Remember back in 2008 when Nashville was featured as an audition city in an episode of Last Comic Standing and every comedy dork from Bellevue to Inglewood started speculating about our city's future as a comedy town? It took a while, but it feels like we're finally getting there. Why do I say that? Because Rory Scovel is headlining a show at The High Watt on June 5.

Rory Scovel is a stand-up comedian based out of Los Angeles who has been featured on Conan, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Nerdist's second “Stand-Up Cluster” episode, and John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show. But, more than that, he released one of the funniest stand-up records of 2011. Dilation, his debut album, is a patently absurd exercise in improvisational stand-up. Over the course of 11 tracks, Scovel stretches simple premises into abject silliness without alienating the crowd. Even when he jumps from driving on mushrooms to Scientology, there's a weird logic that makes you buy into the pay-off.

But it's not so much that Scovel is playing a gig at a music venue that has my hopes high for Music City's comedy future, it's the fact that the local comedy collective Corporate Juggernaut — who we've hyped in the past — is absolutely killing it when it comes to putting on shows and bringing in national talent who might otherwise bypass a club like Zanies. Over the past few months, they've brought in comics like Mary Mack, Kyle Kinane and Andy Sandford to non-traditional comedy venues — and that's a fact worth celebrating. Now, if Corporate Juggernaut would just book Paul F. Tompkins at The Belcourt, we'd really be in business.

Tickets for the show are available from Mercy Lounge for $10. If you would prefer to hear jokes while sweating in a tent with literal unwashed masses, you can also catch him at Bonnaroo, on a line-up that also features Aziz Ansari, Marc Maron, Pete Holmes and the aforementioned Kyle Kinane. And if you happen to have cable, you can catch Scovel's half-hour special on Comedy Central this Friday, May 11, at 11 p.m.

Thornton’s transition began with Sex, Dreams & Self-Control, his comic/dramatic one-man show about coming out that debuted to packed houses at Bongo After Hours Theatre in 2009. Since then, he’s worked the comedy circuit in Los Angeles and around the country, and been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. He just published his second book, The Universe Sock Puppet, and recently topped 1,000 weekly listeners for his weekly podcast Strange Dreamz. (The April 9 edition provided the answer to a question that’s been at the forefront of great minds for years now: Yes, even gay men are fascinated by Dolly Parton’s breasts.)

Check out the video above from Huffington Post’s “The Moment I Knew” project for a funny and touching video of Thornton discussing the titular topic. Though this performance at Play will focus on the comic side, he’ll be singing, and rumor has it the crowd will be treated to covers by everyone from Springsteen to Katy Perry and TLC. For tickets, visit thekevinthornton.com

• Eric England

If anyone is going to bust Nashville’s comedy scene wide open, our money is on podcast supernova, Trash Humpers scene-stealer and sometime Alcohol Stuntband frontman Crofton. He’s in rare form on Pearls Before Swine: Live at the Springwater, which captures his nervy, abrasive act on crackling vinyl before an audience that’s by turns incensed, indifferent and doubled over in hysterics.

True to his nature, Crofton records the uncomfortable silences along with the laughter. The most compelling track consists of the comic getting called on using a racial slur, his subsequent and disarmingly sincere dialogue with the offended audience member, and the ensuing argument between that person and another patron who argues Crofton’s only performing in character. It’s an honest moment bristling with the electricity of live performance — and if you just want to hear some jokes, Crofton’s got those too (including his instant-classic routine on “the new sex bases”). Check it out, if for no other reason than to hear why food trucks are the Pat Boone of culinary culture.

Admission $8; $20 gets you a ticket plus the LP.

Finally, somebody in this town is making a record that’s supposed to be funny! And you’re invited! Which would probably be awkward if it wasn’t a comedy record being recorded in a public place. Let’s face it — watching a band record an album is akin to sitting in on a drunk family trying to balance their checkbook. But this isn’t a band — THANK GOD! We’ve had enough of those! It’s one of the city’s best comedy crews, and they need you in the audience to make this whole crazy Kickstarter-funded idea work. If you showed up and just stared blankly the whole show, that might work too. You never know. It’s comedy — a weird beast that’ll zig when you think it’ll zag. And you can expect all sorts of zagging from Gary Fletcher, Brad Edwards, Sean “Sean Sean” Staggs and the rest of the CJ crew.

More videos of the Corporate Juggernaut crew after the jump.

Where: Out Front on Main in Murfreesboro
When: 9 p.m. April 12-14
$8, BYOB

Poking fun at the predominant gender composition of open mic nights, local comic Jessica Carter decided to embrace the stereotype and curate a three night stand of some of the more interesting comics in town. "Stand-up comedy," Carter offers, "is mostly a male-dominated performance art. I'm not bothered by that - it is what it is. However, I felt very odd at many open mics when I first started doing comedy. Mostly because I was either the only female comedian there, or one of very few. When my close friends would ask me the next day about the other comics at the open mics — I usually responded with, 'They were funny. The show itself was a sausage parade. I was the only woman again.' The name stuck with me."

Each of the event's three nights will have a different lineup drawn from an intriguing and cultivated pool of performers (Scott D. Hill, Bob Marchman, Peter Depp, Tim Long, Rad Hayes Thomas Prunier, Dean Jennings, Hank Bonecutter, Bryce Damuth, John Bowman, James Victor Cherry, and John Grimes), with Carter finishing off the show. “The term Sausage Parade is just funny to me,” she says. “When I was given this opportunity to perform at Out Front On Main, I really wanted some of my favorite local funny guys on the show - then I decided a Sausage Parade theme would be a fun way for them to be featured.” You can expect a lot of cutting, insightful material (as well as some big nasty for leavening), and a great way to experience the stand-up equivalent of a Whitman's sampler of Nashville comedy.

In the clip above, Carter plays a psychic named Moonpie. It's pretty hilarious stuff.

Judging from the buzz of excitement in the lobby at TPAC before Bill Maher's performance last night, you would have thought Tennessee was a blue state. Of course, Davidson is a blue county, so perhaps it's not surprising. Still, I had that feeling I get when I go to synagogue on the high holidays and think, "Wow! There are really this many Jews in Nashville?"

The ominous strains of the theme to HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher began wafting through the speakers shortly after 8. The packed house rose to its feet for an enthusiastic ovation, and Maher took the stage sporting dark jeans and a "Live Free" T-shirt.

For the next 90 minutes, he had the crowd roaring much of the time, as he took on the contraception debate, Rick Santorum's sweater vest, the hypocrisy of conservative Christians, guns, pot, health care, the Republican debates and much more. He even gave a shout-out to the Scene early on, reveling in our "Here Comes the Antichrist" headline and the cover teaser, "Beloved Infidel: Bill Maher Comes to TPAC."

A few highlights after the jump...

The master of the switchblade zing, Ross is the guy who has everybody from Courtney Love (“How is it Courtney Love looks worse than Kurt Cobain?”) to Quentin Tarantino (“an Italian word meaning ‘plagiarism’ ”) sweating when he takes the podium on Comedy Central. For his one-night stand at Zanies, the Roastmaster General promises to slip us all the collective shiv, skewering Music City as well as audience volunteers who want to know how it feels to be Charlie Sheen for a night.

Who is Greg Proops, you ask? To answer that question, let's get in the wayback machine and journey to the far away land of eight days ago, where you can read my critic's pick:

Greg Proops is the kind of stand-up comedian who can only be forged in the crucible of improv and sketch comedy. Perhaps best known as a performer on every Drew Carey hosted sketch show since the dawn of time — including the original Whose Line is it Anyway? and the short-lived Drew Carey's Green Screen Show — Proops has a blazing wit that is unmatched by most comics of his stature. His stand-up act is built around an almost superhuman aptitude for popular culture with a vocabulary envied by most thesauruses. There aren't a lot of comics who can pull off using words like “salubrious” and quoting from Anthony and Cleopatra in their acts, but Proops makes it look easy. Though he appears through Sunday at Zanies, fans won't want to miss the taping of his “The Smartest Man in the World” podcast on Thursday.

Among the topics Proops tackles in his first trip to Tennessee: the ridiculousness of controversy over the Musica statue, honkeytonks vs. strip clubs, a lengthy discussion of Davey Jones and baseball players with "shrimp arm." It's funny stuff, but you may need a dictionary. Most impressively of all, according to Twitter, Proops did entirely different sets during his stand at Zanies, all without Drew Carey calling for an irritating hoedown about shoplifting.

You can download the episode from Libsyn or subscribe via iTunes.

OK, let's be clear: I am not really a fan of crowd-funding website Kickstarter. And it's not just because the one Kickstarter campaign I've ever been a part of resulted in a dude I really respect getting shit-canned. Mostly, I think that Kickstarter is the digital equivalent of punk rock kids sitting in front of a punk rock club asking other punk rock kids for change to get into the show. (I'm broke too, assholes!) Generally, I feel like it's either an enormous waste of bandwidth designed to stroke some hack's ego by encouraging terrible ideas or a money grab/promo-ploy by people with ulterior motives. ($125K for a blog and some YouTube videos? Gimme a break.) Kickstarter also tends to bring out the conspiracy theorist in me, if you couldn't tell. But occasionally it's used for something awesome, and this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those times: Corporate Juggernaut are making a comedy record.

If you've been following the Scene print edition lately, you've probably noticed that I'm a wee bit enamored with local alt-comedy troupe Corporate Juggernaut. It might actually border on “unhealthy obsession,” but it's not like I'm rummaging through Gary Fletcher's garbage or spying on James Austin Johnson while he's taking a shower. (At least not as far as they know.) So I'm flouting my “No Kickstarter” rule. I already donated — and I don't even feel that dirty. Beyond my usual lack o' hygiene, I mean. So if you're interested in seeing some seriously funny alt-comedy or just supporting the idea that somebody around here should do something besides making music, you should kick in. The campaign has barely been up for a day and they are already halfway to their modest goal of $300. And you have until April 22 to donate, if you're lazy. Which I'm going to guess you are since you're reading a blog post when you should be working.

Stand-up comedy in the late 1980s was a hell of a thing. The bubble expanded so rapidly that it seemed like any dope, no matter how hackish their act was, could wind up on television. There’s no greater symbol of 1980s comedy excess than Andrew Dice Clay — not because of the content of his act (though we can talk all day about the misogyny, racism and homophobia present in Dice’s sets), but because of where his act got him.

Dice famously turned naughty nursery rhymes into a sold-out two-night stand at Madison Square Garden in 1990. He was, in a way, the Dane Cook of his era — an arena character comic, reviled by his peers while beloved by his fans. Dice’s controversial stage persona led to being banned from MTV, boycotted on SNL and protested by women’s groups. After a decade of lying low, Dice now returns to comedy, older and — hopefully — wiser.