A slapdash compendium of things that have made me laugh recently

• That the Chase Budinger Asher Roth record was shelved in the Country aisle of Target’s music section when I went there to buy “Madden ’10″ and “NCAA ’10.”

• That there is an art gallery on Newbury Street in Boston called “The Martin Lawrence Gallery.”  Wonder if they have that new Brother Man exhibit, or if the collection focuses mostly on the “Black Knight” period.

• The least romantic meeting place ever (via my office building). And yes, those are rose petals.

• An old poster promoting the DVD release of “What Happens in Vegas,” defaced with what I’ve taken to calling “the Kutchshot.”

• The idea that Eddy Curry + curry powder + “Powder” could = Eddy Curry Powder, and the idea that someone with Photoshop skills could make something beautiful out of that.

• That my friend nicknamed me “The Dad Whisperer,” owing to my estimable talents at engaging parents in conversation, and that another friend’s first reaction was to begin acting out the “Horse Whisperer” psyche-out from “BASEketball” (head to the 3:23 mark):

What’s made you laugh recently, y’all? Tell Andre Dawson here.

OFF-TOPIC: The magnetic appeal of Colin Quinn bombing

I haven’t felt all that interested in sports of late. Sure, there are a million reasons to love the NBA playoffs, there’s all sorts of anger-gold to be mined in rooting for a baseball team with a $147 million payroll that now has Alex Cora batting leadoff, it’s nice and schadenfreude-y to watch Brad Lidge’s inevitable crash-and-burn after a golden summer in the sun, etc. But nothing in the sports landscape has really grabbed my attention by its attention-throat and throttled it into idle weekend-afternoon submission.

In times like these, I eschew spending time with cherished family and dear friends in favor of watching video clips online.

The video above has nothing to do with sports, but it does have something to do with jokes — specifically, when jokes go awry, and how splendid an experience that can be. I think Colin Quinn is a fantastic stand-up comic and comedy writer; I am well aware that many people do not share that opinion, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree. That’s at least partially why these videos (which must be at least 13-15 years old) of Quinn flaming out on Comedy Central’s The A List are so fantastic — he is eminently aware of not only that he is bombing, but also how badly he is bombing, why it’s happening and that every grasping attempt to right the ship will be futile. What grows out of that self-awareness is a sort of director’s commentary on a set in shambles, one that I hope those of you who like jokes might find compelling.

OFF-TOPIC: The greatest rapper of all time died on March 9

(Image via http://www.soulbounce.com)

Today marks 12 years since The Notorious B.I.G. got killed. Tons of people way better versed than I am in every topic related to this artist — his life, his death, his music, his iconography, his impact, etc. — have weighed in on this anniversary in the past, with most of those posts/essays/articles/screeds being brought out of mothballs and polished up today. (In the interest of one-stop shopping for audiophiles, Antone over at Hip 2 Da Game has updated the tribute post he wrote last year with a bunch of rare and unreleased tracks for your listening pleasure.)

There are a lot of amazing songs to choose from when you want to remember how much fun it was to listen to Biggie. (Feel free you leave yours in the comments.) Here’s one that I always love returning to: “Notorious Thugs,” the great collaboration track he recorded with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Hope you can take a couple of minutes and enjoy.

–

EDITOR’S NOTE: Based on some of the searches that are bringing people here this morning, I’m getting the sense that some of you might be looking for the song containing the lyric used in the headline. It’s Canibus’ “Second Round Knockout,” the last track the venerated freestyler made before L.L. Cool J effectively ended his mic life by saying that 99 percent of Canibus fans didn’t exist. (Which is true.) Video of that cut — featuring Mike Tyson helping Can re-enact the Ill Simmons-loved “Rocky and Apollo training on the beach” meme — follows.

OFF-TOPIC: The Chef spurs me to rep my hometown

I know, I know, the number of off-topic posts today (two, for those keeping score at home; here‘s the first) is at least one more than the number of on-topic posts I typically write in a day.  But I just saw this track via The Smoking Section‘s Twitter, and though I’ve not yet been able to listen, I felt compelled to post it up with a brief note. First, the track; if you’re so inclined, the note follows.

Raekwon – Staten We Go Hard

…

As you know if you’ve checked out this site’s about the author page, I was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Staten Island.  Upon moving to New England in 2000 to attend college, I often told people that I was from Brooklyn.  There were two main reasons for this:

A) Whenever I told someone who wasn’t from the New York metropolitan area that I was from Staten Island, the chances were excellent they’d never heard of the place I’d just referenced; often, they just kind of stared blankly at me and said, “You mean Long Island?”  That grew tiresome quickly, and way more people had at least heard of Brooklyn, so I stuck with the fact of my Bay Ridge birth, cut out the middle part and left it at that.

[SIDEBAR 1: This was mostly effective, except for the one time I was waiting for a bus and making small talk with one of the several non-scholarship-athlete black kids at my school (lily-white Northeast liberal arts colleges, FTW).  He asked where I was from, so I told him "New York City," emboldened by months of people not questioning my pedigree.

To my surprise, he said, "Yeah, me too.  I'm from Harlem -- what part are you from?"  At which point I kind of sheepishly said, "Bay Ridge, then Staten Island."  His reply: "Oh. ... Don't sweat it, man. I won't tell anyone."]

B) Because I was mostly ashamed of calling Staten Island home.  I worked my ass off in high school to get out of there, dude, and at first, I definitely tried to leave all traces of it behind.

Despite the fact that I made some great friends there, I always felt like a square peg in the round hole of the overwhelmingly traditional outerborough. The culture shit I liked (at that point, mostly indie rock, comics, IFC and stand-up comedy — I know, not exactly futuristic shit, but still) was very different from most of the kids my age there.

I didn’t go tanning or spend time in the gym, blow out my hair or wear velour sweatsuits.  I didn’t get faded 24/7 or pop ecstasy like Chiclets when I was 17.  I didn’t pretend that my dad’s brother was fuuuuckin’ connected and that I could have you batted out in a fuuuuuuckin’ second.  I didn’t ask people who the fuck they thought they were, or if they knew that my cousin will KILL you for disrespecting me like that?  Maybe more importantly, I didn’t think that not doing any of those things made you a “faggot.”  I wanted something more out of my life than growing up to become a Staten Island guy (or, failing that, at least something different).

[SIDEBAR 2: It was very difficult at first to explain my view on Staten Island living to outsiders; a lot of them only knew one person from there (me) and couldn't quite picture it. It became much easier when MTV aired "True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl" a couple of years back.]

Of course, that was the way I thought when I was 18; eight years and change later, I’m way less raw about it.  I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by warped, dysfunctional, demented, hilarious and loving people in a place that shaped my sense of self, priorities, aspirations and humor in deep, sharp, lasting ways.

As much as it introduced me to douchebags of all shapes, sizes and colors, Staten Island was also the place that introduced me to the freedom of punk rock music, the brilliance of lowbrow wit (and on a good day, the mostly-equal brilliance of its opposite), the wonder of embracing a fanatical love of sports, the exhilaration of seeing something you wrote published, and so much more.

I spent the formative years of my life there, and it’s taken me a long time to realize that pretending I didn’t, or that doing so was necessarily a bad thing, would be ridiculous, counterproductive and ultimately false.  Nearly a decade after I left, part of me still swells up when I listen to Monty Love sing about it being “do or die up in S.I.N.Y.”  I suspect that part of me always will.

Plus, we got the fucking Wu-Tang Clan, bitches.

OK, that’s it for me for today, for real.  About to leave the office, head home in advance of my brother’s arrival and get ready for tonight’s Celtics/Cavs matchup.  As Skeets would advise, “Embrace the weekend, people” … and if, like me, you’re still sort of holding out, embrace your past, too.

OFF-TOPIC: The only (kinda) original Watchmen-related joke I’ve made

Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallback from the hinterlands of January. (You might maybe have seen it back then at the wondrous Hello Friend, curated by Eamonn Brennan.)

Enjoy the mindfreak tonight, gang. And while I’ve already read the book about 10 times and every critic seems to be praising/panning the film’s near-religious adherence to the source material, if there are significant differences between print and screen, do me a solid and don’t mention ‘em in the comments. I’ll be checking the movie out this weekend, and I wouldn’t want to have to murder one of my half-dozen loyal readers.

OFF-TOPIC: Righting a wrong; Mahalo, baller

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post will have nothing to do with sports.  If you don’t want to read something that’s got nothing to do with sports, no hard feelings — I’ll see you Monday.

EDITOR’S NOTE, part deux: I owe a hat-tip to KSK for the headline … I hope I’m not misappropriating it too terribly for your tastes.

–

It wouldn’t be accurate to say I grew up with the comedy of Bill Hicks, but it wouldn’t be totally inaccurate either.  See, the first comedy album I fell in love with was Denis Leary’s No Cure for Cancer.

I wore that sucker out, man.  I listened to it pretty much every day in eighth grade, even cleaning up Leary’s NyQuil bit and performing it for a school-wide public speaking contest.  (I won my class competition, but lost in the eighth-grade finals to some chick reciting “Tikki Tikki Tembo” or something … fucking bullshit, dude.)

It wasn’t until far later that a college friend introduced me to Hicks’ stand-up, beginning a career of admiration that at times borders on proselytizing when I find out that likeminded individuals have never listened to him, and even led to an image of the man being included in a hastily assembled and poorly constructed photo illustration that serves as this site’s unique banner.  (I’m sure he’d be thrilled to share studio space with the Shoryuken.)

Of course, part of being introduced to Hicks is learning of the popular comedy argument that Leary was a thief, a journeyman Boston hack that had appropriated Hicks’ persona and stole chunks of his act, then used it to successfully market himself as the kind of buzz comic that can be sold to overweight suburban 13-year-olds as “edgy.”  The debate between the two comedians’ supporters is lengthy and jam-packed with vitriol … check out some side-by-sides of the material in question if you’d like to judge for yourself.

I wound up falling on the pro-Hicks side; the tonal and material similarities were too much for me to ignore.  (Hicks’ alleged response to an interviewer’s question about Leary’s supposed theft: “I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”)

But it was more than that … the more I listened to Hicks (another friend was kind enough to dub me a copy of Philosophy, which I still listen to every few weeks), the more I read by and about him (Love All the People remains one of my favorite books) and certainly the more I watched him (Bill Hicks Live: Satirist, Social Criticm Stand-Up Comedian ought to be required viewing), the harder it became to enjoy Leary’s stand-up.  It felt like I had spent years happily enjoying Steak-umms, then got treated to a juicy Porterhouse.  I mean, the thing I used to like was still OK, I guess … but man, how fucking good was this new thing?

One of the more controversial elements of Hicks’ career was the censorship of his Oct. 1, 1993, appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman.”  The in-depth details of the affair, recounted late in Love All the People, are sadly not available in the Google Books version, but the rundown in the foreword is (pgs. vii through xi), and it sets things up pretty well.

Here’s the gist: Hicks did some material making fun of the pro-life movement and the Christian celebration of Easter, someone got scared, and producer Robert Morton called Hicks to tell him the set had been cut.  Hicks pressed for an explanation and/or a tape copy of the set, which led to a game of hot potato between the “Late Show” producers and CBS’ standards-and-practices department, neither one of which would take responsibility for the decision or give Hicks what he wanted.  It was one of the last major career events in Hicks’ life — he died less than five six months later (EDITOR’S NOTE: Nice counting, dick), on Feb. 26, 1994, after a bout with pancreatic cancer.

Last night, nearly 16 years after inexplicably chopping her son’s set, Letterman brought Mary Hicks, Bill’s mother, on the show to apologize for the “heartache and sadness [his] decision caused [her] family.”  He also, at long last, played the set.  And of course, because the Internet is awesome, the whole deal is now available on YouTube.  So without further ado:

Here’s part 1, in which Letterman discusses the circumstances surrounding the bit being cut:

Part 2, in which Mary Hicks proudly talks about her son, letting through just a glimmer of the hurt that Letterman’s censorship caused her son and comporting herself quite well (even showcasing a bit of natural timing):

And finally, what we’ve all been waiting for: Part 3, Hicks’ censored “Late Show” performance:

Since last night, I’ve been fixated on Letterman’s reaction after the clip ends … the quick head-shake, the immediacy with which he claims the situation says more about him than it does about Hicks, the disappointment, maybe even disgust, that he allowed this thing to take on such a life of its own.  Welcome contrition.

More than anything, though, last night’s events gave me the image of Bill Hicks that I think I want to remember — looking happy, doing smart, biting material that’s still resonant after more than 15 years, and flat-out killing.  A star shining brightest just before it flames out.  It’s a beautiful sight.