Celebrate Awards Season ’98 with ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’

We are once again firmly entrenched in Hollywood’s favorite time of year: award season. As a nation we will thrill and speculate who will get the gold and whose hands will be left cold©. Well, a mere 19 years ago in March of 1998, Oscar fever hadn’t just swept America, it had seeped into outer […]

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Melissa Lozada-Olivia (@ellomelissa) on Nihilistic Humor and Being an Alien

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatolombian nationally recognized & touring spoken word poet. She has been featured on Button Poetry, Bustle, the Guardian, Huffington Post, Glamour Magazine, & her mom’s Facebook statuses. She is a 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion, a Brenda Moosey Video Slam winner & the author of the chapbooks Plastic Pájaros & rude […]

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Melissa Lozada-Olivia (@ellomelissa) on Nihilistic Humor and Being an Alien

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatolombian nationally recognized & touring spoken word poet. She has been featured on Button Poetry, Bustle, the Guardian, Huffington Post, Glamour Magazine, & her mom’s Facebook statuses. She is a 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion, a Brenda Moosey Video Slam winner & the author of the chapbooks Plastic Pájaros & rude […]

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The Age of Message Comedy

Lots of comedians I follow on Twitter haven’t joked in months, and it’s not because they don’t funny ideas. It’s because of articles like this. We thought we’d made progress these last eight years. Things weren’t perfect; we knew they never would be, but they were improving — at a rate faster than I’d seen in […]

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The Second City Tackles Immigration Through The Power of Song in 2006

Welcome to The Second City Archives, in which we post an exclusive clip each week of some of comedy’s biggest superstars performing early in their careers on the legendary Chicago stage. Second City has generously given us a glimpse into their extensive archive of live performances, and over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some […]

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Typical New Yorkers, by Jeremy Glass

Kitty Beans Kitty grew up in the West Village during a time where even looking in the direction of the subway could get you beaten, mugged, and slapped with one of those gloves that have fire ants sewn into the palm. She chain smokes cigarettes by taping the whole pack together and inhaling them all […]

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Bob Zmuda on Gilbert Gottfried’s Podcast Provided a Fascinating Glimpse Into One of Comedy’s True Scoundrels

As he will be the first to let you know, Bob Zmuda is a very important man. He is, as he has doggedly chronicled through the decades, the man behind Andy Kaufman. In his fever to make his contributions to comedy history known far and wide, Zmuda had stopped just short of pushing for legislation […]

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Brittany Spanos (@ohheybrittany) on Nicki Minaj, Teen Fandoms, and Group Chats

Brittany Spanos is a staff writer at Rolling Stone who has interviewed everyone from Stevie Nicks to Rae Sremmurd. She grew up in Chicago’s South Suburbs and moved to New York for college where she attended NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Prior to Rolling Stone, she was the Clubs Editor at the Village Voice […]

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Josh Ruben Should Be a Snapchat Superstar

A couple of months back, our very own Daniel Hurwitz compiled a spot on list of nine comedians worth following on Snapchat. Today, I’d like to cover one of those fine folks in some more detail, in this first ever This Week in Web Videos edition that talks about Snapchat (I know, I’m very late to […]

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Katie Rich Leads an Improv Scene for the Audience’s Highest Bidder at The Second City in 2012

Welcome to The Second City Archives, in which we post an exclusive clip each week of some of comedy’s biggest superstars performing early in their careers on the legendary Chicago stage. Second City has generously given us a glimpse into their extensive archive of live performances, and over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some […]

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