Artie Lange has been a core cast member of the Howard Stern radio show for eight years. Even if you are not a Stern listener, you may have encountered Lange as a regular on Mad TV, or through one of his other, often controversial television appearances. He is also the author of the best-selling memoir Too Fat To Fish, which was published earlier this year. Lange has just released his first comedy album, the aptly titled Jack and Coke (Shout Factory).
As a result of his celebrity, Lange has fought a very public battle with addiction over the years. He’s been known to miss work at his day job with Stern, or to fall asleep at work if he does make it in. It’s not just his comedy that’s edgy and raw. His life is lived right on that same ragged edge. The thing is, it’s nearly impossible to dislike the guy, and you can’t help but find yourself rooting for him through all of his struggles. He can have you laughing uproariously with his tales of hookers and eight-balls, and in the next moment have you near tears as he talks about his late father.
Jack and Coke is, as you might expect, profane, politically incorrect, vulgar, and yes, very funny. Any comedian who begins his set with the words, “I’m glad Heath Ledger died, and I’ll tell you why,” is prepared to take some chances. Lange follows that with a rather explicit description of his own alleged audition for Brokeback Mountain. For him, there is no idol too sacred to smash, no pretentious balloons that he’s unwilling to put a pin in, and no thought that needs to remain unexpressed. It goes without saying that if you’re easily offended, Jack and Coke is not for you. (more…)
Get out your wallet — or, better yet, don’t: The music subsidiary industries of live venue ticket sales and satellite radio are here to give you a lesson in economics. It was news recently when ticket agent monolith Ticketmaster shuttled consumers seeking Bruce Springsteen tour tickets immediately to a “secondary arm,” which in this case means aftermarket, or, to be more blunt, scalping. The turnaround from viable public sale to resale was an estimated 15 seconds, an impossible speed for the average concertgoer to have broken through to obtain tickets. The whiff of stink indicates that Ticketmaster concocted this scam to get the tickets immediately to the secondary market, where they could charge whatever the market would bear. 100 percent markup? 500 percent markup?
Well, if we can’t rely on businesses to be responsible, or at the very least realistic, we can expect the US government to intercede and not allow such shifty unions to take place, if only for the sake of the public trust, right? Think back to the days when our governance said things like, “We cannot allow XM Satellite Radio to merge with Sirius. They’re the only game in town. To wed them is to subject their customers to all manner of pricing abuses.” Not long thereafter, the two joined forces anyway because, in matters such as these, the merger almost always goes through. And now it looks like XM/Sirius is on the brink of bankruptcy. Are these events related?
In the annals of television history, Son of the Beach will not go down as a classic show — and I don’t mean that as an insult to comedian 