Hi friends,
It's Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my upcoming shows, one thing I think is great, one thing that made me laugh, and one thing I found interesting.
Upcoming Shows
NEW YORK CITY:
Thursday, December 7 at 8 p.m. at Caveat. John Hodgman, Josh Sharp, and a secret mystery scientist join us on You're the Expert for a night of laughter and learning. Link
My full schedule with all upcoming dates is online here.
This week's list
GREAT:
Wyatt Cenac is one of the funniest and smartest standup comedians around. This spring, he's going to be the host of a new series on HBO executive produced by John Oliver. I am so excited to be a staff writer on the show. It's a dream to work for HBO and Wyatt. I've been writing there for the past month, but we only got permission to tell people now (and even still, the content is all top secret). I'll share more when I can, but I really believe the show is going to be something special.
In the meantime, listen to Wyatt's excellent take on post-election America, watch his very funny web series where he's a superhero in hipster Brooklyn, or listen to his fascinatinginterview with Marc Maron on WTF. I'm proud to be working for someone as talented and thoughtful as him.
FUNNY:
I'm in a comedian book club and every month a new person picks a book and hosts the club. Most of the time, we talk about the book for approximately 10 minutes before it devolves into bits and buffoonery. This month though, we read The First Bad Man by Miranda July and it was so funny and clever that we laughed the whole time just remembering our favorite parts. I recommend the book for sure, but her short stories are also a good gateway drug to get you started. Here's one I particularly liked: Roy Spivey by Miranda July
INTERESTING:
Who and what should we laugh at? If everyone agrees a joke is funny, does that mean it's okay? Those are two of the central questions of Hari Kondabolu's excellent new documentary The Problem with Apu. Mollie and I watched this last night and we both loved it. It's funny, thought-provoking, and extremely well-made. Hari is a comedian, so he comes at Apu from The Simpsons with an appreciation for the jokes but also a frustration with the stereotypes. Along the way, he interviews a South Asian hall of fame (everyone from Aziz Ansari to former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy). It's definitely worth a watch. You can stream it online or buy it from iTunes (that was my route, since I couldn't get the streaming to work). The Problem with Apu
Thanks for reading!
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Have a great day,
Chris