Best Thing I’ve Read Today: Elayne Boosler
Three years ago, I wrote a piece about Elayne Boosler, one of the seminal comics of the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, I've followed Elayne on YouTube as she has posted clips from some of the many standup specials she did on cable, and I just ordered her new boxed set,...
Creepy Picture Of The Day
Wanna see something creepy? Watch this final scene from episode three of season seven of "The Cosby Show," which echoes the Spanish Fly bit he did years earlier on an album of standup material [thanks to Kevin Brackett for the link]...
Steve, Marty, Bruce, and That Tony Moment
Why would I buy tickets to see Steve Martin and Martin Short at The Fox Theatre later this year when I just watched their entire show on Netflix? Even if I had only seen bits and pieces of it, I still wouldn't go because they didn't make me smile, let alone laugh. The...
Concert Review: Trevor Noah
My wife and I went to see the first of Trevor Noah's two sold-out shows at The Peabody on Friday night, and we had a great time. Noah, who has really grown into his role as host of "The Daily Show," did about 70 minutes of standup while moving about the stage, as my...
Movie Review: “All About Nina”
With all the standup comedy specials populating Netflix these days, you'd think someone in Hollywood would study them to figure out how to do a movie about comedians. I don't mean putting several of them on stage and filming them a la "The Original Kings Of Comedy." I...
About That Louis CK Story
Several years ago, I was in New York and took my daughter to the Comedy Cellar, where we saw a half-dozen comics perform. They were all pretty good, but we weren't familiar with any of them except Judah Friedlander, who she knew from "30 Rock." We were also happily...
Best Thing I’ve Read Today
A few weeks ago, I recommended Nell Scovell's book "Just The Funny Parts," in which she not only writes about her career as a TV (mostly comedy) writer, but also about the sexism she encountered both on the job and while looking for more opportunities. One of the...
What Michelle Wolf Should Say Now
It seems like we go through this every year. The White House Correspondents Association hires a topical comedian to headline their annual event in Washington, and afterwards, the usual humorless blowhards come out of the woodwork to decry that comedian's material as...