At age 10, Steve Martin got a job selling guidebooks at the newly opened Disneyland. In the decade that followed, he worked in Disney’s magic shop, print shop, and theater, and developed his own magic/comedy act. By age 20, studying poetry and philosophy on the side, he was performing a dozen times a week, most often at the Disney rival, Knott’s Berry Farm. Obsession is a substitute for talent, he has said, and Steve Martin’s focus and daring–his sheer tenacity–are truly stunning. He writes about making the very tough decision to sacrifice everything not original in his act, and about lucking into a job writing for The Smothers Brothers Show. He writes about mentors, girlfriends, his complex relationship with his parents and sister, and about some of his great peers in comedy–Dan Ackroyd, Lorne Michaels, Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson. He writes about fear, anxiety and loneliness. And he writes about how he figured out what worked on stage. This book is a memoir, but it is also an illuminating guidebook to stand-up from one of our two or three greatest comedians. Though Martin is reticent about his personal life, he is also stunningly deft, and manages to give readers a feeling of intimacy and candor. Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs collected by Martin, this book is instantly compelling visually and a spectacularly good read.

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America

I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America’s Top Comics

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Comic Insights: The Art of Stand-up Comedy

Comedy FAQs and Answers: How the Stand-up Biz Really Works

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

American viewers may know him best as the British correspondent on “The Daily Show,” but John Oliver is also an accomplished stand-up comic. In his first Comedy Central special Oliver tackles the topics that perplex him about the United States. He takes well-aimed shots at the American political process and the invasion of Iraq (including how the Brits would have done it differently), and argues for reparations from the Revolutionary War.

Dylan Moran 2005 New York

Bill Hicks - It’s Just A Ride

George Carlin - What Am I Doing In New Jersey?

Jeff Dunham

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dylan Moran (born November 3, 1971) is a BAFTA and Perrier Award-winning Irish comedian, actor and writer. He is most famous for his stand up comedy, the television sitcom Black Books which he co-wrote and starred in, and his work with Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead and Run Fatboy Run. Moran is a regular performer at national and international comedy festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Kilkenny Comedy Festival.

Bill Hicks - It’s Just A Ride

George Carlin - What Am I Doing In New Jersey?

Jeff Dunham

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Bill Melvin Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian.

Finding moderate mainstream success in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Hicks tended to balance heady discussion of religion, politics and personal issues with more ribald material; he characterized his own performances as “Chomsky with dick jokes.”

Bill Hicks Live - Satirist, Social Critic, Stand-Up Comedian

Bill Hicks - Sane Man

Philosophy: The Best of Bill Hicks

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In just over five decades in show business, George Carlin has graduated from comedy’s troublemaking Class Clown (the title of his 1972 Grammy-winning album), to one of its most respected deans, influencing scores of rising comics and quite a few established ones.

His 14th HBO special, “It’s Bad for Ya” (which can be seen in rotation on the cable channel), proves that despite having turned 70 last May, Carlin is every bit as sharp (and some might add “dangerous”) as ever. His material continues to prove cyclically relevant, whether it’s his classic “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine from the early “70s (just ask the FCC how relevant that piece remains) to his more pointed words on wars and the folks who get us into them.

Q. You just celebrated your 50th year in the business. Do milestones mean anything to you, or is it just another year?

A. We kinda have a certain reverence for these round numbers in our life because they’re easy to mark, but yeah, it’s especially big because, it’s, um, I don’t know, I guess “cause it’s half a hundred. (He laughs.) That seems like a good enough reason for me.

Q. Your humor has inspired a number of talented and successful comics, including folks like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Lewis Black and Penn Jillette. Does that encourage you to keep up the good fight?

A. If you think about the people in particular that you just mentioned, they all had rather significant personalities already. They’re formidable people. I was inspired by people like Danny Kaye and Spike Jones when I was a kid. I thought that was a great thing to do. So when people tell you the same thing about yourself, it’s kind of nice to know that you made a little mark in someone’s life, and if they go on with it and do something more with it, that you were a part of it.

Q. Your new show touches on some hot-button topics, from religion to patriotism to death. Do you like to keep your audience on edge?

A. I like figuring out - and it’s not hard to figure out - which things make people a little uneasy when you talk about them, and I like to get into those things. But I like to find the way in through the side door. I don’t like to be predictable. … You know what’s great? This is oratory. I get to say pretty much whatever I want about things and don’t have to face the opposition because it’s rhetoric. It’s not a science course. I don’t have to account for facts. As long as I’m generally right, I’m OK. I don’t mean right as in correct, I mean as long as I’m accurate, I’m OK.

Q. Do you enjoy panel shows like “Real Time With Bill Maher,” where you have a chance to verbally spar with folks who might have a different opinion from yours?

A. Usually when you’re on with a person like an Ann Coulter or someone like that - you can’t really have a reasoned exchange with a zealot because they speak in slogans and sound bites and one-liners. They cut you off and they don’t let you finish, so you never get to develop an idea. A lot of things that are open to debate require a little bit of nuance and structure, to go from A to B to C to D, and they kind of don’t play that way. They throw sand.

Q. You tend to avoid specific references to any particular administration, leveling most of your criticism at “the government.” But have you found this administration to be ripe for comedic potential?

A. It would be, sure. But the problem is that those things are frozen in time and there’s a shelf life that I don’t like. They’re perishable. I like things that will hold up over a long period of time and still have a timely feel to them. There’s a lot of things you can talk about that will be the same topic 10 years from now even though the particulars have changed. When it comes to a couple of lines about Bush in particular in this show, those are lines that will also stand up because they’re not about specific things in time, they’re about him. I was really happy when I found the line “I don’t even capitalize his name when I type it anymore.” That felt so satisfying. That’s really one of those lines that you live for and when they happen, you’re just grateful.

Q. How about the current presidential race?

A. I enjoy it as a blood sport. … It’s just a lot of fun and it’s great theater, you know, because there’s just so much at stake. I would probably prefer, if I were to (be) pressed - waterboarded - that another term of more or less Bush III, that that wouldn’t happen. I’m a lefty, I’m left of center, but I don’t know that anybody’s gonna have any solutions. I have a rooting interest, but it’s mild. I just like to watch the whole thing play out, the whole end of civilization.

Q. That’s something that plays into your show as well. You play the role of the disconnected observer and not a participant.

A. I’m just here for the show. They say if you scratch a cynic, you find a disappointed idealist, and I’d probably cop to that. But it’s more fun, it’s more satisfying, and - artistically, from the standpoint of writing and having a point of view when you write - it’s much easier if you’re detached emotionally from the whole drama and you really don’t have a horse in the race. “Cause if you’re rooting for a certain outcome, it kinda shows. And I just want a good show. I just want a good story that’s fun to talk about, and that’s what humans provide. They never let you down.

[Via - SunJournal.Com]

Wall Street Exodus: Fear, Panic and Anger

The New Homeless Of America - Middle Class

The Scars of Losing a Home

For Wall Street Workers, Ax Falls Quietly

Pathological Consumption

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

George Carlin - Jammin’ in New York

Funniest Amazon.Com Review EVER!

Why Beautiful Women Marry Ugly Men

Record Home Price Drop In Southern California

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity

Jeff Dunham - Arguing With Myself

Andy Kaufman - Midnight Special

George Carlin - Jammin’ in New York

Bill Hicks - Revelations

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

One of America’s first and funniest counterculture comics rips into society’s sacred taboos and institutions in a new, uncensored evening of stand-up comedy. Carlin’s 14th original solo HBO stand-up special delivers dead-on, laugh-out-loud insights on such issues as: the advantages of being old, child worship and the failure of the so-called “self-esteem” movement — In other words, our abnormal preoccupation with BS.

Andy Kaufman - Midnight Special

George Carlin - Jammin’ in New York

Carlin on Campus

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The Andy Kaufman Show

Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman

George Carlin - Jammin’ in New York

Bill Hicks - Revelations (1993)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites