- Singer-songwriter Kate Voegele (pictured at right), who appeared as a musician on the CW's bizarre drama "One Tree Hill," will play tonight at In the Venue, 579 W. 200 South, Salt Lake City. Doors open at 6. Tickets are $15, at SmithsTix or 24Tix. (Voegele is also giving a free live performance, being taped by her record label, tonight at 6 at the Graywhale, 390 N. 500 West, Bountiful.)

- The Utah Symphony finishes conductor Keith Lockhart's 10-year Mahler project with a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. at Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City. Tickets, from $16 to $51, available at ArtTix.

- WiseGuys comedy club opens its new location in Trolley Square - within the new restaurant Poundcakes, at the site of the former Hard Rock Cafe, on 500 South between 600 and 700 East, Salt Lake City - with shows by Marcus (the "Last Comic Standing" runner-up) tonight and Saturday, at 8 and 10 p.m. Tickets are $15, at SmithsTix.

- New York alt-rock band Making April plays (in April - what are the odds?) Saturday at the Avalon, 3605 S. State St., Salt Lake City. Opening acts are The Record Life and Jimmy Robbins. Show starts at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $10, at SmithsTix or at the door.

- The Utah Jazz try to even up the score against the Los Angeles Lakers, Saturday at 7 p.m., at EnergySolutions Arena, 301 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City. Tickets available at TicketMaster.

- Real Salt Lake faces the New England Revolution, Saturday at 7 p.m. at Rio Tinto Stadium, 9256 S. State St., Sandy. Tickets available at the Real web site.

- Rocker Chris Cornell, (pictured at left), the Soundgarden and Audioslave lead singer whose latest album "Scream" found him collaborating with hip-hop producer Timbaland, performs Saturday at 8 p.m. at The Depot at 400 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City. Tickets are $35, at SmithsTix.

- Heavy-metal champions Queensryche returns to one of their favorite haunts, The Depot at 400 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City, Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35, at SmithsTix.

Labels: Marcus, Real Salt Lake, Utah Jazz, weekend schedule

- Trade food for laughs at a "Night of Fools" benefit show for the Utah Food Bank, starting at 7 at Wiseguys Comedy Club, 2194 W. 3500 South, West Valley City. The bill includes Marcus (pictured, from "Last Comic Standing"), Keith Stubbs, Rodney Norman and host Big Budah. Admission is a can of food, or a cash donation.

- Ten Out of Tenn, a collection of 10 solo artists from Tennessee performing each other's indie-rock songs from Nashville, plays at 7:30 at Kilby Court, 741 S. 330 West, Salt Lake City. Tickets are $15, at SmithsTix or 24Tix or at the door.

- Seattle one-man band Astronautalis - with opening acts Bluebird, Lapsed and Non + Non - play at the Urban Lounge, 241 S. 500 East, Salt Lake City. Show starts at 9. Tickets are $7, at 24Tix or at the door.

Labels: Marcus, Tonight's schedule

- The Utah State Fair continues at the Fairpark, 155 W. 1000 North, Salt Lake City. The Fair is open until 10 tonight. Tonight's grandstand show is the VeggieTales Rockin' Tour - with all of your favorite cute, cuddly and Christian plant-based characters - starting at 6. Tickets are $8, $6 seniors and kids 6-12, free for children 5 and young at all Smith's Food and Drug stores.

- A free screening of the documentary "Fighting Goliath: The Texas Coal Wars," narrated by Robert Redford and presented by the Utah chapter of The Sierra Club, is set for 7 at the Tower Theatre, 876 E. 900 South, Salt Lake City.

- Marcus - the man with one name, many tattoos and a second-place showing on NBC's "Last Comic Standing" - will be performing his act in a live taping for an upcoming DVD release, at Peery's Egyptian Theatre, 2556 Washington Blvd., Ogden. Doors open at 6, with a warm-up band and an appearance by Wolf from "American Gladiators," before Marcus takes the stage at 7:30. (Don't be late - they won't let you in, because you might walk in front of a camera or something.) Tickets are $25, at SmithsTix.

Labels: Marcus, Robert Redford, Tonight's schedule, Utah State Fair

Now Marcus has something else in common with David Archuleta besides being from Utah: He, too, knows the sting when the host calls the other person's name.

Marcus - the guy with one name but many tattoos - took the silver on Thursday's finale NBC's "Last Comic Standing," losing the viewers' vote to the show's first female winner, Iliza Shlesinger.

But Marcus didn't leave without first getting a comment from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog: "I predict Marcus will sell many more CDs than Dane Cook - because he will end up with a job at Virgin Records."

Also on Thursday, the Salt Lake burlesque troupe Slippery Kittens moved into the semi-final round on NBC's "America's Got Talent." If you left the room at the wrong moment, though, you would have missed it - the Kittens got exactly 12 seconds of screen time to show off their prison-themed striptease routine.

And Salt Lake designer Keith Bryce (pictured with his model, Alyssa) was in the middle of the pack on this week's "Project Runway." The task was to design a stylish opening-ceremonies uniform for the U.S. Olympic team. Oddly enough, the show's producers never interviewed Keith about what it was like living in the city that held the last Olympics in North America.

Labels: Keith Bryce, Marcus, Reality show, Slippery Kittens

Marcus, Utah's very own one-named and many-tattooed stand-up comedian, will find out tonight - along with the rest of America - whether he will be the "Last Comic Standing" on NBC's reality-competition show.

If Marcus prevails over his four remaining competitors, he wins $250,000 and a talent contract with NBC. But no matter what, as the Tribune's David Burger wrote today, he will be part of the "Last Comic Standing" tour this fall - and he will perform at his home grounds, Wiseguys in Ogden and West Valley, this weekend.

Marcus also got the royal treatment in this week's City Weekly (which hit newsstands late Wednesday) - a cover story by the alt-weekly's TV writer Bill Frost. In the profile, Frost again lamented how Utah's mainstream media has ignored the homegrown talent:

Too bad about the local-media blackout conspiracy against Marcus, huh?

OK, that might be an overstatement—but compared to the months-long (and still going!) Utah media orgasm over "American Idol’s" David Archuleta, the cute Mormon teen from Murray who eventually took the silver, Marcus might as well be competing on the Food Network. No, wait: Kelsey Nixon got more coverage, too. Aside from some radio and City Weekly’s print and blog reports about Marcus’ progress on a major network reality show, the Salt Lake City media has virtually ignored one of its own.

OK, let's do a tally of the City Weekly's coverage of Marcus: Frost mentioned Marcus in his "True TV" column on May 29 and July 3, and the "Lake Effect" feature, also on May 29 - as well as in three blog posts - but this is the alt-weekly's first full-fledged interview with the guy. Frost has repeated the "media blackout" line, or some variation of it, nearly every time.

Meanwhile, the Tribune's Burger has interviewed Marcus twice, and written two blog posts about him, here and here. I've mentioned Marcus in this blog five times (OK, now it's six). The Deseret News' TV critic Scott D. Pierce wrote on Monday that he's rooting for Marcus to win, even though Pierce doesn't like the show much. And KSL - the station that carries "Last Comic Standing" - has done stories on Marcus twice, on July 3 and July 31.

As media conspiracies go, this one isn't going too well.

Labels: Marcus, Reality show

Utah's favorite one-named, many-tattooed stand-up comedian, Marcus, isn't getting the love nationally from his appearances on NBC's "Last Comic Standing."

This from the always snarky Defamer.com:

In a startling example of accidental domestic terrorism, the CDC announced today a major breach of its "Dane Cook Cloning" program, begun in 1997 when weaponized anthrax was found "simply not annoying enough." Clone DC-01 escaped his holding cell two weeks ago (distinguishable from his progenitor only by his tattooed sleeves), finally appearing in public to try his hand at terrible, terrible stand-up comedy during last night's episode of Last Comic Standing. The experiment was a success. We are all doomed.

Marcus is still in the running on "Last Comic Standing." The final is Thursday night. Until then, here's Marcus' last performance on the show, courtesy of NBC:

Labels: Marcus, Reality show

Three Utah residents are still in the running on their respective reality shows.

- Marcus, the many-tattooed comedian, won the challenge on NBC's "Last Comic Standing" to tell a funny bedtime story to "The Girls Next Door" - Hugh Hefner's girlfriends Holly, Bridget and Kendra. That win gave Marcus immunity, and a free pass into the Final 5.

- Pleasant Grove's Chelsie Hightower survived another week on Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance," making it into the final six. (By the way, the touring show for the Top 10 - which includes Hightower and Salt Lake breakdancer Gev Manoukian, will hit West Valley City's E Center on Sept. 23.)

- And Keith Bryce, the director of Salt Lake's Filthy Gorgeous boutique, was in the middle of the pack on this week's eco-friendly challenge on Bravo's "Project Runway." Style guru Tim Gunn described Bryce's creation (pictured) this way: "Keith designed a halter mini-bubble-dress using the champagne silk/hemp blend textile. You may know that I am not a fan of anything "bubble," but he made it work. His execution of the garment was excellent, the proportions were good, and his model Runa knew how to give it runway appeal. Bravo, Keith!"

Labels: Chelsie Hightower, Keith Bryce, Marcus, Reality show

Salt Lake City breakdancer Gev Manoukian was eliminated from Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" on Thursday night - the third finalist from Utah (out of four) to get cut so far.

According to this recap from Entertainment Weekly, Gev (pictured at right) never fully recovered from an early mistake in his solo routine. That leaves Chelsie Hightower, from Pleasant Grove, as the only Utahn left among the eight remaining competitors.

Meanwhile, West Jordan comedian Marcus survived another week on NBC's "Last Comic Standing." And Salt Lake boutique owner Keith Bryce made it through his first challenge on Bravo's "Project Runway," even though he was one of several designers who went for the easy option - a tablecloth - when choosing supermarket items from which to make a dress. (His design is pictured at left.)

And the fate of Rhiannon, the Logan singer who is one of the three remaining finalists on MTV's "Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods," will be decided on Monday night's big finale.

Labels: Keith Bryce, Marcus, Reality show, Rhiannon

I ran into an increasingly familiar face at last night's promo screening for "Hellboy II: The Golden Army": Marcus, the one-named and many-tattooed Utah comedian who's a finalist on NBC's "Last Comic Standing."

Marcus sat in press row with some of his friends from KXRK-FM's "Geek Show" podcast, and riffed a bit about movies.

"What are we seeing? 'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2'?" Marcus asked. "You know what they should call that? 'Sisterhood 2: The Pantsening.' " And he went on like that for about five minutes.

OK, so maybe you had to be there.

Labels: Marcus, Reality show

My colleague David Burger today profiled Marcus, the single-named West Jordan comic who's competing for one of the 12 finalist spots on NBC's reality-competition "Last Comic Standing."

Marcus' specialty is impressions, but he says he's got more than that in his repertoire. "I loved guys who could do it all, like Sammy Davis Jr," he said.

His limited exposure on TV so far has netted Marcus a year and a half of bookings. But he's performing one last show for his home-state fans Saturday at Wiseguys in Orem.

All of this does leave one question: Will Bill Frost, the City Weekly's TV critic, finally shut the heck up about the Trib not doing a story about Marcus?

Labels: Marcus, Reality show