What in the hell happened to the purple leather - not quite a jumpsuit, but almost a super hero - costume-wearing Eddie Murphy of the Raw days?  Hell, I’ll even take the quasi-pink leather of the Delirious days if it means he’ll actually go back to being hardcore funny again.  However, E.M. traded in the leather that hugged his Testiclees (The Greek God of Fertility) like they had just stated their first name and admitted they had a problem for fat suits, novelty teeth, and computer generated animation.  Sure, farts are funny.  Lettin’ one go at the appropriate, strategically placed time (or the inappropriate time) can be funnier than any kick to the tenders.  But as far as I remember, those Nutty Professor movies marked the disappearance of the Eddie Murphy people like me once loved.  The coupe de ville of those two flicks was him playing all the different Klump characters, and blowin’ it out like they worked for Atmos.  Admittedly, the first 10 times you see it, it’s funny.  After that, it’s just him with a bad wig, wearin’ a fat suit, a bunch of makeup, and some editors splicin’ all this flatulence together.  Once again, if by some weird chance you’ve never seen Tropic Thunder – which I refer to more often than the phone book for CVS’s pharmacy – you should.  “Jeff Portnoy” (Jack Black) made his whole career off a movie franchise called The Fatty’s; and in the scenes they show from the movie trailer, all they do is fart at the dinner table a la The Nutty Professor.  So, I guess the only thing worse than not being talked about, is not being made fun of.

E.M. was about as funny a mofo as there was at one time.  He told all those stories about being poor, and cussed like a sailor who just got a below the belt piercing.  But if you watch any tapes of his stand-up, it wasn’t offensive.  The harshness of his vernacular fit the lowdown that he was layin’ forth.  In betwixt all the laughter, you didn’t really have time to keep a scorecard of all motherfuckers, goddamns, fucks, and whatnot.  The routine he did about Bill Cosby was great because, first of all, he imitated his voice and it was dead on.  Second, he told The Cos to fuck off at the end, which in and of itself was shockingly hilarious because it was putting Mr. Family value’s name in the same routine with the F Bomb.  Telling Dr. Huxtable to gargle your gonards takes big cojones, no matter which way you look at it.  He did this no telling how many nights a week, for however long the tour was when he wore that crazy ass leather suit.  That thing was so tight, it probably required three guys, four c-clamps, ball bearings, and a quart of 10W-40 oil just to get it off.  If you looked very closely at his family traditions, you could actually see his pulse, which made the suit very safe.  When he was sick on tour, a doctor could just sit in the front row and monitor his vital signs without having to actually examine him.

Before he kicked ass standing up, he was funnier than that other black guy on SNL, too.  I mean, seriously, Velvet Jones?  After seeing him dressed up in a toupée flogging that book, who didn’t want to be a ho?  There was also the skit where he dressed up as a white guy to see what caucasians were all really up to, and found out we give away free newspapers and drinks to each other on the bus.  I mean, race relations in this country came a long way after he played Gumby.  Before him, nobody could have imagined Gumby as being black.  He’d always just been green.  The only people up for that role were Lou Ferrigno or Bill Bixby, but Murphy took it to new heights.  Singing the song about “Hymie Town” after Jessie Jackson used it in a statement took guts, and he made it funny.  Plus, that goofy wig and the way he holds the mic while doing it is good stuff.  Who hasn’t tried to convince a member of the opposite sex to play Celebrity Hot Tub?  “You got to get in water!  Hey!  Gonna make ya sweata!  Huh!  Good Gawd!”  And if there has ever been a fake assassination more funny than that of Buckwheat, I haven’t seen it – J.R.’s was boring, and not funny at all.  Before the dude shot him, he said, “Hey, Mr. Wheat?”  Mr. Wheat?  That’s funny right there.  I can remember watching that live with my cousin, and thinking it was real.  Some people remember where they were when the marine/government/mob killed John F. Kennedy.  My generation has the memory of where they were the night Buckwheat was shot.

Now it seems as though he has tapped into the intestines of family humor, and is riding that gastric train all the way to bank.  He was the voice of Donkey in a bevy of Shrek films, and Shrek farts as often as Rosie O’Donnell after 10% off day at the Pork Peddler.  We already touched on the Nutty Professor films, when he fat suited and farted his way to the bank.  Then he made some movie called Norbit, which sounds like what you would call a large man who had something very small in his pants – and I never saw it.  He did Bowfinger with Steve Martin and somebody; I don’t know if that finger is where the arrow in Martin’s head came from, because I forgot to tie anything around my finger to remind me see it.  And who can forget his adventures as a lunar night club owner named Pluto Nash?  I know Eddie’s tried to, since it’s lauded as the worst box office flop of all-time.  About the only non-family thing he’s done in the past fifteen years was pick up that prostitute that may, or may not have been a Transformer (more than meets the eye was definitely true in that case).  E.M. told the cops that he was just giving he/she a ride, so maybe he was doing research for a sequel to Taxi Driver.

I understand that E.M. has probably earned a ton of duckets making families across the world happy by playing flatulent, one-dimensional characters.  That’s great, and a fartwhile dream.  I just don’t understand why a man who has as much pure talent and money – assuming he didn’t go all Wesley Snipes – won’t go back to his roots.  I think it’s time to break the Crisco back out, lube up, throw on the leather, get back on stage and tear it up.  I know I’m not the only fool out there who would pay good money to see it.  There may be some hope on the horizon since it’s been reported that another Beverly Hills Cop is in the works, but don’t be surprised if it turns out to be a Pixar production.

(Part I of Eddie Murphy’s Law)

Nick Di Paolo,  Born January 31, 1962

I couldn’t find a whole lot of information about this comedian’s early life, so the background section of this post will be somewhat limited in both scope and accuracy.  Nick Di Paolo was born in Danver, Massachusetts to two people (at least one of them was of Italian descent) who bumped uglies around 9 months before he was born.  He may be an only child, or he may have one or more siblings, who the hell knows?  When he was old enough, Di Paolo attended Danvers High School and probably did some stuff while he was there like join a sports team or club, and experiment with different types of drugs, alcohol, and pre-marital sex.  After high school, Di Paolo attended the University of Maine and majored in marketing, which is a degree someone pursues when they have absolutely no idea what they want to do with their life - at least that’s why I picked it.  After earning his degree, Nick did what a lot of other marketing major graduates have done before him – he began selling frozen steaks and seafood door-to-door out of the back of a pickup truck.

After working for two years as a traveling fish monger, Di Paolo quit and found himself jobless with no clue as to what he would do next.  One day Nick found himself walking on a beach in Revere, Massachusetts, and stumbled upon some guy on stage hosting a Best Tan Contest.  He took this as a sign (after all, he was broke, it was July, and he is Italian), so he entered the contest – and lost.  Later that night, Di Paolo was at a bar drowning his miseries in a pint glass when a stand-up comedian took the local stage.  It was then that Nick realized what his true calling was, and he set out for Boston to begin sowing his comedic oats.  He toiled away in anonymity at various Bean Town comedy clubs for two years, and then decided to take his act to New York.  It was here that Di Paolo began to make a name for himself, and he gained a sizable following from performing at clubs like Catch a Rising Star, Caroline’s, and The Comedy Cellar.  Native New Yoahkers identified with Di Paolo’s take no prisoners style, and enjoyed his politically incorrect brand of humor.  Since that time, Di Paolo has broken into the mainstream through various TV, movie, and radio appearances – some of the most recognizable being: The Chris Rock Show, The Sopranos, Lucky Louie, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, Beer League, The Howard Stern Show, and as a guest host on The Dan Patrick Show.  He has also been a panelist on several of the Comedy Central Roasts, and can currently be seen on a very funny show – with an eclectic cast - called Smoking Gun Presents: World’s Dumbest.  

A critic for the Winnipeg Press once summed up Di Paolo’s on stage persona by saying he is “Gentle as a starved wolverine and as predictable as a tipsy-hop through a minefield, Nick DiPaolo is an experience constrained only slightly by the demands of stand-up comedy.”  I am not exactly sure what any of that means, but what do you expect from a Canadian writer?  The guy was probably full of Molson Ice and french fries with gravy when he wrote the article, so I’m surprised that he was actually able to put a coherent sentence together.

Di Paolo talks about the event every (straight) middle-aged man dreads:

I don’t think anyone wears button-fly jeans anymore, but that doesn’t make this video any less funny:

Nick Di Paolo loves women…politically correct-fueled feminists, not so much:

Watch more Nick Di Paolo stand-up clips on Jokes.com

Before today, I’d never heard of the Christian rock band Newsong, or their popular holiday ditty “Christmas Shoes”; however, I am familiar with the work of comedian Patton Oswalt – you might remember him from such films as Starsky & Hutch, or as the renaissance fair guy in Reno 911! - and he is of the opinion that it’s the most terrible holiday song of all-time.  After listening to some of his thoughts on it (which also includes some very funny animation accompaniment), I had to do a little searching so that I could have a listen and judge for myself.  Without a doubt, the song is definitely as bad as advertised – and their lead singer looks eerily similar to Billy Mays.  Apparently this 1996 song was inspired by a popular Internet story that made its rounds; the story was then turned into a novel in 2002, and eventually made into a CBS made-for-TV movie starring Rob Lowe that same year.  On the outside, it seems like such a touching and heart-wrenching story; but to Patton, it is one of the most disturbing Christmas tales he’s ever heard – and after listening to this extremely funny breakdown of it, I’d have to agree.

(Contains some language)    

(Found on Unreasonable Faith)

Cross reads an excerpt from one of his favorite novels, In Search of Goodpussy: Living Without Love by Donald Spears:

Cross discusses one of his favorite topics, religion:

A compilation from the 2003 film Run Ronnie Run!:

The following videos were taken from Pryor’s 1982 performance “Live on the Sunset Strip”:

Leonard Schneider aka Lenny Bruce,  Born October 13, 1925  Died August 3, 1966

Leonard Schneider was born in Mineola, New York to Myron and Sadie Schneider; his parents divorced when he was five, and Lenny lived with various relatives throughout the next decade.  Lenny attended Mepham High School in Bellmore, New York, but dropped out and decided to join the U.S. Navy in 1942.  He saw active duty in Europe, but was discharged in 1946 after convincing a team of navy shrinks that he was experimenting with homosexual urges.  In 1947, Schneider legally changed his name to Lenny Bruce, and with some encouragement from his mother – who was a stage performer herself – he began doing impressions, one liners, and movie parodies in small nightclubs.  Around this same time he also met a burlesque dancer named Honey Harlow – whom he described as having “alabaster breasts” – after dating for a while, the two were married on June 15, 1951 (they divorced in 1957).  The newlyweds soon moved to Miami Beach, where Honey worked as night club dancer/stripper.  Before moving to Florida, Bruce organized a charter from New York State legalizing the Brothers Mathias Foundation, and received a license to solicit and disperse funds for a leper colony in New Guiana.  On April 23, 1951 he was arrested in Palm Beach for solicitation, but the charges were later reduced to vagrancy and panhandling.  He was found not guilty in the case because the charter was legal, the leper colony did exist, and the local clergy didn’t actually know if he was an imposter – unfortunately, those poor New Guiana lepers only received $2,500 of the $8,000+ that Father Lenny raked in over a three week span.  He narrowly escaped this brush with Johnny Law, it wouldn’t be his last run-in with police and the U.S. judicial system though. 

Bruce started to receive bookings at small nightclubs after his appearance on the TV show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scoutsin 1948.  His unique act eventually led to an increase in popularity, and Bruce soon went from working seedy bars and jazz clubs to doing major TV appearances.  Although he would only appear on TV six times in his career, it was clear to audiences that Lenny Bruce was unlike any comedian during this era.  His routines were laced with profanity, and often involved social commentary on topics like organized religion, racial prejudices, and the government.  This edginess inevitably led to varying opinions in the mainstream media.  Some felt like Broadway columnist Hy Gardner, who called Bruce a ”one-time-around freak attraction”; others echoed the sentiment of a writer from San Francisco named Herb Caen:

They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating. Sometimes you feel guilty laughing at some of Lenny’s mordant jabs, but that disappears a second later when your inner voice tells you with pleased surprise, ‘but that’s true’.”

Bruce’s raunchy persona also led to more altercations with the police - he was arrested 9 times in a 3 year span for either obscenity or possession of narcotics – and basically led to him being blackballed in clubs across the United States.  His last performance was at The Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on June 25, 1966, a concert that also featured Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention.  On August 3, 1996, Lenny Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home, and the autopsy listed his official cause of death as “acute morphine poisoning by an accidental overdose”.  Thirty-seven years after his death, Bruce received the first posthumous pardon in New York’s history when Governor George Pataki overturned his obscenity conviction from 1964.                       

Bruce’s material is not as relevant as it once was, but I still think it’s pretty damn funny:

“The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be’, there is only what is.”

“I was in a casino, minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to move. You’re blocking a fire exit.’ As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you’re flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit. Unless you’re a table.”

“They say Sprite is made out of lemon and lime. I tried to make it at home, there’s more to it than that.”

“Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having. ‘Damn it, Otto, you’re an alcoholic.’ ‘Damn it, Otto, you have lupus.’ One of those two doesn’t sound right.”  

Another video from Funny People‘s character parody of Dane Cook – that’s how I like to think of him at least.  Clearly, Aziz Ansari’s character is much funnier than the real Dane Cook…but, I also happen to think the movie Brian’s Song is funnier than that turd burgular:

(Language NSFW)

(In case you missed it, here’s Part I)

I was browsing through Funny or Die’s latest offerings, and came across this video featuring Aziz Ansari – who you may have seen in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation.  He is in the new Judd Apatow movie Funny People, which also stars Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill (some great cameos too).  Ansari plays a budding stand-up comedian named Randy, and this is a faux profile of the man behind the mic.  Within a couple of minutes I had the distinct feeling that Apatow created Ansari’s character with my least favorite comedian in mind – Dane Cook.  There is no doubt that Randy has all of Cook’s traits down to a science:  energy, sound effects, his use of popular slang, a MySpace account, and no jokes whatsoever.  I still think Funny People is a chick flick disguised as a comedy, but Randy may make it worth the price of admission.  Oh, and Dane Cook sucks monkey scrotums…

(Language NSFW)

Want more Randy? Visit his official website.

I had a chance see this comedian in concert a couple of years ago, and it was the second funniest stand-up act I have ever seen – only behind Dave Chappelle.  His self-deprecating style and an overall distaste for family life also makes him a perfect fit for the Hater Hall of Fame:

Born September 12, 1967

Louis Szekely (pronounced se’-ke) was born in Washington D.C., but his parents moved to Mexico City shortly thereafter.  He lived there until he was five years old, and then moved with his family to Framingham, Massachusetts.  Louis wanted to be a comedian early in life, but said he wasn’t good because “I was only 17-years old and I had a lot to learn about life in general. But I just kept on trying…I had nothing else I was good at.”  His first performance was in 1984 at an open mic night in Boston, Massachusetts; things didn’t go so well, considering all his ”material” only translated into two minutes of actual stage time.  After this perceived failure, C.K. did not step foot on another comedy stage for two years.

In 1989 Louis moved to New York, and his career began to take a turn for the better; he appeared on shows like Evening at the Improv, Comic Strip Live, and Star Search - but lost to some guy named Steve McGrew.  Four years later he was hired as a writer on The Conan O’Brien Show, and worked there for a couple of years; he came up with “The Staring Contest” bit, and was actually the first comedian to appear on the show.  He also worked as a writer on the Late Show with David Letterman, the Dana Carvey Show, and was hired as the head writer/producer for the Chris Rock Show in 1996 – where he he won an Emmy for his work in 1998.

He began the new millenium by writing and producing his first feature length film, Pootie Tang.  The movie was panned by critics, but has developed a sizable cult following since its release - myself included.  His success and reputation as a must see comedian also continued to grow; this led to his first comedy CD in 2001 (“Louis CK: Live in Houston”) and accolades in several entertainment-based publications - like Variety, Entertainment Weekly, & the Hollywood Reporter.  He wrote, produced, and starred in a HBO sitcom pilot in 2005, and a year later “Lucky Louie” went on the air.  Sadly, it was cancelled after only one season, despite a rise in ratings each week and several great reviews.  He bounced back with his first hour long stand-up special in 2006, “Louis CK: Shameless”, and began selling out shows across the country while on tour.  Here are some videos that demonstrate why this comedian was a first ballot selection for The Hall: 

(None of these videos are safe for work)

2008 performance, “Chewed Up”