This is one of my most favorite resources on comedy out there. And it’s just a Youtube video with no picture, only audio.
It’s a sit down conversation with Ari Shaffir, a headlining comic who has hosted his own Comedy Central show, This Is Not Happening. All he does is spew advice. For four hours. Yeah, four hours.
If you’re into doing stand up this will be the most fascinating thing ever. If you’re not it will probably be the most boring thing ever.
Learn more about Ari Shaffir on his site.
Tig Notaro is best known for her album “Live!” But I like her best for her typical stand up: silly, stupid commentaries on everyday things. And doing stupid things like pushing a stool around the sage for two whole minutes.
Watch out her Conan set from 2012. It’s fun. It’ll be good for you! You’ll like it, I swear!
I saw this article a little while back and I liked it because it shows how hard you have to work to make it as a comic. Even after starring in several stand up specials, her own sketch show, and her own movie, Amy Schumer is living in a small apartment in New York City. No pent house just yet, no butlers. She’s still saving her money in case something goes wrong.
It goes to show that even after you “make it” in comedy, you’re not set for life. You have to keep putting the effort in and keep working at it. It’s also nice to know that she doesn’t have it that much better than me. Right?
Happy Halloween!
I’ve gotta go with sharing some classic Halloween material from Seinfeld today. I had a “Jerry Seinfeld Halloween” book when I was a kid that was based on these jokes. You might have heard the jokes a million times before, as is how Seinfeld operates, but the jokes are still classics…
Sometimes I go to the bathroom just for shits and giggles.
One time I was in a bathroom and I walked up to a urinal and I looked down and the urinal was off to the left. And I thought, “This urinal is wrong.”
And then I thought, “No wait Stu, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe this urinal is perfectly placed for someone whose phallus is slightly to the left.”
And then I thought, “Maybe you’re being insensitive because you have a perfectly centered phallus. And now you’re just being cocky.”
And then a guy walked up to the urinal next to me and said, “Are you okay? You’ve been standing there for two whole minutes.”
A lot of people who aren’t as knowledgeable about comedy today – especially the younger audiences – have never heard of Patrice O’Neal because he died young in 2011, at which time he hadn’t produced a ton of material. But comics pretty much all know and love his work. And I’m one of his fans.
He recently came up in the news for being the original source of a joke that Amy Schumer allegedly stole…which comics think is ridiculous.
Know Patrice for what he should be known for: good comedy. Check out his special Elephant in the Room.
Do you think Christmas trees know that they’re Christmas trees or one day a lumberjack just walks up to them and goes, “You’re going to die. For Jesus.”
And the tree is like, “What? But I had no previous religious affiliation heretofore!”
And the lumberjack is like, “Well, henceforth you do. Also, it’s the sixteenth century. That’s why we’re talking like this.”
It would suck to be a Christmas tree. You just live your whole life in Wisconsin with all your friends and then you die. All of you. At the same time.
And then you end up in someone’s living room and you’re like “What’s going on? I can’t feel my legs! How am I standing up right now?”
And then someone is just like, “Shhhhhhhhh…I’m gonna put Christmas lights on you. Trust me, it makes sense.”
And then you’re like, “But it’s the sixteenth century…Christmas lights haven’t been invented yet.”
Todd Barry is a touring, headlining comic who most people know as “that comic guy from Louie.” He has a very flat, deadpan delivery but he does it better than most people I’ve heard. He sounds super sarcastic and a little like me but even drier, so maybe that’s partly why I like him.
His delivery is what makes his crowd work so impressive to me. With such a flat delivery it forces the conversation to be funny because of what Barry says and discovers. The crowd work really has content. Barry isn’t just being silly on stage, he’s quick and intuitive.
Speaking of Louie, Louis CK actually released Todd Barry: The Crowd Work Tour on his website for $5. You can also find it on Netflix. Or, I found it on YouTube as well. I’ll link that below, but who knows when it will disappear! Whoever uploaded the video to YouTube also put “Best Comedian Ever” in the title of the video, so take that as you will.
Brian Regan recently performed the first ever live Comedy Central special at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan. It was a huge deal in the comedy community and most of my friends were either watching together online or actually there in person.
One of the reasons Regan was one of the only people who could be considered to do such an unprecedented show was because he is known so well as a clean comic.
Jim Gaffigan is one of the best known clean comics who actually resents being labeled as one. That’s just one of the things these two comics talk about in this Comics Talk to Comics piece in Vulture. It actually came out just before Regan’s special, so you’ll benefit from the extra excitement.
Here’s an article that I found that was written by Adam Newman, a comic who recently recorded his Comedy Central half hour. Half hours are a huge deal in the industry because Comedy Central gets your name out there. You probably have never heard of Adam Newman, even though he’s a fantastic comic who has performed on several late night talk shows.
In the article Newman describes the process for submitting to Comedy Central and discusses his approach for the submission video. I hadn’t heard of ComedianU before I read this article, which seems blasphemous. It looks like a fantastically cool site and now I’m going to check it out all the time!
Read How Adam Newman Got His Half Hour Special On Comedy Central here.
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