The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Felipe Esparza‘s birthday wish probably isn’t to have another comedian doing a bit on TV that’s similar to his own. Especially when the bit is done by a contestant on season 8 of Last Comic Standing. Esparza won Last Comic the last time NBC mounted the contest in 2010 for …
Last year, America’s Got Talent judge Howie Mandel called out a stand-up comedian for auditioning with a bit he’d seen another comedian do — a fact complicated ironically since that other comedian was AGT’s audience warm-up guy: Frank Nicotero. We never even saw the disputed audition on TV when AGT …
Hello, internet people, including whoever put a joke about vegans that I wrote on a butcher shop window. I wrote a joke a few years ago and performed it on Conan in 2012. You can see it at around the 4:00 mark in this clip: A while ago, someone took …
What are the odds of this? A comedian auditioning last night for NBC’s 2013 summer season of America’s Got Talent performs well, only to be accused by judge Howie Mandel of lifting the bit from another stand-up comedian — who happened to be AGT’s warm-up audience comic that very night …
Milton Berle was “Uncle Miltie” to the first generation of Americans to own televisions. And to a generation of comedians, Berle also was the father of joke thievery. Having his private joke files on the auction block in Los Angeles means we may chance upon rare artificats that once and …
A new season of SNL also brings other comedians out of the woodwork to say, “Hey, I did that comedy sketch first!” When it’s an absurd topic, you might have a case to make. When it’s the idea that a dying soldier would have terrible choices for his last request …
Have you seen the new TV ad McDonald’s is running to promote its line of “premium” chicken sandwiches? Pete Karinen and Brian Sacca sure have. And they see a little too much of themselves in the commercial. Specifically, they see that McDonald’s used the same essential idea that they drew out …
After four years, Louis CK and Dane Cook finally got to sit down and hash out the debate among comedy fans — and themselves — about whether or not Cook had lifted three of CK’s jokes. Cook had told me in a 2007 interview that he most certainly hadn’t (even …
