The Definitive Guide to Comedy
In which the author attempts, despite repeated crashes of his laptop computer, to briefly describe the shows he saw Thursday at the 2007 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Summer of Tears Southern California sketch troupe mixed it up with videos. One took political TV ads and made the candidates potential boyfriends. …
Thursday in Aspen: The 2007 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival Before my recap, let’s get straight to the latest installment of the Shane Spotlight, in which my comedy condo roommate Shane Mauss describes his day. “I had some meetings yesterday with people who saw my show the previous night and liked …
Wednesday in Aspen: The 2007 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival Twenty-four hours after I boarded a Silver Line bus in Boston for the airport, I’m sitting in a condo on the side of the mountain in Aspen, coasting on my fourth wind into what already is shaping up to be one …
The backlash against Carlos Mencia has shifted into higher gear over the past seven days, as these two videos will attest. I’ll have plenty more to say about this later, but for now, just watch these videos, one in which Joe Rogan publicly accuses Mencia of joke stealing in front …
Five years after he returned to stand-up comedy, Robin Williams appears to be attempting another return to the stage. At least, that’s what it looked like last night when Williams launched into his first of two sold-out last-minute performances at the Comedy Connection in Boston. The reasoning? Williams is the …
You have to hand it to Saturday Night Live. Every once in a while, they get it. Not just delivering laughs, but also understanding the need to let everyone in on the joke. Over the holidays, NBC’s longtime late-night institution proved that once again with the music video, "Dick in …
Harry Shearer is a man of many voices, to be sure. And that’s just on The Simpsons, where Shearer voices the characters of Mr. Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, the Rev. Timothy Lovejoy, among others. You’ve heard him for years on Le Show, his weekly public radio …
Katt Williams is one n—– a roll. Wait. Hold on, hold on, just hold on one second. What’s with that "n-word"?! Oh, right. That. Avert your eyes now if you don’t want to know what it is, even though you know all too perfectly well what the word is, and …
Almost forgot to weigh in on last weekend’s other talked-about comedy show, the ballyhooed return of Comic Relief. Broadcast live from Las Vegas and New Orleans on HBO (with a slight delay on TBS), the show looked and sounded all of its 20 years. Robin Williams had nothing new to …
Judah Friedlander is absurd. Judah Friedlander also thrives on crowd work. Combine the two and you get a stand-up comedy show that goes beyond any other show. Just ask Judah. He’ll tell you. That’s why he wears the World Champion yellow T-shirt with ballcap printed in Spanish, "just in case …