Michael Colton and John Aboud are writers and comedians.
They appear regularly on VH1, making snide but loving jokes about pop culture. Entertainment Weekly called Colton & Aboud the “cham-peen deadpan kings” of VH1’s “Best Week Ever.” The duo also appear on VH1’s “I Love the 70s/80s/90s/Toys/Holidays/New Millennium,” “Black to the Future,” “Gaming Gurus” and “The Great Decade Debate.” They are featured on the DVD releases of “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place.” They have been panelists, separately or together, on CNN, Fox News, CMT, NPR and NBC’s “The Today Show.” They occasionally perform live at clubs and colleges across the country to tepid acclaim.
Colton & Aboud have written television pilots for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and Comedy Central. They currently work on the TNT action-comedy Leverage. In 2008 they wrote for the Fox animated sitcom “Sit Down, Shut Up,” created by Mitch Hurwitz (“Arrested Development”).
Their first produced screenplay, “The Comebacks,” starring David Koechner, was released by Fox in October 2007. Current scripts in development include “For Richer or Poorer” at Warner Brothers, “The Bender” and "Puberty" at New Line and “Over My Dead Body” at Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Picture Company.
Colton & Aboud have also written for several magazines including Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Fortune, TV Guide, Time, New York and Radar.
During the Writers Guild of America strike of 2007-8, Aboud was one of the founders and editors of the influential United Hollywood website. In addition, Colton & Aboud created AMPTP.com, a parody of the AMPTP’s official website, AMPTP.org. (The parody is archived here.) The parody was called “must-read” by Advertising Age and “profane” and “inspired” by the Boston Globe. On his blog, “Buffy” creator Joss Whedon referred to Colton & Aboud as “heroes.” Aw.
Before moving to Los Angeles, Colton & Aboud ran Modern Humorist, a media and entertainment company based in Brooklyn. Modern Humorist created comedy for film, television, radio, theater and print magazines, and was best known for its award-winning comedy Web magazine, ModernHumorist.com. The website earned rave reviews from Time, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Salon and other publications around the world. Modern Humorist published three books with Crown Publishing, including the best-selling “My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush.” Modern Humorist also helped develop ad campaigns for Microsoft, Time Warner Cable and Amazon.com.
The idea for Modern Humorist began in 1999 after Colton & Aboud’s first collaboration: a wildly popular online parody of Tina Brown and Harvey Weinstein’s Talk Magazine, using the unclaimed website TalkMagazine.net. (The parody is archived here.)
Prior to founding Modern Humorist, Aboud wrote for Mother Jones, Wired, GQ and TV Guide and worked for Grey Advertising, where he won a One Show Interactive Merit award.
Colton was a staff writer for the Washington Post Style section and has also written for the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, the New York Observer, the Washington City Paper, Brill’s Content and McSweeney’s. He published an essay in the 2008 anthology, “Rejected” (Random House). In high school, Colton co-wrote the book “Up Your Score: The Underground Guide to the SAT” (Workman).
At Harvard College, Colton & Aboud both wrote for the school newspaper, The Crimson, and the humor magazine, The Lampoon.
Colton & Aboud are represented by Creative Artists Agency and Principato-Young Entertainment.
LINKS
Reviews of the "90210" and "Melrose Place" DVD special features
Articles on the AMPTP.com parody
Miscellaneous Fun
Boston Globe profile of Colton
Other...: coltonaboud.blip.tv
