Last night was Jon Stewart's first show back since the Boston tragedy, and he started the show by discussing the previous day's events with his audience. Like the opening to Craig Ferguson's show the night before, it's a heartfelt and thoughtful monologue that manages to focus on the positive in the wake of this horrific event.
My improv team had a good set on that snowy night in February. The three of us were happy. After the show we celebrated with friends at a nearby bar. I attempted to get the bartender’s attention when a man approached me: “you were on that team, right?” he asked. I told him I was. “You guys were so good! At first I was like, ugh three girls, great” he said, enunciating that last word with palpable sarcasm, “but then you guys killed it.”
If you’re a woman or a regular, non-woman-hating man in the comedy community, you’re probably cringing in sympathy. When a man gets on stage, we [...]
It’s no secret that sometimes comedy is taken a bit too seriously. Comedy obsessives love not just the jokes, but the mechanics and emotions of the comedy world. There are a raft of comedy documentaries exploring comedy and comedians, but do they really have anything significant to add to the discussion? This series looks at comedy documentaries and whether they’re interesting, insightful, and possibly even…funny?
The concept of comedy may be universal, but some comedy comes from a very specific time and place. When Stand Up Stood Out looks back at one such era, the influential Boston comedy scene of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Directed and narrated by [...]
Comedian Patton Oswalt wrote a moving Facebook post yesterday following the senseless act of terrorism that occurred in Boston, managing to glean a positive message from the tragedy. Here's Oswalt's post in its entirety:
Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction [...]
Four hours North of New York City, Boston proper exists in the perpetual shadow of one of the largest comedy scenes in the country. Boston Proper is a smallish city but its comedy scene is spread out amongst two interconnected cities: Cambridge (The People’s Republic Of) and Somerville. There's not much of an entertainment industry in Boston, but with over fifty colleges in the greater Boston area that provide ample audiences, and a large and growing number of shows and venues, Boston is a great scene for comics to develop. It's a scene that responds to innovation, but also respects the past. Boston's audiences vary from Harvard students to [...]
If you live in Boston and enjoy the comedy, you should click here and sign up to go see some standups tape their Comedy Central specials for free. There are two shows nightly from Tuesday through Thursday of this week featuring comics such as Joe Mande, Garfunkel and Oates, Rory Scovel and Neal Brennan. Great news for Bostonians! But non-Bostonians, don't worry, you still win, as you don't live in Boston.
All the late night hosts addressed the Boston tragedy on their shows last night, but Craig Ferguson discussed the day's horrific events in a particularly heartfelt and compelling way. Full video of the opening to his show is embedded above.
The very funny Bill Burr stopped by Conan last night to promote his new comedy special, You People Are All the Same, and he ended up setting some kind of world record for criticizing the most things in the least amount of time. In just five minutes, Burr went off on bandwagon Boston fans, sports mascots, campfire songs, Steve Jobs, political conventions, the people who watch political conventions, guys with Tennessee signs, and people who illegally download comedy specials, all without stopping to take a breath.
