Randall Mills

Cast of Monster Party, winners of the Sketch Cage Match at the 1st Annual LA Scripted Comedy Festival on the iO West Theater Mainstage

See also:
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013

Over the weekend, Improv Olympic became a Scripted Olympic. From Thursday through Sunday, Hollywood's iO West Theater hosted its first annual L.A. Scripted Comedy Festival, featuring a collection of talent from across the country showcasing sketch, variety, storytelling, stand up and short films.

The event marked a departure from the improvised comedy that defines iO. According to James Grace, the coordinator of SFC, this venture was an organic evolution for the theater.

"iO West has had an explosion of sketch, solo, storytelling and stand up shows over the last year," explained Grace during a pre-festival interview. "So featuring all the talent at this theater in L.A., and across the country, seemed like a natural progression. The industry is always looking for product and scripted comedy is the best way to consistently showcase talent."

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Anthony D'Alessandro

Emily Maya Mills as Eve proves to God that women are knee-slap funny.

"By any chance, are there a couple of boxes out there on stage?"

Such was comedienne Emily Maya Mills's query to a fellow performer in the dressing room at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Mills needed a nook or two to stash a slew of props -- in the Lady Gaga number range -- for her 35-minute show God Hates Figs.

"There are minimal costume changes. I wear no shoes in the show, but everything else is the craziest prop situation I've ever handled," explained Mills about her 60th show at UCB -- her second one-woman -- directed by fellow UCB vet Julie Brister. "This is going to look like a living cartoon."

Though we live in a city that's a comedy bellwether, in particular the alternative comedy queen scene -- which over the last decade or so has been punctuated by such greats as Beth Lapides, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Maria Bamford, Natasha Leggero, to name a few -- we can lose track of what's new. Let's add Mills to that group of next-gen femmes helping to obliterate the women-aren't-funny cliche -- which, incidentally, is part of her act.

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Photo by Gabrielle Canon

Comedy Living Room hosts Matt Lottman and Frank Chad Muniz

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*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in L.A.
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013

It all started with a red curtain. Roommates Matt Lottman and Frank Chad Muniz realized that the front of their Hollywood rental house resembled a stage one morning when Muniz stood in front of their red-draped front window.

"Basically the ball started rolling in our heads," Lottman says, sitting on a couch in their living room. "We thought, 'Hey, we don't get to go to open mics because of our work hours and whatnot, but why don't we bring the open mic to us.' "

Lottman and Muniz created a monthly show, aptly named Comedy Living Room, that is part Pee-wee's Playhouse, part Saturday Night Live and part stand-up comedy, with a house-party vibe.

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Paul T. Bradey

Eddie Pepitone

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

Who is Eddie Pepitone? If you're not aware of the man they call the Bitter Buddha, you've clearly got a life, well-adjusted friends or an upwardly mobile job -- likely all three. If you've got none of those, he's the comedian-slash-prophet whose shrill screams of truth and tribulation might just briefly soothe your angst-ridden nightmare of an existence.

He's the lye-spiked balm created from the ashes of Bill Hicks and Harvey Pekar, suspended in the colloidal tears of every brilliant but commercially failed social comedian. He's healing your wounds while opening up new ones you never knew were there -- mostly by yelling.

But, as the saying goes, comparisons are odious. That's fine -- so is Eddie Pepitone. Ok, he's really just odious to look at. Ok, and probably to sleep with. And be around socially. But that's about it. The rest of him is perfectly charming. And on Friday night, he suppurated that charm all over a packed house of well-wishers and semi-celebrity roasters at the premiere of his own documentary, Steven Feinartz's The Bitter Buddha.

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Robyn Von Swank

Anthony Jeselnik

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

Onstage, Anthony Jeselnik is unlikeable, dirty and downright disturbing. And that's just the way he prefers it. Known for teaching the old-timers a trick or two on the Comedy Central Roasts of Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen and Roseanne Barr, his new TV show with the cable channel, The Jeselnik Offensive, films Thursdays at Hollywood Center Studios until April 18 and debuts today. We interviewed him last week.

Last night marked the taping of your first episode of The Jeselnik Offensive. How did it go?

It went great! I feel like every first episode of a TV show is bad, you know, and it always improves. I just want it to be comfortable, and be as good as it can possibly be and go as smoothly as it can possibly go. I think a lot of it had to do with the guests I had. I had [my girlfriend] Amy Schumer, who calms me down, and Aziz Ansari, who is amazing. It really helped me out.

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Aaron Frank

Dave Ross warming up the crowd at his weekly free comedy show

See also:
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in L.A.
*12 L.A. Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*5 Best Comedy Shows in L.A. This Week

On any given night in Los Angeles, you can find free comedy shows taking place in bookstores, restaurants, bars and art galleries around the city. In the case of comedian Dave Ross's show Holy Fuck, the venue happens to be a movie theater, specifically the Downtown Independent, which he's managed to fill nearly every Tuesday night for over two years.

Since its inception in November of 2009, Holy Fuck has welcomed some huge names like Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari and Demetri Martin, and just last week, the line for the show stretched half-way down the block. For the next several weeks, you can expect even longer lines at Holy Fuck, as the extensive lineup for the show's first-ever album taping, featuring names like Maria Bamford and Kyle Kinane, has gone viral.

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Russell Peters is probably the only arena-size comic right now who hasn't gotten into trouble for making homophobic slurs or punching a Target employee. Of Indian heritage, but raised Catholic, he's huge in his native Canada; he hosted A Russell Peters Christmas Special in 2011 with fellow Canadian Pamela Anderson playing the Virgin Mary. He's done three world tours and published his memoir, Call Me Russell, in 2010.

The bulk of Peters's humor is Indian vs. whitey jokes, though all groups are fair game. His famous "Be A Man" punchline -- where he pokes fun of a Chinese store owner -- is even printed on T-shirts for sale on his web site.

Peters is returning to the Nokia Theater Jan. 12, and we caught up with the funny man for a quick Q&A.

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Kristen and Kurt

A standing crowd of 200 welcomed L.A.'s newest alternative-comedy offering, lauded New York City transplant Hot Tub with Kurt & Kristen, to The Virgil cocktail bar Monday night.

Nattily-dressed titular duo Kurt Braunohler (IFC's Bunk, Chelsea Lately) and Kristen Schaal (30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords) kicked things off promptly at 8 p.m. with a game of "I Never." "If you had a gay period in college, sit down," Schaal instructed the tightly-packed audience. "If you are gay but had a straight period in college..." Braunohler countered, the game rapidly escalating to include "If you gave a baby up for adoption in the late '70s and regretted it ever since..." and "If you masturbate with your right hand..." with a game "winner" named Eric chosen to serve as show stenographer (a position from which he was quickly fired).

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Paul T. Bradley

Eric André's first joke of 2013.

See also:
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles

Q: What has a hundred thumbs and loves dead moms?

A: Fifty comedians crammed on a stage at the Downtown Independent Theater, that's who.

For the third year in a row, 50 of L.A.'s favorite weird and edgy and off-beat comedians told their first jokes of the new year in rapid two-minute succession last night (it was actually 25 of them split into two different groups). The brainchild of New York comedians John F. O'Donnell, Claudia Cogan and Jiwon Lee, 50 First Jokes has been selling out their hometown for seven years. Now under the tutelage of Loud Village's Jeremy Burke (Mr. Taco Comedy himself), the show's L.A. incarnation sold out in presale this year -- bringing in the finest of dick jokes, new year's resolutions, 2013 dating goals, and jabs at racial harmony, among others to a packed theater.

But, yes, overall, dead mom jokes ruled the evening.

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See also:
*10 Best Stand-Up Comedy Shows in Los Angeles
*12 Comedy Acts to Watch in 2013

Even as Scott Aukerman's Comedy Bang! Bang! continues to build momentum as an IFC talk/sketch series and Earwolf podcast, the earliest incarnation of the brand, a long-running live show originally named Comedy Death-Ray, ended its weekly run at UCB LA in late November. Most in the comedy community assumed the multimedia forerunner was simply shifting its focus (plans for a TV production and distribution company have since been announced), but the question remained: what show would assume the popular CBB's place on the Tuesday-night lineup?

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