Three days before Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” comedian George Lopez was lobbing all sorts of F-bombs at the president from inside Washington, D.C., during his live HBO performance Saturday night, The Wall: Live! From Washington, D.C. As I wrote in my Decider review of Lopez’s newest […]
Continue ReadingYou can see Maz Jobrani on the new CBS sitcom, Superior Donuts, and hear about his life in Episode #91 of my podcast, Last Things First. Now he has just released his fourth solo stand-up special, and first for Netflix, called Immigrant. Jobrani recorded it in D.C. to help put a spotlight on the immigrant […]
Continue ReadingThis is my 11th consecutive year covering Montreal’s Just For Laughs, but the first in which I’ve experienced serious blowback while still at the festival. What’s going on here? A few different things, and I’ll try to clear the air on as many of them as I can. Usually, comedians, comedy fans and the industry […]
Continue ReadingHow’s your Hinglish? That’s not a rhetorical question. Because Aditi Mittal, the first Indian woman to get her own Netflix hour comedy special, freely mixes English and Hindi in Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say. Most of her work translates easily. But as I wrote in my review on Decider: “I realized that being 30 […]
Continue ReadingIs Joe Mande using the power of “The Secret” with the title of his first Netflix hour comedy special? Not exactly. As I wrote in my review on Decider: The conceit, in fact, is that Mande wants to win the (fictitious) “American Humour Award,” and before we see him perform any actual stand-up, Mande talks to […]
Continue ReadingSarah Tiana has appeared regularly on @midnight, and previously on the panels for E!’s Chelsea Lately and CMT’s The Josh Wolf Show, but as she notes on her website, those are perhaps the only things you know about Tiana. She also has written for many Comedy Central Roasts, for Jeff Ross’s The Burn, and finished runner-up in […]
Continue ReadingSarah Tiana has appeared regularly on @midnight, and previously on the panels for E!’s Chelsea Lately and CMT’s The Josh Wolf Show, but as she notes on her website, those are perhaps the only things you know about Tiana. She also has written for many Comedy Central Roasts, for Jeff Ross’s The Burn, and finished runner-up in […]
Continue ReadingFirst things first: The best performances from Wednesday night’s debut New Faces showcases in Montreal came from Taylor Tomlinson, Martin Urbano, Preacher Lawson, Sam Jay and James Austin Johnson. Secondly: The early showcase Wednesday (Group 1) was otherwise solid from top to bottom, despite a lackluster opening by host Sugar Sammy, who didn’t quite warm up […]
Continue ReadingJen Kirkman comes out singing and swinging in her newest stand-up hour. As Kirkman told the audience Tuesday night during the weeklong run of her new show, “Irrational Thoughts,” at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival: “I like to come out singing because I feel like the point of performing, for me, is to feel like I’m […]
Continue Reading“Have you ever seen a saxophone opening a stand up comedy set? I don’t think so. Anything can happen on Stand Up on the Spot!” Jeremiah Watkins, the host of Jeff Ross Presents Stand-Up On the Spot, made his entrance Tuesday night playing the sax while his sidekick, Avery Pearson, tickled the organic ivories onstage […]
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