the comic's comic

Denis Leary's Merry F#%$in' Christmas

Denis Leary's view on the holidays ain't so jolly. Go figure.

A couple of weeks ago, Leary, his band and his 15-year-old son, Jack, performed the actor/comedian's song, "Merry F#%$in' Christmas" as the finale at Cam Neely's Comics Come Home benefit. But it looks and sounds much more subversive when it opens "Denis Leary's Merry F#%$in' Christmas" special Nov. 27 on Comedy Central.

"Live, it's more of a jaunty singalong," Leary told me this week over the phone on a break from voiceover work on Ice Age 2. If by jaunty, you mean an opening verse such as, "Old Saint Nick's got bourbon breath, it's so cold you could catch your death, a cop sold me some crystal meth, it's a merry, f#%$in' Christmas."

"Really, we're just going for the ultimate anti-Christmas song," Leary said. "Then I thought, this is really going to have a great animated video for it. That was the seed for the idea that led to the Christmas special." Cue the claymation! "It's a throwback to Rankin-Bass and all that stuff we know from growing up." Leary said Comedy Central will "bleep" one version of his special, then air the uncensored version sometime later at night (part of what the network calls it's after-midnight Secret Stash series).

How they'll bleep it is another matter. Some skits involve William Shatner, Charlie Murphy, Chris Elliott and the Barenaked Ladies. Leary also pokes fun at Tom Cruise, FEMA and Paris Hilton. "We weren't setting out to make a timeless special. If you wanted something that was evergreen, you couldn't be as funny," he said. "Although I think 'It's Jihad Time, Farley Towne' is timeless." Yes, that is a Peanuts spoof.

Any worries about taking on Tom Cruise, who's known to sue? "I had a big fight with Viacom and Comedy Central," Leary said. "They didn't want Tom Cruise to sue me. It's comedy. If you're not pissing people off, you're not doing your job." So he skewers both Scientology and Catholicism at the same time. "We carry on this stupid tradition with kids, and it's really the beginning, the tradition is deception," he said. Leary's son, Jack, makes a cameo during the special's musical finale, but he doesn't perform. "He said, 'Is it funnier if I act like I'm bored and couldn't care less?' I said, 'You mean like in real life?'" Leary said.

The Learys are hosting many relatives from Massachusetts and even Ireland this weekend for Thanksgiving, so he feels your pain. "Once your family leaves on Sunday, or you leave your family, you'll need a good hearty hour of laughs to get it out of your system," he said. "And it'll also get you in the right mood for Christmas."

Related: The show's Comedy Central site.

Here's a sketch with Bobby Tisdale on the mic:

Sarah Silverman is magic

Sarah Silverman checks her rack out during our interview in Boston a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, yeah, you've read a whole lot of media love for comedian Sarah Silverman this month as her film, Jesus Is Magic, (trailer on this link is NSFW) opened in cinemas. Lots of reporters saying the same thing and quoting the same jokes. Not this joker. At least I get Sarah to open up about different things and say new witty things. And I remembered to record some of it for online posterity. Read on, and click the Boston Herald headline link for access to audio clips and a photo gallery.

Hear me ask Sarah about why she doesn't own her own domain name: 'I know I should.'

'Jesus' is saving Silverman’s irreverent humor for posterity (Boston Herald)
Sarah Silverman is sweet and endearing offstage.
That makes her taboo-crossing humor that much more powerful onstage and onscreen - a formula that has drawn comparisons to Lenny Bruce and Larry David.
But the 34-year-old comedian and actress from Bedford, N.H., doesn’t get the latter reference.
“I don’t really see myself in any way like Larry David, except that I let myself be unlikable,” Silverman said.
Even then, she does so with a sly smile.
“I’ll tickle your back until you fall asleep while I’m feeding you these horrible things,” she said. “I’ll give you a nice warm sponge bath while talking about black people and Mexicans and rape.”
All of those topics - plus the Holocaust, AIDS, Sept. 11, 2001, and her infamous Asian joke that prompted an apology from Conan O’Brien - get covered in her new movie, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, which played to a soldout audience earlier this month as part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival. It opens officially in Boston on Friday.
One of Silverman’s older sisters, Susan, is a local rabbi.
Sarah Silverman, however, left New Hampshire for New York City after high school and soon embarked on her comedy career, getting her first, albeit brief, big break on Saturday Night Live.
Since the mid-1990s, she has cultivated a cult-like following, especially among comedians who wish they had the courage to write and deliver material like hers.
Earlier this year, she turned The Aristocrats joke inside-out. Film critics applauded her for it. She also appears briefly in the film adapatation of Rent (opening Wednesday). Silverman is developing her own half-hour show for Comedy Central, and many publications tout this as her moment to break out to mainstream success.
Silverman isn’t exactly holding her breath.
“I was always a button-pusher growing up,” she said. “But when you start doing standup, it takes years to kind of become yourself or find those best things about yourself comedically onstage. I’m certainly not myself onstage. But I am. I am, in that it’s me talking, it’s the way I talk, it’s the way I move. And those are things that are hard to finally get to. And to continue as I change, once I get old and become a Republican, my material will change and I’ll have to do ads for whatever Dennis Miller does ads for these days.”
But first, a musical number.
To some, the most surprising aspect of Jesus Is Magic is the revelation that Silverman has singing chops, displayed in several musical numbers.
“It was just fun. It was so fun,” she said. “I love musicals, although they’re a little cheesy. Although some are really good. I just saw ‘Wicked.’ That was so good. And ‘Spamalot.’ But I’m a total theater fag, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory homosexual way, but in an, I, too, am a fag for theater. No, wait. That’s still bad.”
The British meaning, perhaps?
“I’m a cigarette for theater,” she said. “See, theater’s smokin’!”
And so is she.

Robby Roadsteamer gets viral

Say hello to Robby Roadsteamer.

Ha! Just ask the comedian/musician, as I did, if he's having the Best Week Ever.

When VH1’s "Best Week Ever" writers looked for a way to make fun of Kevin Federline’s aspiring rap career, they linked to Robby Roadsteamer’s online music video "I Put a Baby in You!"
But don’t expect Roadsteamer to claim this is his best week ever.
"Every week is the best week ever," he said. "I’m blessed. I have the best band in Boston. I have the best body in Boston."
And the women.
"Look at this month alone. We cut our first album, which will be out through Mass Appeal. We’re putting out our first DVD. I’m doing WBCN (104.1 FM). I’m doing the Middle East downstairs New Year’s Eve with my band. All I have to do is blink at a girl and I’m at third base.
"I used to have to take girls to Hilltop . . . now I can go to Arby’s."
No one ever accused Roadsteamer, who put the rumble in this year’s WBCN Rock ’N’ Roll Rumble, of being a nice guy.
He antagonizes both his audience and his keyboard player, Nick D’Amico, while belting out tunes with a growling swagger.
"I’m the type of guy, I walk into a room . . . I’m not leaving unless I’m working somebody’s windpipe or I’ve gotten some girl pregnant," Roadsteamer said. "Johnny Cash went to some prison with a bunch of guards to protect him? I once performed a show in a VFW hall in Chicopee, Mass. You talk about a show that should be put on record."
Roadsteamer performs this weekend with only D’Amico as musical accompaniment, then next weekend with the full band at the Middle East downstairs for a Hurricane Katrina benefit.
He prefers solo work "because I keep all the money."
"Everybody wants to bring up their stupid ideas with their stupid instruments," he said. "The audience doesn’t care. They just want to see my body. The guys could play the wrong chords with chocolate guitars. It doesn’t matter. It’s all about me."
Which means Thanksgiving in the Roadsteamer household won’t be all gravy.
"There’s a lot of awkward eye contact at the dinner table," he said. "My uncle wants to talk about why I’ve got a tattoo of myself on my chest. I want to talk about why I didn’t get to have a dog when I was a kid."
Roadsteamer has other plans.
"I think Thanksgiving, I’m just going to be bulking up, working on the Soloflex, making sure I look good for (the show)," he said.

Al Franken comes to town

The last time Al Franken was in Boston - Election Day 2004 - he and his Air America Radio crew were all set to celebrate with the Kerry-Edwards campaign.
That didn’t turn out so well. But the setting provided an apt way to open Franken’s new book, “The Truth (With Jokes),” in which he continues to bash the Bush administration and the Republican right in print as he does on the air.
Franken returns to the Hub on Tuesday for a live broadcast of “The Al Franken Show,” heard locally on WKOX-AM (1200) and WXKS-AM (1430) from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays, followed by a nighttime book signing at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge.
Is coming back bittersweet?
“No,” Franken said on the phone from New York City. “Just bitter.”
But the news isn’t all bad for the Harvard-educated satirist.
His opening hour is the most listened-to period on WKOX, and he continues to gain ground on his nemesis, Rush Limbaugh, among male listeners between 25 and 54.
“A lot of people come up to me and say I make them feel better, so they don’t feel alone,” Franken said. “I think now, actually now, I’m hearing from some Republicans who are listening to us and switching over.”
He is somewhat amazed by the GOP’s ability to have all their pundits and spokespeople say the same daily message points.
“I know that they’re proud of it,” he said. “I don’t know that I’d consider it something to be proud of. We’d like to be more unified in getting out our message and being more disciplined. But maybe Democrats cannot do that.”
Few, certainly, are willing to make jabs like this one on gay marriage in Franken’s book: “George W. Bush wants to amend our Constitution to make it illegal for gays to marry. But evidently, he has no problem with terrorists getting married. America can’t afford a president who is soft on terrorist marriage. Because unlike gays, terrorists can breed.”
Indicted Vice Presidential chief of staff “Scooter” Libby, a recent talk-radio subject, has a book out, too. Franken hasn’t read it.
“I don’t know,” Franken said. “I hear it’s a good book. Who am I to discredit another author?”
Well, what about Limbaugh?
“Uh, yeah. But he’s just awful,” Franken said.
Franken loves having three hours daily to express his political philosophy and bring a liberal approach to talk radio.
More Americans, though, talk about TV shows than politics.
“It’s shocking how little political literacy there is in this country,” Franken said.
He is supporting grassroots-level organizations that train activists, candidates and campaign managers - some of whom may be enlisted to help Franken run for the U.S. Senate in his native Minnesota. He’ll move back full-time early next year and broadcast his show from a Twin Cities studio.

Cam Neely on Comics Come Home

Every fall, Bruins great Cam Neely brings some of the Hub’s funniest comedians onstage for Comics Come Home, with Denis Leary hosting his benefit for the Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care at Tufts-New England Medical Center.
Only now, Neely is a Hall of Famer.
Does Leary, who spoke at Neely’s induction ceremony earlier this week, have anything up his sleeve to commemorate the occasion here? "Not as far as I know,” Neely said, already chuckling at the notion.
"You know, I never know year to year,” he said. "I choose to do it that way so I’m just as surprised as anyone else.”
What makes Neely laugh?
"Anything from Don Gavin, where you really have to pay attention to what he’s saying, to a guy like Kenny Rogerson. He did a bit on the French and Lance Armstrong at Denis’ charity benefit on the Cape that was phenomenal. It was so hilarious. I don’t want to spoil it, but I hope he does it again,” he said.
"Obviously, Steve Sweeney, with the way he nails the different characters in Boston. Anything you can laugh about is generally my kind of humor.”
Does Neely get embarrassed anymore by what the comics might say about him?
"I certainly hope they’ve covered all the bases, in that regard,” he said. "But you never know with these guys.”
Any silly memories from past Comics Come Home?
"One year, when Dane Cook came out and had these sweat pants on, he ripped them off. It had snaps on the side. It caught everyone by surprise,” Neely said. "Another time, they had Bucky Dent show up. It was a year . . . where the stage looked like the Green Monster. That caught Denis big-time by surprise. He handled it well, though. His typical Bucky (bleepin’) Dent.”
So, hanging around with Leary and the other comics all these years has made Neely that much funnier, right?
"Um, no,” Neely said. "I learned a long time ago to try to not compete with their kind of humor.”

Comics Come Home XI, with Denis Leary, Lenny Clarke and other comics, 8 p.m. tomorrow at Agganis Arena, 925 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. Tickets, $30-$150, available via Ticketmaster. Or go to www.camneelyfoundation.org

Up late with Dave Attell

There are morning people, there are night people, and then there’s Dave Attell - best known for his late-night escapades on Comedy Central’s Insomniac yet doomed to a vicious cycle of morning radio interviews to promote his weekend club gigs.
How can he pull it off?
"I guess there’s a lot of ways to adapt,” Attell said. "If you’re in jail, they get you up early.”
Though still a free man, the comic no longer does new episodes of Insomniac, ending his run earlier this year with a Comedy Central special filmed in Las Vegas. That hasn’t stopped Attell from working the circuit and hitting lots of bars.
"I’m doing a new show called 'Why Aren’t You Doing That Show Anymore?’” he said.
At that moment, the front desk at his hotel in Orlando, Fla., called to tell him he would have to switch rooms.
"Somebody has the jones for this room,” he said. "I’ll just take whatever room you give me, but I just wonder what kind of people say, 'I have a loveless marriage. Can you give me a room with double beds?’”
Later this month, Attell reunites with Lewis Black (they did a nationwide theater tour two years ago) for a performance at the new HBO Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.
He enjoys watching HBO’s Rome - "So is Christ going to show up at the end? Is he going to do a walk-on?” - and is pulling for the success of comic Louis CK’s new show.
"At the end of the day, it comes down to the American people, and they want to see Amy Grant granting wishes,” Attell said.
That’s not a bad thing, but he said the wishes usually are pretty tame. ”It’s never, you know, I’d like a three-way,” he said.
Which is why Attell remains a late-night kind of guy.

Larry David, meet Yoshi Obayashi

Nothing can quite prepare you for an actual conversation with Larry David. Even having the HBO media rep tell me that Larry was about to call me to talk for my story, even watching his TV shows. Afterward, the HBO rep called me back to apologize for how surreal that must've been. Well, let me just say this. Talking to Larry David is just like you might imagine it. While everyone around him on Curb Your Enthusiasm is improvising, Larry David is being Larry David. Take that, Manny Ramirez and your Manny being Manny. Larry actually began our chat by saying he didn't want to talk to me because "I was just in the Boston newspapers" last week. And so he was. But I had to find out for myself how the real Yoshi Obayashi, an aspiring stand-up comic who I recall from our days together in the Seattle comedy scene, found his name and signature opening line in the premise for a recent Curb episode.

This story is a follow-up on my blog posting of Oct. 18, headlined, "Coincidence?"

‘Enthusiasm’ for kamikaze shtick shocks L.A. comic (Boston Herald)
It’s sometimes hard to tell fact from fiction on Larry David’s critically acclaimed HBO comedy, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Especially when they collide.
Yoshi Obayashi, an L.A.-based stand-up comedian, saw something a little too familiar in the “Kamikaze Bingo” episode, which first aired Oct. 16 and remains available via Comcast On Demand.
The premise: David makes fun of his friend Yoshi once he finds out Yoshi’s elderly father was a former kamikaze pilot who didn’t die in World War II. Cringeworthy hilarity ensues, including a failed suicide attempt by Yoshi.
The real-life Yoshi, 36, has opened the majority of his stand-up gigs for years with a similar bit. A Seattle Times article in 2000 even quoted his joke: “My grandfather is a retired kamikaze pilot. Obviously not very good.”
Obayashi said people have ribbed him about the TV Yoshi.
But he had nothing to do with it.
And now he worries that some audiences will think he stole his bit from the show. “That’s the ultimate irony of the thing,” he said.
“My friends tell me not to get mad. This stuff happens in Hollywood all the time,” he said. “I find the whole thing really curious.”
David, who has a home on Martha’s Vineyard, said he had never heard of nor seen Obayashi and picked the name Yoshi for the storyline because it sounded funny.
“It’s just unfortunate,” David said. “It’s totally bizarre. It’s completely bizarre.”
But all a coincidence, he says.
“I should call the guy,” David said.
So he did. Will there be a happy ending? Stay tuned.

Yoshi tells me he had a surreal phone talk with Larry, too. Yoshi certainly doesn't want to make waves or pick a fight with a guy who has made millions of dollars off of Seinfeld. Nor do I. But Larry David has such a sublimely bizarre ability to blur reality and at the same time co-exist with it (remember his episode from seasons past at Dodgers Stadium that helped provide an alibi for an alleged criminal?) that this coincidence was too surreal to let go without at least asking about it. I suppose if the TV character had a name other than Yoshi, I would've let it go. Anyhow, I wish both the real Yoshi and the real Larry David the best.

It's The Aristocrats!

Anyone who really wants to understand the psyche of the stand-up comedian, the process of constructing a stand-up set and the business behind the show business -- well, you should see the 2002 documentary Comedian. That movie is full of insight. The Aristocrats, on the other hand, exists more as a way to turn what inherently is a subjective form of entertainment -- what you think is funny isn't what everyone else thinks is funny -- into something more scientific and objective. See how dozens of different comedians tackle the same premise. In doing so, maybe you'll find out more about the comedian telling the joke. Or not. I finally saw the film on the big screen (thank you, Coolidge Corner Theatre), and the highlights for me were those moments in which you got to see which comedians really have creative genius in their corner. Among those moments, again for me...

-- George Carlin, getting self-analytical mid-routine
-- Gilbert Gottfried, more for his explanations of the joke than for his 2001 live performance of the joke at the Comedy Central roast that reportedly inspired the documentary
-- Eric Mead turning card tricks for his joke (impressive on that level alone)
-- Billy The Mime, because he didn't care about being on a public boulevard
-- Dana Gould's discussions all around the joke
-- Bob Saget, not for showing his true stand-up self (because anyone who follows comedy already knew that), but for cracking himself up repeatedly, yet continuing to tell the joke
-- Mario Cantone's channeling session (spooky but silly)
-- Sarah Silverman's endearing creepiness
-- And the South Park gang's animated bit (by the way, a new season has begun on Comedy Central -- you should still be watching it)