Five Links:
- Forty Great Ad Campaigns.
- Martin Clark on Grime/Dubstep.
- New Chilean President supports a decrease in its GHG growth of 20% by 2020 http://bit.ly/aLW7rc #cop16 #climate
- Women of The Daily Show Speak.
- ROMA in Buenos Ares / Escif in Spain.
Leno is getting lower ratings than Conan ever did: http://bit.ly/cHdWLW
Comedy 4 Kids:
Without over-using comedy voices, groans and shouts the stubbly, shaggy-haired comedian leads kids down Izzardesque avenues; a routine about milk, cream and cheese coming from evermore unfeasibly-sized cows and the idea that your middle name is there for when your first one breaks goes off in all sorts of directions. Naturally long journeys are tiring but luckily the routine only occasionally rests in comedy slow-lanes and the kids are forgiving of the necessary gear changes. Along with the ubiquitous poems and songs about animals (including “I’m A Retriever” to the tune of The Monkees “I’m A Believer”), Campbell nods towards more uncertain ground such as step-parents and child labour. When he informs a child that her Gap top was probably made by someone her age, some of the parents hiss their disapproval. Yet for the most part the parents are having a good time.
— which reminds me of this:
Link via The Independent.
Previously: Global Comedy Chapbook 2010.
I chopped up a bunch of stand-up performances and dumped them together into one video.
Enjoy!
My friends in Austin put on an improv show recently; thankfully, there’s video —
1.
2.
3.
Thief, thief, thief:
Meet the Carlos Mencia of Italy.
Previously: Global Comedy Chapbook 2010.
The Bob Hope Joke Archive, Courtesy of the LoC.
“The complete Bob Hope Joke File — more than 85,000 pages — has been digitally scanned and indexed according to the categories used by Bob Hope for presentation in the Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment.”
via.
Sample joke? “People are really flocking out here, though. You should see the ways our freeways are jammed day and night with people trying to get to Los Angeles from Los Angeles.”
Previously: Global Comedy Chapbook 2010 / LoC blog.
Riaad Moosa — ‘Flying While Muslim.’
Here’s one article offering a summary of some South African Indian comics.
Previously: Global Comedy Chapbook 2010 / a South African radio comedy show / Don Packett.
More Werner Finck:
1.
2. Heil Hitler - Das Schwein ist tot (1/5)
Previously: Werner Finck and Anti-Nazi Jokes, Global Comedy Chapbook 2010.
After the banking crash and the volcano, the comedians:
Jon Gnarr Kristinsson finished his latest stand-up comedy tour last week. Now he is ready to embark on a career as mayor of Reykjavik.
The popular comic actor looks set to take charge of the Icelandic capital after his satirical political party won the most votes in local elections over the weekend.
Mr Kristinsson, whose spoof platform included free towels in swimming pools and a polar bear for the city zoo, says his victory signals mass discontent with politicians after the country’s 2008 banking crisis.
“I think they will have to rethink their whole existence after this,” the writer and star of several comedy films and sitcoms told the Financial Times on Monday.
Mr Kristinsson set up the Best party last November as a satire of the political incompetence and, in some cases, corruption that contributed to Iceland’s banking boom and bust.
But the parody was seized on quickly by voters looking for a way to vent their anger against the ruling elite, two months after an official report accused the Icelandic government and regulators of “extreme negligence” in the run-up to the crisis.
Mr Kristinsson’s party won 34.7 per cent of the vote and six of the 15 council seats – just short of an overall majority. He said talks were under way with the centre-left Social Democrats to form a coalition, with him as mayor.
A South African morning comedy show:
About two thirds of the way through, you’ll hear the (fictional) Zimbabwe Embassy phone service offer an option for voters who aren’t sure if they want to vote for Mugabe or for “that colonial lapdog traitor Makoni or for the British organ-grinder monkey Tsvangarai”:
If you are not sure who you want to vote for, in other words, if you are undecided rural voter, wait for the tone and leave your physical address where one of our representative can help you make up your mind very quickly.
Unfortunately, it’s funny because it’s close to the truth. As the folks at Sokwanele have documented, there’s been widespread voter intimidation designed to “persuade” rural voters that it would be in their best interests to support ZANU-PF.
But a new phenomenon has emerged in the Middle East over the last year that no one could have predicted: Arabs love stand up comedy. Finally, it appears America is bringing something to the Arab world that they really like - in fact, they are paying to see it.
While there were a few stand up comedy shows in the region over the past few years, it wasn’t until last year’s “Axis of Evil Tour” that the Middle East saw a comedy explosion. (And yes, I use the word “explosion” with great hesitancy in an article about the Middle East, but it is the best way to describe the dramatic growth in comedy.) While there is no history of stand up comedy in the Arab world, You Tube and American TV shows airing in the region have brought our comedy there and its catching on fast.
To give you a sense of how much Arabs love stand up comedy, I recently performed in Beirut with Middle Eastern-American comedians Maz Jobrani and Ahmed Ahmed and we sold over 5,000 tickets. Just a few weeks ago I co-headlined a show with comedian Aron Kader in Cairo and over 4,000 people attended.
The material we perform is almost all in English and basically the exact jokes we tell in the comedy clubs in the US. (With a few local jokes thrown in as well.) The audiences in the Arab world - which are predominantly but not exclusively Muslim - have no problem laughing at themselves or jokes about relationships, politics, pop culture, or just standard US observational comedic material. Its been amazing to see these audiences laugh at the identical jokes we have told to US audiences. It makes you realize that we have a lot more in common than some would believe. (Or frankly more in common than some want us to believe.)
— via.
Global Comedy Chapbook 2010.
This is an intentional mess: comedy isn’t Monty Python or David Letterman ad infinitum; there is a vibrant, active, and lively culture at work all around the world, and the aim of publishing this chapbook is to act as an aggregating agent for that. There is plenty to see in Canada and Australia — and the cautionary tale of any sort of overtly critical or light-handed perspective is constantly on our minds, too; and for comedians, let me say: this is about making the feeling of standing at the back of the club watching comics go up all the richer, wider, and fuller — but the path we’ve chosen is both deliberate and only the very beginning: things will change with the next, and the next, and the next.
1. Comedy in Pakistan.
2. Werner Finck and Anti-Nazi Jokes.
3. The Stand-Up Journal/Year One.
4. Mr. Mayor. (Iceland.)
5. More Werner Finck.
6. Guillermo Zuluaga Montecristo (Colombia.)
7. José Vasconcelos. (Brazil.)
8. South Africa: Riaad Moosa, a South African morning comedy show, Don Packett.
9. The Bob Hope Joke Archive, 85,000 pages long.
10. Thief, thief, thief. (Italy.)
11. Comedy 4 Kids.
12. Secret Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Saudi Arabia.
