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COLLEGE COMEDY WEEK

How College Comedies Are Watched by All Ages of Dudes

by | August 31st, 2012

"College is the best time of your life," is something people like to say and believe. It’s also something that self-perpetuates itself: you approach college with that special time of your life vigor and demand nothing less. Accordingly, it's the college comedy film's obligation to capture this ethos from all angles: those looking forward to college, those in college, and those looking back at college.

Animal House came out on DVD around the time I was applying for colleges. My dad swiftly purchased it for me with the advice of, "You should watch this before you go to college." I am not unique in this; dads were buying their [...]

COLLEGE COMEDY WEEK

A Reading List: The Best College Humor Publications

by | August 28th, 2012

College humor magazines have been around for literally hundreds of years, with the oldest of these entertainment publications beginning in the late 1800s. For a long time they trafficked in fluffier fare such as innocent parodies, grandpa jokes like “Have you taken a bath?’ ‘No, why, is one missing?’” and other similarly nonsensical written gags that were funny and skillful, but still squarely on the lighter side of the humor spectrum. This shifted during the 1970s when many of these outfits began to satirize on-campus and off-campus events more heavily and inject a more cynical tone, or at least a heightened irreverence, that produced work worthy of the 1970s and [...]

COLLEGE COMEDY WEEK

Inside the Second City's Comedy Studies Program

by | August 30th, 2012

C.J. Toledano is a familiar face in the Chicago comedy community. He’s a stand-up comedian, and has a natural ease that sets him apart from many other stand-ups his age. At 25, he’s already written for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and is currently a consulting writer for the O.N.N. He takes his craft seriously, and is hard working, imaginative, and focused. But that wasn’t always the case. “I was a punk,” Toledano recalls of his college years, and his academic record can verify that. His GPA was a rocky 1.8, and he had dropped out of film school only to enroll in a university right next to his old [...]

COLLEGE COMEDY WEEK

12 Colleges with Great Improv Groups

by | August 27th, 2012

These days, it’s safe to say every college in the country has an improv group. Most of them perform “short-form” games, but several have also adopted the “long-form” style best known in cities like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. While many of these groups are located in those regions, or have Ivy League pedigrees, a good number have miraculously sprung up in the country’s unlikeliest of corners, from the swamps of Florida to a few miles from the Canadian border in Washington state.

Despite their regional differences, it’s interesting how similar many of these groups are. Most have around 9-12 members. All of them are extremely popular on [...]

COLLEGE COMEDY WEEK

When They Were In College

by | August 29th, 2012

Before many of our most beloved comedy stars made it big, they had the same four-year college experience as millions of young Americans. They sat nervously through the same orientation sessions, suffered through the same macroeconomics gen-ed classes, and shelled out $200 for the same anthropology textbook they were never going to use. But while we were arranging our class schedule so we could sleep in until noon every day, or briefly pretending to care about politics, our soon-to-be comedy idols were quietly positioning themselves to take over the industry, honing their chops in campus sketch groups, humor newspapers, and open mic nights. Below, we listed some comedians whose [...]

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