some less

The plan was to go see an improv performance while in St. Louis. The Improv Trick is run by Bill Chott, who worked in the trailer next to mine at the Comedy World Radio Network and has appeared in "The Ringer" among other films. I emailed Bill to ask about his performance schedule in August and chose a night that fit my itinerary.

After a few wrong turns and much map consulting, my wife and I found our way to The Playhouse at Westport Plaza. It's among a cluster of restaurants, nightclubs and hotels in an office park just off I-270. I thought it unusual that there were restaurants named after local sports legends Albert Pujols, Ozzie Smith and Dan Dierdorf & Jim Hart all in the same complex.

We could hear peals of laughter coming through the doors of the Playhouse. However the box office clerk didn't know what we were talking about when we asked for tickets to the improv show. The performer inside was a comic named Sommore. The clerk suggested we try our luck down the hall at The Funny Bone comedy club. The guy at that ticket window knew the improv show was normally at the Playhouse once a week. They had gotten bumped for Sommore. My wife and I went back to the car, comedy-free.

Whenever I travel, I like to seek out a local improv show for inspiration. I often try to bring back some of their games to Knoxville and add them to our repertoire. I had especially hoped to see a show this week. This coming Tuesday, it will be my turn to emcee the Einstein Simplified show celebrating the group's fourteenth anniversary. Last I heard, recently retired members Todd Covert and Bill Slayden are planning on attending and performing. If any other former members (like Doug McCaughan) show up, I will bring them on stage for at least one game. C'mon out and see us on Tuesday night starting at 8:30 p.m. at Patrick Sullivan's. We're going to extend the show until 10:30, so plan accordingly.

spider-man

If Branson is the Las Vegas of the Bible Belt, then Jim Stafford is the Wayne Newton of Branson. The "Jim Stafford Show" is mostly made up of Jim's comedic monologues with some musical interludes and a couple of dance numbers mixed in. My wife and I went to the show on Monday night. The 64-year-old Stafford shared the spotlight with his 15-year-old son Shea and his 11-year-old daughter G.G., who showcased their talents on the piano.

Jim's voice, cadence and breathiness into the mic all reminded me of Garrison Keillor, which I found surprising. My wife watched Jim's TV show as a child and was more familiar with his delivery. I kept thinking that the whole stage show had the feel of a slightly Southern edition of "A Prairie Home Companion."



The Stafford staff passes cards out to the audience before the show begins. Guests can write down a joke or embarrassing story from their lives. Jim reads a few aloud after intermission. There's a space on the card for the respondent to give permission for the submitted anecdote to be published in a book of "Jim's Gems." The back of the card has room to write the name and address of someone you want to nominate to be included in "Jim Stafford's Knuckleheads." The card says it's a network special that Jim plans to tape at his theatre. Or maybe he already did and the card is out of date.

I think we were close to being the youngest ones in the audience. If not for the people who brought their kids, we would have been. It didn't matter though. The show is appropriate for all ages. It isn't tailored for the retirement crowd except for a few jokes about age. Maybe his kids keep him young. Jim even has a MySpace page. A more typical bit revolves around a cow patty. Jim sings a song about them and then tosses some brown foam flying discs into the audience. They sell the patties in the gift shop. And they put Jim's name on the bottled water at the refreshment stand.



Cow patties and water bottles aren't the only moneymaking opportunities the show creates. You can also buy harmonicas that Jim has played for $24.95 and harmonicas that he has played and autographed for $35.00.



We were only in Branson for one night. If we ever get back, I would like to see the guy who was on TV during my childhood, Andy Williams, assuming he's still performing. One of my wife's aunts said that the show to see is that Shoji dude.

took a whole lotta tryin'

The satire in "Tropic Thunder" was so rich I wanted everyone else in the theatre to stop laughing so I could just soak it all in. At times, I sat there in open-mouthed amazement at the bulls-eye accuracy of the parody. Because it's an R-rated comedy, most of the jokes cannot be shown in the trailer. As a result, I was able to enjoy the movie, unlike "Get Smart," which was ruined for me by watching the previews.

Robert Downey Jr. carries the film. He plays an Australian method actor who has his skin darkened to play an African-American sergeant. Obviously he is spoofing actors, not African-Americans. I haven't heard any reaction yet to the use of the N word in one scene. Instead, some people are upset over use of the R word. I think a satire should be given more leeway than a broad comedy. They're making fun of actors who portray mentally-challenged individuals, not the people who are challenged. Think about "Rain Main," "Forrest Gump" and "I Am Sam" and all the other roles that actors have used as Oscar bait.

There are many reasons to recommend "Tropic Thunder" for audiences ready for some outrageous humor. Not only does Tom Cruise steal every scene he's in, he steals the closing credits too. Which reminds me, I really liked the way the cast list in the credits was organized by scene. I expect to see a favorable review too from Betsy Pickle, based on her laughter during the preview screening last night. She sat right behind me in the crowded theatre.

ain't ashamed to tell ya

To say that I was bummed by the death of Bernie Mac would be an extreme understatement. My daughter knows that I am a fan and called to tell me about Bernie's passing. That's how I found out. When I told some co-workers, they hoped that it was some sort of false rumor. A check of the headlines on their cell phones confirmed the sad news.

The first I ever heard of Bernie was when I saw "The Original Kings of Comedy." Two of the film's other stars, Steve Harvey and D.L. Hughley had made multiple guest appearances on the Mark & Brian show in the time I worked at KLOS. They were enough of a draw for me to want to see the movie.

My wife and I were just about the only white people in movie theater that day. Harvey, Hughley and Cedric the Entertainer were all funny but Bernie Mac stole the show. I started watching for him in other movies and on TV. A year or so later, I set up a Season Pass on my TiVo when "The Bernie Mac Show" debuted. Since 2000, I've seen at least eight of Bernie's movies, including the underrated "Pride" and "Mr. 3000."

The best remembrance of Bernie that I read today is by Alan Sepinwall in the Newark Star-Ledger. He reprinted his 2002 interview with the comedian. Meanwhile, my friend Bean spotted a mistake that the Chicago Tribune certainly must regret. You can read the corrected version of their obituary online as well as a better article that came later. When it was first posted, they had not yet inserted some anecdotes about Mac's early years:

Life changed dramatically for Mac when he was 32. He won the Miller Lite comedy search that year and that performance took him to the standup stage, which ultimately led to regular performances on popular shows like HBO's "Def Comedy Jam."

In a few short years, he was able to put a stamp on this tell-it-like-it-is brand of comedy that audiences had come to know him for. He was a hit on the stage, delivering sordid tales of his early life growing up on Chicago's South Side. Would be great to get a couple examples here

His work hit home to the African American audience -- his aggressive, brash comedy had a down home feel to it, tackling everything from family life to black romantic relationships -- yet Mac was able to cross it over, connecting with a majority entertainment scene.

The obituaries aren't enough. I'm going to look for some videos and watch Bernie Mac at his best.

liberal media bias

Barack Obama did not get equal time in Knoxville last night. Most of the country saw him and John McCain on the finale of "Last Comic Standing." Here, we got McCain only. The two candidates each did a short bit to showcase their sense of humor. From what I've read, Obama's piece may have been a little funnier than McCain's, depending on his delivery.

Obama got preempted by some very early local election returns from Sevier, Jefferson and Loudon counties. WBIR cut in at 8:43 p.m. for about a minute. In most cases only 2% of the precincts were reporting by that time. They cut in again 20 minutes later with some Knox County results. Only 1% of those precincts were reporting. At least they did a better job with the second cut-in by fitting it within the confines of a commercial break. If they had done it right the first time, they could have replaced promos for "Heroes" and "America's Toughest Jobs" and not missed any of the show. By the time they made it back to "Last Comic Standing," Jon Lovitz was starting his stand-up set.

The LCS finale was a typically inflated results show with 89½ minutes of build-up to 30 second announcement. I was happy that Iliza Schlesinger won the competition. She really earned it by performing almost every week. The other comics sent her to the elimination round a couple of times. Their strategy backfired as Iliza won each early vote by a landslide and gained many new fans along the way. Find more Iliza videos on her site and at YouTube.

surprise at the pearly gates

George Carlin seemed younger than 71. Maybe not in appearance but certainly in attitude. If someone asked you last week, could you have guessed that he was born in the 1930s? Yesterday morning I awoke to the startling news that Carlin had died. Although he was only a couple of years younger than my parents, he didn't behave like a member of their generation.

The 28-year-old Carlin was virtually unrecognizable in some footage from a 1965 episode of "The Merv Griffin Show." He was clean-cut and doing a more standard form of shtick reminiscent of Rodney Dangerfield. By the time he hosted the first "Saturday Night Live" in 1975, he had reinvented himself into the comedian we all knew. That could explain why he seemed younger than he was.

When asked for a reaction, Jay Leno told ABC News, "If there was ever a comedian who was a voice of their generation it was George Carlin." Leno's quote for USA Today was "He was a student of Lenny Bruce, and, like him, he spoke directly to his generation." Uh, Jay? Please see paragraphs one and two above.

I remember first listening to one of Carlin's comedy albums while visiting some second cousins in Baltimore. They let me use headphones so as not to disturb the grown-ups. And by grown-ups, I mean the people in the house who were closest to Carlin's age.

George Carlin was one of the many celebrities to appear on KLOS while I worked there. I think he was promoting a book at the time. Or maybe an HBO special. Or possibly both. Carlin was nothing short of prolific. I may not agree with all his beliefs, but I am glad to have met him. I think I may have had him sign a book. If I did, it would be packed away in in box in the basement.

Yesterday I flipped over to NPR as part of my resolution to listen to it more often. They were rerunning an interview with George Carlin from 2004. In the segment I heard, the interviewer asked George about his philosophy of life. In her question, she aptly described it as a mix of narcissism and mysticism. Then she asked about his heart attacks and his thoughts on death. He talked about how he would be sad to know that his life was ending whether he had a minute, a month or a year's notice that his time was up. I wonder what was going through the interviewer's mind as she asked the questions. Was she thinking ahead to the day the interview would eventually be replayed?

the bad, the good and the promising

After seeing "The Happening" this past weekend, I wasn't particularly inspired to write about it. An hour into the movie, people were laughing at parts that weren't meant to be funny. On the plus side, I think it might play better on HBO or DVD. All the hype about it being M. Night Shyamalan's first R-rated movie seemed overblown to me. One or two quick edits probably would have brought it back down to PG-13.

Another movie I saw over the weekend was a pleasant surprise on DVD. "Dan in Real Life" was much better than I expected from the marketing campaign. Neither the TV commercials nor the theatrical trailer did it justice. There's a scene at the end of the trailer that wasn't even in the movie. The part where Dan panics as his daughter pulls out into traffic turns up in the DVD extras. Forget the trailer. All you need to know is that Dan inadvertently meets and falls for his brother's new girlfriend right before she shows up at a family gathering. Except for one cliched pratfall off a roof, the jokes are original and very enjoyable. Steve Carell plays Dan. An understated Dane Cook plays his brother. Don't let your Dane Cook preconceptions get in your way. A radiant Juliette Binoche plays the woman in the middle.

Meanwhile, Steve Carell has been all over TV tonight in the commercials for "Get Smart." My wife and I are still planning to see it this weekend, probably on Sunday.

don't get dumb

The battle at the multiplexes this weekend will be between "Get Smart" and "The Love Guru." It's very unusual for two comedies to open at the same time. Both have been heavily hyped almost everywhere you turn. Mike Myers promoted "The Love Guru" on "American Idol," the MTV Movie Awards and elsewhere. The cast of "Get Smart" is in one of the ads that remind you to silence your cell phone in the movie theatre.

Trailers for both films have been running for months. If you haven't caught them yet, click here and here. I feel that I've already seen as much of "The Love Guru" as I care to. However I'm left wanting more "Get Smart." Based on the trailers alone, my wife wants everyone to get out and "vote" for "Get Smart" this weekend by buying a ticket. Who's with us?

comedy conundrum

If the world's worst comedian makes me laugh every single time I hear him, shouldn't that make him the world's best comedian? Not in the case of Sam Meneshian, the Armenian Comedian. I laugh at him but not for the reasons he wants. His jokes are consistently off-target. I find his failed efforts, many of which are chronicled at KROQ.com, to be hysterical. Sam was a fixture on the Kevin & Bean show before I worked there and continues to be to this day. Jimmy Kimmel has put him on "The Man Show" and his late-night talk show.

Brilliant comics like Andy Kaufman, Sacha Baron Cohen and Robin Williams have created characters that attempt to be what Sam Meneshian is in real life. He tries very hard to become famous without putting any effort into improving his jokes, his singing, his ventriloquism, or his balloon animals. I'm not too sure about his hair-cutting skills either.

The Armenian Comedian's familiar face flashed on my TV screen yesterday while I was watching the previous night's episode of "Last Comic Standing." They ran a quick montage of terrible auditionees and promised to count down their ten worst. I knew that Sam deserved a place in the top three but didn't think they would show him since he had not yet turned up in any audition footage. Numbers 10 through 2 were gradually revealed during the course of the two hour program. They were all comics whose auditions had been shown in the first three episodes of this season. At the very end of the show, they revealed that the number 1 worst audition was, in fact, by Sam Meneshian.



He tried to make something under a bandanna disappear but loudly dropped the object. He took off his shirt and pretended to inflate his stomach by blowing into his finger. Finally, he dropped his ventriloquism dummy while trying to put a live microphone in front of the dummy. Yes, in front of the dummy! In typical fashion, Sam had told the KROQ crew that his audition would be shown next week. As a result, they all missed it on Thursday. My friend Bean asked if I could send him the audio clip for them to play on Monday morning.

Sam is utterly clueless. When he returned from the Miami audition, he said that his audition had gone great. He probably misconstrued the reaction of that week's talent scouts (two guys from "30 Rock"), who stood and applauded the failure of the ventriloquism part of his act. Maybe there's something wrong with the part of his brain that detects sarcasm.

everybody loves Philip

Everybody gets into a bad mood occasionally. I was having a particularly cranky day about a month ago. I wanted to take a nap before going downtown to the Dogwood Arts Festival Parade. As it turned out, I needed to take care of some family stuff that involved going to Loudon County, waiting for two hours and coming back. Right before we left, I grabbed a book off my nightstand that turned my day around.

Earlier that week, I had only just started "The Road." It was not the right day for me to dig into something that dark and heavy. Instead I picked up something light and frothy to read in the car while I waited. My mood improver was "You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes a Sitcom" by Phil Rosenthal. The book kept me entertained through my tiredness that day. It stayed on top of the stack until I finally finished it about a week ago.

Rosenthal describes many of the real-life anecdotes that got turned into episodes of "Everybody Loves Raymond." There's some autobiographical stuff too. Phil doesn't name too many names as he mentions the bad shows he worked on before "Raymond." He has enough credits on his IMDB page to keep me guessing which show was which.

The term "sitcom" has gotten abused by half-hour comedies that are just a series of setups and punchlines. The great thing about "Raymond" is the way they put the emphasis on the situation part of a situation comedy. The characters are so well defined that the audience could get a laugh by knowing what Marie or Debra must be thinking as they walked in on Ray, Robert or Frank. Rosenthal's description of the process gave me a feeling of "oh that's what I thought he was doing" when I wrote a brief essay about characters back in the pre-blog days.

Reading the book was made all the more enjoyable by the bargain-basement price I paid for it. Back in March, I was ordering a Jane Austen-y DVD as a birthday gift for my wife. It cost about $20, which is five dollars under Amazon.com's free-shipping threshold. So I clicked over to my personal Wish List and sorted by price. Rosenthal's book rose to the top because it was on sale for just over $5. Bingo! If you are similarly stymied, Les Jones has posted about a site that will help you find super-cheap items to get to the $25 mark.

coed naked bar hopping?

Okay, here's what happened. On Thursday, one of my co-workers asked if I had seen the obituaries. I had not but there was a copy of the News Sentinel within reach. By coincidence, Terry Morrow, the paper's television columnist, was visiting. We opened the paper and saw the photo my co-worker had noticed. It showed a now-deceased man during happier times. He's wearing a hat that says "Coed Naked Bar Hopping."

Like anyone else would, we laughed about it. Our conversation was not on the air. I knew from past experience that my boss doesn't like me to joke about local deaths on the radio. I told Terry that someone in another market might be able to have fun with it even if I couldn't. We all know that comedy equals tragedy plus time. Sometimes comedy also equals tragedy plus distance. Because Terry and I both know Jimmy Kimmel, we thought it would be a good idea to send the obit to him.

When I got home, I dashed off a fast email to Jimmy. I complimented him on the Matt Damon video and sent a link to the death notice. His one-word reply was "Hilarious!" Quick tangent: I can't wait to see the next volley in the Kimmel/Damon "feud" which reportedly includes Ben Affleck.

Anyway, as I was scanning the Knoxville Blog Network tonight, I saw a link to a post titled "Knoxville on Jimmy Kimmel Live!" As soon as I clicked, I saw the man in the CNBH hat on "The Sunsphere Is Not a Wigshop." The writer explains:

a friend of mine that is a production assistant on the jimmy kimmel live show called me and told me i was the only knoxville connection that anyone on the crew had and they needed a copy of thursday's knoxville news-sentinel.

He spent $30 to FedEx the newspaper to California and says it may turn up on Tuesday night's show (Mondays are usually reruns). Jimmy must have known I would be too cheap to spend the money.

just to have a laugh

This week's episode of "Pioneers of Television" was about variety shows. The stuff about "The Ed Sullivan Show" was fascinating and all new to me. I don't remember my parents ever watching the Sullivan show during my early childhood.

I've been enjoying "Pioneers." When they focused on "The Carol Burnett Show," I heard something that reminded me of why I love performing with an improv group.

Narrator: One key to Burnett’s long success was her willingness to share the laughs with her co-stars.

Tim Conway: We were all participants. We were contributors. She accepted every contribution of a line, or a thought or a thing from everybody.

Vicki Lawrence: I remember Harvey saying, “You have no idea because most stars are very selfish. They’ll have things rewritten to where they get the joke lines and they will not be supportive of you.” I think one of the most important things that I learned from Carol is that you are as good as the people that surround you.

strange bedfellows

There are plenty of reasons for me to be proud of my son. He works hard on his school assignments and tries to improve his time at each swim meet. Without taking anything away from his academic or athletic accomplishments, I have to say that his sense of humor gives me the most gratification. I love it when he makes me laugh. The other day he told me that he and his classmates in AP Government were wishing that Ralph Nader could somehow be chosen as Barack Obama's running mate. It's got nothing to do with politics. They just want to see an "Obama-Nader" bumper sticker.

meet Napoleon Bananaparte

The spoonful of reduced-fat peanut butter on my banana looked enough like a bicorne hat that we had to take a picture. Bonne année!

laugh hard

There will probably be dozens of newspaper reviews with the same headline as today's blog entry. I went with the obvious choice because I did enjoy "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." The film is a wild spoof of musical biopics like "Walk the Line" and "Ray." Everyone will be talking about the nude scene but the rest of the movie is plenty funny too. At the beginning, Dewey's brother keeps saying things like "nothing bad will happen to me today" and "I have my whole life ahead of me." We all knew what was coming but the details of the inevitable tragedy were surprising and funny.

Two of my favorite funny women from TV appear as Dewey's wives. Kristen Wiig of "Saturday Night Live" plays his 12-year-old bride Edith who eventually leaves after Dewey finds some success. Jenna Fischer of "The Office" is absolutely radiant as Dewey's duet partner and second wife, Darlene. They sing a double entendre filled song called "Let's Duet" and suggestively eat ice cream cones as the romantic tension between them builds. Jenna writes about that scene and warns people about the R-rating in her MySpace blog. I do wish that the singer who provided Darlene's singing voice was a closer match to Jenna's speaking voice. The difference was just enough to notice. Then again, maybe it was done on purpose for comedic effect.

The cast is stocked with actors who have appeared in other Judd Apatow films. Some of them are only on screen briefly but memorably, especially Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman as the Beatles. The movie hit all the rock star cliches I could think of: personal tragedy, drug abuse, trashing hotel rooms and the ultimate redemption. If you can take your comedy served deadpan with a dose of outrageousness and some naked junk, walk, or better yet run, to see "Walk Hard."

unrecognizable

The next time he comes to your town, go see comedian Pat Godwin. My wife and I just got home from The Comedy Zone where Pat has been headlining all week. He uses his guitar throughout the entire show, parodying famous rock stars, singing some original music and making up songs about audience members. His impression of Bono singing "Bingo" is especially funny.

Paul Simmons and I had a chance to talk with Pat before the show. I told him that I remembered meeting him seven and a half years ago at the inception of the Comedy World Radio Network. Pat was part of the ensemble on Craig Shoemaker's show. We agreed that Comedy World was several years ahead of the curve with its live audio and video streaming on the Internet. We started talking about some of the other staff members and Pat asked if I knew whatever happened to a guy who worked on one of the other shows but had filled in as producer on Shoemaker's show for a couple of weeks. Pat recalled that this guy had radio experience, unlike most of the other employees at the network. I told Pat that the guy he was thinking of was me. He couldn't believe it. He looked right at me and said, "you must have lost 50 pounds!" I explained that not only had I lost the weight but that I also had Lasik surgery and a makeover.

Now all I have to do is look to see if we still have any of the hand repair lotion that my wife used to be able to find at Bath & Body Works. The skin on my hands is cracked from applauding so hard at Pat Godwin's show.

now you know the rest of the story

On August 23rd, a big crowd at The Comedy Zone had to be evacuated due to a fire in the back building. Einstein Simplified did a show there this past Saturday. Before the show, we walked around back to do some warm-up exercises and I finally got to see the damage. How long does it usually take for the insurance money to arrive and repairs to get made? I went back today with my camera phone:




The most recent Metro Pulse had a paragraph about the fire. No, they're not a month late covering the news. The paragraph was included in the September 30th edition of the nationally syndicated column "News of the Weird." The story was also mentioned in the August 24th edition of "News of the Weird Daily."

Before "News of the Weird" was a newspaper column, it was a newsletter sent to a few "kindred spirits." Its creator, Chuck Shepherd was a professor at The George Washington University. He must have listened to the morning show on WAVA because I started getting a copy of "News of the Weird" in the mail. And by mail I mean the USPS. It was still a few years before email would take over the world.

My "before they were stars" moment with Chuck Shepherd reminds me of an encounter I had after moving to California. I liked to go to the CBS Studio Center store to do some Christmas shopping for the relatives back East. When I told the talkative sales clerk that I would be sending my purchases to the DC area, he told me that he was from suburban Maryland. He remembered me on subsequent visits and eventually offered to put me on the distribution list for his fairly new email newsletter. His name? Matt Drudge.

buy 'em before you can buy 'em

Not that you needed one but here's yet another reason to attend tonight's Einstein Simplified comedy improv show at Patrick Sullivan's in the Old City. Street team members from the Tennessee Theatre will be on hand to distribute invitations for you to buy pre-sale tickets to "An Evening with Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood." Their two man improv show was originally scheduled for October. The date has been changed to Sunday, December 2. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10:00 a.m, unless you have the pre-sale invitation password. The pre-sale tickets will be sold Thursday but only through the Tennessee Theatre website. If you can wait until Friday, you can save some money on service charges by buying your tickets in person at the box office. The show description on the Colin & Brad website gives a good reason to buy seats near the stage:

The show is all about audience participation. Everything in the show is based on audience suggestions and many audience members are brought up on stage to be part of the craziness. The entire evening is completely improvised, and best of all, the show is never the same twice.

the show must go on

The laughter at The Comedy Zone was interrupted tonight by a fire in a back building. According to WATE-TV, comic hypnotist Rich Guzzi (who looks nothing like the photos on his website) was on stage with ten audience members under his spell at the time. Once I heard that everyone was evacuated safely, I thought about our improv group's gig at the club on Saturday evening. They said on the news that The Comedy Zone will reopen tomorrow night for the hypnosis show. You are completely relaxed now. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken. When I snap my fingers, you will show up at The Comedy Zone on Saturday at 6pm. At least it'll be air-conditioned.

lunacy

Comedian Frank Caliendo was a guest on the Kevin & Bean show on Friday. I downloaded several of their podcasts from last week and have been listening to them in my car. Caliendo's impressions always make me laugh. In the interview he talked about his upcoming TBS show. It features a sketch in which he plays all four of the main characters from "Seinfeld." He set the scene in the future to justify the added weight of the characters. The sketch is available online.

There's more funny stuff on the KROQ podcasts. I enjoyed the analysis of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" (especially chapter 13) and the interviews with some "Superbad" cast members.

Best of all was the segment with comedian Joe Rogan. He gave a great description of a National Geographic documentary on superlions that have learned to swim and hunt powerful water buffalo. Just when everything seemed fine, Joe goes crazy defending his suspicion that NASA faked the moon landings. He seemed to doubt that astronauts could have crossed the Van Allen radiation belt. Joe said it looked like the alleged moonwalkers were supported by wires to simulate lower gravity. So basically, he thinks it must be fake because it looked fake.

superpopular

The movie company will get a good report from tonight's word-of-mouth screening of "Superbad." The fans sitting next to me got their tickets to the sneak preview through a local comic book store. The turnout was strong. Some ticketholders who arrived five minutes before showtime were turned away because the theatre was full. As usual, the house had been overbooked. Betsy Pickle was there to review it for the News Sentinel.

The movie is a gross-out comedy with a premise similar to "American Pie" in that some high school friends each hope to get lucky with girls before graduation. They try to use a fake i.d. to buy alcohol for a party. Things go awry from there. The laughs are almost non-stop. Seth Rogen wrote the film and named the lead character after himself. The actor playing Seth has a mop of curly hair similar to Rogen's hairdo in "Knocked Up."

One of the girls in the movie was also in the short-lived Fox series, "Drive." I remember thinking at the time that I must have seen Emma Stone in other shows. Thanks to IMDB, I finally realized that the other show was "In Search of the Partridge Family" on Vh1.

"Superbad" comes out swinging, earning its R rating in the first few minutes. Michael Cera from "Arrested Development" excels with his low-key, deadpan delivery. Parts of it may be vulgar, but all of it is funny.

drop and give me twenty

Morning radio personalities from all over the United States (and often a few from England and Australia) will be traveling to Chicago tomorrow for the annual Morning Show Boot Camp convention. I was fortunate enough to be sent there by my various employers each year between 1999 and 2003. The last two of those years I had negotiated to have the registration fee and travel expenses included in my contract, a tactic I recommend to any deejays who might be reading this. Three of the five Boot Camps I attended were in New Orleans. The other two were in Las Vegas and Atlanta.

The New Orleans gatherings were a lot of fun. Obviously I was there pre-Katrina. I hope to return someday with my wife. I always felt a little guilty telling her about the delicious Bananas Foster I ate at Brennan's or the about time I went to an incredible six or seven course chef's choice dinner with Billy Bush at Emeril's. I remember that one of the courses was quail. Billy was still in radio at the time. The rest of the evening deserves its own chapter in my memoirs, if I ever write them.

In 2000, I spent a night on Bourbon Street with Kevin Ryder from KROQ, New Orleans-based comedian Tim Coston (who also acted as our Big Easy tour guide), Tim Harrod from The Onion and Aisha Tyler, who was not yet well known. They had all appeared on a convention panel about comedy earlier that day with my then-boss, Tamara Rawitt.

This year's Boot Camp attendees will be treated to a session called "Truth in Comedy," led by Charna Halpern. I wish I could be there for it but at least I got to participate in a very similar session Charna did at the Children Miracle Network convention in April. I'm happy for all the deejays who will be able to see the close connection between radio and improv.

bloody a lot

Earlier this week, Ken Levine went through a list of movies currently in theatres and beautifully explained what makes each of them stink. He closed by recommending an art house film called "Once," which is not playing in Knoxville.

I also have a suggestion for a movie that's better than most out there. Go see "Hot Fuzz." My wife and I loved it. It's sort of a cross genre spoof both of buddy cop action movies and quaint British murder mysteries. Yet it is also an actual buddy cop movie that happens to be set in a quaint British village. London's best policeman is making his co-workers look bad by comparison. They arrange to have him transferred to a small town with a crime rate so low it's nonexistent. It doesn't take him long to realize that things are not as they seem. The central mystery has more layers than you would expect from a parody film. It all builds to a satisfying conclusion.

The movie is very funny but also a little gory. I might not have been as surprised by the violent scenes if I had seen "Shaun of the Dead," which was made by the same people. "Hot Fuzz" makes me want to see "Shaun" all the more.

"Hot Fuzz" was chosen as one of the best movies of the year so far by guest critic Christy Lemire on a recent episode of "Ebert & Roeper." Christy didn't do a bad job as co-host. She could be considered as a more permanent replacement for Roger Ebert, who probably isn't coming back any time soon.