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Jennie The Lloyd
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Apr 12, 2024 4:39 pm
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LACEE RAINS AND RIK CLEMENT PHOTOS
Tulsa comics Lacee Rains and Thunderwof, and Butterslutz the Sex-Ed Clown
Lacee Rains Comedy Special: “Face/On” LowDown April 5, 2024
Tulsan Lacee Rains is a former slam poet turned self-described clown — ”the president of idiotville!!!!!” as her Threads profile puts it. In “Face/On,” her first comedy special, filmed live at LowDown, she took a sold-out audience on a fascinating journey that proves she is also a triumphant comedian.
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K Hank Jost
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Apr 1, 2024 11:10 am
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The Comedy Cellar West Village NYC 3/29/24
Comedy is always a gamble. And that’s part of the thrill, no doubt. The threat of a bomb looms over every set, and jokes that land are miracles. The ones that really kill, the laughter is religious in its ecstasy.
It was my brother’s last night in the City, we’d yet to do anything big and touristy or standard only-in-NYC. Not monuments, museums, or anything like that. I just showed him the City as I live in it. So it was only right that we did at least one thing that everyone who comes into town ought to do. We linked up with some friends and stood in the windy cold, waiting to be let in to the legendary Comedy Cellar.
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Synclaire Cruel
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Mar 4, 2024 8:51 pm
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Sheryl Underwood Raleigh Improv Raleigh, N.C. March 2, 2024
Laughter, cheers, and applause boomed from the Raleigh Improv Saturday night as Sheryl Underwood and quick-witted comedians stole the stage. Fans filled the comedy club located in the Parkside Town Commons shopping center in Cary, North Carolina, eager to see the storytellers, commentators, and critics, doused in humor.
A jubilant man half-riding a bicycle called to me, “Why did the scarecrow outspend his Christmas bonus?” After I replied with the obligatory, “Why?” he said smugly, “He was outstanding in the field!” We both cackled as he rode away. The streets gave me a dap and a snug embrace as I walked from the 19th Street BART station and felt the electric Friday night energy in downtown Oakland.
I was en route to “HellaSecret Speakeasy Comedy & Cocktail Night” by the Hella Funny comedy collective. The “hella secret” location was a swanky bar with a bright pink neon sign, Fluid510. As I’d bought my ticket in advance, when I was greeted at the door by comedian and co-producer of the event, Bryant Hicks, he needed only my last name for admission.
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Robin Lapid
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Feb 16, 2024 11:19 am
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The "Mortified" Valentines-themed show at the New Parish in Oakland.
Mortified’s “Doomed Valentines” Show The New Parish Oakland Feb. 10, 2024
Ah, the foolishness of youth. Is the ability to laugh at your own adolescent follies evidence of your own emotional evolution and present magnanimity? Or is it just an excuse to be a ham and include everyone and anyone — strangers, partners, and friends — in on the joke?
Why not both?
Teen angst is big business these days. Just ask the makers of the long-running “Mortified” show. Started in 2002 as a project among friends to share excerpts from their teenage diaries on stage for the amusement of all, it’s grown into a national live show, a Netflix series, podcasts, books, storytelling workshops, and online merch. You never know — that high school crush you swooned over in your diary may have audiences rolling in the aisles.
Comedy is an art form I revere with profound admiration. Maybe it’s because I can’t tell a joke to save my life, butchering even a quippy grade school knock-knock. But comedians, people who understand timing and delivery and whatever magic it is that makes a crowd laugh, possess not only the skill to (potentially) kill, but the courage to get in front of an audience in an effort to tickle folks’ chuckle bone. That bravery is inspiring. I mean, if you’re balls-out enough to get onstage and try to get people to laugh along with you, you’ve already succeeded. The trio of aspiring young L.A.-based yuksters at Drake’s Dealership — Stoney McBlaze and his fellow travelers Ray Lau and Sam Skolnik — brought it with balls of brass.
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Madeline Connors
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Jan 31, 2024 11:49 am
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CRIMEWAVE: ANINDIESLEAZEPARTY Los Angeles Jan. 25, 2024
The indie sleaze event was advertised as a comedy show/birthday party; it took place in a secluded warehouse surrounded by industrial buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. In recent months, there’s been a self-conscious revival, by coastal twenty- and thirtysomethings, of the retroactively dubbed indie sleaze aesthetic, nostalgia for the runoff of aughts pop culture as marked by fixie bikes and sideswept bangs, mild disaffection and upward social mobility, the Strokes and the Patriot Act. Donald Trump was still just a brassy reality TV star, and our favorite bands were white, male, and depressed before we made them self-conscious about it. Things were a little more hopeful. The impulse to return to this era — especially for the white and wealthy who giddily foster a cognitive dissonance about the grim actualities of the Bush administration and Iraq War — is oddly earnest and reassuringly tidy.
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Jamil Ragland
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Jan 9, 2024 10:45 am
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Darren Rivera.
Comedy Night Featuring Jacob Williams City Steam Brewery Hartford Jan. 5, 2024
Comedy is one of those skills that everyone thinks they can do professionally because they’ve been funny at some point in their life. But comedy is more than just being funny. Sure, a professional can tell a funny story and make everyone laugh the first time. But can you make the same story funny twice? Or three times?
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Sarah Bass
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Dec 12, 2023 11:46 am
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Host Clara Bijl kills the stage.
Amber Lounge Comedy 1517 Franklin St. Oakland Weekly Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
We’ve all been at a comedy show where a heckler or two drastically alters the mood of the room, does their (often intoxicated) best to derail the vibes and make things all about themselves. Because they are the star of the show, no? They paid for their seat, dammit!
Well, at the first installment of the now weekly Amber Lounge Comedy in Oakland’s downtown, entry was free.99, the seats were empty, the bar was on the floor. There seemed to be few rules — and plenty of room for one audience member to try to steal the show.
Final battle: Claire Siemietkowski and Kevin Mulharin square off.
Roasted Comedy Battle Grove 34 31 – 83 34th St. Queens, NY Dec. 6, 2023
On Wednesday, all the way out in Queens, at the self-proclaimed eighth best comedy club in the city, 14 comedians gathered for the singular purpose of finding out who’s best at making everyone else feel like shit. Let this be content warning enough.
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Sasha Patkin
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Nov 20, 2023 10:13 am
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Sasha Patkin Photo
Adrian Todd Zuniga hosting Boston's 17th Literary Death Match.
Literary Death Match, The Brattle Theater 40 Brattle St. Cambridge, Mass.
When I think of a literary reading, I think of cardigan sweaters, stuffy rooms, and restrained academic earnestness. When I think of a death match, I think of an all-out, no holds barred, brutal and unholy spectacle.
So if I hear of something called a “Literary Death Match,” there’s a 100 percent chance I’ll attend.
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Jamil Ragland
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Oct 25, 2023 1:46 pm
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Nick Caito Photo
Sea Tea Improv team in action.
Sea Tea Improv’s Family Show Sea Tea Comedy Theater Hartford Oct. 22
I had to think fast — and not insult the kindergartener in the audience.
I was in the audience myself at the latest weekly family-friendly performance by Hartford’s Sea Tea troupe. Since the shows rely on audience participation, that meant I was part of the show. I had to come up with a name for a scenario involving an unfolding car chase. And I had to keep it PG.
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Madeline Connors
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Oct 10, 2023 11:45 am
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Rauwerda on ... instagram!
DEPTHSOFWIKIPEDIA Annie Rauwerda The Regent Theater Los Angeles, Oct. 5, 2023
I like the Instagram account Depths of Wikipedia. It’s a curation of the best the internet has to offer: funny, interesting, poetic, and often strangely profound. The account is a portal to the online margins, where the peculiar and arbitrary meet — for example, look no further than a Wikipedia list of sexually active popes. I’m not alone in my admiration. The account, curated by Annie Rauwerda, has earned 1.2 million followers. She has built a tiny empire of baffling digital detritus.
However, Instagram accounts are not meant to be experienced in real life. They exist on our phones for a reason. They’re certainly not comedy shows, despite Annie Rauwerda’s valiant effort to pass off a meandering PowerPoint as one big meta-joke at the L.A. stop of her touring showDepths of Wikipedia Live at the Regent on Oct. 5.
