the comic's comic

What would "Archer" listen to? Find out, plus a PSA and more to prepare you for season two on FX

The second season of Archer, the animated spy spoof with an attitude, premieres tonight on FX. The series takes the idea of James Bond and takes it to a darker, bawdier place, with more than a healthy dose of snark.

The voice cast is headed up by Jon Benjamin as Archer, and surrounded by talent with Jessica Walter as his boss and mother, plus Aisha Tyler, Chris Parnell, Judy Greer, Amber Nash and George Coe. If you need catching up, as well as an idea of what you're in for, here's a PSA the show put together using clips from the first season.

 

To prepare for tonight's debut, FX also has a few things to help get you in the mood.

For a soundtrack, you can listen to the "Archer Horizontal Mambo Mix" on the show's own Pandora channel. When I looked it up online, these were the first dirty dozen tracks to shuffle onto my laptop...

One hour down, 167 to go: Video with Mike Birbiglia in bed and on display at Macy's flagship #mikeinwindow

About 24 hours ago, comedian/storyteller Mike Birbiglia walked inside a display window of the Macy's flagship location on 34th Street in Manhattan, wearing a blue robe, pajamas and slippers, and laid down in a bed. Where he would spend the next seven days.

It's all a promotion for Downy fabric softener to prove that you'll still have clean sheets after a week. Wait. As bloggers around the world wonder simultaneously: Has that not been the case before? Also: We'd totally do this. We totally already are doing this.

Before getting into his bed on display, Birbiglia explained that he does have access to a nearby hotel room to use the facilities and freshen up whenever the need arises. There's also a collection of people in a makeshift control room directly behind the display window, monitoring him as well as operating at least three cameras so you don't need to be on the sidewalk of 34th Street to see what's going on. Although if you're visiting the special #mikeinwindow Facebook page and don't see live streaming video -- or more to the point, don't see Birbiglia himself -- that's because one of the cameras is above his bed looking out toward the sidewalk.

The promotional stunt began at 10 a.m. Wednesday, and for the first hour, Birbiglia spent most of his time posing for photos and giving interviews. Here is what he had to tell me. Roll it!

 

From now through the following Wednesday, he'll be interacting not just with the gawkers passing by the window, but also with fans on Twitter via #mikeinwindow and @birbigs, on the aforementioned Facebook page, as well as with selected guests for special events. Last night, Mike and his brother Joe held an interactive Q&A. As you can see in my video, he has his laptop computer with him, as well as a couple of books and newspapers. I know other people already have offered him gifts to waste time and/or amuse his audience.

Here's footage of Birbigs and Joe Bags from last night:

 

More than a foot of snow fell on NYC overnight. I'll be interested to see what it looked like from his perspective. As well as how he holds up at the end of the week.

In our interview, Birbigs also told me that he's preparing an off-Broadway run of "My Girlfriend's Boyfriend" in March at the Barrow Street Theater. So you have that to look forward to, too!

Nick Thune performs stand-up and panel on Conan, and issues a post-show warning to a heckler

At least a couple of times already, the new Conan on TBS has brought back a staple of the old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, allowing some of the stand-up comedians to head over to the panel to chat with Conan O'Brien after performing.

We're not seeing O'Brien give the comedians a thumb's up first as Carson used to do on-camera -- these post-set panels appear to be pre-arranged. But still. It's nice to see stand-ups get to do both, and not have to settle for either performance or panel (in which the performance is weaved into the dialogue with the host).

Last night, Nick Thune started off with a couple of quick, subtle numbers that seemed to sail past the studio audience. They caught onto Thune's act soon thereafter, however, and increasingly approved of his wordplay and one-liners accompanied by what O'Brien called a really nice guitar. During the panel portion, Thune told O'Brien about a very naughty audience member at one of his shows -- and I don't naughty in the way you pervs are clearly interpreting it. Rather, naughty as in, someone's going to have to call his mother!

Roll the clip.

 

CBS love for "Mad Love" = "Rules of Engagement" ends "$#*! My Dad Says" rookie season early

CBS announced a series of schedule changes yesterday for three of its sitcoms:

1. New midseason comedy, Mad Love, starring Jason Biggs, Sarah Chalke, Tyler Labine and Judy Greer, will debut a week earlier than planned to coincide with Valentine's Day on Monday, Feb. 14.
2. It'll take the 8:30 p.m. Monday slot currently occupied by Rules of Engagement, which will pop back up on the schedule Feb. 24. at 8:30 p.m. Thursdays.
3. That means your final chance to catch rookie blog-to-book-to-sitcom $#*! My Dad Says will be Thursday, Feb. 17, completing its first 18-episode season. CBS has not yet decided on whether to renew it for the fall.

You'll still get plenty of Shat on your TV in 2011 as the third season of William Shatner's Shatner's Raw Nerve returns to the Bio Channel on Jan. 31.

Bret Ernst goes off the script on "Lopez Tonight"

When you're performing in a comedy club, any little thing that happens while you're onstage can be used as fodder for ad-libbed riffs. In a theater setting, you may choose to ignore the less-obvious accidental moments because most of the room might not have even seen nor heard the moment you want to riff about. On a late-night TV talk-show taping? You usually have only a few minutes and it's all been rehearsed and approved by the booker and the producers beforehand. Forget about it.

But Bret Ernst couldn't help but go off the script as soon as he grabbed the mic on last night's episode of Lopez Tonight. What happened backstage had him laughing at himself and he just had to share. Ernst then went on to joke about old men, his old man, and why you don't want to get into a fight with your elderly males.

Roll the clip!

 

Watch T.J. Miller punish his director in intro to "Mash Up," coming to Comedy Central on March 11, 2011

Comedy Central has set a date for the debut of Mash Up, the post-Blerds experimental comedy show, hitting the airwaves at midnight Friday, March 11, 2011.

TJ Miller hosts, with featured performances by Matt Braunger, Hannibal Buress, Kyle Kinane and Kumail Nanjiani, acted-out stand-up in sketches, and other weirdly addictive visuals. It's directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, and we already can see how he's setting the tone with this intro video.

How do I know it's JoVo Robo underneath that TV helmet? Because he also captured behind-the-scenes footage of this shoot. Any director willing to get pelted with paintballs is OK in my book.

Further reading: Vogt-Roberts explained the whole concept of Mash Up to me last year when they taped it in Los Angeles.

Funny or Die, HBO repeat as Sundance short-film winner with "Brick Novax's Diary"

Looks like the jury at the Sundance Film Festival has the same sense of humor as the folks at Funny or Die, because for the second straight year, they've picked a short from FoD's Funny or Die Presents on HBO series as the best of the fest.

Last year, it was "Drunk History" with Will Ferrell, Don Cheadle and Zooey Deschanel re-enacting the story of Lincoln and Douglass as told by a drunken Jen Kirkman.

This year, it's the "Brick Novax's Diary" series that took the U.S. Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, handed out last night in Park City, Utah. Or rather, the first two of four episodes of the series directed by Matt Piedmont. Using action figures and small-scale models, the series recounts Novax's life as voiced by Marc Evan Jackson. From the official description: "Penniless in a seedy motel room with only weeks to live, international superlegend Brick Novax records his amazing tales as an astronaut, movie star, corporate CEO, and famous musician to preserve his legacy as the coolest guy in the history of the world."

The first part of the Novax diaries aired on the second-season premiere of the HBO FoD series on Jan. 14, with another installment coming on Jan. 28.

 

Weird but true: This teaser clip only had a 25% approval rate from Funny or Die's viewers as of today. Good thing they weren't on the jury?

Meet Me In New York: Sheng Wang

What do they say about New York City: There are eight million stories, and sometimes it seems as though eight million of the people telling them think they're comedians? No, that's not it. It is a fact, though, that America's biggest city is also its biggest comedy mecca. Hollywood may be Hollywood, but New York City is where comedians are born funny, become funny or arrive to thrust their funny upon us. I think we should meet some of these people. This is a new recurring feature, a mini-profile of newcomers, up-and-comers and overcomers of New York's vibrant comedy scene. It's called Meet Me In New York.

Fun Fact: Sheng Wang was the inspiration for the launch of the "Meet Me In New York" series! When I saw Wang in NYC in the fall of 2009 and learned he had made the move here, I realized that I needed to have a way to spotlight so many of the comedians who come to the big city but may not be making headlines everyday to otherwise cover. Of course, Sheng Wang has made plenty of news recently -- winning NBC Universal's seventh annual Stand-Up For Diversity competition and earning a one-year holding deal with the networks. And this Friday, his first half-hour Comedy Central Presents debuts on Comedy Central. Let's get to know a little bit more about him. Cue the Q&A!

Name: Sheng Wang

Arrival date: Sept. 1, 2009

Arrived from: San Francisco (although I spent two transitional years in LA before arriving in NYC).

When and where did you start performing comedy? In the summer of 2002, I took a joke-writing class that culminated with a showcase to which you invited all your buddies. With friendships on the line, my set went pretty well, and I was emboldened to explore the bustling comedy scene in San Francisco. My first set actual set at an open mic was near the end of the night at a laundromat/cafe called the Brainwash. It was a sobering experience with lots of painful silences. But I made friends with comics already entrenched in the community, and they encouraged me to keep at it. It was a great scene with crazy characters and a number of rooms where anyone could sign up and get stage time throughout the week. Once I saw a guy smoke crack on stage and strapped what looked like a homemade bomb onto his chest. Comedians started barreling for the exits. I stayed seated and stoned. Apparently, it was just a "joke."

What was your best credit before moving here? Live at Gotham

Why did you pick NYC over LA or anywhere else?  The traffic in LA is a heartbreaker. I realized that I was getting too comfortable with the culture and the pace of life in the West Coast and wanted a change of scenery to shake things up for myself. I love the conveniences of living in a city where you always have access to cool things happening and you don't have to do some drunk driving at the end of the night. Plus, sometimes when you happen to line up a string of road gigs, you find yourself spending only a few days out of the month actually at home. Given the higher density and late night nature of life in New York, I figured that a few days in NYC goes further than a few days in LA.

Sneak peak at Eagleheart, new Adult Swim series starring Chris Elliott as a kick-ass U.S. Marshal

At last night's Whiplash show at New York's UCB Theatre, director Jason Woliner (Human Giant) previewed an episode of the new Adult Swim series he worked on, Eagleheart, which stars Chris Elliott as an over-the-top U.S. Marshal and debuts Feb. 3.

Check out a clip!

 

More? Alrighty then. Eagleheart is produced by Conan O'Brien's Conaco, with a cast that also features Brett Gelman and Maria Thayer as his sidekicks and Michael Gladis as Chief. In the episode Woliner screened for the NYC audience, which he said was the "original first episode" but will air sometime later on, Elliott's "Chris Monsanto" reveals a special fighting move: The Death Punch. It's absurd and holds no punches. Obviously. It stars Chris Elliott. Anyhow. After utilizing "The Death Punch," Monsanto feels massive guilt upon learning his criminal victim left behind a wife and kids, and then absurdity ensues.

Other episodes are just as violent and silly.

A press release suggests "Monsanto may battle a pair of evil twin gubernatorial candidates, surgically alter his appearance to investigate a string of elderly kidnappings, track missing mountain lions to the center of the earth, or punch people so hard they explode."

Another clip!

 

Related: Team Coco talks to Eagleheart creators (and former Late Night with Conan writers Michael Koman and Andrew Weinberg) about the series. You'll learn that a certain former "Late Night" feature helped inspire the pilot. If you're thinking Walker, Texas Ranger, then, yes. Also how the initial pilot pitch was different from what eventually became Eagleheart. Listen here!

UCB and HP team up to write five days of sketches on the fly via emails from YouTube suggestions

Were you on YouTube on Friday? You probably noticed Rob Riggle on there hosting a special two-hour live improv show with his colleagues from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

That was just the start of a five-day promotional stunt for HP's ePrint, which has allowed viewers to submit their sketch ideas via email and watch as UCB players create short videos for them.

Here's one about a comedian on the subway:

 

It reminds me of those filmmaking competitions in which performers run around a city creating shorts, only in this case, it's all happening in a studio and the YouTube viewers dish out the premises.

The UCB players are accepting and writing about 16 new sketches each day -- the promotion runs through Wednesday. Brandon Gulya said he and the other writers are working from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with crew and actors on an earlier schedule, and editors working later into the nights. The performers are Jon Gabrus, Jon Gemberling, Fran Gellespie, Ben Rogers and Joe Wengert, with sketches written by Gulya, Anthony King, Dan Klein, Arthur Meyer, and Melinda Taub.

Each day has a different theme and setting, such as home, office and school. Today's theme is travel, while Wednesday's is "anything goes." If you want to send in a suggestion -- in the form of pictures, poems, single words or drawings, email [email protected]. If your submission gets picked, you'll receive a link to the personal video via email, and see it online at the HP ePrint Live YouTube channel and the HP for Home Facebook page.

Here are a couple of other videos from the ongoing promotion:

 

Two suggestions in one sketch:

 

And here's the full two-hour live show from Friday, hosted by Riggle!

 

 

Interview: Tammy Pescatelli talks about being, making "A Stand-Up Mother" on WEtv

If you want to know why some comedians go overboard in asking fans and followers to vote for them in Comedy Central's annual "Stand-Up Showdown," then just look at the recent record. Jeff Dunham topped the vote in 2008 and finished runner-up in 2009, and got himself a ventriloquism sketch series on Comedy Central. Last year, season two Last Comic Standing finalist Tammy Pescatelli vaulted to the top. And that helped her launch her own hourlong reality/sitcom on WEtv.

A Stand-Up Mother premieres tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific following the debut of the new Joan and Melissa Rivers series.

Pescatelli spoke with me recently over the phone. But first, let's take a peek at the series. Roll it!

 

So that's the skinny. She's from Ohio, her husband is from Brooklyn, and they picked up and left Los Angeles for Meadville, Penn. -- "The good thing about it is that it has nothing to do with show business," she says -- to live closer to her parents and other relatives.

Each segment of the hour, however, opens with a small bit of Pescatelli on the road performing stand-up.

Walk me through this -- which came first, moving to Pennsylvania, or getting the TV show? When I met you in Las Vegas in 2008, you were still in L.A., right?

"I got pregnant, the writer's strike hit, and we got out of L.A. We were back and forth," she said. "Things started to get clearer and clearer that the baby didn't belong in Los Angeles."

What does that mean? "He couldn't figure out his gang affiliation. His favorite color is green. No. He didn't have family out there. My job is going on a plane and going somewhere. Telling jokes is second. There was only one of us at home with the baby."

Pescatelli said she had bought a house in Meadville years ago. "Ever since Last Comic," she said. "I had hoped my parents would retire here." But she, her husband Luca, and son little Luca could have ended up in another big city entirely. "We actually got a place in New York. It was in Brooklyn. And a house means a body-length away from my mother-in-law, so no." That wasn't going to happen." 

You'd lived on camera before for Last Comic Standing, in a house even, but your family hadn't. Did you have to train them or prep them beforehand for living in front of camera crews? 

"That's why I'm the creator and the executive producer of the show. My son is not talent. It's not like I'm Kate Gosselin making my kids get on camera. It's not his job to propel my career. He was minimal. You'll see clips of him, but he was minimal. My husband is an actor. He gets it. My parents and my mother-in-law I tried to shield, but they ended up being in it because they're bigger personalities.

"Granted, this is a reality sitcom and that was a competition show, but I know the burden and reality of editing. Shocking, that I'm exposing the reality of TV. American Idol is fixed!"

"It's not a documentary. They can't follow you around for 24 hours for five months. And I had two friends die while we were (filming), and we couldn't follow me around to funerals. That wouldn't be fun."

Seinfeld characters re-imagined in multiple suspenseful movie trailers

Remember when mashing up clips for funny movie trailers was a meme? Remember all the way back to 2006? Ah, them's the days.

Well, it's 2011, and maybe you're ready for a refresher course, as brought to you in this series of trailers for suspense movies based around the cast of the 1990s hit sitcom Seinfeld. In this one, Jerry Seinfeld is imagined as a power-hungry madman intent on taking over the world. Roll the clip!

 

But there's more where that came from.

Comedians nominated in the 83rd annual Academy Awards

Sorry. Try again this year. For a list of boring and/or fascinating but all-too dramatic nominees in the 83rd annual Academy Awards, click here. You can watch Oscar-winner Mo'Nique announce some of the nominations, at least? Or read live-Tweeting action by comedians during the Oscars on Feb. 27? Eh. Moving on. Winklevoss Twins, avenge us!

The dream of the '90s is still alive and funny on IFC's new show, "Portlandia" (review, clip)

It isn't as easy as it looks to make mockery of liberal hippies, but that's usually because the jokes are coming from conservatives who are unfunny pricks about it.

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein certainly aren't that. They know their targets. They know their target audience. And in their collaboration together for IFC's new show, Portlandia, they are all of them and more in a spot-on series of sketches and studies of the eccentric characters who inhabit Portland, Ore. Count Brownstein among them. She's better known as part of Portland band Sleater-Kinney. But she proves she can hang comedically with Armisen -- who used his summer break from SNL to film the first season in Portland -- as they deftly move from organic diners to lesbian feminist bookstore owners to an alternate version of themselves. They're aided and abetted in this by contributions from Jason Sudeikis (who played a charismatic polygamist farmer in the premiere episode), Kyle MacLachlan (who plays the mayor), Heather Graham (who plays hot) and others. Although their city is played for laughs, I hope the people of Portland (Ore. branch) can recognize that this satire is also a bit of a love letter to them.

The series plays like a string of silly SNL digital shorts, all anchored by Armisen and Brownstein.

Exhibit A: Here's the music video that serves as an opening anthem for the show, "I Dream of the '90s."

 

Further evidence: As is his wont, Jesse Thorn from "The Sound of Young America" gets to the heart of the matters with Armisen and Brownstein in this recent broadcast transmission. Listen!

The Sound of Young America

In other news...

Before these items lose the "new" part of the news, here's a look at the good, the bad and the weird making news in comedy today:

• The 2010 winners of the British Comedy Awards were honored over the weekend. See the full list of winners and nominees!
• On the other hand, the Razzies announced their nominees today for worst in American movies for 2010. Whoopsies all around.
• Somewhere in between is Harvard's annual Hasty Pudding man and woman of the year. This year's honorees: Jay Leno and Julianne Moore.
• Alan Sepinwall sat down with Louis CK following his TCA press tour panel, and so you'll want to read this interview.
• The Guinness Book of World Records still recognizes The Comic Strip Live in NYC for longest continuous stand-up comedy show, but don't tell that to the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, and definitely don't tell that to the comedians who spent 81 hours telling jokes over the weekend at Magooby's Joke House outside of Baltimore. You can see clips of Magooby's Really Really Really Long Comedy Show on Ustream. Please don't try this at home. And by home, I mean your home club. Or at home.

Comedy Central Presents: Michael Kosta

Michael Kosta is a tennis player and the youngest child in his family. I don't need to tell you those things, however, because Kosta gets into both of those topics in his first half-hour Comedy Central Presents, which debuted on Friday night.

What he didn't say then, because he didn't know it then, was that Kosta also is filming a game-show pilot for NBC with retired NFL legend Jerry Rice. That show is called, well, Catch.

In the meantime, catch up with some of Kosta's comedy. He opens with some advice about drinking and wearing contact lenses. Not a good idea. Crowd work off the top? Go for it. Pound. Explode. Roll it!

 

More clips after the jump!

Mike Birbiglia to spend a week in the Macy's display window. No room for sleepwalking?

On Wednesday morning, Mike Birbiglia will step into the display window of Macy's department store -- the flagship Macy's in New York City's Herald Square -- and spend the next week sleeping (and not sleeping) there in the window.

I know.

He knows.

Here's a short video for Downy (the stunt is promotion for their "Clean Sheet Week") in which Birbiglia talks about prepping for the little big gig. Roll the clip!

 

AOL repackaging podcast clips from Kevin Smith, Adam Carolla and Kevin Pollak for nightly series

Amber J. Lawson is bringing her comedy sensibilities to roost at her new gig heading up programming at AOL, launching a new nightly clip show tonight that culls together highlights from the popular podcasts of Kevin Smith, Adam Carolla and Kevin Pollak.

Lawson told The Hollywood Reporter: "The idea is to take these very popular podcasts with their very rabid audiences and find a platform-appropriate way to create a programming block. We want to tap into their audiences and create video content that is consumable in one- to five-minute chunks."

Smith will provide one segment per week, Carolla will provide nightly segments, while Pollak's weekly chat show will be cut up into four individual segments each week. The clip shows will appear on AOL's home page at 10 p.m. Eastern each weeknight.

The highlights packages all will be safe for work.

Comedy Central Presents: Tom Segura

Comedy Central kicked off its 2011 season of half-hour "Presents" on Friday night with Tom Segura. If you can imagine Patton Oswalt telling jokes, and also imagine Mike Bridenstine telling jokes, and then imagine the two of them telling jokes at the same time as one person, then you're not confused at all by Segura.

If you're imagining too many voices talking at the same time, then let me help clear things up, with this clip of Segura talking about people who don't have teeth, even when they have many millions of dollars to spend on teeth. Roll it!

 

If you enjoyed Segura's half-hour CCP, then you'll likely also enjoy his full-length CD, Thrilled, which comes in just shy of an hour from Rooftop Comedy and includes several of the bits you saw on the TV.

Need more convincing? More clips, then!

Bill Cosby Bukowski, as imagined by Jon Daly

Sure. You may have a Bill Cosby impersonation up your sleeves. Plenty of people do. Tosh.0 even explored this phenomenon in its first season in 2009 with a video mash-up of white girls with Cosby impersonations. But how many people have mashed up a Cosby with a Bukowski? Exactly. Exactly!

Here's Jon Daly reciting NSFW poetry in a Cosby sweater. Roll the clip!