There might have been a couple nosebleed seats in the balcony left at last night's very well attended Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black's Somerville Theater show, but, for those of you who missed it, you really missed a treat. As evidenced by various available YouTube clips, Black and Showalter are extremely funny on their own, but together they brought humor to an entirely new level. The two have been comedy collaborators for 20......

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick seems like a lot of things--sneaky, serious, and smelly since he insists on wearing the same stuff all the time. And now it turns out that he's funny, too. Here's the first example John Tomase at the Herald provides of Belichick's humor: During training camp, rookie Brandon Meriweather granted an interview to the Herald in which he talked about how lucky he was to practice every day against Wes......

Gothamist learned about the craziest urban nightmare come true: A huge python found in the bathroom pipes. It was also a nightmare for some Yankees fans, as manger Joe Torre declined to come back and manage the Bronx Bombers. At least the city's attempt to give some direction to subway riders was interesting, pranksters went shirtless at the Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch and the I Heart Brooklyn Girls calendars came out. And just......

A Harvard student got caught trying to cut down trees that weren't his last Sunday morning. James Powers, a Lampoon editor, decided he didn't like trees that had just been planted at Mount Auburn and Holyoke. The Cambridge Chronicle tried to get a comment, but Powers isn't saying anything. He thinks that's funny? Does he plan to pay the city back for those trees? Oh, his parents can probably handle it. Fifty-three people commented on......

--Semi-Finals: Thursday, October 11, Nick's Comedy Stop (Upstairs), 8:30 pm --Semi-Finals: Friday, October 12, Nick's Comedy Stop (Upstairs), 8:30 pm --Finals: Saturday, October 13, Cutler Majestic, 8:15 pm During the last night of the preliminaries, many of the comics tore into their routines like it was the last show of their lives. Everyone is burning out after four days of endless stand-up shows, but the comics of the last preliminary round made it all worth......

--Preliminaries: Wednesday, October 10, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Semi-Finals: Thursday, October 11, Nick's Comedy Stop (Upstairs), 8:30 pm --Semi-Finals: Friday, October 12, Nick's Comedy Stop (Upstairs), 8:30 pm --Finals: Saturday, October 13, Cutler Majestic, 8:15 pm Here's last night's winners, and find out who Bostonist thinks got robbed after the jump. Preliminary Round Five The Winners: Paul D'Angelo and David Powell In the fifth round, the brainiacs represented. D'Angelo, a former......

--Preliminaries: Tuesday, October 9, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Preliminaries: Wednesday, October 10, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Urban Comedy Showcase: Wednesday, October 10, Roxbury Center for Arts at Hibernian Hall, 8:00 pm --Semi-Finals: Thursday, October 11, Nick's Comedy Stop (Upstairs), 8:30 pm --Semi-Finals: Friday, October 12, Nick's Comedy Stop (Upstairs), 8:30 pm Now that we've warmed up, we'll get right to last night's results. For more on how......

Shalom Auslander Reading Thursday, October 11, 7:00 pm Brookline Booksmith Free More info From far away Shalom Auslander's memoir looks delicate and sweet, with lightly outlined white images traced on a red background. The title appears in a cursive font with looping letters. Then you look at the actual words on the cover--Foreskin's Lament. In this memoir, Auslander and his long departed foreskin have a lot to gripe about. Auslander was raised in an Orthodox......

Boston Comedy Festival Preliminary Rounds --Monday, October 8, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Tuesday, October 9, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm --Wednesday, October 10, Comedy Connection, Faneuil Hall, 7:00 and 9:00 pm All tickets for the preliminaries are $15 The comics rush up onstage and change right before your eyes. One moment, they gaze into the camera and at the audience like classic deer before headlines. Then, an internal......

It looks like just might be a higher power looking down on the MLB postseason. He/She/It is a Red Sox fan and, judging from the sight of Derek Jeter slapping like mad at the bugs descending upon him at the Jake on Friday night, any higher powers out there have a wicked sense of humor. On a Friday night that gave us fire (well, on the T here in Boston), locusts cleverly passed off as......

This year's Boston Comedy Festival is about to start, and you won't be able to make up your mind about all the events happening around town. The following listings include just a few measly highlights, but the Boston Comedy Festival is sure to have something that suits your sense of humor, whether it be ironic, sarcastic, slapsticky, or potty. Check the official site and full schedule for all event details. Boston Comedy Festival Contest Preliminaries:......

Honk! Friday, October 5, through Sunday, October 7 Honk!'s official site The full Honk! schedule Despite the festival's name, Honk! is about more than making noise. Street bands will be performing, but the purpose of the second annual Honk! celebration is to "Reclaim the Street for Horns, Bikes, and Feet!" Honk! is a sound, a lifestyle, and a movement, according to the Honk! mission statement: "Honkers have been providing a heartfelt musical antidote, a soundtrack......

--The production team for Bachelor No. 2 got kicked out of St. Leonard's Church in the North End. They had planned to shoot a scene inside the church, but the church's priest, Rev. Antonio Nardoianni, got wind that the crew had redecorated Umberto Galleria and named it "Cheezus Crust." Apparently Nardoianni missed the hidden commandment "Thou Shalt Have a Sense of Humor." But the location scouts probably should have put two and two together and......

You may not have noticed since they've been largely under the radar, but the Boston Film Festival starts this weekend at the AMC Loews Boston Common, and they have some good movies. The Boston Film Festival website has the full schedule, and Bostonist has pulled out some highlights: Lars and the Real Girl, Saturday, September 15, 7:30-9:30 Have you ever wondered what might happen if a fella bought a blow-up doll and actually fell in......

Welcome to "Series of Tubes," in which Bostonist rounds up developments among local bloggers over the past week. If you want to make sure your blog is on Bostonist's radar, please e-mail caroline@bostonist.com or leave a link in the Contribute section. --David at Blue Mass Group describes the horrible conditions animals must endure at the Wonderland and Raynham dog tracks. His post and the facts described within are more than enough to make a person......

Mort Sahl will perform at Jimmy Tingle's tonight, August 24, and Saturday, August 25, at 7:30 pm. He will also perform Sunday, August 26, at 3:00 pm. For more details, visit the Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway website. After 80 years on this planet, comedian Mort Sahl knows what he likes. V-neck turtlenecks sweaters, for starters. Current events. People with a sense of humor. What Sahl doesn't like became wonderfully apparent during his performance at Jimmy......

Not every day can be that exciting in the sports world. Today will be pretty good: the Sox open a series in Baltimore, the Patriots play their first exhibition game, and Gillette Stadium is preparing for the Sunday arrival of David Beckham. Yesterday...nothing. Well, there was a little excitement. New Celtics Eddie House and Scot Pollard faced the media, and Bostonist already likes Pollard. "Getting Kevin Garnett here was a big deal, but with us......

Will the real Fake Steve Jobs please stand up? Yes, he will. And he'll do it in Boston. The New York Times outed the blogger who's been blogging as a Steve Jobs iMpersonator (can we trademark that?) for over a year. His real name Daniel Lyons a Medford resident. He's been impersonating the Apple chief and lampooning his persona on the blog fakesteve.blogspot.com. In the last year it's gotten the attention of the tech elite......

Serenity will screen at midnight on Saturday, June 23. Proceeds go to Equality Now, and the Coolidge will be accepting food for the Greater Boston Food Bank. Tickets are $10. Joss Whedon fans will have chance to rejoice thanks to Coolidge Corner's midnight screening of Serenity, the full-length movie born after the 2002 cancellation of Whedon's short-lived but much-loved show "Firefly." The screening is on Whedon's birthday and will benefit his charity of choice,......

Bostonist was invited to attend the return performance of Frogz! at the Cutler Majestic theatre this week, and we are here to tell you that this is the sort of show that you should not miss. As children (and adults,) Bostonist loved the Muppets and especially their occasional guests Mummenshanz. Frogz is reminiscent of both of these, with extremely talented dancer/puppeteers transforming their bodies into animals and anthropomorpic objects with grace and humor. The......

This is a much better result for Daisuke. Instead of him pitching brilliantly and losing due to poor run support, he pitched a very average game, but was helped by a barrage of Red Sox home runs, including a team-record four solo shots in a row, courtesy of Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek. Who was worried about Manny and 'Tek's slow starts? That was all well and good, but it was......

Public Radio Talent Quest is live and taking submissions and your vote. Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have teamed up and are giving away $70,000 and a shot at creating your very own radio show. The contest opened on Monday and is taking entries from radio wannabes. They host the entries and feed them to the team of judges. Oh, wait, did we say team? We meant everyone who visits......

You might think you've seen it all on YouTube or by watching Web Junk 2.0, but Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher are connoisseurs of filmed oddities. These two have been digging through stray videotapes and a few Dumpsters since they were teenagers, and you won't believe what they've found. They'll be sharing their treasures with the masses tomorrow night, Saturday, March 31, at midnight at Coolidge Corner Theater. Tickets are $9.50. If you think you've......

Fung Wah accidents are bad news, especially for those riding the bus. But their reliable clumsiness is always a source of humor. Most times, when you hear the words "bus accident" in Massachusetts, someone will invariably ask, "Oh, was it Fung Wah again?" The infamous low-price bus service is so trustworthy in its untrustworthiness that we should probably create a category for it on this site. Today, the Globe reported that a Fung Wah bus......

A little bit of SXSW and a little bit of Japan are converging tomorrow night in Central Square. The SXSW Japan Showcase makes a few U.S. stops in addition to the big indie weekend in Austin. And, lucky for those of us unable to make a pilgrimage to Texas, Japan Night drops by TT's this weekend. Japan Night includes garage punk band The 50 Kaitenz. In addition to strains of The Ramones (one of their......

After the total lunar eclipse spiced up the night sky this past weekend we've got enough of the visuals. This week we're committed not to go see live music but to go hear live music. This week we're welcoming a few new contributors to the list, have a listen, will ya? Monday 3/5 Badly Drawn Boy It's okay to admit to liking British singer-songwriter Damon Gough, aka Badly Drawn Boy. He may write lyrics......

The state of the sidewalks around Boston kept us on our asses this weekend. Not so much of the figurative kind where we sat at home and skipped a show because it was too hard to get around. No, more the literal kind where we kept falling down because of that damn 2" layer of ice that was pretty much everywhere. This week they tell us that the temperature is rising by week's end.......

The staff of the Harvard Lampoon, whom Bostonist last saw honoring Danny Bonaduce, sent out prank e-mails announcing that Harvard's next president would be – ta-da! – Larry Summers. That was kind of cute. But the Crimson went on the warpath against the Lampoon for the gag. The Crimson referred to the Lampoon as "puerile" and "so-called humor." They were also irritated because the e-mails mentioned a forum and invited students to call a phone......

The Super Bowl is supposed to be a face-off between the two best football teams, but it's also a free-for-all among corporations as they scramble for your advertising dollars. This year seemed a touch uninspired, but a few ads were either funny enough or odd enough to stand out. Bostonist braved all the commercials and brings the best to you. We'd also like to hear your thoughts on the ads in the comments. Without further......

Politicians have many talents - talking a long time without saying anything, convincing people to give away large sums of cash, and throwing lavish parties. Singing isn't usually considered their strong suit. That didn't stop NECN from pulling together several Massachusetts politicians to sing the "12 Days of Christmas" in a hilarious, largely tone-deaf montage. Big guns like Ted Kennedy, Mayor Menino, and Deval Patrick good-naturedly sang their hearts out. Mitt Romney even turned out......