Mid-October, 2011 set performed at the 9:55 Comedy Club, McCormack’s Irish Pub and Cafe Diem open mics in Richmond, VA.
 
It’s Columbus Day. If you really want to get into the spirit of Columbus Day, rob a Seven-11 and kill the owner. Last month was World Alzheimer’s Month. I wanted to observe it but I forgot.
 
I’m excited to be here. How excited? More excited than Amanda Knox at an orgy. Good news: Amanda Knox’s murder conviction is overturned. Bad news: she’s been sentenced to spend a season on ‘“Jersey Shore” in Italy. Spoiler alert for “Jersey Shore”: in the dramatic finale, the Situation gets herpes on his Genoa salami. TLC canceled “Kate Plus Eight.” Kate Goselin will team up with Casey Anthony for a new reality TV show, “Kate Plus Casey Minus Eight.”

Ratings are down for “Dancing with the Stars.” That’s understandable. It’s hard to say whose wardrobe malfunction the audience is more worried about: Nancy Grace or Chaz Bono. The Mentalist is so perceptive, he can actually tell the difference between Erin Burnett and Erica Hill. “The Playboy Club” gets canceled after three shows. A bitter Hugh Hefner says, “I’ve had Viagra erections that lasted longer.” Christina Applegate is the star of “Up All Night,” a sitcom about a couple with a new baby. If Christina breastfeeds the baby, that will be some real acting. George Lopez lost his job as a late night talk show host on TNT. Things are so bad he had to take a job as Craig Ferguson’s pool boy.
 
The bad news: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie won’t make a run for president. The good news: he’ll still make a run to Krispy Kreme. The bad news: Sarah Palin says she won’t run for president. The good news: she’s considering another run at Glen Rice. Texas Governor Rick Perry likes to talk about seceding from the United States. It got so bad the other day his hairpiece seceded from his head. Michelle Obama shopped incognito at Target and picked up a copy of “One-Term Presidency for Dummies” by Jimmy Carter at 20 percent off.

I realize the Apple iPhone 4S announcement was a big disappointment. I still feel Steve Jobs
 overreacted. Steve Jobs is not dead. He’s just extensively product testing the iCoffin.
 
I had the $5 three-piece chicken special at Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House. Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House is where the people of Walmart go when they want to make fun of people. “Ooh, he’s too fat.” The chicken wasn’t free range. It was sit on a couch, smoke a bowl and watch tiddlywinks on ESPN chicken. This chicken wasn’t organic. It had more antibiotics in it than a 60-year-old San Francisco AIDS patient.
 
 

Welcome to the September, 2011 newsletter from stand-up comedian Chris Martin. This is the first issue and I hope to put out one every month to let people know what’s going on with my comedy in particular and the comedy scene in general, both locally and nationally. The biggest news in the Richmond, Virginia scene is the departure of several comics for other areas. People are always moving on. You can count on someone leaving for another city every three or four months. Stephen Bryant moved to Philadelphia more than a year ago. Blake Midgette moved to Austin, Texas last year. Erik Monical and Anthony McBrien moved to Chicago. The difference this time out is the relatively large number departing in a short period. John Reaves moved to Brooklyn in June. Patrick McCarthy headed out to LA in August. Joe Hafkey just left for Austin, Texas and Brian Mann took the train to Chicago.

John Reaves was a triple-threat: stand-up, improv and sketch. He and Omari Brown had a sketch comedy duo called The Undergrads. John was a high-energy likable guy who was ubiquitous on the RVA stand-up scene. Patrick McCarthy, when he wasn’t writing scripts and comix, was a regular on the RVA stand-up circuit after graduating from Virginia Tech. He was also a supporter of the Krakajokea East of Java joke-writing sessions which I ran last summer.

Joe Hafkey started Cafe Diem Comedy Night more than two years ago after the demise of the Sticky Rice open mic. Sticky Rice was one of the few open mics around, aside from the Pour House. If Joe hadn’t stepped up to fill in the gap, the RVA comedy scene probably would have lost momentum. Cafe Diem begat open mics at Fallout, Aztek Grill, City Dogs and McCormack’s Irish Pub as well as the open mic at the 9:55 Comedy Club. Joe was just getting started in that he had begun to do booked shows, most notably bringing Ben Kronberg of “Last Call” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and bringing back to Richmond Sara Schaefer and Blake Midgette. My exit interview with Joe should air on the “Too Soon” podcast. Brian Mann was a high school senior who revived booked shows at the New York Deli around December after a hiatus caused by Blake’s departure. Brian was also active in stand-up, sketch and improv. Although on the scene for a relatively short time, he was actively engaged.

This comedy diaspora is bound to have an effect on the Richmond scene. How much remains to be seen. Will the scene will lose momentum? Looking around at a recent Cafe Diem, I would estimate that only about a half of the people who started out more than two years ago are still active today. They’ve been replaced by new faces but I can’t say yet whether it’s a case of two steps forward, one step back. At its height, Cafe Diem would have 25 comics going up with five on the wait list. The August 29 Cafe Diem had 18, possibly due to the hurricane. The September 12 edition was back up to 24 but audience attendance was low. While there has been a proliferation of open mics, some of them such as Aztek Grill and City Dogs, died out last summer.

It’s been more problematic with booked shows. After two iterations, Comedy at the Camel is sleeping, if not dead. Underground Comedy at the New York Deli version 2.0 just went six feet under after someone complained about a black comic using the n-word. Strange Matter went toes-up after one show. Katrina Johnson revived it and it had a good run for six shows. Fortunately, scene maker Johnny Hugel picked up the banner of alt-comedy with The Midnight Suggestion every other month at Steady Sounds Records on West Broad Street.

Ironically, the Richmond Times-Dispatch just ran an article on the Richmond comedy scene. You can read it online here: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/entertainment/flair/2011/sep/01/tdweek08-a-man-walks-into-a-bar-in-richmond-ar-1277481/ Was this the high water mark for Richmond comedy or the first step to bigger and better things? Time will tell.

As for myself, I made it into the semi-finals last month of the stand-up category of the MakeAStar.com talent competition, which is an internet/cable hybrid. I’m about to enter the Andy Kauffman award competition for the second time. I didn’t enter last summer because I was doing a lot of out-of-town shows and got busy. I don’t normally do sketch comedy except for helping out John Reaves and Omari Brown on several of their Undergrads videos last year. I recently returned to sketch comedy for episode two of “Strange Bedfellows,” a webisode produced and directed by Johnny Hugel with local luminary Joey Tran as director of photography. Stand-up comics John Reaves, David Marie-Garland and Nathan Plummer are the lead characters. My role entailed a Saturday afternoon getting tracked while biking around Byrd Park by a DSLR mounted on the back of an SUV and one line of dialogue on set at Johnny’s house.

A lot of comedy biz these days gets conducted with the Internet and computers. Several years ago, I managed to hose Windows XP on my prehistoric used Dell Latitude C600 laptop which didn’t come with any way to restore Windows. Since then, I’ve tried several iterations of Linux, mostly Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Puppy Linux which supposedly work well with older computers. All of them insisted that the largest screen resolution I could work with was 800x600 even though the Dell is capable of 1024x768. When my last version, Linux Mint 10, started acting up, I tried Linux Mint 11 LXDE. Shazam, I had 1024x768 resolution. After nearly a year of working with the 10-inch screen, I now have so much real estate I feel I’ve moved into a 40-room mansion. The 256K memory means I can only open two or three tabs in Google Chrome before the Dell starts the equivalent of a computer wheezing, i.e. prolonged disk thrashing.

That’s it for this month. Have a great fall and see you in October. 

Komedy Karaoke

Hipsta’s Paradise (to the tune of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise)

August 1, 2011 aty Joe Hafkey’s last open mic at Cafe Diem Comedy Night, Richmond, VA

This is Joe Hafkey’s last open mic at Cafe Diem Comedy Night. It’s a shame because Joe has helped change the face of stand-up comedy in Richmond and he was just getting started. Joe is moving to Austin, Texas to found the Joe Hafkey School of Anger Management for Stand-up Comedians. He’s also has a book coming out in the fall on the subject called, “Shut Up, Faggot.” Michael Richards will write the introduction. Joe says that only iconoclasts like Blake Midgette deserve a roast. All of you who think Joe Hafkey is an iconoclast say, “Fuck, yeah.” I can’t hear you… 

Hit it.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of the Fan

I take a look at my life and realize I need a tan,

Cause I’ve been open micin’ and laughin’ so long that

Even Blake Midgette thinks that my mind is gone.

But I ain’t never crossed a man that didn’t deserve it

Me, be treated like a hack, you know that’s unheard of

You better watch if you talkin’ and where you gawkin’

Or you and your cronies might be walkin’

I really hate to trip but I gotta reloc’-

As I grow I see myself in the cigarette smoke, fool

I’m the kinda C Brian Mann wanna be 

On my knees in the night

Doggin’ John Reaves in the room light.

Been spending most our lives living in a hipster’s paradise

Been spending most our lives living in a hipster’s paradise

Keep spending most our lives living in a hipster’s paradise

Keep spending most our lives living in a hipster’s paradise

This is the situation they got me facin’

I can’t live a normal life, I was raised in the LA comedy scene,

So I gotta be down with the meme.

Too much WTF-listenin’ got me chasin’ the dream.

I’m an VCU-educated fool with alt-comedy on my mind.

Got my mic in my hand and a scene in my eye.

I’m a reloc’ed out hipster, set-trippin snarkster.

If my audience is uncomfortable that don’t arouse my anger, fool.

Bombing ain’t nuthin’ but a heart beat away.

I’m livin’ life on the way to LA, what can I say?

I’m twenty-five now, but will I live to see twenty-six?

The way things are goin’ I’m going to wind up in Austin, Texas the sticks.

Tell me why are we so blind to see

That the jokes we blurt are by you and me.

Been spending most our lives living in a hipsta’s paradise

Been spending most our lives living in a hipsta’s paradise

Keep spending most our lives living in a hipsta’s paradise

Keep spending most our lives living in a hipsta’s paradise

Jokes and the funny, funny and the power

Minute after minute, hour after hour

Everybody’s laughin’ but half of them ain’t lookin’

At what’s goin on in the kitchen but the Rock smells what’s cookin’

They say I got ta learn, but nobody’s here to teach me,

If they can’t understand it, how can they reach me?

I guess they can’t; I guess they won’t

I guess I’m gone to Texas; that’s why my life is peachy, fool!

Been spending most our lives living in the hipsta’s paradise

Been spending most our lives living in the hipsta’s paradise

Keep spending most our lives living in the hipsta’s paradise

Keep spending most our lives living in the hipsta’s paradise

Tell me why are we so blind to see

That the jokes we blurt are by you and me.

Tell me why are we so blind to see

That the jokes we blurt are by you and me.

Image via Wikipedia

Queen Elizabeth once referred to a particularly bad year as “annus horribilis.” Lately, it’s just been anus. Even then, it’s always helpful to remember that things could be worse. You could be Blake Midgette, for example. Blake is a former Richmond, VA comedian who was Gone to Texas — Austin, specifically, last year. There he managed to contract a staph infection and run up a considerable hospital bill with no insurance.

I passed the hat at Brian Mann’s New York Deli comedy show, where Blake used to run a show called Super Friends Camp. Just about every comedian at Brian’s show had also performed at Blake’s. I raised $21. I passed the hat at the 9:55 Comedy Club open mic the following night and raised $13. Passed the hat at the McCormack’s Irish Pub open mic and it came up empty. Technically, it came up worse than empty because Silver Persinger, who shoots a lot of video at RVA comedy events, put money in the hat and it got stolen. I have to wonder what kind of rat bastard would do that? Next, Silver put out a jar at Cafe Diem Comedy Night and raised $8.43, for a total of $42.43, which should buy Blake an aspirin or a bandage at current hospital rates.

I’ve been procrastinating sending Blake the money via PayPay because I knew they would have me jumping through hoops. Sure enough, I couldn’t use my checking account to pay him because that was linked to an earlier PayPal account. I couldn’t access that account because PayPal wouldn’t send me the password to the email account it was linked to. Then several attempts to use my ATM card. Finally, I was able to start the process. Now understand, I could go on Amazon and buy anything I could afford as long as I had the correct card info. PayPal charges you $1.95 and then you have to go look up the code attached in your bank account and then enter it in your PayPal account for verification. Banksters steal billions without any consequences and I have to go through this just to get money to a impoverished comedian. 

Doing my set at Comedy @ McCormack’s Irish Pub Wednesday, improv wankster Josh Blubaugh strolls up to the stage and past me to to talk to his bud, MC Steve Howse, sitting nearby at the bar. Did Blubaugh have any compelling reason except for acting like a jerk? He needs to sit down and Shut the Fuck Up. Even though the camcorder was in plain sight on the table next to me next to a large mic, he still managed to knock it to the floor. It occurs to me that depending on where people were sitting, it may not have been visible what was going on. I just spent $175 for a dental exam and x-rays. I can’t afford to replace that camcorder, the best low-cost gadget for videotaping stand-up - which Kodak has discontinued, of course. 

I asked Howse to read an index card intro mentioning my stand-up comedy site. Howse proceded to say, “I really hope there aren’t any pictures of dicks on it or I’ll be excited.” If he’s Louis C.K., by all means, ad lib. If he’s an improv wanker who dabbles in stand-up, he needs to read the index card and Shut the Fuck Up. I’ve spent a year working on the site and I don’t want him reducing (enlarging?) it to dicks. 

Cafe Diem Comedy Night July 6, 2011 featuring Andrew Pauley, Chris Martin and Cree Moon (video by Silver Persinger)

Image via Wikipedia

My set at Cafe Diem Comedy Night, the New York Deli, McCormack’s Irish Pub and the 9:55 Comedy Club open mic.

The next comic to do a Casey Anthony joke gets a free roll of duct tape. I’m always nervous before I do stand-up comedy. More nervous than Russell Crowe at a circumcision. I just got out of the hospital. I was planking when I started to rickroll and fell off a five-story meme.

Another hot summer. I finally understand why it took so long for Grant to take Richmond. It was too damn hot. It was so hot in Richmond back then, Jefferson Davis actually fled the capitol of the confederacy in a bikini rather than a dress. It’s so hot in Richmond, Virginia today that people are drowning themselves in the James River on purpose. It’s so hot in Richmond that I saw pitcher for the Flying Squirrels icing his balls instead of his elbow. It was so hot in Washington, DC that Dick Cheney waterboarded himself. It was so hot in New York City that Kim Kardashian had an air conditioner implanted in her butt. It was so hot in Los Angeles that Lindsay Lohan had to rely on an air condition to supply her blow.

The bad news: A Southwest Airlines pilot mistakenly broadcast a sexist, obscenity-filled rant over the air. The good news: it woke up some sleeping air traffic controllers. Other than that, Charlie Sheen is performing well in his new job.

MySpace got sold and laid off half its employees. It’s so bad I saw Tom standing on a street corner with a sign that read, “Will be your friend for food.” I’m trying to fill the hole created by the dissolution the hacking group, LulzSec. I’m putting SuperGlue on coffee pots in Seven-11s.

Virginia gives $1 to the slave burial site in Shockoe Bottom. The money will be used to add a section for African-American hopes and dreams. Germany will ship radioactive waste to Virginia. However, the state is drawing the line at oven ashes. To mark the second anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, Janet Jackson deflated her implants to half mast. Roger Ebert tweets “Friends don’t left Jackasses drive drunk” after Ryan Dunn dies in a car crash, he apologizes. Let’s face it, the guy is a bigger pussy than Garfield. The inventor of the Weed Wacker is dead at 85. He died in a tragic accident involving his new invention, the Tally Wacker.

Scandalous but true: Bradley Cooper’s girlfriend’s nickname for his penis is “Mini-Cooper.” Imagine my disappointment when I learned that the Red Lobster Festival of Shrimp is not a Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox film retrospective. July 1 was Canada Day. I like to think of Canada as America’s mini-me.

That’s my time. My name is Chris Martin. Thanks.

Related articles

• Russell Crowe Goes On Twitter Rant Against Circumcision (sfist.com)
• Russell Crowe Tweets His Feelings On Circumcision (socialitelife.com)
• Russell Crowe: ‘Circumcision is Barbaric and Stupid’ (justjared.buzznet.com)
• Russell Crowe: “circumcision is barbaric and stupid” (wwtdd.com)
• Russell Crowe Speaks Out Against Circumcision - Thank You (unaskedadvice.wordpress.com)

toosoonshow:

If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career.

- Lenny Bruce

Too Soon with Chris Martin interviews John Reaves, moving to New York City from Richmond, VA to pursue comedy and music. The interview took place June 29, 2011 at John’s…

Image via Wikipedia

Supplemental material for sets to be performed in late June and early July, 2011:

Roger Ebert apologized for tweeting “friends don’t let Jackasses drive drunk” after the death of Ryan Dunn in a car crash. Let’s face it, Roger Ebert is a bigger pussy than Garfield.

Ever walk down the street and find a CD someone has thrown out their car? That has to be the ultimate form of music criticism: you hate a album so much you’re willing to decapitate a pedestrian to get rid to it. This is Ozzy Osbourne’s greatest hits. Excuse me, I thought Ozzy Osbourne’s greatest hits were Vicodin and cocaine.

There are lots of issues facing this country: climate change, a lousy economy, three wars. Here’s an issue that’s near and dear to my heart: truth in porn advertising. If there were truth in porn advertising, YouPorn would be MePorn, Playboy would be Playedout, Penthouse would be Your Parents’ Basement and Barely Legal would be Barely 25.

Related articles

• Roger Ebert should keep his chin up (wwtdd.com)
• Roger Ebert Apologizes for ‘Jackass’ Tweet after Ryan Dunn’s Death (blippitt.com)
• [Blogosphere] I Support Roger Ebert (geeky-guide.com)
• Roger Ebert Speaks For Many In America, Jackasses Should Not Drink And Drive (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Roger Ebert, always quick with a quip, has a point. And… (shortformblog.tumblr.com)
• Roger Ebert says ‘too quick’ to tweet about Dunn (pbpulse.com)
• Film critic Roger Ebert accuses Ryan Dunn of drink-driving after fatal crash (popspoken.wordpress.com)
• Roger Ebert Sparks a Firestorm After Tweeting About Ryan Dunn’s Death (moviefone.com)

Part 2/5 - Comedy Night at McCormack’s Irish Pub June 22, 2011 in Richmond, Virginia, featuring Featuring MC Jesse Jarvis, Paul Bass, Chris Martin and Sidney Raskind. (by Silver Persinger)