He's back!

Funny or Die announced today that Dave Chappelle and Flight of the Conchords will headline FoD's first-ever Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival, which will take to the road for a multi-city tour in August, beginning in Austin, Tex. It's not going to make it all the way to San Francisco or Oakland though, so comedy and curiosity fans will have to trek over to the outdoor Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View to see the show.

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courtesy of the Marsh

Will Durst

In his new one-man show at the Marsh Theater on Valencia, comedian Will Durst, 61, uses technology designed not to spook any Baby Boomers in the audience -- an overhead projector.

In Boomeraging: From LSD to OMG, Durst clearly enjoys himself, riffing on getting older in the face of a youth-obsessed culture. Durst's last show at the Marsh, Elect to Laugh, played for 41 weeks, from Super Tuesday to Election Night. After doing what he's most famous for, political humor, Durst is delighted to have a chance to do material about being seen as pieces of furniture by younger people or repeating phrases your parents said that you swore would never come out of your mouth.

"It's so liberating because I can deal with the evergreen," Durst said. "I can talk about recollections and observations."

Durst thought this was a good time to do the show.

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If you don't know his face, or haven't heard his stand-up specials (2009's The Top Part and 2012's New in Town), you might still be familiar with John Mulaney's work. As a writer on Saturday Night Live, he co-created the character Stefon, the wild New York club kid with the off-the-beaten-path suggestions for tourists; Mulaney is responsible for writing the jokes that caused actor Bill Hader to crack up and break character on-screen.

The 30-year-old comic hopes to bring his own brand of clean cleverness to the little screen this fall; he's currently preparing a pilot for NBC. Though the show has yet to be picked up, Splitsider was able to sit in the live studio audience for a taping and called it "great."

Bay Area fans have the opportunity to see a new hour of Mulaney original stand-up this weekend at Cobb's Comedy Club, and it's best to see him now, before he's making Seinfeld money and demanding Larry the Cable Guy ticket prices.

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Nothing goes better on Cinco De Mayo than an ex-hedonist of legendary proportions drinking virgin margaritas, right? Right. Naturally, then, hilarious British hair model/recovering cupcake-breast-addict Russell Brand is coming to San Francisco that very day for a live comedy performance at newish Mission venue the Chapel. He won't be drinking, but that doesn't mean you can't.

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by Emilie Mutert

Comedian Brian Posehn looks like that guy from your local comic shop or from the last metal show you went to (where you might have conceivably seen him) but you'd probably actually recognize him from his television appearances. He's an alum of Mr. Show, and he stretched himself to play Sarah Silverman's friend "Brian" on The Sarah Silverman Program.

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IFC

Marc Maron at SXSW

If nothing else, 2013 is the Year of Maron. After a long career as a journeyman stand-up comic who moved from Boston to San Francisco to New York and finally to Los Angeles, Marc Maron has surged forward in the last three years, in large part due to the success of his unique and popular podcast, WTF. In extended, wide-ranging conversations, Maron interviews comedians, writers, musicians, and other creative artists, discussing their career arcs, the nature of creative work, and the meaning of success and failure. The podcast has revived his stand-up career, and in the next month alone, Maron is releasing a book of essays (Attempting Normal, out April 30) and a semi-autobiographical TV series debuts on IFC (simply titled Maron; the first episode airs May 3). In the midst of all this and more, Maron is stopping here in San Francisco on Saturday, April 13, for a performance at the Palace of Fine Arts, just a few days ahead of the New York City taping of his Netflix-exclusive stand-up special.

Maron recently spoke to us by phone about the whirlwind his life has become, and we started the discussion by dissecting a recent episode of WTF, taped live at SXSW, at which guest James Franco took umbrage at a remark Maron made near the close of the interview: Franco, referring to his Freaks and Geeks days, said, "I took myself pretty seriously then," to which Maron rejoined, "Not now, though, which is good." It was said in good-natured jest, but Franco, apparently, was not having it.

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Comedian Nato Green is no stranger to these pages: in 2010, he was named "Best Comedian," and he was profiled in a 2011 cover story as well. As one third of the comedy trio Laughter Against the Machine, Green (along with fellow Machinists W. Kamau Bell and Janine Brito) highlighted the political and social inequalities that presently define this country. Now, after spending several months in New York writing for Bell's FX series, Totally Biased, Green is back in San Francisco with a couple of major new additions to his CV.

Just before The Business's founding member Alex Koll relocated to New York last month, Nato joined San Francisco's much-lauded weekly stand-up show -- and he's joining at a time of growth for the troupe, which performs every Wednesday at The Dark Room. Not only is the original S.F. chapter going through a partial changing of the guard, but the recently-established Los Angeles chapter is also taking off with weekly shows at the Lyric-Hyperion Theater, and Koll plans to set up a New York outpost in the near future.

Nato's latest video for JCCSF. More »

By Emilie Mutert
The Hella Gay Comedy Show is normally a once-a-month event featuring LGBT comics, but this month the tables are turning and straight comics are performing gay comedy. Plenty of straight actors play gay guys on television and in movies and porn, and now straight comedians are going to play gay comedians on stage, too.

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By Emilie Mutert
Stephen Lynch is a talented musical comedian. His songs are well-constructed, like maybe you think it's going to be a Third Eye Blind song or something. But then you hear the words Lynch is singing, about how his girlfriend is a hermaphrodite ("she's my little girl, she's my little guy/when I try to please her I get poked in the eye") or how his wife is divorcing him because he likes rubbing up against young boys on the bus.

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Erikka Innes embodies the spirit of nerdiness in her sophomore album, Smells Like Nerd Spirit. From an opener that wonders why female superheroes are required to have big boobs to a slew of self-deprecating ponderings and stories, Innes finds a contradictory line between a self-loathing, single anti-socialite and a proud, forward-thinking feminist.

See also: Top Bay Area Comedians to Follow on Twitter

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