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Live Reviews

When 'Comedy Bang! Bang!' Bangs Your Town

by | August 8th, 2012

"My name is Broke Ankleman," Scott Aukerman said as he came to the lip of an unadorned stage.

Roughly 95% of his body was vintage Aukerman: sensible sweater, Oxford shirt, well-ironed khakis, comfortable sneakers, and lightly tousled hair with just a hint of product. But at the bottom of his left leg was a massive black boot, one he bore due to an injury suffered early on in his "Comedy Bang! Bang! LIVE!" tour, weeks before it came to Manhattan's Highline Ballroom last night.

His recounting of the incident was also vintage Aukerman. "I was literally just walking on stage — Walking! Walking on stage! — and I sprained my [...]

Live Reviews

When Portlandia Comes to Town

by | January 23rd, 2012

What the hell happened at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last Friday night?

Ostensibly, a sold-out crowd saw something called “Portlandia: The Tour,” but that title doesn’t tell us much. Sure, it starred Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the creators and stars of IFC’s Portlandia. But it wasn’t a stage adaptation of an episode in the vein of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “The Nightman Cometh” tour. Nor was it an all-new set of stories like those creepy Glee stadium blowouts. In fact, virtually none of the evening was fictional or in character, at all.

The very existence of the tour is baffling, in a way: what would [...]

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