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If there was an Olympic sport where the object was to graduate from schools that Jonathan Frakes from Star Trek graduated from, I would beat everybody in A Week of Kindness by a factor of three*
*Clearview Elementary School is the third one. There’s no reason you should know that, and many reasons why you shouldn’t.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 08:14 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Thanks to Slightly Known People for having us last night at the Bad Choices show. It was a very fun time. A $5 sketch show where all audience members have an excellent chance of being given a free shot of liquor or three? It’s a bargain, and it’s every Saturday at RiFiFi. We hope to continue this relationship with SKP.
But seriously, there’s something a little bit more pressing to talk about.
There is only one last chance to see Barnyard Jamboree!
Tuesday, October 25, 9:30 PM at The People’s Improv Theatre
154 W. 29th St. (between 6th and 7th.)
$6 cash at the door, or with a credit card. online. Click here for subway directions.
Come see it, folks. I mean it. It’s our best show yet, it’s getting bester every week, and it’ll be even bestest if we get to share it with a big sell-out crowd this coming Tuesday.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 07:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Just a reminder.
Our new sketchfriends Slightly Known People have invited us to contribute some sketches and a film to a themed show they’re putting on tonight at RiFiFi
Anyway, it’s going to be a fun show, and a cheap show. $5. Slightly Known People are hosting and headlining, Mavis Jay will do something with singing, Armed and Ridiculous will be there via satellite, and Wicked Wicked Hammerkatz will be sketching it up too. It’s a lot of show for $5.
The theme is “Bad Choices” which is kind of ironic, seeing as how it would be a good choice for you to come check this out. It’ll be a good way to get you through the four days of withdrawal that stand between now and the next Barnyard Jamboree.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 03:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I had the chance to see a test taping last night of a new show that starts Monday on Comedy Central, the Colbert Report. Test tapings are practice runs that are not intended to make it to the air, but are taped as ifthey were the real thing, in order for the cast and crew to get the kinks of the format worked out before the show actually starts. For those readers who are comedy nerds with high hopes for this show, I’d like to share my impressions.
First, the basics of what the show is, in case you hadn’t known. The show is going to be a fake opinion show (The Bill O’Reilly, Hannity and Colmes school of opinion show) in the same way that the Daily Show is a fake news show. The T in “Report” is as silent as the one in “Colbert.”
Second, Stephen Colbert is a comedy machine who is always on. He never for one second stopped entertaining. Even during those downtimes when the mikes were off for pretend commercial breaks, he was always doing some silly mime or dance thing. He took a Q&A before the taping as well, and when one audience member Q’d him with a “What’s with all the gay?,” he didn’t miss a beat on the yes-and, and A’d right back with “I just crave cock!”
Three, he’s human too. He has that bad-actor habit, unfortunately, of mouthing the lines of his scene partner. Not that you would have been able to see it, since the scene in question was between him at a desk and a soldier against a green screen, with the cameras switching to the one talking. But I found it kind of endearing.
Four, he’s got some ways to go as an inteviewer, but it’s not like he won’t get there. The test subject that particular night was a host of Good Morning America, poo on me for not remembering the name of the guy. It wasn’t a bad interview, but Colbert had enough ums and other audible pauses to make me remark about it. These and a couple of other small reasons added up to my conclusion that the interview was the weakest part of the show. It ended with a challenge, in which the interviewee had to name 14 of the cohosts he’s worked with in his broadcasting career. The idea is that at the end of every interview, Colbert will ask a question designed to stump the guest. He even said “At the Colbert Report, the interview isn’t over until the guest gets nailed,” leading me to think that they’re planning this stump-the-guest thing as a nightly bit. I think it’ll get old.
Five, it’s going to seriously be a really good show. The writing is sharp, particularly the segment making fun of foreign newpapers, which is always good sport, and the format is a logical supplement to the Daily Show. Unlike the Daily Show, though, they did some funny bits incorporating the staff as characters playing staff members.
Anyway, it ain’t perfect yet, but check it out starting on Monday with my endorsement. Your high hopes are quite founded.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 12:17 AM | Comments (2)
The playwright Harold Pinter has just won the Nobel Prize for literature.
He might be the most important playwright of the 20th century, and without a doubt, some part of his influence has filtered directly or indirectly into what A Week of Kindness does, so I think that’s just fantastic.
Any sketch writer who wants a thorough education in how to write an uncomfortable moment need only study up on his or her Pinter.
The Homecoming is a good place to start if you’ve never read Pinter. The other two plays in this volume are pretty hot too, and you can’t beat three seriously great plays for 5 bucks.
Do yourselves a favor.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 02:51 AM | Comments (1)
Well, we just came back from our last rehearsal, and we’re quite sure this show is going to be hot hot hot. Anyway, here’s a reminder of what you’ve got to know about Barnyard Jamboree. Note that the online ticketing is now available from Brown Paper Tickets.
A Week of Kindness returns to the PIT with its third brand-new show, Barnyard Jamboree!
Tuesdays, October 11, 18, and 25, 9:30 PM at The People’s Improv Theatre
154 W. 29th St. (between 6th and 7th.)
$6 cash at the door, or with a credit card online. Click here for subway directions.
Barnyard Jamboree is a multimedia spectacular in which we take you on a guided tour of the proverbial Forbidden Barn to find out what evil lurks within the hearts of animals.
On the agenda:
Natural selection viz-a-viz market forces in the American musical theatre
Ego-defensive tendencies derived from inferiority feelings and overcompensation of the masculine protest
Irish zombie improvisation
“Material Father” vs. “Function of a Father”
A simple recipe for Pasta Pomadorini
How to make wise life-choices
The Red Menace
…and so much more.
Barnyard Jamboree:Created and performed by A Week of Kindness, with appearances by: Antelope, John Constantine, Crocodile, Gannet, Phil Lamplugh, Cody Lindquist, Octopus, Sardine, and Zebra.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 03:19 AM | Comments (3)
It’s been just over six months since we began reporting on what became the Laura K. Krishna Saga, and we’re happy to say it’s been pretty calm for about 4 of those months. I dare say that things have finally normalized to a level where we’re getting more recognition for our shows than for our website, which is how we like it.
But I did promise back then that I’d report on any Krishna-related news if it was brought to my attention. So here’s something I got in my e-mail that should serve as a little appendix. A writer named Dougie Child has seen fit to mention me in passing in a nonfction book she just released, entitled Product Versus Process: The Term Paper Industry and the New Face of Cheating in American Education. It looks like a really interesting book, based on some parts she let me read, and I recommend you check it out.
Here’s the bit I’m in, from the neighborhood of page 50 of the book:*
Others taking the high road are far more good-natured in their efforts. If there is any question why students would rather pay the premium and get their papers through a company as opposed to hiring the Average Joe off the Internet, Nate Kushner’s story is a good example. Kushner, a comedy writer, keeps a web log (blog) called A Week of Kindness. A student saw an old Internet profile of Kushner’s in which he described himself as “eating Hindu sculpture.” Apparently, devouring religious artwork is enough by way of credentials for some students seeking to hire term paper writers, and this undergraduate student contacted him and asked him to write her a five-page paper for the tidy sum of seventy-five dollars. On a whim, Kushner threw together a fast essay consisting mainly of passages taken from online web sources and made-up words (the paper includes choice lines such as “Your actions in each lifetime affect your karma, and if a Shudra watches dharma and greg [Sic], it will have a positive effect on his karma”), used an online search engine to find the name of the student, and recorded the entire process in his blog. As a finishing touch, he implied that he would email the link of his blog entry to the president of the student’s school. Several prominent news and opinion web sites picked up on the story and Kushner’s experiment with the psyche of a plagiarist quickly became a touchstone for a debate over academic dishonesty. Kushner, unlike Parkinson, did not intend to bring the wrath of academia or the Internet down on the plagiarist’s head: all he wanted was for the plagiarist to learn a lesson and he was astonished at the wide-ranging positive and negative responses to his impromptu social experiment.
Anyway, check out that book. I’ll totally sign it for you if you bring one to any of the performances of Barnyard Jamboree!
*And here’s the citation for that excerpt, cause I like things to be cited.
Child, Dougie. Product Versus Process: The Term Paper Industry and the New Face of Cheating in American Education. Booklocker.com: Bangor, Maine, 2005.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 07:21 PM | Comments (2)
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