I love everything about this relic: I love that Bill Hicks is still alive, and that Carlin gets interviewed with some amazing TV production effects. I love that the animated bumps make fun of hack comics as though hack comics aren’t part of the actual show (Elon Gold, I’m looking in your 1990 direction). Gold’s [...]
From the OAD’s entry on dalliance: • brief or casual involvement with something: Berkeley was my last dalliance with the education system. I love that person.
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From my 10th-grade creative writing class journal: When I’m a teacher, I’ll be sure that my students get something out of everything we do. I will be sure to put variety in my teachings, and my kids will never be bored. Also, from my obituary (d: Feb 29, 2052), in the same notebook: “Angry at [...]
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Just a quick post, because I just got this news, and it’s the second best news I got today. Which means the other news was super great, because this news? Jesus! TIG NOTARO’S “I HAVE CANCER” SET’S COMING TO THIS AMERICAN LIFE! For those not obsessively following standup news, a few weeks ago the very [...]
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I’ve been thinking a lot about this xkcd comic: Short version: sex tarp is so much funnier than sex dungeon or (for God’s sake) sex party because it’s something we’ve never heard before. That is: either universally or for a certain portion of the comedy audience, laughter comes as the result of invention and novelty. [...]
Better read critics and theorists may have long solved this problem, but for me it’s been hard to figure out where to go in critique and creativity after going meta—which I’m here going to clunkily define as using the very aspects, techniques, or tools of some process to go out and above that process in [...]
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JONYSS is a great idea for a comedy showcase that’s structured a little misguidedly and aired at a time (10pm CST Fridays) to ensure few but comedy nerds and homebodies will watch. Maybe Comedy Central’s hoping for an audience older than its faithful Workaholics/Tosh.0/South Park-loving demographic, though given last night’s lineup (white guys under 40) [...]
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Best laid plans…. Here are the comics I ended up seeing in New York: Elna Baker Kevin Townley Eliot Glazer Kate McKinnon Cintra Wilson Julie Klausner Evan Q. Franceschini Josh Ruben H. Jon Benjamin George Gordon John Roy Adam Sokol Kara Klenk James Harris Matt McCarthy Mike Feeney Liz Miehle Todd Barry Scott Sharp Chris [...]
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In a small club like the Comedy Cellar, laughter bubbles and percolates around the room like a backyard water feature. At the 2,400-seat Concert Hall of the Kennedy Center it breaks like waves on a nearby shore. The room swells, and the slow rush of it rises into the air and trails off, like a [...]
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John Mulaney is 29 years old, and it’s a cuspy age for a very cuspish comic. “I don’t look older, I just look worse,” he says in a bit from his last special. “When I’m walking down the street no one’s ever like, ‘Hey, look at that man,’ I think they’re just like, ‘Hey, that [...]
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There’s a fan front and center on the stage of Cameo, a theater in the back of the Lovin’ Cup Cafe, which blows upward at the crotch of whomever’s standing at the mic. It gave a couple comics last night something to address immediately, a nice way in to a set after the applause, something [...]
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Without trying, I’ve seen Aziz Ansari three times in three nights. Not once was he slated to appear at Monday night’s Whiplash, the 8pm Tuesday show at the Comedy Cellar, or last night’s Big Terrific, but each night there were promises of a special surprise guest and each night it was Aziz Ansari. When he [...]
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Legendary spot. You see it all over Seinfeld’s Comedian documentary, and lots of scenes from Louie have been shot inside and outside it. I was assigned a seat directly next to the kitchen and my drink order was finally taken during the introduction of the host for that night. “You can’t take notes,” my waitress [...]
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Something happens in you when someone you have seen on television appears on a stage. This is just given and not interesting. But something joyous and profound happens when someone you have seen on television appears unannounced on a stage and does standup to you. This is a common enough occurrence at not just the [...]
Huge, free night of comedy last night that I’m going to try to get at comic-by-comic. HANNIBAL BURESS I think a lot of what makes Buress so funny is the way his slow, laconic voice hides a sharp-as-hell intellect. Hides is the wrong word here, but he’s got the verbal timing of a stoner, and [...]
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“Got a great voice don’t I? A woman once said to me my voice was like butter,” Todd Barry told us at one point in his 20-minute set at the Laughing Devil Comedy Club[*] last night, and this hypothetical woman’s absolutely right. Barry’s voice is reedy and deep like a bass clarinet, and he adds [...]
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I. If standup’s effect on its audience were judged by scientists, they’d rig up people with all kind of Clockwork Orangey probes that measured vibrations in the belly and sides, constriction of the facial muscles, and the milliliters of wetness secreted by the tear ducts. If I had such data available from last night, it’d [...]
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I. What’s the opposite of a joke? For standup comics, it might be the long-form comedic monologue. Pick up any book on how to be a comedian, and they’ll all tell you that to be a comedian you cannot get on stage and tell jokes. There’s a great story in Patton Oswalt’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland [...]
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I’m starting the second leg of AS-YET UNNAMED AND UNFOCUSED BOOK ON STANDUP COMEDY research tomorrow, flying to New York City for nine nights and then DC for two. Which means I’ll be seeing standup every night for the next week and a half, then writing about it as best I can figure how here, [...]
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Viagra, especially in regard to erections lasting longer than 4 hours. Airplane Food. Wearing Comical Clothing. How the name iPad reminds one of feminine hygiene products Prop Comedy Why is there Braille at the drive thru. The Comedian’s Personal Appearance, including; The comedian’s resemblance to the probable offspring of an unlikely celebrity coupling, such as [...]
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