We’re proud to announce the start of this year’s Next Big Comic, a yearly competition we’re producing with CMT. The search is on this year as 12 very comics face off. Check out all the clips over on the CMT site and be sure to share your favorites. Show your support and you can vote as many times for as many comics as you wish. The comics with the most votes will advance each week and the four finalists will perform at the famous Stardome in Birmingham, Alabama. Who are these 12 contestants exactly? You’ve seen them headline clubs all over the country and they’re some of our favorite comics:

Andy Beningo

Shane Mauss

Steve Gillespie

Tom Simmons

Andy Pitz

Felicia Gillespie

Kelly Collette

Lance Weiss

Chris Pennie

Adam Norwest

Dave Stone

Tim Wilkins

Be sure to keep up with the action on Twitter (#NextBigComic) and spread the word! We want to know who you’re supporting. Next week, the eight comics with the most votes will move on and we’ll have new clips for you to consider.

Rooftop Comedy Productions is proud to welcome the newest member of the family: Chris Killian. Chris is a comic from the Nashville area, who spends his time touring clubs and college campuses, bringing his energetic mix of comedy and original songs (including “Bieber Fever”, pictured above). We recently chatted with Chris online to talk about his comedy heroes, Justin Bieber’s comedic chops, and why he’s still waiting to hear back from Jay-Z. Chris’ new album, The Not Black Album comes out tomorrow and we hope you’ll check it out.

How long have you been doing comedy?

Well I hate to brag, but you know that night we recorded the album? That was like my fourth time on stage I think. What is that—three months now? I dunno. My stand-up comedy career so far has just been a haze of drug and sex-induced bravado. Let’s just say two and a half years.

Who are your comedy idols?

Well if I don’t mention classics like the Carlins and the Pryors and the Hicks, comedy nerds might castrate me. Those guys, obviously, and really, I love anyone willing to take risks. Steve Martin is a genius. I know it sounds weird and cliché saying this because he died, but Greg Giraldo was my comedy hero. He was the first stand-up comic I ever watched live, and a few years later I got to open for him a few months before he died and the guy was just great. I still have text messages from him where we’re busting each other’s balls.

You hail from the Nashville area. What’s that comedy scene like?

It’s pretty rural. It’s a lot like LA except most of the guys are related. We love tractor jokes in Nashville.

You incorporate music into your act quite a lot and write original songs. Who do you identify as your equivalent in the music world?

I would hate to insult any musical legends by identifying them as equal to me. But probably John Lennon.

Who are your musical inspirations?

Inspired is probably a strong word. Let’s take Prince for example. I’m a HUGE Prince fan. What he really did was inspire me not to pursue real music because I’m just not that talented. Instead, artists like Prince and The Beatles and Tone Loc taught me that, like all great things, if I cut it down and make fun of it, I can pretend like it’s not that hard to do.

Have you always played music as part of your comedy?

The songs actually led me to stand-up comedy. Originally in college, I would just try to entertain my friends or pick up chicks, so I’d be like “Listen to this song I wrote about homeless people or statutory rape or necrophilia” and eventually, people would tell me I should try to perform those on stage. But from the get-go I knew I only wanted the music to be a small part to my show. The album actually has a lot more music than I usually perform. One reason is because I want the good songs I’ve written to have a longer shelf life so I don’t have to write more. But the MAIN reason is because I want the show to be diverse and break up the monotony a bit.

On the flip side, while we’re on the subject of music in comedy, I have ran into this elitist attitude from some stand-up comics, or purists, and there’s a certain backlash sometimes that comes from having music in my act. I have literally walked into clubs with a guitar and seen other comics roll their eyes and say something like, “Guitar comics are shitty. It’s just a crutch”. Well sure, I agree, some guitar comics are shitty and use it as a crutch. But just to assume that, without seeing them, because someone has a guitar, they’re automatically shitty, well that’s stupid. I know a lot of guys who don’t play music in their act who suck, but that doesn’t mean I think all monologists are terrible. I watch them before I judge.

But to answer your question, yeah, pretty much.

Has Jay-Z formally welcomed you to the “The ______ Album” club?

Not formally, but he’s got like 101 problems now instead of 99, what with Beyoncé and Blue Ivy, so I’m sure it’s on his to-do list. I did get an e-mail from Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich welcoming me, but he’s usually a dick so I didn’t respond.

What are you looking forward to this year in your comedy career?

I am looking forward to the sales of this album sky-rocketing me and catapulting me into the comedy heavens. Realistically, I’m happy to have a busy year on the books and can hopefully just keep writing and performing.

You’re a proud Justin Bieber “belieber”. Do you think he has any comedy chops?

Yeah, I do. Actually, I just read earlier today that the Biebs just bought the rights to the movie FEAR, where Mark Wahlberg played a psychotic stalker. Remember? The article said Biebs wants to re-make that movie and play the Marky Mark character, which I find hilarious. If there’s one word that doesn’t describe Justin Bieber, it’s intimidating.

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Chris will headline Zanies Comedy Club in Nashville February 1-2 and Sidesplitters (Knoxville) on February 5. To see Chris’ full tour schedule, follow him on Facebook and Twitter. The Not Black Album will be available January 31 on iTunes, Amazon, and RooftopComedy.com.

Check out our new series Crashing the Market, now showing on MSN. It’s a weekly send-up of all the business headlines and gossip you may have missed. From McDonald’s fumbles in social media to financial tycoons losing their knighthood, we’re here to help you laugh at the absurd world of business. Click through the link below to watch the first episode, featuring host Mariah Castle. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Crashing the Market – Episode 1

The third annual Magners Comedy Festival is upon us! If you’re in the Boston area, you must check out these great comedy shows, starting tonight and going through Sunday. Marc Maron will be in town performing and recording a live episode of his WTF podcast. Colin Quinn will perform his popular one-man show, Long Story Short. Rounding out the packed weekend is a ton of stand-up shows, including the Comic Stand-Off. You voted on Facebook and now these 10 comics are heading to Boston to face off against each other:

Trenton Davis

Linda Aarons

Kat Radley

Will Noonan

Lance Weiss

Matt D

Erik Levi

Brian Mitchell

Sean Wilkinson

Raj Sivaraman

The semi-final rounds get underway tomorrow night at Nick’s Comedy Stop (TICKETS) and continue Friday night at Mottley’s (TICKETS). Local celebrity judges will decide who moves on to the final showdown at Nick’s Comedy Stop on Friday, Jan 27 (TICKETS). Come support these comics and treat yourself to what is sure to be a great weekend of comedy.

Semi-Final Round 1

Thursday, Jan 26, 8:30pm, Nick’s Comedy Stop

Semi-Final Round 2

Friday, Jan 27, 8pm, Mottley’s

Final Round

Saturday, Jan 28, 8:30pm, Nick’s Comedy Stop

Be sure to keep up with all the Magners Comedy action on Facebook and Twitter. Tickets for most shows are still available, but they’re going fast.

Dana Gould made a stop at Jimmy Kimmel Live and we’re awfully glad he did. Dana killed it with a great set, taking some time to muse on feathers as hair accessories and Stephen Hawking as an inspiration to schlubby Joe Shmoe’s everywhere–naturally. Definitely worth a few minutes of your afternoon. Be sure to follow Dana on Twitter (@DanaJGould) and see him live at SF Sketchfest and regular shows all around LA. Nice job Dana!

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:

Trenton Davis

Linda Aarons

Brian Mitchell

Kat Radley

Raj Sivaraman

Will Noonan

Matt Donaher

Sean Wilkinson

Lance Weiss

M Dickson

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 80^th 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.

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Keep up with Bryan on Facebook and follow him on Twitter. Welcome to Djibouti is available now on iTunes, Amazon, and the Rooftop Comedy shop.