The Definitive Guide to Comedy
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 …
Cedric the Entertainer talked with me upon the arrival of his latest HBO special, Taking You Higher, which he helped promote with a club tour. He had a brief stint on the small screen a few years ago with his 2002 sketch show, Cedric the Entertainer Presents. He has another …
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 …
Dat Phan (you remember him, the Vietnamese-American kid who came out from nowhere — well, actually out from under his desk and his job working at the Improv — to win the first season of Last Comic Standing) finally got another chance at primetime TV. So what does he do? …
Will Ferrell is a really nice guy. Looked me in the eyes during our introduction a couple of weeks ago at the Ritz, delivered a solid handshake. Enough to unnerve a lesser civilian. But after a playfully simple opening question, we were off and running in a discussion to promote …
Comedy Central had Brian Kiley guest blogging on its site the week before his half-hour stand-up special aired on the cable network that spring. It wasn’t Kiley’s idea. "They made us do it. There are certain things you fantasize about before you start your career…but there are other things that …
Some comics really try heard to stay in character. Dan Whitney does all of his interviews as "Larry the Cable Guy" with the Larry accent and persona. Same goes for Sacha Baron Cohen as "Borat." Bobcat Goldthwait, on the other hand, rose to fame with a unique vocal delivery but …
Gary Gulman told me that watching Dane Cook’s Tourgasm has been an interesting contrast to his prolonged exposure on NBC’s Last Comic Standing two years earlier. "Some of it has been relevatory, and some of it has been fun, like watching a home movie. Luckily, I was not the focal …
Bill Burr recently had his own HBO half-hour special, and I wanted to know what he meant in a MySpace blog posting about moving 20 minutes from the end of his set to the front. "Early in my career, joke order was really important, because you had no idea what …