Science Comedian

Science Comedy at the Purple Onion, San Francisco

August 9th, 2010

Thurs­day, Sept. 23, 2010

An evening of sci­ence com­edy – and a cou­ple guests on the show.  More details com­ing soon!

San Francisco’s Pur­ple Onion, in North Beach, is an awe­some venue with a lot of history.

140 Colum­bus Avenue
San Fran­cisco, CA 94133
(415) 956-1653

Sacramento Comedy Spot

August 8th, 2010

Fri­day, Sept. 24, 2010

Sci­ence Com­edy at The Sacra­mento Com­edy Spot

1050 20th Street
Sacra­mento, CA 95811
(916) 444-3137

More details soon!

Green Vanity License Plates

April 1st, 2010

I’ve been per­form­ing stand up com­edy for two decades. I get all the stage time I need.  But I real­ize not every­one has such an out­let. And, yet, humans are such com­pli­cated, emo­tional crea­tures.  They have so much to express!

That’s why I’ve always been fas­ci­nated with van­ity plates and bumper stick­ers.  And I’ve always lumped them in with answer­ing machine out­go­ing mes­sages and Karaoke.  I think, for some peo­ple, these might be the only out­lets they have through which to express them­selves to the world.  They have so much to say – and so lit­tle space!  But humans are creative.

And humans that drive the Toy­ota Prius Hybrid Vehi­cle in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area…  well, they are par­tic­u­larly cre­ative.  And con­sis­tent with their mes­sage.  I keep see­ing hybrids with green-themed van­ity plates.  Not every one below is a Prius, but most of them are.

Have you seen any other van­ity plates with envi­ron­men­tal themes or mes­sages?  Let me know!

Thanks, as always, to Tara for photo touch-up and editing!

Science Cookies

December 13th, 2009

Awe­some sci­ence cook­ies in a series of posts to a food blog by a bio­log­i­cal anthropologist.

Aren’t all anthro­pol­o­gists bio­log­i­cal?  I’m a bio­log­i­cal comedian.

Ooh, she also has Space Invaders!

Science Comedy Show in Sunnyvale

October 13th, 2009

Sci­ence Come­dian Brian Malow

presents

Ratio­nal Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet

An evening of sci­ence humor

8pm, Wednes­day, Octo­ber 28, 2009

Rooster T. Feather’s Com­edy Club
157 W. El Camino Real
Sun­ny­vale, CA 94087
(408) 736-0921

San Francisco Chronicle Features Science Comedian

January 9th, 2009

The San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle ran a fea­ture story on me today (the print ver­sion actu­ally appears in the Date­book sec­tion, Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 11, 2009):

Mak­ing Sci­ence Funny:  Brian Malow

It’s writ­ten by Nick Thomas, who we love!  Last year, Nick did a Q&A with me for Nature:

Helium Walks Into a Bar

In addi­tion to being a pro­lific free­lance writer, Nick is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at Auburn Uni­ver­sity in Mont­gomery, Alabama.

The arti­cle comes out in time to pro­mote my upcom­ing Bay Area shows – Tues­day at the San Fran­cisco Punch Line, and Wednes­day in Sun­ny­vale at Rooster T. Feath­ers.  Also, a week later at the Sacra­mento Punch Line on Jan­u­ary 22.

P.S.  The book I’m hold­ing is Cosm by Gre­gory Ben­ford, one of my favorite reads of 2008.

SF Chronicle Best of 2008 Portraits

January 9th, 2009

This week­end, the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle should be run­ning a story about me in con­junc­tion with next week’s shows at the SF Punch Line Com­edy Club (Tues, Jan.13) and Rooster T. Feath­ers (Wed, Jan.14), in Sun­ny­vale.  See Upcom­ing Shows for details.

A Chron­i­cle pho­tog­ra­pher, Paul Chinn, met me over at the new Cal­i­for­nia Acad­emy of Sci­ences sev­eral weeks ago for a photo shoot.

Appar­ently, even though the story hasn’t run yet, they’ve included a pic­ture of me in their “Best of 2008 Portraits.”

They spelled my name “Brain” (I’m used to it) and called the show “Irra­tional Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet” (which is close – the planet is, indeed, irra­tional but the com­edy is ratio­nal)…  but it’s still pretty cool.

[In the com­ments, Jim Hardy brought it to my atten­tion that they also mis­spelled "science-themd."  Three mis­takes in two sentences!]

The fea­ture is dated 12/29/08.  Nobody even told me it was online.  I had to do a van­ity search on the Chron­i­cle site.  Inter­est­ingly, it only works if you search on “Malow” or “Brain Malow.”  A search on “Brian Malow” returns no rel­e­vant results.

Any­way, nice pic…

Transporter Pie

December 23rd, 2008

Thanks­giv­ing in Atlanta.  My sis­ter served up a picture-perfect slice of apple pie for Tara.

Mine looked like a trans­porter accident:

It was still deli­cious, of course.  The repli­ca­tor just needs a lit­tle tweak­ing, is all.

Stand up straight!

August 7th, 2008

My mother used to tell me to “stand up straight.”

It was one of her favorite things to say: “Stand up straight!”

Many other peo­ple, I have dis­cov­ered, also grew up hear­ing that phrase. It’s nearly uni­ver­sal. As if moth­ers were pro­grammed to say it. In fact, I believe moth­ers have been telling their chil­dren to “stand up straight” longer than we real­ize. Per­haps even to pre-human days.

What if that were the dri­ving force behind the evo­lu­tion­ary trend to walk erect?

Moth­ers nag­ging their chil­dren up the evo­lu­tion­ary ladder:

“Stand up straight!
“Don’t drag your knuck­les when you walk!
“What’re ya born in a tree?
“You want the other fam­i­lies to think we’re not evolving?”

“No, mom…”

Then: “How many times do I have to tell you?”

And, therein lies the ori­gin of mathematics:

“How many times?…well, if I put the three here and carry the one….”

Science Comedy Video

August 5th, 2008

A mon­tage of some of my sci­ence com­edy rou­tines, taken mostly from two events at the Mar­ian Koshland Sci­ence Museum of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences (in 2006 and 2007).

A cou­ple clips from my 2008 per­for­mance appear ear­lier in this blog (on cell phones and Karma) and more are com­ing soon.