The Definitive Guide to Comedy
What do comedy contests and criticism offer to the stand-up comedian? Validation. Feedback. Two things most comics desperately desire. Or, another way to look at it: Am I funny? Why did they think I wasn’t as funny as that other comic? At the Boston Comedy Festival, the annual stand-up contest …
Prelim 4 is when everything you thought you knew about the Boston Comedy Festival contest went out the window and onto the bricks and cobblestones below. A much stronger field of contenders — perhaps five or six of the 12 comics could’ve landed the two semifinalist slots. And yet. Well…let’s …
Monday, Monday… OK, comedy fans. Whether or not you have a financial stake in the outcome of the Boston Comedy Festival contest, you still want to know what really went down last night in the third and fourth preliminaries. So here’s another opinion. But first, another opinion: Why didn’t host …
The Boston Comedy Festival kicked off with its ever-random charm last night, a stand-out stand-up show off the comedy club grid, a well-attended gay-themed show (last year’s had to be canceled) and two equally unpredictable preliminaries in the comedy contest. I’ve told people this before. As both a former participant …
Josh Blue is experiencing that phenomenon known as TV fame in the wake of his win this summer on the fourth edition of NBC’s Last Comic Standing. Had him on the phone the other day, fresh off a gig in Charlotte, N.C. — Blue is in town this weekend at …
Pre-show ticket warnings be darned. Chappelle’s show in Boston would not be foiled! It did take an extra-long time to get into Agganis Arena, though, with two long lines that snaked from either side of the only two ways into the building, forced through a security gauntlet. Fans could keep …
Broken Lizard may not be Monty Python, or even Kids in the Hall, but they prove they’re darned funny in their own right with the release of Beerfest. I had the chance to meet Broken Lizard members Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhanske earlier this month when they came through Boston …
Dave Chappelle hasn’t been doing much press for his current stand-up tour. Perhaps he doesn’t want to answer the same questions over and over again about Africa and Comedy Central. Or perhaps he figures his appearances on Oprah and Anderson Cooper 360 earlier this year were enough. Either way, it’ll …
So yes, Robert “Bobby” Kelly has quite the homecoming this weekend, as he’s taping this weekend’s shows at the Comedy Connection in Boston. Kelly is from nearby Medford. Kelly talked to me in the morning, something he finds himself doing a lot more now that 1) he’s hitting another level …
One of the funnier Super Bowl commercials this year featured comedians Kathy Griffin and Jim Gaffigan as airport security workers, giving Michael Ian Black the wand treatment over his Sierra Mist bottle. How could they have known that seven months later, you couldn’t get soda pop through airport security? A …