Tag: Comedy

6 Jokes That Didn’t Get Me a Job Writing for Weekend Update

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Seth Meyers was pushing for me. Or whatever.

Each fall, before the start of a new television season, Saturday Night Live accepts submissions from comedy writers looking to write jokes on a freelance basis for Weekend Update. To my knowledge, pretty much anyone can apply; the only prerequisite is that you know who to contact in the writer’s room. They generally respond to every inquiry, and the guidelines are fairly straightforward:

We would like you to write a total of 10 jokes based on news stories the occurred between September 6th and September 15, 2011. We are interested in seeing how you write for current events. We do not want old material. Also, please do not submit more than 10 jokes. To help you, I am enclosing a couple of pages of set-ups. You are not limited to the stories from these set-ups, but any stories you use must have occurred during the stated time period.

We are looking for solid, traditional monologue jokes. I.E. Two line jokes. Set-up followed by a punchline. We do not want Daily Show style rants. Please do not send in bits, shorts sketches, or anything involving other cast members. Do not submit jokes with multiple punchlines. They will count as separate jokes.

If you are accepted, there’s no guarantee that anything you write will ever make it to air. In fact, there’s a strong possibility that it won’t. But you still get to say you’re a freelance joke-writer at SNL, and that plays better on a résumé than “dog walker.” I have no idea of how many people typically apply, and even less of an idea of how many are accepted. I wasn’t. In fact, I was rejected in record time, just hours after emailing my submission. So, just in case you’re wondering what not to do, here are a few of the jokes that didn’t get me a job writing for Weekend Update.   Continue reading →

Citysearch: Best New York Bars for a One-Night Stand

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Thank god for alcohol, without which no one would ever have gotten laid–least of all that snaggletoothed disaster sitting at the bar. But after a few car bombs, she starts to look pretty good, and soon it’s off to your place. But not every New York bar is conducive to meeting Mr. or Ms. Right Now. Where to go when you’re on the market for a good old-fashioned, no-strings-attached one-night stand? These six bars, where the pretenses are low and the odds of scoring are high.  Continue reading →

Citysearch: New York Bars I’ve Fallen Down In

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Every true drinker has woken up at least once to discover a bruise or drinking-related injury from the previous night. Me, more than others. Since the day I turned 18–er, 21–I’ve displayed an almost magnificent tendency to drink, slip and fall, and I’ve done it at bars across New York City. Why am I telling you all this? Because I’m drunk now, obviously. But seriously, watch your step at these seven bars, or you could end up like me–and as my parents can confirm, you really don’t want that.  Continue reading →

YRB Magazine Interview: Rapper Lil’ Jon

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Crunk Ain’t Dead.

February 14th is Valentine’s Day, also known as the easiest day of the year to get laid. You’ll still have to pay for it – but with flowers and chocolate instead of by the hour. Hey, romance might be dead, but take solace in the fact that like sweet crunk music, love is alive and well – just ask Lil’ Jon. We did, and here’s what the original dirty South rapper had to say.

JG: In “Lovers and Friends” you talk about “knowing a girl for a long time, but fuckin’ never crossed your mind.” Is that your definition of love?
LJ: Well, that was in the ‘friends’ context… . If you got a homegirl that’s your homegirl, sometimes you don’t never even think about crossing that line. That’s what that was about, just having a female that’s your friend. But sometimes, someone that you’re friends with, something might happen where you just look at someone in a different way, like, ‘Damn, this person been around me all this time, and now I see something else.’ When I first met my wife, I knew that was someone I wanted to be with. We was friends for a lotta years before we even started. And really, the friends in your life are the ones you end up settling down with, only because you known them the longest, you trust them the longest, they know everything about you, and they’re your friend.  Continue reading →

SNL Writers, Players & Andy Samberg Groupies Turn Out to Support Writers Guild

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It was a full house Monday evening at Comix where assorted Saturday Night Live writers and players both past and present participated in a comedy event to benefit the striking Writers Guild of America, East. In keeping with the trend of wearing your support for the writers on your face, “strike beards” were in full effect, and the overall mood seemed to indicate that no one expects to return to work anytime soon.  Continue reading →

An Evening with the Cast of MTV’s Human Giant

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Photo: Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer and Aziz Ansari are Human Giant

Ordinarily, the chances of me going out on a Monday night are nil, especially in this brick-ass cold. But with my television withdrawal giving me an increasingly nasty case of the shakes, I took the opportunity to check out last night’s sneak preview of the new season of Human Giant–the best thing to happen to MTV‘s comedy programming (or rather, MTV period) since The State— hosted by the Human Giants themselves.

As any proper night should, this one began with drinks. Various members of the press (editors and writers from Maxim, the NY Post, the Village Voice, ASCAP, Giant and other publications) assembled beforehand at West Chelsea haunt Half King, along with the show’s stars, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer and Aziz Ansari, before making the troupe to the UCB Theater. Continue reading →

Movie: Superbad

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-Popular Girl: "You know, you scratch our backs, we'll scratch yours." -Fat Nerd: "The funny thing about my back is that it's located on my cock."

Once again, director Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) proves that good things happen when you combine a funny script with funny actors. Superbad tells the tale of Evan and Seth (played by Michael Cera of Arrested Development and Knocked Up’s Jonah Hill), two socially inept best friends and high school seniors who must make the most of their days together before enrolling at different colleges in the fall. With no social skills, less than no sex appeal, and nothing even resembling a cool bone in their bodies, the boys realize that if they want to make it as college men, they’re going to have to turn around their luck with the ladies – starting tonight, on the eve of their graduation. Not to be mistaken for a classic coming of age tale a la Stand By Me, Superbad is about as heartwarming as a funeral. But thankfully, it’s a whole lot funnier.

YRB Magazine Interview: Knocked Up‘s Jason Segel and Jonah Hill

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Image courtesy of NBC Universal

“Knocked Up is about a guy [Ben], played by Seth Rogen, who is starting a website, is kind of a slacker, who goes out to a bar one night and is lucky enough to end up back home with Katherine Heigl’s character [Alison], and what should have been nothing but a one night stand, next thing you know she’s knocked up. So it’s the story of the two of them coming to terms with the fact that they’re sorta stuck together,” says actor Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother), who, along with Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel and Martin Starr, plays one of Ben’s four roommates in this summer’s Knocked Up.

Jonah Hill offers a somewhat different take on the movie. “The plot is basically like Letters from Iwo Jima. We actually ripped off the same plot, and we just added a few ‘fucks’ every now and then,” he jokes, when asked whether there is more to the story than the title and movie trailer suggest. But Jason and Jonah (whose characters also happen to be named Jason and Jonah) do agree that what makes Knocked Up work so well is largely writer/director Judd Apatow’s approach to movie-making. Both have worked with Apatow before (Jonah had a small but memorable role in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Jason starred in Apatow’s television cult classic Freaks and Geeks, among other things) and credit the success of his films with the fact that he trusts his actors enough to let them improvise. Continue reading →

TV: The Sarah Silverman Program

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Photo by Marc Lecrueuil / Comedy Central

From a woman rivaled only by Borat when it comes to making jokes about all things taboo comes Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program. Oddly enough, Sarah Silverman plays a character named Sarah Silverman, and the show focuses around her daily life and the various kooky events and situations in which she finds herself. It may sound like a typical sitcom, but if you’re familiar with the comedic stylings of Ms. Silverman then you know this is no Friends rehash. In the premiere episode, Sarah has a run-in with the police after she ingests too much cough syrup and then proceeds to park her car in the middle of a playground. As in her full-length film, Jesus is Magic, Sarah takes every opportunity to incorporate songs with off-color lyrics into the show, and also shares the screen with some of the funniest people in the world of comedy today, most notably Brian Posehn, who plays one of Sarah’s gay neighbors. Whether she’s reading aloud from The Diary of Anne Frank for the talent portion of a children’s beauty contest, or taking in a homeless man, we love The Sarah Silverman Program, and if you have any sense of humor whatsoever, you will, too.
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(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN YRB MAGAZINE COPYRIGHT © 2007)

 

Interview: Dax Shepard

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Photo by Chris Fortuna for YRB Magazine

“I feel like the Jude Law of comedy this fall. Prepare to get Daxed-out,” says actor Dax Shepard, who stars in three movies this year – Employee of the Month, Idiocracy and Let’s Go To Prison – all released between Labor Day and Thanksgiving.

Dax is perhaps best known for his role as a field agent on the first season of MTV’s celebrity prank series, Punk’d, but how does a dude with a degree in Anthropology from UCLA wind up getting paid to make Justin Timberlake cry on national television? Continue reading →

Movie: Borat

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Fans of HBO’s Da Ali G Show have waited more than two years for some new material from the brilliant mind of Sacha Baron Cohen. And this November, audiences around the country are lining up to see the new full-length feature film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. 

The movie has everything you’d expect from Cohen’s mustachioed alter ego, the brutally un-PC Borat Sagdiyev. From beginning to end, Borat is filled with casual allusions to incest and rape, embarrassing interviews with unsuspecting politicians (including right-wing nut job Alan Keyes – or as Borat describes him, “a real chocolate face”), unenlightened remarks about women, homosexuals, and of course, Jews (though in real life, Cohen himself is a practicing Jew). While the film does drag at times – even Borat loses some of his mystique after an hour-and-a-half – on the whole, Cohen manages to pull it off. Continue reading →

Interview: Jamie Kennedy

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Best known for his work in The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, the Scream movies and Malibu’s Most Wanted, actor Jamie Kennedy is now trying to add Professional Rapper to his resume. In his new reality show, Blowin’ Up (which premieres May 16 on MTV), Kennedy and friend Stu Stone (a.k.a., “Stu the Jew”) will try to convince everyone – from veteran members of the hip-hop community to Jamie’s agents and even his parents – that they have what it takes to be rappers. I sat down with Jamie to discuss Blowin’ Up and his quest to get a record deal and release a “quadruple triple platinum album.”  Continue reading →

Interview: SNL’s Andy Samberg

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Photo: Seth Kushner for YRB Magazine

Ever since Jimmy Fallon and Will Ferrell bade farewell to Saturday Night Live, the weekly sketch comedy show has been driven by veteran cast members like Darrell Hammond, Tina Fey, Chris Parnell and Amy Poehler. But with the remarkable success of the SNL Digital Short “Lazy Sunday,” which aired last December, a rookie cast member has been catapulted into the spotlight: Andy Samberg, 27.

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the last few months, you’ve probably seen the two-and-a-half minute rap video, which follows Samberg and Chris Parnell as they quench their “snack-attacks” with pink frosted cupcakes from New York’s famed Magnolia Bakery, load a backpack with Mr. Pibb and Red Vines purchased with less-than-crisp $10 bills at the local deli, and cab it to the Upper West Side to catch an afternoon showing of The Chronicles of Narnia.  Continue reading →