LIGHTS UP on a team of scientists in lab coats who gather around taking notes of a single man who is swinging a baseball on a string held by another scientist TROY: Aha! I’m gon’ be the first nigga to hit a baseball into space! DOROTHY: Yes, and we’re going to do the math to […]
Continue ReadingScott Rogowsky longs for a bygone era of comedy, when scouts for Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show (or Carson himself) would turn up at comedy clubs in search of the next great comedian, launching the careers of comics that included Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, and David Letterman. Rogowsky has been hustling for over a decade in […]
Continue ReadingOfficially, the inspiration for the excellent new IFC comedy Brockmire is a Funny or Die sketch from 2010, but if you’re a Simpsons fan, you know the origins of the character trace back a little further than that. In “The Twisted World of Marge Simpson,” when Marge’s free pretzels are used to injure Mr. Burns […]
Continue ReadingShakira Evans is 22, a grad student studying Media and Communications, and a hot mess. This week she talked to me about three of her favorite tweets, plus awards season, seeking community while at a predominantly white college, and the emotions that inspire her to tweet. In lieu of plugs, she’d like to direct any […]
Continue ReadingIn his multimedia one-man show California Calling: A Story of Growing Up Punk Rock, Joe Sib wove a tale that started with the first time he heard real punk music and ended with him fronting the band Wax and founding SideOneDummy Records. Performing the show eight years ago planted a seed in Joe that would […]
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 ReadingCommuter Barbie is social commentary of the most cut-and-dried kind. Creators and young professionals Carina Hsieh and Claudia Arisso took their experiences riding the New York City MTA and created a parody doll in the image of who they saw jockeying for standing room alongside them. It’s not layered, it’s not a critique. It’s a simple reflection […]
Continue ReadingKamau Bell has spent a lifetime trying to figure out how he fits into the big picture of things. His new book, The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6′ 4″, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian, is (if you couldn’t guess […]
Continue ReadingWhen Michel Atieh decided to go to school in the United States, he chose the University of Michigan for a specific reason – it was close to Chicago, the home of Second City. Atieh, a Syrian national, was a regular performer at the Courtyard Playhouse, one of the premiere performance venues in Dubai and the only […]
Continue ReadingPod-Canon is an ongoing tribute to the greatest individual comedy-related podcast episodes of all time. When I was a guest on Harris Wittels and Scott Aukerman’s Analyze Phish podcast Harris invited me to be part of the gang when they saw Phish perform at the Hollywood Bowl. I wasn’t able to go due to poverty […]
Continue Reading