'A creative badass'

The Super Serious Show's comedy faves

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

All the good stuff from comedy in cinema is overflowing in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. An actual story, fun characters, physical stunts, obnoxiousness, satire and just plain silliness. Pee Wee makes us giggle to this day. There’s Tim Burton’s directing, Danny Elfman’s awesomely memorable score, the boy and his bike quest and Paul Reuben’s squeezing every last bit of fun out of every scene.

There’s not really too many throw away moments in this sucker. We tend to have a special place in our heart for Pee Wee’s flair for being kind of a dick, too. The basement scene is a great example of jerky Pee Wee and shows that great comedy doesn’t have to lean on repeating the same joke over and over.

Reggie Watts, Live At Central Park

Reggie Watts is magical being of our time. We’re lucky the comedy community gets to share in his talent and generous spirit. Watts could easily have stayed with the cool music kids. Plus, he’s the definition of a creative badass.

Watts has performed at both our local Los Angeles Super Serious Show and our South By Southwest show this year, closing out each to an amazing high. You could really choose any bit of Watts’ vast work. We went with his latest album/special, Live At Central Park.

Watts’ love of performing and the audience’s love of Watts are on full display from what was surely a memorable rainy night at one of the world’s most famous backdrops. Having this album is the next best thing to having Watts there in-person for a never-ending soundtrack of fun.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered

Directed by Paper Heart’s Nicholas Jasenovec, this comedy short stars three of our favorite people and comedic actors: Derek Waters, Jake Johnson and Lizzy Caplan. The short makes up for its web quality appearance with a classic combo of heart and awkwardness. It’s dumb guy fun topped off with a quality lesson that having a strong women around is pretty awesome.

Snuff Box: Boyfriend Scenes

Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher are unforgivingly funny in this short-run series. The internet was nice and gave us the stellar collection of Boyfriend Scenes. Watching the quick switch from ‘nice guy’ to ‘jerk’ never gets old. There’s a ton of great comedy examples of the worst person being the funniest. This is one great example, though.

Thomas Lennon & Funny Or Die: The Vote Off 

Thomas Lennon as a half-ass loser reality show host really makes this Funny Or Die short a fun repeat watch. Funny Or Die really did pull a bunch of strangers in from the street to their conference room to film this impromptu reality show satire. It’s a bit longer than most of their shorts, but Lennon’s ability to change up the joke and sprinkle in a few great improvised moments adds on to the starter joke of ripping on reality show voting. It’s a great spin on getting humor from unsuspecting strangers.

The Vote Off from Thomas Lennon

Rory Scovel on Conan

For far too long the famed late night talk show stand-up spot has been a place where stand-up comedy turns into a weird hall-of-Presidents version of itself. Hitting the notes, punctuating the punchlines, pausing for the applause and all with a healthy amount of white-washing. The unnecessary cleansing mutes the material and ends up sucking the spontaneous joy from live stand-up comedy.

That joy of stand-up is breaking through a bit thanks to the good people at Conan. Of late, they’ve had on an impressive string of performers, all getting a little bit closer to the loosey-goosey fun of actual live stand-up. Rory Scovel, one of our favourite performers for his charm and willingness to go off script at a moment’s notice brought the fun of nightly live comedy to national TV with this great set on Conan. Scovel admirably represents his current comedy home of Los Angeles. It’s a place overflowing with great nightly out-there and off-the-cuff funny from Scovel and all his peers.