Time to turn off the Royal We button on the keyboard for this one.

This post officially marks my last moment as Mr. Head Editor for the site. Maybe I’ll be around here and there in the future to share a thought or two, but the day-to-day operations will no longer be under my control. I’ve tried as best I can to juggle this website, my job, my three African orphans, my constant fight for woman’s rights (to have sex with me), my scheme of stealing money from the poor to give to the rich, digesting food, and my morning jog, during which I smuggle illegal Canadian immigrants across the border. But it’s all just become too much for me to handle, so I had to take a look at my life and reevaluate my priorities. After dumping the orphans off on my mother’s doorstep, I realized I still had more life-cleaning to do, which is why I’m signing off today.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen to this site from now on, but keep your eyes peeled. I’m sure there’ll be news regarding the future of The Coming either here or over at The Apiary, but if you have any questions, send an electronified mail.

So, that’s all. Don’t worry. You’ll all get through this somehow. Probably by turning to alcohol.

I love each and every one of you equally, except for three of you, whom I loath,
Rick

While doctors and scientists are busy sipping margaritas and being fed grapes by scantily-clad women and/or men, comedians are the ones whose brows glisten with grunt-work sweat! Tonight at the NoHo Arts Center on Magnolia, there’s a whole lot of comics and sketch groups — like Ten West, Superpunk, The Class Project, TROOP!, and The Weekly Armenian — who will be using your donations to CURE AIDS!

The AIDS Show
The NoHo Arts Center
Monday September 17th at 8:30 pm
11136 Magnolia Blvd
North Hollywood, CA 91601
$Donation Only$

That’s right, folks. The price is “Donation Only”, meaning you get to be “the decider” when it comes to how much money you want to spend. Has AIDS affected you personally, or do you just want your date to see how big your heart is? Write them out a check. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory and you think that these “cures” are for cheaters? Turn up your nose and drop a shiny nickel into the bucket. The choice is yours!

All proceeds go to the APLA cause.

“The Right Now! Show” taped their pilot episode last night — we went to the 9pm taping — and boy, was it something out of the ordinary! And that’s a good thing!

There were sketches, songs, filmed shorts, extension of standup bits, improvised Q&A, and even a freestyle saxaphone solo. When producers Scott Aukerman and BJ Porter first announced the project, they said they wanted to do a show with the sensibility of their Comedy Death Ray show, and they certainly have delivered.

Some snapshots of the evening:

- Four different actors wearing fake mustaches! With two of them coming off at inopportune times!
- Paul Rust’s “Salvation through the Ringing”.
- Brody Stevens performing roughly 3 hours of material in-and-around the audience throughout the entire taping. That guy could keep the energy up at funeral.
- James Adomian and The Bammer showing off their Brody impersonations, which we hope will lead to some kind of all-night festival of Brody impersonators.
- Mike O’Connell scaring the hell out of us during his song.
- Cap’n Mustache delighting the half of the crowd who gets him, and appalling the half that doesn’t.
- Natasha Leggero putting the audience in their place.
- While everyone was standing in line outside — the 9pm show got to off to a late start — Eddie Pepitone riled up the crowd by yelling, from across the street, “Sketch comedy sucks!” and other anti-hipster taunts.
- “Wheel of Desire”, our favorite bit of the night, which we won’t ruin here.
- “Boy Wonder” Jordan Morris getting a face-full of Casey Wilson’s limp body during her sensual dance.
- Seeing David Cross onscreen in the audience during Ian Edwards’ rap bit. Bob Odenkirk was also there for the taping, which has us thinking that shots of Bob & David in the audience will be used as easter eggs for comedy nerds, letting them know this show is on the level.

For many more tidbits, opinions and oaths to picket Fox is they pass on the show, head over to the AST thread about the taping.

And boy are they decent! From Punchline Magazine:

As with any art compilation – whether it’s a book of landscape paintings, a CD of jazz standards or a double-live album collection of some of LA’s best known and under-the-radar comics – there’s going to be, at best, some disposable samples and, at worst, so much collateral damage that you spend most of your time sifting through the rubble for something with a pulse.

Luckily, in the case of Comedy Death-Ray, Comedy Central Records’ newest 18 tracks of stand-up, it’s more of the former. And even at this collection’s lowest points (see Andy Daly’s excruciatingly heavy-handed satirical look on clichéd comedy premises and one-liners or Neil Hamburger’s needlessly slow-paced 11-and-a-half minute series of bad – and not in the ironic way – jokes) you’re still experiencing something unique.

We couldn’t agree less about Andy Daly’s bit; although maybe it doesn’t translate well in an audio-only format. But despite that bit of negativity, for the first time in years we’re completely excited about September 11th. Let’s take back 9/11! With comedy!

Reservations for next week’s Comedy Death Ray CD release festival at the UCB are already taken, but you might be able to get on the waiting list if you head over there early enough. We recommend starting to stand in line … right … NOW!

Last week, Horatio Sanz, Paul Scheer and Robs Huebel and Riggle headed out to Iraq to help take the troops’ minds off their freedom-protecting by subjecting them to some humor. Paul had a plan of blogging all about the Iraq tour while he was over there, but:

However, my plan of picture and video blogging was severely hindered by the fact that Iraq’s infrastructure doesn’t really support high speed DSL. Who knew?

Instead he plans on spending this upcoming week updating his blog with a bunch of photos and videos of the event. Needless to say, it’ll be worth a visit or three. Any comedy done in a barren desert wasteland is worth checking out.

Those who went to the last Match Game Live show at the UCB (the August 10th episode) should remember this guy:

The fella, whose name we cannot recall, was one of the two contestants that night. Officially, he was the “female” contestant — the producers of the show were tricked by his feminine-sounding name — but the big shock of the night was when host Jimmy Pardo learned about the young man’s job: Professional air guitarist. Later on in the night, he showed off his skills by air-riffing to some Guns N Roses while Pardo wowed the crowd with his own air bass technique.

While he ended up losing the Match Game, the young man can console himself by being recently featured on Countdown with Keith Olbermann in a story about this year’s US Air Guitar awards in New York. Well done, young sir.

From the recently-linked Hollywood Elsewhere blog:

Right now and for the foreseeable future, anything Michael Cera is in, going to be in, producing, writing or saying is automatically worth considering or checking out. Superbad, of course. Jason Reitman’s Juno (Fox Searchlight, 12.14), which will reportedly show at the Toronto Film Festival. A forthcoming Judd Apatow/Harold Ramis comedy called Year One, in which he’ll costar with Jack Black. The starring role fo “Nick Twist” in Youth in Revolt, a Dimension Films’ adaptation of the C.D. Payne novels (about Twisp “striving to balance out his budding sexual urges while remaining an intellectual teenager in a world of moronic adults”) with David Permut producing.

2008 is looking more and more like The Year Of The Cera.

(Also of Superbad note: A rave review.)

Jeffrey Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere has been writing up a storm recently on Superbad, which he calls “the funniest, most cleverly written youth comedy in I-don’t-know-how-many-years”. In his latest love poem, he brought our attention to a pretty great 3-part roundtable discussion with Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, and Jonah Hill — another proponent of the JewFro — over at Entertainment Weekly. Here the group talks about the use of cuss words in their films:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The other thing that sets the Apatow-brand comedies apart is the combination of the hard-R kind of raunchiness with the emotional sweetness.
JUDD APATOW: D— and heart. That’s what I’m going to call my new production company: D— Heart Productions.
MICHAEL CERA: Those are the two key organs involved in life.
APATOW: There are obviously great comedies that aren’t R-rated, but you can certainly do a very honest, frank, sweet, and also disgusting type of comedy with an R rating. I always enjoyed writing for The Larry Sanders Show because it was fun to hear Rip Torn say f—. To me, it’s just about showing how people really express themselves. I mean, this conversation is R.
CERA: It was never a conscious effort to swear on Superbad. If anything, when we were doing the clean version for TV, it was a conscious effort not to swear.
APATOW: It was so hard to get Jonah to stop saying f—. We spent so much time trying to thin out the f—s. It was like, ‘’What f— is not connected to a joke?'’
JONAH HILL: One time Judd sent me an e-mail during shooting: ‘’You should try not to curse so much, because you need to make it emphasize more when you do curse.'’ I just wrote back: ‘’F— that.'’
APATOW: You’ve got the f— crutch.

The movie comes out this Friday and there’s a bunch of clips over at the official website, if you’re into that sort of thing. Don’t you dare skip that funky intro, which we’ve been watching consistently for the past four hours.

Well, this certainly is an interesting way to promote a show.

During this week’s Running Your Trap” (9:30pm, $5), host Jimmy Pardo is not only sharing the stage Rob Corddry and Tom Clark, but he might also be welcoming in a very special guest: his child!

Jimmy’s Last RYT Before He’s A Dad!
Come and see if Danielle will go into labor at this very show!
(there will be no nudity)

We recommend bringing some goggles along too, just in case.

Also, as an exclusive to The Coming, we have the only known public ultrasound photos of the Pardo/Koenig fetus after the jump.

Continue Reading »

With Comic-Con going on, everyone everywhere is breaking news about the latest thing, widget, or motion-activated celluloid transmission. But isoS over at AST just trumped them all by breaking the Most(!) Important(!) Announcement(!) Of(!) The(!) Summer(!):

Scott Aukerman: We have sold a sketch show to Fox, based in part upon our Comedy Death-Ray shows.

isoS: awesome!

BJ Porter: It’s being developed by their new Late Night division

isoS: what’s the show called?

Scott Aukerman: It is called “The Right Now! Show”

Later in the IMterview, Aukerman and Porter go on to discuss who’s cast in the show, which is such a dream team of performers that we’ve already put in a call to the National Holiday Society to make sure that they didn’t change April Fools Day to August this year. So far, the confirmed parties are: Maria Bamford, James Adomian, Ian Edwards, Paul Rust, Casey Wilson, Natasha Leggero and Mike O’Connell.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to change our pants.