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:

Posted: October 30th, 2009 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy.
Comments: 2

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.
Read more »

Posted: October 28th, 2009 under News'n'stuff.
Comments: 70

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.)

Read more »

Posted: October 25th, 2009 under Guest Editors.
Comments: 4

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!!

Read more »

Posted: October 23rd, 2009 under Interview.
Comments: 228

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.

Posted: October 22nd, 2009 under News'n'stuff.
Comments: 4

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.

Read more »

Posted: October 20th, 2009 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 2

Interview by Chris Garcia

Andy Wood’s life is probably best summed up by a quote he remembers hearing come out of the mouth of the trophy-stepmother of a friend of his back in fourth grade: “That boy thinks too much.”

Evidently he doesn’t think enough about practical things, though, which is why his engineering career has gone by the wayside in favor of comedy. An alumnus of the Bumbershoot Arts Festival and the Portland Amateur Comedy Competition, Andy is also one of the founders of the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, one of the best stand up comedy festivals in the country.

Andy took a break from his busy schedule to speak to us about his latest project, helping out with The Bentzen Ball, a stand up comedy festival which takes place in Washington DC Thursday-Sunday of this week.

Read more »

Posted: October 19th, 2009 under Interview.
Comments: 1

David Nadelberg is one of the bravest men in comedy.

As the creator of Mortified, a hysterical smorgasbord of teenage angst wherein real people share their real childhood artifacts (such as diaries, letters, poems, songs, etc), Nadelberg has hit the nail on the painfully nostalgic head. Audiences go nuts for the stage show, and the press has, too; the show has received countless accolades, including Day-Glo raves from Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, and “This American Life” on NPR.

Can you imagine hopping up on a stage and reading, aloud, to a group of strangers, your most intimate and, yes, embarrassing, teenage thoughts?

We told you it was brave.

Read more »

Posted: October 19th, 2009 under Guest Editors.
Comments: 6

[ <--We stole this from Mr. Morph's Gallery - The Beard Community Bulletin Board.]

Even more exciting than the sweet’n'hairy morphing action happening on this page? The release of “Comedy For People”, the brand-spankin’ new album from our fuzzy buddies The Beards of Comedy. (Click HERE to purchase!)

Comprised of Rooftop comedians Dave Stone, Andy Sandford, TJ Young, and Joe Zimmerman, the Beards of Comedy have a combined resume that includes appearances with Aziz Ansari, Todd Barry, Doug Benson, Jim Breuer, Greg Giraldo, Andy Kindler, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn and Greg Proops. Plus. a collective yard of wooly facial sassafras that simply can’t be beat.

The Beards are celebrating the release of “Comedy for People” with a multi-city tour. Dates include:

October 15 – DSI Comedy Theatre – Chapel Hill, NC
October 16 – The Melting Point – Athens, GA
October 17 – Ground Zero – Spartanburg, SC
November 13-14 – Nutt Street Comedy – Wilmington, NC
January 16-19 (2010) – The Laughing Skull Lounge – Atlanta, GA
January 22-23 (2010) – The Charleston Comedy Festival – Charleston, SC

Posted: October 15th, 2009 under News'n'stuff.
Comments: 9

I was thinking today about what got me interested in stand-up comedy, what my earliest memories of comedians are, what made me laugh as a kid that still makes me laugh today.

My parents were fairly strict about monitoring my TV and movie watching habits growing up, so I was never exposed to, say, Richard Pryor or George Carlin. (Except, of course, when Carlin appeared as The Conductor on “Shining Times Station.” Choo chooooo.) But Dad was a huge Mel Brooks fan, and the jokes encompassed enough innuendo that, as kids, we didn’t get it when Young Frankenstein‘s Inga vanted to take a roll in ze hay, or when Blazing Saddles’ Lili Von Shtupp crooned that men were always coming and going and going and coming…too soon. We just thought that Frau Blucher was silly, that Sherrif Bart was goofy. We just liked to laugh.

Then, when I discovered Gilda Radner…I was hooked. I’d found my idol. Most girls my age were into (and I’m dating myself here) Debbie Gibson and Tiffany and the New Kids on the Block. I loved Gilda. Loved Steve Martin. Loved loved loved Gene Wilder.

What about you?

Posted: October 15th, 2009 under Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
Comments: 6