TVSquad

I watched this stand-up performance by comic Steve Mazan the other night on The Late Show. I thought he was very funny and he went over well with the crowd. Only today did I realize he has inoperable cancer and his life's dream was to appear on the show.

He's making a documentary of his quest, Dying To Do Letterman. I can't imagine the emotions that were going through him as he did his set.

Nick posted a review of Patton Oswalt's latest special, My Weakness Is Strong. This clip below is from an earlier special, and I'm posting it here not just because I think he's a very funny guy but also because he talks about a classic TV commercial from the late 70s/early 80s. Wish I could find the original ad online but I can't.

(By the way, this clip is UNSFW - Unbelievably Not Safe For Work).

Back in February, Patton Oswalt headed to DC to record his new comedy special, My Weakness Is Strong. It's set to air on Comedy Central on Sunday night (that's the 23rd, you lazy bum), with the CD/DVD coming out two days later. If you can't hang on that long, just hop on iTunes, where his album is already rapidly climbing up the charts, currently sitting at #3 and making the likes of Reba McEntire weep Internet-tears.

I was lucky enough to be in attendance when Oswalt taped his special, and I was not disappointed. Since I returned home that evening so many months ago, I have been thinking about the DVD, quietly praying and hoping that the cameras did not catch me wiping tears from my eyes or awkwardly leaning too close to the person sitting next to me as I laughed. Excuse me, I have a surly image to maintain.

Bill Scheft has been writing for David Letterman for years (as well as being a novelist), and in the video below, he gives a behind the scenes look at what it's like to write for the show, including how much input Letterman has, what he's looking for, and what jokes you shouldn't do. I wonder who wrote the Sarah Palin joke? (You can see Scheft most nights standing on the stage off to the right.)

[via TV Tattle]

Well, this is odd. Jerry Seinfeld has filmed a commercial for Australia's Great Building Society. It shows him setting up a mic, amp, and stool/pitcher of water on the street and doing standup (the ads were actually filmed in a small New York town and not actually Australia.) He's going to do a series of media spots like this for the next couple of years. I guess he really loves Australia and/or building societies.

I think he should go on tour this way in America, just set up standup routines like this on various streets around the country without notice. Wouldn't that be great?

[via TV Tattle]

Even if we've gone way beyond life on the island - with the plots literally weaving through space, time, and place - there was surely a moment when the characters on Lost got tired of swimming and putt-putt. Amid destruction and death, even the survivors of Oceanic 815 surely needed a laugh now and then, which gave Sayid - who apparently moonlights as a stand-up comic when not being awesome with guns and roundhouse kicks - the chance to demonstrate his comic chops for his new friends.

Bill Hicks was only 32 years old when he died of cancer in 1994. If you've never heard of him, or heard of him but didn't get a chance to see any of his work, tune into The Late Show with David Letterman this Friday night.

One of Letterman's guests will be Hicks' mom (the show was taped earlier this week). She'll be there to mark the 15th anniversary of Hicks' death. Now, this may seem like an odd thing for a talk show to do, have the mom of a deceased comic on, but there's special meaning behind this appearance. Just five months before his death, Hicks appeared on The Late Show and did a scathing stand-up routine (the kind he usually did) which attacked everything from religion to politics. Unfortunately, it was too hot for the show and the performance was never shown, and this really hurt Hicks. On Friday, Letterman is finally going to show the performance.

Chris Rock is returning to HBO! The network announced today at TCA that the comedian would premiere his fifth stand-up special this fall. The special will feature footage from three locations: South Africa's Carnival City Casino, New York's Apollo Theater, and the Carling Apollo Hammersmith in London. Of the return to HBO, Chris Rock says, "I wanted to do that type of stand-up special that I've never seen before, and the only place that I could see doing that is at HBO. I love HBO because they want to take chances."

Also of note is that Rock set the Guinness World Record on the No Apologies Tour by playing to crowds of 15,900 at Greenwich's O2 venue. That's the largest audience for stand-up comedy performance in British history.

I'm psyched that Chris Rock will be returning to HBO. He's on the few comedians whose performance I can watch from beginning to end and not get bored. Ever.

Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger will debut on Saturday, September 27th at 9:00 p.m. ET / PT on HBO.

Wow. I just got in from a very, very late flight from Denver, and the early-morning newscasts hit me with this wallop: my favorite comedian, George Carlin, passed away last night. On Sunday, he admitted himself into a local Santa Monica hospital, complaining of chest pains, and ended up dying that evening of heart failure. He was 71.

Carlin, of course, is most famous for the 1970s comedy routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV." It was a bit which not only got radio stations that played it in trouble with the FCC, leading to landmark First Amendment and decency rulings by the Supreme Court, but he was also arrested in Milwaukee on indecency charges after doing the routine on stage there.

(S05E12) I can't help myself, I just need to blurt out tonight's winner: Doug Benson!

You almost thought I posted a pre-jump spoiler, didn't you? Admit it, you were sharpening your commenter fingers just ready to eviscerate me for ruining the show!

Well, I did no such thing. The only person who is ruining this show for you people is Bill Bellamy, and that's the way it's gonna stay!

Let's get on with the review...

(S05E10) In a lot of ways, writing my reviews of LCS each week has been very easy. By hating the mindless format, the useless judges, the stupid challenges, the lousy editing, and the dearth of stand-up comedy, I was able to construct a pretty flawless template for each of my reviews: start with a thousand words or so about why one of the things I hated was so horrible, then review the comedy while commenting on how little of it there was, and finish up with a look at what was going to be terrible next week. Hate, apparently, fuels productivity; I could bang out two thousand words an episode like I was a goth kid writing about popular jocks on my blog.

Tonight is different, though. I can't do it. I'm at a loss for words. I... actually liked an episode of Last Comic Standing!

Previously I mentioned a new Web series for Comedy Central's Motherload site called "Crash Course in Comedy." Well, the first couple lessons from comedian Ted Alexandro are up with more to follow over the next month.

These new webisodes are somewhat different than other offerings on Motherload, as amateur comedians can actually upload their own performances to demonstrate what they've learned from the online instructions. In theory, I suppose it's an interesting idea, but the segments suffer from a kind of schizophrenia by trying to be both funny and informative at the same time. I'm not a comedian, but I think most established comedians would tell you that stand-up comedy, or any kind of comedy, isn't something that can be taught. One either has a knack for it, or they don't, and no amount of lessons are going to turn you into Steve Martin anymore than piano sheet music will turn you into Beethoven. The only thing that can turn you into Beethoven is a "spirit meld" orchestrated by a mystical wizard; I think everyone knows that.

Check out one of the first lessons after the jump.

The New York Post is reporting that Bravo is editing all of comedian Kathy Griffin's standup specials, because she makes several jokes about Anna Nicole Smith on them.

I actually thought of this when Anna Nicole died, how Kathy Griffin used to joke about Anna Nicole's reality show (and the fact that it would cause Daniel to go into rehab - ouch), how Anna Nicole acted, how she seemed when both of them were guests on The Hollywood Squares. It must be odd when a major part of your act actually dies, tragically and young, and you can't use that material anymore. I'm sure some comedians would still do it, but Griffin doesn't want to because she's genuinely sad about what happened.

Griffin just finished a new special for Bravo titled Everyone Can Suck It.

[via TV Tattle]

I think I've mentioned here before that I'm a big fan of Demetri Martin. Some people don't seem to like him for some reason (not sure why, he's funny and doesn't have any annoying qualities). It's probably just a knee-jerk reaction, to appear hip to dislike someone who has suddenly become hip. But I have no scientific data to back up this claim.

Martin talks to The Onion about how he got started in comedy, what it was like to be an intern on The Daily Show and then an on-air correspondent, how hard standup can be, and how comedy has changed since he started (since he started? What, seven or eight years ago?)

He also updates fans on the status of not one but two pilots he wrote for NBC. Hint: the news is not good. Or maybe it's very good, depending on what you want to see from Martin. He has a new CD out, These Are Jokes, and will film a special for Comedy Central.

If you missed Michael Richards' appearance on Letterman's show last night after his racist tirade at a comedy club in West Hollywood, CBS' Late Show Web site has the video, which you can see here.

Setting aside Richards' racial slurs aside for a moment, watching the video of his onstage meltdown made me think of the kind of heated exchanges people get into where one becomes so enraged they reach deep into their reserves for the ultimate atomic bomb of an insult, the one word or phrase they can say that will completely flatten the person who is attacking them, and in Richard's case his racist comments . During his appearance on Letterman's show, Richards acknowledged that he lost his temper, and it seems fairly obvious to me that whatever self-censoring mechanism he had was overrode by his need to take down the people who were heckling him.