Humorism

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Humorism

A newsletter about labor, inequality, and extremism in comedy.

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Comedy Central Blows It Again

Here's what you need to know about Charlamagne Tha God's new show with Stephen Colbert.

CW: sexual assault, drugging Youtube video Here's as clear an example as you'll find of how rape culture works. This week Comedy Central announced a new weekly late night show hosted by "multi-media mogul" Lenard McKelvey, a.k.a Charlamagne Tha God. Titled Tha God's Honest Truth with Lenard McKelvey, the show will be co-produced by Stephen Colbert, who in a press release called McKelvey "fearless" and "peerless." McKelvey is best known for hosting the radio show The Breakfast Club, though he also co-hosts the podcast The Brilliant Idiots with comedian Andrew Schulz. He's known for some other things too. A few years ago The Daily Beast reported on recently resurfaced charges that in 2001, when McKelvey was 22, he raped a 15-year-old girl: > A Berkeley County incident report from Jun

Seth Simons

Jul 23 2021

10 min read

How To Get Rich In Comedy, Part II

Dani Zoldan's "MoviePass for comedy clubs" service received $153,266 in federal performing arts relief. Venues participating in the program say nobody's ever used it.

For the last four months, Stand Up NY owner Dani Zoldan has been raising hell about the Shuttered Venue Operators Grants, a federal stimulus program designed to bring financial aid to live arts venues devastated by the pandemic. When the application portal launched with disastrous technical failures in April, he posted about it. When the Small Business Administration planned for its relaunch on a Saturday—Shabbos—he posted about it. When months went by without any grants awarded, he posted about it, took to the radio, went on TV, asked Joe Rogan and Mark Cuban to raise awareness, and even called on comedians to stop performing. When the SBA disbursed grants to massive cultural institutions before many smaller venues like his comedy club—say it with me—he posted about it. According to data

Seth Simons

Jul 20 2021

7 min read

I Think You Should Read

A weekend reading list.

One of my favorite sketches in the new season of I Think You Should Leave was the courtroom sketch, which hit my sweet spot for stories-within-stories (and my other sweet spot for hat-based humor). If you have the same sweet spot, allow me to recommend some of my favorite works of fiction with embedded narratives: - The Others by Matthew Rohrer, a novel in verse about a very bad day in the life of a junior literary editor with a pile of manuscripts to sort through; - Mr. Burns: a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn, about a post-apocalyptic society that forms a whole mythology around a Simpsons episode; - The Antipodes by Annie Baker, a play about a writers room swapping stories as they try to break an unspecified project; - Arlington by Enda Walsh, a play about a sort of Bec

Seth Simons

Jul 16 2021

3 min read