Comedy Performance

This fun and fascinating collection of trivia is your secret weapon for sparking memorable conversations, breaking the ice, and keeping people engaged… no matter how shy you are.

Sol Bernstein, the oldest Jewish stand-up comedian still playing the clubs today, tells his favourite Jewish jokes so that they can be handed down to another generation. Told and adapted by Jews throughout the centuries from the Eastern Europe shtetls of the 19th century to the American Borscht Belt circuit of the 1950s and '60s Sol retells jokes on religion, assimilation, marriage and sex from a people and religion that has always had its humour no matter what the world throws at them.

Married . . . With Children writer-producer Richard Gurman takes us behind the scenes of this boundary-breaking show to reveal how its inner workings were at times as disruptive and contentious—yet at other times, as hysterical and raunchy—as the Bundy family themselves.

My Favorite Husband hit the CBS Radio airwaves in 1948, starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denningas Liz and George Cugat - who later became Liz and George Cooper when confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change. Set in the fictitious town of Sheridan Falls, the show follows the happily married couple, residents of 321 Bundy Drive, through mischief and various predicaments, from faked illnesses to trouble with exes.

A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing But Using the Bathroom as an Escape by Joe Pera is a funny, warm, and sincere guide to regaining calm and confidence when you're hiding in the bathroom.

i>39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities---Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.

When Kantkiss Neverclean replaces her sister as a contestant on the Hunger Games - the second-highest-rated reality TV show in Peaceland, behind Extreme Home Makeover - she has no idea what to expect. Having lived her entire life in the telemarketing district’s worst neighborhood, the Crack, Kantkiss feels unprepared to fight to the death while simultaneously winking and looking adorable for the cameras. Soon, her survival rests on choosing between the dreamy hunk from home, Carol Handsomestein, or the doughy klutz, Pita Malarkey....

Written by an acknowledged master of comedy, this study reflects on the nature of humor and the functions it serves. Why do we laugh? What are we to make of the sheer variety of laughter, from braying and cackling to sniggering and chortling? Is humor subversive, or can it defuse dissent? Can we define wit?

Jay Chandrasekhar has spent the past two decades writing, directing, and acting in film and TV. With his comedy group, Broken Lizard, he has produced and directed beloved movies such as Super Troopers, Beerfest, and Club Dread. Now, with the coming release of the long-awaited Super Troopers 2, Jay is ready to tell the ridiculous, madcap, dead-honest story of how he built his career, how he formed Broken Lizard, and, ultimately, how he made Super Troopers.

It’s been 20 years since Mean Girls hit theaters, winning over critics and audiences alike with its razor-sharp wit, star-making turns for its then unknown cast, and obsessively quotable screenplay by Tina Fey. Fast forward two decades and Mean Girls remains as relevant as ever. Arguably, no other movie from the 2000s has had as big of an impact on pop culture. In So Fetch, New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, offers the first ever authoritative book about this beloved classic that shaped an entire generation

In Planet Funny, Ken Jennings explores this brave new comedic world and what it means - or doesn’t - to be funny in it now. Tracing the evolution of humor from the caveman days to the bawdy middle-class antics of Chaucer to Monty Python’s game-changing silliness to the fast-paced meta-humor of The Simpsons, Jennings explains how we built our humor-saturated modern age, where lots of us get our news from comedy shows and a comic figure can even be elected president of the United States purely on showmanship.

Few television shows revolutionized comedy as profoundly or have had such an enormous and continued impact on our culture as In Living Color. Inspired by Richard Pryor, Carol Burnett, and Eddie Murphy, Keenen Ivory Wayans created a television series unlike any that had come before it. In Living Color shaped American culture in ways both seen and unseen. Now, Homey Don't Play That! reveals the complete, captivating story of how In Living Color overcame enormous odds to become a major, zeitgeist-seizing hit.

Hello! I’m Brian Limond, aka Limmy. You might know me from Limmy’s Show. Or you might not know me at all. Don’t worry if you don’t. They asked me to write a book about mental health, because I sometimes talk about my mental health in tweets and interviews, like suicidal thoughts and anxiety, and what I’ve done to try to deal with it. I said to them, oh, I don’t know if I could fill a whole book with just that. But how’s about I write a general autobiography type of thing, and all the mental health stuff will naturally appear along the way?

The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour is Canada's top award for humour - and nobody has won it more times than Arthur Black, who carried off his third medal in June 2006. Now, in case there is anyone left standing who still disputes Black's claim to the title of Canada's funniest man, Harbour presents the laughing proof: a retrospective of Black's best hits, high-graded from eleven previous collections stretching back over the past 20 years.

Long gone are the good old days when a cat’s biggest worries were mean dogs or a bath. Modern cats must confront satanists, online predators, the possibility of needing to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and countless other threats to their nine lives. For over four decades, the American Association of Patriots have stood at the vanguard of our country's defense by helping to prepare our nation's cat owners for the difficult conversations they dread having with their pets.

'I have just had one of those absolutely mad mornings when you go out to have a browse at tagines and end up coming home with a brand-new gas ring expander. I think I was probably as surprised as anybody. Sometimes life is just like that, isn't it?' Award-winning food writer Damien Trench takes you on a journey through his childhood and his early inspirations - culinary and otherwise - with occasional diversions to the present.

Hello there! Hayley Morris here. Or you might know me as the Brain Girl, and don't be fooled...it's not because I'm outrageously smart. Just an avid overthinker. I'm on a mission to prove once and for all that You. Are. Normal. Running through imaginary arguments whilst showering or not knowing how to be a normal human when you have the plumber over. I've spent the majority of my life saying and doing embarrassing things that wake me up in a cold sweat at three a.m. as my brain reminds me of every minor detail.

Mothers, immigration, marriage, parenthood, sports, political correctness, and our general attitudes toward each other - all are equally worthy of Dennis Miller's close inspection and ridicule. What's really going on in this country? Ask Dennis Miller. Or don't ask. He'll tell you anyway.

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate,” he wrote. “When he can’t afford it and when he can.” The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect horror and heart-sickness over it,” she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.”

In the spirit of Mindy Kaling, Kelly Oxford, and Sarah Silverman, a compulsively listenable and outrageously funny memoir of growing up as a fish out of water, finding your voice, and embracing your inner crazy person from popular actress, writer, and comedian Bonnie McFarlane.