Send Barack Your Baby. Q: How long will my baby be with Barack himself? A: You may choose from three interaction types: a kiss, a hug, or giving hope. For a kiss or a hug, Barack spends roughly two minutes with a baby. Giving hope usually takes about twice that long. Maaahahaha. Via Coudal.......

Michael Ian Black has started a "feud" with ex-Chicagoan (now Frenchman?) David Sedaris to promote Black's new book My Custom Van. Black will be in town July 21 to sign copies.......

It's a beautiful thing to find "your people." Creepers unite!......

Sketch comedy vets Schadenfreude celebrate their 10th anniversary by reviving material from their 1998-2001 run at the Heartland. The show's at Theater on the Lake and starts at 7:30pm. Tickets are $17.50, but can you really put a price tag on Monica Lewinsky jokes? In other dated humor news, Mortified comes to Chicago tonight, with local authors and comedians reading diary entries, songs and other adolescent ephemera from their past. The show starts at 8pm......

George Carlin passed away last night, and we'll miss the man that introduced us to the seven words you can't say on television. Here we've included another musing of his on language, its power, and the misuse of that power.......

Our weekend comedy show round-up! ComedySportz is celebrating the 100th performance in their new theater tonight at 8pm. Go for the laughs, stay for the champagne toast and gift bags at the end of the show. Tonight at I.O. Theater- Go for the critically acclaimed Improvised Shakespeare at 8pm. Stay for the ridiculously funny men of Guy Friends premiering at midnight. Spend Saturday day on the beach. (80 and sunny, right?) Spend Saturday night......

Not that there isn’t always sort some of comedy show happening here in town, but lately there has been sort of a surge, what with the Improv Comedy Festival just wrapping up and last weekend’s aptly (and hilariously) named Snubfest Comedy Festival – comedians snubbed from the Improv Fest lineup. If you are still craving a dose of comedy, consider checking out The Playground Theater’s comedy variety improve show, O.I.N.K., featuring many local comedians and......

Yeah, it's Monday. But turn those frowns upside-down because the 11th Annual Chicago Improv Fest kicks off tonight with a performance by Scheer & McBrayer, a team composed of, well, Paul Scheer (MTV's Human Giant, Best Week Ever) and Jack McBrayer (30 Rock, Talladega Nights). What they lack in name originality they more than make up for when they bring the funny. But the fun doesn't stop there: shows will continue all week at a......

Wired's blog Threat Level has an interview with "Defiant" and "EBK," the hackers who took down Comcast yesterday. They say they did it because they hate Comcast. However they got in, the intrusion gave the pair control of over 200 domain names owned by Comcast. They changed the contact information for one of them, Comcast.net, to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used the "Dildo Room" at "69 Dick Tard Lane." Baaaahahaaha. Feel......

Tomorrow night at the Hideout, Chicagoist will be going up against Time Out Chicago, Gapers Block, and the Red Eye in Schadenfreude's second annual Alternative Media Slam. We're not sure how a Tribune company paper counts as "alternative," but last year's winner (cough bullshit cough) the Reader wouldn't participate this year. We'll be trading yo-mama–style rap-battle insults with the other esteemed publications...and the Red Eye. Hey-o! We're practicing already. The show starts at 9pm and......

Well, that anti-promoter ordinance the City's kicking around sounds worse with every passing second. The vague language means it may limit live comedy in Chicago, too. You can hear Alderman Eugene Schulter try to defend the ordinance on 848 from this morning, but we'll warn you that it'll just make you grumpy. Call your alderman, or plan on going to the City Council meeting tomorrow at 10am. update: Some folks are trying to rally 100......

Oh, Eddie Izzard, you lovable scamp. Long before he took over the small screen as a gypsy gone darkly mainstream on The Riches, he was cracking us up with his hilarious stand-up. Perhaps best known for wearing a dress on-stage (and off), Izzard's stream-of-consciousness comedy has kept us in stitches through specials like Glorious and Dress To Kill. Now he's bringing his new show, Stripped, to the Chicago Theatre for a three night run. And......

Robin Williams, in town to tape an episode of Ellen, also performed a few impromptu stand-up sets over the weekend. He dropped by the Lakeshore Theater Friday and Saturday nights and the under-the-radar venue Town Hall Pub on Sunday for what one audience member tells us was "great shit." Williams was apparently a fan of local comedian Jena Friedman's work on Friday night, came back to see her on Saturday, and performed at her......

Comedian Ken Barnard hopes you’re into the same things he’s into, because if you are you will thoroughly enjoy his one-man show, Get Into It, coming up later this week at the Lincoln Lodge. We’ve mentioned Barnard before, noting that he’s a versatile comic who goes beyond simple stand-up or sketch comedy. We’ve seen him pull a handful of off-the-wall, oddball stunts in the name of “performance comedy,” and he must be doing something right......

Team Submarine's official farewell show is tonight at the Playground theater at 10pm ($10). TS performs some of the most reliable sets in town, so we're really going to miss them. Tonight's show is your last chance to see Nate and Steve's absurdist stylings in Chicago. Except for tomorrow, when they throw down in Schadenfreude's Rent Party Tour. Saturday's show at Gallery Cabaret, one of our favorite cozy venues, includes Team Submarine, hilarious musical duo......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Reunion From Cheap Trick to Material Issue, Chicago is a power-pop kind of town. We're also a town that takes super talented bands and devour them whole, only to spit out their bones and leave them for dead. The Krinkles already made their way through that life cycle and hung up their guitars years ago,......

From "Oprah Launches Own Reality": [M]edia giant Oprah Winfrey unveiled her latest project Monday: a completely separate realm of existence, known as >OpraH, which she will control on the subatomic level. "Now, Oprah's always on!" Winfrey said through an interspatial image of herself broadcast between her world and ours. "I've created a place where anyone can come to share and laugh and feel totally free from the conventional laws of the physical universe." "I invite......

The Interview Show, a monthly opportunity for host Mark Bazer to rub elbows with Chicago celebs, returns tonight to the Hideout. Here’s a few queries we’d like to see answered: For rapper extraordinaire Rhymefest: What was it like to work with Michael Jackson? Does he seem as freaky in real life as he does on Court TV? When’s El Che dropping? And premiering at a stage near us? For author and Strand Magazine Critics Award......

We've dug Doug Benson's silly one-liners on Best Week Ever for ages, but it wasn't until we saw his stand-up with the Comedians of Comedy that we felt totally smitten. His set is a lot sharper and faster than we'd have expected, and anyone who can coin the terms "fuckdiculous" and "what the fart?" gets an enthusiastic recommendation from us. Benson has shows tomorrow and Saturday night at the Lakeshore Theater, and tickets are......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Yet Another Canadian Indie Band Born Ruffians fall firmly on the "quirk" end of the hipster scale, with disjointed songs filled with spurting, lurching melodies. We imagine this is what The Shins might sound like after a couple pots of coffee ... filled with espresso. Their debut is pleasant enough but we'd have a hard......

Kids in the Hall! Reuniting! And coming to Chicago! OK, we need to go take some deep breaths. The famed Canadian comedy troupe will be touring for the first time in six years, and sketch nerds everywhere are no doubt crapping themselves with glee. We sure are. Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson will be in Chicago on May 29, venue TBA. The tour kicks of April 4 in......

Team Submarine, beloved sketch/stand-up hybrid duo, is recording its very first album tomorrow, which will some day be available in both CD and "cassingle" form. Absurdist neo-Smothers Brothers (in a good way) on a nostalgia-inducing audio format? Hell yes. TS's Nate Fernald tells us that the CD will be more stand-up oriented and will cover TS's last two years of material. He says you can expect "some classic bits, but also some that have......

Hotcha! One of our more beloved Chicago comedy shows is returning...eventually. Impress These Apes comes back September 22. Consider our calender marked. Audition applications are due June 15, and Chicagoista and season two Ape-impresser Margaret Hicks had this advice for aspiring contestants: "Contact your inner nerd as much as possible. I don't think the apes are looking to be blown away by your knowledge of Shakespeare but hope to be impressed by humans' knowledge, no......

Many would say Chicago tops the list of America’s funniest cities, so it’s fitting that our town created an awards show exclusively to honor Chicago comics. The Second Annual Chicago Comedy Awards, a three-day extravaganza taking place this weekend, sets the stage for local comedians to, well, celebrate themselves. The show is an expansion of last year’s, which included only four awards. This year they’ve dropped the “Most Improved Comedian” award -- er, maybe because......

Friday’s late night crowd at Gorilla Tango Theater is raucous and loud, with some patrons sloshed to the point of major distraction. But complaining about a drunken scene at sketch comedy revue Boozelegger’s Ball is like complaining about excessive violence in There Will Be Blood. The title alone should clue you in. Drawing the pub crawling crowd into an interactive show is risky. No one at last Friday’s performance passed out or attempted to “rewrite”......

A few months ago, Ann Sather packed up and moved a few doors east into a brand-spankin’ new location at 909 W. Belmont. The old location was put up for sale, and it was anyone’s guess who would win the bid to settle in. It always makes us nervous when there is retail space for rent in our neighborhood; because we would rather see a distinctive new business that will bring character to the area,......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Art Gabriel Mejia was born in the Chicago area and received his undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University. Gabriel teaches art at Jones College Prep and says of his art, "I am interested in documenting, through painting and drawing, specific moments in time captured through candid photographs of people that I know very well." He'll......

Riding the Brown Line home tonight? Local comedian Ken Barnard is organizing a rally at the Montrose Sinkhole to er, protest its filling/be silly. The fun starts at 4:45 and people should be there until around 5:30. BYO signs. Photo by Thee Erin......

Local filmmaker Steve Delahoyde and sketch comedy team Schadenfreude make a series of short films together called Regrets. The first one in that series is called "Boxes." Last week, a Montreal-based printing company Pazazz made a web commercial. Look familiar? Warren Werbitt, president and CEO of Pazazz (and star of printing version), says he'd never seen "Boxes" before, and that the guy who created the Pazazz version is on vacation until next week. Werbitt wouldn't......

Do you crave comedy with a side of pancakes? If so, The Lincoln Lodge, located behind the Lincoln Restaurant in Northcenter, will get your carb-filled belly jiggling. In the mullet-like tradition of “business in the front, party in the back”, the forefront Lincoln Restaurant serves up some of the best diner food in town. But in the back room, the party rolls all weekend as The Lincoln Lodge showcases some of the most uproarious young......