Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
2012
Language
English
Description
In this "moving and powerful memoir" (Mayim Bialik), comedian Moshe Kasher details his outrageously dysfunctional early years in this darkly hilarious, absurd coming-of-age story.
Rising young comedian Moshe Kasher is lucky to be alive. He started using drugs when he was just 12. At that point, he had already been in psychoanlysis for 8 years. By the time he was 15, he had been in and out of several mental institutions, drifting...
Rising young comedian Moshe Kasher is lucky to be alive. He started using drugs when he was just 12. At that point, he had already been in psychoanlysis for 8 years. By the time he was 15, he had been in and out of several mental institutions, drifting...
3) 700 Sundays
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
To support his family, Billy Crystal's father, Jack, worked two jobs, having only one day a week to spend with his family. Based on Crystal's one-man Broadway show of the same name, "700 Sundays"--referring sadly to the time shared by an adoring father and his devoted son--offers a heartfelt, hilarious memoir. Photos throughout.
Author
Language
English
Description
"Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller-coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition and her massive insecurities. But Rivers' career...
5) Last words
Author
Language
English
Description
With fourteen HBO specials, five Grammys, a critical Supreme Court battle over censorship, and countless appearances on the international comedy circuit, George Carlin saw it all and made fun of most of it. Carlin's journey to stardom began in the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods of New York in the 1950s, where class and culture wars planted the seeds for some of his earliest material including the infamous Seven Dirty Words routine. Carlin describes...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
An American comic icon tells the story of his second–act rise from obscurity to multimedia stardom.
"When I was a kid," writes Rodney Dangerfield, "I worked tough places in show business––places like Fonzo's Knuckle Room. Or Aldo's, formerly Vito's, formerly Nunzio's. That was a tough joint. I looked at the menu. They had broken leg of lamb." For once, one of America's most beloved comic icons isn't kidding. Dangerfield
...Author
Language
English
Description
"Billy Crystal is turning 65, and he's not happy about it. With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt. In humorous chapters like "Buying the Plot" and "Nodding Off," Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
"An intimate and light-hearted memoir by viral sensation and three-time Emmy-nominated musical comedian Randy Rainbow that takes readers through his life-the highs, the lows, the lipstick, the pink glasses, and the show tunes. Randy Rainbow, the man who conquered the Internet with a stylish pair of pink glasses, an inexhaustible knowledge of Broadway musicals, and the most gimlet-eyed view of American politics this side of Mark Twain finally tells...
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Lane Moore is a fool for love. From her addiction to romantic comedies to her tendency to form instant soulmate connections with strangers, Lane has a way of romanticizing everything and everyone. But her romantic nature belies a decidedly unromantic childhood, one that sent her down a long and difficult road. Lane considers herself an orphan, though she has two living parents. Her estrangement from her family was a catalyst for her to build a new...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the span of four months in 2012, Tig Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease called C-diff, her mother unexpectedly died, she went through a breakup, and she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Days after her diagnosis, Tig took her grief onstage, opening an unvarnished set with, "Good evening. Hello. I have cancer." The set went viral instantly and was later released as an album, Live, and was nominated for a Grammy....
Author
Language
English
Description
Journalist and cultural critic James Sullivan tells the story of Alternative America from the 1950s to the present, from the singular vantage point of George Carlin, the Catholic boy for whom nothing was sacred. This critical biography is an insightful (and hilarious) examination of Carlin's body of work as it pertained to its cultural times and the man who created it, from his early days as a more-or-less conventional comedian to his stunning transformation...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From "weird, scary, ingenious" (The New York Times) stand-up comedian Maria Bamford, a brutally honest and hilariously frenetic memoir about show business, mental health, and the comfort of rigid belief systems-from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Suzuki violin training, to Richard Simmons, to 12-step programs. Maria Bamford is a comedian's comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to...
Author
Language
English
Description
In a career spanning more than thirty years, Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. Yet he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman's television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality....
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Buteau's humorous essays reflect on growing up Caribbean, Catholic, and thick in New Jersey, going to college in Miami (where everyone smells like pineapple), her many friendship and dating disasters, working as a newsroom editor during 9/11, getting started in standup opening for male strippers, marrying into her husband's Dutch family, IVF and surrogacy, motherhood, chosen family, and what it feels like to have a full heart, tight jeans, and stardom...
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Description
"In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so heavily that she became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads. The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she's...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"During the course of a career that began in the late 1940s, Lenny Bruce challenged the sanctity of organized religion and other societal and political conventions; he widened the boundaries of free speech. Critic Ralph Gleason said, "So many taboos have been lifted and so many comics have rushed through the doors Lenny opened. He utterly changed the world of comedy." Although Bruce died when he was only forty, his influence on the worlds of comedy,...