The process for just getting an audition on 'Saturday Night Live' is a giant slippery ladder in which each rung is greased with the guts of a feral cat and only a helping hand can get you to the top step.

And once you've reached the summit, there are only 12 to 14 spots, depending on how bad the previous season was (if it's after the 1980 season, you're golden, Ponyboy). So naturally, some very talented and entertaining people have to fall on the sword as a sacrifice to the cruel mistress of statistics.

That doesn't mean the public can't enjoy these mysterious mirthmakers. Thanks to the beauty of YouTube, now we can all enjoy those lost audition tapes of cast members who didn't make the cut. Here's the cream of the castaway crop ...

With the stand-up special 'Comedy You Can Believe In,' David Alan Grier is planning to bring the laughs to TBS on Sunday, June 28.

David will host an array of raucous comedians like Mark Curry, Bruce Bruce and Marina Franklin during the network's Very Funny Festival in Chicago.

The funnyman talked one-on-one with AOL TV about the special, how he helped Chelsea Handler land her own show and why he'd never want to be on 'Dancing With the Stars' again (unless they follow his rules, of course). -- By Katy Kroll

Tonight, Bill Burr will be the first stand-up comedian to do a performance spot on Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show. If you don't know him, you will soon be one of the few. Burr has been on a roll for the past few years, getting stronger and stronger and playing bigger and bigger venues, culminating in last year's special, Why do I Do This?, which premiered last August on Comedy Central and is now on CD and DVD.

I've seen Burr live for years, playing shows like Denis Leary's annual Comics Come Home in Boston and Opie and Anthony's Traveling Virus tour. I have never seen him fail (the closest I came was last year in Los Angeles in front of a mostly indifferent crowd, working really hard for every laugh - for some perspective, Dave Attell and a lot of other good comics bombed that night). He became infamous for a decidedly NSFW YouTube video showing him at an O&A show in Philadelphia, the only time I can think of that a single comedian took on a crowd of hecklers and won.

This past weekend (May 24) marked the fourth anniversary of the death of comic and writer Drake Sather. No one knows what goes on in the mind of someone who takes their own life, but this guy was brilliant and quite funny. Besides his great standup work, he was a writer and producer on NewsRadio (he also played Jimmy James' attorney in two different episodes of the show), and also wrote for such shows as Saturday Night Live, Ed, The Dennis Miller Show, Sammy,The Naked Truth, Empty Nest, and The Larry Sanders Show. He also wrote the movie Zoolander.

After the jump is a standup routine from Sather, filmed at the San Diego Improv in 1992 (split up into three different videos). It's actually rather amazing that a lot of funny bits and lines that I've used over the past 10 years came from Sather.

So sad, but his work does live on.

Somehow I missed this special, When The Leaves Blow Away, when it originally aired on Comedy Central, but it's re-airing tonight on the network at midnight, and the DVD of the special was released today.

Wright was on The Late Show With David Letterman last night, and he was in great (if hairy) form. He's a Boston-area guy and I've loved his stuff since the 80s. If you've never seen him, he's sort of an older, darker Demetri Martin, going from one quirky observation to another unrelated quirky observation. He was an influence on many standup comics.

After the jump, a clip from the special (he used some of the material on Letterman last night).

Sometimes a celebrity will (supposedly) leave his or her comments on a web site, but you're never quite sure if it's really them or just someone impersonating them. But comedian David Cross is online a lot and when he leaves a comment you know it's him. Case in point, this comment left after a SFist review of a recent gig in San Francisco.

You can read the review, but to summarize: the reviewer loved Cross' stuff on Mr. Show and Arrested Development, but she couldn't take his jokes about Mormons (and on Martin Luther King Day too!). Cross doesn't just leave a snide comment or a quick, expletive-filled putdown, he actually goes on at length about the review, how the show was really perceived by the audience (and he has it on tape to prove it), and tries to explain the comedy he was trying to do at the show. Now, it's never good to "explain" your comedy, but what else is someone supposed to do when they are basically called a bigot?

[via Gawker]

That's what gossip queen Janet Charleton is alleging in her latest post. She says that even though Griffin has said on her standup special and elsewhere that she and husband Matt are working things out, the two have actually been living apart for quite some time, and the scenes you see of him living in her home aren't true. He comes into the house to film scenes for My Life on the D List, but then he leaves again when the filming is done.

Charleton says that the couple's marriage is over. Hmmm...

[via TV Tattle]