Jonny Sun released his first book this year: Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur an Aliebn Too. The book is an illustrated account following the character at the center of Sun’s Twitter account, an alien named Jomny on a never-ending quest to make sense of humanity (and himself). The message and tone of the book are […]
Continue ReadingWelcome to our Fall Comedy Reads series, where we take a closer look at some of the newly released comedy-related books worth checking out this month. When it began in 1996, The Daily Show was nothing like what it would become. Hosted by Craig Kilborn, the show dealt mostly with light entertainment news and had a mean-spirited […]
Continue ReadingWelcome to our Fall Comedy Reads series, where we take a closer look at some of the newly released comedy-related books worth checking out this month. Budd Friedman loves celebrities. This point is driven home multiple times throughout his memoir/“oral history,” The Improv: An Oral History of the Comedy Club That Revolutionized Stand-Up. By comedian Bruce Smirnoff, who […]
Continue ReadingThe paranoia-inducing The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon is best paired with a room temperature watermelon wine cooler, which should be preceded by licking two hits of LSD off an official United States Post Office stamp (or a Trystero stamp, if you can find one). Don DeLillo’s breakout novel White Noise goes down […]
Continue ReadingWelcome to our Fall Comedy Reads series, where we take a closer look at some of the newly released comedy-related books worth checking out this month. It’s difficult to articulate exactly what it is about The Golden Girls that made it last this long in our hearts. Or at least, it can be difficult to point to […]
Continue ReadingWelcome to our Fall Comedy Reads series, where we take a closer look at some of the newly released comedy-related books worth checking out this month. It’s difficult to articulate exactly what it is about The Golden Girls that made it last this long in our hearts. Or at least, it can be difficult to point to […]
Continue ReadingWelcome to our Fall Comedy Reads series, where we take a closer look at some of the newly released comedy-related books worth checking out this month. By the end of 1966, Carol Burnett was living in Los Angeles “sitting on orange crates and packing boxes.” Her Broadway career had not exploded the way she’d expected while starring […]
Continue ReadingWhat is your greatest fear? My greatest fear is of teens, and the possibility of a reckless, bullying majority that they represent. It is worst when they are polite; that’s when I am most likely to have something thrown at me. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? The worst things about me […]
Continue ReadingWelcome to our Fall Comedy Reads series, where we take a closer look at some of the newly released comedy-related books worth checking out this month. In 1937, while visiting Los Angeles, British journalist Austin J. Putnam described the “Seven Wonders of Hollywood.” His list included restaurants, theaters, studios, and the live production of Jack […]
Continue ReadingThe comedian, actor and musician on being part of a strong, close family, his parents’ high expectations, and discovering he could write good riffs
My granddad had a 1,500-acre hobby farm that he had built up from scratch in Western Australia, so my siblings and I spent our childhoods going there a lot. That place – and the beach – was a huge part of our lives. I would define myself as someone who had a completely idyllic childhood. Except, of course, that childhood’s complicated!
I was the middle of three children and then the second of four kids when my little sister came along, when I was 10. We all got along, and were expected to do so. We had periods of arguing, but it is a real privilege being part of a gang. I guess that is something I worry about with my kids – that there are only two of them [Minchin and his wife, Sarah, have two children, Violet, 11, and Caspar, eight]. We kids did a lot together, so we never found a reason to reject each other’s choices. I guess it is an affirmation of our relationships – why wouldn’t we want to be with each other?
Related: Tim Minchin: My life as a dad
With the piano, I had that insatiable need to prove myself
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