"There are plenty of reasons to recover from addiction, anxiety, depression, and trauma....But comedians are perverse people who often don't care about any of those things. So maybe this will convince them, and maybe this will convince me: get better — so you can get funny."
In a frank, personal, and revealing article, essayist Jaime Lutz interviews comedians
Marc Maron,
Eddie Pepitone,
Paul Gilmartin, and
Anthony Atamanuik about the uneasy relationship between mental illness and comedy.
posted by scarylarry
on Dec 14, 2012 -
9 comments
Monica Potts on Louis CK and privilege: "For the most part, people of color are the ones who initiate serious discussions about race and privilege in the public sphere -- and in the world of comedy ... Some white comedians, like Sarah Silverman, tend to joke
about racism, making fun of white people and their ignorance in ways that shock and offend. ... But Louis' comedy is about being a white man -- and about how others view white men. He doesn't accept ignorance as a point of view. Moreover, this isn't the occasional stand-up bit; a significant number of his jokes are about race, class, and gender."
[more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk
on Oct 15, 2010 -
75 comments
Can a stand-up comedian's performance be objectively evaluated and ranked? In the recent documentary
I Am Comic [imdb | clips],
Steve Roye demonstrates his product, the
Comedy Evaluator Pro. A "Positive Audience Response" (PAR) score is the percentage of PAR during the time the comedian is on the stage (not taking into account other factors such as venue size, etc.). Of course, this method
stirs controversy about the art vs. science of stand-up.
Ritch Shydner, the protagonist of
I Am Comic, thinks that
booking agents shouldn't rely on PAR scores to choose who gets to be on stage, while the director of
I Am Comic, Jordan Brady, disagrees, seeing
PAR as a way to elevate the quality of stand-up. So, drum roll, please:
Who is the world's funniest comedian? According to PAR score, it's
J.R. Redwater, during this bit at the Pow Wow Comedy Jam. [agree | disagree]
posted by not_on_display
on Aug 19, 2010 -
112 comments
Life as a Comic is series of short videos by Rob Paravonian (famous for The Pachelbel Rant) about what it's like to be a working stand-up comic. It has recently started up again after a long break.
Here's the first episode which is about doing gigs at venues which aren't full-time comedy clubs. Direct links to the rest of the episodes, all of which are in quicktime-format, below the cut.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 19, 2010 -
14 comments
"For a lot of comics, it's OK to talk about raping women now. That's the new black on the comedy circuit." "One false move, and I'm Jim Davidson." "Don't go thinking I'm the new Bernard Manning. I'm being postmodern and ironic. I understand that what I'm saying is unacceptable."
The new offenders of standup comedy.
posted by permafrost
on Jul 28, 2009 -
168 comments
Billy At 65: I owe it all to Glasgow.
But Glasgow and Scots in general owe
Billy Connolly for all the laughs at our own expense...
Tourism,
Economy,
Music,
Religion,
Sport,
Social life,
Education,
Language,
Cuisine,
History,
Transport and
Sex.
(Rampant YouTubery: All links potentially offensive and NSFW)
[more inside]
posted by brautigan
on Dec 3, 2007 -
26 comments
Lost in translation. British Comedian Stewart Lee explores comedy in Germany and finds it stymied by the peculiarities of language and sentence construction. Mark Liberman at Language Log
disagrees. And an extended essay by Josh Schonwald explores in greater depth how the
German comedy scene is transitioning (PDF) from the more traditional kabernett to a burgeoning stand-up comedy scene, which is characterized by one observer as being in "the Bob Hope phase of comedy."
posted by madamjujujive
on May 26, 2006 -
72 comments
Cake or Death? The spectacularly funny British comic
Eddie Izzard, currently on Broadway in A Day In The Death of Joe Egg has revamped his web site (warning: irritating flash animation & audio), and annouced that he is coming on tour, starting
Down Under and continuing throughout
Canada & The U.S. For those NY mefites, check out Joe Egg while you can, it is depressing but simultaneously funny, and anyone who hasn't seen Eddie either live or on HBO, do yourself a favor and catch a show, it's good stuff.
posted by jonson
on May 27, 2003 -
35 comments
