Earlier this year, Paul F. Tompkins begun releasing videos from the vast archives of things filmed at his long-running Los Angeles variety show The Paul F. Tompkins Show. Here's the latest video from the PFT Vaults, which is a long 2011 sketch starring Tompkins and special guests Jon Hamm and Maya Rudolph. It's now the closest you can ever come to being at this show in 2011 without the aid of time travel.
Comedian Tig Notaro received a great deal of praise from the comedy community in August for a performance at the Los Angeles venue Largo in which she announced she had breast cancer and spoke honestly about the news (and some other personal hardships) in a hilarious, insightful, and heartfelt set. The set was recorded by the venue's owner (who records most performances there), and Louis C.K. just released it today on his website for $5. It's well worth the price to hear this noteworthy performance, in which Notaro gives a tragic, funny, and moving account of her diagnosis, her mother's tragic death, breaking up with her girlfriend, [...]
Here's Paul F. Tompkins singing Adele's theme from the James Bond movie Skyfall with a full band backing him up. It's a spectacular performance from the final Paul F. Tompkins Show of 2012, his monthly variety show at the L.A. nightclub Largo. Tompkins is taking a little break from The Paul F. Tompkins Show, but he's promised via Tumblr to share more cool stuff from his personal video archive in the new year and we all know Tumblr promises can't be broken.
"And so I was in New York and I met with [Ira Glass] and I had like ten pages of start to finish every detail of horrible stuff that had gone on and he read it and he said 'Ugh, this is so depressing.' And I was like 'Yeah, I know it’s my life, Ira, I don’t know.' And he said 'You need to work this out in stand-up, you know, not in just a written piece of tragic stuff.' He said, 'Your power is on stage so you need to utilize that. There’s nothing funny right now.'” – An excerpt from Tig Notaro explaining the entire story of her [...]
Tig Notaro's acclaimed Largo set, which was released on Louis C.K.'s website and became a huge success, was the most talked-about standup performance of the year, and Notaro has been keeping kind of a low profile since. Here she is in a rare recent interview with Pitchfork TV, talking about the awful fourth months point in her life she was at during the Largo performance, her tennis plans with Taylor Dayne, and her affinity for the song "Mississippi Queen."
