The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Today is the 15th anniversary of the day stand-up comedian Bill Hicks died. Over in the U.K., comedy club Jongleurs in Camden held a tribute show last night. Tonight, his childhood friend Dwight Slade performs at Cap City Comedy Club in Austin, Texas, with a special screening of the 2007 …
Ann Carr doesn't simply create characters, she jumps into them so fully that you wonder where Carr went. I often want to tell anyone who likes Showtime's new comedy United States of Tara that if they really want to see how one person can inhabit so many different personalities and …
Jerry Seinfeld doesn't need the money. But Seinfeld cannot stay away from the stage, whether it's stand-up comedy or television. NBC announced today that he's coming back to the Peacock Network, creating a comedy/reality show about married couples tentatively called "The Marriage Ref." It'll take real married couples with disputes …
Speaking of comedians in places you don't expect to see comedians…the second edition of The Celebrity Apprentice starts on Sunday night, because, well, I don't know why NBC has trotted the Trumps back out, but I'm almost compelled to watch this. Why not have a silly rich man who's always …
People think that the funny guy in the office would make a great stand-up comedian, but that humor does not always translate from the workplace to the stage. Ditch Films has produced a series of online shorts that puts a reverse spin on this, taking stand-up comedians and having them …
Location, location, location. That's the mantra in real estate, and perhaps the folks at Adult Swim followed it by choosing Bleecker and Lafayette as the setting for their larger-than-life advertisement for Delcoated, the very funny new short series that airs on Thursday nights. (Thanks, Aziz) You can catch up with …
Watching Phil Hartman’s audition tape for Saturday Night Live is such a bittersweet experience. Mostly sweet. To know that you don’t have to be a kid to get your big break in show business — Hartman was 38 when he joined the cast of SNL. To see the precision, vision …
For those of you who do not live in New York City, let me just preface this by saying that we first got introduced to Sal Lupo at comedy shows by learning he was a cab driver from the Canarsie neighborhood in Brooklyn. Turns out Lupo has shifted gears more …
Are you going to the 2009 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, next month? I know these comedians will be, because they're all listed on the festival site as performers mingling among the thousands of fans and musicians, with performances March 20-21 at either the Velveeta Room or Esther's Follies. Performers …
Maybe Kate Winslet should have thanked Ricky Gervais more on Oscar night when she accepted her Academy Award for playing a hot illiterate Nazi in The Reader. After all, Gervais had given her the funny lines to say a couple of years ago in his HBO show, Extras. This has …