Day: November 17, 2009

One of my first stops on my Hollywood misadventure was to The Paley Center for Media's Beverly Hills branch for a behind-the-scenes discussion with the cast and crew of NBC's Parks and Recreation — a sitcom that I feel has found a funnier level in its second season following its unusual debut launch in the spring. But we can let the people involved with the show explain that. Seemed as though many of the audience members in attendance worked for nearby local governments and wanted to let the cast and crew know how "spot-on" they were in nailing life inside Town Hall. Here is a guy who looks like Nick Offerman posing with the actor. I could have told them this as well, having covered various local governments in Idaho and Washington state as a newspaper reporter — and sakes alive, bubba jive, you have not lived until you've discovered the soap opera mini-dramas of a water and sewer district. Let me tell you. Or not. Let's focus, people! Pawnee, Indiana, you're on the air, fictional city. Greg Daniels said they had to pick a fictional town. His other NBC sitcom, The Office, may be set in a real place (Scranton, Penn.), but the town is not the driving force of the plot; it's the people in the office. In Parks and Rec, however, the town is the focus....

Comedy Central has picked nine stand-up comedians for a new special called Comedy Central's Hot List, and if you're a reader of The Comic's Comic, absolutely none of the people on this list will come as a surprise. Oh, you may quibble and say so-and-so is much hotter than who'sa-ma-what'she, or wonder why isn't that guy on the list, but that's like wondering whether Rolling Stone is going to name someone the "Hot Comic" and then rip the "Hot Comic" the next year for no longer being hot (see: Cook, Dane). Or maybe they'll come up with a list of 12 Comics Who Aren't Funny — thank you Newsweek for providing this service! Oh, wait. You mean to tell me that's just a deliberate slideshow trap to generate tons of page views and incredulous comments? Nice try, Newsweek. No. Actually. Not a nice try, Newsweek. You didn't even try, it seems. But enough about them. What about the new "Hot List"? Comedy Central must have been reading Variety's 10 Comics to Watch list, then decided, hey, we could do that as a TV show, throw some stand-up footage and interviews in there, and voila: Instant comedy. Their picks for Comedy Central's Hot List, which airs Dec. 6, include Aziz Ansari, Anthony Jeselnik, Nick Kroll, T.J. Miller, Whitney Cummings, Jon Lajoie, Donald Glover, Matt Braunger and Kumail Nanjiani. The press...