Recent News

1) Nathan Barnatt’s got another dancing video. There’s no skittles, but TJ Miller, Josh Fadem, Brandon Johnson, Martin Starr (featured not dancing), and more dancing should make up for that.

2) There’s now a Comedy Central India…

3) Retro action comedy series Danger 5 is now an on-air TV series in Australia. This clip of all their explosions alone shows why and also why we should bring Danger 5 to the States.

4) How could you not vote for Knope? [via THR]

5) Here’s a completely out of context, but still funny clip from the film adaptation of Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk with Me.

6) Brian Eugene Abrahamson/Michael Ethan Jacob tries to explain his side of not being able to pay comedians.

7) You wanted more Mike Tyson as Herman Cain, Funny or Die got your message!

8) Riot LA’s totals for Kickstarter: $15,236 of $20,000 with 11 days to go.

9) On today’s Puddin’, Eddie Pepitone will change the way you think of avocados FOREVER.

10) Let’s stop focusing on whether there are enough women in comedy or enough minorities in comedy. There aren’t enough funny people in comedy. Let’s solve that problem.

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1) The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Academy Awards nods to comedy include:

Midnight in Paris: Best Picture, Woody Allen for Best Director & Best Original Screenplay, Art Direction
Beginners: Christopher Plummer for Best Supporting Actor  
Bridesmaids: Melissa McCarthy for Best Supporting Actress, Annie Mumulo & Kristen Wiig for Best Original Screenplay 
Best Animated Film: The Adventures of Tintin, A Cat in Paris, Chico & Rita, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, Rango  
Original Song: “Man or Muppet” from the Muppets by Bret McKenzie 

2) In other industry news news:
Stop motion feature Hell & Back with TJ Miller gets Brian Posehn, Kumail Nanjiani, and Rob Riggle
NBC picks up a bunch of pilots including ones from Greg Daniels, Stephen Falk, Jimmy Fallon, Roseanne Barr, and more
Ben Stiller plans to do a HBO comedy pilot with Scott Rudin
Sony Pictures Classics acquires the Rashida Jones co-written Sundance film Celeste & Jesse Forever

3) Sleepwalk With Me, the film adaptation, asks you if want to see it so big wigs will give it some distribution.

4) Casey Wilson takes a look into the “charmed” life of Callista Gingrich for Funny or Die.

5) Erin Gibson, Funny or Die’s go-to Michele Bachmann, gets private messages from guys and then she publicly responds to them and they’re pretty hilarious. Take a read or two.

6) Here’s a funny music video with plenty of comedy folks NOT directed by Tom Scharpling. (Hospitality’s “Friends of Friends” directed by Scott Jacobson).

7) Speaking of Schapling, did you know his Low Times podcast is having a tournament of the worst lyrics ever, March madness style?

8) So, it’s advisable to not have breast feeding videos uploaded to Funny or Die.

9) With its new series Unsupervised, FX’s venturing into animated comedy territory with some of the guys from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

10) There will be no new episode of our podcast This Better Be Funny this week. Want an explanation? So do we. So do we.

11) Riot LA’s totals for their Kickstarter: $16,929 of $20,000 with 10 days to go. Check out their new clip with Megan Mullally, Kumail Nanjiani, and Martin Starr. 

12) Can’t believe comics are still opening their sets with “So I was fucking this chick, right?” unironically. That’s still happening.

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1) Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock touring together is still just as much a rumor as it was last year.

2) Tonight on late night, John Mulaney stops by Conan (TBS 11PM) to no doubt promote New in Town, his 1-hour special for Comedy Central that we’ll all be watching next week.

3) TJ Miller responds on Pete Holmes’ You Made It Weird to Dane Cook’s response on Joe Rogan’s podcast to his response on Twitter about his set at the Laugh Factory last Wednesday.

4) A live interview with Rick Shapiro at Cafe Muse where we find out he’s in Project X and how he currently can’t release his special? YES.

5) The new Humblebrag rankings are out!

6) Riot LA’s Abbey Londer got interviewed by Serial Optimist, has new videos with Matt Braunger and Dana Gould & Patton Oswalt, and only has less than $2,500 to raise for their Kickstarter with 9 days to go. It’s really all happening. (Can you tell that we’re excited?)

7) Joel McHale and Zooey Deschanel throw their, most likely, really cool hats in the awards hosting ring with the WGA Awards.

8) Of course, what Patton Oswalt would do in lieu of being snubbed by the Oscars is way more interesting than the actual Oscars.

9) On today’s Puddin’, learn from Eddie Pepitone, the pick-up artist.

10) Last night, we saw Josh Adam Meyers perform a short set at Performance Anxiety and not only is he recovering after the tragic car accident quite well, he’s still quite damn funny. 

11) Finally, Starbucks is going to make good on their announcement of selling beer and wine at limited locations in LA. Hopefully, they’ll be prepared to have comics asking them to have an open mic.

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1) In John Mulaney news, he was just on Conan, there’s a funny interview with him by Dan Mintz, and the NY Times Magazine just did a profile on him.

2) And now for Nazis in space with Iron Sky. That’s all that needs to be said.

3) Garfunkel & Oates have a promo for their new album Slippery When Moist with the dancing talents of the Doorknockers.

4) The early deadline for applications for the 10 Annual iO West Improv Comedy Festival is less than a week away.

5) Austin, TX gets a comedy fest!

6) In industry news news, Rebel Wilson and Conan O’Brien are trying to bring a Super Fun Night to CBS, IFC picks up Liberal Arts at Sundance, and Kate Winslet & Catherine Keener join Charlie Kaufman’s “meta musical comedy” Frank or Francis w/Jack Black, Steve Carell, and more.

7) How Aubrey Plaza is handling Sundance in an interview with Vulture…

9) More t-shirts for the How Did Get This Made? podcast!

10) We can only hope we can be as curmudgeon-y and funny as Maurice Sendak opposite of Stephen Colbert.

11) Ever need a compilation of comedians dancing? Of course, you do.

12) Riot LA’s totals for their Kickstarter: $18,506 of $20,000 with 8 days to go.

13) For any real people curious about watching open mics, I highly suggest going to at least one. You never know when you’ll see a baseball player do spoken word poetry or a portion of an “Irish wake” from former members of the CRA. That was just this week, if you were wondering.

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1) Ferris Bueller, apparently, will keep all of us waiting until the Super Bowl to find out that he’s not making a sequel?

2) We didn’t know that you could fit a billion dollar movie on VOD, but Tim & Eric found a way.

3) There will be ½ priced gas from Key & Peele next Tues. (when they premiere)/pile up of frugal comedy nerds at Fairfax & Beverly, an already crowded intersection because of the Grove.

4) Pete Holmes chatted with the A.V. Club Chicago!

5) The Compatish gang got down with a classic Nerf whistling football throwing challenge complete with sarcastic distance markers.

6) This write up of “The Buried Secret of M. Night Shymalan”, which is a egomaniacal, autobiographical prank, is not only pretty funny in just objectively describing the movie, but simultaneously pulls off trashing the movie AND making it “a must see”.

7) The 5 Most Intentionally Funny Videos This Week on the Nerdist ranges from one of the weirdest things you’ll see at Hollywood and Highland to Bill Cosby teaching Jimmy Fallon a lesson about.

8) Truly, Riot LA is almost to their proposed goal on Kickstarter at $18,863 of $20,000 with only 7 days to go. 

9) On today’s Puddin’, the guy eating pudding finally… well… just watch it.

10) I bet someone is making a family tree of “Shit [ ] Says” videos because everyone on the Internet has way too much free time.

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1) So, it’s official. Riot LA reached their goal and LA will have a comedy festival worthy of the city’s amazing comedy later this year. If you’re still feeling generous, they are still taking donations until Fri. Feb. 3rd 9:30PM PST.

2) Bobcat Goldthwait has shown how dark a comedy in go with every movie he makes, and, from the trailer, his latest film, God Bless America, is certainly no exception.

3) Now the world knows what we’ve been having to keep mum about since last year, The Eric Andre Show will be on Adult Swim with co-host Hannibal Buress.

4) John Mulaney’s hour long special “New In Town” is tonight at 10PM on Comedy Central. Simply, watch.

5) The Ferris Bueller Superbowl ad teaser was just a hoax by Honda.

6) In industry news news, NBC greenlights a comedy from Ryan Murphy and Allison Adler, ABC gets three more comedy pilots, and the Charlie Kaufman meta comedy musical, Frank or Francis, adds Elizabeth Banks and Paul Reubens to the cast.

7) Also, the cast of Monty Python is joining forces yet again to not go to Camelot.

8) It would seem as though Us Weekly Magazine does not only understand jokes on Twitter even when Sean Green added the hashtag #nitrous.

9) This should definitely not be a Fake Criterion…

10) Davey Johnson, apparently, at least in this What’s What, has just drank an entire cup of Jack Daniels for the first time.

11) As a comedian, some times, it must be a horrible realization that you will have to make people laugh that religiously read Us Weekly, non-ironically.

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1) At the Sundance Film Festival Jury Awards, Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk With Me walked aways with the Best of NEXT Audience Award and Derek Conolly, writer of Safety Not Guaranteed with Aubrey Plaza, Kristen Bell, and more walked away with the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. 

2) In other comedy recognition news, Curb Your Enthusiasm was awarded Best Comedy Series at the DGA Awards.

3) In other other comedy recognition news, here are the results for the Channel 101 January Screening. Congrats to Intimate Indiscretions keeping “sexy back”, if that makes any sense.

4) Comic faces jail if he jokes about dad/Why not to do comedy in Malawi if your dad is a high ranking member of the Malawi government…

5) Now that Riot LA is at $20,847 of their $20,000 on their Kickstarter and will happen, it asks “@RiotLA Alright! What/who do you guys wanna see at this thing?” Let’s start with Eddie & Freddie Pepitone and go from there.

6) Robin Williams did Set List at SF Sketchfest and there’s proof! Yes, that’s Robin Williams doing improvised stand-up. We’ll try to find a clip of this if one arises.

7) Doug Stanhope was interviewed by Esquire Magazine and there’s no link to it online, so Stanhope took a picture of it and posted it.

8) I came to the realization last night that people yelling at bill collectors on the phone is pretty much white noise at an open mic.

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1) We’re pretty sure that someone thinks that Louis CK was thinking, “I bet no one will expect that I’m developing a multi-cam sitcom for CBS with the writer of the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld, Spike Feresten,” when really, we’re pretty sure that he just thought, “This will be very interesting.”

It’ll be different this time around, right?

2) Despite the worries of David Cross, everything is a-go for new episodes of Arrested Development just the way we remember it, apparently.

3) SAG Awards for comedy: 
Best Cast, TV Comedy: Modern Family
Best Actress, TV Comedy: Betty White, Hot in Cleveland
Best Actor, TV Comedy: Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock 
Best Supporting Actor, Motion Picture: Christopher Plummer, Beginners 

4) Tonight on late night, Marc Maron will be on Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC 12AM) and Chris Gethard will be on Conan (TBS 11PM). We know it won’t happen, but it would be amazing if Maron and Gethard had a late night talk show guest crossover tonight.

5) Rather than the Year of the Dragon, doesn’t “Year of Rick Shapiro” sound better? Help his Kickstarter out to make that happen.

6) While waiting to buy/download/get in some way John Mulaney’s New in Town, you can read his interview with Black Book about it.

7) This “Our Least Favorite [Music] Genre Names” on the All Things Considered Blog makes us want to find these music genre placards at Amoeba Records. 

8) Riot LA’s totals for their Kickstarter: $20,909 of $20,000 with 4 days to go.

9) The top finisher of this weekend’s Channel 101 screening, the new episode of Intimate Indiscretions is absolutely required watching if you want to laugh and love alternative history. Also, it’s awesomely NSFW.

10) In realizing that several comedians live-tweeted the SAG Awards, it’s truly sad that the Razzies aren’t broadcasted because that would be worth live-tweeting.

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1) Raise your fist and give a hell yeah for the trailer for Season 3 of Eastbound and Down. 

2) Last night on late night, Chris Gethard read his best fanmail ever on Conan and Marc Maron discussed fans of WTF that are more concerned about his personal well-being than his comedy on Kimmel. Tonight on late night, the venerable Bill Murray will be on The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS 11:35PM) and Jack McBrayer on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC 12:35AM)

3) Also tonight, the world premiere of Comedy Central’s new sketch show, Key & Peele, is tonight at 10:30PM. If you’re still on the fence, read this endorsement from Rob Delaney and also get free gas at Fairfax and Beverly thanks to the show.

4) John Mulaney’s New In Town is now available! Also, on DVD so you can see the wonderful opening that starts like this…

5) So, it will now be the commercials, Billy Eichner on the field, then the halftime show, and then the actual game in terms of what are the most to least interesting things at the Superbowl.

6) You do know that Brian Regan just grossed over a million by just doing ten shows, right?

7) Old school goofy chases are never old as proven by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

8) Many of you know that Matt Knudsen is a very talented comedian, but did you know that he can play several instruments, thanks to video effects, at the same time? That means you now know and should watch him do so.

9) We reviewed Sean Green’s “Whiskey Dick” in 5 sentences because who has time for six? Also, you should listen to the album, it’s really funny.

10) The This Better Be Funny Podcast is back with even fewer explanations than ever! We walk down Sunset Blvd. from an open mic to the Comedy Store in the most accurate depiction of two frustrated comedians walking around Hollywood with no show to do that night.

11) Riot LA’s totals for their Kickstarter: $20,924 of $20,000 with 3 days to go.

12) On today’s Puddin’, there’s snazzy new VFX and blasphemy!

13) Just a note to comics claiming they’re self-deprecating: if you say that you’re self-deprecating out loud on stage, you’re not self-deprecating.

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