Philadelphia native Tom Wilson — you know him as Biff from Back to the Future — brings his clean standup act to Helium Comedy Club this week. He called me from his home in Los Angeles to discuss rooming with Andrew Dice Clay and Yakov Smirnoff, bathing in manure, and not joking about Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease.

What part of the city are you from?
I grew up in Overbrook, 64th and Jefferson. Then, before high school, we moved to Villanova. I went to Radnor High. My family is still all around. The Blue Route kind of decimated my neighborhood, so I have sisters and brothers in Phoenixville, cousins in the Northeast and New Jersey. I fully expect my family to show up at the shows in droves.

And when did you head west?
I left Philly when I was around 22. Moved to New York, studied acting. And if you wanna be an actor, you have to wind up in L.A., so that’s what I did.

Is that when you roomed with Dice Clay?
[Laughs] When I first moved to L.A., Andy Clay, yes. And Yakov Smirnoff was my other roommate. At the same time. All in the same place. I taught them both about America. We were living a situation comedy. I was using a wipeboard for ideas for jokes. When I’d go out, Andy would erase everything. He would take down my 3×5 cards and destroy them. And then he’d draw on my board the most horrifying gynecological stick figures you could ever imagine. And that was his idea of being funny.

Read the rest of the interview.

Last weekend, the laugh-starved packed into the Borgata’s 600-seat Music Box to see notoriously offensive late-’80s comedy loudmouth Andrew Dice Clay try to recapture his star that plummeted so long ago. But in an age where we’ve seen it all online and been shocked into complete desensitization, does he have a chance?

Andrew Dice Clay with Jim Florentine at the Borgata, August 23rd

Strengths: The Diceman is a gifted performer and one who still generates enough interest after all these years — during which he apparently spent some time managing a gym — to convince throngs of people to pay $65 a head to see him. He’s developed a strong character, a straight-talking misogynistic pig of a man that is easy to love or at least love to hate. We sit at the edge of our seats, waiting for him to say something that evokes a squirming “No he did not” response. And he’s updated his set a bit, getting away from the “Hickory dickory dock, some chick’s been sucking my cock” stuff and throwing in some post-’80s topics like cell phones (it’s true, you never do hear the other end of the “Can you hear me now?” conversation), Sex and the City (”that redhead, what’s her name? Morinda? Now that chick has some concave tits”), and the influence of internet porn on the modern woman (”If one more chick spits on my dick … what’s with that?”).

Weaknesses: For openers, let’s talk about the opener — one-time Jersey guy Jim Florentine, who warmed up the crowd a little bit too much. His material felt fresh and had the crowd in a pretty constant state of laughter. And he was plenty offensive, covering everything from gay marriage (gerbil visitation rights for divorced gay couples) to female hygiene (”So you’re telling me that you can smell the girl wearing Jay-Z perfume a thousand yards away but you can’t smell that?”). Typically, the opener is the one who has something to prove, and if Florentine had to prove anything, he certainly did.

But it was Dice who really had to come out and wow the crowd and show them that he still has it. But he doesn’t. And he didn’t. Mere seconds after Florentine left the stage, a lame light show accompanied EMF’s Unbelievable (a 1991 song that includes a Dice soundbite) until a characteristically black-clad Dice walked out and ended it with an also characteristic wrist-flick. His short set was funny at points, but his funniest material — on cell phones, on the endowment of black men — is easily viewable on YouTube, and certainly any real Dice fan (which is pretty much anyone who would pay $65) would have seen it. You know the punchline. He threatened to verbally take out a heckler, which we were all waiting for him to do, but he never followed through, appearing to lack the confidence to do it effectively, which is the only way to do it. And his impersonations — of Rocky, Pacino, and Sammy Davis Jr. — were half-assed and completely out of place (the Backstreet Boys dancing impersonation offered by ticket agent Michael Ely that night was much more entertaining). And why he succumbed to persistent heckles for the “Hickory Dickory” shtick, after which he abruptly and possibly prematurely ended the show, I’ll never know.

Verdict: Without a competent writing team and a director, this character is one that should be left in our ambivalent memories of the ’80s, like so many moussed hairdos.

After a just-funny-enough opening segment by comedian Mario Joyner, a completely lackadaisical digital (as in vinyl-free) set by Philly’s own DJ Jazzy Jeff and some unnamed emcee, and then a 20-minute intermission, Chris Rock finally took the stage at the Academy of Music last night in front of a mostly white crowd to kick off his three-night stand, for which tickets remain.

He started off disappointingly by making fun of our cheesesteak obsession, but not in a remotely amusing way, and then seriously asking whether Will Smith’s childhood house had surpassed the Rocky steps as a tourist attraction. After these unfortunate attempts at acting like he knows anything at all about Philly, he launched into his act, which was way too long (people who paid $79.50 for their seats started leaving) but, overall, proved that he is one of the funniest fucks alive.

Some highlights:

Read the rest on Impresario, our new arts and events blog.

Unless you are a Jehovah’s Witness — undoubtedly the world’s worst religion, given its members’ refusal to celebrate Thanksgiving — your relatives will, at any moment, be crawling out from under their respective rocks to gorge themselves. Undoubtedly, wine will be spilled, china will be chipped, and the turkey will be dry and chewy. In case you need to blow off some steam in a big way, I give you the following.

Men your father does not approve of … R. Kelly has some major cojones. This is a guy who allegedly likes to pee on underage girls and mounts a tour while he’s up on a bevy of child porn charges. Tonight, he turns on his sex-crazed lyrical spigot (not to mention the hordes of women who forgive him his trespasses) at the Wachovia Center, and there are many, many tickets available (8th row from the stage = $100). Not to be outdone, pottymouthed Chris Rock will offend pretty much everyone as he takes the stage in Atlantic City. Tickets are sparse.

Shop until you drop Eat and drink until you drop, and then shop … I’ve never understood the Black Friday thing. I mean, I’m all for saving money, but the idea of battling massive crowds of hungover cheapskates makes me wince. But this year, Kohl’s has epitomized the lunacy of it all by opening its doors at 4 a.m. I feel for the local TV reporter — maybe Dick Standish? — who has to cover it.

If God himself were a jazz guitarist … There’s not much snarky to be said about Pat Martino, the legendary Philadelphia guitarist who had to relearn the instrument in the 1980s after a near-fatal brain aneurysm led to amnesia. He has a two-night stand this weekend at Chris’ Jazz Cafe. (Rumor has it that if you slide the door girl an impressive bill, she’ll whisk the “Frank Sinatra” table from the kitchen and give you a posh seat up front.)

Assuming Jurassic Park didn’t ruin the allure for you … You probably haven’t seen the Academy of Natural Sciences’ impressive dinosaur collection since that fifth-grade field trip, so the museum’s Thanksgiving Dino Weekend might be a good way to reclaim your youth, or at least entertain the tots for a while.

Now you know why my wife says I’m immature … Prank call the Butterball Turkey Hotline. I know that sounds like a really stupid idea, but it’s a great way to relieve holiday stress. 1-800-BUTTERBALL.

Have a great Thanksgiving!