Last week, I featured a teen comic from the Seattle area and today I’ve decided to stick to my roots and introduce another talented comedian who hails from the Emerald city. Jubal Flagg is a comic and radio personality on The Jackie and Bender Show on KISS 106.1. Often dealing with callers or celebrities live on the air, Jubal has clearly honed the ability to think of material quickly and on the fly. Although the radio program is a fantastic gig, I think Jubal thrives on a stage behind a mic.

Jubal delivers his sometimes edgy material (careful masturbation, driving drunk vs. driving stoned, and doing a woman with no arms doggie style) with a mellow and laid back demeanor. He looks very comfortable on stage and lets the audience know he is confident in his material. Too many comics take the stage doubting their jokes or focusing on not having a bad set that it gets the audience feeling the same way and that is a recipe for disaster. Not so with Jubal. Watching Jubal, you immediately feel like you can let your guard down and enjoy some good laughs.

If you live in the Seattle, WA area or are planning to visit soon, you can see Jubal perform live on November 11 at Rocko’s and on November 13 at Jazzbones. He also performs regularly at the Seattle Comedy Underground and Laugh’s Comedy Spot in Kirkland.

Punchline Magazine ended up giving away 17 pairs of tickets to see the legendary Artie Lange on the latest installment of LateNet with Ray Ellin, which aired live on PalTalk Monday. If you missed it, here’s a little taste:

Keep your eye on DailyComedy.com; I’m sure they’ll be rolling out more Artie!

Happy Halloween, lovely Punchline readers. A lot of people take humor into account when choosing their Halloween costumes. Sadly, I ran out time (and money… ok mostly money) so I had to go with an old standby vampire outfit, consisting of my mom’s old 70’s gown, some fangs that took far too long to customize and caused way too many burns on fingers, and a pentagram necklace recycled from last year’s Nikki Sixx costume.

However, I’d like to share with you my favorite photo that I took this year. Look below to see Joe Gonzalez sporting “Sad Pooh.” Eat some candy for me and have a wonderful Halloween!

Last night in anticipation of the New York Comedy Festival, comedians Lee Camp and Marc Theobald won the second showcase competition at Stand-up NY in the search for the funniest comic in the city. They, along with Joe DeRosa and Joey Gay will move on to compete in the finals Nov. 5 at Carolines. The winner that night will get a cash prize, a week of shows at Carolines, a spot at the Festival and more. The next round of semi finals competition is Nov. 1 at Stand Up NY. See below for the list of comics scheduled to compete that night.

For now enjoy some video of last night’s winners:

PRANKTIVISM vs. Sweatshop Labor - Part One

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Comics to perform at the next round of semi finals competition Nov. 1st at Stand Up NY.
Pete Holmes
Dustin Chafin
Ryan Reiss
Dante Nero
Paul Virzi
Julian McCullough
Val Jegar
Colin Kane
Bob DiBuono
Erica Watson
Danny Siegel
Kurt Metzger
Sean McCarthy
Sauce
Luca Tesconi
Will Vought
David Kinney
Alli Breen
Michael Brill
Wil Sylvince

Are you like me and have a love for stand-up comedy but live in an area that is miles away from the nearest venue? What do you do? You can either drive the distance until you can no longer afford the fuel or you can get stand-up venues started right in your own backyard (this last one requires some spare time (and a very big backyard).

I live near Olympia, WA and there are NO comedy venues here. The nearest club is The Comedy Underground in Tacoma and then of course in Seattle there are plenty of historic clubs to choose from. The problem is that these are too far out of reach for me and are not practical. Downtown Olympia does tout quite a few cafes, bars, and theaters, that already offer either poetry reading or local music talent. If your town offers any of those types of establishments, then your new goal is to meet with the managers of those venues and get your own open mic started.

This task sounds daunting, I’ll admit, but if you are able to start up an open mic at least once a week at a small bar or cafe, a manager will see the revenue potential and might want to consider booking comedians on a more regular basis. It might not hurt for you to MySpace some local comedians and let them know where they can now send some head shots and video clips too.

Have you ever tried something like this before? Was is it a success or a miserable failure? I want to know! Leave a comment with you experience and/or thoughts on the subject below.

Since there are so few documentaries out there geared toward obsessed stand-up comedy fans, it’s always a pleasure to see someone create something other than a live comedy album or DVD, especially when it gives us a look into the inner goings on of comedians.

Comics on Duty: We Love You, Mrs. Bevins does just that and does it well. Of course, as one would probably infer from the title, this isn’t a typical day-in-the-life-of type of film.

Rather, we’re given access to four Los Angeles-based comedians – John Bizarre (who directed the film), Danny Bevins, Sarah Tiana and Dave Mishevitz – during their travels throughout Iraq and Afghanistan to entertain U.S. soldiers.

Like the USO, Comics on Duty – founded in 1992 – is an organization that provides moral support to active military, specifically by sending headlining comics overseas.

Bizarre deftly integrates interviews with all four comics with short clips of them performing, traveling in convoys to the next show, flying in choppers and talking with soldiers all while dropping flashes of real life in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While its clear through each comedian’s time on screen and off stage that they hold a deep respect for the soldiers they’ve been sent to entertain, Comics on Duty never slips into the all-too-easy-comfort niche of sentimentality. The film doesn’t glorify the war, nor does it suffer from an agonizingly patriotic bent.

Instead, Bizarre strikes an excellent balance that finds him, Bevins, Tiana and Mishevitz honoring our soldiers without creating a political statement for or against the war; it’s something that sounds easy to accomplish yet rarely actually done in these times where barking out highly-charged opinions means higher ratings.

Check out the Comics on Duty trailer here.

One of my favorite NYC comics, Nate Bargatze, has this bit I love about why he likes Wal-Mart. He doesn’t get why people who don’t like the franchise say it’s because they support small mom and pop shops instead, when really, Wal-Mart was initially a mom and pop shop, then they figured it out, became awesome and got it right.

Dane Cook, Chappelle & Dave Attell didn’t just wake up one day and go, “Do comedy? Sure!” and then the next morning, they’re all over TV. They started out as tiny shops and then figured it out.

So rather than being a cynical small shop…why not go check out the Wal-Marts (just go with the metaphor) of stand-up and see what they’re doing that’s getting them to where they are? Because if I hear one more “new comic” say they don’t go see stand-up shows, I’m going to punch them in their stupid, bitter face. If these guys are successful and you’re not yet, you should try and figure out what’s going on.

Oh! And visit Nate online at myspace.com/natebargatze

Support your favorite stand-up comedy magazine by listening to some online radio today.

As most of you know (either from experience or because you’re smart), most working comedians spend a great deal of time on the road. I was thinking about this and it dawned on me that there must be some interesting tips for the road that various comics have come up with and could share with the rest of the community. So here, I’ve compiled a shared list of what I’m calling the comedian’s road survival guide.

• Pack Febreeze and keep your tank as full as possible - Charlie Moreno
• Take a cooler stocked with sandwich meats, PB&J, mayo, mustard, and lots of canned food etc. You will save so much money on food that you may actually break even. Don’t eat fast food or Denny’s everyday…you’ll end up feeling like shit. - Sina Amedson
• Learn something about working on a car. Nothing major. Make sure you have a clue on how to change a tire, battery, and belt. - Matt, the puppet guy
• If you have a mic/mic-stand, I recommend taking them. As well as any cables you may have…you’ll be surprised how many different bars/clubs have shitty equipment or broken equipment. You can find that you saved the day by having something better on hand. - Sina Amedson (again (he shared a LOT of tips)

Do you have a story of a time when one of your sure fire tricks of the trade saved your butt on the road? We want to hear about it! Leave a comment and let’s share this with stuff others!

There’s recently been more than a few tangential stand-up comedy diversions that deal with the insider aspects of the industry out there: among others, there’s Mitch Shydner and Mark Schiff’s I Killed, Jimmy Carr’s Only Joking and the newest Comedians of Comedy DVD.

Most of these projects, understandably, are produced around big-name comics or big-name comedy tours. It’s rare that comedy fans get a glimpse inside the lives of comics you never heard of, the ones that eek out a living crisscrossing the country, performing at town halls, bars, the occasional club and fighting for a few drink tickets and decent motel in which to sleep.

To remedy that, Canadian comic Bryan Cox – also an accomplished radio and voice over artist – has taken his 18 years of stand-up experience and his skills with a studio microphone and created the two-disc audio book, Road Stories of the Real Highway Comics.

The title of the book leads you to believe that the virtual pages would be filled with little more than story after story from comics. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the book, many times, doesn’t know what it is— and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

There’s plenty hilarious stories for sure, but, since Cox is a seasoned comic himself, you also get a lot of stand-up-comedy-school type entries, where Cox lets us in on the inner workings of agents, managers and comedy venues. When Cox isn’t relaying stories or teaching, he’s giving tips for would be comics.

Through it all, Cox takes care to keep entries concise and entertaining; a lesser talent would embrace every self-indulgent whim and drag out each story minutes too long. The comic also sparingly mixes in simple sound effects to create audible segues for listeners.

And speaking of listeners, while Road Stories has been skillfully produced into hours of easily digested material for hardcore comedy crazies, it’s not for casual comedy observers. If you have more than 10 comedy albums in your CD collection or if you’re a comic of any level; if you’re a comedy agent, manager, publicist or comedy club owner, you should pick this up.

Click here to purchase Real Stories of the Highway Comics.