ground. You can’t do that over there, because you get three minutes into a bit and you realize the payoff is something that’s completely American-centric and it’s going to fucking die and its three more minutes to you get to that part. And people are like, ‘no just do your material. We understand it. We have Friends.’ Yeah, just watching an episode of Friends really isn’t going to clue you into what I’m talking about. ‘We get everything American over here’ they say. Not at all.

It is what it is. I’ve never liked anything I put out. By the time you put it out you’re so fucking tired of doing it. Inherent in getting it polished is getting sick of it. It gets to the point where it doesn’t make sense anymore, you don’t know why its funny or why people are laughing and then you start hating the audience; you become like Glenn Beck, you’re hating them for liking you.

You do a long bit on the new album where you basically deconstruct the traditional idea of what romance is…
Yeah, romance and love isn’t predicated on fucking. They’re two different things. You can be romantic, but it has nothing to do with buying diamonds and fucking one person for the rest of your life and all this fucking madness.

You’re in a longterm relationship. So, what is romance to you?
I don’t know. We have a great relationship. We’re very juvenile. I lure her into the bathroom after I’ve taken an horrific dump under the guise that one of the dogs is bleeding from one of his paws or something. I buy cap guns and shoot them in her face. We’re fucking silly and ridiculous. We get along great.

How long have you been together?
Almost six years. There’s no jealousy problems. We actually like each other. There are so many people who are with someone they never fucking hang out with; most relationships are so fucking duplicitous. Most people live in them rather than admitting that their relationship is going nowhere. And they end up like your fucking parents, staring at each other in a cold gloom—‘Well, I have to go to work… well, I have to clean the house.’

My mother married my father because it was what you were supposed to do. And then later in life when we were kids he told us, ‘I think your mother married me because it was the thing to do. He was a very simple and sweet guy. It was the early ’70s and I asked her about that. And she said, ‘yeah, that’s it. It was the thing to do.’ It’s incredible to me, the things that people do, just because its what people before them did. We’re the only people alive right now. We can make up our own rules. This entire world could be different by just deciding its different.

Like, hey we’re alive. Why do these rules apply? Those people are dead, they had a reason for this. Even the Founding Fathers shit. Well, that might have worked at the time but it’s a different world. We’re alive so let’s fucking start from scratch. It would be great if generations started by themselves— like when the last guy dies, that’s when the first kids are born and everyone starts from scratch.

I know you read about that teen from Oregon who killed himself onstage after an open mic performance. As soon as I heard about it, I thought of you.
Yeah, I just wanted to repeatedly post it online for people who missed it. And the song he sang too… “Sorry About The Mess” is the name of the song he played. It’s fantastic. It’s horrific and sad. But Jesus, if there’s a way to go… it’s everything you want to do to an audience.

You mean horrify them?
Yeah! People say to me, ‘oh you speak truths onstage.’ Bullshit, I’m not changing anybody’s mind onstage. But to horrify someone like that; that could change someone’s life. I think it’s fucking beautiful.

Yeah, I thought it was very “Stanhope.”
Too late now. It’s already been done. There’s really no ballsier move. My mother killed herself, and that was the single bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone ever do. And it came from a scared woman. I’m doing a bit about it. She had emphysema and was dying and drowning in her own fluids so she ate a shitload of morphine and said goodbye. I have to make a bit out of it. Make it funny. I’ll leave it at that. I’ll save the details.

You were close to your mom, right?
Yeah, but I really didn’t like her much towards the end. She became a horrible, horrible person– for whatever reasons; they might have been good. She wasn’t evil. But when she said it’s time for me to go, there was no one saying, ‘but you have so much to live for!’ She couldn’t even leave the house to continue her hoarding. She was a hoarder but she didn’t have the fucking lungs to go to the dollar store. Between back pain and that, she was just physically a fucking wreck and that lasted for like a decade.

But she was the one person who was talking me into doing comedy before I even tried. I’d call her on the phone being all goofy and shit and she would say, ‘you should do this onstage. You’re funnier than these fucking people on TV.’ She was always behind me. But how you could die at 63 and not have a single friend in the world? When she died, there was no one for me to call– other than my brother, who she called before to tell him, ‘this is it.’ How do you not have anyone in your life? There’s a reason for that. I was the only person she liked, to my detriment. She thought everyone else was an asshole. She would complain about the way my brother was raising his kids. I was like, ‘hey mom, you really shouldn’t be talking about how to raise kids.’ In hindsight we turned out well in spite of a lot of it. But, I don’t want to Margaret Cho-up your interview.

How do you mean, by talking about your mom so much?
Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about it. I hate when people onstage talk about ‘my family is so crazy, my mother is so this’….no one wants to hear that. But may be it’s ok if we kill her at the end of the bit.

I have a feeling you’ll figure out a way to talk about your mom in a way no comedian has before.
Fortunately, I’ve never had a child. Because that always destroys a comic. Louis C.K. is probably the only comic I could name off the top of my head that’s had any material about being a parent that I’ve laughed at. Where it doesn’t seem like it’s ruined him. Almost every comic, once they have kid, you used to like them and now you don’t. It’s like friends; once they have a kid, you can pretty much count on a card at Christmas. Why is he sending me cards? I used to get my coke from that guy and now he’s sending me cards?

Talking about your crazy family is like airline material. There’s no way you can do airline jokes. I’ve done a couple. But as soon as you say ‘airline,’ you’re hack. It sucks when there’s something that’s eating your soul but you can’t do it because it’s hack.

That’s one of the problems living out here [small town in Arizona] in the middle of nowhere and playing rock clubs. I don’t see comics on a daily basis. I don’t know what’s being done. I’m not involved in comedy so it fucks with your head. You’d see that in Carlin in later years. He’d have some fucking fantastic bits but then it would be like, ‘is he doing a Crocodile Hunter bit?’ And of course, he’s the king so we’ll let it slide; you didn’t hear that from Carlin. Let’s just hear the good part again. Because you know Carlin wasn’t hanging around the Improv drinking cocktails saying, ‘oh yeah I’m working on a bit like that, too.’ I’m out of the loop like that.

Which is good in a lot of ways.
Yeah, I mean I don’t really have my finger on the pulse. Jo Koy is a good reference for unfunny comedy these days even though I’m not sure what he does. I saw 30 seconds of him on a commercial once. That’s the only Comedy Central I watch—whatever commercials you get as you’re going back into South Park, because I’ll fast forward through most of them on DVR. And I see a commercial: ‘hey next week on Comedy Central, it’s Jo Koy’… and you’re like, well there’s a new reference for who sucks.

It was like that for Frank Caliendo for me, too. I used to tape the Fox football pregame show when he was part of that just so I could watch him so I can hate him. So I could feel the comedy bitterness. It’s always fun to have someone to hate. I don’t mean any of it. I never did call Kyle Cease back. He sent ingratiating emails, and I know that I would fall for it. So I just ignored it and let the whole thing die. I’m not a guy who’s thinking this whole fucking business makes any difference.

It’s fun to snipe about stuff. It’s fun to have a rivalry with Dane Cook, if you can call it a rivalry. For me it was a fun Yankees vs Red Sox kind of thing. We met at the San Francisco comedy competition in 1995. I had that garage band attitude, like, ‘I knew he sucked even before you knew who he was. You guys don’t even know, jumping on the band wagaon saying Dane Cook sucks. I was saying that even before anyone knew who I was talking about.’ But he was always there. From the competition, then to Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch, it was me and Dane Cook. At the Man Show auditions, it was down to me and Dane Cook and another guy before Joe Rogan got the ok to get out of his contract and do it.

Dane Cook was always kinda right there. It was fun to hate Dane Cook. It’s not my style of comedy. It just boiled down to that. ‘Oh, You don’t like zucchini?’ No, I don’t. ‘Well fuck you, what vegetable to do you like? You don’t know vegetables!” It’s not really personal. But it’s fun to make it personal. And I hope I didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings too bad by saying Kyle Cease’s mother should die or whatever.

It’s so ridiculous. We’re just fat girls singing karaoke. That’s all we are. Everyone. We’re just fat girls trying to get attention singing karaoke. Who gives a shit? It’s so dumb. I want it to be fun again. It’s no fun once you take it seriously.

I’m having fun when I’m not doing comedy. I can quit this. That’s the only thought that keeps me going. It’s that thought that makes me happy— just walking away from it. Just quitting.

For more info on Doug, check out dougstanhope.com. To order the new CD/DVD, just click the image below.

Interview with Rob Riggle, ultimate Renaissance comedy machine

by Jake Kroeger

Comedian Rob Riggle is everywhere. He’s on the big screen, the small screen, and stages across America, and now, on a webseries produced by AXE Shower Gel and Comedy Central Digital, hosting the AXE Dirtcathalon. Punchline Magazine got a chance to catch up with Riggle and his amazing story of how he came to do almost everything (sketch, stand-up, acting, improv, etc.) all at the same time.

You have three separate bios on your site. Do you ever just look back at everything you’ve done and just feel amazed at how far you’ve come?
That’s very nice of you to say, but I don’t look back. You gotta keep going forward.

Really, it’s amazing. You come from the Midwest. You grew up in Kentucky and you went to the University of Kansas. Do you ever think you’re like one of those Horatio Alger “rags to riches” American dreams stories?
I like this. You really romanticized it. I do love this country for many reasons. I had a dream to be a comedic actor and I grew up watching Caddyshack and Stripes and all these wonderful movies and I just thought those guys were so funny and so amazing and I was like, “That’s what I want to do.”

You wanted to be “one of those guys”?
Yeah, you know, that’s a wonderful thing. You put a little hard work into it. In life, you get what you put in. That’s it’s. There’s no silver bullet. There’s no magic combination. It’s just hard work and maybe a little talent and you catch a break here and there, you get an opportunity here and there, make the most of it, and you hope it works out.

I’m still curious, as cheesy at this might sound with everything else I’ve asked you this far, but why was comedy always your dream?
Yeah, I don’t know exactly. It just called to me. I did remember when I saw Trading Places and I remember when I saw Caddyshack or Meatballs or any of these great comedy movies. I remember being just so entertained and so mesmerized by some of the performances and thinking that that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I enjoyed it and I think that’s what drove me to, one day, try to be that.

I remember the joy that Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy and people like that brought me. I can remember quoting them for days and weeks and months and years. Quoting them and quoting them and thinking how awesome that was. Given that opportunity, I wanted to be that guy too. I wanted to do stuff that was funny and hopefully memorable. I get a real big kick out of when people come up to me and quote lines back to me from movies that I’ve done.

That has to be a great feeling.
It’s like if I saw Bill Murray, I’d go up and quote lines to him, you know? It’s very flattering and I’m very grateful.

I do have to take a moment here. You were in the military for almost 20 years. Thank you for your service to our country.
Thanks. I’m still in the Reserves, actually. Twenty-one years.

How then do you manage your time? You’ve come all this way with comedy and you’ve had a very illustrious military career as well. How do you balance something like that?
Right now, I’m in the Reserves, so provided I get in my proper amount of drill days per year, then I have a “good year” is what it’s called. So long as I get in my days, I’m good. I’m getting very close to getting out. So, I should be out probably sometime around this time next year.

You’re going to retire a Lt. Colonel after being in several movies and all these Funny or Die videos.
It’s going to be one hell of a party.

So, you got a degree in film and theater from the University of Kansas, why did you decide to go in the military if you knew comedy is what you wanted to do?
Well, I also had my pilot’s license when I was in college and, at the time, I took a test called the AQTFAR, an aerial aptitude type test. I took this test and the Marines said I scored high enough on it that they’ll give me a guaranteed flight contract. When you’re a young man and about to graduate college and you’re a theater and film major, it means you’re going to be a waiter upon graduation, or, if you’re lucky, a bartender upon graduation cause no one just graduates from college then walks across the street and go, “I’d like to be in movies now.” You have to have a day job, usually for a long period of time.

So I was looking at being a waiter or a bartender upon graduation or I could join the Marine Corps with a guaranteed flight contract and be the next Top Gun. So I thought that sounded a little sexier at the time, but then, as it turned out, as I went through Basic Training, Officer Candidate School, went through all that boot camp, and got to flight school down in Pensacola, FL and eventually continued on in Corpus Christi, as I worked my way through the flight school pipeline, I realized that once I pin my wings on, they got me for eight years and that seemed like a lot back then. That’s my whole life and I wanted to try acting and try comedy, you know, I gotta try it. If I don’t try it, I’d always regret it.

Right.
If I try and I fail, it’ll suck, but, at least, I’ll know. So, I told them I didn’t want to fly anymore and I became a ground officer, which reduced my commitment time, but it was better than right years. I fulfilled my contract as a ground officer and then went and pursued comedy and I’m glad I did.

Even in being a ground officer, how would you allocate your time?
After I left flight school, I was sent to North Carolina and I served there for two and a half years and then I was getting out. My contract was up. I was done and I was actually going to move to Chicago and I was going to study at Improv Olympic or Second City, I didn’t know which one, I just knew I was going to Chicago to do long form improv like all my heroes: Belushi, Akroyd, all those guys. That’s where I was going.

The Marines said, “What would it take for you to stay in?” and I had just been promoted to Captain at that point and I said, “If you can get me to New York or Los Angeles (cause we have a little public affairs office in those places), I would extend on active duty.” They called my bluff. The next day, I had orders to New York City. So, I moved to New York City and I was a Marine seven to five during the day, then, at night, I would leave straight from the Marine office and go downtown to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and I would take classes, do lights and sound for people’s shows, anything I could do to be around the theatre. I would hang around with guys from my improv classes and we would write sketches. We would perform on any empty stage that would have us. Eventually, I started to teach down at the UCB and all that stuff was in the evenings and that was seven nights a week.

All my weekends, I was at the UCB constantly trying to learn, trying to absorb, just take in as much as I could, meeting other comedians, meeting other writers who turned out to be life long friends and I still play with them and perform with them to this very day. As a matter of fact, Paul Scheer, Rob Heubel who are from Human Giant, the three of us were on the same improv troupe at the UCB for 7 years. Tonight, I’m going to the UCB Theatre here in Los Angeles and we’re doing a show that we did back in New York called “Facebook”

That’s where you take an audience member’s Facebook profile and improv off that, right?
Exactly. Back in New York, way back in the day, the original name of the show was “MySpace”. I mean, I still do improv whenever I get a chance. I don’t get paid for it, but we do it because we love it.

Absolutely.
We love each other and we love doing improv.

I always held this belief about comedy that if you’re going to perform it, you can’t be in it for the money. You have to be in it for the love of it because you’re not going to make any money at it for a long time.
That is a cold hard fact. You gotta love so much that if you wouldn’t do it for free, it’s probably not what you should be doing.

As I’m a stand-up comic as well, here in LA, performing for free kind of goes without saying.
Yeah, exactly. But, if you work at it long enough and hard enough and get where you want to be, the money will come.

You were a Marine from seven to five, then you were at the UCB seven nights a week. How do you have the energy for that?
You know, you do a lot of things when you’re a young man, right? If you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it.

Did you feel coming up through the UCB prepared you for things later in your comedy career like the Daily Show, SNL, the Office?
Absolutely, 100 percent. I believe the UCB is hands down one of the best training grounds for whatever you want to do. If you want to be a writer, if you want to be an actor, if you want to be a stand-up even, believe it or not, it’s just a wonderful place to go learn because you get stage time, which is crucial. You learn what works in front of an audience and what doesn’t and why. You start surrounding yourself with a community of comedians and writers and it’s also just a great place to be seen. There’s managers and agents and casting directors are all over the UCB Theatre in New York and in LA. It’s a real good community and it’s a good place to start.

Do you think it’s almost like a movement at this point? UCB, alternative comedy?
I don’t know. That’s a good question. I don’t know how I’d frame it like that. I just think a great training ground and a great proving ground. A great place to grow your roots and also grow your wings. Oh, I sound like my dad, right?

They’re there for a reason.
I have nothing but positive things to say about the UCB because I feel like I grew up there comedically. I got to get up and do shows. I had shows that were very successful and shows that tanked. You know, you have great days and you have bad days, but it’s all learning. Again, I still have people I met there that I still work with to this very day and I can see myself working with them for the rest of my life because they’re wildly talented and we enjoy each other’s comedy.

The reason I ask about UCB being a movement is that a lot of people that aren’t aware that the UCB even exists, that there’s such a thing as alternative comedy. Here in LA, there are people that only know, as far as comedy goes, about the Hollywood Improv, Laugh Factory, the Comedy Store, and that’s it.
They deny themselves. I’m a stand-up too and I love stand-up and I enjoy it a lot, but improv is something special and when it’s done well, it’s really fun to watch people who know what they’re doing. It’s a really a good time. It also feels a little safer than going out on the stage all by yourself, especially when you’re starting out.

There’s almost very little difference between some booked shows and some of the open mics here in LA because you’re still performing for comics and it’s rough. It can be great sometimes, but, either way, you, as a performer, have to go through it. A working stand up comic friend of mine was telling me recently that bad shows never stop. You’ll always keep having bad shows. It’s just the frequency of it will go down if you keep going up and keep working at it.
That’s a fact. Sometimes, it’s out of your control. I’ve done stand-up shows that have gone average and you think to yourself, “What was the deal with tonight?” Sometimes, it’s you. Sometimes, it’s them [the audience]. There’s a lot of factors that go into a good show that you kind of just take for granted. That’s accurate though; the bad shows get fewer and far between.

Jokes.com
Exclusive – Rob Riggle – Should Be Dead
comedians.comedycentral.com

You did sketch and improv for so long, how did you get into doing stand-up?
I was on the Daily Show and I shared an office with John Oliver for almost three years and John Oliver is an amazing stand-up comedian. And, he was always on my case, telling me that I gotta do it and I finally said OK, you’re right, I’m gonna do it. So he kind of pushed me into getting out there and, you know, I would go around New York to the Slipper Room, the Piano Room, UCB, any place that had stage time and I would get up and do five minutes here and five minutes there and eventually I was able to build a set.

Is that set what you do now or do you still write new material?
I’m always developing material. Not enough, lately. I’ve been writing screenplays and stuff. You know what it’s like being a stand-up (ed. note: writer Jake Kroeger performs stand-up in LA), you have your notebook, jotting down premises and then you’ll flesh that out later and then you come back and think, “Why did I think that was funny?” Though, sometimes you look back and see that there was something funny there, “I can work with that.”

Then, you’re doing it six months later and then you find what was funny actually worked. You just found that little detail that needed to be there for it to work.
Absolutely.

You’re doing the road now, correct?
Yes.

Do you think being in the military has mitigated how lonesome and grueling that can be?
Yeah, definitely. It was absolutely a good training ground.

Road stories with comedians are always a big deal and how depressing it can get, but you must have a pretty high tolerance for it.
Well, I’ve been deployed before and I know what it’s like and also, I’m kind of a square because I’m married and I didn’t get into stand-up until after I was married, a little later in life. Most of those comics when there out there on the road, they’re in their 20’s. They’re single and they’re getting loaded, meeting girls, you know, and it’s a good time. For me, I go to my hotel room. I go to bed. I go to the clubs and do my gigs. Then, I go home and that’s it. So it’s not quite the wild ride that everyone else is having.

You’ve done the Daily Show, SNL, stand up, viral videos. Take us, if you would, through the trajectory of where you want to go comedy wise and how it’s been?
Well, I would love to be the lead in a movie. Eventually, someday, I would love to have that opportunity and other than that, I want to keep doing what I’m doing, which is comedic acting. It’s so much fun when you get to work with really funny, talented people. If I keep doing that, that’s all I need and I’m a very happy man.

How do you “switch hats” between all of these things: sketch, stand up, improv, acting? At the end of the day, it’s still comedy and you’re making people laugh, but it’s a different skill set.
It’s like being a baseball player. When you’re in the field, you have situation awareness. If they hit a “pop-up,” you know how to handle it. If they hit a ground ball, you know where you’re going to throw it, and when you’re at the plate and it’s time to bat, it’s a totally different thing. It’s still in the same genre of baseball, but it’s a different skill set and you gotta know how to hit the high ones and how to hit the low ones. You got to have all those skills down, but it is all under the umbrella of baseball. I think the same thing goes for comedy.

You’ve got the big umbrella of comedy, but then, underneath that umbrella, you have stand-up, sketch, comedic acting, story-telling, writing. you know, there’s all kinds of things that fall under that. It’s just different skill sets and I think, as a comedian, you need to have as many of them as possible.

You’re doing so many projects right now, building the Rob Riggle brand?
I don’t look at it as building the Rob Riggle brand, but I definitely look at it as an opportunity to work. That’s all that I can ask for, but I hear that too, “You gotta come up with your own thing, your own brand, da da da…” So it’s yes and no. If it’s something good, people buy into it, gets traction, gets you recognized, then that’s great, but it doesn’t mean that it works for everybody. Generally, what I’ve found and what I believe to be true is that if you just go out and do good work, the best you can, things tend to follow. Things take shape the way they’re supposed to. There’s no magic formula. There’s no silver bullet answer to the combination of success. It doesn’t work like that. There’s no such thing as an overnight success. There’s a ten year overnight success. That’s pretty common.

I love how with comedic performers when they break out, people think they’re just brand new, but have been working at it for 15 years.
I think people watch American Idol too much these days and think it’s going to happen overnight like you can just walk off a playground and be a superstar. If it happens, it’s one in a million. It’s the exception and not the norm. The norm is: you work your balls off, you don’t get paid much, you don’t get appreciated much, as a matter of fact, you get fucking out right abused. If you have enough tenacity, you might catch enough breaks that you actually get what you want.

You said that there is no answer to making it in comedy. I think that you have a little bit of an answer. You do all these different things we’ve mentioned throughout, do you think that’s what it takes to make it?
No, I don’t necessarily that is what it takes. I think hard work is what it takes. Generally, people want it to come to them, but it’s never going to come to you. Unless you are one of maybe 10 people in this world that are on a very small A-list, people actually write movies and produce movies for you, everything else you have to go get yourself.

Like your most recent project, The AXE Dirtcathalon. What exactly is it?
The good people over at AXE Shower Gel are relaunching their brand and they wanted to do it in a fun, unique way. So, they created this series called the AXE Dirtcathlon. It’s basically a game show meets a reality show on the web. We have four, hot, young, sexy couples competing against each other in these bizarre challenges that we’ve created for them, so that they get very dirty in the process and whoever wins out of this challenge gets a trip to Spain to be a part of that festival where they throw tomatoes at each other so they can get dirty all over again and if you go to Axe.Atom.com, you can watch these webisodes and you can even win prizes yourself.

How did you get approached for this project?
They just called. They called and asked if I’d be willing to host and I said, “yeah.”

You can catch more of Rob at the AXE Dirtcathalon here and find out where he’s performing next or what big blockbuster comedy he’s in at RobRiggle.com.

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