Speaking with The Arty Semite over the phone, Michael Ian Black paused and said: “That’s weird. I’m in the hotel hallway walking towards my room. On the carpet I see a pair of underwear and recognize them as my own. Now why in the world is a pair of my own underwear sitting in the…
Once upon a time there were two Jewish sisters. One grew up to be a Reform rabbi and the other one of America’s more profane comics. These two sisters — Rabbi Susan Silverman and Sarah Silverman — could not be both more different and more alike. The sacred and profane mingle in their DNA, which…
In his black T-shirt and first-day-of-basic-training haircut, with weathered skin that betrays his Iranian roots, Idan Mor looks like a typical post-army Israeli. The soft-spoken Mor, however, is anything but. The 32-year-old former paratrooper and Haifa native is making a name for himself as one of the smartest and most original comics on Israel’s alternative…
Journalist Calvin Trillin is a long-time staff writer at The New Yorker who has written over two dozen books. But he is perhaps best known as a humorist, a career that began in 1978 when then-editor of The Nation, “the parsimonious Victor Navasky,” took him to lunch. As Trillin recalls, Navasky wanted to “discuss his…
Courtesy of HBO Dick Cavett calls Mel Brooks more than a comedy star; he’s a “super nova.” Mel Brooks calls Dick Cavett “spectacularly gentile.” The two share the stage on the appropriately titled HBO special, “Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again,” an hour-long, anecdote-filled, hilarious love fest debuting September 9 at 9:00 p.m. Brooks…
Like many people of a certain age, Judy Gold grew up on television sitcoms. They proved to be a tremendous influence, providing a moral compass on issues such as racism (All in the Family), poverty (Good Times), single motherhood (One Day at a Time), homosexuality (Three’s Company), and unmarried professional womanhood (The Mary Tyler Moore…
The Shmooze is surprised but pleased to learn that author, TV star and famed bedwetter Sarah Silverman will star in a new comedy on NBC. The subject of an “intense bidding war” among several networks, the show will be loosely based on Silverman’s own life — as was her previous show for Comedy Central, “The…
Funny or Die “Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is. My nose and ass — they’re both big” is the catchy refrain to this outrageous yet endearing Funny or Die parody, celebrating the idiosyncratic joys of being both black and Jewish. It’s hard to be put off by the video’s many offensive Jewish and…
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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