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”
Tag: nyc
Chris Gethard On Why He Stayed In NYC Instead Of Heading To L.A.
This is a fantastic piece in a series of articles that are being written about NYC and L.A. comedy this week in Vulture.
I know nothing about the comedy scene in L.A. (okay not nothing), but my sister does live there and I’ve visited several other times, too. And from what Gethard says about the two locations…well, I can’t help but agree with him. New York is awesome! I don’t like L.A. right now. Does that mean I’ll stay in NY forever like him? I donno. But I can certainly hop on board with the NY lovin’.
One thing I definitely don’t get about L.A. is that even though you abbreviate NYC like this: NYC, you abbreviate L.A. like this: L.A.. That doesn’t make any sense! Look how clunky those two periods look next to one another! I’m not even sure I did that right…either way, it’s confusing! Come on, L.A.! Efficiency! Take those gosh darn periods out of there. No one will confuse you with Louisiana. I don’t know why you’re insecure about that; you’re much more popular than LA.
Anyways, Chris Gethard is awesome. The way I remember how to spell his last name is that it spells “get hard.” There can’t be a cooler person than that! You can see more of him on The Chris Gethard Show on Fusion.
BTDubs, the picture of Gethard I used was taken at The Creek and the Cave, which I go to pretty much every day.
Nick Vatterott’s Letter to UCB
Nick Vatterott is a big name in comedy. He’s a working comic who has been around New York City for a while now, working some of its best clubs. I think the consensus is that he hasn’t had his “breakout” moment yet on TV, but he has a huge cult following because he’s awesome. (see more of him on his website)
Yesterday, in frustration with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, he typed out this long Facebook post, which has accumulated upwards of 800 likes and 80 shares in 17 hours. His frustrations with the theater have garnered a lot of support from the stand up community. Everybody seems to be sharing or posting about it today!
If you want the tl;dr on this, Vatterott is upset with how UCB treats stand up comics compared to improvisers. On top of that, he implies that UCB doesn’t even treat improvisers very well – they’re being taken advantage of too. UCB doesn’t pay performers for paid shows and they seem to have done some mean things to Vatterott and other stand ups. To add some context, UCB is essentially THE place for improv and sketch in New York and they’ve expanded to four locations: two in NYC and two in LA. Essentially, if you want to do improv, you kind of have to go through them. But they have comedy shows with all different acts, including stand up. And Vatterott feels like they treat stand ups as outsiders because of that.
I can’t speak to any of this from experience (not being a paid comic) but Vatterott’s words seem to be resonating with other comedians. I was just at UCB in Chelsea earlier this week to see Whiplash, which is one of the best free shows in the city. UCB makes that sort of thing possible, which is great. But, at least from Vatterott’s frustrated comments, it seems like they might not always go about things the right way.
Brooklyn’s Newest Open Mike
This is a humor piece written by NYC Comedian Lucas Gardner and published in the New York Times. It’s a funny thing I like that pokes fun at the hoops you have to jump through to get stage time as an open mic comic in New York. Garner has written a lot of funny stuff. If you like this, check out his personal site.
stumelton.com 