Splitsider

June 18th, 2013
Tweetin

Today's Funniest Tweets

by | June 18th, 2013

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Movies

Watch a Supercut of Troy McClure Listing All His Movies

by | June 18th, 2013


Here's a supercut of every clip of The Simpsons' Troy McClure listing his movie titles, made by Christopher Coleman. Obviously, the best one is The Greatest Story Ever Hula-ed.

Politics

John Oliver Wants You to Ignore Sarah Palin

by | June 18th, 2013


Summer Daily Show fill-in host John Oliver proposed a new method of dealing with Sarah Palin on the show last night: ignoring her. Of course, in order to get the entire country to ignore somebody, you have to talk about that person – the opposite of ignoring them – but it's a nice thought nonetheless.

Late Night

Howard Stern Gives Jimmy Fallon 'Tonight Show' Advice

by | June 18th, 2013


"I subscribe to the 'anyone but Jay' philosophy. No offense to you. You know I love you, but if they had replaced Jay with Ahmadinejad over in Iran, I am telling you I wouldn't have cared. Charlie Manson could have taken over The Tonight Show as long as it's not Jay Leno."

-Howard Stern to Jimmy Fallon

Spending Dollars

Fun Thing to Buy of the Day: 'Wilfred' Season 2

by | June 18th, 2013

The third season of Wilfred premieres this week, but you can start slobbering now because the second season of the dark comedy is available on DVD and Blu-Ray today! A story of man and man's best friend, the FX series follows Ryan Newman, played by Elijah Wood, and his anthropomorphic dog, Wilfred, played by series co-creator Jason Gann, the only actor held-over from the original Australian series. Developed for American television by the original showrunner for Family Guy, David Zuckerman, Wilfred's second season resolves the cliff-hanger finale of season one, and finds Wilfred confronting Ryan with life's most serious questions concerning love, happiness, and the ongoing cuteness war between dogs and babies. Grab a friend, grab a dog, or grab a friend's dog and fetch yourself a copy of Wilfred: The Complete Season 2 on DVD and Blu-Ray! READ MORE

Social Media

The Vine 5 Film Festival: Eggs Over My Dad Abandoning Me

by | June 18th, 2013

Vine is a toy from Twitter that challenges users to make the most profound work ever committed to video in exactly six seconds. Or at the very least, challenges comedians to bring a little more laughter into this world. Every Tuesday we showcase five of the funniest short shorts of the past week.

Your RSS feed might be difficult and not show the videos, but trust us – they are there.

More funny people made their first attempts at Vine this past week. As part of #OneVineDay and the Just For Laughs festival in Chicago, some comedians who were either waiting for the app to get to Android and/or for other comedians to sway them with a joke and some playful nagging to get them to use it revealed their inaugural efforts. Here was Conan O'Brien's: READ MORE

Movies

Alison Brie and Colin Hanks to Star in an Inter-Dimensional Rom-Com

by | June 18th, 2013

Alison Brie and Colin Hanks are set to star in a new indie romantic comedy that, unlike most indie romantic comedies, involves some sort of inter-dimensional portal. Variety reports that production is underway on the film, entitled No Stranger than Love. Nick Wernham is making his directorial debut on the project, which was written by Steve Adams (Envy). In the movie, Brie plays a small town high school teacher who starts having an affair with the school's married football coach (Hanks) until he vanishes down an inter-dimensional hole that opens in her living room. Small towns are so weird.

Live Events

The Best of Just For Laughs Chicago

by | June 18th, 2013

Five years in, Chicago's Just For Laughs Festival has never felt more catered towards comedy nerds; podcast tapings, surprise shows in incredibly intimate theaters, and a pair of shows celebrating the beloved Twitter account @dadboner dotted the medium-eclectic lineup. Though standup was clearly the main attraction, a few of the festival's highest highs came from the conceptual, premise-driven shows that offered up once in a lifetime type of moments that could only happen at a comedy festival. READ MORE

journalism

Watch Some Cable News Anchors Be Weird to Russell Brand

by | June 18th, 2013


Here's Russell Brand on MSNBC's Morning Joe yesterday, dealing with a trio of news anchors who spend the bulk of the interview talking about him as if he's not there despite his repeated pleas for them to stop doing that because it's weird and rude.

SNL

Saturday Night's Children: Peter Aykroyd (1979-1980)

by | June 18th, 2013

Saturday Night Live has been home to over a hundred cast members throughout the past 37 years. In our column Saturday Night’s Children, we present the history, talent, and best sketches of one SNL cast member every other week for your viewing, learning, and laughing pleasure.

It's surprising that Peter Aykroyd (Dan's little brother) never benefitted from namesake recognition on SNL considering the modest sibling success of Brian Doyle-Murray and Jim Belushi. Barely appearing on the show at all, the younger Aykroyd was credited as a cast member for only six of the sixteen episodes he spent as both a writer and sparingly used featured extra. Dan Aykroyd-level fame on SNL may have been impossible in any case, but as one of nine eager featured players in the wake of the original cast, the pressure and competition was at an all-time high. READ MORE

Interviews

Talking to Sean Patton About 'The Half Hour', Being Nomadic, and How Comedy's Made Him a Better Person

by | June 18th, 2013

For the past 15 years, Comedy Central’s half hour specials have showcased the future stars of standup. Looking back, the early years of Comedy Central Presents included memorable sets from the likes of Mitch Hedberg, Patton Oswalt, Maria Bamford, Dane Cook and dozens more. Re-branded The Half Hour in 2012, the series continues to feature the best up-and-coming comics in the country.

For many comedians, it’s that history that makes doing a half hour special so significant. While a half hour may once have been a comic’s first major exposure, comedians now have many ways to build an audience. Almost everyone who taped a special this year does non-standup comedy as well, branching out into the worlds of podcasting, sketch and improv, web series, acting, and more. In this new series, I sat down with each of this year’s 16 Half Hour comedians to talk about their specials, their careers, and their generation of comedians. Each interview will also feature an exclusive clip from the special. All the interviews can be found here.

Sean Patton has been seen on Conan and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, his first album, Standard Operating Procedure, is available on AST Records, and he acted in the slasher comedy Shotgun Wedding, out now on Netflix. He also co-created the long running and much beloved Comedy as a Second Language show in New York, which just celebrated its sixth anniversary. I caught up with Sean over the phone to talk about being disapproving audience members and why standup is the hardest art form.

How did the taping go?

I felt really great about it. But it went by so fast. It was literally, I blinked my eyes and it was done. And I don't know how many other people have said this, but I can hardly remember even doing it. It’s all just a blur of LED lights and laughter. [He laughs.] How'd I do it? I don't even know how I did it. Was I conscious? Did I black out? It was crazy. I mean, it was awesome, but you just spend so much time preparing for it that when if finally happens, you're like, “Oh that's it? That was it? Okay.” But it was really good.

Any memorable incidents from your taping? A couple people I’ve talked to screwed up jokes, and Andy Haynes had a heckler.

No. I heard about Andy's heckler. The one thing I do think is funny — someone took video on their phone of the monitor in the green room that was showing the audience while we were on, and there was one part where I slit my tongue odd, like a lizard you would say, but in a sort of sexually suggestive manner, and the camera was on this one middle-aged white dude, just shaking his head in disapproval the whole time. Just really not into that. And someone had taken a two minute video clip of that. I hope they keep that guy in, just disapproving. Being like, “Wow that's disgusting, he's performing orally on a woman. That's disgusting.” Because he really he didn't like it. READ MORE

RIP

Second City Co-Founder Bernie Sahlins Dies at 90

by | June 18th, 2013

Comedy pioneer Bernie Sahlins passed away Sunday in his Chicago home at the age of 90. Sahlins, who co-founded Chicago's Second City theater in 1959, had a vast influence on the careers of the dozens and dozens of brilliant comedic minds that passed through the theater's doors during his tenure there and upon the American comedy landscape as a whole. Sahlins spent three decades at Second City before selling the theater to Andrew Alexander in 1984 and stepping down as artistic director in 1988. During his time at Second City, Sahlins hired a long list of iconic performers that includes Alan Arkin, Joan Rivers, Fred Willard, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Shelley Long, Harold Ramis, and Martin Short, among countless others.

Sahlins's influence in the comedy world is so large that it's difficult to comprehend. He served as a developer and producer on SCTV, one of the most influential TV sketch shows of all time, and his work with Second City led to Chicago becoming one of the country's preeminent comedy cities, now boasting a thriving stand-up scene and other influential theaters like iO and Annoyance — all of which came about in the decades that followed the founding of Second City. The theater also had an indelible impact upon Saturday Night Live, with producers from the show making it a habit of scouting for cast members there. SNL poached from the theater so much that Second City producer Joyce Sloane tells the Chicago Sun-Times that Sahlins once half-jokingly instructed her to lock Lorne Michaels out of the building.

Bernie Sahlins clashed with improv guru Del Close over whether improvisation could be viewed as an art form in and of itself. Sahlins felt improv should serve as a method of developing scripted ideas, whereas Close felt it could stand on its own, which led him to co-found his own Chicago theater, the ImprovOlympic. Sahlins famously told Close on his deathbed, "Del, for tonight it is an art form." Despite Sahlins's opinions on the form, improv hubs like iO and UCB owe a lot to his work at Second City — as does the rest of the comedy world.

Reviews

'Arrested Development' Episode Reviews: A New Attitude / Señoritis

by | June 18th, 2013

In addition to our Arrested Development season 4 review, Splitsider has also been posting episode-by-episode recaps that will cover two episodes at a time. So if you haven't yet plowed through all 8 hours of the new season, and instead opted for a slower, more leisurely approach to screening the episodes, these weekly recaps should suit your old fashioned and increasingly obsolete lifestyle perfectly. These articles will be written from the perspective of someone watching the episodes sequentially, with no knowledge of future reveals or plot twists. That said, there may be some discussion of running gags or seemingly throwaway jokes, which, given the show's reputation, may very well likely serve as setups or foreshadowing of events to come. We ask that commenters refrain from discussing information from episodes past the ones reviewed below.

Episode 11 – A New Attitude

What Happened: GOB takes on the job of selling Michael’s homes and asks his brother to pose as his gay boyfriend in a scheme to enact revenge on gay rival magician Tony Wonder. Michael refuses (as does Steve Holt), so GOB turns to George Michael, promising to reconnect his nephew with Michael. GOB uses George Michael to sneak into the Gothic Castle, where he tries unsuccessfully to sabotage Tony’s act. While watching it, however, GOB relates with the coming-out themes presented in the routine and hits it off with Tony at the bar – both men assuming the other is gay. GOB devises a new plan: get Tony to fall in love with him, and then break his heart. While GOB secures one deal with Tobias to sell the Sudden Valley homes to sex offenders, and another to have the Chinese "build" the border wall, we learn that Tony Wonder is not gay, but secretly colluding with Sally Sitwell, who stole money from Lucille Austero to re-brand Tony as a “gay magician.” Having overheard about George Michael’s FakeBlock software while hiding at the Gothic Castle, Tony now plans on using GOB to get closer to his nephew (whom Tony still thinks is GOB’s boyfriend) to exploit his million dollar software idea. READ MORE

Apologies

Dan Harmon Apologizes for What He Said About 'Community' Season 4

by | June 18th, 2013

After going off on a rant about the latest season of Community on his podcast Harmontown, Community creator Dan Harmon took to Twitter and Tumblr yesterday and this morning to apologize for his words. Harmon tweeted, "I feel bad if I made anyone feel bad with my comments in harmontown. It's a dirty, personal comedy podcast, not charismatic for quoting," and "I like making stuff that pleases people, I like being honest about my feelings but I hate hurting other people, especially community fans."

He then wrote a lengthy Tumblr post, entitled "It Won't Happen Again Again," in the wee hours of the morning to further apologize to fans, the writers of Community season four, and for making a joke that compared binge-watching the season to "being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach." In his Tumblr apology, Harmon complimented the writers on certain parts of season four and wrote, "Don’t tell anyone I said this but all writers are better people than all non-writers. Nobody read that unless you’re a writer. I broke a code when I judged the work of writers with whom I wasn’t in the same trenches." Harmon also addressed Community fans, saying, "To keep from hurting you, I’m going to try thinking about you before saying things into microphones … Obviously the solution is to stop talking about my job in my podcast until production is safely complete." Time will tell if Harmon is able to stick to that promise.

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