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The article profiles comedian Josh Ostrovsky, focusing on his social media comedic alter ego "The Fat Jew." Topics addressed include his efforts to build a comedy career based on his online presence rather than through stand-up comedy; his posts on social media websites such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter; and his personality and career history.

OFF East Seventh Street in the East Village, through a doorway marked with a faded Hebrew Actors' Union plaque and up a flight of stairs, a slim man in a dapper suit kept dashing madly into the long, empty room, rehearsing slapstick stage entrances. The man mugged like Jolson and mimed like Chaplin. He ladled out Borscht Belt bits and vamped vaudevillian. All this, on Wednesday afternoon, as sepia faces from the past stared at him from photographs on the walls. If Maurice Schwartz, Aaron Lebedeff, Reizl Bozyk and these other legends of New York City's bygone Yiddish stage could speak, they may well have said: Not bad for a nice Episcopalian boy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

-- the fabulous monster as crackerjack comic -- is revealed to the world in Matthew Lombardo's play ''Looped,'' which stars Valerie Harper as that troubled actress in her twilight moments. As she lurches around the recording studio where the play is set in 1965, unable to finish the last bit of work on what will prove to be her final film, Tallulah barks out punch lines with the skill of a stand-up comic with decades of Borscht Belt experience, despite the half-bottle of Scotch flowing through her veins. Even the estimable wisecracker Joan Rivers might want to hustle down to the Lyceum Theater, where the show opened on Broadway on Sunday night, to pick up a few pointers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reports that the exhibition `Let There be Laughter! Jewish Humor in America,' will be displayed through August 17, 1997, at the Spertus Museum in Chicago, Illinois. Description of some of the artifacts and photographs that will be showcased; Admission fees; Contact information.