The Definitive Guide to Comedy
D’oh. Now we know why The Problem With Apu continues to be problematic, despite Hank Azaria acknowledging that the voice he has used on The Simpsons for an Indian immigrant running the Springfield convenience store might not be as funny in 2018 as it was in 1988. The Simpsons defended …
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 …
Congratulations to this year’s class of “10 Comics to Watch,” as anointed by Variety magazine and toasted in July at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival. Variety usually compiles its list by a combination of asking industry influencers, plus forecasting based on what comics already have lined up in the coming …
I use my middle initial professionally and always have because there are far too many Sean McCarthys in the world, even in the world of comedy. Hari Kondabolu might not ever have that problem, despite what his mother taught him. Then again, as Kondabolu joked in his performance on Thursday’s …
Despite the defensive stance the writers on The Simpsons took just weeks ago about their Apu problem, the white man who’s voiced Apu from the start has said he’s finally ready to stop doing so, based on hearing the complaints from the Indian-American community. Hank Azaria, appearing this week on …
On Sunday night’s episode of The Simpsons, the writers had little Lisa give advice to her mom about something or other, using it instead as an opportunity to defend themselves against charges of racism for having a white actor voice an Indian character with a heavily stereotyped accent. “It’s hard …
Here’s something you don’t see much: A celebrity thanking TMZ for stopping him to ask a question. But here was Hank Azaria, who voices Apu (among several other characters) on The Simpsons, with a statement regarding comedian Hari Konadbolu’s documentary for truTV, The Problem With Apu. “I think the documentary …
Plenty of cable channels/networks have rebranded and renamed themselves since first launching in the 1980s or 1990s, and now truTV has fully embraced its newer identity as a full-time comedy channel — complete with a new ad campaign and tagline, “Funny Because It’s tru.” The campaign features the following truTV …
With less than a month until the 2016 presidential election, SiriusXM will rebrand one of its comedy channels as “F* Politics” for the week to help you cope with the shockingly grotesque turn in our political discourse. Starting Monday (Oct. 17, 2016), Comedy Greats (ch. 94) will become “F* Politics” with a …
Hari Kondabolu and I go back to the scene of his very first big break, showcasing for the 2007 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and HBO, how that all happened, and how he managed to take a year off afterward to earn his master’s degree from the London School …
