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The College Humor Show, Featuring UCBT's Dan Gurewitch & Others, Debuts February 8th On MTV
February 2, 2009, 10:58 pm - [ Category: NY Classes ]
This Sunday, Feb. 8th at 9:30PM/8:30C, MTV will launch "The CollegeHumor Show," a new comedy written by and starring the people that work at CollegeHumor.com. The network's first scripted comedy series since "Human Giant," the show will aim for a fresh, fast-paced format that combines sitcom and sketch elements. Overarching storylines will be interspersed with occasional sketches and short films in the style of CollegeHumor's "CH Originals" and "Hardly Working" video series.
The UCBT's Dan Gurewitch is a senior writer and actor on the show, in which the CH staff members play fictionalized versions of themselves in their actual Union Square office. The show also features appearances by UCBT regulars Nick Kroll, Curtis Gwinn, Violet Krumbein, Paul W. Downs and Adam Frucci.
The February 8th premiere is the first of six episodes initially ordered by MTV. More information on "The CollegeHumor Show" can be found at http://www.collegehumor.com/thecollegehumorshow.
Joe Mande and Workdays With Maury on NYPress.com
July 1, 2008, 2:14 pm - [ Category: NY Classes ]
Workdays With Maury: Stand-up Joe Mande dishes on his intern days with ‘The Maury Show’
The Maury Show, like all television taped before a live, studio audience, would not exist without the thankless wheel greasing provided by its bright-eyed and delusional unpaid interns. Internships in television rarely lead to staff positions or a meaningful future, but you generally don’t come to that realization until you’ve been floundering out of college for a few years in an unrelated field. Therefore, it’s especially satisfying when former interns make proper use of their experiences by taking their stories public.
Pithy stand-up Joe Mande, co-host of the popular Rififi show “Totally JK” and the winner of the Emerging Comic Award at this year’s ECNYs, bites the hand that didn’t feed (or pay) him with a new outing at the UCB Theater called Workdays With Maury, a meditation on the time and energy he gave to help make The Maury Show the gassy shit-parade it is today. I talked to Joe about working for MoPo and learned that when life hands you unexpected results, you’ve gotta learn to make due. Sorry Maury, you are the father of this baby. And he seems a little colicky.
As a former intern at Late Night myself, we were forbidden to talk to guests. Conan was somewhat off-limits too, or at least he seemed that way to me. Were any similar rules and advisories in place at Maury?
Yes. Interns at The Maury Show were told to never speak to Maury Povich (or even look in his general direction), which really wasn’t that hard considering he was hardly ever there due to his busy schedule of golfing all day and buying turtleneck sweaters.
What were your duties there?
My main duty at The Maury Show was to read and organize all the viewer mail. But I did a lot of other stuff too. Like: I answered The Maury Show hotline (1-888-85-MAURY), I checked Maury’s voicemail, I got high in a stairwell by myself a lot and sometimes I did sit-ups in the green room when it was empty.
Connie Chung is a beard, right?
I believe she’s an Asian.
How long have you been doing stand up?
I started doing stand-up with a bunch of my friends, including my “Totally JK” co-host, Noah Garfinkel, at Emerson College about four or five years ago. We started performing at this great place in Harvard Square called the Comedy Studio. Then I moved to NYC in late 2005, blew everyone I could, and now here I am. Living the dream. Making that ECNY money, son!
Then is Workdays With Maury your first one-person show?
It would be a lie to say Workdays With Maury is my first one-man show, because it actually stars two other people playing all the supporting characters. So far, Jenny Slate, Gabe Liedman and Chris Gethard have all done the show with me. They’ve been great. Some other very exciting comedians have told me they’ll do the show if it continues on into the summer and fall. But yes, this is the first thing I’ve ever done with light cues and blocking and stuff like that.
One of my favorite things on The Maury Show is watching a crowd of riled heavyset ladies scream “It’s a man!” at someone of ambiguous gender as the person pulls a sign out of their pantsuit that says, “I’m a woman!” Everyone is just floored by the results—it’s so jarring. Were the results just as shocking from the control room or the monitors?
Sadly, my entire time at The Maury Show was during the summer when they weren’t taping any shows. My job was pretty much all pre-production bullshit. It sucked. When I applied for the position, I thought it would be all feeding fat babies and administering paternity tests. But, no. It was actually super lame. However, I did walk in on Maury Povich taking a leak once and definitely caught a glimpse of his old, Jewy penis. So, that was a thrill!
Workdays with Maury at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, 307 W. 26th St. (near 8th Ave.), 212-366-9176; July 2 & 9 at 8, $5.
Posted by Nate Sloan
Click here to make reservations for "Workdays With Maury at UCBT NY.