Recent News

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. 

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This is the first full length trailer for Mike Birbiglia’s Sleepwalk With Me, which comedy nerds should rejoice not only because Birbiglia is making a film from his stand-up that’s seems charmingly grounded co-starring Lauren Ambrose, but cameos include Marc Maron, Henry Phillips, Wyatt Cenac, Kristen Schaal, and more.

Creator and former showrunner of NBC’s Community Dan Harmon ran down a plethora of metaphors with why he’s made his peace with being fired from his own show referencing burgers and crack rocks with Marc Maron on Attack of the Show. This perhaps the least goofy moments of TV that’s ever been on G4. 

Honestly, a comedian apologizing about a rape joke like Daniel Tosh just did, then the Internet proclaiming that you can’t ever make rape jokes is a story we could give a fuck less about. We feel that crass about it to say it exactly like that since we, yet again, have to address the fact that there is no such thing as a “taboo topic” in comedy. There are ways to joke about anything, no matter how loathsome as it might seem, and, of course, there are ways to just say shocking things in the conventional cadence of a joke, then get yourself instantly vilified. 

We hate when comedians apologize. Apologies in comedy are tragic as it’s explicit defeat. The mark of a great comedian is never having to apologize for what they were saying because they believe in, not necessarily the suggested morals/values of their joke, but the humor of it. If even 30% of comedians actually legitimately believed in the actual philosophy of half of their bits, they should be tied to the padded walls of the asylum they were committed to. Alas, that’s not the case. In fact, most comedians willingly go to therapy and not end up in mental institutions. 

Last night at Performance Anxiety, a stand-up show that takes place in a sex toy store, we saw Ian Edwards do a bit referencing rape and a woman seated behind us sheepishly whispered, “Oh my god, I can’t hear this,” which cued a unified sigh from all of us as we thought, “She’s about to say that rape isn’t funny.” Yet, by the end of Edward’s well crafted bit, she was doubling over in laughter. 

Two things happened there to illicit laughter from this woman who was, initially, deeply offended by this rape joke:
1) This person remembered they were at a comedy show and she is hearing jokes, not manifestos from a soapbox.
2) The comedian wrote and performed a solid joke.

With those two elements in play at a comedy show, anything can be put in a context where it will get laughs. It’s usually when one or both of those things are absent from the equation that things go awry at all.

Starburns Industries seeks to not only bring original animation projects to screens everywhere, but want to bring in the most innovative and original talent like Charlie Kaufman with Dan Harmon, Dino Stamatopoulous (Mr. Show), Duke Johnson (worked with Harmon on a stop motion ep. of Community) in this project Anomalisa. Above all, they want to circumvent studios and production companies and more by doing it Kickstarter. This could lead to doing more projects like this, they hope with people like Louis CK. 

We’re not even going to add the please here. Just donate. 

This is a full length trailer for Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming talk show web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”, which has some of the biggest names in comedy being exactly like you would expect. Larry David pretends to drink coffee, Michael Richards sits on the floor, and more. 

Is this how talk shows will be hosted in 10 years?

http://lineup.sfoutsidelands.com/?sort=barbary

Outside of CK’s defense of the fart joke on The Daily Show, YouTube’s Official Comedy brings the most intellectual breakdown of the fart joke and it’s storied history stretching to the beginning of time/hearing & smelling.

One of the most captivating tales the Moth has ever captured was the late, great Mike DeStefano’s story about his wife’s last days. Here’s another such Moth story from DeStefano about how he reluctantly found peace, as he would, through Buddhism. 

Many of the most exciting comedians performing right now on stage, on your television, on your laptop, phone, and probably on repeat in your head were once part of a specific class of comedians that were in Chicago at the same time. Known by being part of The Lyon’s Den open mic or part of The Blerds, you might better know some of them now as Kyle Kinane, TJ Miller, Kumail Nanjiani, Hannibal Buress, Pete Holmes, Nick Vatterott, John Roy, or Matt Braunger who has an hour Comedy Central special tomorrow night. We’re not going to go into what was in the water in Chicago because, honestly, we don’t know. 

What we do know is that one, Pat Brice, was part of that group. To this day and most assuredly well beyond it, Brice is spoken of in fond admiration by many in that beyond exceptional class of Chicago comics. Some of them have pictures hanging on their walls in remembrance. Depending on how big of a comedy nerd you are, you might have heard his name in one of your randomly social networking feeds or brought up on Holmes’ You Made It Weird with Kyle Kinane (at min. 39.) Yet, he is a source of inspiration for a lot of the much more oft-spoken names above and rightfully so for how funny he was (and we’ve only seen clips). 

He sadly passed away 5 years ago today, but, as some of you might as well know, there is no better way to remember a comedian than remembering his comedy, which you can do right now right here or here.