Beyond the Joke: News: Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival Goes Online. “The Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival is launching its 2020 summer series of Fringe shows powered by Cisco and streamed live on Twitch. It starts on Saturday 30th May, with its first-ever online show – a Pick of the Fringe gig featuring six top comedians.”
Another one of those things I stumbled across thanks to the Bing News RSS feed: The Project Comedy Club database. From the About page: “Project CCDB came to fruition when a few comedians in a text feed were complaining about the lack of women/POC diversity in nationwide comedy club line-ups, even in large markets like Los Angeles, where the population contains more than enough qualified (audience-drawing) comics for booking. After months of exchanging photos of predominantly white male lineups, these comics got sick of complaining about it and connected with an interested computer scientist to gather actual data from clubs over a three month period and see if the hearsay was true or just rumors of a resentful messaging group. So, here are the facts as they stand of what genders and ethnicitites are most represented.”
Business Wire: The National Comedy Center Honors Lucille Ball on 30th Anniversary of Legend’s Passing (PRESS RELEASE). “As the world marks the 30 th anniversary of the passing of Lucille Ball, the new National Comedy Center – a state-of-the-art museum in Jamestown, New York that embodies Ball’s vision for a destination for the celebration of comedy – has announced a new initiative to digitally preserve the extensive archives of the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum.”
The Verge: Comedians are coming for one of Instagram’s biggest joke aggregators. “Comedians have started a campaign to take down Fuckjerry, one of Instagram’s biggest joke aggregators. The Instagram account, run primarily by Elliot Tebele with contribution from others at Jerry Media, posts jokes and memes from around the internet — while profiting off sponsored posts sent to the 14.3 million followers those jokes have attracted.”
Hollywood Reporter: New Garry Shandling Website Chronicles Late Comedian’s Personal Journals, Notes on Stand-Up Craft. “The estate of comedian Garry Shandling, who died in 2016 at his home in Los Angeles, has launched a website to house the stand-up’s many writings, notes and journal entries. [The site] went live Thursday morning and features copies of handwritten journal entires by Shandling on his comedic process, old set lists, photos from his club days, various videos from his decades-long career and a number of other personal material for fans and aspiring comics alike to peruse.” More materials will be added over time.
A.V. Club: Mitch Hedberg’s widow says unheard material is coming soon. “Prince’s archives are the stuff of legend, but what about Mitch Hedberg’s? We’ll soon find out, as in a guest column in today’s The Hollywood Reporter, Hedberg’s widow, Lynn Shawcroft, reveals that she’s spent the last eight months diligently digitizing a huge archive of unreleased material from the late comedy legend, and that ‘at some point soon, all of you will be hearing and seeing Mitch again.’”
The Smithsonian has started a project to digitize the joke cards of Phyllis Diller. I did a bunch yesterday; I am a big Diller fan. “Phyllis Diller’s groundbreaking career as a stand-up comic spanned almost 50 years. Throughout her career she used a gag file to organize her material. Diller’s gag file consists of a steel cabinet with 48 drawers (along with a 3 drawer expansion) containing over 52,000 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag. These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject, ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.”
Who really loves Periscope? Comedians. “THE MORNING AFTER Halloween, Tom Lennon found a dirty diaper on the street in front of his house. As a self-respecting professional comedian, he saw it as an opportunity to be funny. Lennon put on goggles, a mask, and bright orange safety gloves, and he proceeded to livestream from his iPhone a comically careful disposal of the diaper.”
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