The Definitive Guide to Comedy
You never quite know what you’re going to find in a Rory Scovel performance, and he succeeds in bewildering the audiences at the San Francisco Punch Line where he recorded his new stand-up comedy CD, “Dilation,” earlier this year. Not that bewilderment is a bad thing to produce. Scovel likes …
Pablo Francisco is a whirling dervish of voices, noises, sound effects and impersonations. And on Francisco’s new CD/DVD, “They Put It Out There,” he puts it all out there. Before you can ask — Who is they, what did they put and where did they put it? — let’s take a look …
Josh Gondelman sincerely is one of the nicest people I know. Normally, in comedy circles, saying someone is nice is the “nice” way to say that person isn’t funny. Thankfully, though, Gondelman proves on his debut CD, “Everything’s The Best,” that he is an exception to this comedy rule. A …
Before you begin listening to Louis Katz’s CD, “If These Balls Could Talk,” it’s important that you know a couple of things. Dave Attell is a fan of his (often bringing Katz on the road with him as his feature act, and employing him on his Showtime series, Dave’s Old Porn). …
The CD, Wyatt Cenac: Comedy Person, begins with a bit of a bait-and-switch, as it’s not Cenac, but rather Daily Show colleague John Hodgman who is talking to the audience throughout the first introductory track. When Cenac does arrive onstage, he helps Hodgman out by explaining that his first bit, …
Norm Macdonald has gone on record saying that he tries to write jokes as short as possible. And on the record, Me Doing Standup (available in CD or DVD versions), Macdonald proceeds to do just that. He cuts to the chase in such a startling way that that in and …
Patrice O’Neal embodied and espoused brutal honesty. And in his first, and regrettably only full special released during his lifetime, Oneal addressed the “Elephant in the Room” as one of the best comedy CD/DVDs of 2011. Oneal had been tagged with too many unfair labels by critics and detractors over recent …
Dave Chappelle said it himself last night during a 2-hour, 20-minute performance that lasted until 4 a.m. this morning at the Comedy Cellar: “I transcend comedy!” Well, Chappelle said many things last night in his two surprise drop-in sets at the Cellar during his first night of a short visit …
Kevin Hart cites Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Martin Lawrence and The Kings of Comedy as his inspiration for bringing his latest stand-up effort to the big screen as a concert film. But Hart may have Louis CK as much to thank for getting Laugh at My Pain into movie theaters, …
Reading the TV tea leaves seems fairly simple once you read enough of them, because television executives tend to follow certain predictable patterns. Such as: If you hype a new sketch comedy series featuring a relative unknown comedian but backed by a famous TV/movie comedic actor, tell us you’re going …
