Splitsider

The first time I saw Dave Hill perform, he was giving a celebrity interview to Ira Glass and wearing — at least in my memory — some kind of kimono-inspired bathrobe. His answers were slow and sleepy and totally absurd. Periodically and without provocation, he’d solo for a while on the electric guitar, just because, you know. But while another performer might go broad, Hill remains disarmingly sincere: you feel a little like you’re watching him vamp in front of the bathroom mirror when nobody else is home. In his just-off-the-mark version of reality, none of this is a joke. In our world, it is, which is good — [...]

As co-host of the Nerdist podcast, one of the best and most popular comedy podcasts going, Jonah Ray wields a lot of power in the comedy community, but the show, which he hosts with Chris Hardwick and Matt Mira, is just one of the many projects he currently has his hands in. Ray is also a writer for The Soup, as well as an accomplished standup who hosts the awesome weekly show The Meltdown along with buddy Kumail Nanjiani in the back room of the L.A. comic book store Meltdown Comics.

Jonah Ray’s new album, Hello Mr. Magic Plane Person, Hello, drops today on A Special Thing [...]

Though I can’t say this for certain, I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s never been an another television announcer in broadcast history who appeared in an on-camera sketch sitting shirtless in a kiddie pool with a cabana boy on each arm.

But that was Joel Godard, and he did it with style.

Godard was the announcer for all 17 seasons of Late Night with Conan O’Brien on NBC. He wasn’t the first late night talk show announcer to step out from his offstage booth and appear on-camera, but he was the funniest. His willingness to do anything for a laugh, including going along [...]

You ever get the feeling that the stars of Parks & Recreation knowingly act like their characters? Nick Offerman seems to revel in the extreme masculinity hoisted upon to him. Chris Pratt, though far more capable than Andy, apes his characters wide-eyed, big ol' lugness. In his interview with GQ, there are many quoteables that easily could be something Andy would say, well, if he was an actor who played a character like Andy on television. Mostly though, he comes off as humble mixed with Andy's sense of wonder:

As a newcomer to the world of TV, actor Timothy Simons is joining a very impressive group of writers and performers for his first big role in the HBO political comedy series Veep. Created by Oscar-nominated auteur Armando Iannucci (In the Loop, The Thick of It) and boasting a cast that includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky, and Tony Hale, Veep has a more impressive pedigree than any TV comedy in recent memory. I’ve seen the first three episodes of Veep, and Timothy Simons holds his own against these heavy-hitters. It’s a funny show that lives up to the high expectations set by Armando Iannucci’s previous work, and [...]

This Sunday, May 20th, is going to be big for Hannibal Buress. At 11:00pm, his hour special, Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace, premieres on Comedy Central and then 30 minutes after it finishes, at 12:30am, The Eric Andre Show, for which he is the co-host, premieres on Adult Swim. After years of being the most buzzed about comedian by everyone from Chris Rock to Eugene Mirman to many powerful people in show business to any fan of comedy, the buzz is finally going to reach an unavoidable volume. I don't know Hannibal personally but my first reaction is pride.

That's because with one off-hand joke, Hannibal changed my life. I [...]

It may be hard to believe now, but until the early '90s, the biggest influence on whether a stand-up comedian's career took off was left to one man: Johnny Carson. Not only would a shot on his version of The Tonight Show ensure that you could take a step up in the comedy world, but if he motioned you over to sit with him and Ed McMahon, you had the upper hand on any comedy club owner that ever tried to screw you over as you were coming up.

That's what happened to Drew Carey, whose career skyrocketed after his initial 1991 appearance on The Tonight Show, where he [...]

The Sklar brothers, Randy and Jason, have been the Sklar Brothers for about 20 years, ever since a post-collegiate move to NYC and an embrace of the alternative comedy community. Where alt comedy has grown to be one of those terms that means everything and nothing, to the Sklars it meant an opportunity to do duo, and sibling, comedy in a different way, a more genuine way. Instead of endless jokes about being identical or an aping of a false straight-main/funny-man thing, the Sklar's comedy is an honest representation of who they are as everyday people.

And they've been able to take their comedic lens and successfully apply it [...]

Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham, creators/writers/stars of NBC's Best Friends Forever, and I are not friends, let alone best friends, but when I watch the show, like many of its fans, I feel like I am. You want to root for them because they'd root for you. It's what makes them great comic actresses – they'd be just as happy, if not happier, with their scene partners getting the laugh as they would themselves. It's how they were taught at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

Their show is a reflection of that training; it's heavily improvised, absurd yet realistically grounded, not afraid to go into scary territories, and, [...]

People don't talk about JLD enough. She was arguably the most talented actor of the Seinfeld four, as has been proven by a pretty solid post-90s career, especially compared to the other guys. Her new show, Veep, premieres on Sunday and looks pretty great. Grantland sat down for an interview with her, to talk about the show, being totally over NBC, and cursing. On the latter: "You know, I still get swoony for 'motherfucker.' But I also like 'busting my ladyballs.' That’s awfully fun to say too." The. Best. Also, the interviewer mentions that she is 51, which is insane. If I looked that good at 31, I'd [...]

Everyone has at least one movie or TV show they enjoy that no one else can stand, whether it’s a guilty pleasure or something the rest of the world is just wrong about. I recently rang up Sirius Radio host and Twitter luminary Jake Fogelnest to talk about the pieces of pop cultures that he enjoys that everyone else seems to hate.

Jake Fogelnest’s a busy guy, splitting his time between hosting his own indie rock show on Sirius, his webcam show on Stickam, his hilarious and wildly popular Twitter feed, an equally-bitchin’ Tumblr, and at least a couple fake Twitter accounts. In the [...]

"Yeah. I have a joke about how people don’t talk about mental illness the way they do other regular illnesses. 'Well, apparently Jeff has cancer. Uh, I have cancer. We all have cancer. You go to chemotherapy you get it taken care of, am I right? You get back to work.' Or: 'I was dating this chick, and three months in, she tells me that she wears glasses, and she’s been wearing contact lenses all this time. She needs help seeing. I was like, listen, I’m not into all that Western medicine shit. If you want to see, then work at it. Figure out how not to be so myopic. You know?' [...]

It seems like Girls is finally out of the thinkpiece stage and into the "Oh, this is just a TV show that's going to be on every week, we should probably chillax" stage. It helps that the show keeps on getting better and its praise has become less hyperbolic and more earnest. Girls creator/Our creator's second coming, Lena Dunham dropped by the Colbert Report to talk about her show, be charming, have Colbert act kind of like a dad, and answer the most important question of her series – if Stephen Colbert used to be a Charlotte, who is he in Girls? While we're talking about Dunham, the below [...]

The 1980s were defined by myriad phenomena, and perhaps just below the end of the Cold War in terms of cultural relevance was the growth in popularity of group aerobic exercise. The Richard Simmons Show premiered in 1980; the next year brought Physical by Olivia Newton-John.  Jane Fonda’s first video workout tape was released in 1982, and John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis starred in the film Perfect three years later.

But on April 24, 1987, the ultimate merger of mass media and body mass reduction took place when at least one television station in the United States (KTLA in Los Angeles, as evidenced by the clip above) [...]