Pop culture blog Vulture is holding its "Comedy Week" right now, and they've loaded up their page with plenty of fun stuff to read like an obsessive history of Jon Hamm's personal obsession with comedy and Pete Holmes's piece recounting the agonizing six months he spent waiting to hear if his TBS talk show would make it to air. Check out Vulture's Comedy Week or just stay here, where we live every week like it's Comedy Week.
The system works! Bad Advice From My Brother, a blog started by Jordan Pope Roush in 2010 with the intention of drumming up enough of an audience to turn it into a TV show, is being developed into a TV show by Comedy Central. Here's the synopsis: [The show] follows the adventures of two brothers: Jason, the older, not necessarily wiser brother who has spent most of his post-college life chasing women and the almighty dollar on Wall Street, and Ben, his younger brother who wants to follow in his footsteps. When Ben moves in, Jason sees this as an opportunity to reflect on his mistakes and [...]
Jim Norton took to the red carpet of the Grammys to ask stars from Steve Martin to Adele to hold up his non-nominated 2011 standup album Despicable and related merchandise onstage. It's a pretty funny idea, and it highlights the fact that you rarely see successful album or book releases from comedians these days without a high-profile promotional stunt behind them. It seems that it's barely even worth writing and releasing a funny book if you don't also have a great, original idea to promote it virally online.
Ricky Gervais said months ago that this year's Golden Globes would be his last, and now he's confirming it. "It's like a parachute jump. You can only really enjoy it in retrospect when you realise you didn't die and it was quite an amazing thing to do," he said. Yes, I agree, an amazing thing that only needs to be done three times and doesn't need to be talked about ever again.
ABC and Tracy McMillan have embarked upon the last leg of that classic journey from super-harsh blog post to book to television show. Why You're Not Married will be "an ensemble comedy that explores the current state of modern American love." Did I mention it's based on a blog post?
Community and Channel 101 mastermind Dan Harmon is releasing his first book, a collection of the best writings from his amazing blog, "Dan Harmon Poops." The book, entitled You'll Be Perfect When You're Dead: The Collected Online Writings of Dan Harmon, was just announced as a surprise to fans yesterday by Harmon's girlfriend Erin McGathy on Twitter and Reddit to coincide with the tour of Harmon's live show "Harmontown." It's a 307-page book that will only be available for purchase on Harmontown.com tomorrow, 1/8/13, from 12AM to 11:59PST, or during stops on the Harmontown tour (if there are copies left). Only 900 copies of [...]
Did you know that Mike Sacks, author of the much-loved And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, is now the editor of Adult Swim's Not a Blog? Well, he is! And he's running fun things like today's Movie Reviewer Trapped in a Wall by The Onion's Dan Mirk. So go check it out why don't you?
Another day, another Congressman thinking an Onion article is real. Fight the abortionplex, America! Call your congressperson (and ask if his refrigerator is running, 'cause that dude will fall for anything).
Kelly Oxford addressed the haters on her blog yesterday, pointing out that her Twitter popularity isn't the reason her pilot's been purchased by NBC. She writes, "if someone is turning my feed into a TV show I will sue that person because it isn’t me. I don’t even know what turning a twitter feed into a show means." None of us do, man.
Mindy Kaling introduced the world today to the back of her book, which features a photo of her as an androgynous but happy child puppeteer. There really isn't anything non-adorable about this picture: the haircut, the glasses, the – is that a vest over a sweater over a collared shirt?
"Funny people are about truth, not cute," Kaling writes in her blog post. "I am funnier when I wake up in the morning having slept in the clothes I went to work in the day before, with a greasy T-zone; not when I’m a fancy dress at some awards show." Word, man. Word.
It's a banner day for Patton Oswalt, as FX announced he’s been cast in a recurring role on the upcoming season of the Timothy Olyphant western Justified, and he just wrote a cool piece on his web site, as well. Oswalt will make his first Justified appearance in the season four premiere in early 2013 as Olyphant’s former schoolmate-turned-constable. As mentioned, Oswalt also penned a top-notch blog post today. Inspired by an incident at the L.A. Riot comedy festival last week, he wrote about the importance of outgrowing your youthful rebellious streak. Here’s an excerpt (full piece here):
You’re supposed to mindlessly, reflexively boo “The Man”, even [...]
The writers of Bob's Burgers have started a blog, and they're kicking things off by posting some script covers from season 2's table reads. I'm most excited for "Mutiny on the Windbreak." What about you?
Here's some good advice about crowd work from comic Steve Cronin. Print it out and discreetly pull it out of your pocket when you're onstage dealing with the savage hordes that call themselves comedy fans.
I have long thought that the ultimate level of success would be to have people write sonnets about your stream-of-consciousness 2:30AM blog posts. So without further ado:
Dan Harmon's water-puking and foam-shitting, He's just moved and it's two thirty at night. But he says things look good from where he's sitting. Despite the break, Community will be alright. The TV Guide award came months ago, Not just a reaction to the news so tragic, It's proof that this timeline will truly glow With fans' love translated to TV magic. The ratings will be high on Thursday eve - We know this show does Christmas well, aft'r all - [...]
