Download or read book Running the Light written by Sam Tallent and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father - comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: what happens when the opportunity doesn't come - or worse - it comes and goes?

Download or read book The Light Comedian written by Hermon Ould and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Adam Sandler written by Bill Crawford and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the comedy clubs of New York to his big break on "Saturday Night Live" to block-buster films like "Big Daddy" and "Little Nicky" Adam Sandler has left America howling in their seats and peeing in their pants. Sandler has emerged as the decade's most unstoppable comedic-and the ladies love him! But how many people know the story behind this lovable comedic prodigy's ascent to fame? Bill Crawford takes you back to Sandler's childhood in a small New Hampshire Town, where his stand-up routines were always hits with his classmates but not necessarily the teachers! When Adam left his small town to take on the big city at New York University, it wasn't always easy, Sandler performed as a street musician crooning Springsteen songs to commuters, but he was destined to succeed. From his long friendship with then college classmate Tim Herlihy, who went on to co-write all Sandler's movies, to being discovered by Dennis Miller and eventually becoming America's funnyman, Bill Crawford looks behind the headlines and tabloid tales to shed new light on this decade's comedic darling.

Download or read book Create Your Own Light written by Travis Howze and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From taking human life to being assigned to the body recovery team of nine brother firefighters, including one of his best friends, U.S. Marine, former Police Officer and Firefighter Travis Howze was plagued with extreme Post Traumatic Stress, Depression and Survivors Guilt from a lifetime of very traumatic exposures dating back to early childhood. Victorious in the fight for his very own life at just three months old, his struggle to survive was just the beginning. Years later, he would defeat the very silent and deadly killer, PTSD, but not before it caused massive carnage and collateral damage to his personal and professional life. From Class Clown to professional Stand-Up Comedian and Speaker, Travis' UNBELIEVABLY GRIPPING, uncensored autobiography is a MUST READ that takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride through the eyes of an emergency responder. Follow Travis through countless horrific events, from funny stories inside of the Firehouse, Patrol Car, and Marine Corps, to Stand-Up Comedy Stages and the dark places first responders have to go to in their mind to survive.This true, hard-hitting story is about staying in the fight. It's about never quitting yourself, always getting up, doing the things you love, and how the power of perspective, attitude, ownership and acceptance can lead to LIFE CHANGING personal growth and a more PURPOSEFUL LIFE.

Download or read book A Comedian Walks Into A Funeral Home written by Dennis Kelly and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vince Locker's life is tragic. His comedy act for the LaughCom competition has just bombed, ruining any chance of the cash prize he desperately needed. His life is in tatters; abandoned by his father as a child, an estranged wife, Jessica, who he seems to disappoint just by his mere existence, and living in his mother's house with his bipolar brother and facing foreclosure. As he stands on Smith Avenue Bridge, suicide seems the only option until he is unexpectedly rescued by an old school mortician named Truss. Vince meets another of Truss's rescues, Winona. Although beyond social norms, the trio seize on a quick cash fix that just might help Vince meet his child support demands-comedic tributes for the dead. The eulogies are hilarious and off the wall, sometimes disastrous and sometimes enlightening. They propel Vince into the dark underworld of the funeral industry, life insurance scams, savage politics, a kidnapping, the murder investigation of a destitute unclaimed young woman and threats to Jessica and his young daughter. As details of the murdered young woman are slowly revealed, Vince realizes that he has many ghosts of his own to put to rest. The story is a brilliant thought-provoking exploration of grief and death nested in clever humor.

Download or read book Stand Up Comedy written by Judy Carter and published by Dell. This book was released on 2010-03-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you think you’re funny, buy this book! Whether you dream of becoming a star . . . A better public speaker . . . A more effective communicator . . . A funnier, happier human being . . . You can learn to leave ‘em laughing! David Letterman learned to do it. Jay Leno learned to do it. Roseanne Barr learned to do it. So can you! Now successful stand-up comic Judy Carter—who went from teaching high school to performing in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Lake Tahoe, and on over 45 major TV shows—gives you the same hands-on, step-by-step instruction she’s taught to students in her comedy workshops. She shows you how to do it: create an act, perform it, make money with it, or apply it to everyday life. Discover: • The formulas for creating comedy material • How to find your own style • The three steps to putting your act together • Rehearsal do’s and don’ts • What to do if you bomb • Ways to punch up your everyday life with humor

Download or read book Dad Is Fat written by Jim Gaffigan and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jim Gaffigan never imagined he would have his own kids. Though he grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family, Jim was satisfied with the nomadic, nocturnal life of a standup comedian, and was content to be "that weird uncle who lives in an apartment by himself in New York that everyone in the family speculates about." But all that changed when he married and found out his wife, Jeannie "is someone who gets pregnant looking at babies." Five kids later, the comedian whose riffs on everything from Hot Pockets to Jesus have scored millions of hits on YouTube, started to tweet about the mistakes and victories of his life as a dad. Those tweets struck such a chord that he soon passed the million followers mark. But it turns out 140 characters are not enough to express all the joys and horrors of life with five kids, so he's now sharing it all in Dad Is Fat. From new parents to empty nesters to Jim's twenty-something fans, everyone will recognize their own families in these hilarious takes on everything from cousins ("celebrities for little kids") to growing up in a big family ("I always assumed my father had six children so he could have a sufficient lawn crew") to changing diapers in the middle of the night ("like The Hurt Locker but much more dangerous") to bedtime (aka "Negotiating with Terrorists"). Dad is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home.

Download or read book Don t Wear Shorts on Stage written by Rob Durham and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rob Durham has written a book on the ins and outs of being a stand-up comic. Hilarious and enlightening, he uses some funny experiences of his own with famous and not-so-famous people to give some great tips on getting started in the biz. "Rob Durham 'gets it' as a performer and a teacher of how to get going in the comedy business. He covers the little things that so many new guys ignore. This is the book I would have written. . . if I had the time, interest, or word-processor." --Jimmy Pardo"I support this book unconditionally!" --Maria Bamford"Read this book before going to your next open mic night." --Tommy Johnagin

Download or read book Behind the Laughter written by Anthony Griffith and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you keep going when your world is falling apart? Discover the powerful story of stand-up comic Anthony Griffith and how to navigate grief through persistence, faith, humor and love. Now available in trade paper. Just as Anthony’s career in stand-up comedy launched him onto the stage of The Tonight Show, he and his wife Brigitte faced an unimaginable personal nightmare: their two-year-old daughter, Brittany Nicole, was dying from cancer. While Anthony performed under bright lights, he struggled not to succumb to the darkness of losing a child. In this stirring memoir, Anthony Griffith and his wife of more than thirty years, Brigitte Travis-Griffin, share the powerful story of living between life’s funniest moments and its most heartbreaking tragedies. With humor and deep insights into the human spirit, Behind the Laughter explores Anthony’s life and career as well as the bonds between parent and child and husband and wife. The surprising twists along Anthony’s path highlights experiencing God’s sustaining presence in the darkest moments as well as the sweetest dreams. Behind the Laughter explores: Powerful, relatable emotions and lessons that are universal and inspiring New perspectives on difficult topics that everyone can relate to The power of finding humor in spite of adversity Find true inspiration along with laugh-out-loud humor in this remarkable story of resilience and grace in the face of loss.

Download or read book The Comedians written by Kliph Nesteroff and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century. “Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal

Download or read book It Never Ends written by Tom Scharpling and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling’s harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.

Download or read book A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar written by Caty Borum Chattoo and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges. Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change. Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.

Download or read book By the Light of the Moon written by Dean Koontz and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dean Koontz has surpassed his longtime reputation as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”(Rolling Stone) to become one of the most celebrated and successful writers of our time. Reviewers hail his boundless originality, his art, his unparalleled ability to create highly textured, riveting drama, at once viscerally familiar and utterly unique. Author of one #1 New York Times bestseller after another, Koontz is at the pinnacle of his powers, spinning mysteries and miracles, enthralling tales that speak directly to today’s readers, balm for the heart and fire for the mind. In this stunning new novel, he delivers a tour de force of dark suspense and brilliant revelation that has all the Koontz trademarks: adventure, chills, riddles, humor, heartbreak, an unforgettable cast of characters, and a climax that will leave you clamoring for more. Dylan O’Connor is a gifted young artist just trying to do the right thing in life. He’s on his way to an arts festival in Santa Fe when he stops to get a room for himself and his twenty-year-old autistic brother, Shep. But in a nightmarish instant, Dylan is attacked by a mysterious “doctor,” injected with a strange substance, and told that he is now a carrier of something that will either kill him...or transform his life in the most remarkable way. Then he is told that he must flee--before the doctor’s enemies hunt him down for the secret circulating through his body. No one can help him, the doctor says, not even the police. Stunned, disbelieving, Dylan is turned loose to run for his life...and straight into an adventure that will turn the next twenty-four hours into an odyssey of terror, mystery--and wondrous discovery. It is a journey that begins when Dylan and Shep’s path intersects with that of Jillian Jackson. Before that evening Jilly was a beautiful comedian whose biggest worry was whether she would ever find a decent man. Now she too is a carrier. And even as Dylan tries to convince her that they’ll be safer sticking together, cold-eyed men in a threatening pack of black Suburbans approach, only seconds before Jilly’s classic Coupe DeVille explodes into thin air. Now the three are on the run together, but with no idea whom they’re running from--or why. Meanwhile Shep has begun exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior. And whatever it is that’s coursing through their bodies seems to have plunged them into one waking nightmare after another. Seized by sinister premonitions, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to crime scenes--just minutes before the crimes take place. What this unfathomable power is, how they can use it to stop the evil erupting all around them, and why they have been chosen are only parts of a puzzle that reaches back into the tragic past and the dark secrets they all share: secrets of madness, pain, and untimely death. Perhaps the answer lies in the eerie, enigmatic messages that Shep, with precious time running out, begins to repeat, about an entity who does his work “by the light of the moon.” By the Light of the Moon is a novel of heart-stopping suspense and transcendent beauty, of how evil can destroy us and love can redeem us--a masterwork of the imagination in which the surprises come page after page and the spell of sublime storytelling triumphs throughout. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Dean Koontz's The City.

Download or read book The Light Streamed Beneath It written by Shawn Hitchins and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Notable Book 49th Shelf Recommended Read A modern gay memoir exploring love, death, pain, and community that will resonate long after the last page. “This is an embodied story of love, loss, and recovery — raw, candid, and filled with a sense of awe at human resilience.” — Shelf Awareness “A timely story so human, so beautiful, so bravely told with heart and humour.” — Rosie O’Donnell A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when comedian and writer Shawn Hitchins loses two great loves, five months apart, to sudden death. In this deeply poignant memoir that combines sober self-portrait with tender elegy, Hitchins explores the messiness of being alive: the longing and desire, scorching-earth anger, raw grief — and the pathway of healing he discovers when he lets his heart remain open. Never without an edge of self-awareness, The Light Streamed Beneath It invites the reader into Hitchins’s world as he reckons with his past and stays painfully in the present. As he builds an embodied future, he confronts the stories that have shaped him, sets aside his ambition, and seeks connection in what he used to deflect with laughter — therapy, community and chosen family, movement, spirituality, and an awareness of death’s ever-presence. A heartrending and hope-filled story of resilience in the wake of death, The Light Streamed Beneath It joyfully affirms that life is essentially good, as Hitchins weaves his tale full of tenacious spirit, humor, kindness, and grit through life’s most unforgiving challenges.

Download or read book The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh written by Helen Rutter and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When life is funny, make some jokes about it. Billy Plimpton has a big dream: to become a famous comedian when he grows up. He already knows a lot of jokes, but thinks he has one big problem standing in his way: his stutter. At first, Billy thinks the best way to deal with this is to . . . never say a word. That way, the kids in his new school won’t hear him stammer. But soon he finds out this is NOT the best way to deal with things. (For one thing, it’s very hard to tell a joke without getting a word out.) As Billy makes his way toward the spotlight, a lot of funny things (and some less funny things) happen to him. In the end, the whole school will know -- If you think you can hold Billy Plimpton back, be warned: The joke will soon be on you!

Download or read book We Killed written by Yael Kohen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kohen assembles America's most prominent comediennes to piece together an oral history about the revolution that happened to (and by) women in American comedy.

Download or read book The Dark Side of Stand Up Comedy written by Patrice A. Oppliger and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-10 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the “dark side” of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers’ troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians’ onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.