Word: stand-up
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...pinch off the end of his Connoisseur Geant. "But I remember how my mother worked twelve- hour days cleaning other people's houses before coming home to take care of her own house and kids," and "all the things I did in college: running track, playing football, bartending, doing stand-up comedy" -- and still making the dean's list. By comparison, he concludes, "this is easy...
...unexpected 20 minutes from the hottest stand-up comedian in America -- not bad for a Sunday-night club outing. But not that surprising either. Stand-up comics are suddenly everywhere. On TV they get nightly exposure on such talk shows as Tonight and Late Night with David Letterman, as well as on | their own specials for cable networks like HBO and Showtime. Jackie Mason, a veteran stand-up performer from the '50s and '60s, made a smash comeback by turning his comedy routines into the current hit Broadway show The World According to Me. And Steve Martin is just...
...Stand-up comedy has been a staple of American entertainment since the heyday of the Borscht Belt. But the current boom is something new. TV has clearly played a major role, giving comedians national exposure and drawing on them for starring roles in sitcoms and Saturday Night Live. The intimacy between comic and audience, moreover, may be especially appealing in an age of high-tech movies and supersize rock concerts. Or it may simply be that the instant gratification of one-liners is perfectly suited to the short attention span of the TV-educated '80s audience...
...contrast to a decade ago, when offbeat comics like Martin, Albert Brooks and Andy Kaufman were redefining the stand-up genre, the current crop is relatively traditional. Except for a few intriguing eccentrics, such as Bob Goldthwait and Emo Philips, most of today's comics present themselves as regular folks, directing barbs at familiar subjects, from TV commercials to dating. Their lineage can be traced directly to two influential comics of the 1960s and '70s, George Carlin and Robert Klein. Both rooted their material in the commonplace concerns and shared memories of the baby-boom generation (especially TV) and perfected...
Some familiar elements are missing from the stand-up scene. Despite a flurry of jabs at news events like the Iran-contra testimony, committed political satire is rare. So is X-rated material, with a few notable exceptions like screaming Sam Kinnison's. "The networks want comedians to work clean," says Richard Fields, owner of Catch a Rising Star, a Manhattan comedy club. Indeed, many young comics regard stand-up comedy less as a goal than as a stepping stone. "People today are not just shooting to be * headliners," says Dennis Perrin, a New York-based comic and writer. "They...