The Definitive Guide to Comedy
I’m Dying Up Here almost didn’t survive to a second season. Dave Flebotte, who with Jim Carrey created the Showtime adaptation of William Knoedelseder’s best-seller about The Comedy Store in the 1970s, told me over the phone last week that when Showtime gave them “a month to come up with what we …
Doug Stanhope, who booked the late Sean Rouse on his Unbookables tour and captured it for a documentary, has written a beautiful eulogy to his friend over at Vulture. GO READ IT. If reading proves too difficult for you, for whatever reason, then you can listen to Stanhope along with …
A decade ago, W. Kamau Bell promised to end racism in an hour, titling his touring one-man show that to bring the audience in and leave them laughing. We’re not laughing so much now in 2018, when racism remains an American problem by its own birth and historical circumstances. Nevertheless, …
I made a point not to go back and look at my review of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette from when I saw it live onstage in New York City just a few months ago, either before, during or after watching the version she filmed for Netflix back in Sydney. Now I …
Aptly titled. Oh, you want more? Fine. Steve Martin Short fits even better. But An Evening You Will Forget For The Rest of Your Life definitely fits the bill, as I sit here a month and a half later and cannot tell you much of what transpired, even if I do …
I’ve read more than one thinkpiece (please don’t try that at home or anywhere else, for that matter) that compared Hannah Gadsby’s brilliant one-woman show, Nanette, to Tig Notaro’s performance at Largo when she first revealed she had cancer. All of which only makes me appreciate Notaro’s own 2018 Netflix …
I can’t tell you how many acquaintances of mine have asked me about Ali Wong in the past couple of years. No, wait. Actually, I can tell you how many. ALL OF THEM. Wong burst into the mainstream as the first comedian to become an “overnight sensation” thanks to Netflix …
If you had told me 11 years ago that the quiet guy in the condo Shane Mauss let me crash in during the final HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen would turn out to be comedy giant-killer, I may never have believed you. But I’ve enjoyed watching Hari Kondabolu’s …
John Mulaney is one of the best stand-up comedians working today. Although probably not today as it’s a holiday, but you get it. And even if you don’t get it, and need all the qualifiers, Mulaney definitely probably is the best cis heterosexual privileged white male in the stand-up trade …
Sam Grittner is one of the best comedians on Twitter. Don’t take my word for it? OK, then how about Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post and famous comedians such as “Weird” Al Yankovic, who are among the tens of thousands who follow him and have put him on best of …
