Recent News

Dan Harmon’s Harmontown Officially a Podcast

If you’re not familiar with Dan Harmon’s Harmontown, it’s literally over an hour of Dan Harmon doing whatever he wants (perhaps you’d be into that), which could be stories, making Donald Glover play the role of himself while reading an e-mail from a weird relative that’s not a big fan of Community, or anything else percolating in that brilliance coffee pot of a brain from Harmon along with “comptroller” Jeff Davis. 

Now, it’s in podcast form for the Internet to enjoy. They’re already two episodes in

John Oliver’s NY Stand Up Show and Portlandia Brunch Special on Tonight

Get your DVRs set.

Both John Oliver’s NY Stand Up Show and The Portlandia Brunch Special are on tonight on Comedy Central and IFC, respectively, at 11PM. Unless you can watch things simultaneously in the Midwest and on either coast, you’re going to want to catch both, so find a way to watch one now and one later.

Two shows that will cause less of a viewing conflict, Comedy Bang Bang and Bunk will be on IFC at 10PM and 10:30PM, respectively.

Also, there’s no more conflict between Viacom and DirecTV so we can all watch John Oliver tonight at Todd Barry tomorrow in peace. 

Watch Todd Barry on Letterman Now and on Comedy Central Tonight

Todd Barry just did Letterman with a set that’s pretty much a preview of his 1 hr. special “Super Crazy” that debuts tonight on Comedy Central at 11PM. Let’s not get into specifics (i.e. where’s the mic stand during the Letterman set I’m so used to seeing Todd hold?) and just say you should just watch both.

Have Guy Branum & Alex Koll Educate/Joke About Anything You Want

The Factuary is a web series where very funny comedian Guy Branum educates the general public on anything from dubstep to Luxembourg to the rage of MIA with clever graphics and a delightful sidekick Alex Koll.

They’re now looking for what you want to learn about, but have not bothered to Google because of “epic marriage proposal fail” or whatever you type into YouTube. This could be the world’s chance to hear a really great Higgs Boson joke. Watch video for details.

Ted Alexandro’s Tuesday Night Out on Ferguson

Ted Alexandro recounts a wonderful story on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson about him going out, which does sound really vague, but we don’t want to give any of the jokes away, so just watch.

Bob Odenkirk Is Just As Famous Jim Jardashian

While appearing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last week, Bob Odenkirk was concerned that he was not getting his proper due for his illustrious acting career. So, he put a reel together show people his entire body of work. Despite most of you that are reading this here being familiar with all of Odenkirk’s work, this particular reel from a strip mall “video hut” is definitely worth a watch.

Have Paper Figurines of Your Favorite Comedians

The fine folks from across the pond at Paper People absolutely love comedy as they have made an entire series of cut out paper figurines of some of our favorite comedians including (pictured above) Bill Burr, Paul F. Tompkins, Marc Maron, and Pete Holmes as well as Moshe Kasher, Tom Segura, Brendon Walsh, Randy Liedtke & Davey Johnson, Jay Larson, Jim Jefferies, and much more.

They even have the cut out patterns for you to print out in full color so you can comedy nerd out this whole Sunday afternoon.

Just For Laughs Unveils New Faces for 2012

(Adam Cayton Holland via Portroids)

Every year, the prestigious Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Arts Festival makes its picks on who are the comedians to watch as they’ll be watched by, hopefully, millions very soon. This year, amongst three divisions (New Faces, New Faces Characters, New Faces Unrepped), we’re happy to find that many of our favorite performers that we’ve been lucky enough to see come up the ranks before this list came out made it on to JFL’s  including Ron Babcock, Adam Cayton-Holland, Emily Heller, Jamie Lee, Mike Drucker, Will Weldon, Joe Wengert, Jared Logan, Ahmed Bharoocha, and more.

The whole list is below/after the jump.

NEW FACES
David Angelo
Ron Babcock
Mike Burns
Adam Cayton- Holland
Thomas Dale
James Davis
Dominic Dierkes
Mike Drucker
Sean Flannery
Jermaine Fowler
Calise Hawkins
Emily Heller
Jamie Lee
Jared Logan
Adam Lowitt
The Lucas Brothers
Brent Morin
Josh Rabinowitz
Will Weldon
Joe Wengert

NEW FACES: CHARACTERS
Tim Baltz
Rachel Bloom
Tony Cavalero
Brendan Jennings
Lauren Lapkus
Griffin Newman
Sam Richardson
Natasha Rothwell
Greg Worswick

NEW FACES: UNREPPED
Ahmed Bharoocha
Ryan Dalton
Anthony DeVito
Annie Lederman
Joe List
Joe Machi
Nick Mullen
Brian Parise
Tommy Pope
Junior Stopka
Dave Waite 

Ben Kronberg Defends Using A Joke Notebook on Stage

In this second episode of Scott Moran’s wonderful web series, Modern Comedian, comedian Ben Kronberg is profiled, specifically into his jokes and why he often brings one of his many joke notebooks on stage, a practice highly frowned upon by many in the comedy world. Some might argue that, at the very least, he’s telling jokes, one right after the other. It’s a highly divisive issue amongst comedians and industry to say the least.

Yet, he got away with it on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Pre-Order Jim Hamilton’s ‘Poems About the Ocean’

For how hysterical Jim Hamilton is (he has one of our coveted tips of the hat), getting his debut album Poems About the Ocean on AST Records should be absolute necessary to any comedy fan, which you can pre-order right now. Whether you choose to pre-order or regular order, there’s also a release party this Fri. at R-Bar in LA where you will more likely than not meet other people who pre-ordered the album and discuss your favorite Jim Hamilton joke, which you’ll never get to the end of because there are so many.   

Entire NTSF:SD:SUV Comic-Con Panel

Considering Paul Scheer’s hijinks with bothering other panels at Comic-Con, it’s sort of surprising that most of the NTSF:SD:SUV panel wasn’t spent dealing with planted hecklers. Anyways, the NTSF:SD:SUV Comic-Con panel is here in it’s entirety to stream for now.

Meet Curtiss Angel, Cousin/Copy Cat of Criss Angel

Didn’t know that “extreme” magician Criss Angel had a brother? Well, we didn’t either. Yet, thanks to the talents of Andre Hyland, we get to see Curtiss Angel attempt to do more realistic magic than his cousin with more emphasis on the realistic and less emphasis on the magic.

Todd Barry’s and Dan Telfer’s Tendrils of Ruin Out Today

Having both Todd Barry’s Super Crazy and Dan Telfer’s Tendrils of Ruin to listen/watch will make up for the fact you can’t go anywhere else today because you spent your gas money for the week.

Beth Stelling Makes Late Night Debut on Conan

Now based out of LA via Chicago, we’re thrilled to see Beth Stelling go from getting New Faces last year at JFL Montreal to having her first late night set on Conan. 

Angelo Bowers Name Is on The Comedy Store Wall

At the beginning of the year, beloved comedian Angelo Bowers passed away. It was a unanimous opinion that he went well before his time because of how funny he was, but, at the very least, both he and his comedy will be remembered even more as the wall of The Comedy Store now includes his name as captured by close friend and hilarious comic Jerrod Carmichael amongst the other greats that played there. 

We have little doubt, had Angelo lived, that his name would still have made it to the wall sometime in 2012.

Day 1 of Just For Laughs Montreal 2012

Théâtre Maissonneuve

While we just got here and are calling this day 1 of the Just For Laughs Montreal Comedy Arts Festival, the festival itself has been going on for weeks now. It’s a much larger event and undertaking than we’ll ever be to encapsulate here, but that’s why it’s the pre-eminent comedy festival in the world. 

Certainly, sitting amongst hundreds of people in Théâtre Maissonneuve at the Place Des Arts to see Jim Gaffigan self-reflexively whisper “How many more shower jokes is going to tell?” has made us not think otherwise.

Usually, a cab driver has no idea that comedy is happening even in a city like LA (we’re sure there are people out there that think live comedy altogether seems cancelled because of Tosh), but Just For Laughs Montreal is such an institution in Montreal that our cab driver we had from the airport just brought it up in casual conversation. 

As this is our first visit to JFL Montreal Just walking along the Place des Festivals, the staging area for many of the festivals, we’re taken aback by the numerous outdoor stages, hundreds of people walking around though no shows are yet taking place as these are things not normally associated with many of the other comedy festivals we’ve been to. The sheer size of it, not to mention having entire galas hosted by such folks as Lewis Black and The Muppets and see so many people be excited is amazing.

While still staring in wonderment that comedy could be this appreciated, The New Faces of Comedy were announced. Plenty of comedians that are either based in LA or comfortable enough with calling themselves LA comics made JFL’s prestigious list of the future comedy stars such as Ron Babcock, Will Weldon, Ahmed Bharoocha, Joe Wengert, and more. It will undoubtedly be great to see hundreds of new people in cavernous theaters laugh at the people we get to see do dive bars on a nightly basis.

As we are based out of LA, we hardly get to see anyone do a legitimate hour, especially one with a planned encore. Acts that headline clubs will generally do 40 min. and call that headlining, but it’s quite an unreal experience sitting in a nearly 1500 seat venue without an empty seat in the house to watch Jim Gaffigan.

Of course, he killed it, but, more impressive than that was being just as sharp as ever with his dry delivery and endless amount of material revolving around food. He even had a joke about poutine, a dish native to Quebec, which we can only describe is perfectly Gaffigan, “I’m an unhealthy eater, but poutine just seems irresponsible.” Applause breaks resounded as he did bacon and hot pocket jokes that well could have been recited by the entire crowd. Gaffigan, especially for the assumed encore that he did, is undoubtedly at rock star status as a comedian and deservingly so after that performance.

Following that, we braved the rain as, it’s been raining here quite frequently in our two days so far, to walk across Downtown Montreal to the Mainline Theatre. There, we caught most of the Paul F. Tompkins and The Holy Trinity Plus 1 as well as Set List: The Improvised Stand-Up Show. Tompkins’ show was a whole bunch of rambunctious, yet classy fun with Tompkins interviewing James Adomian and Rory Scovel in a made up segment called “After Set”, then updating it for Todd Glass by interviewing him before introducing him in “Pre Set”. At one point, Glass did an impersonation of Adomian doing an impersonation of him. In short, it was absurdly spectacular. 

Then, Set List featured several delightful comics from across the pond including Daniel Sloss, Keith Farnan, and Paul Foot as well as Tompkins improvising material based of incredibly random pre-written topics (1 hand in pocket vs. 2 hands in pocket or bondage regret) and though it started passed midnight, the crowd was well into the show. It’s not really a wonder why Set List has toured the world and was recently adapted into a TV show in England for how real sounding and funny much of the material that they’re merely riffing off is.

Well, now for Day 2…