I thought they were kidding: Heidi Fleiss answering emails and giving sex tips while skirting legal bounds? The show isn't called "Titty City" although Ms. Fleiss and her trailer-park chic slumbermate make the suggestion. It is funny, REALLY FUNNY, the genuine kind. And its available anytime in streaming video which loads fast and sounds great at Laugh.com (http://laugh.com/main_pages/sextips.asp).

      When I was in school some years ago, my wife, then just a possible girlfriend, Rusty White (with some chick that will not be named), and I took in a George Carlin show at a small venue right off Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. As a child, I had heard Mr. Carlin's comedy on vinyl often followed by Bill Cosby in order to right my moral rudder. In stark contrast to the salty tongued Carlin, the mild mannered Cosby can be a funny fellow also; his take on "HUD," for example, is more than memorable, think about all those burning animals in the United Kingdom a month ago, there a joke there somewhere. Of course, early in the dawn of my video experiences, I was introduced to Lenny Bruce (is life really a four letter word?) filtered through that uncanny docu-drama "Lenny" which could be a super video risk. Funny is timeless and lives on at Laugh.com providing Mr. Carlin's constantly updating cutting one-liners called "Not-Quite-Daily-Message," with quotes like "In America, anybody can be president. That's the problem."

      Anyway, that night in Memphis good ol' George was dark and ruthless as usual, my wife, to my surprise, loved him and I knew then that I had found a soulmate.

      Bob Kohn is a funny fellow as well, and a businessman. He has served as Chairman of the Board of EMusic.com, Inc. and as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ:BORL). His book "Kohn on Music Licensing," which he co-wrote with his father Al Kohn, retired vice president of licensing for Warner Bros. Music, is highly regarded and heavy. Although I do not have a copy, it reportedly runs some 1500 pages and could substitute as a booster chair for a toddler at the endless feeding trough that is Ryan's Steakhouse.

      Mr. Kohn has now turned his attention to comedy and as president of Laugh.com may have caught something pleasantly infectious and dangerous funny.

EInsiders.com: What's funny about Laugh.com?

Bob Kohn: Primarily, what we're paying our employees. Considering that we've driven all of the other comedy dot coms out of business, we think we've got the funniest thing going. Seriously, we are peopled with funny: George Carlin, The Jerky Boys, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Jeffrey Ross, Phyllis Diller, Bob Zany, Red Buttons, Jeff Altman, Norm Crosby, Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling, Rich Little, Bill Dana, Shelly Berman, Gary Owens -- and those are just our accountants! We're also the number one source of free audio and video comedy clips on the web, including clips from George Carlin's television specials. We've been getting great feedback on the website and visitors are coming back everyday for their snippet of daily comedy.

"He turned down the hookers, so we gave him the vision pitch and he bought it."
--Bob Kohn on George Carlin

How did you get the great George Carlin involved with the site?

He turned down the hookers, so we gave him the vision pitch and he bought it. George Carlin was really impressed with our vision of a website "of comedians, by comedians, for comedians" and a record company focused on stand-up comedy. Our mission is to raise the profile of comedy CDs in record stores and on the Internet, and we producing and releasing CDs from both the legendary comedians, as well as the rising stars of stand-up comedy today. Our first two releases are The Jerky Boys's 6th CD, "The Jerky Tapes," and Jonathan Winter's first CD in 30 years, "Outpatients," which he recorded with Gary Owens and Rich Little. Most humor websites are dedicated to hosting text "jokes," which is fine, but we saw an opportunity to focus on the art of standup, producing great comedy CDs, and providing business model for comedians and comedy writers to actually make money from the web.

Emusic.com, Inc., Borland Software Corporation, and now Laugh.com, how do you find time for 18 holes and a beer?

Besides the time I spend with underprivileged children and the blind, I make sure I set aside some time for 18 beers and a hole of golf. You see, I live in Pebble Beach, California, right near the legendary golf course and a bar called "The 19th Hole," which is not just another hooker joke. That's where EMusic comes in. I also heavily employ a Palm Pilot, voice recognition in my Benz, reliable Toshiba laptop, and an HP laser printer. If you're wondering why I'm mentioning all these brand names, we're desperately looking for sponsorships.

Your book "Kohn on Music Licensing" runs 1500 pages and sounds like an exegesis of sorts. With the Napster debacle, how can we make the Playstation generation respect the value of copyright?

Being Jewish, I had to look up the word, "exegesis," which is not found in the Old Testament. But I get your drift. According to my book, which USA Today actually called, "The bible on legal issues in the music world" (which makes me a kind of Roman God on the subject), there are a variety of ways we can teach today's younger generation to respect the value of copyright. We might start with lots of naked pictures of Britney Spears. At some point, the kids will realize that they too might aspire to become a rock star or movie star, and if fate were to be kind to them, they wouldn't want to have naked pictures of themselves traded on the Internet for free -- they'd want to charge for them like everyone else. Another thing we can do is to make it cheaper to buy the music than it is to steal it. In other words, offer a legal Napster, a service that allows you to download all the music you want for a small monthly subscription fee. That's what we built at EMusic, except we couldn't offer naked pictures of Britney Spears, so we sold the company to Vivendi/Universal last month.

Recently, I heard a quote from an unnamed Internet company CEO who said on the record that the "new Internet" (it does exist, you know) will be focused on things like ordering tailored clothing and on better security. Off the record, the unnamed Internet CEO was quoted as saying that the new Internet could be summed up with one word "porn." What words of advice would you have for the recent college graduate, Benjamin Braddock style, interested in finding a revenue stream from the new Internet?

"Silicon." And I'm not referring to the stuff that's used in microchips. I think your CEO friend has a point, or two. People are looking to the Internet to find things that they can't find anywhere else. For example, much of the comedy you will find on Laugh.com could never, ever appear on ComedyCentral, Politically Incorrect, or even the Saprano's. Too dirty. Not obscene, just indecent. Good comedy, whether clean or filthy, has the noble purpose of purging the emotions and bringing order to the soul, providing not only amusement and relaxation, but promoting virtue and justice among men. Now, for an emotion to be purged, it must first be aroused. Perhaps this is why words like the seven you can't say on television enter the act. At the end of the day, if people laugh, the comedian is, by definition, getting in touch with the emotions of his or her audience. Accordingly, we must give to the comedian the benefit of the doubt on these decisions of taste. As Shakespeare said, on actors and comedians, "Let them be well used; for they are the abstract and chronicles of the time. After your death you were better to have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."

Just for kicks, compare the Broadway production of "The Producers" and the Academy Award winning film, "American Beauty."

I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to take my family to the opening of the "The Producers" on Broadway. My wife and kids, including a 15 year old daughter and 12 year old boy, consider ourselves minor experts on the 1968 Mel Brooks movie of the same title, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, which we've viewed over 20 times since the kids were old enough to say, "Heil Hitler."

We thought it would be difficult to take one of the best comedy movies of all time (surpassed, perhaps, only by Jerry Lewis' 1963 film, "The Nutty Professor") and bring it to the stage. How would they handle, we thought, the audience's reaction and reaction to the play within a play? How would the Swastika dance formation work in the theater? Who would play the role of L.S.D., performed in the film by the incomparable Dick Shawn? Well, Mel Brooks and crew solved these problems beautifully, added some delightful new scenes, and wrote a handful of new hysterical songs. The result: "a satiric masterpiece." You could have had a Max Bialystock better than Nathan Lane, but only if you brought Zero back from the dead. Same goes for Matthew Broderick, but Gene Wilder only "looks" dead.

"Christmas came early to Broadway this year, and guess who they've stuffed in our stocking? Adolph Hitler." This is how you purge 50 years of pain. I watched "American Beauty" on cable television, months after my family saw it in the theater, and had I almost threw up in disgust. Who financed this masturbating piece of crap? And who voted it Best Picture? Ever notice how every motion picture and television mini-series that deals with either the Holocaust or anti-Semitism is a sure fire winner of an Oscar or an Emmy? (Research it, you'll see). The asshole turns over a plate, sees a Swastika, and whammo, instant Academy Award for a piece of shit film that merely served to glorify the lascivious corruption of innocent youth. It's enough to fire up a 1,000 skin-heads into a frenzy against innocent Jews and gays. What were the writers and producers of this film thinking? The so-called anti-smoking advertisements you see on billboards and on TV, financed by our tax dollars, have successfully increased cigarette smoking by teenagers. That we know. When will we realize that films like American Beauty only promotes intolerance against Jews and gays in the same way?

Contrast this with the handling of anti-Semitism and bigotry in "The Producers," and you come up with a message that says, "Hey, people, lighten up!!" You laugh and everyone walks out loving everyone for what they are: the Jews, the Germans, the Irish, the Blacks, even little old ladies -- not many groups escaped the satire. Broadway seems to be sending a message to Hollywood: Finance more geniuses like Mel Brooks and fewer guilt-ridden Jews like Steven Spielberg, and maybe we'll have a country where people of different ethnicities and beliefs will live in harmony. The evidence is in: junk films like American Beauty are winning Oscars, yet racial relations and bigotry are getting worse. And one more thing: When the hell will Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally recognize the filmmaking genius of Jerry Lewis and award him a special Oscar?

The views expressed above are my own, not of Laugh.com or anyone else associated with Laugh.com.

Jonathan W. Hickman