Book Review: Patton Oswalt’s Zombie Spaceship Wasteland
Patton Oswalt, a Sterling, Virginia-raised comedian who toiled for years in Washington area comedy clubs, is one of those rare performers whose material translates to any medium without losing its sharpness – including, for the first time, print. Part memoir, part graphic novel, part collection of humor essays, his “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland” is a little […]
Canned Laughter: A History Reconstructed – An Interview with Ben Glenn II, Television Historian
How did canned laughter come about? The concept actually goes back at least five hundred years. History tells us that there were audience “plants” in the crowds at Shakespearean performances in the 16th century. They spurred on audience reactions, including laughter and cheering—as well as jeers. How about more recently? Canned laughter was used to […]
Quigley R. Gomez, The Idiot Savant of Stand-Up: An Oral History
On Wednesday February 3, 2010, Quigley R. Gomez, former stand-up comedian, briefly renown among cult comedy fans (and the subject of two songs by 90s Cleveland-based alt rockers The Bottlerockets), was found dead in his parent’s modest ranch-style house in Hagerstown, Maryland, roughly forty-five miles outside of Washington, D.C. The comedian, not yet to reach […]
Over the Edge: An Oral History
“They were old enough to know better, but too young to care. And now this town is . . . Over the Edge.” – From the trailer In the spring of 1979, a small-budgeted movie with a somewhat corny-sounding name was released in just a handful of theaters in New York and Los Angeles, only to […]
Q&A: Tim and Eric
If you’ve ever been in close proximity to someone explaining what’s funny about a Monty Python skit, or doing their best to reenact a favorite scene from a Marx Brothers movie, or pontificating on the comedic genius of the Firesign Theatre, you know just how insufferable it can be. Absurdist comedy—any comedy, really—does not translate […]
Q&A: Steve Cohen, “The Millionaires’ Magician”
Since 1999, magician Steve Cohen, aka “The Millionaires’ Magician,” has been performing his sold-out show every weekend to small audiences at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. A master at prestidigitation—meaning “sleight-of-hand,” or, literally “quick fingers” in French—Cohen has made a career (and a very good one, at that) entertaining with his “Chamber Magic” […]
Q&A: Is Blues Music on the Verge of Extinction?
In the spring of 2008, two blues producers, Roger Stolle and Jeff Konkel, piled into a Dodge conversion van and drove through the Delta region of northwestern Mississippi, capturing an art form very nearly on the brink of extinction: the pre-war (World War II, that is) style of country blues originally made famous by—among others—Charlie […]
A Spoonful of Mojo to Go: A Primer on Early Blues
Yarmulkes on Goyim
Less is Best, Mr. Nabokov
In April I submitted Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “Torpid Smoke” to seven online manuscript evaluation services. Other than changing the title to “Russian Smoke” and Nabokov’s name to Jonathan Shade, I left the piece unaltered. My online editors had some praise for the story, but also some suggestions on how to improve it. They each […]
