Vanessa Hollingshead is a New York stand-up comedian and actress with more than three decades on stage. She trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute, has a Comedy Central special, filmed Showtime’s Funny Women of a Certain Age, and has opened for Richard Pryor and George Carlin.Nobody at the Comedy Store wanted to…
We Asked Comedians for Their Mount Rushmore of Stand-Up. Only One Name Kept Coming Back
October 31, 2026
Near the end of some of our interviews on The Comics Unseen, we ask one last question: who is on your Mount Rushmore of comedy? Four faces, carved in stone. It sounds like an easy question. It never is. Comedians who had just talked for an hour about their careers suddenly went quiet, bargained for a fifth slot, or, in one case…
Williams, Carlin and Gervais' Joke Blueprint
September 19, 2025
Comedy feels like magic. A comedian talks, the audience listens, and suddenly everyone bursts into laughter. But jokes follow structure. They are not random; they are built step by step.Most jokes share three key parts: the premise, the setup, and the punchline. Many also use tags—extra lines that keep laughs going.The…