The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Here is a fanciful animated short video to keep you company while I prepare another day of comedy news and analysis for you. As I write and research, perhaps I should be watching this, too, since it asks that essential age-old old-age question: What is comedy?
You’ve all been waiting for this (sorry about the wait), it’s the two final preliminary competitions in the 2008 Boston Comedy Festival contest, so let’s get to recapping… Prelim 7 winners: Byron Bowers, Jessi Campbell, Dave Waite, Drew Thomas When Bowers took the stage, he joked about being the fourth …
Amy Poehler talks to USA Today today about her imminent departure from SNL. Seth Meyers says replacing Poehler won’t be easy: "She has a real connection with the audience," he says. "She looks like she’s having a lot of fun, and it’s contagious. It’s going to be hard for one …
Before Tim Reid was Venus Flytrap on WKRP on Cincinnati, and before Tom Dreesen was warming up audiences for Frank Sinatra, Tim & Tom were perhaps the first "and sadly the last" black-and-white comedy team in the early 1970s, as Dreesen told the Chicago Tribune. (via Shecky) The Trib’s story …
Microsoft announced today that it was launching a new ad campaign — without Jerry Seinfeld — and that that was part of the plan all along. The new ads that begin today open with a guy who looks like John Hodgman so they can play off of the "I’m a …
Hey comedy fans, perhaps you remember reading or hearing a rumor about comedian TJ Miller and his audition this summer for SNL. Or the "baloney and fibs," as Miller tells me. When I saw him a day or two after his audition, he said he would be more than OK …
The folks at Funny or Die know that Will Ferrell is their star attraction, so they put him in front of a laptop and got him to read some of the many Internet comments directed his way from a variety of sites. Oh, to be a celebrity…(NSFW): See more Will …
Sometimes, the main difference between stand-up comedy on HBO and stand-up comedy on Showtime seems to be that HBO lets you know it’s coming. Their promotional efforts are everywhere. Showtime, you blink, you may miss it. Which is my way of saying a new comedy showcase began last week on …
On the Left Coast, the second week of the 2008 San Francisco Comedy Competition’s preliminaries begins tonight. Follow along here, and here. And here are your comedians for the coming week in and around Northern California: Week Two competitors: Jen Adams, New York; Shannon Gettins, Los Angeles; Andy Haynes, New …
Someone asked me if going first in a contest meant certain elimination. That entirely depends upon a few factors, such as: How proficient your host is in warming up the audience and getting them to laugh, what time your show starts (the later, the better, it’d seem), and how quickly …