Deep within a pretty fascinating New York Times profile last week of Eddie Brill, the comedy booker for Late Show with David Letterman, gave his explanation why the show booked only one female standup in 2011: “‘There are a lot …
Comedy
Louis CK Wins the Internet (and a Bet on Human Decency)
On Saturday, comedian Louis CK did what was arguably a stupid thing. He made his latest concert video, Live at the Beacon Theater, available for streaming and download at his website for five bucks. The stupid part, depending on your view of human nature, is that he put up a version of the video that had no copy protection—you download …
Lunchtime Movie Matinee: Musical Mayhem, Courtesy of the Blues Brothers
The cops have staked out the concert hall. The lead performers are nowhere to be found. The crowd is growing rowdy. The show must go on.
Yet, just when all hope seems lost for a great Blues Brother reunion at the Palace Hotel …
Gilbert Gottfried and the Rise of Self-Twimmolation
If you take a guy known for making outrageous jokes—like his notorious remarks at the Friars Club three weeks after 9/11—and hire him as the voice of your adorable duck mascot, you’re taking a risk. Particularly if you’re an insurance company, and you do business that may directly involve enormous tragedies. Aflac discovered that …
Musical Comedy: Every Comic in World (Almost) in New Pornographers Video
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYyu5vbwvbA]
I try to make a point of not using this blog to simply post random videos from bands that I like. But I feel I can make an exception when the video (for The New Pornographers’ “Moves”) includes Paul Rudd, Bill Hader, Donald Glover, much of the Daily Show cast, Julie Klausner as Neko …
Fixing Emmy, Part 2: The Case Against Comedy and Drama
Earlier this morning I posted about the broadcast networks’ hopes to solve the problem of their not winning enough Emmys, by any means short of actually making better shows. (Let’s not get crazy here!) Now let’s take a minute to look at an Emmy problem that actually might need fixing. Namely: does it still do any good to have separate …
Dead Tree Alert: And Now, Your Moment of Men
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to post any more Dead Tree Alerts here. Recently, TIME stopped posting full articles from its print edition online, requiring people to buy the print or iPad editions of the magazine to read the pieces. There is—as of now—no option to buy articles or issues of the magazine through the Web, so …
Dead Tree Alert: Comedy Comes Back
Sunday night, the Seinfeld-reunion arc starts on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and to greet it, I have an essay in the print TIME about the state of TV comedy 11 years later—which surprisingly, for once in a long while, is pretty good. For once in a long time, most of the best new series this year have been comedies. Part of the reason …