Back in May I posted a trailer and some screening info on my comedy webseries Wigs. Last week it had its online debut over at PhantomSway.com, you can click the link to watch it there and read a short interview the site did with me. Or you can watch it below and follow on YouTube […]
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A young lady asked me today what I’ve been doing on Ricochet with these posts about stand up comedy. She wanted to know who is this Mr. Anthony Jeselnik, praise of whom I have been damning & damning & am about to thrice damn. This was in public, so I had to be careful. I retold the […]
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Did anyone every tell you about who knows what classic that’s supposed to be all that & a bag of chips but they can give you no sense as to why? At least when Mr. Clinton gives you Leaves of grass you know exactly what he’s smoking & where the fire is… But these other people […]
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I ask you, fellow Ricochetti, is The Federalist a den of philistines or only a hotel of philistines? How silly can conservatives get about vulgarity? Here’s the shot–get your own chaser. Mr. Jeselnik is not known to you decent, not to say lucky folks. He is known to me by his work. He pretends that his […]
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https://thisisengland.org.uk/video-driving-ms-merkel-comedy-sketch-mocks-the-woman-busy-destroying-europe/ Preview Open
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I am psyched to announce that Can We Take a Joke? – a FIRE-supported feature documentary about the threats outrage culture poses to comedy and free speech — will be premiering next month at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival. The world premiere will take place on Nov. 13 at NYC’s IFC Center, with an additional screening on Nov. 16.
As FIRE announced:
In Can We Take A Joke?, comedians Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli, Jim Norton, Adam Carolla, Heather McDonald, Karith Foster, and more come together with narrator Christina Pazsitzky to explore what happens when comedy, censorship, and outrage culture collide. […]
There’s an interesting Bloomberg story about the rise in stand-up comedy specials. Apparently both major networks and streaming services are scrambling for new content. Not only are these specials cheap to produce, making them incredibly profitable, but one agent says there’s not enough quality comedians to fulfill the rising demand.
As networks, cable companies, and streaming video platforms try to support a raft of expensive scripted shows, they’re looking to stand-up comedy for that magical, money-making creature Silicon Valley calls a unicorn. Its audience is growing, and the economics of the genre are ridiculously good.
Think of it this way. Scripted drama, with teams of writers, trailers full of makeup people, and squads of union camera crews clustered around elaborate sets, is like a massive factory cranking out a complicated product. Stand-up is the slick social app cooked up over Negronis in a co-working space. In a word, it’s cheap. And there is no telling how big its market may be.
[Coulter]’s from Connecticut, & she’s very upset about immigrants. I’m willing to lend a sympathetic ear to people from Connecticut when it comes to immigrants — if they happen to own a tribal casino! My feeling is, unless you’re Native American, you should just shut up about this. ‘Cause you ain’t from here. That’s the […]
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Preview Open
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Yesterday’s old comedy was Roman holiday. I’ve planned old comedies, starting with The Lady Eve, for evening viewings this week, to amuse the young miss, who looks upon Audrey Hepburn with the excitement aroused by an especially lovely pet & the melancholy bestowed on old idols. &, too, she enjoyed looking for & telling me about places […]
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Who had lovelier wit than Preston Sturges? Not many people, at any rate. I’m watching The Lady Eve again, so here are some comments. Eve herself live-tweets the first scene of any comic interest, which she views in her make-up mirror, as though a movie. She has a rather contemptuous wit. She also says things […]
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I make my college debut at West Chester College in eastern Pennsylvania on September 19, in what I anticipate will seem less like a gig than a reality show to see if I can say politically correct things while half-plausibly seeming to mean them. In that spirit, I have decided to re-write my stand-up for West Chester […]
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I pick up with the conclusion of my previous piece: Vote for Sandler! Say it with me, folks. Who is the comedian who best shows you the outrageous & vulgar jokes of Aristophanes, who first discovered comedy & made good its attack on politics & science? Sandler! Who shows you the various social classes in […]
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Hello, friends & enemies, this is the third in a series of essays on comedy & conservatism. I started with some reflections on why comedy is the way to understand our situation. This is because our situation is remarkably like that of ancient Athens. Democracy is getting out of hand; & the opposition to democracy is […]
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I expect most people on Ricochet have lives to live, so that the experience of folks who live out fantasies might be of some exotic interest, in the way visiting Europe has been interesting to Americans, every now & then, but not too soon after escaping the dead hand of the past… I expect, further, […]
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If you know comedy, you know Colin Quinn. The Brooklyn native began his career on MTV’s “Remote Control” (alongside Adam Sandler), which led to a gig on “Saturday Night Live” (alongside Adam Sandler). Then, in the early ’00s, he hosted the vastly underrated “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn” on Comedy Central, broadcast nightly after “The Daily Show.”
“Tough Crowd” was set up as yet another cable panel show, but everyone was a comedian, most were friends, and the political viewpoints were all over the place. Guests ranged from the far left to the far right to utterly unclassifiable. One common topic was political correctness since, even then, comics found audiences growing increasingly censorious.
When “Tough Crowd” comics left or right spouted cliched talking points in a joke format (i.e., the “clapper humor” popularized by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), Quinn would heckle the crowd and ridicule the lazy comic. The guest would usually throw it back at the host and the segment would end with laughter. Nevertheless, the message was reinforced that comedy isn’t just another vehicle for social signaling; it’s about making people laugh and sometimes squirm.
Clip from “Unconstitutional” – comedian Colin Quinn’s latest, now streaming on Netflix. In less than two minutes, Quinn paints a hilariously scary picture of what it’s like in the United States of Political Correctness, where people walk on eggshells and fear insulting someone or being “noninclusive.” Preview Open
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For those of you who missed Jerry Seinfeld’s recent comments about the state of comedy, Seinfeld remarked that the politically correct atmosphere on most college campuses dissuades top comedians from even playing them. This is a view he shares with other major stand-up stars, including Chris Rock. Specifically, Seinfeld says that today’s young people throw around words like “racism” for the sake of saying them, without even understanding fully what those concepts mean. He even uses his own daughter as an example.
Tell a joke to a liberal. Between your punchline and his laughter, there is a Progressive Comedy Pause. In this second or two, the liberal will process the joke to make sure he is allowed to laugh.
Is that joke racist? He mentioned Obama, but didn’t make light of him, so to speak. He also mentioned Michelle, but I didn’t notice sexism. Is it dismissive of the LGBTQIA community? Latinos? Muslims? Vegans? Will this joke hurt progressive causes? Will my laughter trivialize oppressed communities? Will I appear intolerant? I think it’s okay if I laugh. Yes, I’ll laugh now to signal my appreciation and to indicate that I’m not a joyless liberal scold.
“Ha ha.”
