the comic's comic

Lisa Lampanelli writing a one-woman show for Broadway, reality series for Logo TV

Looks like Lisa Lampanelli lately is steering her career in a new direction. Make that directions. Word has surfaced in the past week that Lampanelli has written a one-woman show for herself that she hopes to take to Broadway, and she also has sold a reality show pitch to Logo TV that would follow Lampanelli and her newlywed husband as they build a life and career together.

Lampanelli told New York Magazine about her one-woman show, which she is working on with help from Alan Zweibel:

"It's something that I haven't done yet. I'm scared to death because I have to talk about the real stuff. Like, no stand-up; there's not one line of stand-up ... it's pretty much going to focus on my two main obsessions in life, which are men and food. And now that I'm married I only have one obsession, food, so I'm going to stick to that."

And from Deadline, which reported on Logo TV's latest development slate, comes word of Big Loud Lisa, which is being executive produced by Chelsea Handler's Borderline Amazing Productions, Parallel and Lampanelli.

Lisa Lampanelli on the heckler who turned her into an insult comic, the "Queen of Mean"

After a special sneak screening of the first two episodes of The Green Room with Paul Provenza, which returns to Showtime for its second season on July 14, 2011, Provenza convened a special live panel last night for The Creative Coalition with comedians Billy Connolly, Lisa Lampanelli, Rain Pryor and Jamie Kilstein inside The Core Club in Midtown Manhattan.

One of the first topics thrown at the panel was dealing with hecklers, and Lampanelli told the story of how one of her very first shows as an MC included a heckler who prompted her to change her entire act and become the insult comedian that made her a star and the self-described "Queen of Mean."

Lampanelli told the audience she was working a gig with her first husband:

"So I went up and I was emceeing, and everybody knows that the MC goes up and does five minutes, and then they bring up the next act. So I do my five minutes, and I did OK for like my fifth time onstage, and my poor husband, with his retarded jokes and horrible one-liners -- we were divorced, by the way, before he died, so it's OK, I felt really bad when he died, I'll mourn later. As I'm watching poor Jim struggle, I hear somebody yell, 'Bring back the fat chick!' So it's kind of a compliment! But it's like, oh my God, I'm fucking fat! They noticed I was fat. I thought I was hiding it, under layers. So I go, well, I took it so to heart, I was so upset, that the next day, I wrote all insults. I said, 'I was going to get those cocksuckers before they get me,' and I'm an insult comic now. So thank you guy who said, 'Bring back the fat chick.'"

Provenza: "Is that the truth?"

Lampanelli: "That's the absolute truth. Yeah, I was like, I am not letting them get a word in."

First look: Lisa Lampanelli roasts the Jersey Shore and Real Housewives of New Jersey with "Tough Love"

If the situation wasn't worse for people portrayed as New Jersey "reality" "stars," then just wait until they hear what "Queen of Mean" Lisa Lampanelli has to say about them in her new stand-up special, "Tough Love."

It debuts March 27 on Comedy Central, and then on an extended DVD on April 5.

Here's a first look at a section of the insult comedian's targets called “Roast of Worthless Americans,” which includes not only the casts of MTV's Jersey Shore, Bravo's Real Housewives of Jersey, Tiger Woods, Lindsay Lohan, Brad Pitt, Jessica Simpson and others. First, a clip of Lampanelli insulting "Snooki" and "The Situation."

 

And here she is moving her sights toward the "real" "housewives" of New Jersey.

 

If you like what you see, you can pre-order "Tough Love" as DVD via Amazon.com:

Lisa Lampanelli guest hosts TMZ on TV, no immediate boost for black male celebrities

TMZ is letting Lisa Lampanelli take over hosting duties today for its half-hour TV show, in which the pap smearers pitch their awfulness to her, for reasons which are never really explained.

Exciting, isn't it? Roll a clip.

Preview one-liner quip clips from the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff

The Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff taped on Sunday night in Los Angeles, and will air on Aug. 15, 2010, and to get us more interested in actually watching the darned thing, the network has produced some one-liner clips of quips from the dais.

Would you like to see Seth MacFarlane do his "Stewie" voice to talk about Pam Anderson's breasts, or Whitney Cummings slam Lisa Lampanelli, or Lampanelli slam the Hoff, or Jerry Springer slam the Hoff, or Greg Giraldo and Jeffrey Ross take on MacFarlane? Well, then click click on this vid vids. We'll start with Ross, because he is our generation's Roastmaster, no matter what Comedy Central says, and since he takes down MacFarlane for something he should be taken down for, if he ever submits to a full Roast himself, so roll the clip!

And here are the rest...

Recently on The Laugh Track and in comedy news

We've got ourselves a big Monday here, which means it's time to catch up on what's been happening in comedy and see if we missed anything. First up, what funny things from comedians have I posted recently over on The Laugh Track?

• Matt McCarthy and Pete Holmes star in an infomercial to end all infomercials.
• Did you know that The Comedy Store in Hollywood fielded its own basketball team in 1978, and that David Letterman, JJ Walker, John Witherspoon, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen played on it. Want to see what that looked like? Is that why they went on strike, again?
• Frank Caliendo is about to start a 10-year contract performing four nights a week at the Monte Carlo resort and casino in Las Vegas (hey, that's where I stayed last November during the comedy festival!), but first, he swung by ESPN's Mike and Mike in the morning and breezed through a bunch of his voices.
• Lisa Lampanelli got engaged (to a white guy!), while Chelsea Handler reportedly broke up with her boyfriend (who's also her boss). Yikes and double yikes!
• Sunda Croonquist got a lot of "free" publicity by having her mother-in-law sue her over her jokes, while Eddie Izzard is earning his media attention by running more than a marathon a day around the United Kingdom. Watch clips from both!

But that's not all. There was also some comedy in the news. Such as, for instance, this, that and the other thing:

• Lewis Black is filming a new stand-up comedy special for a network that's not on the air yet. The network, Epix, is debuting this fall, but you'll have to check with your cable or satellite provider to see if you'll get it.
• The toughest comedy ticket in L.A. is going to be the UCB, seeing as the Los Angeles Times just wrote a big profile of the UCB Theatre and how it's helping comedians such as Harris Wittels. Also featured: Aziz Ansari, Paul Rust, Ben Schwartz, Wyatt Cenac and Aubrey Plaza.
• Today is the deadline to apply for The PIT's second annual NBC Diversity Workshop, as well as The PIT's SketchProv 2009.
• TIME magazine interviewed David Cross about his new book, but really seemed more interested in trying to get a scoop about an Arrested Development movie. In related news, they had an article last week about comedians trying to make Obama jokes. The weird thing about that story is that the author, Richard Zoglin (who just wrote a book about stand-up in the 1970s), wants us to believe that political comedy disappeared in the 1980s and only came back on the scene thanks to George W. Bush. Did he forget about Bill Clinton? Or Dan Quayle? Really?!?

They saw the Larry the Cable Guy Roast so that you could live

Comedy Central's Roast of Larry the Cable Guy taped its raucous proceedings last night in the greater Los Angeles area, and through the power of the Internets, we already know the best parts. Thanks go to The Laugh Track, the Tweets of @dougbenson, and CCInsider's Matt Tobey for providing us with their picks of the best zingers and photos from inside the taping. Does this mean we don't have to tune in on March 15. Or does this tease you enough to set your DVRs and TiVos already? That's up to you, isn't it?

Video previews already up from Lisa Lampanelli, Greg Giraldo, and (big gulp) Maureen McCormick!