Recent News

Mark July 31st on Your Calendars as Buy Jim Hamilton’s Album Day

One of the funniest people we know, Jim Hamilton, has his first stand-up album coming out on AST Records July 31st and definitely deserves a reminder or two on your smart phone.

The Modern Supportive Boyfriend According to Sketch Group Uncle Mom

Hilarious sub 2-minute sketch group Uncle Mom and Lindsay Ames gives their take on what it is to be a supportive boyfriend in the 2010’s of a twisted alternate reality of their own.

The Upcoming ‘Nature Break’ on Shut Up! Cartoons Has Comedians To Know

Andre Hyland, Lizzy Cooperman, and Katie Crown are just of our few of our favorite people to watch live and their voices are now being lent to the new animated web series Nature Break created by Mike Hollingsworth (Life and Times of Tim) on Shut Up! Cartoons, one of YouTube’s most popular channels. It premieres July 9th, then every Monday after that. With animals voiced by hysterical people, there’s a lot of promise here.

Anyone Feel Like They’re at The Salem Comedy Trials?

It’s incredibly bizarre that comedy is now in a period of rebirth and burgeoning relevance and yet, what comedians say today is often scrutinized and attacked more than ever before. People being offended by a tweet by Chris Rock is a news story, when it shouldn’t be.

The rampant “trolling” of whatever is said or done in comedy has the Internet to blame. Still, the Internet is how comedians are now discovered and build their following. It’s really proving to be a sensationalist circus of faceless crowds with torches and pitchforks that are ready to burn anyone at the stake that they, only two weeks ago, enjoyed listening to in the middle of the town square.

With any single thing, whether it can be a joke that was being told or especially a tweet that often lacks subtext and/or context, a comedian can go from thought of as pretty funny to be effectively protested by groups of people. That’s ridiculous. Why are people getting up in arms over John Mulaney’s rather innocuous bit off his latest special New in Town about there not being a female Ocean’s 11? 

How is it that Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks would still be edgy today? They absolutely would be crossing the line by today’s standards, if not more so than most people currently working in comedy. It’s hard to imagine that a bit about blowing up a plane or attacking everyone that works in marketing would be televised today in any time slot. Decades and scores ago they broke down censorship barriers and now it feels like we’re rolling back because people don’t understand that a joke is a joke and not a personal threat towards their identity.

Sure, there are people who think of themselves as comedians that say shocking things without remorse simply to illicit a reaction, but when you get offended and file your complaint via your blog, Twitter, etc. you’re giving them what they want. Ignore them. That’s the number one way to make them go away, especially on the Internet, which has arguably what brought about this new wave of political correctness. Think of all the unfunny web videos that don’t get millions of views because people don’t find them funny. They’re allowed to fade away into obscurity.

Above all, it’s an oxymoron that the forum of the Internet, that allowed people to freely and legitimately express themselves is the very forum that has made it impossible to freely express anything without being vilified by hordes of people begging you to confess a non-existent crime you’ve somehow committed. They’re just jokes.

It’s Still Not Comedy Podcast Overload Yet

It’s not just comedy podcast collective start-up Feral Audio that is inherently fighting for the side of “not enough comedy podcasts” in the debate of whether the medium has over-saturated itself. Recently, a whole new load of podcasts with some of the funniest people based out of NY and LA have made their debut from the the likes of Cave Comedy Radio from the Creek and The Cave, HAHAJK.com, and more.

Such as…

On Cave Comedy Radio (The Creek and The Cave):
Legion of Skanks with Big Jay Oakerson, Luis J. Gomez, and Dave Smith 
Funny Story with Tom Shillue
Utopiduh with Victor Varnado
Page Seven with Jackie Zebrowski and Molly Knefel
Nobody Asked You with Thomas Dale and Michael Che
On HAHAJK.com
My Crappy Week with Orny Adams
Magazine Time with Guy Branum
Air Quotes with Tony Sam and Kurtis Rintala
It’s Your Journey Boo with Michelle Buteau and Lauren Rochelle 
Indepedently produced and released 
Friday Night Film School with Julia Prescott and Dave Child (Coming soon) 

Podbay.fm Here to Streamline Podcast Listening

Are you tired of seeming like podcasts are coming from every direction on the Internet? (Yes, this is about to sound like an informercial, but it’s absolutely not.) 
Do you want to go to less than 10 different sites to listen to your 10 favorite podcasts?
Don’t feel like subscribing to or browsing through iTunes for podcasts?
Get annoyed having to use several different proprietary media players?

Check out Podbay.fm right now.

Well, Podbay.fm is here to clear all those very specific podcast listener problems right up. Extremely clean and easy to use, the “open podcasting” database cuts right through the multitude of networks and having to subscribe to RSS feeds/iTunes along with the many other things that have made podcasting difficult to explain to potential listeners.

Already, you can find nearly any podcast on there (even ours) and every episode is neatly listed with the option to subscribe via RSS/iTunes or just stay right on the page and listen right then and there. The browsing feature that’s also very user-friendly revealed plenty of shows that we had no idea that existed.

Whether you’re just about to get into podcasts or already neck deep into religiously listening to your favorites, Podbay.fm should make it incredibly less confusing and more tempting to check out this “pod-thing” all the kids are doing these days.

How Not To Do “Stop the Hate” Video

Interestingly enough, even though this video illustrates how not to do a make video highlighting how you are victimized everyday, we ended up still feeling for the guy. Also, Ryan O’Flanagan is hilarious and you should see him do stand-up some time soon.

Nathan Barnatt Will Tell You in Person That He’s on The Cover of LA Weekly

In doing an issue on YouTube, LA Weekly did a cover story on internet dancing phenom Nathan Barnatt/Keith Apicary. Of course, he had to tell people in person that he was on the cover because that’s what you do when you’re Internet famous.

Photo by W.B. Fontenot

Donate to Myq Kaplan’s Already Funded Kickstarter on Exploring Art

Yesterday, comedian Myq Kaplan launched a Kickstarter that only asked for $1 that would be spent to mail Kickstarter with the query, “What is conceptual art?”. Though it might seem like a prank on Kickstarter, Kickstarter did approve the project and Myq has already raised $125 with 59 days to go and if he gets enough he might just take an art class.

The thought of a joke that Kaplan would come up based on art history should be worth your donation alone. 

A Promo for W. Kamau Bell’s Totally Biased That Isn’t Just Text

Executive Producer Chris Rock presents W. Kamau Bell in actual moving images rather than just title cards in this second promo for Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Not only are we excited for this show, premiering Thurs. Aug. 9th 11PM on FX, the gritty looking stage that’s not unlike a repurposed set from the Dark Knight is pretty fantastic/closer to what live stand-up is actually like.

‘Nature Break’ Shows Animals in Their Casual Habitat

Of course, sloths and iguanas order pizza and angler fish don’t sound as scary as they look. Maybe, that’s not true, but that’s what you’ll learn from Shut Up Cartoons! latest web series Nature Break created by Mike Hollingsworth, you know, the one we previewed over this past weekend because it has more than plenty of really funny people involved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZCQZu-6dA

Dan Telfer’s Tendrils of Ruin Out on July 24th

In what should be an exciting summer of AST Records releases, the very funny Dan Telfer, who you might know from his astounding dinosaur bit, has his latest album “Tendrils of Ruin” coming out on Tues. July 24th, though you can pre-order now. This being the day that Todd Barry’s “Super Crazy” comes out, you might want to save your money for the next two weeks.

Bill Murray Party Crashing Tour?

According to Death and Taxes Magazine, the one and only Bill Murray will be going on tour where he simply crashes parties that have booze and karaoke. Even if this ends up being fake, it’s pretty amazing to imagine Bill Murray ending up in a viral video at your house party.

Update 2:41AM PST: Based off the phone number on the poster being that of the Westboro Baptist Church, our question mark in the post title was more than well placed/this was indeed to good to be true. Yet, it was nice to have the thought of a Bill Murray party tour anyway. Maybe, as he undoubtedly saw something about this, maybe he’ll now do one.

The Bill Murray party tour? The number on the poster belongs to the Westboro Baptist Church…

Well, that’s unfortunate. We figured that it might be too good to be true, which is why we suggested the possibility of being fake and had a question mark in the post title. We posted it anyway thinking that perhaps, in the very real eventuality that it was a hoax, if the thought of a Bill Murray party crashing tour was put out there, he might actually do it. 

Murray has randomly read poems, done slip and slide at delayed baseball games, and more. A party tour would not be out of question for him. Why not throw the idea of a Bill Murray party tour into the universe of the Internet, then, maybe, make it happen?

Chris Gethard hitchhiked across the country with the same strategy.