Germany to Prosecute Comic for Mocking ErdoganA little-known German law takes a very, well, German approach to the question of whether it’s okay to ridicule representatives of other nations.
Caroline Hirsch Watches All the Late-Night ShowsName: Caroline Hirsch
Job: Proprietor, Carolines on Broadway, the legendary Manhattan comedy club. Caroline founded the annual New York Comedy Festival, which begins next week and will feature performances by Rosie O’Donnell, Denis Leary, Sarah Silverman, and Artie Lange. Click here for our advance coverage of the fest.
Neighborhood: Midtown East
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Edna St. Vincent Millay.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
My mother’s pasta on Sunday.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
I am constantly trying to discover what new talent is about to emerge.
party lines
What We Learned on the Night Before ‘The Ten’
Last night was yet another party for The Ten, the commandments-spoofing movie from the Wet Hot American Summer–slash–The State–slash–Stella crowd, and we learned several important things smoking and drinking backstage with Janeane Garofalo, Amy Poehler, and Rashida Jones. Among them:
• Garafalo, who makes an uncredited cameo in the movie, dislikes gossip magazines but can accept their right to exist. “There’s journalism and there’s dirt digging,” she said after a stand-up stand. “It’s not real journalism. But gossiping is, I guess, just part of the human condition.”
• Poehler, who was onstage barely longer than it took her to mimic jerking off, had little to say about the human condition but lots to say about our fear of getting older. “You know what the best years are?” she asked. “28 to 30. Ooh, they’re good.” (Somehow we think her 1998–2000 Comedy Central show had something to do with that.)
• And Jones revealed that she hasn’t always been funny. “I took a class with the Groundlings in L.A.,” she recalled. Before that, “God, I was so bad.”
• Also, David Wain has a fake tooth, and Ken Marino is in full support of breast-feeding, though he thinks National Breast Feeding Week could be replaced by a tasteful liquid lunch.
And now you know. —Jocelyn Guest
party lines
Big Laughs and Small Food at ‘The Ten’ PremiereThe Wet Hot American Summer gang — the Stella gang? Part of the State gang? — is back with a new movie: The Ten. It’s ten sketches, each inspired by one of the Ten Commandments, and it premiered last night at the DGA Theater in midtown. The after-party was at Avalon in Chelsea, and our Party Lines crew reports it was particularly late and particularly boozy, with a D.J. playing oldies, lots of small food (mini-burgers, mini–croque monsieurs), and big crowds on the smoking porch. What did David Wain, Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, Paul Rudd, Kerri Kenney, Gretchen Mol, Winona Ryder, and lots of others have to say at the party? Why was Chris Meloni wearing that ridiculous hat and Janeane Garofalo that crazy jacket? Why was Winona wearing an overcoat and a hat? (Does she have her own weather system?) All those answers at our Interactive Party Lines.
‘The Ten’ Screening [NYM]
intel
Computers, Comedy Further Destroy Lower East SideEveryone has his own personal milestone for when the Lower East Side was, irrevocably, over. Maybe it was when the Hotel on Rivington went up, or when Tonic closed, or when you first overheard one I-banker telling another about the Annex. Two new options now present themselves. First, there’s VLES, a Second Life–esque “virtual version” of the neighborhood wherein you, via your own hipster avatar, can walk from “Katz’s” down “Ludlow” and “watch” “bands” “play” “clubs.” And then there’s HBO’s Lower East Side–set new series, The Flight of the Conchords (which is likely being advertised inches from this item). Think Tenacious D with the added deadly touch of Wes Anderson/Demetri Martin/Eugene Mirman deadpan. (Robot obsession? Check.) Yes, it sounds like the perfect TV embodiment of the neighborhood — but it also makes us want to never, ever set foot there again. Thankfully, we don’t need to; we’ve got it on our desktop.
Virtual Lower East Side [VLES.com]
Flight of the Conchords [HBO.com]
in the magazine
Live from ‘New York’If you were watching NBC over the weekend — and, actually, Nielsen numbers from the last few months suggest you probably weren’t — you saw the Lorne Michaels version of what Saturday Night Live was like in the nineties, a Sunday-night prime-time clip show of the comedy franchise’s Clinton-era highlights. (“Must have been a short show,” quipped a New Yorker.) Want the non-hagiographic take on SNL in that era? We bring you back to the March 13, 1995, issue of New York and Chris Smith’s cover story, “The Inside Story of the Decline and Fall of Saturday Night Live.” Smith spent a month in and around Studio 8H, and he discovered a show with falling ratings, increasing expenses, mediocre writing, a miserable cast, and a detached executive producer in Michaels. “What’s really killing SNL,” he wrote,” is a deep spiritual funk.” From the archives, here’s his account of that funk.
Comedy Isn’t Funny [NYM, 3/13/1995]
cultural capital
Conan Returns to New York, and Thank God
After a week in San Francisco, Late Night With Conan O’Brien returns home today to the cozy hearth of Rockefeller Center. Like previous trips to Toronto, Chicago, and Finland, the San Francisco sojourn was marked by high spirits and top-notch japery. (Particularly enjoyable: the outing to Intel headquarters; repeated references to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s sex scandals delivered as ingenuous expressions of gratitude to the city government.) The return to boring ol’ Studio 6A is welcome, however, because it means relief from the overeager Bay Area audience.
21 questions
Comic Mo Rocca Makes Oatmeal But Not DinnerName: Mo Rocca
Age: 38
Job: Imp; currently appearing in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Neighborhood: Chelsea
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Isidore Itzkowitz, a.k.a. Eddie Cantor.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
Currently I’m in love with the buttermilk fried chicken at Dirty Bird on 14th Street.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
Bite my nails and try to think of funny things.
in the magazine
Sex Diaries: The Attached VillagerIt’s the Sex and Love issue of New York this week, and for it six New Yorkers kept Sex Diaries that chronicled their sexual lives (or lack thereof) over a period of seven days. Daily Intel has even more diaries, and we’ll bring you a new one each day this week. Today, Jessica Delfino: 30, comedian and dirty folk rocker, East Village, straight and in a relationship.
DAY 1
Midnight: Reunited with boyfriend after he was out of town all week. Trade wet kisses.
12:30 a.m.: Boyfriend tells me we should go home and 69.
12:57 a.m.: Get fondled in the foyer, followed by some love pecks and pokes in the elevator. Steven Tyler would have been proud.
1:27 a.m.: Attack my boyfriend in bed wearing nothing but a softball jersey. He’s watching That ‘70s Show and isn’t responding.
1:32 a.m.: After five minutes of kissing him, he’s still not with the program. Warn him that I’m documenting our sex life. He calls me weird. He caresses my vagina and thighs between eating chocolate-covered raisins while he watches the show.
2:07 a.m.: Sex o’clock. We both win. Me first, as usual.
ByArianne Cohen
in the magazine
In the Colbert Nation, We’re All Young and Invincible
Last night, Stephen Colbert devoted his show’s prime real estate — his “The Word” segment — to the “Young Invincibles,” the health-insurance-forgoing twenty- and thirtysomethings David Amsden profiled in a recent issue of New York. “This is an encouraging trend,” the faux-conservative faux-blowhard commented about Amsden’s piece, “but we have to make sure that forsaking health insurance stays sassy and rad.” With your help, Stephen, we’re sure it will. Comedy Central has the clip, and we’ve got the article.
Hip Replacement [Comedy Central]
The Young Invincibles [NYM]
21 questions
‘Daily Show’ Correspondent John Oliver Fears We’re in the End TimesName: John Oliver
Age: 29
Job: Daily Show correspondent and advisory-board member to Dave Eggers’s writing program, 826NYC. Oliver will perform tonight at Symphony Space at an 826NYC fund-raiser, McSweeney’s Presents: The World, Explained.
Neighborhood: West Village
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
I like the sound of Emily Warren Roebling. Anyone who can finish building the Brooklyn Bridge whilst finding time to be a member of Daughters of the American Revolution is okay by me. Although her implied support of the Boston Tea Party is appalling. The only time throwing tea into the sea would be acceptable would be if you’d pre-boiled the ocean. And added a splash of milk.
cultural capital
Conan O’Brien Owes His Career to a Crank
Four things about Conan O’Brien and his show that we’re pretty sure haven’t been published before, which we learned last night at his rare public appearance — with four of his writers — at the Museum of Television and Radio:
• The character “
cultural capital
New ‘Onion’ Fake News: Actually Fake, Not So FunnyHere’s the remarkable thing about the Onion News Network, the satire stalwart’s first foray into video content: It’s the first televisual product to literally fit the wrongheaded moniker “fake news.” The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, which are regularly saddled with that descriptor, don’t fake the news; they fake the format. ONN — as of this writing, less a network than a Web page with four clips and a Dewar’s ad — finally takes that extra step. Its news items are, indeed, mocked-up rather than simply mocked. This means that both the anchors and the subjects are played, hammily, by actors, and the “news footage” is as scripted as the banter around it. Sadly, though, it is not particularly well scripted, nor particularly amusing.
