Month: March 2016

What I Learned From Seeing Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Thank God For Jokes’ Three Times

About a month ago, I made my way down to the Lynn Redgrave Theater on Bleecker Street to see Mike Birbiglia’s one man show, Thank God For Jokes. It was awesome. Birbiglia was fantastic as always and I got a glimpse of some other comedians like John Mulaney and a chunk of the cast of The League hanging out in the lobby of the small theater before and after the show. Continue reading “What I Learned From Seeing Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Thank God For Jokes’ Three Times” →

Things I Remember From Seeing The Book Of Mormon A Few Months Ago

I saw The Book of Mormon on Broadway a few months ago. If I tell people that, they’ll always be like, “Oh! What did you think?!” This is what I think.

  • Definitely get someone else to buy tickets for you.
  • There’s a lot of singing in musicals. Like, most of the time I’d say.
  • The characters don’t all talk in South Park voices.
  • Every mormon boy in the world is insanely fit except for Elder Cunningham.
  • A lot of the performers have comedy-related backgrounds.
  • The dudes who play mormon boys are like 57 years old, so theater is more about musical talent than accuracy.
  • There are many jokes in it.
  • Mormons wear weird pajamas.
  • The “The Book of Mormon” props they use on stage are all filled with blank pages – it is a ruse. Here’s an idea: put the script in there. Whoa. You’re welcome, Broadway.
  • There’s lots of AIDS in Uganda.
  • Typically, there are two main acts in a Broadway musical.
  • After Act I, I was like “This is the best thing I’ve ever seen in the entire world.”
  • After Act II, I was like “That was pretty good.”
  • It’s a satire of a musical that’s still totally a musical, i.e. it’s guilty of things it’s trying to satirize sometimes.
  • I liked it.

Did You Know? I Run A Comedy Show

Dear people of the internet,

I’m excited for this month’s edition of the show I co-host, Night Cheese. I made a website for it. Check it out…join the mailing list…or don’t. I don’t care. I just like that the website kind of looks like cheese and I wanted to show that off. I clearly have an eye for design.

Love,

Stu

Being Silly and Being Real: How Writing Comedy On The East And West Coasts Made Me Funnier

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my stand up has changed since I did comedy back in college on the West coast, and so I wrote this thing about one of my old jokes that I ended up adapting after coming to New York City. Before I say anything else, I want to point out that my experience in comedy is limited. I did relatively minimal comedy before coming to New York and I’ve been here for just over half a year. So, in terms of the East/West differences I’m writing about, they only come from my limited personal experiences, which I suppose could have been different for anyone.

Continue reading “Being Silly and Being Real: How Writing Comedy On The East And West Coasts Made Me Funnier” →

Bullshit Is Entertaining

Hello! I’ve been working hard on this story so that I could submit it to a comedy festival…and I just finished it! It’s a story about a trip I took to New Orleans with my grandpa. It’s pretty damn long, but I really do like it a lot. I’m not just saying that. Give it a darn minute of your time and see if you like it!

Continue reading “Bullshit Is Entertaining” →

Two Views On Political Correctness: John Cleese And Paul F. Tompkins

I’ve been sitting on these two videos for a while, not realizing that they totally go together. They are both about political correctness. So they go together. But they are opposing views. So I’m putting them together.

John Cleese thinks “we can’t have comedy and political correctness at the same time.”

Paul F. Tompkins thinks “political correctness keeps comedy fresh.”

There are more subtleties to their arguments than that. So, watch these videos because they are interesting and you’re a smart person who really likes watching interesting things! You can find more about the John Cleese video here. You can find a transcription of what Tompkins says in his video here. You can find nothing here.

I didn’t know what the big think (the people who made these videos) was before now, but it seems pretty cool. Here.