When I first stumbled across Hasan Minhaj’s YouTube videos back in 2012, I was at a strange point in my evolution as a comedy consumer, where my identity as a budding comedy nerd and my identity as an Indian-Canadian were somewhat at odds. For as much as I loved standup and was fascinated by the […]
Continue ReadingOver 42 years, Saturday Night Live has weathered its share of cultural storms, joking its way through everything from Watergate to 9/11, but they’ve never had to handle anything quite like this past year – one that saw the election of America’s first fake president, and the glimmer of our generation’s first true foray into […]
Continue ReadingPod-Canon is an ongoing tribute to the greatest individual comedy-related podcast episodes of all time. Former MTV personality Jesse Camp is the ultimate Warholian cult celebrity. At one point Camp had the profile and popularity to command a million-dollar recording contract for a hair metal debut featuring appearances from Stevie Nicks and Rick Nielsen and […]
Continue ReadingIn August, late night TV fans were shocked to learn that Larry Wilmore’s Nightly Show had been canceled after just 19 months on the air. Comedy Central contended that the show had failed to make a significant impact, a claim which anyone who watched the show would find dubious (and that Jon Stewart himself challenged […]
Continue ReadingWhen it comes to comedies, ABC has distinguished itself by having one of the most inclusive slate of shows on network TV. Speechless has deservedly gotten a lot of attention for its depiction of a child with cerebral palsy (starring an actor who lives with the illness in real life). But as important as this […]
Continue ReadingBiniam Bizuneh is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. He’s the creator the web series LieGuys, and most recently he performed on the Vans Warped Tour, served as a consultant on Billy on the Street, and made his televised standup debut on the Viceland show, Flophouse. This week Bizuneh talked to me about […]
Continue ReadingI once attended a Q&A with Chris Kraus, the author of I Love Dick. She was promoting her biography of Kathy Acker, a work she undertook at least partially because she didn’t like Acker. It struck me as a particularly selfish act. But here I am choosing to write a review of the TV show […]
Continue ReadingThe comedy podcast universe is ever expanding, not unlike the universe universe. We’re here to make it a bit smaller, a bit more manageable. There are a lot of great shows and each has a lot of great episodes, so we want to highlight the exceptional, the noteworthy. Each week our crack team of podcast […]
Continue ReadingToday marks the 10-year anniversary of the Human Giant MTV 24-hour takeover. Starting at 12:00pm on May 18th, 2007 and ending at 12:00pm on May 19th, 2007, the cast of Human Giant (Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer) were allowed to show music videos, air episodes from season 1, and bring on guest comedians and performers. […]
Continue ReadingBack when I was a lad in the nineteen-hundred and eighties, standup showcase shows were on cable television 24 hours a day, and I watched every single one of them. They were all good to me and my insatiable appetite for standup, but the big ones were on HBO. I seldom had access to HBO, […]
Continue Reading