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.
