Sara Schaefer

Here are my favorites from 2007.

Ann Carr.

If you're at all NYC comedy savvy, you already know that this woman is hilarious. One of my favorite things a comedian can do is make you slightly uncomfortable. In her solo show, she goes into the audience as her character "Paloma" and gets into the personal space of an audience member (usually male) and says "Am I making you uncomfortable?" And then she changes position and says "What about now?" and changes position again, repeating "How about now?". She repeats that about 10 times. Finally when the entire audience is either crying tears of laughter or internally dying of discomfort, she screams "YES! GOOD! FEEEEEEEL IT!" It's the best. Read Ann's blog here, and vote for her in the ECNY awards (though I'll admit, it's a tough choice, the other nominees are awesome!!!).


Rick Kant

I can't decide if I love this so much because it's so purely hilarious, or because deep down I'm probably not that different from Rick Kant.


Union Hall

This place is awesome. I remember the first time I went there I was completely annoyed by the bacci ball court, which inspired a poorly written stand-up joke about how I'm going to open my own bar called "Squishy", in which there are no bathrooms and we hand out Depends at the door. (Playing on the old-people-are-the-new-hipsters theme.) The joke *may* have ended with me describing the signature drink, which is like a cosmopolitan but with prune juice, called the "Constipalitan". HEEEEYO! Yeesh. Ahem. Okay. So I love this place. The people that work there are wonderful. And it's so multi-purpose! I've seen it work perfectly as ALL of the following:

- a quiet place to snuggle by the fireside in a pretend library
- a venue to see David Cross and Sarah Silverman 'drop by' for coolier-than-thou comedy sets (i love, i love)
- a rock club to which you can refer years from now when describing how you saw an intimate set by [insert cool band here]
- a church/reception hall for cool/hilarious/sweet weddings
- a clubhouse for park slope ladies who like to breast feed in public
- a home in which to play my shows and my games


Freelance Chicken

Jon Friedman learns a lesson about dressing up in a chicken costume and mingling with children in the park.


Michelle Collins' Pet Picture Collections

BestWeekEver's blog is always great but it's the best when Michelle Collins puts up a list of pets-in-various-costumes. My favorite this year was the "Top 10 Most Humiliating Pet Costumes (Judging By The Expressions of the Pet Models)".


The Lisps.

I discovered this band through a string of references and friends, and totally fell in love when they played a set at my Name That Tune night. When I asked them to back me for my new solo show, I was fully expecting them to say no. But when they said yes, love quickly turned into Fatal-Attraction-level obsession. Sammy, Cesar, Eric, and Jeremy are not only incredibly talented musicians with a unique perspective and a near-perfect sense of comedy, but they are also just great people. The show on the 18th at Union Hall was amazing. I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to play with me. The Lisps are to Sara Schaefer what Aimee Mann is to PT Anderson. Except my Aimee Mann is three parts man-boy and one part lady-tiger. They have a CD release party at Joe's Pub on Jan 5. I'm going. You are too. More info here.


Get out your fucking checkbook.

I know it's cliche at this point, but there is nothing this year that made me laugh as hard as this. I remember in the days just after my mom passed away, I hooked up my computer to my dad's huge screen TV and played this video for my siblings. We watched it over and over again. The insanity of it was just what we needed at the time. And it still makes me laugh just as hard.