The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Earlier in the hour, Mike DeStefano had no problems provoking the crowd with his thoughts on race and gender, saying he was here not for them but for himself to help set this world record. His closing bit even lasted a few minutes longer as he told audience members about …
"There isn’t one married couple left in here, is there?" Tom Van Horn just observed from the stage, before launching into his relationship material. "They’re all home or dead now."
Everyone seems a little feisty. Except me. I’m oddly calm. Some new audience members have filled in the vacant front seats, while other corners remain packed with comedy fans who’ve been here for the past six hours or so. The young man with the pillow had disappeared for a bit, …
"Damn! You were here last night? Now I’ve got to tell new jokes," Chuck Nice told the fans who said they came back for more tonight (which is now the first minutes of Thursday morning). "I was drunk last night. What’d I talk about?" So he asked for a beer …
Within the past 15 minutes, seemingly half of the capacity crowd has made their moves for the exits, following Jeffrey Ross toward the door at the end of his 50-minute set. I happen to be in the lobby when this happens, having filmed a short improvised riff with Rory Albanese …
Mike Birbiglia goes onstage and immediately fills the audience in on my presence liveblogging the event. The lights go up. A couple of hundred heads swivel my way. "So what’s been the highlight so far?" Birbiglia asks me. Pause. "Well, I guess this would have to be the highlight," I …
Gary Gulman opened with a quick quip about wanting "to set the record for beards of bees" before setting down his recording device on the stool onstage. "But first, I’m going to record this, so you can see where you can do better…because you might mail it in," Gulman said, …
I now have watched 24 hours of continuous stand-up comedy without napping, dozing or otherwise passing out from exhaustion. Our host, William Stephenson, has just told the audience that this not only will be a record-setting show, but also "the best f#%&ing comedy show in the history of the universe." …
Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, the late-night half-hour chat show for comedians that features the least actual chat of any TV show I know, will get two more seasons — or 260 episodes — to blatantly promote stand-up comedians. Which is ultimately still a good thing. Right? The series already …
There’s a nine-year-old boy in the audience, and that throws our host off until he realizes the boy is the son of Paul Mecurio, who has returned for his second set of the day. Mecurio is back to work the crowd, and a young Indian man beats him to the …