Hicks was waaaaaaay ahead of his time. You have to consider the overrall environment when judging a comic. The man was pushing boundaries like no other during his time. Listen to Relentless and try to imagine where most of the audience was mentally when they heard that in 93-94.

That's a fair point.

No Joe Rogan ITT?!?! Dude puts on one of the best shows i've ever seen live. Great podcast also for those of you who don't mind listening to a genius for 3 hrs.

Some comics I haven't seen mentioned yet (or barely):

John Pinette has some strong material.
Wanda Sykes has some good stuff.
Felicia Michaels' "Big Pussy" bit is tremendous.
Gilbert Gottfried shows occasional brilliance imo. His best stuff is really good.

Something about Louis CK bothers me. I can't put my finger on it. I hate about 80% of his stuff, but the other 20% more than makes up for it. I rank him pretty high. I like "Louie" and really like "Lucky Louie".

Regarding George Carlin, I think he sucked for the first 30+ years of his career, then he became a beast in the late 90s. The first 2 minutes of his "Religion is Bull****" bit is my favorite 2 minutes of stand-up.

You guys should check out the Norm Show on YouTube. Norm MacDonald clowning hard and killing, I think he loses his sponsorship in one of the early episodes for ****ting all over the product he's shilling

+1,000,000

The episode with Gilbert Gottfried will make you poop your pants.

I'll third that reccomendation. Unfortunately I don't think the show's coming back from its "summer hiatus" at this point. Here's a compilation someone made of the ManGrate plugs:

Outside of the obvious ones (most of which seemed to be mentioned):

Favorite lesser known comic:
Rory Scovel - Especially live, his ability to riff is insane. And he has done several weird tv sets too, like performing simultaneously with Jon Dore on Conan, I think he did another set where he just did a whole set in a southern accent, and another in german accent. He has a new album coming out through Jack White's company soon (it was supposed to be out 2 weeks ago though, not sure what's up).

Others I really like that I don't think are household names yet (although Pete has his show on TBS now):
Tom Segura
John Mulaney
Pete Holmes
Kumail Nanjiani
Ari Shaffir
Joey Diaz
Hannibal Burress
Kurt Braunohler
TJ Miller
Brendon Walsh
Brandt Tobler (he mostly still features I think)

I read somewhere that Norm is writing a book, which is why they went on summer hiatus. However, he still seems to find time to live tweet golf tournaments and other sporting events. I would not put it past Norm to think it's hilarious to put out 7 off-the-charts-funny episodes then not do it again.

"cancer is a small price to pay to lick Catherine Zeta Jones pussy"

I was a little unimpressed with Aziz's new special on Netflix. I really liked his whole section about marriage, but outside of that it felt like watered down versions of his older jokes

I actually liked it a lot more than I expected. I thought his last stand up was fairly meh and his first, while good, was also a bit overrated. I found myself laughing a lot during his new one. Probably my favorite of his specials personally.

I just watched Birbiglia's My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (NF streaming). Wow, so good. I've been watching a lot of specials on NF as I've been laid off for a week and this blows it all away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA9TT3c2C-Q
sean lock, his improv is the best, and somehow his stand up isnt as good.

spine in a sack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeJywF86uAU

I was certainly impressed with the intro song choice. I'm glad they cued it up so it got to that classic sax line.

That said, not bad. Better then his second one. He seems a little more comfortable on stage. He's always funnier when he's not doing standup though and it's unfortunate. A random convo would be funnier then what he does on stage.

I was just about 1/2 way through before the above, and have to amend it to being a great special. Every bit was good, and didn't feel at all like recycled or revisited material.

Ralphie May and Billy Gardell

What's the name of the redneck Asian guy?

Rarry the cabre guy?

Haha. Nice.

Henry Cho?

Aziz Ansari's Buried Alive is on Netflix now and it's pretty goddamn good.

We were just talking about it above. By far his best. I am very impressed.

TheAVClub reviewed, and it's the only reason I knew it was out. And yet, Mike Birbiglia and Marc Maron released specials on Netflix that I had no idea about until this thread. BOOOO!!!!

somehow was watching an infomercial for those Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts and came acroos this and was laughing my ass off: