the comic's comic

Are iTunes top comedy albums of 2009 on your list?

The only thing people love making more than year-end list are decade-end lists, and some of them seem as much about generating page-views as they are about subjectively ranking things that should not be ranked. That's rank! So where are my lists? I've got something else up my sleeves for this December, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share with you the iTunes list of their choices of the 20 best comedy discs from 2009, along with my thoughts on said list.

For one thing, it's really across the board. Any list that puts Brent Weinbach side-by-side with Katt Williams is looking to appeal to all sorts. I'm not exactly sure I agree with everything on here, but then again, I haven't quite listened to all of them just yet -- there are stacks of CDs and DVDs in my apartment, and I hope to get through them all by year's end and share my own thoughts on them with you. I have listened to and reviewed eight of the iTunes 20; most of the rest are waiting in my queue, and a few I don't even have my hands on just yet? My loss or yours? Also, iTunes missed some great ones from the past year. No John Mulaney? I haven't heard Paul F. Tompkins new disc yet, but would presume it's worthy. And no ladies on the list? Not even Maria Bamford? Harumph. Here, then, are the iTunes choices from the year in comedy -- I'm not sure if they have a ranking order from iTunes, so I'll list them alphabetically:

Doug Benson, Unbalanced Load

Matt Braunger, Soak Up The Night

Bo Burnham, Bo Burnham

John Caparulo, Meet Cap

Christian Finnegan, Au Contraire!

Flight of the Conchords, I Told You I Was Freaky

Jim Gaffigan, King Baby

Greg Giraldo, Midlife Vices

Kyle Grooms, The Legend of the Jersey Devil

Moshe Kasher, Everyone You Know Is Going To Die, and Then You Are!

Jon Lajoie, You Want Some of This?

Artie Lange, Jack and Coke

The Lonely Island, Incredibad

Eugene Mirman, God Is A 12-Year-Old Boy with Asperger's

Patton Oswalt, My Weakness Is Strong

Jon Reep, Metro Jethro

Nick Swardson, Seriously, Who Farted?

Brent Weinbach, The Night Shift

Katt Williams, It's Pimpin' Pimpin'

Weird Al Yankovic, Internet Leaks

E! televises "Comedians of Chelsea Lately" but doesn't promote it?

Chelsea Handler's long-term relationship with E! has not only been good for her own career, but also has provided a boon to many aspiring stand-up comedians who live in Los Angeles. Handler's Chelsea Lately includes a nightly roundtable panel in which she dishes about the celebrinews of the day with three of her friends in comedy. She has given them an additional TV credit boost with this summer's Friday-night series, Comedians of Chelsea Lately, which she hosts with her sidekick Chuy.

Tonight is the second week, featuring stand-up sets from Heather McDonald, John Caparulo and Whitney Cummings. Not that you would know that by going to, say, the E! network website. I tried looking for episode breakdowns and whatnot last week for the debut and came up empty. Certainly by now, they'd have something something, right? Here's what came up today when I entered "comedians of chelsea lately" in E!'s search bar:

To be fair, to the far far right of this screengrab, you can see that they did have a video clip from last week's debut to view. And if you root around on the Chelsea Lately pages, you can find some additional short clips (also on Hulu). But this show is not considered an actual show, according to E! Which is saying something, considering this is E! Is that what that "Awful Truth" button is for? I know that's not what that button is for, unfortunately, because I have been to this website before, and if I left my TV on E! around-the-clock, I may come across an ad for the show, but by then, I would have lost all sense of humanity.

But I won't leave you completely empty-handed...