At the begininning of each month we will bring the previous month’s five best longreads. April was a great month to kick this off as it included everything from a fascinating piece on the first guy to hack the iPhone to the one thing Aziz Ansari might love more than comedy, food. We curated this list both from the official longreads site as well as other periodicals we follow. These are some of our favorites from April, we hope you enjoy them!
Every attempt at government eventually comes to a point of being a forest of thousands of shouting voices, any single voice indistinguishable from the other. Comedy is not a form of government, but the Internet has brought about this said forest with plenty of hilarious things getting lost in the thick of videos, podcasts, tweets, and more.
Luckily, there is such a person who is willing to sift through all those “voices” that think they are so hilarious and bring to you the ones that matter/will make you laugh enough to believe in life again* (*assuming that you had lost faith in life recently or another emotionally comparable experience).
I’m that person. My name is Jake Kroeger/The Comedy Bureau/The Comedy Editor for the Nerdist Blog/”Your next comic…” (the host forgot my name one night) and I’m here, once a month, at the wonderful Serial Optimist to let all you wonderful people know This Is What You Need to Know About Comedy in April. (Obviously, the month will change in the title as the month changes, unless an overwhelming amount of you like April for some reason).
Happy three-year anniversary to our friends at Comedy Bang! Bang! But really, all the presents are for us. The anniversary party podcast features 90-minutes of Zach Galifianakis, Harris Wittels, Brett Gelman, El Chupacabra (Nick Kroll), Marissa Wompler (Jessica St. Clair), Cake Boss (Paul F. Tompkins), and a posthumous visit from Christopher Hitchens. What’s the icing on this anniversary cake? Music from St. Vincent and Toph Shay. So forget everything else you are supposed to do on this Monday morning and start your week off with a BANG, comedy style. Click here for the good listenin’!
Laura Redburn is a 25-year-old collage (and mixed media) artist currently living in Cardiff, Wales. Color, animals, nature, old films, science fiction, dreams and vivid imagination inspire her. She likes to create snapshots from dreams and other worlds in her work, leaving the viewer to reflect upon their own dreams, imagination and experiences to gather their own meaning from the illustrations. Laura is currently making a zine’ featuring some of her favorite collage artists, hopefully to be out by the end of May. Read on for more of Laura’s work.
Jan Smith (an SO favorite) has been recently working (i.e.: creating stunning art) in Chernobyl. We were lucky enough to catch up with him on today’s year anniversary to talk about his project Yellow Cake. This is what he said. ”When I was working in Chernobyl on two personal art and photography projects, I was immediately aware of the graffiti that decorates many of the buildings. Many of the pieces have a bitter-sweet essence to them that goes well with the empty buildings and the tragic history of the place. It is very apparent that the graffiti was meant as a tribute to the former inhabitants and a statement against nuclear energy. Some pieces decorate entire facades and are very noticeable, but others are hidden in hallways and rooms. Finding them became a treasure hunt game for me that helped lighten the mood of daily work. Time and weather are taking their toll on many of the pieces because they are beginning to fade or the walls they are on are crumbling. I decided to record as many of these pieces as possible both in tribute to the artists who made them, and as a historical record of sorts. I decided to call this collection Yellow Cake in reference to the powder that is extracted from uranium and used for nuclear power.” Amazing.
Imagine watching a David Lynch marathon with episodes of ‘Seinfeld’ mixed in then going to sleep (BECAUSE WHO WOULDN’T DO THAT?). Your dreams would no doubt look like the new web series from Matt Cook and Katharine Henner ‘Nights in UltraViolet‘. The 10-episode series follows a shut-in author of legal thrillers who joins his freeloading friends for a night out, triggering a series of inexplicable events. Unlike most web series, ‘Nights In UltraViolet’ focuses on a crafted, serialized story that unfolds, blending with elements of a surreal soap opera. Episodes were filmed in over 20 locations and feature nearly 100 actors in New York. It also features SO pals Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer along with Rob Michael Hugel doing some fun work as the most WTF character Virgil. Now go get lost in the odd mystery (oddestry?) that is ‘Nights in UltraViolet’.
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