Daily Urban Legend

Hiya, folks who still read blogs!

Just wanted to pimp an awesome new site run by the talented and lovely Maggie Serota, Daily Urban Legend!

Making up shit is fun!

UPDATE: If you've been sent here by Daily Urban Legend, you are now caught in some sort of mutually-promoting internet temporal loop. Welcome!

Back to Boston

PEOPLE OF BOSTON! I am hosting awesome shows at Mottley's Comedy club this weekend.

Tim McIntire returns to Mottley's, and he's bringing his favorite comics with him! McIntire's been one of the most prolific comics in the Boston scene for over a decade, releasing two acclaimed comedy CDs, hosting the Boston Music Awards, writing for Nickelodeon, appearing on Comcast and NPR, doing independent films and even finding time to write a novel. The Boston Globe has called him a comic "on the verge of stardom."

Tim's bringing some of his very favorite comics with him - he's got New York's Carolyn Castiglia (you might have seen her on Comedy Central or VH1) with his old partner in crime, Benari Poulten, hosting. They're joined by up and comers Gary Petersen (Friday) and Sean Wilkinson (Saturday). Truly, a stacked lineup top to bottom. Come on out!

So head on out to Mottley's Comedy Club! A splendid time is guaranteed for all.*

*Splendid time not actually guaranteed for all.

T.S. Dandersnatch, Real Estate Broker At Large - Episode the Fourth

More silliness.

T.S. Dandersnatch, Real Estate Broker At Large - Episode the Third

Things continue getting creepier for our hapless Real Estate Broker, as Hallowe'en draws ever nearer.



Previous episodes of T.S. Dandersnatch, Real Estate Broker At Large can be found HERE and HERE.

NYC tonight!

NYC FOLKS!

Luca Lounge! Tonight! Comedy!
Tuesday, October 26th · 8:00pm - 9:30pm
222 Avenue B between 13th and 14th
New York, NY

T.S. Dandersnatch, Real Estate Broker At Large - Episode the Second

I am officially addicted to making little movies on xtranormal.com. Here's the second in the continuing adventures of T.S. Dandersnatch, hapless Real Estate Broker.



Fellow geeks (lookin' at you Kevin, Mikester) might get an added kick out of this one...

Family Hour Show tonight!

HIYA, CITIZENS!

Tonight, Sara Benincasa's FAMILY HOUR returns to NYC! And I'll be telling some sort of story involving my nephews, Star Wars, super heroes, and my parents.

DETAILS:

Tuesday, October 19 · 8:00pm - 9:30pm
Luca Lounge
222 Avenue B between 13th and 14th
New York, NY
The critically-acclaimed fan favorite is BACK in a new location!
FREE admission
FREE homebaked cookies

Featuring true family stories from...

Baratunde Thurston (web editor at The Onion; HarperCollins author)
Sean Donnelly (Lil' Seany Boy Show)
Sean L. McCarthy (The Comic's Comic)
Benari Poulten (Shoot the Messenger)
Chelsea White (Gotham Comedy Club)
Jena Friedman (Entertaining the Bartender)

T.S. Dandersnatch, Real Estate Broker At Large - Episode the First

Look! I made this thing!



And you can make your own thing, too! Bravo xtranormal.com for creating a fantastically simple and fun tool.

Welcome to this week's obsession.

Rush Justice

Sometimes, we make funny videos.




Added bonus video!

The Sophisticates! Tonight!

Illustration by Norn Cutson

NOT A HOAX!

NOT A DREAM!

TONIGHT!
Thursday, April 1st at 8PM!
The Peoples Improv Theater
154 W. 29th Street 2nd FL
New York, NY

Kevin Janus and Benari Poulten are... The Sophisticates! Join them on the first Thursday of every month for their brand new comedy show featuring original live and video sketches. Tuxedos. Red Roses. Lovely Ladies. It's Comedy... with a touch of class.


If you're in the NYC area and looking for something awesome to do for April Fool's Day...come on down!

Exclamation points!!!!


"I love these guys! Hilarious--best live comedy I've seen in ages!"
- Lizz Winstead, Co-Creator of The Daily Show.

"I wet my pants. Happy now? You f*^kers owe me new pants."
- Jo Miller, Writer, The Daily Show.

"Reviving the comedy spirit of Martin & Lewis, the Sophisticates are just as smart, silly and carefree, but a little more Canadian and a touch more bald."
- Jeff Kreisler, IFC sketch critic; author of Get Rich Cheating.

Buy Tix

oh, hello

TONIGHT!

The Sophisticates at the PIT, MARCH 4th at 8pm.
154 W. 29th St. NYC

Kevin Janus and Benari Poulten are... The Sophisticates! Join them on the first Thursday of every month for an all new comedy show featuring original live and video sketches, plus music and special guest stars!
Comedy... with a touch of class.
$10 at the door.
Tix are a little cheaper if you order online...
brownpapertickets.com

As seen on facebook

"Goo goo ga joob."

One of my buddies posted video of this horrifying Walrus mask on on his facebook page, to which I replied:

"From the month-long Bothan raves to the seemingly endless lines of "Correlian Marching Powder" he would snort, Walrus Man thought the decadence of 1977 would last forever. He was wrong. Tragically wrong. His collaborater and best friend, Snaggletooth, would never even live to see how bad things would get by the 80's..."

-from Inside the Cantina: a tale of scum and villainy

To which my buddy replied:

He buried most of his friends in the 80's, Benari. But was the Times reporting THAT?! WHERE was their evolved sensibility then?!

My reply:

There were numerous plays written about it throughout the 80's and well into the 90's, including "Tauntauns," "...And the Cantina Band Played On," "Love! Ewoks! Compassion!" And of course, the sprawling epic "Angels in Alderaan" by noted bounty hunter-turned-playwright Dengar.

How do you get to Colbert's writers' room? Just get deployed to Iraq!

Here's a quick round-up of what I've been up to this week:


The Lowell Sun has a nice mention of me in the Sunday Column:

STAND-UP COMIC and Army Sgt. 1st Class Benari Poulten rubbed elbows recently in Baghdad with political satirist and Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert.

"He was in Iraq for a few days for a USO tour, and I managed to end up in his makeshift writers room during part of the visit," Poulten e-mailed The Sun from Iraq. "Just think, I had been in NYC for 5 years, and I had to go all the way to Baghdad to end up in Colbert's writers room."

Colbert's visit has been widely reported, because he declared the war in Iraq officially over and had his head shaved, Army-style, after a videotaped order from President Barack Obama.

Poulten, who grew up in Chelmsford, is part of a multinational force in Baghdad specializing in civil and public affairs as a liaison to the Iraqi media.

Before being deployed in January, Benari was in New York, where he most recently worked in a comedy club show with Liz Winstead, a co-creator of The Daily Show, where Colbert got his start.

Benari has also rubbed elbows with Lowellian Mehmed Ali, an arts/culture liaison with the Iraqi government.

"They're on different sides of Baghdad, but have seen each other when Benari goes to the American Embassy," said Sam Poulten, Benari's father.


When he returns, "hopefully by Christmas," Benari will likely return to New York to resume his comedy writing and stand-up career.

He hopes his backstage brush with Colbert, who taped four episodes of his show there, opens doors.

"He's a terrific guy and the shows were hilarious -- and he was nice enough to take a pic backstage," Benari e-mailed.

Don't know how many doors it'll open up, but it was pretty cool. Colbert and his entire staff were fantastic and could not have been nicer to me. And since one of Colbert's goals was to bring more attention to the troops still here in Iraq, I'd say "Mission ccomplished." There's nothing politically volatile about that phrase, right?

My old boss and good pal Pat Cook is also mentioned in Column for his dry wit and humor. And what's this? Why, yes, he also had a thing or two to say about my brush with fame.

And of course, NYC buddy and comedy aficionado Sean McCarthy had a nice mention of me over on his blog, The Comic's Comic, one of the best resources of comedy insight on the world wide web.

I'll follow up soon with some more behind the scenes tales from the front lines of Baghdad.

Excelsior!

"Time's up! Time's here..for the Watchmen. Watch out!"

Somehow I don't think we're that far off from this actually being a cartoon...



I think the Bubastis-as-Snarf/Scooby might be my favorite...

I cannot believe that I'm missing out on WATCH-MANIA, the geekiest cultural event since Episode I.

Here's a quick look back at the unpublished WATCHMEN musical Ross and I once joked about writing.

And when they finally DO make the musical...well, the joke will be on us.

Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

International Man of Blogging

Where does he find the time to win a war AND guest blog?

Well, all that time I spend NOT blogging on my own damn site has really paid off!

Friend, fellow NYU alum and screenwriter/playwright extraordinaire Ross Maxwell has a deviously acerbic and hilariously macabre little blog called DreadWhimsy. A blog I very much enjoy.

Crossing cultural, religious, socio-economic and geo-political boundaries, Ross has graciously offered to let me "guest write" a few entries in a rarely seen collaboration between the LA theatre community (read: gays) and the US military industrial complex (Jews who run the world)*.

So check out DreadWhimsy and enjoy some profoundly disturbing laughs.


By the way, this is currently my favorite one from Ro-- er, I mean, Prof. DreadWhimsy...


*you realize I am using satire here. I'm just kidding. There are no gays in LA...

Somewhat of an explanation....

NY Press explains what's up with me lately...

COMEDY OF TERRORS
From political comic to active-duty solider,
Benari Poulten trades gags for guns

By Maggie Serota


Benari Poulten is a resident of Astoria, or at least he was until his commitment to civic duty granted him a year-long vacation in scenic Iraq. In addition to playing the role of the opening hype man for the weekly Shoot the Messenger comedy show at the Green Room Theater, he’s also a regular at comedy spots Comix, People’s Improv Theater, The Tank and Rififi.

“I think I’ve done everything that has been done,” Poulten remarks. “Even the places that have closed down.”
One would be hard-pressed to find a comedian more qualified to skewer the political process and foreign affairs than 31-year-old Poulten. While other comics passively rely on newspaper headlines and sound bites for material, Poulten has already served as a Congressional Aide to Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass) as well as a staffer for the 2004 Kerry campaign. And he’s not just talk; Poulten has also spent the better part of the last decade enlisted in the Army Reserves as a print and broadcast journalist, having recently been promoted to Sergeant First Class.

“I joined the Army Reserves in 1999, one month after college, which pissed off my dad because he wanted me to join for the tuition money. I was like, ‘Screw you, old man!’” Poulten explains. Clearly, there is no greater affront to a father than ignoring his fiscal advice. Adding insult to injury, Poulten went on to acquire $100,000 more debt by earning his MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU.

His military experience—not to mention a childhood spent in community theater—made him a perfect candidate to send up this summer’s Republican National Convention with the rest of his comedy group, the Shoot the Messenger crew, when they exported their weekly theater show to Minneapolis. Although Poulten is the first to admit that Republicans are comedic sitting ducks.

“A lot of satire is based on taking on the people who happen to be in power, and right now, these are the people who are in power,” Poulten relays before explaining that the group spent its days reporting on the convention via radio and their nights “taking the politicians to task and raking them over the coals.”

Their targets didn’t make it very difficult. “The most absurd moment had to be when we spotted Karl Rove just walking around as if he wasn’t being indicted,” Poulten says. “[Comic] Lizz Winstead remarked that one of the perks of being at the convention is that we were hanging around people that should be in jail.”

Naturally, Poulten did what anyone would do and seized the moment to take a picture with the unsuspecting Bush crony, even if he did have to exercise what he refers to as “an incredible amount of restraint.”

Another highlight involved shooting a segment making fun of the horrendous patriotic-themed fashions being peddled by vendors and modeled by prominent Republicans.

“I had to drive over to the Republican mayor of Bloomington, Indiana’s house to pick up one of the outfits for our sketch, and the car died. So I had to have the mayor help jump my [car] so I could go back to Minneapolis and go make fun of his friends.” It should be noted that the mayor of Bloomington is Gene Winstead, Lizz’s brother.

Although Poulten identifies as a liberal and “proud Democrat,” one has to wonder if he is in any way conflicted about his military assignments, especially when those assignments are surrounded by controversy.

“The last time I was deployed, I was in Guantanamo in 2002,” Poulten relays with remarkable good humor. “I was only supposed to be there for six months, but that got extended to a year because someone had to go and start another war.”

“Guantanamo was one of those situations where I had to separate the warriors from the war since a lot of the public perception of what went on was shaped by policy fights in Washington. It was certainly an interesting place to be handling public affairs.” How’s that for an understatement?

This month, Poulten will be going on the road again, not as an entertainer, but as a member of the Army Reserves shopping off to Iraq.

“I knew it was a possibility that I would be going into Iraq, but I don’t think I’ve fully processed it yet,” he explains. “I have friends who have gone and come back and friends who went and didn’t come back, but I’m looking forward to being a part of history that few of us can experience firsthand.”

Despite being sent into a war zone with the added stress of a leadership position, Poulten fails to lose sight of what is most important.

“Call me back if you need me to be funnier,” he remarked before hanging up.

buh-bye party

My comedy friends in NYC are sending me off in style.

Sniff. Ain't they sweet?

WUW - live, at the RNC, 3rd show

This one was probably my favorite one, both from a writing and performing standpoint.




Added bonus; our street team coverage of the convention.

Look for me (or rather, my feet) as TWO of the different reporters on our Mensroom Watch.

WUW - live, at the RNC

More video coverage from the RNC.

Apparently, the crowd loved my first joke so much, it kind threw off the rest of the piece.

That's a good problem to have, though.



For the record, the "Science Museum" joke was the first joke I wrote with Lizz when we got there.

minnie

Hiya, folks.

Shoot the Messenger heads out West this week for three shows:

Sep 2, 2008 - Sep 4, 2008
@ 7:00pm each night

The Parkway Theater
4814 Chicago Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN

READ MORE HERE.

Also, Lizz Winstead and I will be broadcasting live on Lowell's WCAP 980 AM every day during the convention. 9:30am and 4:30pm (EST). Tune in or listen live online at 980wcap.com/

That is all. For now.