A Weekend of Stand-Up Comedy

Television stations often use holiday weekends to run marathon-style programming, and Comedy Central is taking full advantage of the Fourth of July as an excuse to show nothing but stand-up comedy specials. Seriously, all weekend long -- the programming started this morning and ends Sunday night.

Saturday's schedule can be found here and Sunday's schedule is less exciting but here.

Now, as great as the marathon is, chances are you don't plan to spend your entire day in front of the television (and I hope that's the case). But that's why God invented TiVo, right?

Most of the good stuff is on Saturday. And by good stuff, I mean stuff that I've seen and laughed at. Sunday's specials might be just as good, but I've only seen Lewis Black's and Dat Phan's. So here are my recommendations for tomorrow:

Maria Bamford @ 11 a.m.
A very funny lady with a wealth of character voices and priceless stories.

Jim Gaffigan @ 2 p.m.
I'm not sure what material this special will cover, but he's definitely a laugh.

Nick Swardson @ 3:30 p.m.
You probably don't realize that you've seen him in movies -- often as a raving fanboy. His first special was hysterical, and I imagine this will be as well.

Mike Birbiglia @ 5 p.m.
I haven't seen his hour long special, but his Comedy Central Presents was good stuff.

Demetri Martin @ 8 p.m.
His one liners remind me of Mitch Hedberg, plus he plays guitar and makes drawings. His hour long special has a lot of good moments.

I realize now that I am utterly unqualified to describe comedy. I couldn't come up with descriptions for most of these performers -- rather like how I started out writing vague music reviews. So just trust me on these, okay? They'll make you laugh. Even if I can't tell you why.

If you have a better description for any of those comedians, leave it in the comments. Go on, show me up. I won't mind.

Happy fourth of July!