Results tagged “laugh”

This week there's some really great free shows going down at 8p at the Comedy Central stage, so you've really got no excuse to not get out there. Around town, you can also shake off the candy withdrawals and expensive bar tab by keeping it cheap at the usual haunts: UCB, iO West, Westside Comedy. If you've got a little more coin in your pocket, there's a couple of great shows going down at Largo - particularly The League fellas on Wednesday. If you think I missed something or want to let me know about something you're going to see, email Farley here. Happy November everyone.

Stand up abounds this week in the comedy world, but there's also some great opportunities to check back in with the improv roots you know you have. Beer Shark Mice are only around for one more show (that we know of), TNT and Crashbar are doing their usual great stuff.

Well, comedy never sleeps so why should you? After last week's stand up show at Hollywood Forever, brace yourselves for another rousing week of rambunctious laughter at the ends of some of LAs best and brightest. There's Mark Curry, Patton Oswalt, Tig Notaro. There's cagematches and sketch shows and everything under the sun, particularly at Largo and the Improv. You know the drill: hit me up if you want your show listed.

Guys, this Wednesday is insane for comedy. From Mortified to Old Town to the Chelsea Lately show... and we're not even including the great sketch shows going on over at UCB, include the Apple Sisters. Well, no matter what day of the week you get out to peep some comedy, let this calendar be your guide to the funniest that LA has to offer this week.

Well, LAst Laugh is back with the weekly dish on comedy in and around LA. Pretty straightforward stuff this week, with a ton of sketch and stand up covering the land, with a slight chance of great improv too. Probably most notable is all of the great female stand ups out and about this week, from Mary Lynn to Sarah Silverman on down. Don't for get to holler at cha boy if you're interested in getting listed, comedy snobs.

Lately, at iO West on Tuesday nights, a strange thing has been happening: they’ve been stacking the deck. With Monday nights as their cream-of-the-crop Armando shows and Saturdays reserved for Beer Shark Mice or some other formidable team, it would be entirely possible for iO to experience a bit of the mid-week improv doldrums. But instead, with the last three Harold Competition champion teams running back-to-back-to-back, Tuesdays at iO are becoming a great go-to for improv in Los Angeles.

You know Jim Breuer, if not by name then at least by his perpetually stoned-looking mug or his outlandish Saturday Night Live characters, most notably Goat Boy. This is the Jim Breuer you recognize, from Half-Baked and Chappelle’s Show and even Clerks. But a lot of people don’t know that Breuer also has a long love affair with stand up, dating back many years and several TV specials. And those specials, while rarely game-changing, have been good, sometimes great; the AC/DC hokey pokey bit is pretty magical. Unfortunately, Breuer’s new special Let’s Clear the Air lacks all of the magic and most of the funny that you could previously expect from the man you thought you knew.

There's a ton of great stuff this week and upcoming down in Irvine, which sort of sucks for anyone who doesn't love traffic. But not to worry, there's so many solid weekly shows around town that you might be neglecting, like Jay Leno or The Smokes or Local 132. Get out, or get AT me if you want to be considered for a hype session from yours truly.

There's so much great 'found' stuff going on this week, from the Found Footage competition courtesy of Cinefamily to the Found Magazine show at Largo. Add in some Kevin Nealon and some great sketch, and this week is really starting to look better than some of the decisions you made last weekend. Get AT ME if you want your ish hyped.

A lot of what is often missing from sketch shows, as opposed to improv, is that organic moment of discovery. With lines, there’s security and safety... which explains why half the hosts of Saturday Night Live manage to make it through without looking like COMPLETE douches. If you want the dangerous side of scripted live comedy, you’re really going to have to look towards UCB’s show Sketch Cram, where they write and perform the show in only 12 hours. But that’s once a month and is wholly comprised of veteran writers and improvisors. Try doing a live show where you get your lines two hours before the lights go up, your teleprompters are only 50% reliable, and you’ve got a host performer for the evening who may not have ever done a sketch show in their life. And it has to be good. Sweating bullets yet? Good. Welcome to Fries On The Side.

There's lots of outside-the-mainstream greatness going on this week, with Patton Oswalt and Bobcat Goldthwait both doing Cinefamily stuff, Fries On The Side closing out their great season up in North Hollywood, and the not to be missed Celebrity Autobiography show at Largo. Get out, laugh it up, and let Farley know what else is on the horizon.

With the wrap up of the LA Improv Festival at iO West, you'd think that things would be all quiet on the comedy front this week. But thankfully that's just not the case, with the opening of this year's Secret Policeman's Ball / Film Festival showing us some of the great classics in UK comedy. There's also a ton of good improv and sketch all over town, including the start of Ultimate X-ecution and Comedy Death Ray having Bob Odenkirk. Get out, get laffy. As per usual, if you want to see yourself or someone you love on this list, give Farley a holler.

Following the fanfare of a star-studded Thursday red carpet opening, the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club is officially here. And while the Lovitz club likes to throw around the idea that Los Angeles hasn’t had a new comedy club in 30 years, that PR spin really discounts the amount of stand up that goes on at the less-than-5-year-old UCB, or the revamped and reopened Downtown Comedy Club. But be that as it may, it certainly is exciting to see new comedy come out of the woodwork, when places all around us are closing up shop.

Improv, along with sketch and stand up, comprises the three main pillars of comedy. Yet most people who go to comedy shows see stand up first, sketch second, and improv a distant third. Indeed, not a single Harold Night goes by at UCB without someone raising their hand at the question ‘who’s never seen improv before’. So, for those of you still living under joke rocks (or those hide-a-key rocks...how funny are THOSE?!), next week is your chance.

It seems that in the past month, you can't throw a joke book without hitting Garfunkel & Oates at some show around town. Not that you'd want to; these lovely ladies are quickly mastering the craft of beautiful songs with enough comedic edge to keep you in your seats. Both Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci are well known faces on television and film, but their most recent musical endeavors have made them fan favorites around the Los Angeles alternative comedy scene, as well as online, where their single-take 'couch videos' are blowing up all over YouTube. LAist was fortunate enough to catch up with the ladies in the middle of their whirlwind month of performing, recording, and making new music videos for the fans. And let's not forget their UCB show on Wednesday!

There's a lot of good stuff around town, as the comedy world gears up for next week's LA Improv Festival at iO West. Garfunkel and Oates are at UCB, Jo Koy is out and about, and Dave Attell is headlining with some hardcore hilarious folks. Not to mention Patton and his friends, and Maria Bamford at The Improv. It's stand up time!

Ah, Dane Cook. Regarded by some as the aggressive and rugged face of fun, energetic comedy. Sort of the anti-Mitch Hedberg. For others, Dane is a posterboy for an altogether different type of comic: the plagiarizer, the man without a punchline. Personally, I have long held that Dane Cook is a performer and not a stand up comedian, in the way that Bob Villa was a TV show host and not a licensed contractor. For the better part of a decade, you couldn’t be handed a transcript of a Dane Cook set, read it, and think it was funny. There just weren’t any JOKES in the conventional sense, just a lot of stage direction and exclamation points where the punchlines should be.

As podcasts go, more often than not there are the kings of the ring, and everyone else is sitting on the sidelines. It’s sort of like the presidency: technically anyone can run for office, but historically old white dudes have passed the torch from one wrinkly hand to another. But every once in a while, there are wonderful examples of podcasts, and presidents, rising from the ground up to really do something spectacular. Barack Obama is one of these. The SuperEgo podcast is another.

The Smokes, 7p UCB. These improv veterans do two different long-form improv forms every single week, and every time they are fucking hilarious. An absolute can’t-miss for anyone seriously interested in long form improvisation. | You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, 8p Comedy Central Stage. Based on excerpts from the upcoming book of the same name, Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn tell tales of what it takes to be married. Apparently, it’s a lot.

Hello, web readers. If you’ve managed to find this small bit of writing out there in the vast internet, then there’s a good chance you’ve also heard of YouTube. That is, unless you’re my grandmother, whom I send links to and she opens without questioning where she is being taken to, and couldn’t get to google if you spotted her the ‘-oogle.com’. And since you’re familiar with YouTube, you undoubtedly know the phrase ‘YouTube sensation’, as a label to anyone who has managed to make a name for themselves through their posted videos. From Lisa Nova to LonelyGirl15, BaratsAndBereta to Chocolate Rain, there’s no shortage of people who’ve managed to turn video views into financial viability. Welcome to the club, Bo Burnham.

Comedian Jo Koy has become an absolute staple in the mainstream stand up comedy circuit over the past five years. Fans really seem to appreciate Jo’s honesty and enthusiasm on stage; he’s like Dane Cook after you give him a horse tranquilizer and a joke book to calm him down. After touring with Carlos Mencia (for better or worse) on his Punisher Tour, Koy even got listed in Daily Variety as a top 10 comic to watch. He'll be at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach at the end of the month, and now he’s got a Comedy Central DVD to back it all up.

Man, this is like the week of two-person shows. Between the amazing Garfunkel and Oates, Frankenmatt, Triple S, and Teenager of the Year, the stages in and around LA just boiling over with great stuff this week. And we're not even talking about the mind-blowing two man improv happening at UCB cagematch on Wednesday nights at 11p. They're called Kill Screen, and Ben Schwartz and Chad Carter will murder you in your sweet little hearts with laughter.

If you live in Los Angeles and you like to see cheap comedy, more than likely you’re spending your time and money in the ‘alternative comedy’ scene, for better or worse. Now, I’ll be the first to promote the benefits of lesser known comedians in more intimate venues, but every once in a while it’s nice to take a step back towards more mainstream comedy, just to retest the waters and see if you really still find the same things funny. Enter Adam Ferrara. As a stand up comic, Ferrara has been around for years, honing his craft on stage in front of larger and larger audiences and, as of late, working on the the FX show Rescue Me. On June 12th, Ferrara will be taking a slice of airtime on Comedy Central to show his new stand up special, Funny As Hell.

There's a few big events going on this week, from the LA Comedy Festival continuing over at Acme on La Brea, to the start of the Harold Competition at iO West. There's a bunch of good sketch this week at Acme and UCB, and some solid stand up around town. Not to mention Aziz. Always Aziz. If you want your stuff hyped, hit me up here.

While LAist certainly doesn’t condone all you able-bodied folks out there mooching off the government in this age of budget shortfalls, we’re not one to lay down the law when it comes to having a little fun, either. And apparently we’re not alone. The Laugh Factory in Hollywood and Long Beach have recently begun to offer free shows for those of us who can prove that we’re unemployed. Sounds like fun to us.

This week is a great one for comedy, as a lot of heavy hitters are performing all over town. the Comedy Central Stage is getting a lot of love, as is Largo with back to back nights featuring Aziz Ansari and Sarah Silverman. Beer Shark Mice is back at iO, and Harold Night tonight at UCB promises great things. I will too, if you send me a link to the show's you're interested in and want to hype. Hit me up.

MONDAY 4/06

You will be doing yourself a very large disservice if you don't get your ass over to Largo tonight to check out the Reno 911! Benefit Show, to raise money for Planting Peace, a charity that works to help children in impoverished nations. Every member of the show, including Tom Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio and Ian Roberts, will be sharing stage time with a roll call list of the greatest class clowns you'd kill to have in homeroom. Rob Heubel and Paul Scheer from MTV's Human Giant, Andy Daly (the principal on Eastbound and Down), Nick Kroll, Matt Besser and Matt Walsh (founders of Upright Citizens Brigade theatre) Nick Swardson, and even Rainn Wilson, to NAME JUST A FEW.

Largo at the Coronet, on La Cienega, is absolutely killing it this week. The Reno 911! benefit show is an absolute must, and CDR at UCB should be it's usual long-as-hell-but-also-gut-busting self. Naked Babies on Thursday should prove to be a great improv show from a lot of top names, and The Improv has the Sklars on Saturday. Hot DAMN folks. This recession can go to hell.

When deciding to take on a career in the arts, the one thing that will separate you from a herd of like-minded cattle is ‘finding your voice’. This, simply, means getting comfortable with yourself, your medium, and your material. Once you reach that easygoing level, you can maneuver within it to truly discover the reasons you were drawn towards your creative craft in the first place.