The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Your Tuesday afternoon has been my Tuesday morning, which means you may have seen this already. If not, though, please allow me to introduce you to the latest episode of "Between Two Ferns," the always-entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny play on talk shows, starring Zach Galifianakis. His guest today is Oscar-winning …
Something felt a little different this Labor Day weekend. What could it have been? Oh, that's right. The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. When I was a kid in Connecticut, the telethon aired on the most popular station (WFSB, Ch. 3) and without cable, it was the only thing on for …
More than a few of you may have been surprised last year to see NBC's Last Comic Standing (not just because it was still on, which it wasn't this summer) and find a comedy duo singing songs about Christ in a stand-up competition. Behold the power of God's Pottery. In …
As a former newspaper reporter, I have had more than a passing curiosity with how those in the mainstream media have chased my scoops this past week on the hirings and firings at Saturday Night Live. Most new media organizations and online components of print newspapers and magazines have been …
Boston's annual comedy festival competition, much like its comedy scene, is an odd mix of college-aged joketellers, strong writers, aspiring upstarts and wily veterans who for some reason have flown under the national radar. In 2008, Dwight Slade (a teen comedy peer of the late Bill Hicks) entered and won …
Steve Mazan realized his dream this week when he performed on Late Show with David Letterman. He taped his stand-up comedy set on Monday and CBS broadcast it on Friday night. This is extra special for the comedian, his friends and loved ones, because Steve Mazan had made doing Letterman …
I was on hand Friday night for the end of the semifinal rounds of the 2009 Boston Comedy Festival stand-up contest. While the early semi seemed to point clearly to who would advance to the finals, some might quibble about who got the lucky finalist slots in the late semi …
You've known comedian Kevin Nealon for going on almost decades plural at this point, from his "Subliminal Man" on Saturday Night Live to appearances in films as a supporting player for Adam Sandler, and for the past several years, as stoned Doug Wilson on Showtime's Weeds. How is it only now, …
Back in the earlier part of this decade, I'd see comedian Michael Loftus at least a couple of times a year, coming through the Tempe Improv as a middle. Sometimes I even worked with him as the opener. But I lost touch and lost track of him for while, though …
Stand-up comedian Steve Mazan has made it his life mission to perform on Late Show with David Letterman, which is a mission many stand-ups in this generation share, but Mazan's mission really has been about life or death since he was diagnosed with cancer. So he launched his "Dying To …