Splitsider

An American, Australian and an Estonian walk into a bar...

This may sound like the lead-in to a joke about general stereotypes, but it is actually how one might describe Comedy Estonia if one wanted to slightly mislead the reader into thinking one was about to tell a joke about general stereotypes. If we’re splitting hairs here, my clever little lead should have included a total of two Americans entering said bar — but I thought that might muddle the joke. Still with me?

The key players in this set up are Australian Louis Zezeran, Americans Eric Seufert and Stewart Johnson, and Estonian Andrei Tuch. The implicated bar is Club Prive in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, or a bar in the city of Tartu or elsewhere. The activity, as their company’s name might have already implicated to you, is comedy. It is at Club Prive, located in a rather hip part of Old Town Tallinn near some embassies and the American Business Center, that Comedy Estonia hosts a monthly show aptly called “Stand Up Comedy at Club Privè.” READ MORE

The Best Sitcom Episode Ever Tournament is pitting 32 of the greatest episodes of funny TV shows ever produced against each other in a single-elimination winner-takes-all (well, takes-nothing) competition. Every day, we're putting up episodes for you, our loyal readers, to vote on. Today: Cheers vs. Fawlty Towers.

Cheers — “Pick a Con...Any Con” (1983)
This classic Cheers episode, from the inaugural season of the single-setting sitcom, sees the Cheers gang hiring con man Harry the Hat (played by a pre-Night Court Harry Anderson) to win Coach’s money back from a card hustler. It’s a sharp episode that features a fairly elaborate plot for an 80’s sitcom and great moments from everyone in the show’s original ensemble (complete with Diane and Coach). Even though "Pick a Con" was produced early in Cheers' run, the characters are fully defined and comically potent, as evidenced by memorable bits like mailman Cliff Clavin attempting to gamble with commemorative stamps when he's run out of money and Diane trying her hand at bartending for the first time, only to be baffled by the process of making a Bloody Mary. The storyline is full of twists and turns, defying predictability by pulling off the kind of surprises that few other TV comedies are capable of delivering, even now. — Bradford Evans READ MORE

Unpopular Opinions is a new weekly column in which a writer takes a stand against popular opinion, whether it's asserting the true merit of a supposedly guilty pleasure or dissenting against the universally lauded.

The inescapable hum of buzz that has surrounded Bridesmaids since the film's release peaked at the end of January, just in time for its exclusion from the Best Picture race to generate outrage in critical circles. The Atlantic decried the snub as evidence that the Academy hates broad, raunchy comedies, while director Paul Feig was quoted in the Huffington Post saying that the film was too “relatable,” a dig at the kind of artsy fare that normally garners Oscar acclaim.

The one thing that none of the film's defenders actually did, however, was take a critical look at Bridesmaids. If they had, they might have spotted the fatal flaw lurking at its core. For a movie written by women, with a cast made up of some of the funniest females on the planet, its core female characters are offensively reductive stereotypes: a rich bitch, a reactive adolescent, and the world's most passive bride. READ MORE

Saturday Night Live has been home to over a hundred cast members throughout the past 36 years. In our column Saturday Night’s Children, we present the history, talent, and best sketches of one SNL cast member each week for your viewing, learning, and laughing pleasure.

While live television was an unfamiliar gig for Robert Downey Jr. when he joined the cast of SNL in 1985 alongside movie stars like Randy Quaid and Anthony Michael Hall, his experience performing extended back to 1970 both backstage and on-screen, starting with his role as a puppy in his underground filmmaker father's debut film Pound at age five. He may not have survived through the following season, but Downey has since gone onto mega-stardom, and his year on SNL has been all but forgotten in the process, overshadowed by his drug and legal problems in the 1990s as well as his current action superstar status via the Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes franchises. READ MORE

“Teen-agers, bohos, camp culturati, photographers – they have won by default, because, after all, they do create styles.” — Tom Wolfe

One of the blazing revelations I’ve had over the last few whirligig weeks of reading about, seeking out and conversing with the progenitors of our favorite old Nickelodeon shows is that, for the most part, this was a bunch of ragtag art kids in their twenties and thirties who — in lieu of heading to the West Coast to fuse a punk-rock ethos to mainstream accessibility in music — brought the “alternative” sensibility to an even more unlikely place than the radio: shows for kids (and, when they really nailed it, shows for each other).

They worked together, played together, traveled similar circles and many of them have maintained their friendships twenty years later.

The Adventures of Pete & Pete remains a gleaming paragon of this DIY/indie/punk-integrated-into-children’s-programming mentality. READ MORE

Effective June 4, A Part Thai’d Restaurant has closed its doors for good. We would like to thank our small contingent of customers, as it was an absolute pleasure to serve you our Thai/American fusion cuisine over the last five weeks. We regret this decision, but the bad press and unrelenting protests were just too much to endure.

To those that fiercely protested against us, we have addressed some of your wild accusations:

“You’re an abominable restaurant that advocates racism.”

YIKES! This is absolutely 100% NOT true. For the record: we DO NOT support segregating race, just like we do not support segregating flavors. You would know this if you tried our succulent Panang Burger or our transcendent Nacho Cheese Pot Stickers.

We didn’t even know apartheid was a thing before this whole big misunderstanding. After reading up on it, we can confidently say that we’d love to serve Nelson Mandela. The only prison we would put him in would be his own body because he’d get morbidly obese after eating so much of our delicious food! READ MORE