Louisiana Voice

It’s been 21 years since I did my last gig at the Baton Rouge Funny Bone. Some say I should’ve gotten out before my 1999 New Year’s Eve finale. Perhaps they’re right because after 15 years at the club, most everyone in Baton Rouge had heard my joke. When the audience blurts out your punch line before you get to it, it’s time to go.

My most humiliating moment onstage came one night when there were only about 20 people in the entire club. At the time, we had three comics each show: me, as emcee, the middle, or feature act, and the headliner. As emcee, my job was to warm up the audience and get them ready for the feature act and headliner.

This particular night, there were three women sitting together right down front. They had their arms crossed, which is bad body language that practically screamed to me: “I ain’t laughing at anything, clown boy.” So, I concentrated on trying to make them laugh, reasoning that if they laughed, I had the entire room.

Nothing I did worked, so I resorted to talking to them. I usually talked to people in the audience because that was a good way to loosen them up if I could play off their responses to make a joke. But I got nothing. Finally, I asked what they did for a living. It turned out that all three were law students in Tulane Law School. No problem. I had a number of lawyer jokes that I rolled out.

Still nothing. Finally, out of desperation, I told them that I had done my best material and even tried lawyer jokes, so what would they like to hear?

Without missing a beat, one of them replied, “Humor.”

Any entertainer should know when he has lost the fight. I bailed and brought up the feature act.

Despite that one show, I had a great run working for Mike Rogers at the Funny Bone. It gave me the courage to promote my own shows in Mandeville, Hattiesburg, Natchez and, the most successful of all, in a monthly show at a place called Augustine’s in Hammond.

At Augustine’s each month, I would bring in an established comic to headline the show. It usually was one who had performed at the Baton Rouge Funny Bone whom I knew to be a strong act. To round out the bill, I gave stage time to a number of amateur comics from the Baton Rouge and New Orleans area.

New Orleans was especially fertile ground for aspiring comics, so I always had a well-staffed show at Augustine’s with as many as five or six locals to go up before the headliner.

One headliner was an African-American comic who had been burned in a freak gasoline fire when he was fueling his car. His best line was, “Between me, Michael Jackson, and Richard Pryor, we have proved beyond a doubt that black people are flammable.”

One of those who made the monthly pilgrimage from New Orleans to Hammond was a resident of internal medicine at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. A Korean, he played off his ethnicity, tossing out lines like “We industrious Koreans think the Japanese are lazy.” Not exactly political correctness, but hey, this was comedy and nothing is sacred.

His name was KEN JEONG . A licensed physician, he gave up his practice of medicine to concentrate on a movie career. You may have seen him as the hilarious Mr. Chow in the Hangover trilogy (he’s the one who jumped stark-naked out of the trunk of a car in the original Hangover movie. It was his wife’s idea to do that).

More recently, he has appeared as a regular panelist on the Fox Network’s The Masked Singer, a show I have never watched because I equate it with cheap substitutes for entertainment like Bachelor, Bachelorette, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor, and other low-cost productions designed to seduce us into a lobotomized state. (Sorry, Ken, but I’m just not into such low-brow entertainment).

But last week, during taping of the show, Ken STALKED OFF THE SET in apparent disgust over the revelation of one of the masked singers on the show.

And who was the masked singer who was unmasked, drawing the ire of Ken Jeong?

None other than former New York City Mayor and current Trump apologist and fellow conspirator Rudy “hands in his pants” Giuliani.

Ken was infuriated to see Giuliani behind the mask because his background as a doctor stoked his anger. He considers Giuliani as part of the administration that bungled the COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages.

I know there are the usual trolls who will trash me for this, but I don’t really care. I am proud of Ken Jeong and his courage to walk off the set of a show aired by Fox Network. If the trolls have anything to say about my comedy career that never really got off the ground except for a few dozen corporate shows on each coast or if they don’t like what I write, they don’t have to read these posts.

Meanwhile, if I ever get the chance, I will shake Ken Jeong’s hand and hope he remembers me.

Anyone who has ever had a bad experience with the IRS (is there any other kind of experience?), anyone who has ever been audited, or anyone who has ever even paid income taxes will want to read my latest book.

It’s All TheIRS is the story of Scott Tanner who is assessed penalties and interest totaling more than $600,000 because of the failure of a former business partner to pay his taxes. When he learns that the deadbeat’s ex-wife is being assessed the same amount, in effect allow the IRS to collect twice on a single debt, he decides to fight back.

It’s All TheIRS chronicles the pair’s battle with an agency that refuses to listen to reason or to accept their explanations. The book is fiction, of course (no one in his right mind chooses to fight the IRS), but it contains numerous actual events in which the agency steamrolls its victims. One example is the story (true) about the IRS padlocking a day care center because of a tax liability. When parents came to get their children, the IRS attempted to force the parents to sign promissory notes to pay the day care’s penalties.

The cover design is by Jeanette Herren of West Monroe and it features a photo of the U.S. Treasury.

To see the cover, click here:

You can order a copy of the book by clicking on the DONATE button in the column to the right of this post and pay $25 by credit card or you may sent a $25 check to Tom Aswell, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727

DON LEMON said it for me.

He didn’t have to say it because we know it down here in Loozianer, even if we won’t say it openly.

I mean, it’s a given.

But Lemon, a native of Baton Rouge now plying his trade with CNN, called Sen. John Kennedy an “ignoramus” Wednesday night, adding that he was “just that dumb” and that he “embarrassed Louisiana, all Louisianians.”

Well, not all, of course. There are still many who do not possess the cognizance to recognize a buffoon when they see one. Their misplaced loyalty to a party label prohibits them from separating dignified diplomacy from dumb-ass platitudes and outright insults.

And of course, Kennedy will ramp up those catchy little banalities in his upcoming campaign for reelection without uttering a single word of real substance.

So, what, exactly, provoked Lemon into calling out Kennedy Wednesday night?

Nothing really – except Kennedy’s penchant to insult, debase, and demean (pick one) President Joe Biden’s nominee for the US Supreme Court – before the nominee has even been named.

To quote a now deceased friend of mine, “What an ass-clown.” And I’m talking about Kennedy here.

The man is a graduate of Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia Law School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, so it’s pretty well substantiated that he’s no dummy. Yet, he insists on playing down to the lowest common mental denominator of his Trump-worshiping base by doing his best to sound like Foghorn Leghorn of the Warner Bros. cartoons.

Kennedy, a member of the Judiciary Committee which votes on federal court nominees, was uncharacteristically quiet when Donald Trump touted the qualifications of a female nominee before the nominee’s identity was even known. That nominee, of course, was Amy Coney Barrett and she was approved with nary a Republican objection.

But then President Biden promised to appoint a qualified Black woman to the court, Sens. Ted “Cancun” Cruz and Kennedy went berserk. Cruz called Biden’s promise “offensive,” but Kennedy, true to his Mouth of the South persona, didn’t stop there. He had to inject his witty homilies into the dialog.

“Number one,” he proclaimed, “I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog. Number two, I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a woke agenda.”

That absurd utterance prompted me to wonder if our junior senator had been peeking at the women’s lingerie section of a J. Crew catalog, perhaps mistaking it for a law book.

Lemon’s response? Well, there were no cute little remarks like, “Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit” or “I’ll be batter dipped and deep-fried.”

No, Lemon, in an understated, calm manner said, “Senator Kennedy, really? You’re an ignoramus. You’re just that dumb. And I’m embarrassed because I’m from Louisiana. You embarrassed Louisiana, all Louisianians.”

Lemon went on to say Repugnantcans are “playing to the base with manufactured outrage over President Joe Biden’s vow to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. They can’t hang their outrage on her education or her record or anything at all other than the one thing that they know: That she’s Black. They don’t even know who she is yet.”

Remember, too, that when he first ran for senator, Kennedy was a liberal Democrat. But when the political winds shifted, so did he and now he’s a self-described Trump Repugnantcan.

Remember, too, that he was one of eight senators to vote to overturn the 2020 election, joining such luminaries as Tommy Tuberville (who identified the three branches of government as the House, the Senate, and the executive and who mistakenly said the US fought socialism in WWII), Josh Hawley and Cruz.

Kennedy, aka Mr. Haney (Green Acres), also said he’d “rather drink weed killer” than support Obamacare. He has repeated his pledge to drink Roundup than to let his constituents down.

Don Lemon was correct: Kennedy is an embarrassment much in the same manner as one Earl K. Long was in 1959. But Long had an excuse. He was suffering from a mental breakdown.

Kennedy is just suffering from diarrhea of the mouth.

It’s not at all clear the motive behind or the advantage gained by Jared Caruso-Riecke’s claim that he served as a compliance officer for “multiple regulatory agencies,” including “the Louisiana Public Service Commission,” but it now seems that was a misrepresentation of his professional background.

Caruso-Riecke was appointed to the State Police Commission in June 2016 by Gov. John Bel Edwards.

His Linkedin page says that in 2002, “Mr. Riecke expanded his management roles and business interests by becoming President and CEO of Southeastern Louisiana Water and Sewer Co. (SELA), a private (family held) water and waste water utility serving approximately 64,000 residents in the St Tammany and Tangipahoa parishes.”

But then, he went on to say that he “served as compliance official for multiple regulatory agencies including the Louisiana Public Service Commission, among many others.”

But a check with the office of Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell of Elm Grove, who represents all or part of 24 parishes in north Louisiana, indicated no history of employment of Caruso-Riecke by the PSC.

In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Campbell said it would be “inappropriate” for anyone who owned or operated any utility regulated by the PSC to also work for the agency. “That would be wrong,” he said.

Today, Colby Cook of Campbell’s office wrote in an email to LouisianaVoice, “Commissioner Campbell’s office forwarded your request to the LPSC’s main office in Baton Rouge where such records would be located. After researching your request, no employment records could be located for Jared Caruso-Riecke.”

Caruso-Riecke’s continues to be mentioned as a person of interest in the April 2012 murder of his business partner, Bruce Cucchiara in New Orleans East. He was interviewed once by detectives but has since refused to consent to a second interview.

His company, SELA, held a $2 million life insurance policy on Cucchiara.

I’m sure the anonymous troll who has been texting me will love this but for all those who have attempted to subscribe to my new web blog, injustice4all.net and experienced difficulty, I believe I found the glitch in the system and fixed it.

You should be able to subscribe now. The payment goes into my Paypal account, but you don’t have to have a Paypal account yourself – just your credit card.

We will be be tracking abuses by police, prosecutors and judges. There are websites that are devoted to police, to law enforcement and to judges, but few encompass all three into a single blog and we are looking at national incidents, not just local.

The subscription rate is $5 per month or $50 per year.