The Definitive Guide to Comedy
“I’m a comedian, but I don’t tell jokes.” That’s what Dave Shirley told the judges of NBC’s America’s Got Talent at the start of his audition on last night’s episode. So. What does he do? As a self-described “failed street performer,” this guy from Denver puts on a multimedia show …
Who is Angela Hoover? No, you’re not on Jeopardy or in jeopardy, for that matter. Just noting that millions of Americans newly discovered Angela Hoover last night via TV, and that they may already have seen her before — despite the onscreen graphic on America’s Got Talent that said she’s …
Kathleen Madigan performed on last night’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and let us all in on her very first experience with life on a cruise ship — which came when she performed on Lewis Black’s comedy cruise. Apparently there is a lot more than just eating and drinking to …
Myq Kaplan returned to the Conan program on the TBS last night. Kaplan ponders the idea of a Buddhist extremist, as well as zombie Hitler, time travel, the Back to the Future movies, and of course, Bill Murray. If you feel like you’ve seen this clip before, then perhaps you …
If the Writers Guild of America membership is to be believed, half of the best-written TV series of all time just so happened to have been written in the past decade. Whether they choose to ignore their past or celebrate it, the WGA’s East and West Coast branches voted online …
Ask most comedians today who they love and loved watching perform, and Richard Pryor’s name is more likely than not to make the cut as one of the top two influencers for a generation of stand-ups. That’s the sense you’ll get at the start of watching the new documentary about …
Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taconne were childhood friends in Berkeley, Calif., who went off to separate colleges before reuniting and forming The Lonely Island. Their short film collaborations led them to Saturday Night Live, feature films, sitcoms and two hit albums of their comedy hip-hop songs — “Incredibad” …
If you’re looking for a healthy, lengthy debate about how comedy and feminism don’t have to be mutually exclusive concepts that tear at each other with straw-man arguments, then, well… Here’s a five-minute discussion, moderated by W. Kamau Bell on his FX late-night program, Totally Biased, from last night featuring …
If “Long Story Short” told the story of the rise and fall of every empire, including our own, then Colin Quinn’s new one-man show, “Unconstitutional,” zeroes in on what makes the United States of America so unique and yet not quite immune itself to the perils of contemporary culture and …
Growing up in South Africa with an African mother and a Swiss-German father, the nation’s prevailing policy of Apartheid at the time meant that Trevor Noah had been “Born a Crime.” That’s the title Noah adopts for his one-man show, “The Racist,” which over the past year he has performed at the grand …
