Patton Oswalt sat down on the Conan couch last night to promote his new film, Young Adult. The conversation, though, didn’t just focus on the Jason Reitman-directed film that looks awfully good and the logical perplexities of Patton adding a love scene with Charlize Theron to his resume. Naturally, the holiday season came up and Patton wants to know the Little Drummer Boy’s secret to soothing babies (Jesus or otherwise). Watch his full interview:
In this edition of Point/Counter Point, Finwë Carnesîr and Elladan Súrion (known by their un-elvish names as Jono and Dominic) take on the topic of LOTR Elves versus good old fashioned Santa Elves. Who will win in this holiday themed round of Point/Counter Point??
-Jono
ElveHere’s a question: when’s the last time you saw Hugo Weaving toiling with some pathetic rocking horse for your baby cousin Zach? Never. Hugo Weaving is far too busy gazing sternly and being immortal. Elves that inhabit the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings are less about being replaceable servants to a fat white man and more about mastering archery, among their other pursuits.
Maybe you’ve sampled their bread—lembas. Well, probably not because either a) you’re evil (there’s a reason Gollum was so averse to it) or b) you’re not an elf. They like to keep this miracle food in the elf family. By family, I of course mean the likes of Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, and the aforementioned Hugo. Lembas keeps you full for whatever elvish activities you have going on in your day. Maybe you’re off to fight in just some little battle at Helm’s Deep (Legolas/Orlando Bloom); or maybe you need to go ponder the burden of immortality in the face of true mortal love (Arwen/Liv Tyler). These elves keep their calendars booked and they need a badass snack to go with it. Lembas stays fresh for months and even just a few bites will keep an elf full for a whole day. Santa’s cookies these are not.
The pointed ears are where the similarities end between Middle Earth elves and Santa’s elves. No need to crouch down to their level. Legolas will look you straight in the eye and tell you he couldn’t care less about Christmas. They rather spend their time, according to my sources, doing smithwork, sculpture, dancing, and eating. Who couldn’t get behind that? Also, they don’t just pop up as a seasonal thing, hawking tablets for Best Buy. I rest my case, but let’s watch the elves make their entrance into Helm’s Deep.
-Dominic
Long before their species was immortalized by Will Ferrell in 2003′s Elf, those known as “Santa’s little helpers” had carved a nice niche for their kind. They made toys, spread joy through their gift of song and worked tirelessly to ensure that children all over the world had something to look forward to on Christmas day.
Christmas is a big deal. And while Santa might run shop, its the elves who make things tick – literally (they make thousands of watches each holiday season!). Now, my misguided cohort might praise the value of the elves from Middle Earth but, come on. There is no Middle Earth. But there is indeed a north pole. With candy cane lanes and sugar plums and all kinds of goodies that the superior elves (Santa’s elves) inhabit year round. Rather than concerning themselves with one ring to “rule them all”, these elves are actually making DVDs of Lord Of The Rings as well as board games, action figures and collectible goblets to actually make children happy.
Let me get down to brass tax. Tolkien’s fantasy-world of elves and rings and hobbits is something that may appeal to some of us. But joy and snow and hot cocoa and picturing cute mini-people making etch-a-sketches and jack-in-the-boxes and rocking ponies is something that I think all of us can get behind. My troubled friend Jono may not have any holiday spirit but I hope that someday the splendor and magic that Santa’s elves personify can find a way to infect him. I’ll leave it to Papa Elf to explain why Santa’s elves are the very best elves.
Who takes it? If you don’t think words were enough, perhaps a dance battle between the two will settle this.
After some heated Facebook voting, the Magners Comedy Festival moves on with the top 10 comics. Thousands of “pints” later, the all-knowing Facebook told us who should move on to win the contest. In January, the ten finalists will face-off in person in Boston for a great weekend of comedy that’s not to be missed. One lucky comic from that bunch will fly to Scotland to perform in the renowned Glasgow International Comedy Festival. In no particular order, here are Top 10 comics moving on in the Magners Comedy Festival:
You can catch these comics in Boston for the semi-final rounds (Jan 26 at Nick’s Comedy Stop and Jan 27 at Mottley’s) and the final round (Jan 28 at Nick’s Comedy Stop). Thank you so much to all who voted and please visit the festival’s site for more info.
The wonderfully weird and recent Andy Kaufman Award winner Nick Vatterott delivered a distinctly quirky set on Conan last night. Apparently he’s gearing up to do some shows for kindergarten students and that sounds just about perfect. Nick also reflected on his own (distracted) childhood and the inherent awkwardness of the letter “Q”. Be sure to watch the rest of Nick’s clips on Rooftop and keep up with him on Twitter. Great job Nick!
Las Vegas doesn’t immediately jump to mind when people think of comedy hotbeds. For Bryan Bruner, though, that’s where he got his first gigs and where he jumped the first hurdle of stealing people’s attention from the slot machines. Since then, Bryan has only been improving, crafting his own style that’s a blast to listen to on his debut album, Welcome to Djibouti. We recently sat down with Bryan to talk about some intense (and violent) heckling, Kal Penn’s relationship with cheetahs, and the comedic muse that is Florida’s swingers’ community.
Rooftop Comedy: What was it like to get your comedy start in the Vegas scene?
Bryan Bruner: It was tough because it still is a very young, tiny scene. It’s not like New York, where there’s six generations of comics and an established way of doing things. In Vegas, it’s starting. It’s creating itself. You’re doing video poker bars. People’s attentions are everywhere but being geared up for comedy. People are figuring it out though. They’re figuring out how to set up the room and how to give comedy a fighting chance. Coming from Vegas definitely gave me the chops to have the fighting chance to survive in New York.
RT: So how about that one time a Marine attacked you while you were performing onstage?
BB: I think I was doing stand-up for six months and I was hosting this show and it was in the back of the bar. I’m dying on stage. I’m getting nowhere. My mom’s in the audience. My grandma is there. It’s her 80th birthday. I’m eating so much dick. I’m getting no laughs and one of the jokes tanks and I turn and I repeated the punch line at this guy or whatnot. Out of the blue, he comes out of nowhere and spears me from the side, knocks me into the TV and into the wall. Just a few minutes earlier, his buddy had heckled me and I made fun of him. It wasn’t anything mean. It was kind of a shitty comeback. Anyway, his buddy heckled me and I went back into the bit and then after that bit is when he just charged me onstage. It was a weird thing where I got stuck in the wall and I had to unplug my ass out of the wall. After that, I think I quit doing stand-up for quite a long time. [Ed. note: you can watch the incident on YouTube]
RT: How was it going on a U.S. Army tour overseas?
BB: We were in Djibouti and our tour—we were just a bunch of no-name comics—but there was also a USO tour called the Hollywood Handshake tour. It was Christian Slater, Kal Penn, Zachary Levi, and Joel David Moore. So their tour meets our tour and we’re in Djibouti and they take us to this cheetah refuge. Some of them are contained behind a fence and there was one cheetah that was actually domesticated and you could pet the cheetah. I’m a little stand-off-ish about this and I’m sitting next to Kal Penn and some military officer was like, “Hey Kal, don’t try to ride this cheetah”, because in Harold and Kumar, they have to ride a cheetah back to White Castle. So they start fucking with Kal Penn and Kal Penn for a second was like, “Dude, I don’t think you guys understand. I really fucking hate cheetahs. When we were filming the movie, they purposefully didn’t feed the cheetah, so it would come across meaner”. So when Kal Penn wouldn’t go into the cheetah refuge, these military guys would just give him shit the whole time. I’m glad I’m not a movie star.
RT: Your album features a few stand-out long-form stories, including one about your introduction to the swingers’ community in Florida. Are these bits pretty polished at this point, or do you continue to develop the delivery?
BB: Yes and no. It’s got to change and it’s got to evolve. I can’t do the same thing every time. My problem that I have is sometimes I load it too much with detail and it loses focus. I’ll know I have a good story, if I feel like I’ll be embarrassed to tell it. If I’m like, “I don’t even know if I should be telling you about this”, well then that’s a story everyone wants to hear. For me, the hardest part is just getting out there and saying it. The more I say it, the more comfortable I become talking about it. What I’ll do is I’ll just go to some open mic and I’ll take my five minutes or whatever I’m allotted and I will just tell the story. I don’t care if it works or if it doesn’t. I just need to get the beats down. I’ve always been a storyteller for my friends and whatnot. Honestly, though, it was something I just started getting into before we recorded that record.
RT: You also produce the Sorta Secret Comedy Show. How did you decide to host a comedy show in your New York-sized apartment?
BB: Obviously, like everyone in New York, I have two roommates and they’re stand-ups. I wanted to do a show in a parking garage or in an auto shop and I started coming up with all these weird places I wanted to do it. We wanted to do one in our living room, but our landlord is a dick. We have a really big place. We kind of looked at each other and were like, “That’s so crazy of an idea that it just might work”. We started taking tape measurements of the room and started figuring out how we could line up couches and where we could get chairs. We charged $10 to get in the door and then it’s free beer—all you can drink. I think at our first show we had 45 people. The biggest show in our living room we had 55 people. Now, we’re taking it elsewhere. We’re working on getting into a laundromat. We just did the top of a hotel. Brown Paper Tickets totally sponsored us and rented us a sick as rock star suite at the top of a Holiday Inn. We really want to get into a Planned Parenthood.
In case you missed it, Rooftop friend and owl look-alike Sean Patton stopped by Conanrecently. Sean hit his stride right off the bat with a spin “dance move” that Conan really enjoyed. In a great set, he revealed his tricks to picking up ladies, including some surprising tips from the owls. He also congratulated himself for quitting smoking cigarettes and marijuana–an accomplishment that’s had some unforeseen effects (no more tuna-mac cakes!). Nice job, Sean! Don’t forget to catch out all of his Rooftop clips–you don’t want to miss his analysis of how college students party. You can follow Sean on Twitter.
Tig Notaro returned to the Conan stage last night, building off her hilarious last visit in September. Topics of the day included unusual reflections on her name, the bathing style of toddlers, and stool sounds. Be sure to watch all of Tig’s Rooftop clips. You can catch Tig on her weekly podcast Professor Blastoff, where she is joined by Kyle Dunnigan and David Huntsberger. Great job Tig!
