Welcome to version 8.0 of ChadRiden.com.

Sometime around 1995, I put my first personal website online and started posting pointless crap. I continued to do that until I joined MySpace as “Druncle Sam“.. within a few months, I was posting all kinds of content there, but nothing on my site anymore. Eventually MySpace randomly shut down that account, and I created another, and another and another.. Then I started using Facebook and then a Fan page on Facebook and Twitter and posting things to Google Reader and don’t forget YouTube and ComedySoapbox and MangyDog and FriendFeed and Tumblr and DailyComedy and Twitbook and MyFace and SpaceTwit and Dibble-Dobble and Scoobity-doobity-doo-dot-net and wherever else quality whoring can be done.

I now have dozens of profiles on every website that has ever been made, including some that I don’t even remember setting up. I have spread my crap all over the internet-tubes, but have completely neglected my own website. If you just went to ChadRiden.com, it looked as dead as my soul after a visit to Chuck E. Cheese.

This new website is an attempt to reign all of that in. These internet fads will come and go forever, so instead of wasting all my time and energy on other people’s websites, I’m wasting all my time and energy on MY website. Right now, I’m in the process of importing all of the content I’ve produced online for the last 14 years and organizing it here for dozens to enjoy and/or ignore! I’ll still probably whore my stupid crap all over those other sites, but my main focus will be here.

I hope you stumble around and waste all of your time here. Click around! Watch some stupid videos! Buy a shirt! Subscribe to the RSS thing! Join the mailing list! Come to a live show! Send me some hate mail! Or don’t. Don’t let people tell you what to do with your life. Figure it out on your own, you goof.

I spend a lot of time reading and discussing news stories about comedy, interviews with comics, reviews of shows & cd’s and whatnot. For a long time, I’ve seen sites like SlashDot.org and Digg.com and Fark.com and thought there should be a site just for COMEDY news. It’s not “here’s a funny thing I found on the internet” it’s the stories from behind the scenes.

So here’s what I did:

ComedyNews.Org is a socially-powered comedy news site featuring interviews, reviews and news stories from around the world. It’s a web application that allows you to submit an article that will be reviewed by all and will be promoted, based on popularity, to the main page. When a user submits a news article it will be placed in the “unpublished” area until it gains sufficient votes to be promoted to the main page. Users can comment on each article in threaded discussions.. and there’s a bunch of social network-y crap going on, too.

If you’re a comedy nerd looking for comedy nerd news, stop by and chime in. If you see a comedy-related story out there, please submit it!

Hola, true believers! It’s me, your pal Chad Riden (America’s Favorite Comedian of All Time) with a little update about comedy crap and real life crap and everything in between. There has been so much going on, I barely know where to start. Maybe I should start at the beginning? (I’m told that’s a very good place to start.)

No, I’m going to start at the end: I’ve got shows coming up! Tonight at Zanies, Tomorrow on NBC’s Last Comic Standing (maybe) and live at Jesse Zane’s.. Next week at Zanies a few more times. Skip to the bottom of this for more details.

REAL LIFE CRAP UPDATES:

It has been a wonderful spring for me. It’s about this time every year when my neighbors and I begin plotting to overthrow the neighborhood association.. it really needs to be done and I’m just the man to do it. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED!

I spent a week in Hollywood, where I…
- saw maria bamford, orny adams, jim gaffigan, godfrey, daryl wright @ the improv.
- filmed gang fight scenes for a movie trailer
- got to meet my heroes Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier and brush into Tom Kenny.
- had lunch at The Magic Castle. Their lunch menu called me “America’s most famous unknown stand-up comedian” which made me very happy.
- saw a dog w/ a bag of his crap tied to his collar

I had a lot of fun, but the dog crap thing was really the highlight. When I got back to Nashville’s airport, I saw an 80 year old man pimpin a brand new Members Only jacket, which made me smile and then cry.

Sadness! Some idiot hit / flipped / totaled my jeep. Laura and Callia are bruised but ok. The fault goes to a 77-year-old woman pulling out of her driveway onto Andrew Jackson Parkway who “hit the gas instead of the brake”. Classic. Way too old to drive.. she plowed thru three cars and went across the grass median before she stopped. It’s hard to be mad at an old woman, though.. she was just horrified at what she had done. It puts things into perspective, too. Everybody’s safe and the Jeep can be replaced. Plus, I feel like a moron when I hit the windshield wiper instead of the turn signal.. imagine this woman’s embarrassment and guilt. Still, get off the friggin’ road, oldie! The worst part was I sprinted two whole blocks from the road block to the wreckage to get to my family.. and my body was SORE as it could be for the next four days. Exercise is the worst possible thing you could do to your body.

OH! I almost forgot. This is the biggest announcement ever:

ChadRiden 3G – the super-cool, faster, awesomer version of me will be available July 11th worldwide. Get in line, now! Every year I watch Steve Jobs’ keynote presentation at the big Apple WWDC thing (eagerly awaiting word of the new stuff from Apple that I can’t afford) and it’s always slightly disappointing. I always expect him to show off Apple’s life-sized, fully functional starship Enterprise. What’d we get? iPhone3G! Screw that.. gimme a transporter room and stuff so I can cruise the universe lookin’ for hot alien chicks.

Speaking of hotties, my comedy pal Carla Rhodes is in the current issue of Penthouse. It’s very tastefully done and she really doesn’t show off anything but cleavage.. but still.. it’s the first time any of my comedy buddies has appeared in that fine publication, so I think it’s pretty cool. Go to NashvilleStandUp.com to check it out.

COMEDY CRAP UPDATES:

- TONIGHT / Wed 6/11 @ Zanies w/ Tim Wilson. showtime @ 7:30pm, but get there early for good seats. Sorry for the late notice, they just asked me to do this show this morning.

- TOMORROW / Thurs 6/12 @ 7:30pm Central, NBC will air the new episode of “Last Comic Standing” featuring the Nashville auditions shot at Zanies on March 3rd. Yes, LCS will once again reduce Nashville’s comedy scene (and stand-up comedy in general) to a montage of shirtless redneck caricatures, Sassy Southern Grannies Who Tell It Like It Is, and other clueless goofballs in costumes who’ve never performed comedy but want to “git own tha tee-veee.” Mixed in there somewhere (hopefully) will be some of the professional and up-and-coming comics from the region who auditioned that day. Who knows. Right off the bat, the first episode started off with a guy in a chicken suit.. so expectations are LOW for this season. At the end of last weeks episode, they promo’d tomorrows episode and I could be seen running up onto the stage.. SO, now I’m really scared that I’ll be on the show and they’ll make me look like an even bigger ass-hat than I really am. I know for a fact that my buddies Dale Jones and Mary Mack will be all over the episode, so let me encourage you to watch just to see them.

- TOMORROW / Thurs 6/12@ Jesse Zane’s Nashville Nights @9pm. Just $3 cover. I’m headlining this, but the rest of the line-up is well worth going out to see this show, regardless – Damian Anaya, Tommy Joyce, Joe Southards, Brad Edwards, Monty Mitchell, ‘D’ White.. it’s gonna be a lot of fun. 308 Church Street (next to Printer’s Alley) – 615-242-9773. Set your TiVo to record Last Comic and bring your booty out to see me live at Jesse Zane’s. If you go, somehow work the Smurfs into conversation with me and I’ll buy you a beer.

- Mon, June 16 @ Zanies w/ Mike Birbiglia. 7:30pm. There is a completely unfounded rumor floating around that some of the other comics from the Bonnaroo comedy tent might drop by to do a set. Let me repeat: that is a completely unfounded and probably false rumor. Regardless, it’s gonna be an awesome show. Buy tickets now, it will sell out before this week is over.

- June 18, 19, 22 @ Zanies w/ “Uncle Lar” Larry Reeb & Tom Rhodes. Funny guys, as heard on the Bob and Tom Radio show. Plus me! Wooo.

Then in July I drive off to do a run of shows in the Carolinas and on a few beaches. I HATE the beach, but Laura and Callia enjoy fun in the sun so I book this every year for them. It’s all about The Ladies.

That’s it. Give me a yell and tell me what’s going on with you.. or sign up for Twitter and add me there. (it’s easy and awesome and not all gay like MySpace) I’m at http://www.Twitter.com/ChadRiden

if you get a chance to come out to any of these shows, please bring me Pokemon cards. I use ‘em to pay off the neighborhood kids to do my revolutionary dirty work for me.

The Hardest Working Man In No Business,
Chad Riden

Callia Lee Riden was born at 7:55 a.m. weighing 8 pounds, 11 ounces.. 20.5 inches long.