With two Halloween events, three filthy shows and three comedy contests, October humor is shaping up to be scary, sexy and heavily competitive. After a summer of record-breaking comedy festivals, you can fall into the autumnal weather with some bone-chilling monologues of creepy copulation with Bob Saget and Competitive Erotic…
Because of chance employment as a waitress at Comedy Works, Crystal Allen found herself surrounded by comedians — and her husband, Ben Roy, even became one. An aspiring photographer, Allen used this opportunity to start capturing on film not just aspiring Denver performers, but some of the most accomplished standup…
Over the weekend both Louis C.K. and Bill Maher dropped some wisdom about how the Internet is draining us of empathy and encouraging a consequence-free environment of cruelty and debasement. After spending the last two weeks whining about homophobic roasts and the irony of “clean comedy”, it feels good to…
The concept is simple: Adapt Ken Kesey’s novel about a fascist mental ward, and make half the patients deaf. The affect, though, is much more complex and dynamic. The Rocky Mountain Deaf Theatre’s co-director, Nicki Runge, says she’s always felt that “the way the patients were treated in One Flew…
Known as a blitz-eyed giggler from Half Baked, or the animal-hybrid, nostalgia talk-show host Goat Boy from Saturday Night Live, Jim Breuer has been subtly shifting his comedy content over the last five years, relating stories of domestic life and spiritual yearning through his autobiography and documentary. While avoiding any…
A wild-mannered legend of comedy history, Jon Lovitz has created a mid-tempo career with roles on The Simpsons and in movies like Casino Jack and Woody Allen’s Small Time Crooks since his unforgettable years as a pathological liar and Jewish Santa on Saturday Night Live. Rarely a leading man and…
If 1967 was the summer of love, then 2013 was definitely the summer of laughter — at least in Denver. After absorbing three comedy festivals in four weeks, there must have been a lot of chuckle-trimmed abs that got another workout last night. Because closing out this season of the…
Often overlooked for its bigger, brasher cousin, East Colfax Avenue, the quaint little strip of 13th Avenue between Downing and Sherman streets is one of the few remaining arteries of pedestrian shopping, historic buildings and authentic culture in the Denver area. Its lack of recognition may actually be the secret…
On Sepember 19 Denver crowds will unload a serious amount of cash on an event titled “The Clean Guys Comedy,” which features such stand-up legends as Jamie Kennedy (Scream), Uncle Joey from Full House, and some other folks you vaguely remember from somewhere. The comics themselves aren’t what’s selling this…
No, Dave Chappelle did not get sick of his “Rick James, bitch!”-shouting fans and disappear into Morocco. The Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival, scheduled for tonight at Fiddler’s Green, has been postponed due to the massive flooding and rainfall that Denver and other cities have endured over the last few…
Every band is, to some degree, essentially a mask of theatrics in which you play a character that is not really yourself. But for Denver’s Euro-trash, synth-dance duo, Total Ghost, the act is one hundred percent comedic lies. Chön and Biktor, a pair of rude, vain, indulgent citizens of Berlin…
Homophobia in popular culture began to fade in the ’70s, and for the most part was dead and gone by the ’90s. With music, it began with disco and was stomped to death by riot grrrl. In film it was exposed with Boys in the Band, and deemed passé with…
While last week’s High Plains Comedy Festival was a tightly run ship that set sail to introduce the world to the Denver comedy scene, this weekend’s Too Much Funstival was a sloppy drunken kiss on the lips to this city’s funny fans, an incredibly loose bacchanal of free food, booze,…
A week into his comeback tour, Dave Chappelle either had a “meltdown,” was “booed off the stage,” or was treated like a black-face minstrel by a crowd of “fucking animals” last Thursday in Hartford, Connecticut. The incident has made for a bloggery buffet of commentary on race, comedy and corporate…
Mike Birbiglia is not interested in your laughter. Or at least, that’s not all he’s interested in. While most comedians shy away from long-form jokes — for fear of not getting any laughs and being stuck with a sinking ship for ten minutes — Birbiglia is all about the long-term…
While Jon Stewart was away directing his first film in the Middle East, CNN took the opportunity to revamp Crossfire. One of the first politically polarizing talk shows on the first cable news network, Crossfire had a 22-year run before it was shut down in 2004, after Stewart called the…
Like an infant growing into an Olympian athlete overnight, this weekend the Denver comedy scene went from an impressive-but-small collection of local talent to a nationally recognized force with its own annual rendezvous. The High Plains Comedy Festival was more than just a killer weekend of ab-crunching hilarity; the heavily…
This weekend Denver’s funny business will mark a significant milestone with the High Plains Comedy Festival. While the scene has put together a handful of notable comedy fests over the years with Laugh Track and the Fine Gentleman’s Club’s Too Much Funstival, High Plains will be the first nationally recognized…
The next four weeks in Denver will see a tsunami of comedy events. There are four killer standups at Comedy Works (Craig Ferguson, Mike Birbiglia, Marc Maron, Kevin Nealon), two comedy festivals (High Plains, Funstival) and the Oddball Comedy Tour (Dave Chapelle, Flight of the Conchords). It’s raining microphones in…
If you believe that podcasting saved comedy, then Marc Maron is a messiah of humor. After enduring divorces, a flaccid comedy career and losing his job on Air America, in 2009 Maron launched the WTF podcast, recorded in the same garage he often contemplated killing himself in. Today WTF is…
The members of the Fine Gentleman’s Club make no secret about how much they love getting high. Over the last year, some of us at Westword have had a lot of fun smoking up with comedians and musicians and asking them oddball questions that have nothing to do with anything…
While previous summers have given comedy fans a handful of semi-decent shows to look forward to, this August is so packed with top-shelf talent that it’s difficult to limit a list of the highlights to just ten shows. In the month ahead we have two female comedy duos, two local…
