Farley Elliott

Get it figured out, kid. Photo courtesy Ca-los via LAist Flickr. 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....

iO West in Hollywood. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons. 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,...

Photo courtesy the Actors' Gang. For over twenty years, when Culver City-based theatre collective The Actors’ Gang has spoken, Los Angeles theatergoers have listened, and with good reason. The shows that are produced in the tiny Ivy Substation are often on par or well above the other high-gloss production shows you can pay twice as much money for around town. Not that their works are expansive (or expensive) shows with all sorts of modern...

What a joke, indeed. A sad, sad joke. Photo courtesy rios-enriquez via Flickr. Stand up is the biggest draw this week, but as always improv is making a strong stand out at Westside and of course at UCB and iO West. In fact, Sentimental Lady and Flap Jackson are going to be breaking out of the Harold and into some new forms on Sunday evening at UCB, so that's worth a look too. Either...

Jim Breuer. Photo via ModestProposal. 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...

You're right, this shitty graffiti is not the government. Photo courtesy Lord Jim via LAist Flickr. 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...

Meow mix, bitches. Photo courtesy Lucyrk via LAist Flickr. This week's Last Laugh is a good mix of stand up, sketch, and improv. There's a couple not-very-often shows you should get involved with, as well as some stuff that just sounds great or is always worth it, like Benson Interruption. California is giving out IOUs because we can't pay our bills, but that shouldn't stop you from maxing out your credit cards with some...

Jason Nash as The Shaman. Photo courtesy The Shaman. In general, a web series can be a hard thing to get into, even though its short, any time / anywhere format would seem conducive to today’s youth-driven media market. Maybe there’s something inherently sketchy about the sustainability of online sketch comedy, like the media moguls who control television are just finding new, more subversive ways to lure us in. Or, maybe a lot of...

What could have been. Photo courtesy IFC Films. There are plenty of movies out there that pay homage to their forefather films, those exceptionally well made pieces that stand the test of time and help to define a genre. However, this is perhaps seen nowhere more than in horror film vein, where hat-tips to the Evil Deads, the Braindeads, and even the Shaun of the Deads are practically mandatory. But these exist for a...

The image in question: Saigon Execution, by Eddie Adams. Most of the iconic images we see - the ones that define an era or change a social tide - come without much of a footnote at all. Unless it’s in your nature or your profession, there’s a good chance that Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz are about as deep as you’re willing to wade into the photo pool. But there’s also a good chance...