Comedy has gotten much more democratic over the years: It’s no longer limited to guys in clubs or major-network TV shows. With a bit of free time and minimal iMovie know-how, everyone from budding young comics to name-brand stars can carve out some Internet space for their sense of humor. At the same time, traditional outlets like comedy CDs and DVDs are growing in breadth with the artform itself. It’s a great time to be a comedy fan, and Laugh Track, The A.V. Club’s monthly column, will round it all up—new and noteworthy stand-up, sketch, and online video, much of it courtesy of under-the-radar comedians with a little too much time on their hands.
Internet: Chris Gethard
The Upright Citizens Brigade is best known for the fantastic foursome (though didja know Horatio Sanz was an original member in Chicago?), but it’s also enjoyed great success with its two theaters, one each in New York and Los Angeles. Legions of malleable young comics can now subscribe to the UCB philosophy, which pushes fast and funny, down-and-dirty improv and sketch comedy. Gethard is a child of the New York theater, and he’s used its former-strip-club confines to refine his bizarre sensibilities. He performs weekly with improv team The Stepfathers, occasionally with celebrity-studded ASSSSCAT, and has put on shows aboard buses and featuring boxing bouts. He’s also the force behind The Chris Gethard Show, a monthly late-night talk show featuring Gethard and his comic pals pulling odd stunts. In one, he auctions off the chance to have a sleepover at his parents’ house; at another point he forces two straight male comics to go on a date. He recently took his renegade sensibilities to Comedy Central as the host of Portable Lounge, a transient talk show that kicked off in a bowling alley with Saturday Night Live’s Bobby Moynihan. Gethard is set to star in Comedy Central’s Big Lake sitcom in August, alongside Sanz and Chris Parnell, but for now it’s nice to see an underdog get his due.
Here’s that date video, which is pretty great:
He’s also attempted to contact Diddy via, well, you’ll see:
His friends pull pranks on him, sometimes:
CD: Lewis Black, Stark Raving Black
Lewis Black has officially become an “applause comic.” After years of refining his outsider-looking-in, hot-tempered act, Black’s audience can see where jokes are going—and they like it. The smallest proclamations about bad politicians making bad judgments get huge applause breaks—and given that Black plays almost exclusively large theaters now, that sporadic applause is a hiccup in the comic’s momentum. But Black wisely plays against expectations, sticking by premises that are more personal and refined in this, his eighth album. He tackles his age (just over 60), then transitions into stories about his parents that reveal a) where he got his disturbing sense of humor and b) just how disturbing they still are, well into their nineties. There’s also talk of the financial meltdown, but Black spins these well-worn topics to reveal the aspects that personally insult him the most, like how one bank exec spent $1.5 million just to redecorate his office. And, of course, his random angry snipes are a delight for their furor alone: At one point, apropos of nothing, he yells, “And if you’re Twittering, fuck you.”