If you want to join the ranks of the dozen or so local comics who have gone on to national recognition, then Comedy Works New Faces Competition is the perfect place to start. “A lot of comics use it each year to see where they are as comedians, judging by…
When a single spotlight illuminated the bottle of Black Grouse whiskey resting on a bar stool center-stage, the 2,800 people in the audience at the Temple Buell Theatre rose to their feet, their deafening applause seemingly cheering the bottle of booze itself until Southern sass-man Ron White casually materialized out…
Comedy writing pioneer Bruce Vilanch is bursting with gayness. One of the first openly gay comedians, he’s known for his continuing role on Hollywood Squares and as a head writer for the Academy Awards show, as well as writing jokes for Bette Midler, Elizabeth Taylor, The Brady Bunch, Donnie and…
You probably remember him as the “grandpa’s old cough medicine,” urine-drinking cop from Dumb & Dumber, or the serial killer hitchhiker spouting “seven chipmunks twirlin’ on a branch, eatin’ lots of sunflowers on my uncle’s ranch” in There’s Something About Mary. But you may not know that Harland Williams improvised…
Overhearing two pop-culturists argue about this comedy series, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a debate over gun-control or Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Passions can run high when a U.S. Office apologist clashes with a U.K. Office purist, leading to heated exchanges about whether David Brent was…
There have been a handful of standup comics with cerebral palsy over the years, but few have transcended the “inspirational” novelty and gone on to achieve legitimate credibility in their field. Not like Denver’s Josh Blue, who conquered the fourth season of Last Comic Standing and released his own Showtime…
While many comics will play to their political or cultural bases, Ron White is virtually impossible to pin down to any one audience. First rising to fame through the Blue Collar Comedy Tour with Jeff Foxworthy and Larry The Cable Guy, he became a hero to conservatives with his pro-death…
Do drugs fuel creativity? Is an addled mind essential to making great music? Does sobriety cause creative impotence? What if Jimi Hendrix had suddenly decided to enter a twelve-step program? Would Are You Experienced? have sucked? To answer these nagging questions, you have to take a look at rock’s red-eyed…
The long-awaited autobiographical comedy Maron has finally arrived on IFC, bringing all the anxiety, self-loathing and standup comedy wisdom of this podcasting pioneer into the homes of normal folks (i.e. non-comedy nerds), who were surely forced to watch its premiere by their sycophantic boyfriends. And I gotta say…it’s not great…
“Normally, whenever I’m doing a show, I like to find out what people do for a living. Should there be a zombie apocalypse — which there will be — I want to find out if their skills are applicable,” comedian Chris Hardwick told his Comedy Works audience last night after…
In 2013, being called a nerd isn’t the insult that it once was. Practically no one uses the term negatively anymore, and there’s no shortage of people who proudly wear the nerd badge as a cultural identity. But if there’s still such a thing as a king of the nerds,…
On Saturday night, Conan O’Brien took on hosting duties for the second time since 1995 at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and apparently his years on network television have not affected his ability to skewer politicians and pundits with some unrelenting jabs at the most sensitive news of the…
Now that we’ve finally eked our way into the warmer weeks of spring (fingers crossed), it’s time to get off the couch and head out into the fresh air to get to May’s ten best comedy events. We’ve got albums being recorded, albums being released, two Latino-themed shows, nerd heroes…
The appearance of sociopathic dreamboat Anthony Jeselnik at the University of Denver’s Newman Center Saturday was filled with unthinkable rape jokes and reverse-pandering to the backward-hat bros and “Woo!” women who populate the college campus. Despite the fact that nearly half his set was recycled material from his standup special…
For nearly two years the Nix Brothers and The Grawlix comedy team have been producing mind-burstingly good short films for the web that also screen each month at the Grawlix’s Bug Theatre comedy show. With a trio of hyper-real characters that play off each other with a juvenile cruelty and…
Between his standup performances and his Comedy Central show, The Jeselnik Offensive, handsome asshole Anthony Jeselnik has slapped the PC button of just about every sociopolitical demographic the world over. Whether you’re a liberal female with an eating disorder or a conservative Catholic who survived cancer, this sharp-tongued mockster will…
Beloved Denver comedian Mara Wiles has received a heartwarming amount of support from the local comedy community in the face of her battle with lupus. Leading up to her kidney transplant last month, several benefit performances raised funds to help cover her mounting medical bills — and while everyone is…
A lot of comedy audiences have an Us vs. Them attitude regarding what standups to like; they feel they have to decide between David Cross or Larry The Cable Guy. And while this attitude would usually push comedian John Caparulo into the latter category (he’s critical of healthy eating and…
Employing the tactic now known as the House of Cards method (after the Netflix-produced Kevin Spacey drama), Amazon has bankrolled fourteen pilots for its new Prime Instant Video service, taking a seemingly democratic twist on the TV-industry convention of letting the public decide which series ascend into multi-episode Heaven, and…
The Grawlix have been one of the brightest lights on the Denver comedy scene for a couple of years now, most successful comedy team not to come out of Denver — but to live in Denver. Their crowning achievement thus far, though, has got to be this past weekend’s premiere…
In many pockets of Denver, there are visible connections to our city’s past that are, with each passing year, slowly being erased in favor of a more modern aesthetic. This concerns Black Eye Coffee co-owner Gregory Ferrari, who is promoting a Kickstarter campaign to install a large, early twentieth-century-style mural…
Not everyone can relate to the idea of defining yourself through popular culture, but anyone who gets it, really gets it. And for the last year Denver has been blessed with a sonic sanctuary for these poor souls: the These Things Matter podcast. This week TTM hosts Taylor Gonda and…
