Matt Solomon

2 days ago | cracked.com | Matt Solomon

Tony Danza excelled at playing sitcom characters named “Tony.” In his breakthrough show Taxi, Danza starred as Tony Banta, a wanna-be prize fighter. (He wasn’t very good at it — at one point, the show revealed his record was 8 wins against 24 losses. He also got knocked out 14 times, which has to be a violation of concussion protocols.) The show ran for five seasons, collecting 18 Emmy Awards before finally pulling into the Sunshine Cab garage for good. But you can’t keep a good Tony down.

2 weeks ago | cracked.com | Matt Solomon

Richard Pryor was in the midst of a career transformation in the early 1970s. He abandoned the Bill Cosby-esque routines that earned him a shot on 1960s TV variety shows, recording albums like 1971’s Craps that “brought the language of the streets to stand-up,” according to the biography Becoming Richard Pryor. But while Pryor was shattering racial and sexual boundaries on stage, he was still taking showbiz jobs that required a more family-friendly style.

2 weeks ago | cracked.com | Matt Solomon

He sits behind his microphoneJohn-ny Car-son!He speaks in such a manly toneJohn-ny Car-son!Brian Wilson, who recently passed away at the age of 82, wrote some amazing songs during his tenure with the Beach Boys. With all respect, “Johnny Carson,” his 1977 ode to late-night comedy, might not have been one of them.

2 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Matt Solomon

7 hours agoSo silly. The stairs of Air Force One were often cruel to Joe Biden, and now it appears they've come for Donald Trump. Over the weekend a clip of the U.S. president tripping up the stairs has gone viral, and Stephen Colbert's The Late Show responded in the only way it could: with a parody GOP ad …

2 weeks ago | cracked.com | Matt Solomon

It isn’t just sitcom fans at Cracked who shake their fists at the heavens and shout “The Bear isn’t a comedy!” every time the FX show sweeps another round of Golden Globes or Emmy Awards. According to “multiple writers on various comedy series” who spoke to Vulture, the industry’s joke-writing pros decided enough was enough when it came to honoring dramatic shows just because they were nominated in the comedy category.