The New Shayne-Michael.COMedy

Posted February 1, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Comedy Shows for All | No Comments | Bookmark

SF Deco Lounge Organizes Stand-Up Comedy To Benefit Haiti

A weekly stand-up comedy show in San Francisco's Tenderloin District will benefit an aid organization in Haiti for the next two weeks. That show, entitled Funny Mondays at the Deco Lounge, will raise money through the Rainbow World Fund in cooperation with its disaster relief partner CARE. Those attending the show will be asked to donate up to $20 at the door, with all proceeds going to CARE, an organization which has already begun distributing food, water and shelter in Haiti. Monday, January 18th 2010, the all-star cast will include: Lisa Geduldig, Marga Gomez, Yayne Abeba, Natasha Muse, Casey Ley and Cameron Edmondson with host Tony Koester. Funny Mondays begins at 8pm. The Deco Lounge is located at 510 Larkin St. in San Francisco, CA.

Posted January 17, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Comedy Shows for All | No Comments | Bookmark

Roseanne Barr Will Headline The Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival Acts

Jeff Garin is most famous for the series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The comic actor recently teamed with Michael Moore to create the first annual Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival. We now know who the featured acts will be. Included in that list of performers are J.B Smoove, Whitney Cummings and Mike Birbiglia. The headliner will be the former domestic Goddess Roseanne Barr. Barr made a name for herself by starring in her self-titled a sitcom series called Roseanne. Barr will be the top draw for the inaugural Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival which is scheduled to run from Feb. 19th through the 21st. Co-founder Michael Moore has promised Barr will be funny and caustic. Garlin, who created the festival with Moore, will also perform onstage and host a nightly talk show during the three-day event. Oscar-winning filmmaker Moore chose Traverse City because of its proximity to his home city of Flint, Michigan. He and Garlin started the comedy festival as a counterpart to a film festival Moore began in Travers five years ago. The comedy festival was created to drum up business for Northern Michigan and help the state cope with the economic crisis currently affecting us all. "It will run pretty much the same way as the summer film festival," Moore cracked, "except for the tire chains, the frostbite stations and eventual slip-and-fall lawsuits." I thought Garlin was the comedian here? Schedule and ticket information will be announced next week. Moore promises ticket will be affordable in the hopes that it will light up Traverse City in the middle of winter and also give a nice boost to the local economy.

Posted January 16, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Comedy Festivals for All | No Comments | Bookmark

The 100 Greatest Stand-Up Comic Trends

• Richard Pryor: New Rank 1 +
• Steve Martin: New Rank 2 -
• George Carlin: New Rank 3 -
• Robin Williams: New Rank 8 + / Showdown
• Rodney Dangerfield: New Rank 9 -
• Ellen DeGeneres: New Rank 12 +
• Jerry Seinfeld: New Rank 13 +

Comedian Corner [+]

Reviewing Steve Roye's Killer Stand-Up Series: Part One

I recently purchased Steve Roye's Killer Stand-Up Series. I have since read the Interactive Writing and Performing Guide cover-to-cover. What will follow is an in depth review of the system. This review will begin Friday when I subject material written through his Interactive Writing Guide and rehearsed through his Interactive Performance Guide to the test at my usual Friday Eye Candy open mic. After evaluating most of my new bits with Roye's Comedy Evaluator Pro I realized, my new material, tested or not, tends to get about a PAR score of 20. Tested material that I've been doing a lot time, usually tops out at a little over 40, and approaches 50 when I'm killing. I will be comparing new material developed with my own writing techniques to material developed with the Killer Stand-Up Comedy System on the same subject. I will be looking at this from both an objective and a subjective point of view. I have two questions to ask here: Will the system allow me to stay on topic longer than usual? As a one liner comic that's very hard for me to do. Secondly, will the material developed with Roye's system have a higher PAR score right off the bat, assuming I do everything the system tells me to do. And third, yes I have trouble counting, how effective are these tools for a one-liner comic like myself.

Stay tuned for the clip and the results.

Posted February 1, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Writing Tools for All | No Comments | Bookmark

What Constitutes Comedy At The Jordan Comedy Festival

When I traveled to London as a graduation gift the only thing I wanted to do was perform at an open mic. Little did I know you could be deported for that, even if you’re not getting paid. Other countries tend to go ballistic when foreigners do anything in their country that resembles work. They want you to spend your money there, not earn it. If you do perform in another country, there’s a good chance your material won’t work anyway. Comedy needs to be relatable. I learned this first in Canada. In Montana we told sheep jokes. In Canada, we explained them. Often times there are often cultural barriers in comedy when exotic locations are involved. You’ll notice it on the road too. Small towns don’t laugh when you joke about traffic lights because some of these small towns don’t have traffic lights. So when I learned how much comedy had taken off in the Middle East, I wondered what they were talking about. After scouring the internet, I found some clues.

Arab culture is known for religious conservatives. My guess is that there aren’t a lot of Arab comedians joking about the Koran. I suspect those who do also risk getting heckled with a hail storm of rocks. "He died on stage," might not be far from the truth. So what does get tackled in Arab comedy? Well, at the Jordan Comedy Festival some topics last year included marriage and family. Arab Comedy is hardly dangerous yet, ala Lenny Bruce. Comedians are just starting to discuss their personal lives, often to the dismay of their spouses. Much of the comedy is regional; I guess making fun of the town down the street takes place in all cultures. There are occasional light-hearted jabs at politics. One comic joked Iranian opposition protesters were forced to shorten Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s name for rally chants. Arab Comedy is not dangerous yet. But if comedy evolves the way it usually does, we may see government intervention in the Arab world we could never imagine in the United States.

Posted January 17, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Foreign Comedy for All | No Comments | Bookmark

Bollywood Comedian Enters The Guinness Book of World

Have you ever wondered what was the most stand-up comedians in a film? Me neither. But here’s the answer anyway. A Bollywood comic named Sunil Pal has earned a Guinness Book of World Record for a film he directed and produced entitled Bhavnao Ko Samjho, which roughly translates into the phrase, “Slow news day.” That film features 51 stand-up comedians. So what constitutes the most comedians in a comedy flick? 51. Before the record was awarded the Guinness Book of World Records checked to make sure that each comedian had a speaking role. They couldn’t be background actors. That means the film with 150 extras who are working comics doesn’t count; that’s good, because that would be most every film ever made. Additionally, all comedians who were featured in the film needed to be career stand-up comics. There goes my idea for beating that record by bringing a home video camera to next Friday’s open mic at the Eye Candy Cafe. Suni describes the film as clean comedy at its best. “The entire film will have the people in splits,” he said in an interview with the Thaindian New, “but nowhere have we resorted to using cheap punches or vulgarity to make the people laugh. You can watch the film with your entire family,” he added. Pal also acts in the film. By the way, I have no idea what it means to have your audience in the splits.

Posted January 16, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Indian Comedy for All | No Comments | Bookmark

Upcoming Stand-Up Comedy Seminars

• Kurtis Mathews: San Francisco, CA on 02/17/2010 6pm / FREE / Visit The Class Website
• Greg Dean: Los Angeles, CA on 02/22/2010 7pm / FREE / Visit The Class Website

Recent Articles For Comedians [+]

New Article: Ten Pervasive Myths About Stand-Up Comedy

ONE: The first myth is that doing open mics every night makes you a better comedian. Contrary to what you may believe, going up that often, without being prepared, can also reinforce bad habits. I learned more by watching Charles Fleisher one time than I learned at ten open mics in a row, I learned more because I watched Fleisher do more things right that night than I had done right all week. TWO: The second myth is that bringer shows are all bad. If you can draw an audience, you can play most anywhere you want. I’m not downplaying the club’s responsibility to draw in an audience. But you also have a real obligation to promote yourself. THREE: The third myth is th... [Read Entire Article]

Posted December 30, 2009 by Shayne Michael under Performing

Recent Biographies [+]

Robin Williams is known for his improvisational and impersonations skills. His quick-wit and rapid-fire improvised one-liners are widely regarded as the best examples of improv comedy of our time. Williams began doing impersonations as a child, mimicking his aunt's southern accent. From there, his style evolved in the footsteps of his idols, Jonathan Winters and Richard Pryor. But what else is there to learn about the wildly successful comedian who was voted "Least Likely to Succeed" by his fellow graduates of Redwood High School in Larkspur, California? Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 21st, 1951. He was the only child of Robert Williams, a senior executive at Ford Motors. His mother Laura McLaurin Smith was a model from Jackson, Mississippi. Williams credits his mother as being the strongest supporter in his quest to become an actor and a comedian. “She gave me the... [Read Entire Bio]

Posted 02/09/10 by Shayne Michael under comic actor

New DVD Releases, Rankings & Reviews [+]

Other Recent DVDs/ Films Ranked or Reviewed

                          

Site Changes/ New Features [+]

Shayne-Michael.COM's Gift To Comedy Teachers

I have been working on this for a while. Comedy teachers were always listed at this site. But I wanted a feature that would allow those teachers to promote upcoming seminars. It would be as simple as choosing a date and a price. This site would do the rest of the work for the instructor. Well the basic feature is online now. The comedy class page now allows registered users who teach a comedy class to post details of one upcoming comedy seminar including the date and the price. I just used it to list one of Greg Dean’s seminars and one of Kurtis Matthews. Once the date passes, the seminar will be erased for you. I’ll be adding a lot more bells and whistles in the days to come. I want to make it possible to promote the seminars on every page, allow for posting multiple seminars and give a little more details about what will be covered there. Teachers who aren’t listed on the Comedy Class page can easily add their class here. Registering a site-wide account with the same email as that class will give you control over all the details of the class and allow you to post upcoming seminars.

I also altered the comedy class page, so having a class listed will promote any book or CD related developing as a stand-up comic that the teacher has released.

Posted January 16, 2010 by Shayne Michael under Comedy Classes for All | No Comments | Bookmark