The comedian Louis C.K. has pulled out of his role as the headliner at this years Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner. No replacement has been announced yet. more ›

Ten journalists-turned-comedians took to the stage and tested their wit at last night's fourth annual Commedia dell Media. The verdict? Many of them could in fact quit their day jobs. (If stand-up were any more stable and lucrative than their chosen professions.) Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Councilmember Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) and actual professional comedian Dennis Regan were on hand to deliver American Idol-style instant feedback and crown the best in show. more ›

What happens when you take a cult classic TV show and adapt it for a national tour of music halls? You get Portlandia, which arrived at the 9:30 Club last night. Was watching it live any better than on TV? Not really. more ›

D.C. has landed an HBO comedy pilot on a D.C.-based Jewish family that will be directed by and star Ben Stiller. more ›

It might be worth investigating how to sneak your way into next year's Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner, with the announcement that Louis C.K., the acerbic and altogether brilliant comedian, is headlining the event. more ›

Let me just clear one thing up, lest there be any confusion a few paragraphs down the page. The Sitter isn't a great film. In all likelihood, it may not even be a very good film. But the mostly-praise you're about to read about this movie is a reflection of the fact that despite its deficiencies -- and they are many -- this film is a dumb comedy made by smart people who know how to make you have fun despite what might be in your best interest. more ›

Ned's not really an idiot, and Our Idiot Brother is no dumb summer comedy. Paul Rudd makes sure of that in an excellent performance at the center of this sweet -- but never cloying -- comedy. more ›

D.C. expanded its humor options yesterday with the opening of Riot Act Comedy Theater in Penn Quarter. It's the District's second comedy club -- the first being DC Improv on Connecticut Avenue. more ›

A bunch of skateboarders ride past Terri (Jacob Wysocki), an overweight teen standing glumly by the side of the road, and one compliments his comfort-driven fashion sense: "Nice pajamas, man." Terri cracks a little smile. He still feels like an outcast, but at least he's found someone who grants him fleeting acceptance. Even if the person praising his sartorial choices is himself an outsider as well. Moments like this abound in Azazel Jacobs' Terri, keeping just to the realistic side of quirk, and finding moments of small revelation in subtle gestures. more ›

Municipal budget negotiations are notoriously stodgy affairs, so we can appreciate that there's at least one member of the Council who is at least able to lend some levity to the proceedings. Cue Mary Cheh! more ›

When the women of Bridesmaids board a plane bound for a bachelorette party in Vegas, it's easy to assume that's where the movie's really going to get crazy. By this point in the narrative, the characters in this group have already been established as an idiosyncratic and wide-ranging set of personalities. Rather than making them a band of lifelong friends, writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo choose to make them strangers, only bonded by their independent friendships with the bride-to-be, Lillian (Maya Rudolph). The personality clashes and getting-to-know-you moments provide the basis for a lot of the initial comedy within that group dynamic; as the flight takes off for Sin City, the possibilities for disastrous hilarity seem set. more ›

Hey, did you see? Stephen Colbert is in town today. (That's one itchy TweetDeck trigger finger you've got there, Mr. Colbert.) The funnyman will be spending his afternoon in the District to file paperwork related to his "super PAC," which he hopes will allow him to raise and spend innumerable amounts of cash on election-related efforts, while simultaneously becoming the first person in the history of the world to make jokes about campaign finance regulation hilarious. (The idea of Colbert running ads without politicians' permission has some serious legs, you have to admit.) more ›

When I got the chance to sit down with Eleanor Holmes Norton last weekend, I knew that I'd end the interview with a question about Stephen Colbert and the rumors that he'd host a rally on the Mall in response to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally. Norton's a titan of the D.C. political scene and probably one of the most interesting people I've ever sat down and talked with -- the stories she has at her disposal: incredible -- but there's no denying that there's a significant slice of America that knows her as that lady that Colbert made fun of in his "Better Know A District" series. And Norton loves Colbert, even stating that Colbert had "done more for voting rights than anything we have ever done." more ›

Long before Borat ever walked the street, Tom Green made his living on MTV shocking strangers, his parents, and television audiences with his brand of feigned naïveté. You may remember the Canadian comic giving his parents' car a "Slutmobile" paintjob that he thinks they'll love, or making an embarrassing fuss about buying condoms. Following a bout with testicular cancer, Green went on to make several movies, marry and divorce Drew Barrymore, work with Letterman and Leno and get fired by Donald Trump. He now plies his trade by producing his own show on a self-dedicated Internet channel. more ›

Ward 3 D.C. Council member Mary Cheh circulated a list of proposals to her colleagues today that was made up entirely of outlandish jokes. From establishing a "Peeps Ceremonial Fund" to a "revenue neutral" suggestion that a Starbucks be constructed inside the John A. Wilson Building, Cheh apparently thought the Council could stand a little humor to lighten their heavy, budget-related burden this week. Hard to argue that she's wrong on that score. more ›

Totally and completely not D.C. related, but this hilarious news photo and caption is just starting to make the rounds on Twitter, and we couldn't resist sharing. The photo was included with a routine news story from the Union Leader in New Hampshire about a fire that broke out near the town of Hampton. Thanks to an alert tipster for sending it in. We still can't stop laughing. more ›

The best spoofs laugh with their subjects, not at them. Zucker, Abrahams, & Zucker obviously had a great love for the campy pleasures of disaster movies and the unintended humor of Zero Hour! when they made Airplane!, and Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's adoration of zombie cinema is apparent in every frame of Shaun of the Dead. In that same vein comes Patrick Barlow's stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's popular 1935 thriller, which is as reverential to the source material — and to Hitch himself — as it is completely silly. more ›

Twitter is absolutely freaking out right now about Conan O'Brien's just announced "The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour," which will indeed be stopping in Washington, D.C., on June 8 at DAR Constitution Hall. Billed as "a night of music, comedy, hugging, and the occasional awkward silence," we're envisioning a sort of Conan Unplugged extravaganza, with sketches, performances and surely some special celebrity guests. In other words: yes, please. more ›

In between her mix of song, snark and scatological jokes, Sarah Silverman did a bit at the 9:30 Club on Sunday night where she let audience members ask her for advice, entertaining questions on everything from getting out of credit card debt to making it as a stand-up comic. If we learned one thing from this weekend's impressive Bentzen Ball comedy festival, presented by Brightest Young Things and curated by fantastic stand-up Tig Notaro, it's that no member of the audience is safe from today's top comics. Notaro had an obliging 9:30 Club staffer hold up her mic stand for a good ten minutes. Sarah Silverman Program writer Chelsea Peretti handed out canned dialogue to three audience members and had them perform a skit with her. Three or four different comedians at one Studio Theatre show earlier in the weekend gave a drunken (and later, shoeless) heckler a hell of a time. And of course, no photographer was safe from ridicule. more ›

Over 60 comics are about to descend on D.C. for the Bentzen Ball, a four day collection of comedy performances at venues ranging from the 9:30 Club and the Black Cat to the Studio and Lincoln Theatres, and even Ben's Chili Bowl. Presented by our friends over at Brightest Young Things, and curated by comic Tig Notaro, it surely must be the biggest comedy festival to ever hit the nation's capital. more ›

Mike Birbiglia remembers when the room was a lot smaller. He's headlining Saturday night at the Warner Theatre, where he'll tell some stories he’s considering for inclusion in his next one-man show. But he cut his teeth at the DC Improv in the late 90s, while a student at Georgetown University. By the time he was 25, he'd done the The Late Show with David Letterman , released his first album, and had his own Comedy Central special. more ›

By DCist Contributor Matthew Siblo more ›

While we wait for the results of this full week of D.C. Council budget negotiations, a process that's at least partly colored by the most recent Marion Barry scandals, we thought it might be good for all of us to take a step back from complaining about our city's ineffectual political system ... and laugh about someone else's. DCist tech guru Tom Lee recently circulated these videos, compiled from the open public comment periods at sessions of the Santa Cruz City Council and the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors in Santa Cruz, Calif., and we just can't stop watching them. Every community has its crosses to bear in the form of weirdos and busybodies who like to shove their way into local politics, but Santa Cruz appears to have more than its fair share. We hasten to add that the first 25 seconds or so of the audio portion of this video is NSFW. more ›

We've officially clocked 37 different reader requests to post this admittedly kinda funny rap spoof that's apparently been making the rounds on the interwebs. So by popular demand, DCist presents: "Arlington: The Rap" by YouTube user GoRemy. more ›

If you haven't been watching The Tonight Show since Conan O'Brien took over the show last week, you might have missed a segment that aired Monday night featuring local WUSA-9 TV news reporter Armando Trull. The sketch, which Conan dubbed "Trull Busters," features a clip of Trull reporting on a story outside a Metro station (looks like it could be Silver Spring, but it's hard to make out), only to have a portly gentlemen take a rather exaggerated pratfall directly behind him. You can view the video here; the sketch gets going around the 11:30 minute mark. more ›

Comedienne Wanda Sykes returned to Washington this weekend to deliver the ever-fraught White House Correspondents Dinner host's comedy routine. Sykes grew up in the D.C. area, and famously worked as a procurement officer for the National Security Agency before launching her stand-up career. more ›

Not technically D.C.-related, but given that this may actually be the best local TV news story we've ever seen, there was just no way we could pass on it. WLWT in Cincinnati reports on the "growing trend" of "real-life superheroes" in this piece of pure comedy gold. Make sure not to miss the interaction between Cincinnati's top superhero, "Shadow Hare," and a Cincinnati cop about halfway through. Absolutely brilliant. more ›

Patton Oswalt’s career as a writer and actor has been on an ascending curve over the last couple of years, most notably since he provided the voice (and inspired much of the character) of Remy, the rat who dreams of becoming a gourmet chef, in Brad Bird’s terrific 2007 PIXAR film, Ratatouille. He plays his first on-camera leading role in Big Fan, written and directed by Robert D. Siegel — the former editor of The Onion, and the writer of last year’s critically adored The Wrestler — which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month. more ›

By DCist contributor Dave Weigel more ›

Former GOP presidential candidate and governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee surprised practically all of the country a few months back when he ably and deftly spoofed himself on an episode of Saturday Night Live, proving that he was not only a good sport about his candidacy and didn’t take himself too seriously, but that there were some discernible comedic chops there. Last night at the DC Improv, Huckabee proved his SNL appearance was no fluke, winning this year’s DC’s Funniest Celebrity competition, now in its 15th year and benefiting VSA arts, a non-profit dedicated to providing people with disabilities greater access to the arts. more ›