Kevin Scanlon

Two of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

When Kumail Nanjiani was 18, he came halfway around the world from Karachi, Pakistan, to one of the whitest places on Earth, Grinnell College in Iowa. Appropriately, at 34, he's now a comedian specializing in wry jokes and fish-out-of-water observations, which have landed him both a Late Show With David Letterman appearance and a recently filmed Comedy Central special.

His wife, Emily V. Gordon, also works in the comedy industry, but that's about where their similarities end, at least on paper. Hailing from Scarborough, N.C., the 33-year-old Gordon previously was employed as a therapist at a Chicago institution for schizophrenics. Now program director of West Hollywood's Nerdist Theater, Gordon is charged with wrangling events at the venue, which happens to be in the rear of a Sunset Boulevard comics store.

More >>

Photo by Ted Soqui

The crowd at the Best Fish Taco in Ensenada, getting ready to laugh.

It's just after 10 p.m. and already five comedians have done their thing when comic Eddie Pepitone strides up to start his set. Short, bald and decidedly unhinged, Pepitone gives the air of a blue-collar Buddha: a wizened, workaday sage who happens to be slightly crazy-eyed.

Getting right to the point, he starts his trademark screaming.

"Let's address the elephant in the room," he shrieks. "We are out-fucking-side a fish taco place -- things are not going well for ANYONE!"

Pepitone is in the outdoor faux-cabana of the venerable Los Feliz taco hut Best Fish Taco in Ensenada -- a spot that looks like a cross between a Corona Light commercial and Keanu Reeves' man cave. Normally you'd come here to eat fish and/or shrimp tacos, and gulp down any number of canned sodas. And yet, for the 11th time on alternating Tuesdays (the first and third of every month), the hip, the punk and the snarky are crowded here under stage lights, listening to some comedy.

More >>

Laurent Martin

Comedian and Author Moshe Kasher

To say Moshe Kasher had a tumultuous upbringing would be an understatement at best. The 32-year-old comedian and author now appears regularly on E!'s Chelsea Lately and his clean-cut look -- slicked-back hair with thick black glasses -- appears to dispel the notion of any momentous regrets. But Kasher in the Rye, his compelling memoir of a rough-and-tumble childhood with two deaf parents and a festering substance-abuse problem, isn't exactly easy to stomach.

Written in Kasher's distinctly witty and often frantic narrative voice, the book takes you on a journey through his stints in rehab, jail and therapy as a teenager. It's not so much a redemption story as it is a comical reflection on a past life, one that Kasher left behind after getting sober at 16. "When I was about to turn 30, I had a realization that I had this full measure of life between that insane period and where I'm at now," he explained recently in an interview at the vegan restaurant Flore in Silver Lake.

Kasher's parents split up when he was 9 and his mother whisked him and his older brother away to Oakland, where they lived mostly on disability assistance and food stamps. In the book, he tells of his parents' romantic first encounter, at the World Games for the Deaf in 1967, but his father, a painter before rededicating himself to Hassidic Judaism, often flew into uncontrollable fits of rage, once breaking his mother's fingers. "Seems like my dad might've been born angry too," he writes in the first chapter.

More >>

Courtesy of Comedy Central

In Ugly Americans, which began debuting new episodes last week on Comedy Central, wizards, demons, zombies, humans and more live together, and often clash, in New York City. At the center is Social Services trying to ease the rifts between the varied members of the community.

Callie Maggotbone works in Social Services. She also dates the show's central character, human Mark Lilly. Voiced by comedian Natasha Leggero, Callie is a half-demon/half-human succubus.

"You don't play the succubus part," says Leggero over a recent phone call. "She's a woman and she's in love with Mark. It's very much how I've been in relationships, minus being Rosemary's Baby."

More >>

"I'm glad I remembered the 'cum salad' story," is the first thing Greg Behrendt said backstage after "Iron Comic" at the UCB Theater on Saturday night.

Fortunately, we are talking about comedy. Iron Comic is an improvisational stand-up competition created by Nato Green. Behrendt and four other contestants (Louis Katz, Alex Koll, Morgan Murphy -- who won -- and Chelsea Peretti) have just been run through a creative wringer -- live, for a very receptive, sold-out house.

Green's creation (which had only been performed in L.A. once before, five years ago) tests the joke-writing skills of its contestant comics. Similar in format to its namesake, TV reality series Iron Chef, the show challenges comics to write original material on the spot. Each round starts with an audience-suggested topic being pulled from a hat. The comics then repair backstage for seven minutes, during which they all write two minutes' worth of material on that topic before returning to the stage to perform it. After three rounds are scored by guest judges, the two top-scoring comics square off in a final lightning round.

More >>

Kevin Nealon wants to spend Valentine's Day with you. He's even named his standup show King of Love to get you in the mood. It'll be at Largo at the Coronet on Tuesday.

Here's our Q&A with Nealon:

How much of a romantic are you?

I am very romantic. In fact, I just renewed my vows .. although it was with another woman.

More >>

Pete Holmes

It's an unusual but exciting time for the L.A. comedy scene. For the most part the Big Three Hollywood clubs (The Comedy Store, The Laugh Factory and The Improv) continue chugging along with more traditional shows and mainstream audiences, while younger, subjectively hipper, and more "alternative" talent and fans are increasingly found crowding Meltdown Comics's backroom Nerdist Theater, at bar shows like Monday-night staple What's Up, Tiger Lily? or trading cash donations for complimentary beer at any number of Theater Row black boxes.

Enter Dot Comedy. The Wednesday-night Laugh Factory show is the brainchild of Doron Lion, the new VP of Operations who landed the gig after his wife fortuitously shared a flight with owner Jamie Masada. At just two months old Dot Comedy has already found its footing and featured the smart, savvy likes of Marc Maron, Maria Bamford, Duncan Trussell, Jen Kirkman, TJ Miller, Moshe Kasher, Morgan Murphy, Joe Mande, Ari Shaffir and Nick Kroll, most of whom wouldn't normally be found treading the Laugh Factory stage.

More >>

Nanette Gonzales

The Meatballs of Comedy -- Tommy Tallstand, left, Joey Sorice and Brandon Ficara in front of Ciao Cristina, home of their regular Saturday night gig

Joey Sorice -- pronounced sore-eess -- greets people just inside the showroom door at the snazzy Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank. "That guy right there," he says, pointing to Vince Secere, a handsome yet comically visaged character expert and martial arts expert, "was in Analyze This. He was the guy that was thrown out the window."

Sorice is 5 feet, 5 inches but larger in overall effect, with a fireplug physique and strong, squared-off features under his brushed-back mass of dark hair. He's been a comedian and show producer in L.A. for 10 years. While he grew up partly in the Valley, the northern New Jersey of his earlier upbringing defines his persona.

More >>

Photo by Carolyn Djanogly

At the start of his first North American stand-up tour he's entitled Hello Ladies, Stephen Merchant -- the taller, less famous writing/directing partner of Ricky Gervais and co-creator of The Office -- shows a photo from The Guardian newspaper of him standing on stage behind Gervais at the 2004 Golden Globes, his head chopped off. Story of his life. The man may have changed the face of both British and American comedy, but at 6' 7'', Merchant still has to stoop his way through life and suffer other indignities, just like any average bloke, though they help fuel his self-deprecating humor, which you can see at Largo at the Coronet beginning Jan. 17.

More >>

Eric Andrè

They've got the talent, the credits and the buzz, and all are poised to make the leap to the comedic Big Leagues in 2012. Here are the individuals, groups and projects that will have Los Angeles talking -- and more important, laughing -- next year. Some are our picks, but some are selections from those in the know.

More >>