Some comedians get to host the AVN porn awards (see Jim Norton) and then some get to host “the world’s largest video game marketing conference.”

Christian Finnegan has the latter job, as he will play host and performer at the third annual MI6 Game Marketing Conference in San Francisco from April 8-9.

From GameSpy.com:

“We’re shaking up the traditional awards ceremony by putting the emphasis on entertainment and, of course, the quality of work that has been produced over the past year. We’re going more ‘Golden Globes’ less ‘Academy Awards,’ and Christian’s comedy is a perfect fit for the tone we are aiming to set for this fun evening,” explained MI6 president Jonathan Block-Verk.

Kelsey Grammer, Ben Stiller, Maroon 5 and The Roots have been added to the lineup of Comedy Central’s live event, Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education, organizers announced today.

The show will be aired live on Comedy Central April 13 at 8 p.m. EST from the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Jon Stewart will host the event. Previously announced performers include Steve Carell, Rosie O’Donnell, Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman.

Tickets are now available through ticketmaster and beacontheatre.com

The previous Night of Too Many Stars – in Oct. 2006 – raised more than $2.5 million.

I can’t complain. Life has been pretty good to me. I’ve done everything I ever wanted to do including working as a Hollywood stuntman and performing stand-up comedy.

At a very young age I had heard about someone who interviewed people at a senior center. Not a single person regretted what they had done in their lives; they had however, regretted what they didn’t do. That simple philosophy has guided me since then.

Comedians perform stand-up for a variety of reasons. Some want to be discovered. The Holy Grail is a TV show or a movie role. They start out as open mic’ers and work their way into emcee spots. Some choose to become road comics, and after several years move into feature spots– and even headlining for some of the lucky ones. It takes a lot of dedication and perseverance to succeed. The comedians that do make it are driven and have a goal.

My story is different. I had no intention of becoming famous (so far it’s working) and landing a television show or movie role. I got into comedy by mistake. My son was in the Marine Corps and served two tours in Iraq. It was a total of 15 months.

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Comedian Paul F. Tompkins has nothing against new dads. He’s just a bit bored by the same old speech. Check it out.

Click here to become Andy Juett’s best mySpace buddy. He likes to be fed warm milk straight from the teat after 7. So remember that.

I hate to say it, but I’m officially annoyed by BOTH Clintons.

For years I espoused modest endearment for Slick Willie and his half-cocked Yosemite Sam meets Wilt Chamberlin Ameri-pimp attitude.

Don’t get me wrong, there were elements of his modus operandi that were ALWAYS offensive to me (see, “I didn’t inhale”…did you REALLY say that?), but I was able to dismiss some of his major muffs by comfortably falling back on the belief that he would know what to do in critical situations (see DIPLOMACY…I’m talking to you big Georger.) That’s not happening right now.

Here’s the deal Billiam, Hillary needs to pipe down and so do YOU.

Yesterday you told a bunch of old Democrats to “chill out” in San Jose. You pontificated about the benefits of dragging out the Democratic Presidential Primary. CHILL OUT? Nobody needs a nice steamroller pull more than you, captain.

Billy, You went from badass to pain-in-the-ass.

In 2006, you seemed to be back. You were kicking it with Bush Sr. (sucking it up) raising money for people who NEEDED help in Indonesia post-Tsunami. Nice.

In 2007, you got the Democrats back on their talking points and made Chris Wallace from Fox News VERY uncomfortable.

Please don’t e-mail me and try to convince me that Wallace looked dignified or tough. If you do that, I’ll just laugh at you and write you off as a crazy person that chooses to create the fiction along with the Fox News network in your head as you watch that bullshit.

Until recently, the Clintons were helmed by a womanizing hillbilly that made most of the headlines. Sure, Hillary’s press was abundant, but cold, bitchy and boring.

It took far more than a village for me to give a shit about her newsworthy happenings given her cranky, persistently calculated “straight talk.”

If you e-mail me to try and convince me that you really believe that she’s NOT cold and bitchy and insincere (See Amy Poehler’s Clinton on SNL) and that I’m another male in a long list of media assholes painting a “woman” into the corner of PMS, I’ll take a shit on your front porch.

No. That is not related to anything I’ve written thus far in this piece. I just really want to defecate where you live. I’m taking classes. It’ll all be fine.

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Comedy Central will release Robert Kelly’s album, Just the Tip on April 8. But for you, fine Punchline Magazine readers, we’ve rolled out this special sneak peak. Listen to Kelly warn you about the dangers of getting a handy while whacked out on painkillers.

Make sure you check out Punchline Magazine’s front page in the next few days to read our in-depth interview with Kelly with exclusive photos.

Variety’s Brian Lowry posted a column titled “Why standups are sitting out primetime” last Friday, which partly explored the idea that as of late, comedians have been landing game show host jobs as opposed to sitcom deals. I say “partly” because the piece was loaded with amazingly inaccurate rhetoric about what a sorry state stand-up comedy is in. While there are many other things about Lowry’s editorial on which I disagree, it’s the passage below I’d like to chat about. To get the most out of this, however, I really do suggest you read Lowry’s entire piece.

The comedy biz’s bedraggled state can be tacitly seen in two programs that premiered in March — “Lewis Black’s The Root of All Evil,” on Comedy Central; and DirecTV’s “Supreme Court of Comedy,” hatched by the Laugh Factory’s Jamie Masada.

I assume – perhaps naively – that Brian Lowry either has an extensive knowledge of stand-up comedy and its history or at least has his own history of writing about stand-up comedy. I assume this because surely Variety wouldn’t have published Lowry’s column on the topic without any authority behind his words. So if either or both possibilities are true, it seems Lowry allowed his stand-up know-how to sit this one out to better prove his dubious thesis — that stand-up comedy is in such a “bedraggled” state that contemporary comics have been forced to accept lowly game-show-hosting gigs instead of scoring the big American stand-up-comedy dream: the sitcom

Lowry’s commentary is a prime example of the way the entertainment industry treats stand-up comedy, that is to say, like the redheaded stepchild to its traditional sibling rivals: television, theater, film. For the sake of writing a provocative piece, Lowry grossly misrepresents the state of contemporary stand-up comedy, all but writing the art form’s eulogy.

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Oscar-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler bought the rights to the recently published Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America and is planning to produce a documentary version of the book. Comedy legends George Carlin, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and more will will be featured in the film.

From Variety:

Like the book, the documentary will examine comics from Lenny Bruce to Jerry Seinfeld. It will also look at the way in which stand-up shaped pop culture as well as “the provocative questions the book poses about our culture today,” [co-producer Sarah] Timberman said.

… While the film is in the very early planning stages, Cutler said Zoglin has access to several decades’ worth of archival footage as well as relationships with many of the key comics examined in the book. Cutler is also working on ways to make the film more than just a history lesson, though he wouldn’t get into specifics about whether he was planning a reunion of some sort to serve as a focal point for the pic.

For more info on Zoglin and Comedy at the Edge, check out Punchline Magazine’s recent interview with the author.

Organizers of this year’s New York City Underground Comedy Festival announced today their intentions to scale back the amount of festival shows and up the quality of the participating comedians.

“We still want to present new, quality faces to the industry along side established comedy veterans, however we want to do it in a more targeted way,” says festival producer Jim Mendrinos. “In the past, we’ve focused on quantity; this year is all about quality.”

Comedian submissions are currently being accepted; guidelines are now on the official festival site. Festival shows will run from Oct. 3 – 10 in various New York City venues.

Kevin Pollak: 3/22 - Hilarities - Cleveland, OH

Auggie Smith: 3/22 - Funny Bone - Springfield, Ill

Paul Mooney: 3/23 - Carolines - NYC, NY

Drew Hastings: 3/23 - Cracker’s - Indianapolis, IN

Ian Bagg: 3/26 - Improv - Washington, DC

Bob Goldthwait: 3/27 - Tommy T’s - Pleasanton, CA

John Pinette: 3/27 - Punchline - Atlanta, GA

Marc Maron: 3/27 - Improv - Tampa, FL

Want to tell us about a Hot Show?

Email us at: hotshows@punchlinemagazine.com