This is draftspace to keep notes and links to help me improve Hari Kondabolu.
Photos edit
http://romanoffsbite.tumblr.com/post/153505401929
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNF7dtBBbAF/ & https://twitter.com/kalpenn/status/800898636154478592 .... don't know what date this is, but there was a Biden photo from previous to January 29 2016, which is when https://harikondabolu.bandcamp.com/album/mainstream-american-comic was recorded )
(photos from the Biden administration not available for FOIA till January 2022, per https://www.archives.gov/research/vice-presidential-records/faqs.html#photographs )
attended 2016 Biden Diwali celebration http://www.indiaabroad-digital.com/indiaabroad/20161125?pg=22#pg22 https://www.espnfrontrow.com/2016/11/sportscenters-negandhi-attends-vp-bidens-diwali-reception/
https://photos.state.gov/libraries/kolcata/231771/PDFs/Bulletin_January%202012.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20171228142145/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/kolcata/231771/PDFs/Bulletin_January%202012.pdf
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usconsulatechennai/6645874553/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usconsulatechennai/6646031799/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usconsulatechennai/6645874569/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usconsulatechennai/6646031809/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usconsulatechennai/6665136807/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usconsulatechennai/6665136847/
Approbation edit
compared to Lenny Bruce after initial Bumbershoot performance https://web.archive.org/web/20080222065508/http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003242639_bumbershoot04.html
Spoke at 2013 National Conference for Media Reform http://conference.freepress.net/presenter/101924/hari-kondabolu
played in Bangalore http://chennai.usconsulate.gov/makechainotwar_120106.html
was at Aspen Ideas Festival https://www.aspenideas.org/speaker/hari-kondabolu http://www.theatlantic.com/live/events/aspen-ideas-festival/2014/
http://exclaim.ca/comedy/article/hari_kondabolu-mainstream_american_comic "There's no working comic who can seamlessly blend personal and socio-political comedy as substantively and satisfyingly as Hari Kondabolu." "a preternaturally great comedian — someone who can weave stories and jokes together that shock, surprise, and overwhelm his audiences." "Most strikingly, Kondabolu stands out because he's just sharper and more dedicated to his craft than most, and he is decidedly harsh at a harsh, tumultuous point in history."
http://www.andhraportal.org/nri/ notable Telugu alongside Satya Nadella & Ajay Naidu
Performed at Kennedy Center in 2015 http://www.kennedy-center.org/video/index/M54421 and roasted James Carville http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/event/XQCCT https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2016/06/24/district-comedy-roast-james-carville-kennedy-center/
Activism/organizing work edit
https://www.futureyoungleaders.org/young-india/washington-leadership-program/ The Washington Leadership Program was started in 1995 under the auspices of the now-defunct Indian American Center for Political Awareness, formerly the India Abroad Center for Political Awareness, and is now its own org.
swimming/drowning line used in a Black Lives Matter protest http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-21/mainstream-comic-hari-kondabolu-changing-definition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGKuQOeLEsg&index=25&list=RDe-zW6f63ZKo - on the Make Chai not War tour, got to visit his mom
performed at a Strike Debt performance for the People's Bailout (an Occupy Wall Street offshoot event) http://flavorwire.com/347336/best-telethon-ever-strike-debts-scrappy-brilliant-peoples-bailout in 2012
online campaigns/controversies edit
Facebook & death threats against Kondabolu: http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-apologizes-not-taking-down-death-threat-against-comedian-hari-kondabolu-2022310 (mid-2015)
trying to turn One Direction fans anti-Trump http://flavorwire.com/551226/comedian-hari-kondabolu-mobilizes-one-direction-fans-against-trump http://jezebel.com/comedian-hari-kondabolu-unites-one-directioners-against-1747593357
Marc Maron tiff http://www.harikondabolu.com/2010/08/a-conversation-between-marc-maron-and-hari-kondabolu-now-animated/ http://thecomicscomic.com/2010/04/26/robin-williams-opens-up-about-longstanding-rumors-of-joke-theft-on-marc-marons-wtf-podcast/
early life/family edit
lived in Jackson Heights: 'So many uncommon immigrant stories to be told', Pais, Arthur J. India Abroad [New York, N.Y] 06 Sep 2013: M3,M10.
Denzel Washington Is The Best Actor podcast: he gave the keynote address at high school graduation a few years prior to 2015
family spoke? speaks? Telugu at home 'Behind these doors, it is pretty much India', Pais, Arthur J. India Abroad [New York, N.Y] 06 Sep 2013: M2,M4.
Ravi is now president of the Akkineni Foundation of America http://www.akkinenifoundationofamerica.org/about.php
Hinduism/personal life edit
http://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/100000003199656/off-color-hari-kondabolu.html NYT "off color comedy", 1:58, he's wearing a rekhi bracelet
on slurs/comedy approach edit
even in 2004, "Focus on identity: Indian? South Asian? Desi? Brown?" Kondabolu, Hari K. News India - Times [New York, N.Y] 12 Mar 2004: 30. -- joking about and using stereotypes while speaking to desis
used a slur in recounting something that had happened to him: https://web.archive.org/web/20100310105535/http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2003802720_comic24.html July 24, 2007 "Sept. 11 was turning point for activist/comedian" by Tom Scanlon, Seattle Times staff reporter
'The real adventurous people are my parents Pais, Arthur J. India Abroad [New York, N.Y] 06 Sep 2013: M5,M10. and he owes them a debt, which is a reason he has stopped making jokes at their expense
on the benefits of not starting out in NYC: http://thecomicscomic.com/2011/02/10/meet-me-in-new-york-hari-kondabolu/
works out new material with Seattle audiences https://www.thestranger.com/events/23904841/hari-kondabolus-scratch-night
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/03/catching-up-with-hari-kondabolu.html (on the "entitlement" of growing up in an ethnically diverse place)
likes to play with space between laughter & discomfort http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/03/qa_0
comedy as a unique art form: "You can listen to Rage Against the Machine and not know what they’re saying; you just like how loud it is and you like knocking into people. But you can’t avoid my punchlines; you can’t avoid what I’m saying." http://inthesetimes.com/article/16780/hari_kondabolu_feminist_dick_jokes_the_new_mainstream -- also on cissexism & his "feminist dick joke"
influences include Chris Rock https://web.archive.org/web/20150919080634/http://moreintelligentlife.com/blog/corbin-hiar/qa-hari-kondabolu-stand-comedian
inspired by Wyatt Cenac, Baratunde Thurston, Ashok Kondabolu http://flavorwire.com/356385/50-up-and-coming-new-york-culture-makers-to-watch-in-2013/26
Richard Pryor as influence https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/dec/11/hari-kondabolu-comedy-american-race-issues-interview
Indian dominance of the US spelling bee http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/18/203034882/comedian-hari-kondabolu-on-diversity-race-and-burger-king
During the protests that followed, Kondabolu saw his “swimming while drowning” line used on a banner. “The Grammy nomination didn’t have any value any more,” remembers Kondabolu. “There was nothing that could get bigger than that. That to me is a sign that the work I’m doing has impact and people appreciate it.” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/dec/11/hari-kondabolu-comedy-american-race-issues-interview
Mainstream American Comic -- paper USA jacket -- http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-21/mainstream-comic-hari-kondabolu-changing-definition
http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2015/07/leaving-the-late-show/ -- on wasting jokes when working in a writers' room rather than stand-up; on joke-stories, & Twitter's negative effect on his writing; on his time at WBOR (his years at Bowdoin: "incredibly formative")
NYU’s APA Institute’s “Artist in Residence” for the 2014-2015 Academic Year. http://www.nyu-apastudies.org/2012/hari-kondabolu-2014-2015/ "some of the things I want to work on are more long-form (like stories) and are not always best told in a stand-up context"
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/purple-america/people-we-love-hari-kondabolu "Kondabolu uses comedy to point out hidden assumptions about immigrants. After hearing a xenophobic remark from a fellow comic, 'I [responded] by writing material that … gave a fuller picture,” Kondabolu says, “[a] bit about reducing the immigration rate by either making billboards that convince people that America is not as great as they think it is or by ending the exploitation of developing nations.'"
Kondabolu's friend and writing partner is Ahamefule Oluo http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a35281/hari-kondabolu-greatest-joke/
"he left us on a heartfelt bit about how we need to take care of ourselves, first and foremost, before we can take care of anyone else" http://exclaim.ca/comedy/article/hari_kondabolu_sean_devlin-biltmore_cabaret_vancouver_bc_february_25 (an early 2016 show; self-care)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vngPdeR7SxM kickoff event for APA institute artist in residence gig -- how he comes up with a joke; used to write everything down, but that meant he could not create new stuff in the moment; much of his work is written live; formal education is to some extent a scam (30:00); got to Seattle and immediately took LSAT & planned to become lawyer (around 32:00)
http://www.nytimes.com/video/arts/100000003199656/off-color-hari-kondabolu.html W. Kamau Bell: "He's doing comedy to explain the world around him". on Pryor's 1976 album: Kondabolu learned that you can just affect people on a deep level emotionally. If something makes him angry, that's a sign it could be a joke.
Brown Threat by Kumarini Silva, University of Minnesota Press: "Ironically, Apu is named after [Satyajit] Ray’s Apu Trilogy, but as comedian Hari Kondabolu notes, “think about Satyajit Ray’s work and how beautiful and complicated those characters are. We don’t get that from this Apu.”" (p. 188-189)
From Sreenivasan interview on NewsHour:
"I mean, I started doing that 'cause it was easy. And I think a comedian wants to make an audience laugh. That's standard for any comic. But when you're starting, that's all you're thinking about. There isn't the possibility of, 'what do I want to say? and do I *know* what I want to say? and what's my point of view?' That all comes later. So initially, that's all I wanted to do, and accents did it. Like, if I did a funny voice, I mean, we saw it with Apu on the Simpsons --"
"He was the most famous South Asian."
"Yes!"
"Growing up, for both of us."
"Yes. And Gandhi. Apu and --"
"There's a significant gap."
"Gandhi and a cartoon were the two options that we had. And so I knew that would work. You know, there was precedent for it. And so I did impressions of my father." [also: knew it was hacky when he was 17 or 18. ....post-9/11, everything became more complicated, he asked [things that led to more complexity in comedy... When he was a kid, [didn't follow news but got news from comedians]
Research/scholarship edit
Kondabolu's own MSc thesis from LSE towards his 2008 master's (with Merit) in human rights: Mexican Returnees as Internally Displaced People: An Argument for the Protection of Economic Migrants Under the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement [I'm awaiting interlibrary loan]
Performing health: Stand-up comedy and the production of biomedical knowledge by Beza Merid (2015) [I'm awaiting interlibrary loan]
"All Joking Aside: American Humor and its Discontents" by Rebecca Krefting, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 -- "Hari Kondabolu: Performing in the Age of Modern-Day Minstrelsy" https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/all-joking-aside , on how he changed to write from the heart and try to do non-hurtful work -- available via Project MUSE [I have this, need to read]
Portland State University syllabus https://www.academia.edu/15212106/Syllabus_American_Comedy_ & Lehigh University syllabus on Asian American Literature http://scholar.aci.info/view/147a94cbe390953012d/14d265a4a350001000e
Laughter Against the state: On Humor, Postcolonial Satire, and Asian American Short Fiction by Nerissa S. Balce, Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 19, Number 1, February 2016, pp. 46-73 "While Sarita See has elegantly theorized “colonial melancholia” as the Filipino colonized subject’s inability”to speak”or”name the loss” of the”destruction of native languages” and other traumas of colonization,4 I would argue that most cultures have an alternative language to name, understand, or recognize the colonial past through humor. We witness this in the work of some ethnic American artists.... Asian American comic Hari Kondabolu’s explores racial politics, colonialism, and immigration in his CD Waiting for 2042."
To acquire & read edit
Humour and Gender Hegemony: The Panoptical Role of Ridicule vis-à-vis Gender, https://www.academia.edu/11625331/_Humour_and_Gender_Hegemony_The_Panoptical_Role_of_Ridicule_vis-%C3%A0-vis_Gender_
"All Joking Aside: A Serious Investigation into the Persuasive Effect of Funny Social Issue Messages" by Robin Nabi
"The Hurtline and the Colorline: Race and Racism in American Stand-up Comedy from Civil Rights to Color-Blindness" by Raul Perez, University of California, Irvine, 2015
"Racial Formation in the Post-September 11 Era: The Paradoxical Positioning of Working Class South Asian American Youth", by Veena Hampapur, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016
http://oic.uqam.ca/fr/profils/lafontaine-thomas
oic.uqam.ca/fr/evenements/femmes-ingouvernables-repenser-lirreverence-feminine-dans-limaginaire-populaire
http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/9197/1/M14612.pdf
http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/9197/
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1144339.pdf "Resisting the Coloniality of English: A Research Review of Strategies" quotes him
other works edit
http://kondabolubrothers.libsyn.com/ , http://kondabolubrothers.com/
Kondabolu is working on creating a pilot episode for his own weekly series on the cable channel Tru TV http://mainetoday.com/do-this-2/comedian-hari-kondabolu-bowdoin-college-grad-known-routines-race-politics-social-justice-will-play-port-city-music-hall-portland-friday/
https://jococruise.com/the-entertainment/ (but not on https://jococruise.com/ )
acted in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJchJpg0ynI with Randall Park - http://www.harikondabolu.com/2009/06/the-food-episode-1/
to listen edit
https://themoth.org/stories/not-too-sensitive-just-sensitive
https://www.wnyc.org/story/death-sex-money-bam-year-two/ -- about Uma Kondabolu
https://www.wnyc.org/story/4-phoebe-and-hari-kondabolu-reach-peak-confidence/
http://thecomicscomic.com/2016/08/01/episode-106-hari-kondabolu/ early August 2016, on the history of his career
http://www.feralaudio.com/50-hari-kondabolu/
http://theadventuresofdannyandmike.com/?p=947
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH3rsmiKjgM - Solid Ground interview wearing rekhi -- Ashok is "the funniest person I know" -- what he found funny as a kid (funny faces)
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2691641406
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/political-comic-hari-kondabolu-puts-the-joy-in-killjoy-1.3675220
https://www.wnyc.org/story/hari-kondabolu-stop-worrying-and-learn-love-demographics/
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/01/5-just-for-laughs-stand-up-shows-you-should-watch.html foreign hecklers
https://www.pastemagazine.com/search?t=hari%20kondabolu interviews
http://vishkhanna.com/2014/12/02/ep-151-hari-kondabolu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywaBSxrFwJ8
http://www.infiniteguest.org/secret-skin/2015/09/hari-kondabolu-pro-wrestling/
http://www.snc.edu/cvc/programs/2015-16/hooksresidency16/harikondabolu.html
http://kuow.org/post/radioactive-explores-minority-representation-hari-kondabolu
http://kondabolubrothers.com/videos.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQzRDwCxY4 APA institute conversation
https://www.solid-ground.org/hari-kondabolu-honors-justserve/ honoring JustServe AmeriCorps
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gist/2016/07/comedian_hari_kondabolu_on_balancing_what_s_funny_and_what_s_sensitive.html "On The Gist, comedian Hari Kondabolu says he doesn’t mind updating his jokes to heed the sensitivities of his fans."
The Comic's Comic
We Want the Airwaves
WGN Radio, The Download
The Champs podcast
Nerdette podcast
regator
maximumfun
Press Play (kcrw)
wxpr interview
The Sound of Applause (WCLV, Dee Perry)
Wisconsin Public Radio
interview with Hari Sreenivasan, PBS NewsHour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA6gc2nAq-4 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/comedian-hari-kondabolu-finds-humor-substance-talking-race/
work on Conan O'Brien's show http://teamcoco.com/celebs/hari-kondabolu
http://www.harikondabolu.com/2010/08/college-humors-inception-characters-dont-understand-inception/
http://www.harikondabolu.com/2011/02/hari-kondabolu-asks-das-racist-for-help/
http://www.harikondabolu.com/2011/02/hari-kondabolu-asks-ajay-naidu-for-help/
http://bhupalakpaneer.tumblr.com/post/114027224470/icymi-tonight-at-a-panel-called-the-revolution
Totally Biased argument with Kal Penn over Stop & Frisk
Totally Biased piece on baseball; when he was young and played in Little League, he was fat and wanted to pitch
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-19/guilty-pleasure-hari-kondabolu-loves-untamed-heart
to read edit
https://www.saada.org/tides/article/20130311-1319 goes into his experience in Make Chai Not War, the Koh-i-Noor diamond joke as the first joke he told that reflected who he really is, doing accents, the vegan soul food joke, his influences, the Hindu mythological tradition, how we are a generation that can give "the response" -- getting the complex identities of whiteness back versus not
http://www.alternet.org/media/hari-kondabolu-americas-smartest-and-funniest-mainstream-comic observational versus political comedy, goal in the Apu documentary, his work being used in protest or syllabi
http://logger.believermag.com/post/91059744384/hari-kondabolu-and-alex-edelman-in-conversation "Snarky people pretend that they don’t know what they’re talking about or that they’re not invested in what they’re hearing, but clearly they are because they’re talking about it. Or paying for it."
http://myspiltmilk.com/waiting-hari-kondabolu
https://talkshow.im/show/BkO8Q5GCQROCsAEf -- sports can be transformative
http://rollingstoneindia.com/the-small-town-south-indian-boys-of-new-york/
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=305509473 -- is a Hindu; "I used to be a bit where I used to read the U.S. citizenship application onstage"; "I loved organizing, and, you know, I was working with victims of hate crimes, I was doing some work in detention centers and meeting families whose - you know, who had family members who were going to be deported, and, you know, it was really powerful, workplace discrimination cases"
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/22/292402137/why-comedian-hari-kondabolu-is-waiting-for-2042
http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/seattle-birthplace-of-hari-kondabolursquos-comedy-career/
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/18/203034882/comedian-hari-kondabolu-on-diversity-race-and-burger-king -- "worked in the Queens district attorney's office bureau of hate crimes"
https://www.bowdoin.edu/magazine/archives/2011/pdf/Bowdoin-Vol82_No.2.pdf long article on his childhood, education; helped organize a global consciousness lecture series, he was music director at WBOR (Bowdoin college radio)
http://www.uft.org/noteworthy-grads/noteworthy-graduates-hari-kondabolu-comedian on his childhood education
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/29/1553610/-Mainstream-American-comic-Hari-Kondabolu-answers-five-questions on who will be considered white next, complicated enemies (Republican Indian-Americans), being an outsider
How to Tell a Joke, Wollan, Malia. New York Times (Online), New York Times Company. Jul 24, 2015. ''If people aren't laughing, then it's slam poetry,'' Kondabolu says, ''and that's not what you're trying to do.''
http://www.harikondabolu.com/press/
read http://blog.mtviggy.com/2010/07/16/q-a-with-hari-kondabolu-part-i/ & http://blog.mtviggy.com/2010/07/16/q-a-with-comedian-hari-kondabolu-part-ii-joel-stein-bloody-bastard/
"Hari Kondabolu: 'I don't hold back'" -- Acker, Mike. The Oregonian; Portland, Or. [Portland, Or]25 Nov 2016: 17.
"A rising comedy star brings race, identity, and activism into the act" -- Sullivan, James. Boston Globe; Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]10 Nov 2016: G.4. " The experience at Bowdoin shaped him. "I could see who was going to have power," he says. "When people ask what politicized me, it was that, without a doubt."" Interning for Hillary Clinton: learned he is a fighter, not someone who supports the party. And: he was Captain Hook in a childhood production of Peter Pan.
Sep 16, 2016 Morning Edition interview:
- I mean, I don't go on stage to make people uncomfortable or to offend anyone. I go out there to speak my truth. You know, let me fix that. No, I think I do go out, actually, to - with the risk of offending people. I'm OK with offense, to be honest with you. I think offense happens when it - something questions your beliefs and your sensibilities and you don't know how to handle that. I think that can be a good thing. It forces an issue. I think causing people pain, however, can be different. I think that's a little more complicated.
"Political comedian Hari Kondabolu dishes on his Queens experience" -- Rosenberg, Scott A. AM New York; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]01 May 2017. On food, diversity, Apu, headlining Caroline's
"‘Politically Re-Active’ in the Trump Era: The hosts of ‘Politically Re-Active’ talk the return of their popular podcast, voting for Jill Stein, and that controversial ‘future of media’ magazine cover." -- Wilstein, Matt. The Daily Beast; New York [New York]29 Mar 2017.
"When Kondabolu Wasn't Just Funny" -- Anonymous. India Abroad; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]17 Feb 2017: 4. On Apu: "Kondabolu describes it as "being in love with something and still criticizing it," which is also what he sees as being American."
"Connecting and challenging via comedy: Hari Kondabolu hits tough topics of racism and inequality" -- Valerie Schremp Hahn. St. Louis Post - Dispatch; St. Louis, Mo. [St. Louis, Mo]11 Dec 2016: E.5.
"How to crack a joke in Trump's America" -- PRI's The World; Minneapolis Minneapolis: Public Radio International (PRI). (Feb 01, 2017)
http://www.oralhistory.org/2015/08/24/human-rights-activist-and-comedian-hari-kondabolu-to-perform-at-oha-annual-meeting/ for British TV credits