Political, Social and Entertainment Comedians
Comic and internet sensation Kenny Sebastian, in an interview with Letty Mariam Abraham of Mid-day (5/14/2017) about his recent special, Don’t Be That Guy...
Month: June 2017
Bill Maher’s On-Air Apologies
I make my Advanced Public Speaking students write and give a speech of apology for a public figure, so when we’re talking about comics giving apologies, w...
A Note About Dyson’s Interview with Maher
Dyson’s points I want to give some ink to Michael Eric Dyson, who did a fairly good job of holding Maher’s feet to the fire in their interview, desp...
Relief Theory update
I’ll post updates as I encounter new comedy, theories or writing/blogs about either. So here’s one: Sarah Silverman references relief/release theor...
Bill Maher On What Comics Do
I make my Advanced Public Speaking students write and give a speech of apology for a public figure, so when we’re talking about comics giving apologies, w...
Narrators: Unreliable and Discordant
The idea that we can influence people with words (rhetoric) depends on the notion that the speaker is who they appear to be and mean what they say. Scholars ca...
Comic Intent
You hear it time and time again, from both comics and scholars: in stand-up comedy the only goal is laughter by any means available (Borns; Gilbert; Horowitz; L...
Spatial Theories
The basic idea of a space for ideas comes from Aristotle, who argues that we organize ideas spatially in our mind. We group like with like into genres, topics,...
Why You Should Ask an Academic
An article published last July in the Chronicle of Higher Education reappeared in my FB news feed the other day, and it says basically what I’ve been on a...
Getting on Stage
Perhaps the hardest part of stand-up for many people is actually getting on stage. Seinfeld’s joke about fear of public speaking versus death is legendar...