Conan O’Brien is giving you BOTH tips to stay safe and healthy and absolutely brilliant content to keep you sane in these weird times of COVID-19. Please enjoy this latest bit of comedy genius here.
Starting today, the one and only Eddie Pepitone, arguably one of best ranters in comedy history (just watch any of his specials or listen to any of his albums) will be doing a daily live stream called Eddie Pepitone Live From The Bunker.
Truly, all we need to say is that you’ll get to see Eddie 7 days a week with characters, rants, guests, and more during these weird times. Eddie’s firebrand (often meta) comedy might be perfect thing to hear/see right now. Tune in at @eddiepep on Instagram at 4PM PST daily.
Even in these grim times, Conan O’Brien can still come up with a hysterical remote. Please, please enjoy Conan’s DIY tips for how he’s combatting the spread of this novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, here (even if you have done so many times already when it dropped earlier this week).
Due to concern over the spread of this latest novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, events and venues around the world have be shutting down/postponing/cancelling events/etc. in a way to combat the spread of said virus. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has called for a moratorium on any public gatherings of 250 people or more and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has strongly encouraged the same with events that bring 50 or more people together.
Thus, plenty of venues and shows in and around Los Angeles have taken it upon themselves to be pro-active and preemptively suspend operations.
Here’s a rundown of announcements made by major comedy venues around LA right now (we will update this with any new updates/changes as frequently as we can).
*UPDATED*
Upright Citizens Brigade (Franklin, Sunset, Inner Sanctum)-all operations are cancelled until further notice.
Dynasty Typewriter-all shows are postponed until further notice.
The Comedy Store-All shows suspended through March.
Largo at the Coronet Theatre-All shows considered postponed.
Westside Comedy Theater-all operations are suspended until further notice.
The Groundlings-All shows cancelled until Mar. 31st.
Hollywood Improv-Calendar shows that venue is dark until April 1st.
Lyric Hyperion Theatre & Cafe-Theater will go dark until end of March.
Flappers Comedy Club-shut down until further notice.
Second City Hollywood-All performances suspended until further notice.
The Clubhouse-Closed until further notice (possibly will re-open on Mar. 20th)
Pack Theater-All shows cancelled until further notice.
Hollywood Laugh Factory-closed until further notice.
Comedy & Magic Club-All shows are postponed until further notice.
Ahmanson Theatre (where Book of Mormon is, well, was happening)-all shows cancelled until at least Mar. 31st.
Flappers Comedy Club-capacity of Main Room and Yoo Hoo Room limited in respect to state recommendations.
Haha Cafe-Closed until further notice.
Tao Comedy Studio-closed for the next week.
Many indie shows and open mics are going dark as well, but NOT all of them are. For now, many of the hourly mics are still active and there are a handful of small shows that are still going forward as of this post. Again, we will be sure to keep you as updated as we possibly can to know where you can go see a show if you so choose (NOTE: it probably will be at a very small venue).
We were already pretty thrilled at the prospect of a Three Busy Debras series on Adult Swim.
This trailer is just a bit more a sneak peek of the fun, absurdist, feminist chaos that Sandy Honig, Mitra Jouhari, and Alyssa Stonoha have in store for us all. We can’t wait.
Look for Three Busy Debras to premiere on Adult Swim on Mar. 29th at midnight.
For every day of the week, there is usually one or more weekly live comedy shows that you can rely on in the Greater LA Area to deliver you the best in stand-up, sketch, and improv. For Fridays, Sauce was absolutely one of those shows and hosts and LA comedy favorites Barbara Gray, Erin Lampart, Jeff Wattenhofer, and Brodie Reed maintained a damn good stand-up comedy show (that always included some jaunty, original bits and characters) at 8PM at Desano Pizza Bakery for years and years.
Now, after a bit of a hiatus, Sauce is back, but has evolved into Fancy Sauce and will be going up at The Airliner on Fridays, starting next month. We have no doubt that they’ll be as good as they have ever been in The Airliner’s brand spanking new, wonderful upstairs show room.
So, Fancy Sauce will be in Lincoln Heights (just North of DTLA) starting Fridays at April 3rd at 9PM. Tickets will be $5 and it should be part of your weekly comedy diet, especially if you live far on the Eastside.
(via Deadline)
Even when it was announced that it was in development, we were very excited for Joel Kim Booster‘s modern-day, gay rom com inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
As far as we’re concerned, Booster’s wickedly sharp sense of humor needed to be in a show somewhere and it’s finally going to happen as the upcoming mobile only streaming service Quibi just ordered it to series.
We’re sure that people will be binge watching everything as they stay indoors and consequently run out of things to watch soon enough. So, it’s nice to know something this unique is on the horizon.
From where we’re looking, it might seem like there’s a nice little wave of late night stand-up debuts this month. Last week, Hannah Einbinder dazzled on Colbert. This week, Marlena Rodriguez graces the stage of A Little Late with Lilly Singh for her very own late night network TV debut (and we sincerely hope more are coming over the next couple of weeks)
Rodriguez blends bits of sobering honesty with undeniable silliness, which she especially commits during act outs. It’s a very satisfying mix of the dark and the light that Marlena has perfected over the years.
It’s unfortunate that SXSW got cancelled (amidst a bunch of big time events getting cancelled because of COVID-19). However, if you were looking forward to seeing some very special comedy in Austin, TX during SXSW this month, perhaps you can get kind of close (without leaving town) with the Austin-born Glow Show with Joey Z.
As the name suggests, it’s a comedy show with glow-in-the-dark running rampant from start to finish and this line-up certainly is worthy of SXSW with the likes of Reggie Watts, Kyle Kinane, and fresh off her TV debut and fantastic debut album Vanessa Gonzalez. We have no doubt that this ought to be something special.
The Glow Show with Joey Z is set for Mon. Mar. 30th at Lyric Hyperion at 9PM. Tickets are $8 now and $12 day of. Save a few bucks and go get your tickets here right now.
Unlike Disney+, Apple TV+ hasn’t exactly gotten to ride the coattails of something like The Mandalorian. Perhaps, this super charming musical animated series from beloved Bob’s Burgers creator Loren Bouchard might be the thing to put Apple TV+ on the map.
There are clever songs with animated dance numbers, the comfort and familiarity of Bouchard’s aesthetics from Bob’s Burgers, and even Stanley Tucci voicing an evil 1%-er in the vein of a Captain Planet villain dead set on paving over Central Park to build more NYC high rises. See all of this for yourself in the newly unveiled trailer.
Certainly, we’re very on board to see what Central Park is all about. We’ll look forward to May 29th when it premieres on Apple TV+.
Simply put, The Sklar Brothers are and have always been a true joy to watch. Their cadence, act outs, writing, rhythm, imagination always make for a joyful ride through their marvelous brand of comedy. Of course, as their duo of twins, they are just able to hit those punchlines and tags so damn fast and it never fails to have us cackling wherever and whenever we happen to be watching them.
All of that is on display with their latest appearance on Conan, which you should very much watch here.
Hands down, one of our all time favorite podcasts is The Jackie and Laurie Show with the amazing, brilliant, hysterical pairing of Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin. Their weekly perspective as some of the funniest comedians working today (that happen to be older women) is a true joy and illuminating on how far we’ve come with representation in comedy and how much further we need to go.
This evening is a special showcase that not only feature Kashian and Kilmartin, but a collection of their “Comics of the Week”, a handpicked line-up of their favorite female comics that you need to see, which will include Marcella Arguello, Hannah Einbinder, Robin Tran, Kimberly Clark, Bernie Pauley, Amy Anderson.
So, you’ll get a bit of Jackie and Laurie and an amazing stand-up show all in one night. Tickets for Jackie and Laurie Present are $20 (+2 item min.). Please go get them here.
TCB 3.0 has been so long in the works (since sometime last year-honestly, it has been so long that we forget when we embarked on this journey with our web designer Andrew Delman and some gracious guidance from Derek Meklir). Anyhow, finding anything and everything you wanted to know about LA comedy has just gotten a huge upgrade (even as we have just “soft” launched) and we wanted to give you a quick tour of what you can do with the new and improved Comedy Bureau, outside of our spiffy new look.
If you wonder how unstoppable Desus Nice and The Kid Mero are when it comes to riffing, you should know that, in addition to riffing their way through their own Showtime show and their podcast, The Bodega Boys, they warm-up the crowd themselves on their own show.
Almost 100% of the time, a stand-up comedian that isn’t definitely not the host of the show does some combo of explaining the rules, doing some stand-up, and some crowd work to the audience in attendance in order to bring the energy of the room to higher, cohesive point.
Yet, Desus & Mero can do that all by their damn selves. Thankfully, Showtime has put all of that online, for your convenience, on the Desus & Mero YouTube channel. Dig in and enjoy.
Essentially, accomplished and esteemed writer, sketch performer, and comedian Nick Kocher is daring you to see if you can make it through the length of an entire live comedy show without laughing? The irony of daring people to not laugh at any comedy show is so rich that we can’t help already giggle at the idea of it.
Kocher is upping the stakes by letting his friend Aaron Schroeder (who is explicitly not a comedian) take the stage and just share his life, which is amazingly ridiculous (and very hard to not laugh at). We’re not sure what the prize is at this point, but you really ought to see what your limits of controlling your own laughter/seeing Aaron be his truest self and basking in the wonder of that.
We actually got to see a test run of this at Everything’s Great, which Nick co-hosts, and pretty much everyone failed to not laugh.
Tickets for Don’t Laugh at Aaron are $7 and you can should go get them here.
It has been a relatively short time since Vanessa Gonzalez touched down in LA from Austin and she has been nothing but a delightful and silly force to be reckoned with.
Gonzalez combines a measured amount of attitude and verve with an irresistible sense of play in her stand-up. She speaks from the heart, expressing herself emphatically through all of her deeply personal stories, but threads so much fun in every bit that she does that it doesn’t matter how dark or blue she gets. Vanessa is just undeniably a hoot to watch and listen to. Her style is shown off exquisitely on her debut album, My Birthday’s Tomorrow, which offers so much vulnerability (pretty much from the second she takes the stage), but still is full of Vanessa’s unique charm.
My Birthday’s Tomorrow is available today from AST Records at Apple Music, Amazon, or wherever you get/listen to comedy albums.
(via Deadline)
The landmark dark and absurdist humor of the legendary Canadian sketch group, Kids In the Hall, are indeed set to return via Amazon Prime. The entire group, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson are all on board for 8 brand spankin’ new episodes.
They’re planning on bringing back many of your favorite characters, but we hope we get something new and as wonderfully offbeat for today as the Kids in the Hall were for the 90s.
Thus, the amassing of content for the streaming wars continues and Amazon, for our money, scored big.
May Brody Stevens rest in peace and may we remember the joy and light and artistry in comedy that he kept pushing further and further.
A great way to honor his memory is be in attendance for this 2nd Annual Festival of Friendship at one of what essentially was Brody’s home club, The Comedy Store next Tuesday.
The line-up is set to feature:
Bobby Lee
Steve Rennazzizi
Anthony Jeselnik
Josh Wolf
Adam Ray
Tony Hinchcliffe
Brenton Biddlecombe
Brian Redban
Matt Braunager
Cort McCown
Jayson Thibault
Annie Lederman
with Master of Ceremonies Sam Tripoli
+more TBA!
Please go get your tickets for this very special occasion. They are $20 (+2 drink min.) and you can (and should) purchase them here.
Natalie Palamides has really pushed herself to new thrilling and hysterical territory with her solo show, NATE. Audiences and critics around the world (including some of the most prestigious comedy and performance festivals) agree in being awestruck with Natalie’s work here where she satirizes masculinity in such a daring way.
Also, one Amy Poehler feels similarly and, as such, will be presenting NATE to the world as a live comedy special that will tape next month, Fri. Aug. 9th, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in DTLA. There will be two tapings, 7PM and 9:30PM, and you can (and very, very much should) RSVP for FREE tickets here.
Denver’s High Plains Comedy Festival is one of the best comedy festivals (that’ just a comedy festival rather than part of a bigger music and arts festival) that we have going in the U.S. Now in it’s 7th year, it looks to keep that way for the weekend of Thurs. Sept. 26th-Sat. Sept. 28th.
The first wave of comics announced for this year sure makes it seem like High Plains will continue on its hot streak.
Thus far, scheduled to perform:
– Moshe Kasher
– Kyle Kinane
– Rhea Butcher
– Adam Cayton-Holland
– Baron Vaughn
– Andrew Orvedahl
– Ben Roy
– Ian Karmel
– David Gborie
– Kate Willett
– Chris Garcia
– Shane Torres
– Sean Jordan
– Nore Davis
– Kyle Ayers
– Amy Miller
– Joyelle Nicole Johnson
– Allen Strickland Williams
– Eric Dadourian
– Joe Kwaczala
– Charla Lauriston
– Dave Stone
– Bryan Cook
– Maggie Maye
– Andy Peters
– Sammy Arechar
– Casey Ley
– Barbara Gray
– Mike Carrozza
– Adam Burke
– Chelsea Hood
– David Perdue
– Zach Peterson
– Ian Aber
– Anwar Newton
– Mike Turner
– Troy Walker
– Chris Charpentier
– Jordan Doll
– Mara Wiles
– Stephen Agyei
– Brent Gill
– Rachel Weeks
– Matt Monroe
– Kevin O’Brien
– Mallory Wallace
– Eric Henderson
– Nolawee Mengist
Pretty great, right? If you’re in and around Denver, CO at the end of Sept., you really ought to snag a $140 pass or get some tickets to as much of this as you can. Get more details, tickets, passes, etc. for High Plains here.
Steph Tolev and Debra DiGiovanni are two of the funniest comedians exported from Toronto to LA in recent memory. Wherever they take the stage around town, they’ve always crushed it by unapologetically being themselves on stage.
So, this Comedy Central digital series Steph and Deb takes a cue from that and fully realize some of their best bits and stories. Get into it here.