Sarah Silverman

On Friday, May 9, counterintuitively lewd comedian Sarah Silverman appeared at Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall in a benefit show for Project A.L.S., which raises money for the study and treatment of a not-very-hilarious neurodegenerative disease. Instead, her monologue evoked an old favorite: starving African children. “I don’t send them money,” Ms.  read more »

To the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala on Monday, May 5, themed “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” Gossip Girl star Blake Lively wore black gloves and a snug black Ralph Lauren gown involving feathers. She said that her favorite superhero was “Spider-Man. Cause he’s awesome! He gets to swing around, and, I don’t know....” Accompanied by her onscreen (and rumored offscreen) boyfriend, actor Penn Badgley, Ms. Lively had come straight from a photo shoot and had done her hair in the car. “I have no idea what I look like,” she said, adding: “I’ve always seen pictures growing up, being a teenager, and thought, ‘I’d love to go to that, a night just to dress up in ball gowns.’ And here I am!”

Here everyone was, at least in fashion and showbiz and society circles. Oh, to have the superpower of invisibility and be able to flit up the stairs and into the great halls beyond!

Vogue editor and hostess Anna Wintour was the first to arrive, at 6:33 p.m., wearing a Chanel gown adorned with what appeared to be seahorse tails and accompanied by daughter Bee Shaffer, who required two men, including the formidable Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, to carry the train of her voluminous blue Nina Ricci dress up the stairs.  read more »

The guys that brought you The Aristocrats, the movie where more than a dozen comics delivered versions of the oldest, dirtiest joke on the Hollywood comedy circuit, have just signed a six-figure deal for a book that will interview salty comics about controversial topics.

!Satiristas¡ will be written by Paul Provenza with photographer Dan Dion, the house photographer at the Fillmore Auditorium.

Matt Thornton at Publishers Weekly writes:

In the book, comedians George Carlin, Lewis Black, Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman and others will sound off on everything from race to religion, politics to pornography.

There's talk of a concert tour based on the book.

• Publishers Weekly

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 30 -- Those who know Sarah Silverman only from her much discussed star turn in the 2005 comedy film "The Aristocrats" and from her one-woman concert movie, "Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic," might bristle at the notion that another overnight wonder has been granted that holy grail of comedy, the self-titled sitcom.

Witness the might of "might":

* IF there are people who only know Sarah Silverman from two movies, and

* IF those people, on watching The Aristocrats, concluded that this woman who appeared onscreen telling a joke, in the middle of a movie that consisted of dozens of veteran professional comedians telling a joke, was not a veteran professional comedian, and

* IF those people were then to hear that Silverman had landed a self-titled sitcom, and

* IF they were tired of the television industry's constant practice of building name-branded sitcoms around unknown and unproven comedians then...what? They "might bristle." Unless Edward Wyatt of the New York Times--having executed the classic Straw Man Lead, aka the Flying Pig--is there to placate them:

But "The Sarah Silverman Program," a six-installment Comedy Central series that has its premiere on Thursday night at 10:30 (9:30 Central time), is far from the work of an overnight success.

At ease, bristly people, wherever you might be! Edward Wyatt is here to tell you that Sarah Silverman is actually a hard-working comedy veteran. And, um, also (with less fanfare) that her "holy grail" sitcom consists of a six-show run on cable--which puts her in a bit of a a different league from Bob Newhart.