So why haven’t I pursued stand-up comedy as a profession? Well, it’s for the very same reason I never pursued a career as an adult film star. Though it may seem like a pretty awesome job, at the end of the day, it more than likely blows. Richard Jeni didn’t shoot himself in the face because he was thrilled with his chosen career. Most comics are miserable sonsabitches off-stage.

To be perfectly honest with you, I did put forth a half-assed effort to become a comedian more than once in my life. I took an extension course at the University of Washington when I was 16. The biggest laugh I got in that class was when the audience (my esteemed classmates) caught me reading my material off my hand — hardy, har, har! Years later, I also did an open mic at the Icehouse in Pasadena. I was better prepared that time, having practiced my routine all weekend. So I was a tad chagrined when I got to the Icehouse and found out that there was actually no microphone for the open mic. I had to do my material on an empty stage for a handful of other aspiring stand-ups, all waiting for their turn.

Guess who’s the shittiest and most unsupportive audience for an aspiring stand-up. If you guessed other aspiring stand-ups, you are correct!

After my Icehouse performance, I was told by the management that they weren’t comfortable with my material, and I was not invited back to perform for a paying audience. It was extremely blue, my routine. But that was sort of the point. Unlike the d-bag emcee who I saw at the Icehouse that night, a guy who recycled the same boring and G-rated rant about buying a cup of coffee that I’d seen him do a year earlier, I wanted my jokes to be hilariously offensive, like all the comedians I enjoy: Bill Hicks, Rodney Dangerfield, Sam Kinison, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, et al. Of course I lacked the polish and nuance that they had. But I think I showed promise as someone who can spew profanity with a humorous bent.

I’m someone who’s very easily discouraged when I don’t really care all that much about something. And it was fairly obvious to me that being an aspiring stand-up comic seemed to look about as much fun as a colonscopy. I saw myself showing up to open mics night after night, running through the same material I no longer found funny, and getting no laughs from a sparsely populated audience of untalented stand-ups. Believe it or not, most of these hacks who fancy themselves as the next Dane Cook don’t even memorize their routines. They go up on stage and literally recite their jokes off a rumpled piece of paper. It’s only funny when they can’t read their own crappy handwriting. At any rate, I decided becoming a professional stand-up comedian simply wasn’t worth the trouble.

Nowadays, I’m fairly content with being a funny guy for a very limited audience of close friends and co-workers. They’re a much better audience, and I don’t have to fly anywhere and stay in some hotel room. No, I don’t star in a craptacular sitcom where I’m a fat schlub with an inexplicably hot wife. I don’t have a film career and millions of people quoting me endlessly. I don’t even have Carlos Mencia ripping off my material wholesale. However, unlike all of my favorite stand-ups, I ain’t dead.

-Brad Lohan

That said, here’s a list of my top 10 favorite haunts in the L.A. area:

The Nuart

This is easily my favorite movie house in L.A. I’ve been to more midnight movies here than I can count. The most recent one I saw was “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” They also show very obscure art films in extremely limited release. I can’t wait to see “Anvil” next month.

Amoeba Music

Looking for hard-to-find CDs or DVDs? I’d recommend Amoeba. Short on cash? Sell them your used DVDs and CDs for store credit or some greenbacks. Unfortunately, they used to have a more generous buyback policy than they do now. A few years ago, I walked away with almost $200 for a stack of ill-informed blind buys they gladly took off my hands. More recently, I left with about $18. Still, their selection of rare and used DVDs is significantly better than the bargain bin at your local Blockbuster.

House of Secrets

This is where Paul Dini and Joss Whedon buy their comics. I know because I’ve seen them there. If you’ve never heard of them, well, you probably don’t read comics, watch cartoons or like cult TV shows. At any rate, HOS also knocks at least 10% off your purchases, and you don’t even need to have a pull file. Someone even spraypainted “Who Watches the WATCHMF” on the outside of their building. I don’t advocate vandalism, nor poor spelling, but that’s still kind of cool.

Cinefile

Right next door to the Nuart is the best video store in all of Los Angeles. Where else will you find a place that has a “Charles Bronson” section? Cinefile categorizes their movies by filmmaker, subgenre and even “Holy F***ing S***!” titles. This is where real cineastes rent or buy films. Brett Ratner goes here, too.

The ArcLight Hollywood

I’ll drive all the way from the Westside to Hollywood to catch a movie at the Dome every now and then. The last one was, of course, “Watchmen.” Here’s a theater that has some great filmmaker Q&As and screening series. I also found a book called “Playboy: Redheads” in their gift shop once. I couldn’t put it down!

Dark Delicacies

I don’t like shopping in big box bookstores. I find their horror and film selections to be lacking. Oh, Barnes & Noble has a lot of books, but none that are rare or used. Dark Delicacies carries all manner of out-of-print titles, and the staff is immensely helpful. They also line up some great author and filmmaker signings. I got Lloyd Kaufman to autograph my copy of “Toxic Avenger: The Novel,” a book that’s quite a fetching read!

Cafe ’50s

I don’t understand my fascination with the 1950s. Maybe it’s because my parents were born back then. I have no idea. Whatever the reason, I have nostalgia for a period in which I never lived. Fortunately, there’s a Cafe ’50s just a short walk from my apartment, and in my opinion, it’s the best in L.A.; there’s one in Venice and another in Sherman Oaks. I almost always get a hamburger and an Oreo cookie milkshake — with frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, of course. You can even play board games like Connect Four while waiting for your food. Fun fact: I really suck at Connect Four!

The Groundlings

The sketch comedy shows at the Groundlings are always funnier than any Judd Apatow bromance picture now playing in theaters. There are some incredibly hysterical unknown actors — and a few known ones — performing either improv or scripted material every night. I personally prefer the scripted shows; improv can be a mixed bag.

Blast From the Past

Buying back your childhood? Well, if you’re constantly being outbid on eBay, try Blast From the Past. Here you’ll find all manner of collectibles from your childhood that you broke or wantonly discarded. The toys on the pegs here are way cooler than all the “Ben 10″ bullshit I see at Toys ‘R Us now.

The Puzzle Zoo

The Third Street Promenade isn’t just a homeless talent show. Yes, there you’ll probably see the fat guy who paints himself silver and wears silver clothes and wants you to give him money because he can stand really still. But you’ll also find the Puzzle Zoo, another great place to pick up hard-to-find action figures from your childhood. It’s definitely a better way to spend your money than giving it to some d-bag with a guitar who sings U2 songs that I don’t even like when Bono sings them.

So those are the places that I spent most of my free time and my discretionary income. Check ‘em out.

-Brad Lohan

I’ve always been a bit of a homebody. Staycations sort of make sense to me. Some people travel to all sorts of exotic locales for Christmas or Spring Break or Talk Like a Pirate Day. I, however, like sleeping in my own bed, playing with the cat and maybe hitting a theme park that’s just a stone’s throw away. I mean, it’s not like I’m a million miles from vacation hot spots; this city’s lousy with them. That said, Staycations in L.A. are far and away more exciting than the ones I went on in Spokane.

My co-people at work have been asking me what I’ve got planned. So I’ve created an action item list:

10/3 – “The Shining” at the Nuart
10/4 – Halloween Horror Nights
10/5 – “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sunday” at the Groundlings
10/6 – Disney’s California Adventure
10/7 – “Evilspeak” at the Silent Movie Theater
10/8 – Knott’s Halloween Haunt
10/9 – TBA
10/10 – “Clue” at the Nuart

Most of those activities are in the evening, leaving my days open for me to do a whole lot of nothin’. Apart from “The Shining,” “Evilspeak” and “Clue,” there are a half-dozen or so other movies I’d like to check out, too (“Religulous,” “Blindness,” “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” “Rachel Getting Married,” “Choke,” “Quarantine” and “Body of Lies”). I’ll have to fit those in somewhere. I’m also about 15 pages into a script I started writing earlier this week; I’d like to keep knocking out a couple pages a day on that leviathan. And I should read at least one book, something angry and political.

I’ll try to keep up on my blog as well. Expect reviews of some of the abovementioned activities and films. Special editions of “Psycho” and “Sleeping Beauty” hit DVD next Tuesday, and yes, I’m going to buy them both because I’m just that weird. I’ll see if I can’t review those.

I seem to have a lot on my plate for my staycation. If I’m not careful, it’s going to start feeling like work.

-Brad Lohan

I guess my fandom for “The Fly” has its limits. And as Dirty Harry said, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” But what about Spider-Man? Well… I might just pay $250 to see Spidey croon. As luck would have it, IESB.net reports that “Spider-Man: The Musical” might be opening on Broadway as early as next year. Eat it, “Rent!”

Based on the character breakdowns, it appears that Spidey will be romancing Mary Jane and doing battle against the Green Goblin. There’s also a character named Arachne, loosely based on Spider-Woman (the Julia Carpenter one, not the Jessica Drew one). She sounds like she’ll bring sort of a New Agey vibe to the material. Apparently, there are spider-gods or something.

Bono has taken some time off from activism to co-write the score with his U2 bandmate, The Edge. I like U2. I don’t have any of their albums, but you really don’t need them, not if you’ve ever owned on a radio in the past twenty years. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with Spidey, even if it costs a couple hundred bucks for a ticket.

-Brad Lohan

For the uninitiated, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is a movie adaptation of “The Rocky Horror Show” stage musical. It’s a sexy send-up of 1950s B-pictures that stars Tim Curry — as Dr. Frankenfurter, a self-described “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania” — and a very young, very “aoogah” Susan Sarandon. The film was a bunker-busting bomb when it opened in 1975, but it ultimately became the longest-running theatrical release in cinema history once it caught on with the midnight movie crowd. Nowadays, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a major city that doesn’t have some art house that screens the movie for devotees at least once a month, if not once a week.

The experience of going to see “Rocky” is unlike your average night out at the movies. Sitting there in stone silence isn’t encouraged. You’re actually supposed to talk back to the screen. In fact, there are all sorts of pre-scripted “callbacks” one shouts at certain moments throughout the film. These callbacks have evolved over the film’s 30+ years of playing to obsessed fans. Each time I go, I’m amazed at how current events will make their way into the fold.

At the Nuart, not only do audience members hurl insults at the screen, but a “shadow cast” — a troupe called Sins O’ The Flesh — acts out the movie as it plays behind them. They have character-specific costumes, props and visual gags that collectively add another layer of obsessive fandom to the experience. You don’t actually go to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to watch “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I’ve been four times now, and I still have no friggin’ idea what’s going on in the movie; it’s something about a newly engaged couple that winds up at a castle populated by cross-dressers. No, you go to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to have a movie-going experience that’s unlike any other.

And MTV wants to suck all the fun out of that by remaking “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” as a TV movie, according to Bloody Disgusting. Did I not just explain in detail how the film is 100% more enjoyable when seen with a large crowd of weirdos dressed in drag? I own “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” on DVD and have yet to watch it. That’s partly because I’m waiting for Halloween to roll around. I’m also convinced that watching it at home won’t be nearly as much fun as being in a theater and seated next to women in corsets and fishnet stockings.

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is an interactive movie. When they do “The Time Warp” musical number in the movie, the people in the audience get out of their seats and “do a jump to the left, then step to the right,” etc. I would imagine there’s something wholly unsatisfying about “a pelvic thrust” when performed at home by yourself.

I think MTV’s completely lost their minds. What, are they going to have the cast of “Real World: Transsexual Transylvania” star in this piece of trash? Do they honestly think the hardcore fans of “Rocky” are going to want to see this? I’m not even a diehard, and I couldn’t be less interested. This is the most obvious example of lack-brained building on a brand I’ve seen to date. You can bet that whenever this monstrosity airs, I’ll instead be catching the Late Night Double Feature Picture Show at the Nuart.

-Brad Lohan

In the film, physicist Seth Brudle (Jeff Goldblum) invents a means of teleportation. When he attempts to teleport himself, a common housefly becomes an unwitting participant in the experiment. Brundle and the fly are fused together at the genetic level. At first he believes teleportation has somehow improved him physically. His strength, agility and fondness for candy bars have all been increased. But then he begins to transform into “Brundlefly,” a gruesome hybrid of man and insect. And his girlfriend Ronnie (Geena Davis) soon finds out she’s pregnant.

The sci-fi elements of the film don’t overshadow the human story. This film is about dying of cancer or of AIDS, a fairly unknown and misunderstood illness when the film was released in 1986. It’s not a movie about a guy who turns into a giant bug and kills people. Brudlefly remains sympathetic to the end, even when he’s regurgitating acid onto the limbs of Ronnie’s creep of an ex-boyfriend, Stathis Borans (John Getz). You genuinely care about Brudlefly. Goldblum’s that brilliant in the role, buried beneath piles of malformed foam latex. He still exudes the agony, the fear and the macabre humor of a man who’s dying of an incurable disease.

Now it’s an opera. I’ve never seen an opera before, but I would absolutely see “The Fly: The Opera.” After all, it’s not “The Fly 2: The Opera.” Ain’t It Cool News has a mixed-positive review from the Paris premiere last week. It doesn’t open in Los Angeles until September. Cronenberg and Howard Shore, who composed the music for the film, are involved. If this is a cynical cash-in, at least the right cynics are involved. Unfortunately, Goldblum isn’t reprising his role as Brudle. I’m not sure if he has the pipes for it. But how does a fly sing anyway?

-Brad Lohan

Evidently, this film is based on a stage musical of the same name. When writing a musical now, you don’t even need to write original music, rather a bunch of loosely-connected scenes you can shoehorn insipid ABBA songs into. Then, some producer will come along and make your uninspired monstrosity of a stage show into an equally uninspired monstrosity of a movie.

This horrorshow is opening the same day as “The Dark Knight” in a sneaky little bit of counter-programming on the part of Universal Pictures. Now you might say that the new Batman movie is just another cynical product of franchising, not unlike “Mamma Mia.” I would have to disagree. Early reviews I’m reading of “The Dark Knight” are calling it a “masterpiece” that elevates the comic book genre in the same way that “Godfather II” elevated gangster pictures and “Empire Strikes Back” elevated sci-fi. In short, it takes the source material to another level. I’m not seeing any indication that “Mamma Mia” is such a game-changer.

Some people might say that I’m being unfair, that “Mamma Mia” is just harmless entertainment. Those people are weenises. “Mamma Mia” is piffle and doesn’t even want to be original. It’s an adaptation of an adaptation. It’s not nearly as ill-conceived as that useless “Producers” movie that came out a couple years ago — a film that’s based on a stage musical that’s based on another film. But that still doesn’t justify its existence.

Studios are run by yellow-bellied bean counters, too timid to greenlight anything new or different. They like brand names, things that are familiar to the mainstream audience. Even non-adaptations stink of sameness, like tomorrow’s “Hancock.” What’s key to successfully cashing in on a brand name and maintaining some modicum of artistic integrity is bringing something fresh to the proceedings, an original approach. Now if Pierce Brosnan were blowing away criminal masterminds with a Walther PPK, bedding that bug-eyed blonde girl on all the “Mamma Mia” posters, and singing “Dancing Queen,” that’d be something different. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of that business in the trailers. So I’m absolutely not going to take a chance on “Mia.”

-Brad Lohan

It looks as though the bar was completely destroyed, another reason to blame al-Qaeda; Islamo-Fascists don’t drink! Shows have been postponed until July 7th, but classes will remain on-schedule. I hadn’t signed up for Level 2 classes before the events of 6/26 (never forget!), having put my improv comedy studies on hold so I can spend the summer in Europe. I’m not physically going to Europe, but there are some foreign films at the top of my Netflix queue. “The Dirty Dozen” counts, right?

Seriously, folks, out of all the places in Hollywood that could’ve been hit, I am saddened that it had to be iO. There’s a Popeye’s Chicken a block over from iO on Cahuenga that looks like a truck already drove through it. But that’s why they’re called “terrorists.” They don’t enjoy improv comedy like you or I. And they drive gas-guzzling SUVs — all the more reason to hate them.

The only way we can fight these monsters is to keep buying stuff, like tickets to upcoming iO shows once their doors reopen. You should also vote for John McCain or we’ll just get hit again. Maybe next time it’ll be the Groundlings or Second City. I’m willing to make the “ultimate sacrifice” by driving to Hollywood on a weeknight(!!!) to check out an iO show. But I won’t have to worry about parking now that they have a drive-thru.

-Brad Lohan

This afternoon, I went to see a stage production of “1984″ at the Redcat in Downtown L.A.

I’d somehow managed to get through high school without having read George Orwell’s novel. Only last year did I get around to finally reading it and loved every prescient page. Shortly after, I tracked down the out-of-print DVD of the film, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton and Suzannah Hamilton’s naughty bits. I found the movie entertaining, but a fairly dry and straightforward adaptation. The trouble with realizing the book on film is that so much of Winston Smith’s conflict is internal. He spends a lot of his time reading and writing, somewhat boring activities on film. But all the sex and torture scenes manage to spice things up a bit.

The stageplay, directed by Tim Robbins, retains the spirit of the novel, but strips everything down to one location — a holding cell in the bowels of the Ministry of Love where Smith stands accused of his numerous thoughtcrimes. Shaved bald, looking half-starved and wearing blood-stained undergarments, the actor portraying Smith is shackled to the floor and harangued by four party members as well as the booming, omnipresent voice of Big Brother. Passages from his diary are read back to him and key scenes from the novel are reenacted. Ultimately, Smith is hauled into room 101 and tortured further by O’Brien, where he learns that two plus two equals five and to stop worrying and love Big Brother.

The stage has its own set of limitations, but unlike film, allows for the audience to use their imagination to a greater degree. I was sort of disappointed that all the action was limited to the holding cell. I would’ve liked the structure of the novel to have remained in place and more locations to have been used: Winston’s apartment, his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, the room in the Prole district where he and Julia meet in secret, O’Brien’s apartment, etc. The same backdrop of the holding cell could’ve remained part of the background (thematically it would’ve worked brilliantly), but a few tables and chairs and the audience’s imagination could’ve gone a long way in building a larger world.

With the story being described more or less in series of flashbacks, the conflict doesn’t necessarily rise and the character beats seem much more anecdotal. Stretching out Smith’s interrogation over two hours is also a bit exhausting with all the yelling and screaming and electrocuting that’s going on.

Robbins does bring a few contemporary touches to the production. The party members are wearing Oceania lapel pins, and the words “terrorist” and “homeland” find their way into the script several times. Yet I’m surprised Smith wasn’t wearing an orange jumpsuit, and I guess waterboarding was too messy. Despite my nitpicks, I did in fact enjoy the stage version of “1984.” You could say I had a plus-good time taking in a little theatre this weekend.

-Brad Lohan