Among Comedy Central’s newest online offerings on CC:Studios is This Is Not Happening, which features comics like TJ Miller, Kyle Kinane, and The Walsh Brothers telling true stories in front of a live audience. Host Ari Shaffir is the perfect choice for fostering an environment where no story is too risqué, embarrassing, or heartbreaking to cover, and so far there are twelve tales of pot cookies, a GHB overdose, a less-than-attractive Parisian affair, and shitting in a Munich alley during Oktoberfest.
Elizabeth Harper began her music career as a singer-songwriter. After five years, though, she got bored of that and started a different band, Class Actress, with Scott Rosenthal and Mark Richardson. “It’s a totally different part of myself. I don’t even feel like the same person anymore,” she says. On the EP Journal of Ardency, the Brooklyn trio indulges in melancholic, synth-heavy jams about romance and desire that recall some of Harper’s favorite groups: Soft Cell, Pet Shop Boys, and Yaz.
In the increasingly competitive world of comedic podcasting, earning the title of “must-listen” can be quite challenging. With an abundance of engaging options available to occupy your 9-5, a discerning ear is essential to remain up-to-date on the very best in audio entertainment. Earwolf, arguably the industry’s leading tastemaker in comedy podcasts, recently added the sophisticated humor of frequent collaborators Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter to their all-star roster by agreeing to host their previously independent podcast, Topics.
Co-created and co-hosted by standups Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer, MTV’s late night talk show Nikki & Sara Live debuted its second season late last month. The series is a mix of topical jokes, sketches, on the street bits, and celebrity interviews that quickly found an audience and earned a renewal from the network after premiering this spring. I recently had the chance to speak with Glaser and Schaefer about the new season, how they go about hiring writers, and why they’re not doing their show live anymore.
Tamar Braxton opened up about her July suicide attempt on Tamron Hall earlier this week, claiming her own TV show negatively affected her mental health and denying her ex-boyfriend’s domestic-violence allegations. “Our household became very hard, and it was hard because I wasn’t happy at my job, and I hadn’t been happy for years,” Braxton told Hall. She said she had become tired of appearing on We TV’s reality show Braxton Family Values “and having the stigma of the angry Black woman all the time.
music review Aug. 20, 2018 Music Review: Leonard Bernstein Is Paid Half-Hearted Tribute at TanglewoodAndris Nelsons conducted as if he would rather be at home watching TV. Some music can endure an uncommitted performance; Bernstein’s can’t. By Justin Davidson
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK5705qerGeklruouMSwpqicXaLCtLXCZqqhnZRk
Oceans rise, empires fall, we’ve seen Taran Killam through it all. Saturday Night Live alum Killam will be making his Broadway debut in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical sensation Hamilton, where he’ll be playing the flamboyantly grouchy King George for an unspecified period of time. He’ll officially begin his reign on January 17, with the current king, Rory O’Malley, scheduled to play his final performance on January 15. The casting will be keeping Killam — who was unexpectedly let go as a featured player from SNL this season — busy in the upcoming months, as he also scored a Showtime pilot called Mating, which is about a “recently divorced guy forced to confront the modern hookup scene.
This interview contains spoilers for Orange Is the New Black season three.
Orange Is the New Black has never been concerned with sparing its viewers emotional pain. And in season three, it ripped the rug from under us with a startling, emotionally dense episode dedicated to Litchfield’s most fleshed-out character: Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett. Over the course of three seasons, Pennsatucky has reinvented herself from a toothless, Bible-thumping meth-head to a gentler, more complex woman who, in season three’s opener, finds herself questioning the kind of mother she’d have been to all her unborn children over a makeshift cemetery.
If this were a movie … Update, Tuesday, September 25, at 8 a.m.: Flash forward and Swifties are taking on the world together, literally. Taylor Swift announced the global release of The Eras Tour movie, after previously announcing the North American dates with AMC Theatres. “Been so excited to tell you all that The Eras Tour concert film is now officially coming to theaters WORLDWIDE on Oct 13!
Is there a message to be found in the video for Taylor Swift’s “…Ready for It?” As our first responders aptly noted, the video, directed by Joseph Kahn, makes a hash out of the visual designs of various sci-fi franchises: the orb thing from Prometheus, Blade Runner’s kanji-pockmarked claustrophobic nightlife, other … stuff. It’s not really important what’s a reference to what. What counts is whether the video has anything coherent to say on its own, and how that narrative, if it exists, functions in the larger process of Revamping Taylor Swift’s Image for a New Album.