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As always, thanks for reading!

I picked my copy up on a whim at the airport when a flight got delayed and managed to speed through about half of it before getting home. Ferguson has a spare style that reads easily and keeps things moving, which is frankly a good thing – the first sections of the book, which focus mostly on his relatively normal upbringing in and around Edinburgh, aren’t particularly interesting (especially since if you’re familiar with his life you already know what’s to come and can see any foreshadowing pretty blatantly). One thing is obvious: that early life is important to him. There are many shout-outs to friends and his early attempts at stardom as a punk-rock drummer are chronicled pretty extensively before we arrive at the comedy about half-way through the book.

And when he does discuss his career, the stuff is good. Talking about how he created his first comic persona – Bing Hitler – leaves you impressed by both his calculation, and his drive to find any way to be successful. He’s also frank about how alcoholism and drug addiction prevented him from achieving fame earlier in his comedy career and led to several stumbles. While he moves away from comedy to talk about bottoming out and rehab, that material is also compelling. It’s in these sections that Ferguson seems to write very truthfully about the extent of his problems, and how his own inability to turn down a drink may have ironically saved his life. And once his life is on the mend and he moves to Hollywood we get to some great discussion of how the town works, the difficulties of finding rewarding work that also pays, what a struggle it can be to maintain artistic control of your ideas (and the accompanying funk that comes from failing to do so). When Ferguson writes about the rigorous audition process for The Late Late Show you remember what a long-shot he was considered, and it’s great to read about Johnny Carson’s former producer Peter Lasally at work.

Beyond the stuff about his comedic career though, the book can seem sentimental. There’s an obvious attempt to make it a great “coming to America” type story. While there’s little doubt that Ferguson really did have those feelings of wonder about New York as a child – and that he does, rightfully, consider himself a true example of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps – we’ve heard this story before and with almost the exact same details.

The bottom line is this: if you’re a fan of his Late Late Show then you’ll enjoy reading all of the book. If you’ve wondered how a Scot ended up in an American late-night chair or enjoy a frank discussion of how Hollywood often works, you’ll find the discussions of his career interesting and insightful. Those who have never liked him and don’t care much for behind the scenes stories, or people who are looking for a humorous read, are probably better off leaving Craig’s mugging smirk and patriotic kilt on the bookstand.

Greg Maughan is of the founder and current executive director of the Philly Improv Theater.

So if you want to enter the random drawing for the tickets, send an e-mail to comicvsaudience@gmail.com by Friday at noon. If you sent an email back in October, you don’t have to again.

You remember Showalter and Black of course from the sketch trio Stella with David Wain or going even farther back as members of the sketch group The State. Their other credits in film, albums and books are too numerous to mention, but it’s fair to say that these guys are everywhere.

Live the two usually do their own sets of stand-up and spend the rest of the time hilariously messing around on stage. When they performed at The TLA a few years ago, that included dancing to awful songs from their iTunes collections and spending a good amount of time talking to hecklers.

Well, whoever is left should check out this video by the sketch duo Animosity Pierre (profile). The ladies just want some nookie, but the dudes want Lost love. Can they sum it all up in five minutes?

This is Animosity Pierre’s second Lost video. The first one saw Dave get caught up on it all over a three-day marathon.

Hey, did you hear Lost is coming back tonight? Yes, it’s true, Lost. Ok, see you later (Lost).

Not only do these slightly less obvious choices (he interviews Stephen Merchant instead of Ricky Gervais, Allison Silverman instead of Stephen Colbert, and Paul Feig instead of Judd Apatow) create more honest and interesting interviews, but the range of time he covers is pretty incredible. The oldest subject in the book wrote for Milton Berle, and he includes people behind some of the most recent comedy touchstones like Arrested Development and The Colbert Report). After that he does manage to land some big names, too: Dick Cavett, David Sedaris, and Dave Barry all have great interviews in the book.

Sacks deserves a lot of credit for his editing of each interviewee as well. Knowing what to include, what to cut from the several hours he spent with each person must have been a challenge… but it seems like the best its have all made it to the page. Sacks also knows how to get a subject’s voice and cadence across on the page – an under appreciated skill – and his capturing of the quirks of language and recall that, say, 93-year-old Irving Brecher had in person really add something as you read. Every interview has little nuggets tucked away in it, and almost every writer was a story that is entertaining or at least relates a behind the scenes sense of something every comedy nerd knows. Bottom line: for the price of admission, the wisdom and anecdotes contained within this book are best deal you’ll find. Next time you’re in the bookstore ignore that “Comedy Bible” with the wacky cover and grab this one instead.

Greg Maughan is of the founder and current executive director of the Philly Improv Theater. There are great live shows at the theater this week and next.

Look, don’t ask me…I just post these.

Although details are murky, it appears that Cecily (Karen Getz) and Gwendolyn (Kelly Jennings) have traveled through time to Philadelphia to study our culture. Their “stage” is on the floor of the hall with the audience’s seats in a circle around the performers. There are tables throughout the room with observational material; one table has some random supplies and a microscope. Another has various literature, dictionaries and a Barbie DVD. You see, the two woman are here to observe our customs, dialect, and way of life.

Essentially they do this through what would be considered by a stand-up comedian as “crowd work.” They ask members of the audience questions and being that they are expressive characters in control of the room, the answers are usually short and shy in response, and usually followed by giggling. It happened to even myself, I meant to take some pictures of the two, but never felt like I had a good moment to do so. Even if they weren’t looking at me, they would surely hear the snap of my camera and they would point me to out to everyone else. What was I doing with a camera, they would surely ask. They weren’t supposed to be the ones observed, after all.

Comedy, for the most part, comes from honesty and Getz and Jennings extend this to the audience. As they ask questions, they “observe” their subjects and their body language, ticks, tone of voice and more. They play off of these things for the humor and at times it appears that we learn a thing or two about the audience members, provided that they are telling the truth. Additionally, they ask members of the audience to draw and take notes throughout the evening and their review of these at the end of the show is yet another way to observe their subjects.

Not much is disclosed about Cecily and Gwendolyn, however. Seemingly there’s a more of a back story there, but they didn’t spend a lot of time on themselves. At the show that I went to, they discussed eating dinner in Chinatown and wondered if they should speak Chinese there. But Mandarin or Cantonese? Cecily remarked that her Mandarin was very rusty. So have they traveled all over the world? For how long? Is Cecily a lesbian? Could Gwendolyn be as well? Hmm.

Playing through the end of January, Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Fanastical Balloon Ride is worth seeing before presumably they go off to the next town, in perhaps a different time.

Tonight at 10AM, improv group King Friday will be donating all of the proceeds from their monthly BYOB pay-what-you-can show at Studio 34 in West Philadelphia to UNICEF. [show info]

The N Crowd will donate proceeds to Red Cross from their weekly show at The Actors Center tomorrow evening at 8PM [show info].

And on Saturday night at 7:30 [show info] and 10PM [show info], ComedySportz will donate proceeds to Mercy Corps.

It’s also worth noting that there is another benefit this weekend. Pat House, Carolyn Busa, Chip Chantry and Jared Bilski will be performing on Saturday to benefit The Children of Marjorie Gormley Goodwin Fund. [show info]

One of the coolest things about running Bedtime Stories is that, every so often, we get to raise money for some pretty great causes. We’re partnering up with the Samuel Dalembert Foundation next week in order to raise money for relief efforts in Haiti. The earthquake there is one of the worst tragedies of our lifetime; any little bit can really help out since, even in the best of times, a lot of people who live in Port-Au-Prince don’t have access to running water and proper health care.

In case you don’t know, Samuel Dalembert plays for the Sixers and was born in Haiti. His foundation was set up in order to assist children in his homeland. The foundation is now focusing on providing relief efforts since the tragedy of this past week.

Any money we make from the show is going to go to the The Samuel Dalembert Foundation. Also, we’re going to pass around a bucket (or something) so people can toss in some extra money.

Please come to this. On top of being for a really good cause, it’s going to be a great show. The topic is Philadelphia and we’ve got a bunch of awesome acts performing, including, for the first time at Bedtime Stories, the Hopper Brothers!

Also slated to be on the show are Jon Goff, Secret Pants, Meg and Rob, Camp Woods, Randi Warhol, Feeko Brothers and more.

The Comics Comic has a listing of other relief shows (pretty much all in NYC). And if you can’t make it to the show, there’s a list of good relief organizations here.