Joe Blevins Author Archive

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Joe Blevins Author Archive MOST RECENT ARTICLES BY:

  • Oct. 25, 2017

    An Actual Bad Teacher Explains Why ‘Bad Teacher’ Is the Truest Teaching […]Though it pulled in over $200 million on a $20 million budget, Jake Kasdan’s raunchy 2011 comedy Bad Teacher is nobody’s idea of a masterpiece. […]

  • June 15, 2017

    Revisiting ‘Very Bad Things,’ the ‘Rough Night’ of 1998Lucia Aniello’s dark comedy Rough Night, which began life under the working title Move That Body, will face audiences and critics when it opens […]

  • Dec. 29, 2015

    2015: The Year Comedy Music Broke In late December 2015, like at the end of each calendar year, Barret Hansen, better known for nearly half a century as top-hatted madman Dr. […]

  • Dec. 8, 2015

    I Am the President: The Rise and Fall of David Frye Most people, if asked to attempt a Richard Nixon impression, would do the same few basic things. They’d stoop their shoulders, furrow their […]

  • Dec. 3, 2015

    Beer, Guns, and Rusty Chevrolets: The Comedy Music of the Upper Midwest Comedy music already occupies its own little segregated neighborhood – elitists might say a ghetto – within the larger music community. […]

  • Nov. 20, 2015

    Obscene and Unheard: The Unmade Films of John WatersLet’s take a journey into unchartered Waters.

  • Nov. 18, 2015

    The Night Siskel and Ebert Took Over ‘SNL’ Despite the show’s title and producer Lorne Michaels’ decades-long commitment to putting live comedy on network television, Saturday Night […]

  • Nov. 10, 2015

    The Dark, Angry Father of ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’David Seville never really existed at all, and yet there have been at least three of him in the last 60 years. Dave, of course, is the human […]

  • Nov. 6, 2015

    Before ‘Silicon Valley’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’, There Was ‘Dweebs’Twenty years ago, on November 9, 1995, a little-watched CBS half hour sitcom breathed its last, having aired only seven of its ten recorded […]

  • Nov. 3, 2015

    ‘The Great Philouza": A Masterpiece of Old-Timey Comedy“I’m going to the general store! For a phosphate!” The fact that these quaint-sounding words are shouted in anger by David Cross is just one of […]

  • Oct. 29, 2015

    The Dangerous Comedy of Bernard ManningThough he played Las Vegas in the late 1970s and was interviewed by Joan Rivers in the 1980s, British comedian Bernard Manning (1930-2007) […]

  • Oct. 26, 2015

    The Surprisingly Weighty Songs of ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic“I did not enjoy silliness ever.” That was how Marc Maron described his own taste in comedy, even as a kid, when music parodist “Weird Al” […]

  • Oct. 20, 2015

    The Enigma of Rick MoranisA June 1981 episode of NBC’s SCTV Network 90 begins with a straight-to-the-camera editorial by Rick Moranis, assuming the role of cranky […]

  • Oct. 13, 2015

    The Raunchy, Underground World of Trucker TapesA tasteful 1968 print ad for the Beatles’ self-titled double LP advised consumers to “get yourself this album or get the double 8-track […]

  • Oct. 5, 2015

    Ren, Stimpy, and the Horrors of ManlinessWith tonight’s debut of The Splat!, a much-hyped late-night programming block on TeenNick consisting of vintage Nickelodeon shows from the […]
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