“Nathan For You” is built on an undercurrent of mundane desperation: most of us will go along with anything if it means 10 minutes of face-time on TV. We’ll serve (artificial!) poo flavored yogurt at our FroYo shop; court lawsuits for the publicity; deceive the public with bogus animal videos; and camp with unknown men…
David Wain is a co-founder of two sketch comedy troupes, The State and Stella. He is executive producer and occasional star of the Emmy-winning Adult Swim series, “Children’s Hospital.” He also has his own online show, “Wainy Days,” about his (mis)adventures with women. But certainly his greatest claim to fame is his 2001 cult classic,…
Drake wants to be loved. Drake is Jewish. Ergo, why not go on JDate? At least, that’s what Drizzy’s media coach tells him to do in this awesome skit from Above Average’s “Sound Advice.” Not a real media coach, obviously. Just Vanessa Bayer of “Saturday Night Live” as “Janessa Slater” a “media coach who’s helped…
It was all about tale telling at the Society of Illustrators’ “From the Borscht Belt to Seinfeld: The Evolution of Jewish American Comedy.” With welcoming comments by Society’s executive director Anelle Miller, panelists included Yiddish scholar and Jewish comedy maven Prof. Edward Portnoy, “comedy writer Tom Leopold (“Seinfeld,” “Cheers”), Drew Friedman, whose amazing caricature illustrations…
While many comedians make other people laugh while fretting about their ability to do so, Eugene Mirman has always had a unique perspective on comedy. “I wanted to be a professional comedian,” the Russian-born, Brooklyn-based comedian explains, “whatever that entailed.” To hear him tell it, this attitude may not actually be so rare. In fact,…
It’s been 100 years since four brothers — Leonard, Arthur, Julius and Milton — sat down at a table and, with the assistance of a fellow vaudevillian, reinvented themselves as Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Gummo. The centennial anniversary of that comic rebirth will be celebrated with Marxfest, a month-long series of screenings and discussions taking…
A popular form of entertainment is watching comics analyzing comedy — a subject that doesn’t easily lend itself to analysis. Simply: What’s funny is what makes the lady in the third row laugh. You cannot tell her she’s wrong; if she doesn’t laugh it isn’t funny, she does and it is. End of story. Still,…
(JTA) — Attention all Bostonians looking for a good, old-fashioned, R-rated outgoing voicemail message: Sarah Silverman and Keshet, an organization that advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Jews, might be able to help. Attendees of the Keshet Cabaret on March 27 will have the opportunity to bid on a personal voicemail from the raunchy…
100% of profits support our journalism
