newcritics

The world situation is relentlessly grim, the national political scene is discouraging, and the Mets go into the history books as one of the all-time greatest collapses of a team during one season.

To offer some relief from this reality, Newcritics is hosting a comedy blog-a-thon November 6 to 11 to coincide with the New York Comedy Festival. We are putting out a call for posts that answer this question:

What is the purest comedic moment you have ever experienced?

This blog-a-thon is designed to cut across blog genres: we hope that you film guys will contribute the great movie moments; the lit crit types might regale us with scenes of Evelyn Waugh or Wodehouse that you find brilliant; you tv addicts will kick in the great small screen nuggets, and so on.

We know that to analyze comedy is to kill it, but this is also a personal question–it’s your most satisfying moment of experiencing what we collectively call comedy, but which will have a spectrum from the sardonic to slapstick.

Maybe it was at a standup performance, maybe listening to a comedy album, maybe it was at your best friend’s wedding. We look forward to hearing about it. And, like Joel McCrae learned at the end of Sullivan’s Travels, you never know when a story you share is going to lighten the day for one of your readers.

Send permalinks to josquin21@aol.com as you publish on your own site, Nov. 6 to 11. I’ll group them/post them at newcritics for all to connect to. Newcritics will also be posting an array of comedy-centric pieces all that week.

Comedy UPDATE: First Ever “New York’s Funniest Stand-Up” Award
The New York Comedy Festival has announced its search for “New York’s Funniest Stand-Up,” a comedy competition open to any and all stand-up comedians who think they have what it takes to be “New York’s Funniest Stand-Up.” An open call will be held at Carolines on Broadway on Tuesday, October 16, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Go here for details and rules.