Imagine what kind of gems you could unearth if you spent an afternoon digging through the video collection at a thrift store. Instructional aerobics from the 1980s? Battered VHS copies of local cable access television shows? Home videos, starring the most spectacularly mustached men you could imagine?

Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, co-creators, co-curators, and hosts of the Found Footage Festival, have spent many an afternoon elbows-deep in such thrift-store video bins, and the fruits of their labor are screened, for a live audience, at shows around the country. Sometimes awkward, always hilarious, this “found footage” serves as an authentic historical marker of consumer, health, educational, and fashion trends from the past several decades. And damn. People were funny.

[The Found Footage Festival is currently on tour! Click here to see when it hits your city!]

Rooftop spoke to Nick about his favorite types of clips, those dadgum Internets, and the magic of the movies.

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November 4th, 2009
Categories: Interview

By Comedian Sean Keane

Brett Favre returned to Lambeau Field, the New York-Philadelphia rivalry spread to the gridiron, and Cleveland’s season actually got sadder. There was no Sunday Night Football, ostensibly because of the World Series, but realistically, it’s because Bob Costas has to get a chemical peel and synthesize a new toupee every year at mid season. The NFC West is terrible, the NFC East is suddenly wide open, and while half of the AFC North had a bye week, the Ravens played with the strength of four teams against Denver. Meanwhile, Cleveland was about as dominant as the Gimp from “Pulp Fiction.” To the games!

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November 3rd, 2009
Categories: Sports

If you’re simultaneously obsessed with social media but irritated by the sheer banality of most content, (It’s raining. We get it.) WitStream.com is the place for you. Founded by television producer Lisa Cohen and co-operated by comedian Michael Ian Black, WitStream is a hand-picked collection of Twittering comedians, writers, and humorists, whose updates are savory little nuggets of freshly-fried funny.

Perhaps the best part about WitStream is that the users (including Matt Braunger, Rob Delaney, Myq Kaplan, and Laurie Kilmartin) engage in conversation with each other in a way that’s easy for an audience to follow. No “@” symbols and re-tweets here; comedians ruffle each others’ feathers in real time, and you get to watch.

The site officially launches today, November 2, and is celebrating with an A-list show TONIGHT at Comix, featuring Michael Showalter, Baron Vaughn, Pete Holmes, Doug Benson, Josh Fadem, Morgan Murphy, and, of course, MIB himself.

Rooftop managed to tear our eyes away from WitStream activity long enough to catch up with Queen Bee Lisa Cohen.

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November 2nd, 2009
Categories: Ruminations, theorizations and stuff

What’s so “special” about Special Ed? For one thing, the man can eat an entire burrito in less than a minute. Sorry, ladies. He’s taken.

One-quarter of Boston’s beloved morning show sausage fest The Sandbox on 101.7 WFNX radio (92.1 in New Hampshire, for the yokels), Ed — also the show’s producer — is super picky about the funny. (He does like a good fart joke, but it has to be well-crafted. Finessed. Seamless. Did you know there’s a fart art?)  Ed has bantered on the mic with some of the country’s best comedians, so we trust his judgment.

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November 2nd, 2009
Categories: Guest Editors

It’s here! The Rooftop staff’s favorite holiday. Nothing better than costumes and candy!

Behold! The ghosts (and vampires. And soccer trophies?!) of Rooftop’s Halloweens past:

October 30th, 2009
Categories: Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy

By Comedian Sean Keane

It was a bad week to be an underdog in the NFL. Last week, the Raiders were 14-point underdogs at home, and pulled a huge upset. This week, the Raiders lost by 38 at home.  Favorites brought down the hammer, only three underdogs covered, thousands of multi-team parlays paid off, and bookmakers all over Vegas got murdered.  And by “murdered”, I mean, beaten with baseball bats and dumped into shallow graves in the desert, all because there’s no point spread high enough for a game featuring the St. Louis Rams.  Betting on Tampa, Cleveland, St. Louis, or Tampa? Fuhgeddaboudit.
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October 28th, 2009
Categories: News'n'stuff

Myq Kaplan does not spell “Mike” that way to be a gimmicky wackadoo comedian; he changed his name to Myq as a pre-teen at summer camp, and never looked back.

Well, he may have looked back. But he never stopped spelling his name that way.

However you spell it, you should commit his name to memory; pretty soon, it’ll be all over the place. Featured as a “New Face” in the 2009 Montreal Just For Laughs festival, Myq is about to tape his first half-hour Comedy Central special, and can be seen stumping for Pizza Hut and Subway on a series of Comedy Central promos. (Even more impressive when you consider that he’s been a vegan since college.)

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October 25th, 2009
Categories: Guest Editors

Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter need little introduction. The stars of the Comedy Central hit Michael and Michael Have Issues, and two-thirds (with David Wain) of the wildly popular comedy troupe Stella, Black and Showalter have earned the sort of cult following associated with fans who memorize decades worth of sketches and one-liners and movie quotes. [Black is also the Chief Content Officer of Witstream, an aggregated Twitter feed of hand-picked writers and comedians. No banal updates about the weather here, kids.]

So, unsurprisingly, when Rooftop asked Michael and Michael fans to submit questions for this interview, most of them were based on monkey torture and quotes from Wet Hot American Summer. Which we’re cool with. And hell, I even dared to ask Showalter if there were anything that he wanted to dip his balls in. I did it for you, Rooftop fans. I did it for you.  (And, for the record, he declined to answer. I’d keep that info private, too, if I had balls.)

I was thrilled to catch up with the Michaels while they’re in the midst of their “Michael and Michael Have Live Tour” (upcoming dates in Oakland, CA, Montclair, NJ, Boston, Washington DC, and Philly. Click here for more info.) and ask them some of your pressing questions. Are you ready? Here it comes! OPEN WIDE!!

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October 23rd, 2009
Categories: Interview

MIT Sloan business school students are nerds. But funny nerds. Funny nerds with autotune.

Whatchu got, Harvard? Stanford? Chicago? Bring it.

Damn, MIT. Last month you Rick-Rolled an entire city. And now you’re taking on SNL? We like it.

October 22nd, 2009
Categories: News'n'stuff

By Comedian Sean Keane

New Orleans and New England ran up the score in huge victories, and the Eagles and Jaguars ran up their fans’ blood pressure in an exciting weekend of NFL action. The Jets ran for a ton of yardage in a loss, the Titans ran into a snowstorm and an offensive buzzsaw in New England, and the Redskins are trying to run their head coach out of town.  In addition, field goals were made and missed seemingly at
ran-dom, and a fourth-down stop by Cleveland against Pittsburgh was overruled by a referee’s decision worthy of election officials in I-ran.

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October 20th, 2009
Categories: Ruminations, theorizations and stuff