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Dane Jeffrey Cook (born March 18 1972) is an American stand-up comedian and actor.

He has released two albums, Harmful If Swallowed and Retaliation, the latter of which went double platinum and became the highest charting comedy album in twenty-eight years. Cook performs on many television shows and in the fall of 2006 performed in his own HBO special, Vicious Circle. As an actor, Cook has appeared in fifteen films since 1997, and starred in the 2006 comedy Employee of the Month, with Jessica Simpson.

Early life

Cook was born in Boston, to Donna and George Cook. He grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb and, along with his five sisters and one brother, was raised as a Roman Catholic. Dane held down jobs at Video Horizons and the BK lounge.

coty says "dane cook rulez"

Career

In 1998, he was featured on Comedy Central's stand-up comedy showcase Premium Blend and, the following year, Comics Come Home. It would begin a partnership with the cable channel that would help launch Cook's career to new heights.

1999 saw Cook starring in the straight-to-video Dennis Rodman vehicle, Simon Sez. In the film, Cook plays Rodman's partner, Nick Miranda. The film was directed by Kevin Elders, previously known as the screenwriter for Aces: Iron Eagle III.

Two years later, Cook pooled $25,000 of his own money from savings and retirement accounts and launched www.danecook.com, his own interactive website, to help further his career and help stay personally connected to his fans. Later, Cook would also become one of the first celebrities to make use of the global networking site MySpace. To date, Cook has over 1.6 million fans listed as friends on his profile.

In 2002 and 2003, Dane was featured as the voice of three puppets on the Comedy Central show Crank Yankers, which featured real prank phone calls being recorded in a studio and then re-enacted by puppets. Four of Dane's calls were aired between July 2002 and April 2003. He took on the aliases of Sav McCauley, Gene Winterbuck, and Foreign Guy.

In 2003, Cook released his first comedy album, Harmful If Swallowed. The album also included a DVD which showcased his first-ever Comedy Central headlining special. Later that year, Cook released the film 8 Guys, which he wrote, directed, and starred in.

2005 to present

In 2005, Cook launched a nationwide tour dubbed "Tourgasm" after releasing his album Retaliation, which debuted at #4 on Billboard magazine's Top Albums chart. That year, he also played a role as a cook named Floyd in the movie Waiting....

During a May 2005 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Cook parodied Tom Cruise's "couch jumping" Oprah appearance and made a "tattoo" of Katie Holmes (actually a picture taped to his back) and barged into the women's restroom to get her.

During an October 2005 appearance on The Tonight Show, Charlize Theron gave him permission to kiss her butt. Cook was re-enacting a previous joke in which Theron kissed Shirley MacLaine's butt at a Premiere magazine tribute to women in Hollywood.

Cook also appeared and performed on Dave Attell's Insomniac Tour.

Soon after, he finished his own television pilot called Cooked, a program in which he will star and for which he will write.

On December 3, 2005, Cook hosted Saturday Night Live. He performed the longest monologue in the show's history (around ten minutes long); the episode was one of the highest-rated SNLs of the season (until the Steve Martin/Prince episode in February of 2006). However, Entertainment Weekly named it the fourth-worst show of the year.

Cook hosted SNL for a second time on the premiere of its thirty-second season, September 30, 2006.

On January 13, 2006, after months of keeping a "BIG secret" from his fans, he announced via his website an April 15 gig at Boston's TD Banknorth Garden where his first HBO special, Vicious Circle, would be eventually filmed. His first show sold out during the pre-sale phase of the on-sale, and a second show was added for the same night. In all, Dane Cook's Boston concert drew 36,000 fans in two shows, on the same night. A documentary series and a scripted program are also in the works for HBO. In the week prior to the televised gig, he performed at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas (April 8) and Allstate Arena in Chicago (April 13), the largest venues he has ever performed in those cities. Aside from airing on HBO, Vicious Circle is also being screened in select theaters and it features an additional 40 minutes of material.

September saw the release of Employee of the Month, Cook's first movie featuring him in the lead role. He co-starred alongside Jessica Simpson and Dax Shepard. Response to this movie was lukewarm but made an acceptable box office performance.

At the end of December 2006, Cook released "I'll Never Be You" his first single. Confusion over it's seriousness had been the talk of both fans and critics alike. In the song, Dane refers to himself as a normal person ("My life stands still, watching where your life goes"), commenting with envy ("sometimes I picture myself beating you up") at a celebrity or otherwise popular person.

Interestingly enough, the song has a few lines hinting that the envied celebrity is Dane Cook. The first is in the narrator's dream sequence where he takes the celebrity's place ("Oh God, please let me, live in your life for one week"), which says "All your friends, they love me, and love that I hate you!" which may refer to his "friends" as other comedians who dislike Dane Cook. Another line says "You're so smug, and so fake, with your laugh, and your clique," which is immediately followed by a low clip of Dane Cook laughing, which could easily be ignored by a listener, but if heard may lead to the conclusion that the song is about someone who envies Dane Cook.

His mother died of cancer in 2006.

Discography / Videography

• Harmful If Swallowed CD and DVD. Comedy Central, 2003.
• Retaliation Two CDs and DVD. Comedy Central, 2005.
• Vicious Circle DVD. HBO, 2006
• Dane Cook's Tourgasm DVD. HBO, 2006

Filmography

Cook was in Albuquerque, New Mexico filming a new movie called Employee of the Month, a comedy co-starring Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard, Efren Ramirez, and Harland Williams. He is also currently filming the psychological thriller Mr. Brooks in Shreveport, Louisiana with Kevin Costner. He was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of 2006.

Dane Cook's first HBO special, Vicious Circle, was aired on September 4, 2006. The double DVD was released on November 28, 2006. It is a 90-minute presentation which was filmed at TD Banknorth Garden in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts on a circular stage surrounded by the audience. The stage had on it the impression of his Super Finger hand gesture. Cook brought the same set to Madison Square Garden for back-to-back sold out shows on November 12, 2006.

Dane Cook is also an avid supporter of charities in his hometown Boston, Massachusetts. On November 15th, 2006 he attended the "Fun Run for Families" event in downtown Boston as a special guest celebrity runner. The event raised upwards of $10,000 for local families.

The SUperFInger

The SUperFInger or SU-FI is a hand gesture. It consists of raising the middle finger, ring finger, and thumb on the same hand while lowering (or curling) the index and pinky fingers. Cook's website explains his idea behind the SU-FI:

One night I did a bit on stage about 5 years ago at the Laugh Factory. I was talking about how the finger is lame now and it's lost its pizzazz. I said I wanted to upgrade the finger and so from now on people should use both the ring finger coupled with the middle finger. I called it the SUperFInger (or SU-FI).

In 2005, Cook started his own company to produce his albums and videos, which he named SUperFInger Entertainment.

Content

Cook's style is principally observational humor. He has commented that:

I wanted to create a stage persona for myself that allowed me to really speak on anything I want... So I can be a storyteller, I can be jokey, I can be corny, I can be a little vulgar, I can be a lot vulgar. And I'm not afraid to go anywhere to get the point of the joke across.

Cook utilizes a unique slang vocabulary to match his talkative manner. For example: A bad relationship is a "Relationshit", Walgreens is "The Wall," and a sandwich is a "sangwich". Similarly, he uses such acronyms as BAMF and SUFI, which are short for "Bad Ass Mother Fucker" and "SUperFInger." He also shortens words to keep the same meaning. He has even been known to completely change words, like saying "Concernicus" instead of concerned, and "Chicken Sangwich" instead of Chicken Sandwich.

Criticism

there is none stop being jelous comedians cant stabd success for others

References

1. ^ "Great Dane took a bite out of the Competition in 1995", The San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition web site.
2. ^ Time's 100 Most Influential People
3. askmen.com, Dane Cook, access February 3, 2007
4. Hollywood.com biography
5. Gillian Flynn, "TV 2005: The 5 Worst". Entertainment Weekly, December 30, 2005.
6. "Dane Cook Whips Up HBO Deal", Zap2it.
7. Dane Cook Message Board (quote posted by Dane Cook)
8. "HBO Signs Stand-Up Comedian Dane Cook to Multi-Project Deal", Time-Warner, March 2, 2006.
9. Heather Havrilesky, "Overcooked". Salon, September 3, 2006.

External links

• Official website
• Dane Cook on MySpace
• Louis C.K. / Dane Cook comparison
• Louis C.K / Dane Cook / Steve Martin comparison
• Dane Cook at IMDb
• Template:Nndb name

News articles & interviews

• Casey, Susan. "Everybody Likes Dane". Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 30, 2005.
• Havrilesky, Heather. "Overcooked". Salon, Sept. 3, 2006.
• Kharakh, Ben. Interview with Dane Cook. One Trick Pony. January 2006.
• Macpherson, Guy. "Dane Cook Gets the Hook at Yuk Yuk's". The Province, July 25, 2006, p. B7.
• Perry, Ryan. "Dane Cook: The Gorilla Mask Interview". Gorilla Mask. August 4, 2005.
• Zoglin, Richard. "Dane Cook: Standing Out in the Art of Stand-Up.". Time, May 8, 2006. From Time 100 issue.
• Gladstone, Neil. "Sex, Jobs, and Rock 'n' Roll". AOL Comedy, Nov. 2, 2006.

• 1972 births
• American comedians
• American film actors
• American stand-up comedians
• Irish-American actors
• Living people
• People from Cambridge, Massachusetts