What do Jay-Z, Jim Carrey, Jake Gyllenhaal and Sacramento comedian Mike E. Winfield have in common? They are all scheduled to appear this week on CBS's “Late Show With David Letterman.” "It was an AMAZING experience," Winfield said when asked to describe his recent appearance. Winfield is no stranger to performing his unique brand of standup on television. He’s been featured on Showtime’s “Comics Without Borders,” hosted by Russell Peters, “Comicview” on BET, “Comics Unleashed” with Byron Allen, “Last Comic Standing” on NBC and “Live at Gotham” on Comedy Central. Quite the resume for a man who, until recently was a grocery clerk working at the local supermarket chain. At AmericasComedy

A SacramentoComedy.Com Interview If you listen to comedian Felipe Esparza, you'll hear a cross between Cheech Marin from Cheech and Chong and your funniest "homeboy." They both have the East L.A. accent and down to earth sense of humor that comes from growing up in the barrio. "I'm not a tough guy, but I can beat up everyone at Trader Joe's, but at Food-for-Less I shut up," he said. "They don‘t have aisles, they have alleys." Sacramento Comedy spoke to Esparza recently just after his advance to the semi-final rounds of NBC's Last Comic Standing, Season 7. "The next step is to have a big battle between the semi-finalists in New York and Los Angeles," Esparza said. We asked him if he ant

A SacramentoComedy.Com Interview Henry Cho's fairytale career began in 1986 when, as a student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, he entered a "Funniest Person in America" contest sponsored by the Showtime network. Cho, who is a full-blooded Korean, but raised in the heart of the South, walked onto the stage and in his deepest, most Southern drawl stated, "So, I'm from the South. So I guess that makes me South Korean." It was a juxtaposition "hook" that launched his career. "It was my first joke, so I had to explain who I was," he said. And that hook has served him well. The late Steve Allen, first host of the original "Tonight Show" and a huge supporter of Cho's, once comment

A capacity crowd filled the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium with screams Thursday night as the lights went down on the Sacramento leg of Conan O’Brien’s Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour. For more than two hours, Team Coco kept the crowd thoroughly entertained and gave the impression that Sacramento was the only stop on its tour, not one of 30. In the band's opener, Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up," three of the musicians, including trombone player Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg, marched into the audience as they played, bringing the crowd to a frenzy. A short movie clip showed O'Brien fat and depressed over the very public end of his late-night talk show. Then, members of

A SacramentoComedy.Com Interview From his start telling jokes at family Passover dinners at age 10, to catching hell for doing impressions of his high school coach, Kevin Pollak was meant to perform. Comedy "I was born in San Francisco but moved to San Jose when I was young. When I began performing, it was in venues that were designed for music. There were no comedy clubs then in San Jose. I would go on between the bands breaks when nobody really wanted to listen. When I moved to San Francisco, I was amazed that people loved going to see comedy and would actually pay to see it!" Entering the San Francisco comedy scene in the late '70's, Pollak was the youngest performer in the San Fran

A SacramentoComedy.Com Interview With a name like Ahmed Ahmed, in this day and age, you might think that it could lead to some mishaps with law enforcement agencies. If so, you'd be correct. Ahmed's family came to America when he was just a month old, and he grew up in Riverside, right in the epicenter of Southern California, so misconceptions aren’t uncommon but, in retrospect, the name has served him well. We caught up with Ahmed by phone in New York, having just completed his first appearance at the Tribeca Film Festival, premiering 'Just Like Us,' his freshman directorial debut earlier in the week. We decided to start off by asking, (very politely), about his name. "Ahmed Ahmed is m

By Mikhail Chernyavsky By the amount of Mohawks and Affliction shirts sported by audience members at the Punch Line Comedy Club Friday night, a spectator could only assume a five-minute bout in the octagon was about to commence. And, you wouldn’t be too far off. Joe Rogan took to the stage of a sold out audience – cheering and whistling him on – for what would be two hours of dirty, raunchy, intellectual and simply hilarious stand up comedy. Now, intellectual is not exactly what you would expect from a man who is best known for hosting a reality game show that had contestants wolfing down the sexual organs of animals. It is easy to say this Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) commentator is nothin

Will Durst is very smart and very, very funny. The five-time Emmy nominee is bringing his one-man show, "Lieutenant Governor of the State of Confusion" to Sacramento's Crest Theatre on May 8. Durst, one of the country's best-known political humorists, has been compared to Will Rogers, Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory. Described as a "bipartisan basher," Durst seems to leave no stone unturned in exploring the political landscape for nuggets of humor, often of the "I can't believe they did that" variety. "Sacramento is a 'company town' and I speak of 'company' business," he said.  Though Durst lives in one of the state's most liberal cities, San Francisco, he doesn't limit his material to stat

Paula Poundstone is funny, smart, quick and has a profound friendliness about her. A steady flow of excited audience members streamed through the doors of the beautiful Crest Theater Saturday night to see Poundstone perform, filling the theater to it's maximum capacity. All walks of life and lifestyles seemed to be well-represented, making it clear that she has a very broad appeal. It became apparent just how much anticipation the audience had for this night when General Manager Sid Garcia-Heberger came onstage and asked that all cell phones be turned off for the performance and the crowd applauded. How could Poundstone follow that? Simple. She just jumped right in. "So, were you all cl

  A Sacramento Comedy.Com Interview Getting to the essence of veteran comedian Doug Stanhope is both easy and difficult at the same time. He's so simple, yet so complex. Because of that, he is also completely controversial. Actually, to say that Stanhope is "controversial " is a vast understatement. Many people only know Stanhope through his short-lived hosting of "The Man Show" with Joe Rogan and his participation in the late-night, titillating "Girls Gone Wild" infomercials, which he said was only for the money. Stanhope's true fans know him as an outspoken, uncensored, honest and libertarian comic who looks at the world and questions aloud how we have turned a blind eye to how we ar

A SacramentoComedy.Com Interview When Mitch Fatel was growing up, it seemed that there were only two things he wanted to do: explore the magic of women and make people laugh. He seems to be doing just fine on both counts! SacramentoComedy.Com caught up with Fatel by phone while he was on a recent layover returning from a very successful series of shows at the Tempe Improv. Fatel, when asked about living on the East Coast, commented that he felt silly telling people that he lives in New York because he's traveling more than 46 weeks this year. "I spend less time in New York than I do anywhere else." Fatel started doing stand-up at the age of 15. He joined a comedy class for adults that

A Sacramento Comedy.Com Interview Steven Bloom, aka, The Comedy Guy,  spoke with Paula by phone recently at her home in Santa Monica. Traveling almost every week of the year, the amazing part is that she was at home. When asked if Poundstone enjoyed all of the extensive travel, she just replied that because she spends so little time at each location, that she calls herself, "a lazy traveler," and that she mostly works or sleeps in the hotel room. In the old days when she would perform at comedy clubs and be there four of five nights, Poundstone used to go exploring. She even reminisced about the Sacramento Railroad Museum when she performed at the historic Laughs Unlimited in Old Sac. O