As Matt Nelson at Phillyimprov.com reported yesterday, there are three more Philly comedy shows this weekend to benefit Haiti:

Tonight at 10AM, improv group King Friday will be donating all of the proceeds from their monthly BYOB pay-what-you-can show at Studio 34 in West Philadelphia to UNICEF. [show info]

The N Crowd will donate proceeds to Red Cross from their weekly show at The Actors Center tomorrow evening at 8PM [show info].

And on Saturday night at 7:30 [show info] and 10PM [show info], ComedySportz will donate proceeds to Mercy Corps.

It’s also worth noting that there is another benefit this weekend. Pat House, Carolyn Busa, Chip Chantry and Jared Bilski will be performing on Saturday to benefit The Children of Marjorie Gormley Goodwin Fund. [show info]

Chip Chantry’s [left] One-Man Show (w/special guests) returns to The Khyber tonight [show info] with performances Amir Gollan, James Hesky, Darryl Charles, Mykal Carter-Jackson, and sketch group Secret Pants and even you? After the booked performances, Chantry is having holding The Minuteman Challenge in which anyone, yes, ANYONE can come on stage for one minute to try to make people laugh. What you do for that one minute is up to you, you can do a dance, you can sing a song, just do something that will be funny. The winner gets a $25 gift certificate to, as the original posting says, “someplace.”

You may have noticed a comedian by the name of Bing Supernova coming up on a lot of lists as a highlight of 2009 in Philadelphia comedy. But who really is this man? Well, I don’t have much info for you today (hopefully more next week), but the Philadelphia Joke Institute thinks he is awesome and letting him put together his own show, Bing Supernova’s Cavalcade Of Fools [show info], tonight with Steve Gerben, Chip Chantry and Johnny Goodtimes. And to celebrate the man, they are putting on a haiku contest. Submit your haiku(s) here about how awesome Bing Supernova is and they’ll give the winner two tickets to see him tonight. Deadline is Friday at noon.

Don’t believe them that he’s awesome? Perhaps this clip will persuade you.

As we count down the hours until 2010, here are more Top 5 of 2009 lists from Philadelphia comedians.

Doogie Horner, stand-up, host of The Ministry of Secret Jokes

5. Henry Foley vs. Luke Giordano at the Raven Lounge debate

The Raven debate is always entertaining, but this match was especially interesting because of the contestant’s diametrically opposite approaches. The debate was, Who would be a better wingman: Darth Vader or Scorpion from Mortal Kombat? Luke had Vader and Foley had Scorpion. Foley took an early lead as the crowd favorite, being very personable and friendly, and clearly having fun. Luke came in all business. He appeared confident that his superior knowledge of Star Wars would give him an edge, but it actually worked against him since the crowd didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Foley easily walked all over him until the final round when he suggested that Scorpion would use his trademark “Get over here!” move to snare women from across the bar. The crowd thought that was really funny until Luke—in a stunning comeback—explained that what Foley had described was basically ninja rape.

Read More…

As we continue to count down 2009, the TOP 5 lists keep coming…

Ben Maher, co-founder/co-producer of Philly Sketchfest

5. “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC goes viral. It was great to see “Weird Al” debut an EP’s worth of new songs in video form on the internet, and once again gain a whole new generation of fans as he continues to spoof popular music better than anyone else.

4. LOCAL SHOWS continue to spotlight the best Philly has to offer. The Philadelphia comedy scene continues to prove that not only is it filled with hilarious comedians, but that it supports its own better than anywhere else. Shows such as Chip Chantry’s One Man Show (with Special Guests), Bedtime Stories, Ministry of Secret Jokes, Guilty Pleasures, Hey Everybody! and more showcase the amazing talent Philly has to offer. (and props to the venues that put them on like Khyber, PHIT, Connie’s Ric Rac, etc.)

3. KENT HAINES on Comedy Central. National exposure for Philadelphia comedy, featuring one of our funniest and most intelligent comics? Love it.

2. PAT HOUSE INTROS featuring the various incarnations of John Kensil. Absolutely awesome, nonstop hilarious and I hope they never end. The only time I laughed more than this all year was…

1. BING SUPERNOVA at PHILLY SKETCHFEST late show, Saturday night. (go ahead and call me biased, but PSF lucked out to have this performance. It would rank in this spot no matter where it was) A mighty juggernaut of over the top, tear inducing, stomach cramping laughs. This was the funniest 15 minutes of comedy I have seen in years, and the crowd agreed. Mr. Supernova graced this show with his presence, and we are all better for it. Bing Supernova, we thank you.

Honorable Mentions:
The STATE on DVD! (Finally!) & CINEMATIC TITANIC selling out at the Troc!

Perhaps you’ve heard of this Twitter thing that Oprah mentioned a few months ago. It allows anyone to post whatever they want in 140 characters or less. Naturally, it’s a great medium for comedians to try out jokes. Recently a website just for this purpose, Witstream, launched with Michael Ian Black as “Chief Content Officer.”

Just yesterday Twitter launched a new lists feature in which any user can create a custom list of accounts. So I took it upon myself to make a Philadelphia comedians list that makes it easy to follow all of the stand-up, sketch and improv comedians in Philadelphia that are on Twitter (there are 42 in all).

Some comics “tweet” about upcoming shows and others use it to just be funny. Some of my favorites of late:

If you’re know of someone that isn’t on the list but should be, feel free to comment below or e-mail comicvsaudience@gmail.com to be added.

And in related news, profiles in the database that contained a Twitter name aren’t loading correctly. I should be able to fix this this weekend.

By this time, it appears that we’ve heard everything dirty that you can imagine. Although people are still offended by jokes in certain contexts, there aren’t too many things that are surprisingly too dirty. But that doesn’t mean that dirty jokes aren’t still funny, which Philly stand-up Doogie Horner (profile) shows in the book that he has edited Dirty Jokes Every Man Should Know. Published by Philadelphia’s Quirk Books, where Horner is a graphic designer, the book is a portable compendium of mostly sex jokes taken from various sources (FULL DISCLOSURE: I let Doogie borrow of few of my old joke books), but also features a set of Willie Nelson jokes from comic Chip Chantry (profile). Philly comics Roger Weaver and Conrad Roth (who has since moved to San Francisco) are also thanked, although it’s unclear which jokes they contributed. I tossed a few questions to Doogie by e-mail recently to find out more about the process and allure of dirty jokes. Suffice to say this post is NSFW.

1. Are dirty jokes as relevant as they used to be?

I wouldn’t say they’re less relevant than they used to be, but they’re certainly less uncommon. Fifty years ago there was a distinction between dirty jokes and regular jokes, but these days a lot of jokes that used to be considered dirty are almost quaint.

When I first started the book, I submitted modern dirty jokes, jokes about cancer, pedophilia, rape, murder. And the editors said “Uh, not that dirty.” They wanted jokes that were just kind of ribald.

So, the jokes in the book are definitely throwback jokes, because their smut is old-timey. Also, they needed to be jokes that anyone can tell, that depend on the language, not the delivery. And by nature those kind of jokes are the old Catskill kind. Anyone can tell them.

2. Deep down inside, what do you think it is about dirty jokes that appeals to people?

They’re shocking, they’re naughty. You’re getting away with something when you tell one. You’re not supposed to say “poopy,” but you’re saying it anyways! It gives you a little thrill.

3. Where did you find these jokes? Do you know how old they are?

I found most of them in old joke books. A lot of them I found in multiple books, told slightly differently each time. Sometimes a guy would be fucking a donkey, but in a different telling of the joke he’d be fucking a duck, or whatever. Some jokes people told me at bars. Some of the jokes I’ve known for a long time, just heard them from word of mouth, such as the moose joke, I’ve known that one for years.

I don’t specifically know how old any of the jokes are. Most of them I know are at least from the 50s or 60s, since that was the heyday of that type of humor, and that’s when a lot of the books were from. I’m sure a lot are older than that.

4. And some Philly comics gave you jokes as well?

Originally I asked some comics if they had any dirty jokes, but the problem was that their jokes didn’t fit with the style of the rest of the book. They were too obviously modern. Or, they were too short, one-liners. There aren’t many one-liners in the book. Roger Weaver wrote a great one: “What’s the difference between Paris Hilton and a snow leopard? It’s very difficult to find video of a snow leopard mating.” But we couldn’t put it in, because we didn’t use any one-liners.

The one exception is that we used Chip Chantry’s dirty Willie Nelson joke. However, I was able to make a Dirty Willie Nelson jokes sidebar, and that Willie Nelson one-liner was one of four or five Willie Nelson jokes (which Chip also wrote), and we put them all together, so that was different. Yeah, Chip wrote a bunch of dirty Willie Nelson jokes, and we pretended like that was a legitimate genre, as though it’s as common a theme as divorce jokes or pope jokes.

5. What is your favorite dirty joke?

I think it has to be the Moose Joke, because it’s the first dirty joke I ever learned. It’s too long to reprint here, but it’s on page 59 of the book. I also like the one about the two fleas on the beach (page 48), even though it’s not really funny, but it’s so strange, it begins with two fleas suntanning on a beach, I like that. And there was one I really like that they wouldn’t let me put in the book, which is “What’s the difference between a Cadillac and a pile of dead babies? I don’t have a Cadillac in my garage.” But they said no dead baby jokes.

6. What makes a good dirty joke?

It’s subjective, but my favorite dirty jokes are those that take place in an alternate reality, a world where crazy shit happens and everyone behaves like it’s normal. Like, there’s a cocktail party and in one corner there’s an elephant with an erect cock, but nobody thinks that’s unusual, that’s not even the punchline, that’s just the setup. A lot of old-timey jokes are like that, they live in an alternate reality. They’re the exact opposite of modern humor, where comedians try to be observational and realistic.

7. Did you write any for the book?

I wrote all the sidebars, all the commentary and the introduction and stuff like “When Is it Appropriate to Tell These Jokes?”. There are a couple different sections about particular genres, such as Pope Jokes, Lonely Lumberjack Jokes, and I wrote that commentary. I also rewrote all the jokes in the book, I didn’t copy any of them verbatim from the source material. I tried to tighten them up, hopefully I improved them.

There’s only one old joke whose punchline I completely changed, and it’s this one:

A woman told her lawyer she was divorcing her husband on the grounds of hobosexuality.

Her lawyer said “I think you mean ‘homosexuality.’”

– – –

Now, the original punchline is “No,” the woman said, “he’s a bum fuck.” But I changed it to “No,” the woman said, “he likes to fuck hobos.”

Now in it’s second year, the Philly Sketchfest will be held from December 3-5 at the Plays and Players Theatre (1714 Delancey Place). Since last year’s inaugural run, the fest has certainly grown, even inviting sketch groups from Chicago and New York to perform this time. The other new wrinkle this year, beyond that there is an extra day, is that there will be a different stand-up comic every night hosting the shows (last year Chip Chantry hosted all of the shows).

The complete lineup is below, minus the winner of the Helium competition being held on November 18th [show info]. But enough of my yakking, here we go!:

Thursday 12/03 8PM Show
Host: CHIP CHANTRY (Philadelphia)
HELIUM WINNER
BOY MEETS TRACTOR (Swarthmore University)
GENTLEMAN’S ROTARY AUXILIARY (New Jersey)

Thursday 12/03 10PM Show
Host: CHIP CHANTRY
FEEKO BROS. (Philadelphia)
Special Appearance by BING SUPERNOVA (Hollywood)
SIXTH BOROUGH (Philadelphia)

Friday 12/04 8PM Show
Host: STEVE GERBEN (Philadelphia)
THIS THING OF OURS (Philly/New York)
ANIMOSITY PIERRE (Philadelphia)

Friday 12/04 10PM Show
Host: STEVE GERBEN
CHRIS & PAUL SHOW (New York City)
SECRET PANTS (Philadelphia)

Saturday 12/05 8PM Show
Host: KENT HAINES (Philadelphia)
BETTER THAN THE MACHINE (New York City)
THE WAITSTAFF (Philadelphia)

Saturday 12/05 10PM Show
Host: KENT HAINES
THE COOL TABLE (Chicago)
MEG & ROB (Philadelphia)

In related news, producing partners for the fest, sketch group Animosity Pierre are continuing their Mexican Sock Puppet series. Here’s the second episode:

Perhaps you are reading this from somewhere around the Nation’s Capital. Hey, maybe you’re even from the Philadelphia area originally but now work for a politician down there. Well tonight you should head out to the DC Improv for a night of Philadelphia comedy. Area comic Chris Coccia, who has been teaching a comedy class at the club, is bringing his pals John Kensil, Chip Chantry and Chris Cotton to entertain the folks of the District of Columbia.

And if you go, ask them about the NL East Champs!

It’s been almost a week since Michael “Ron Mexico” Vick joined the Philadelphia Eagles and the town is still talking about it. But did you know that Vick isn’t the first athlete in the city to have a history of animal cruelty? The video below from Johnny Goodtimes and Chip Chantry (profile), originally shown at Chip Chantry’s One Man Show w/ Special Guests this past Monday, explains.