Posts from — August 2007

The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, on Monday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into a safety barrier, severing his leg below the knee, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his lower right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.

The man and his leg were taken to a hospital, but the limb had been crushed in the collision, the paper said.

JOKESTARTERS:

• When told of his mistake, the victim got “hopping mad,” according to eyewitnesses.
• On the bright side of things, at least the motorcyclist will now be eligible to enter the famous Tokyo One-Legged Ass Kicking Contest; he also just cut his toenail-clipping responsibilities in half!

SOURCE:

• Reuters

By PETER KEEPNEWS

Midway through the recently concluded Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, her first as vice president for programming, Maureen Taran was talking with a veteran stand-up comic who wondered, with evident envy, why so many young sketch groups were generating so much industry interest, and how he could get that kind of attention.

Her answer, she recalled, was simple: “Pick up a camera and do it yourself.”

This year, Just for Laughs was, as it has been for 25 years, largely a showcase for stand-ups from throughout the English-speaking world and a gathering place for comedy professionals. As usual, there were comedians who seemed poised to break through to a bigger audience (Louis C.K., Zach Galifianakis) or who were ready to face North American audiences (Jim Jeffries from Australia, Stephen K. Amos from Britain). But in at least two ways, this year was a little different.

With the sitcom format in decline, more than one festival participant was heard to remark that the days when a stand-up could come to Montreal with a solid set and leave with a network development deal are long gone. That may at least partly explain why two of the hottest topics at Just for Laughs this year were sketch comedy and the World Wide Web.

Sketch comedy, never more than a sidelight at previous editions of Just for Laughs, was prominent this year. There were performances by, among others, the reunited Kids in the Hall and the anarchic British troupe Spymonkey. One of the most anticipated events was “The Lineup,” a showcase of six up-and-coming sketch groups, with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross of the fondly remembered HBO series “Mr. Show” as hosts.

Also present in greater numbers than ever, Ms. Taran said, were executives in search of Internet content, for television networks and cable channels, as well as for comedy Web sites like Super Deluxe (superdeluxe.com) and Funny or Die (funnyordie .com).The two phenomena are not unrelated. The Web is proving to be a very hospitable place for sketch comedy, if not yet a very lucrative one.

Few people were willing to go as far as Mark Krantz, a veteran comedy producer in Montreal seeking talent for Super Deluxe, who said in an interview after the festival that “the Web just might be the future of all things comedy.” But comedy in general, and sketch comedy in particular, is already a big deal there.

Posting a clip on YouTube or MySpace can jump-start a comedy career: homemade digital videos helped propel Andy Samberg to “Saturday Night Live” and led to cable series for the sketch groups Human Giant and the Whitest Kids U’Know.

If the Web is still more a means to an end than an end in itself — getting on television remains most comedians’ goal — the ability to produce sketches quickly and cheaply, and to show them to the world almost as soon as they’re made, is changing the comedy landscape. Sites like Super Deluxe (a unit of Turner Broadcasting) and Funny or Die (which is run by Will Ferrell and the writer-director Adam McKay) have the clout to make the Web not just a place to post clips but also a career option, for established comedians as well as for unknowns.

“The Web has opened things up,” said JoAnn Grigioni, the director of talent for Comedy Central, who was at Just for Laughs scouting acts both for the cable channel itself and for its Web site, comedycentral.com. “There’s so much more that you can do with talent that might not fit in a show on the air.”

“Comedy in general works really well on the Web,” Ms. Grigioni said. “It’s the only genre where you can be successful in 10 seconds or five minutes.”

Mr. Krantz of Super Deluxe agreed. “Sketch comedy is primarily short-form,” he noted. “You have to get in and you have to know when to get out” — which makes it, he said, “perfect for the Web.”

The Los Angeles comedy team Leon and Andy, who were featured in the Montreal sketch showcase (although they did not actually perform; they stayed backstage while their clips were shown to the audience on a big screen), echoed that sentiment. In an e-mail interview, the two comedians, Leon Mandel and Andy Fisher, whose bizarre shorts can be seen online at www.weepirate.com, said: “The Web is an amazing venue for sketch comedy. It’s practically built for it. People want short, easily digestible pieces that they can ingest on their lunch breaks and share with their friends.”

Mr. Mandel and Mr. Fisher said the Web had become their primary outlet. “We used to perform live a lot more than we do now,” they wrote. “But when you can spend your energies making films that you can propagate onto the Web for perpetuity, performing for a crowd at a bar loses a little of its luster. We still love it, but we do it sparingly.”

The situation is a little different for the Buffoons, a troupe affiliated with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York that was also on the “Lineup” bill, jolting the crowd with what might be called Three Stooges routines for the new millennium.

In a telephone interview, Bobby Moynihan of the Buffoons said the group had been “approached primarily by Internet people” at the festival and, with possible deals being discussed, faces the challenge of making its visceral comedy work online. “We’re a very physical group,” he said. “That’s one of our biggest obstacles right now, because it’s hard to translate that to film or television or the Internet.”

Still, he said, the Buffoons are ready; they expect to be well represented online in the near future, when the Upright Citizens Brigade site (ucbtheatre.com) begins posting videos. He has had a taste of Web fame already through his bit part in a raunchy clip by another sketch troupe, Derrick (derrickcomedy.com), which he said was shot in one afternoon and which has been viewed three million times on YouTube.

“It used to be you’d do stand-up and you’d have an act that could be turned into a sitcom,” Mr. Moynihan said. “Now if you have 20 seconds, you can put it up there and you’ll be more famous than someone who spent years developing an act.”

That sound you just heard is the collective click of comedians everywhere turning on their cameras.

SOURCE:

• New York Times

Employees at Changes, on North 45th Street, said they don’t know, but the ensuing melee just past 1 a.m. Thursday was unlike anything they’ve ever seen there before.

As soon as the man on stage started singing about the stars in his best Chris Martin impersonation, the woman reportedly said: “Oh, no, not that song. I can’t stand that song!”

Witnesses said her distaste for Coldplay quickly took a violent turn, and she leaped at the would-be crooner, shouting expletives and telling him that his singing “sucked,” while expressing the same opinion of the song, according to a Seattle police report.

She pushed the man and punched him, all in an effort to stop his singing.

Other patrons went to the singer’s aid and hauled the 21-year-old woman outside.

“It took three or four of us to hold her down,” said Robert Willmette, one of the bartenders at Changes.

The woman, Willmette said, “went crazy” when she got outside, punching him twice in the face, and throwing blows at the others gathered around her.

But the person who drew most of the music critic’s ire was an off-duty Seattle police officer. The off-duty officer identified herself as a cop, gave her badge number and had another patron call 911 to request help for an officer.

The response was fast and overwhelming, with both patrol officers and Gang Unit detectives converging on the normally tame neighborhood bar.

“They blocked the whole street off,” Willmette said.

According to the police report, the woman’s rage only grew when the uniformed officers arrived.

The officers took the woman, whom Willmette described as “a little hippie girl,” to the ground, but she was still able to head butt the off-duty officer several times before she was handcuffed.

After treatment for injuries she suffered in the scuffle, the woman was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault. She was also held on a warrant issued for a previous theft charge.

The off-duty officer also went to the hospital, for treatment of several cuts, scrapes and bruises.

Later Thursday morning, bar employees were shaking their heads over the woman’s bizarre behavior.

It could have been the Coldplay song “Yellow” that upset the patron of a Wallingford neighborhood bar. Or perhaps it was the karaoke singer who belted it out.

Employees at Changes, on North 45th Street, said they don’t know, but the ensuing melee just past 1 a.m. Thursday was one unlike anything seen at the bar before.

As soon as the man on stage started singing about the stars in his best Chris Martin impersonation, the woman reportedly said: “Oh, no, not that song. I can’t stand that song!”

Witnesses said her distaste for Coldplay quickly took a violent turn, and she leaped at the would-be crooner, shouting expletives and telling him that his singing “sucked,” while expressing the same opinion of the song, according to a Seattle police report.

She pushed the man and punched him, all in an effort to stop his singing.

Other patrons went to the singer’s aid and hauled the 21-year-old woman outside.

“It took three or four of us to hold her down,” said Robert Willmette, one of the bartenders at Changes.

The woman, Willmette said, “went crazy” when she got outside, punching him twice in the face, and throwing blows at the others gathered around her.

But the person who drew most of the music critic’s ire was an off-duty Seattle police officer. The off-duty officer identified herself as a cop, gave her badge number and had another patron call 911 to request help for an officer.

The response was fast and overwhelming, with both patrol officers and Gang Unit detectives converging on the normally tame neighborhood bar.

“They blocked the whole street off,” Willmette said.

According to the police report, the woman’s rage only grew when the uniformed officers arrived.

The officers took the woman, whom Willmette described as “a little hippie girl,” to the ground, but she was still able to head butt the off-duty officer several times before she was handcuffed.

After treatment for injuries she suffered in the scuffle, the woman was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault. She was also held on a warrant issued for a previous theft charge.

The off-duty officer also went to the hospital, for treatment of several cuts, scrapes and bruises.

Later Thursday morning, bar employees were shaking their heads over the woman’s bizarre behavior.

According to the night bartender’s notes, she had just one drink — a single shot of Jägermeister.

She didn’t appear to be one of the regulars who flock to the bar for its karaoke nights on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Most are regulars who come for the pleasure of the singing, and the police are rarely needed.

“She was just crazy,” Willmette said.

According to the night bartender’s notes, she had just one drink — a single shot of Jägermeister.

She didn’t appear to be one of the regulars who flock to the bar for its karaoke nights on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Most are regulars who come for the pleasure of the singing, and the police are rarely needed.

“She was just crazy,” Willmette said.

JOKESTARTERS:

• Initially, the attacker was arrested and charged with assault. But once authorities found out that her anger was based on a karaoke version of “Yellow,” all charges were immediately dropped. A parade in her honor is now scheduled for Monday at Noon.
• Actually, the reason the singer was attacked was because the suspect “hippie girl” had hepatitis, and was offended by lyrics talking about “skin” and “yellow.”

RE-CREATE THE ATTACK HERE – WATCH, THEN PUNCH YOUR MONITOR:

SOURCE:

• Seattle P-I

Danny Anderson, 53, was feeding his horses Monday night, when a 5-foot rattler slithered onto his central Washington property, about 50 miles southeast of Yakima.

Anderson and his 27-year-old son, Benjamin, pinned the snake with an irrigation pipe and cut off its head with a shovel. A few more strikes to the head left it decapitated and dead sitting under a pickup truck.

“When I reached down to pick up the head, it raised around and did a backflip almost, and bit my finger,” Anderson said. “I had to shake my hand real hard to get it to let loose.”

His wife insisted they go to the hospital, and by the time they arrived at Prosser Memorial Hospital 10 minutes later, Anderson’s tongue was swollen and the venom was spreading. He then was taken by ambulance 30 miles to a Richland hospital to get the full series of six shots he needed.

The snake head ended up in the bed of his pickup, and Anderson ended up in the hospital until Wednesday afternoon.

Mike Livingston, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist, said the area where the Andersons live is near prime snake habitat. But he said he had never heard of anyone being bit by a decapitated snake before.

“That’s really surprising but that’s an important thing to tell people,” he said. “It may have been just a reflex on the part of the snake.”

If another rattlesnake comes along, Anderson said he’ll likely try to kill it again, but said he’ll grab a shovel and bury it right there.

“It still gives me the creeps to think that son-of-a-gun could do that,” he said.

JOKESTARTERS:

• This incident is further proof that the ghosts of angry, dead rattlesnakes are dangerous.
• “Youch!” screamed the victim, “when I said I wanted a little head I didn’t mean this!”

SOURCE:

• Seattle P-I

FREDERICK, CO — A Catholic priest faces indecent exposure charges after jogging totally nekkid, like Adam, about an hour before sunrise.

The Rev. Robert Whipkey told officers he had been running naked at a high school track and didn’t think anyone would be around at that time of day, a police report said.

He told officers he sweats profusely if he wears clothing while jogging.

“I know what I did was wrong,” he said in the report.

Whipkey did not return phone messages. His attorney, Doug Tisdale, told the Daily Times-Call of Longmont that Whipkey had no comment.

Whipkey, 53, was arrested around 4:30 a.m. June 22 in this town about 20 miles north of Denver.

The Archdiocese of Denver said it takes the incident seriously but is awaiting the outcome of the case. Whipkey remains an active priest.

If convicted of indecent exposure, a misdemeanor, he would have to register as a sex offender, prosecutors said.

JOKESTARTERS:

• Come on folks – what’s so wrong with a Catholic priest running naked on a high school track early in the morning? Okay, okay, you’re right…
• Actually, Father Whipkey wasn’t totally nude when arrested. He was wearing his collar. His spiked dog collar that is.
• In a related development, a male prostitute was arrested for walking fully clothed through a church last night (ok so it ain’t quite there yet but work on the opposite angle will ya…?).

SOURCE:

• WRAL