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      New York Comedy Festival Recommendations

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      The intriguing options range from well-known names like Bill Maher and Tracy Morgan to under-the-radar standups like Chloe Radcliffe and Jay Jurden.When the New York Comedy Festival started in 2004, it was a modest affair, with only a dozen standup shows. Twenty years later, it has grown into a bustling, sprawling staple of the comedy season, featuring more than 100 shows, big and small, in every borough. The festival begins Thursday and runs through Nov. 17. Here are a few promising options.‘Chloe Radcliffe: Cheat’Chelsea Music Hall, SundayMore than a decade ago, a Hollywood producer told me you couldn’t make a movie about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend or spouse and still retain the audience’s sympathy. The stand-up Chloe Radcliffe proves him wrong in this personal solo show that explores infidelity (her own and the subject broadly) with a refreshing candor and open-mindedness. “Cheat” finds a new take on an old subject while delivering hard-hitting punchlines.Bill Maher: The WTF TourBeacon Theater, Nov. 16In a festival that doesn’t seem especially packed with political comics, Bill Maher, who has performed at the event more than any other comic, stands out. He has talked about giving up standup and focusing on his weekly HBO show and podcast, so who knows if this will be his swan song. In September he predicted Donald J. Trump would lose. What will he say now?Jay JurdenGramercy Theater, MondayWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Television

      ‘English Teacher’ Gets TikTok Boost from Brian Jordan Alvarez

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      Brian Jordan Alvarez’s career started on social media. His mastery of the form, and a ridiculous dance trend, have drawn viewers to his show, “English Teacher.”The start of a new TV show is a fraught time for its creators and stars. Years of work have gone into its debut, yet the window of time in which to attract viewers is brief. Add a splintered media environment and an oxygen-sucking presidential election, and the chances for cultural relevancy slip further.Most showrunners make the press rounds and hope for the best. Brian Jordan Alvarez unwittingly came up with another strategy: becoming a meme.In September, shortly after the debut of “English Teacher,” an FX show that Mr. Alvarez created and stars in, a TikTok user with the handle @clozvr posted a clip from an old “Gilmore Girls” episode mashed up with the song “Breathe” by Olly Alexander.In the “Gilmore” clip, Kirk Gleason, the awkward character played by Sean Gunn, has made a black-and-white art-house movie. In it, Kirk tells his girlfriend’s father, “I love your daughter.” When the father says, “What do you have to offer her?” Kirk replies, “Nothing. Only this,” before breaking into a goofy break dance.Mr. Alvarez saw another TikTok user dancing in an apartment to the clip and found it “weirdly captivating,” he said. He decided to film his own version in the Nashville airport, lip-syncing to the dialogue and the song and dancing as he rolled his suitcase.

      @brianjordanalvarez Wow ♬ afilmbykirk – ꫂ ၴႅၴ

      @brianjordanalvarez ♬ afilmbykirk – ꫂ ၴႅၴ We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

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      Janey Godley, Scottish Comic Who Brought Humor to Harrowing Topics, Dies at 63

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      A Scottish performer, she said she believed there were “funny sides” to terrible experiences, including some that she drew from her own times of loss and hardship.Janey Godley, a Scottish comedian, actor and writer whose hard-hitting, candid wit established her as a comedy star and who became widely known for her parody voice-overs of elected leaders during the coronavirus pandemic, died on Saturday in Glasgow. She was 63.Her death, at the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, was caused by ovarian cancer, according to her manager, Chris Davis. Ms. Godley announced in September that she had exhausted her treatment options and had entered palliative care.She gained a following during the coronavirus pandemic performing parodies that reimagined what officials were saying — or perhaps secretly thinking — during their public addresses. One favorite subject was Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s leader at the time.Ms. Sturgeon seemed to appreciate the humor, calling Ms. Godley her “alter ego.” Ms. Godley’s videos, some observers said, led her to become a distinctive voice helping to spread public health messages during the pandemic.Other world leaders were not spared Ms. Godley’s voice-over treatment. Her targets also included Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May of Britain, President Donald J. Trump and Queen Elizabeth II.“Here’s the thing: Women my age are constantly being told we don’t know how to work the internet — but I nailed it,” she joked in an interview. “I showed these 22-year-olds how it’s done.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

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      Specials by Tom Papa and Others to Distract You From the News

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      Tom Papa, James Adomian and Emily Catalano take very different, very funny approaches in their new hours.Tom Papa, ‘Home Free’(Stream it on Netflix)If the scroll of election news has you in the mood for some light distraction and cheer-me-up laughs, Tom Papa’s latest special arrives just in time. The ultimate escapist comedian, Papa has built a soothingly funny body of work with a persona that stands out in these anxious times: a sensible optimist who thinks you are too hard on yourself. The title of his last special sums up his message: “You’re doing great!”Papa — the perfect name for his brand of middle-aged dad comedy — tells well-crafted jokes about family secrets and hot-dog-eating contests with the spirit of a self-help guru. Even his complaints come out as gratitude. “A good day is any day I don’t have to retrieve a username and password,” he once joked.In his new special, he opens with an unexpectedly sunny take on being an empty-nester. It’s set up with an unshowy deftness that lets you know you are in good hands. His delivery is lilting and subtle. When one of my daughters was getting a little weepy about the prospect of her sister leaving home, I showed this joke to her and the mood lightened. Papa shot the special in Washington, D.C., and nods to Americans’ exhaustion with politics, before suggesting we take a break from the news now and then. “You can know too much,” he says. “Ignorance is bliss” is a theme.He loves that therapy is popular, but it’s not for him. “I’m having a good time,” he says. “If I go to therapy, they’re going to stop it.” And yet, Papa can sound like a therapist — or at least a comedian version of one.He asks questions that reframe your perspective to something healthier. Is there some “power of positive thinking” hokum here? Sure. But there’s also an entertainer’s ethos that the job is to make you forget your troubles — come on, get happy. This doesn’t mean avoiding darkness. In fact, Papa understands that grim news is necessary to find the incongruity that will make you laugh. In explaining to a child what “nuclear Armageddon” means, he gives it as rosy a slant as one could. “We’re all going to die someday and there’s a way we can all die on the same day.” Then he smiles and does a little dance.James Adomian, ‘Path of Most Resistance’(Stream it on YouTube)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      New Comedy Specials by Tom Papa and Others to Distract You From the News

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      Tom Papa, James Adomian and Emily Catalano take very different, very funny approaches in their new hours.Tom Papa, ‘Home Free’(Stream it on Netflix)If the scroll of election news has you in the mood for some light distraction and cheer-me-up laughs, Tom Papa’s latest special arrives just in time. The ultimate escapist comedian, Papa has built a soothingly funny body of work with a persona that stands out in these anxious times: a sensible optimist who thinks you are too hard on yourself. The title of his last special sums up his message: “You’re doing great!”Papa — the perfect name for his brand of middle-aged dad comedy — tells well-crafted jokes about family secrets and hot-dog-eating contests with the spirit of a self-help guru. Even his complaints come out as gratitude. “A good day is any day I don’t have to retrieve a username and password,” he once joked.In his new special, he opens with an unexpectedly sunny take on being an empty-nester. It’s set up with an unshowy deftness that lets you know you are in good hands. His delivery is lilting and subtle. When one of my daughters was getting a little weepy about the prospect of her sister leaving home, I showed this joke to her and the mood lightened. Papa shot the special in Washington, D.C., and nods to Americans’ exhaustion with politics, before suggesting we take a break from the news now and then. “You can know too much,” he says. “Ignorance is bliss” is a theme.He loves that therapy is popular, but it’s not for him. “I’m having a good time,” he says. “If I go to therapy, they’re going to stop it.” And yet, Papa can sound like a therapist — or at least a comedian version of one.He asks questions that reframe your perspective to something healthier. Is there some “power of positive thinking” hokum here? Sure. But there’s also an entertainer’s ethos that the job is to make you forget your troubles — come on, get happy. This doesn’t mean avoiding darkness. In fact, Papa understands that grim news is necessary to find the incongruity that will make you laugh. In explaining to a child what “nuclear Armageddon” means, he gives it as rosy a slant as one could. “We’re all going to die someday and there’s a way we can all die on the same day.” Then he smiles and does a little dance.James Adomian, ‘Path of Most Resistance’(Stream it on YouTube)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Teri Garr, Comic Actress in ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Tootsie,’ Dies at 79

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      An Oscar nominee for her role in “Tootsie,” she was also a favorite guest of David Letterman and Johnny Carson and a three-time host of “Saturday Night Live.”Teri Garr, the alternately shy and sassy blond actress whose little-girl voice, deadpan comic timing, expressive eyes and cinematic bravery in the face of seemingly crazy male characters made her a star of 1970s and ’80s movies and earned her an Oscar nomination for her role in “Tootsie,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 79.Her publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, said the cause was complications of multiple sclerosis.Ms. Garr received that diagnosis in 1999, after 16 years of symptoms and medical research; she made her condition public in 2002. In late 2006, she had a ruptured brain aneurysm and was in a coma for a week, but she was eventually able to regain the ability to walk and talk.Onscreen, Ms. Garr’s outstanding features were her eyes, which could seem simultaneously pained, baffled, sympathetic, vulnerable, intrigued and determined, whether she was registering a grand new discovery or holding back tears. If her best-known roles had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.Ms. Garr and Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” (1982). She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the neglected friend-turned-lover of an actor played by Mr. Hoffman.Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock PhotoIn “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” she initially went into denial when her husband (Richard Dreyfuss) became obsessed with U.F.O.s, but promptly abandoned him, taking the children, when he built, in their family room, a mountain of garbage, fencing and backyard soil.In “Oh, God!,” Ms. Garr was supportive when her husband (John Denver), a California supermarket manager, told everyone that he was hanging out with God incarnate (George Burns). In “Tootsie,” for which she earned a 1983 Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, she whined eloquently as the neglected friend-turned-lover of an actor (Dustin Hoffman) who was behaving strangely. It turned out he had been posing as a woman to get better acting jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Why ‘Perfect Strangers’ Keeps Coming Back

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      From “The Leftovers” to “Only Murders in the Building,” “Perfect Strangers,” the wacky 1980s sitcom with a bombastic theme song, is enjoying a strange afterlife.In the latest season of “Only Murders in the Building,” the show’s trio of amateur detectives are investigating yet another murder and discover a theme — and a song — from an unlikely source: another TV show.The show is “Perfect Strangers,” the wacky 1980s sitcom that paired two cousins who — like the stars of “Only Murders” and its new cast of characters this season — couldn’t have been more different. The uplifting, bombastic “Perfect Strangers” theme song appears in the “Only Murders” fourth season, which concludes Tuesday.“We needed something that landed as a clue, something that opened up something curious for our trio to discover, something that kept hitting over and over again,” John Hoffman, the “Only Murders” showrunner, said.And so the “Perfect Strangers” theme song appears as a call sign over the ham radios of misfit residents introduced in this season of “Only Murders” and referred to as “the Westies.” Those are the tenants who live in the West tower of the Arconia, across from where Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin) live and where much of the investigation focuses.In one scene, in an apartment in the West tower of the Arconia, the New York City residential building at the center of the show, Mabel softly begins singing.“No matter what the odds are this time / nothing’s gonna stand in my way,” she chimes.Oliver mumbles along: “This flame in my heart / long-lost friend / Gives every dark street / a light at the end.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Trump Uses Comics Like Tony Hinchcliffe to Spread His Message

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      Like the former president, these stand-ups loathe the news media, delight in transgression and harbor a deep-seated love of cruel insult jokes.The stand-up of Tony Hinchcliffe, a popular insult comic, became an immediate issue in the presidential campaign on Sunday after his racist lines at a Donald J. Trump rally earned immediate blowback and criticism from, among others, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz.As Hinchcliffe has done in the past when embroiled in controversy, he doubled down. On X, he wrote that Walz had found the time to “analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.” Walz didn’t do that. But to the extent that there was a relevant context to Hinchcliffe’s dopey, trolling punchlines, it’s this: They were delivered at a Trump campaign event nine days before the election.There was a time not long ago when people wondered why there weren’t more conservative comedians or why there wasn’t a right-wing version of “The Daily Show.” These questions have always been a little naïve. Comedy has long had a conservative streak, and anyone who ever attended middle school knows that jokes can be as effective at reaffirming the status quo as challenging it.But comedy has become more partisan over the years; late-night TV’s move from neutral Johnny Carson to anti-Trump hosts is only one example. In this election, a forceful new Trump-friendly contingent has emerged, one dominated by male comics, many from Joe Rogan’s orbit. Whereas the biggest names in pop music have come out aggressively for Vice President Kamala Harris, the artists who have provided the most support for Trump have been comedians.Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have made comedy podcasts a regular stop, aiming to win over young male voters dissatisfied with mainstream news outlets. Just in the past week, Vance has appeared on the podcasts of Tim Dillon, a satirical comic who specializes in booming nihilistic rants, and the oddly poetic, bro-ish comic Theo Von. After much public speculation over whether Trump would be invited to sit down with Rogan — the most popular comedy podcaster and the one who gave a boost to many of these comics — it happened. (Trump has also appeared on podcasts with Von and with the New York standup Andrew Schulz, a podcaster so popular he headlined Madison Square Garden this year.)This doesn’t even count Greg Gutfeld, who as Fox’s highly rated right-wing answer to late night has had Trump on as well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More