Some good reading on comedy from across the blogosphere:
Kliph Nesteroff has published a piece on the WFMU blog on burlesque comedy legend Tubby Boots. Kliph frequently posts about lesser-known comedians of yesteryear--look through the archives and you'll find some fascinating stuff!
Clarence Beaks at CHUD.com has a great review up of George Carlin's latest HBO special, It's Bad For You. Nailing the mentality of a comic perhaps a little too well: "Stand-up comedy attracts the young, but it only suffers the bitter. Even the comics who seem well-adjusted harbor a bubbling hatred of their fellow man; it just so happens that it sometimes manifests itself in the smashing of watermelons or wisecracks from a woozle named Peanut. But there's nothing anodyne in their efforts to amuse you. They're doing it for your fleeting approval. And once the laughter's dissipated, they're back to lamenting your existence."
Finally, from Jim Emmerson's Scanners blog, a lengthy, multi-sourced essay/survey on Black Humor from Steppin Fetchit to Richard Pryor to Tyler Perry. Quoting third hand from Good Times writer Bob Peete: "There is a real difference between black humor and white humor. The chief distinction is that black humor is more attitudinal; it's not what one says, but how one says it." Read the whole thing. There are some fascinating insights, and links to several other pieces on the topic.
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That Tubby Boots article resulted in a Cease and Desist order from lawyers representing a budget DVD company that owned the rights to a shoddily taped 1991 comedy club performance of Tubby Boots. It has been removed from the site to avoid a lawsuit, but will be up on my own site at some point down the line.
What was left unsaid is that I opened for Tubby Boots at Groucho's Comedy Club in Stuart, Florida, and you saw it live! It was, um, a trip. Wigs were involved.
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