Video by Karina Granda and Elizabeth Kreutz

Did you miss our third annual live showcase as part of the New York Comedy Festival? Enjoy a snippet from each of the fantastic performers; it will have to be enough to tide you over until next year.

Read profiles of the comics here, here and here.

At last night’s annual fundraiser for storytelling powerhouse the Moth, the superstars of the world of the narrative celebrated and gave their support. We asked each the same question: “What will be the opening line of your next memoir, real or imaginary?”

“If you know me, please don’t read this.”
Jonathan Ames, essayist, HBO character

“I was completely unprepared for this.”
Sarah Jones, playwright

“Thank God for my two families, my original and my present.”
Albert Maysles, documentary filmmaker

“I am sitting in a Starbucks trying to fill the page so they’ll pay me.”
Mike Birbiglia, comedian and author

“I wish I’d never gotten involved with storytelling.”
George Dawes Green, novelist and founder of the Moth

“It was on Labor Day, lying on a massage table with a woman squeezing my glutes and talking about Jesus, when I realized that I was suffering a stroke.”
Garrison Keillor, Prairie Homesteader

“This is an ambush and I’m outraged.”
Tony Hendra, satirist, Ian Faith

“57 and not getting any taller.”
Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys

“There are the things we can see and the things we can’t.”
Jennifer Stein, poet and writer

“Let’s see, where was I…”
Tommy Tune, Broadway director and choreographer

“My name is Adam Wade, and I’m originally from New Hampshire.”
Adam Wade, Moth GrandSlam Winner

“Everything changed once I was able to hold two ideas in my head at the same time: that life wasn’t fair and that I was really lucky to be here.”
Ed Gavagan, Moth GrandSlam Winner

Photographs of Jonathan Ames (top) and Garrison Keillor by Sarah Stacke.

1. A surprise set from melodic and heartfelt indie-rock power duo Mates of State is the perfect lead-in to a night of comedy from stand-up’s most endearing talent, Mike Birbiglia; both are the performance equivalent of friendly hugs.

2. He wasn’t drunk. He promises. In spite of what a blogger claimed to have been disappointed by in an earlier performance, Birbiglia is never intoxicated onstage. “Apparently I’m just a mess. Me at neutral is a mess.”

3. The spinning-circles-within-spinning-circles movement of the “ubiquitous” carnival ride known as the Scrambler can actually be physically represented by one person on a stage. And it will make you as nauseous as the memory being recalled.

4. Birbiglia always sticks his landings. His act is not only a collection of funny jokes, but also a series of ideas and anecdotes that, you realize at the end, relate to one another thematically and humorously for an even bigger payoff.

5. When he sprinkled classic jokes into his set, audience members delivered the punch lines in tandem—”Season tickets to the Yankees!”—and when the Mates of State backed him on “The Oatmeal Song” as an encore, the crowd stood, clapped and sang along. Mike Birbiglia will be a household name…but I guess we actually learned that a while ago.

Since we couldn’t be in Edinburgh this year, comedian and saucy songstress Jessica Delfino has sent dispatches through both the literal Scottish fog and the Festival Fringe alcoholic one.

Being a New Yorker in Scotland offers its own interesting set of issues. The very words New York City put glimmers in people’s eyes. They think the streets of NYC are paved with gold and that everyone there is obviously a movie star. Audience members who follow me outside after the show, hoping to catch a glimpse of me slipping into a stretch white limo and slinking off, are surely more than a little disappointed to instead see me get onto a rickety mountain bike and pedal away carrying my guitar and purse, like a pack mule. I feel as a New Yorker it’s my duty to live up to the polish and shimmer that I’m supposed to have, so I do dress up for shows, I do apply a shade of showbiz red lipstick every evening before my show, I do sign autographs after shows, and I do sip red wine all sophisticated like, while the brutish Scots glug down pint after pint and exclaim, “Oy!” and “Arr!,” both in awe—and in ugghhh—of my New York pizzazz.

Lots of my American friends are here: Kurt Branohler and Kristen Schaal, Ben Lerman, Jamie Kilstein, Mike Amato, Carolyn Castiglia, David Calvitto, Marshall Cordell. The list goes on and on.

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Ricky Gervais entreats you to attend his November 5 New York Comedy Festival show at Carnegie Hall.

Tonight, at 10pm, The Jon Dore Television Show makes its American debut on IFC. The 30-minute comedy, which originally aired on the Comedy Network in Canada, is cocreated by and stars stand-up comic Jon Dore, who aims to improve his life in a new way in each episode. The show has a good-natured misguidedness familiar to fans of The Sarah Silverman Program, features Dore interviewing real people about ridiculous subjects à la Sacha Baron Cohen, and oozes with the kind of happy-go-lucky malaise of Chris Elliott’s Get a Life. Also, it’s super weird.

IFC will air both seasons of The Jon Dore Television Show on 26 consecutive Tuesdays, with encores of each episode the following Saturday. Dore, who was just named as one of Variety’s 10 Comics to Watch, is going places. See where he began.

The New York Comedy Festival just announced its 2009 schedule. The stand-ups appearing in the sixth annual celebration prove that the fest is continuing in its tradition of getting better every year. We are excited.
Pasted beyond the jump are those headliners. Stay tuned for information regarding sundry events, such as panel discussions, the Andy Kaufman Awards, and TONY Approved, hosted by yours truly.

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Dustin Chafin knows the trailer park.

Just for Laughs ‘09:
718 artists, 306 shows, almost 25 venues, innumerable hangovers.

Excluding the gala hosts—Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Short, Lewis Black and John Cleese—there was a dearth of TV and film celebrities at this year’s fest. Bill Cosby did a couple of shows, as did David Alan Grier, Paul Rodriguez and sketch group Broken Lizard (Super Troopers, Beerfest), but otherwise performance slots were filled by touring comics and new faces—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Still, the circumstance leads one to wonder if the festival’s continued expansion—not only in Toronto but now also in Chicago—is cannibalizing the roster of its flagship event.

However, for comedy nerds there were still plenty of celebrities on hand. Here is a conversation I overheard two comics having while walking back to the Hyatt around 3:30am. “Look, there’s Louis C.K., just walking on the street like he’s a normal person and not a genius.” “Yeah, just  breathing the same air as the unworthy lowlifes traipsing along behind him.”

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Even within the context of comedy, the definition of improvisation varies greatly, obviously, depending on whether the word is being used to describe a stand-up or a group of people creating scenes. Or so I thought.

U.K. superstar stand-up Ross Noble is a game changer. For Noble, who performed an hour in a small cabaret space more than 1,000 seats shy of his typical venues, improvisation is not a digression or distraction, is not a way to deftly handle the unanticipated or to warm up the crowd; it is the show itself.

He got sweet on the idea that there might be a simultaneous show happening next door with “wheelie panthers”—it spawned from one audience member’s overzealous reaction to Noble’s entrance; his scream was so sensational, Noble deduced there must have been a panther behind him, though probably it would have been stuffed, as that makes more sense, and would therefore have had to have to been on some sort of wheeled dolly crossing the stage, clearly to get to the show next door.

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Less than an hour before last night’s televised gala program began, the Just for Laughs festival office e-mailed a release stating that film star and Python John Cleese would be unable to host its premier event, as he was undergoing emergency treatment for prostatitis. The show went on; Lewis Black filled in, ably, and Cleese will return to host a newly added gala on Sunday. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Beyond the jump, the brightest of the New Faces showcase, with links to their clips.
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To celebrate the U.S. DVD release of its surreal U.K. comedy show, Mighty Boosh stars and writers Howard Moon (Julian Barratt) and Vince Noir (Noel Fielding) performed a “secret stand-up” show last night at Bowery Ballroom, sponsored by MySpace. It drew hyperbolic lines of rabid fans in costumes, and delivered wonderfully silly sketches and musical numbers—including some overly dramatic folk that might have sent Jeff Buckley somersaulting in his grave. Here, several highlights.

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Attention, Brit-com fans: Your prayers have been answered. After making a splash on BBC-TV in ‘04 and then recently on Adult Swim’s late-night lineup, the duo known The Mighty Boosh (Julian Barratt as snobby unhip Howard Moon and Noel Fielding as glamtastic Vince Noir) will grace Yank fans with their U.S. debut tonight at Bowery Ballroom, to celebrate the stateside DVD release of their cheeky psychedelic show’s first two seasons. (A signing is also scheduled at Other Music at 6pm.)

The performance is a freebie, but it’s first-come, first-served, so queue up early for their otherworldly adventures and antics (sign up at myspace.com/secretstandup to find out about similar events in the future).—Jason Gross

Adam Newman’s got a new joke.

He’s also got a great pickup line. Read more »

Sean Patton grew up in the suburbs.

See Sean Patton’s Joke of the week.

See all Jokes of the week: The webcam series.

Sam Morril has a restaurant idea.

Ardal O’Hanlon cracks wise from a TV studio in New York in advance of his appearance in The Fellas Live!

Local comedians Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello blow your mind along with those of eight unsuspecting dinner guests.