Photo: Andrew Marantz

1. Moderator Virginia Heffernan (online media critic at The New York Times) wanted to push the notion that the Internet is fundamentally changing TV comedy, but the comedy writers were not having it. That impasse was reached within the first two minutes of the panel and then explored for the next two hours. “So, you guys really don’t think the Internet is changing the way you work?” said Heffernan. “No, not really,” said the writers. Over. And over.

2. “I don’t even have a computer,” said Jim Downey, and he was not joking. Having worked at Saturday Night Live since 1976, Downey is clearly qualified to talk about television writing. But as the last person in America to hold out on the computer fad, he had absolutely nothing to say about the “Internet” part.

3. The other three writers had some predictably cranky things to say about the Internet. Peter Tolan (Rescue Me) thinks it’s too democratic. Al Jean (The Simpsons) thinks it’s too negative. “Most of it is negative,” Rory Albanese (The Daily Show) agreed. “Except for the porn.”

4. The Simpsons producers were the ones who leaked the video of Homer trying to vote for Obama. I knew it!

5. Extrapolating from tonight’s four-person sample, we can deduce that 100 percent of comedy writers are white men; 75 percent of comedy writers dress in black sport coats; 75 percent of comedy writers wear black-rimmed glasses (the other 25 percent keep their glasses in the pocket of their sport coats); and 0 percent of comedy writers will read this post, because they don’t really care about the Internet.

Thing I learned from Donald Glover, host of the show: Curse words aren’t so bad: “Know who didn’t curse? Hitler, that’s who.” Therefore, Comedy Central should let Glover tell jokes about the word niglet.

Thing I learned from sketch group Pangea 3000: Every fart sound has a proper spelling. If you spell a fart Fhfhfhoohinstead of Fhfhfhfhooh, you’re out of the spelling bee.

Thing I learned from sketch group Curtis and John: Ahab and Moby Dick were best friends until they argued over how to split the bill at a seafood restaurant.

Thing I learned from sketch group Murderfist: Watching a fat guy get progressively more and more naked is funny, yes, but mostly uncomfortable.

Thing I learned from the show: If this show is any indication, intellectual, jokey sketch is out and absurdism is in.

Photo: Andrew Yakira

Pretty in prep

Has Flight of the Conchords gotten too big for its own good? Though the duo once referred to themselves as "New Zealand’s fourth-most popular folk-parody duo," it is clear that Bret and Jemaine are now the first-most popular musical comedy act in the world. If a well-received HBO series and forthcoming album from Sub Pop weren’t enough evidence of this, there was the crowd last night at the the Town Hall—which, in my unscientific analysis, seemed about 65 percent female and about 95 percent ready to throw their panties onstage.
 
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Horatio Sanz was acting a little weird last night.

He was one of two special guests (the other was Chad Carter, formerly of Respecto Montalban) to join the four members of the Upright Citizens Brigade (Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts and Amy Poehler) at Irving Plaza. For those who don’t know, ASSSSCAT is a long-form improv technique pioneered by the UCB and performed every Sunday at the UCB Theatre. It’s hard to describe the form because, like many watersheds in improv, it is distinguished by how often it breaks its own rules.

ASSSSCAT has the feel of a supergroup: a bunch of old friends who have proved their prodigious skills and are now just fucking around. This is not to say that they do not take their craft seriously. As we know from musical supergroups—think Cream or CSNY—fucking around can produce superlative results when you know what you’re doing.

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Last night, during a spiel about immigration, D.L. Hughley recited the inscription from the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

In the silent moment after he finished, the Town Hall felt more like a coffeehouse than a comedy club. “That’s some beautiful shit,” he said. “But if we don’t mean it, we might as well scratch it off. Or at least add at the bottom, ‘P.S. Except for Mexicans.’

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The following are quotes from Damon Wayans’s performance last night:

"I’m not racist; I think African is an ugly language, too."

"There’s gay churches now? I tell you, they’re really trying to speed up Armageddon."

"I don’t vote; I vote for God."

"I like ugly women ’cause they’re hardworking."

Perhaps if George Bush had said these things, they would have been funny. But they were not funny when Damon Wayans said them. Nor–and this is the important part–did he intend for them to be funny. He delivered them as applause lines, without a hint of irony. The first sentence set up his impression of the "African language" that "bushmen" speak, one that (predictably) included lots of clicks. The "gay church" line led to his interpretation of the inside of a gay church, including a stereotypical gay pastor and a joke about a Jesus being hung backward (for all the Sodomite necrophiliacs, I guess). And so on. You get the point.

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The comedian Louis C.K. is a pudgy, 40-year-old white guy. He doesn’t have a gimmick. He just stands there in corduroys and talks about exactly what you’d expect: his wife, his kids, the difference between men and women.

He also might be the best stand-up comic on the planet. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I will try.

Louis C.K. has been in comedy for more 20 years. He has written for Conan, Letterman and Chris Rock. But, like a great athlete, he makes it look easy. His everymanesque delivery dupes you into thinking he’s just a guy who’s telling you a story. His material is not topical or incisive. He simply says one funny thing, and then another, and then another. His bits are the opposite of one-liners: He picks a mundane topic, burrows in and drags everything funny out of it.

Not that his act is tame. He uses every taboo word you can think of. He tells jokes about rape, AIDS and 9/11. He talks about exposing himself to a retarded girl. He does a ten-minute bit about how much he hates deer. (One snippet: “I cold shoot a baby deer in the mouth and feel nothing. Just, Oh, now it’s dead. That’s interesting. Maybe it’s because I shot it in the mouth.")

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Every comedian has an onstage persona, a character he or she plays when performing. Most of the time, the distinction is easy to pin down. “Larry David” is a hyperneurotic Larry David. “Stephen Colbert,” obviously, is more conservative than Stephen Colbert. Or, take the two comedians who opened for Sarah Silverman last night at Carnegie Hall: “Doug Benson” is a happy-go-lucky stoner and “Todd Barry” is a creepy, deadpan…creepy guy. Both of them come highly recommended, by the way. But we’re here to talk about Sarah.

Sarah Silverman has described “Sarah Silverman” as “a cuntier version of myself.” If that adjective doesn’t work for you, here’s another description, by Real Sarah, of  Fake Sarah: “more ignorant, yet arrogant.” Both of these descriptions are accurate but insufficient. Yes, “Sarah Silverman,” the protagonist of The Sarah Silverman Program, is a bigoted idiot. But she also exudes a kind of perverse charm. She is the bigoted idiot you hate to love.

In a word, Sarah Silverman—or, at least, “Sarah Silverman”—is cute. She is cute like a sex symbol and she is cute like a kid. Without both kinds of cuteness, her jokes about poop and the Holocaust simply would not fly. This is especially true in live performance, where Silverman can use her very real charisma to build a rapport with the audience—and instantly cash it in for a laugh.

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Last night at Carolines, Bob Saget made the kind of red-carpet entrance one tends to associate with the Olsen twins. Inside, a bevy of women with face-lifts and guys with hair gel scrambled to find him a martini.

In the world of scleroderma research, Bob Saget is a big deal. Saget lost his sister to the autoimmune disease in the ’90s, and since then he has devoted much of his time and talent to the Scleroderma Foundation, serving as MC at their annual benefits. This year’s benefit, starring Jimmy Fallon and Robin Williams, was billed as part of the New York Comedy Festival, but it was not your standard night at Carolines. The opening act was an auction. Doctors and pharmaceutical researchers gave long, sentimental speeches while the waiters served poached salmon. Katie Couric and Kelly Ripa sat in the front row.

There have always been two Bob Sagets. You surely know the Full House Bob, the game-show host Bob, the one who plays well in suburbia. If you go to comedy clubs and watch movies like The Aristocrats, you might know the vulgar comedian’s-comedian Bob, the one who would scare the shit out of a soccer mom.

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Do you enjoy procrastinating, but don’t have the time?

Want to find that perfect three-minute clip on YouTube, but don’t want to spend three minutes looking for it?

The people at ComedySmack have a solution. Their "crack team of Big Laugh Hunters" "scour every place that comedy hides" "to deliver the cream." In other words, they find things online that are funny—mostly viral videos, but also listings of upcoming movies, books and performances.

Then they deliver three of them to your in-box every day. Or, if you don’t want any more e-mail in your life, you can go to the website and dig through the archives yourself. Although, that almost defeats the purpose.

On Friday 19, a dozen underpaid, overdressed comedians played the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton. “There haven’t been this many Jews inside a Hilton,” Greg Fitzsimmons observed, “since Paris pitched her last TV show.”

With comedians strutting onto the dais in suits to hurl personal insults at each other, the event was a cross between a gala luncheon and a family therapy session.

The first Friars Club roast took place in 1950. At least once a year since then, a lucky Friar has been chosen to sit onstage, grinning, while his peers kick the proverbial shit out of him. (The Friars Club roasts were once aired on Comedy Central, until the network realized they could get higher ratings with bigger celebrities. Comedy Central now lampoons the likes of Pam Anderson and Flavor Flav, while the Friars, without the TV cameras, continue to roast people who are intentionally funny.)

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