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The 5 Most Intentionally Funny Videos 7/3

Before or after you get your fireworks fix today, check out our picks for The 5 Most Intentionally Funny Videos This Week for The Nerdist. Channel 101 made our list twice!

Make It Christmas in July by Supporting These Kickstarters

Now’s the time you can make that wish for a summertime Christmas after you watched A Christmas Story in the summer or something to that effect come true. Here’s three Kickstarters you can donate to and spread the joy of Christmas six months early.

Drennon Davis’ The Imaginary Radio Program, one of the most innovative live comedy shows out there today, is trying to go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 13 days left on their goal of $4,000.

Susan Burke, esteemed writer, funny stand-up, member of the amazing sketch group The Birds of Prey, is making a “…short mock-u-drama about a fictional female humorist in the spirit of Dorothy Parker… but raunchier,” with her Margot Rourke Story. 26 days to go on her $5,000 goal.

Intimate conversation web series with Dave Holmes, A Drink with Dave, still needs some help getting to their Kickstarter goal to bring you a wonderful season 2. 7 days to go on their $30,000 goal.

This 4th of July…

…celebrate the freedom to be offended, lashing out with a perfect sense of security with the wall of anonymity on the Internet to be completely non-sensical, baseless in your opinions and thoughts, even bigoted towards people who merely wasted 5 minutes of your time for a sketch/a set of stand-up/etc. or sharing their thoughts on said sketch/stand-up/etc. or even several degrees more removed and in return you called them something worst than 90% of all slurs, mostly due to the fact that you’re adding all of them together, or wrote a completely unnecessary diatribe on why their wrong even though this is such a infinitesimal concern or one that’s best to be ignored to fade away, letting your most deep-seated beliefs out to the world in the worst looking way possible, despite them not having really anything to do with the non-issue that you’re on your digital and/or real soapbox yelling/tweeting/updating/posting/blogging/reddit-ing  about including this very gratuitous post about our freedom of expression…

…and you still be able to freely eat BBQ and watch fireworks this 4th of July because there are currently places in this world where you can say a restaurant’s food is too salty in an online review and get arrested and detained for libel. 

Lost Moon Radio Showed What Really Happened with Lewis and Clark

The hilarious comedy collective Lost Moon Radio has been uncovering what really happened on Lewis & Clark’s famed expedition across America, especially during their down time/quiet moments.  

Soundcloud Goes for Their 2nd Community Fellowship/Here’s an Opportunity for the Comedy Podcast You Wanted to Start

We don’t know what side of the “too many/not enough comedy podcasts” debate you stand on. Hopefully, you’re on the not enough if you want to know how we feel about it. Either way, if you are looking to start a podcast and have a great angle besides comedians talking to other comedians talking about comedy, Soundcloud is having their second round of Community Fellowship looking for projects seeking to “cause a visceral reaction in their listeners” whether it be “laugh, cry, or think” through the medium of sound. If picked, Soundcloud will then support it in making it a reality.

Knowing that there’s podcasts about Phish, dead authors, comedian former scientists, and more, you better be really unique and original. 

Required Online Comedy Reading List 7/5

Here’s a whole set of “long reads” that span the comedy spectrum of Kyle Kinane pointedly defending not proliferating bad comedy all the way to a review of the long-running series we’re all a part of called “America” by Megan Amram. You have time for this because you’re still off work for the 4th, right?

“Just to set the record straight” by Kyle Kinane for his blog
“Radiohead wouldn’t exist without early major-label funding. The future won’t bring new Radioheads. All I want to say here, truly, is: let’s get used to it.” by Mike Doughty for his blog (don’t worry, there’s very prominent nod to comedy in this)
“America: A Review” by Megan Amram for her blog 
“Justine Barron’s Slow-Tracked Life Part 4: the mastermind” by Justine Barron for Slacklust
“American, Home of the Free to Make Fun of Ourselves” by Jake Kroeger for The Nerdist

The Nerdist’s Course of The Force ‘Origin Story’

Before the massive charity event where slews of people will run from Santa Monica to San Diego, light sabers in hand for Comic Con, Course of the Force, you have to know how all of this is coming to pass in a detailed, somewhat anachronistic origin story. Chris Hardwick had to bring the first light saber down from Skywalker Ranch, which proved difficult with shady Ewoks, Boba Fett in a van, and a vengeful The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman. Also, Moshe Kasher appears as an employee of Skywalker Ranch named Tom.

Who in the world is having more fun than Chris Hardwick right now?

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