Month: June 2024

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Sebastian Manuscalco shared his go to high protein breakfast with the folks at Men’s Health. He showed off his black and white striped fridge. Men’s Health says the fridge itself is meticulously organized, filled with every imaginable fruit, vegetable, meat, cheese, pasta, et cetera.

Not only is it visually appealing, but it showcases the variety of foods and flavors he incorporates into his meals. You mean he doesn’t go to the National donut chain every morning and eats something that’s totally unhealthy and a large iced coffee of caramel and milk. Maniscalco jokes that the container of Bell peppers is strictly for color and equips. We bought it for the look. He claims.

His staple ingredient is eggs, and a typical breakfast for Sebastian Maniscalco consists of three or four eggs, smoked salmon, and some avocado. When he’s on tour. He likes to eat healthier and prioritize protein as a way to sustain the energy and physicality required. For sets. One thing you’ll never find in his fridge.

Every Friday growing up, my mother would make liver with onions and it was awful. Manuscalco then took Ment Health to the gym, where he showed off his latest edition pickleball courts. He jokes, because he’s now fifty, it felt necessary. Yeah, I’m fifty something and that seems to be the rage. I’m still out there playing beach volleyball with people literally half my age.

Last week a teammate was talking to someone on the other team and she realized, Oh, it’s not just I could be your mom, I could be your grandmother. Ha ha. Sebagin said, when I was in my twenties, thirties and early forties, it was primarily esthetics. Used to be a lot about weight training. There’s no more plates.

Now it’s more about nutrition and being flexible. I don’t really care if I have the biggest chest, biceps, legs. That’s not the intention here. The intention now is about mobility. Entertainment Weekley did a big profile of Stephen Colbert.

He pulled out a frame photo of an early career Walter cronkite where he used to discuss the day’s headlines with a puppet named Charlemagne. Colbert said, this is my that Walter Cronkite started off as a morning anchor who had a puppet lion, so let’s not hear about the dignity of CBS News. Back at Northwestern University, he paid his fifty dollars rent by building cheap futon frames out of two by fours and dry wall screws and sell them to the broke college students. He recalls dead fall apart. In the middle of the night.

People would call me furious, and I’d put a handful of screws in my pocket and grab a cordless drill. I’d ride my bike across Evanston, I’d fix their bed, and I’d go home. Eventually he got a job answering phones and selling souvenirs at Second City, a perk of the job free classes. Perhaps his improv background makes him such a good listener, He says, I’m not setting the tone. My interests are eclectic and my tone is malleable.

There’s almost nothing that we could talk about that I’m not going to find some interest in. I’m willing to ride your pony wherever. The only exception is when he has politicians on the show. With politicians, I feel a different obligation to ask the questions that I want to ask, not the questions that they want to be asked. It’s not like I want to be adversarial, but when you interview a politician, you can’t edit anything they want you to edit.

He plans to host the late show as long as they I’ll let him. Vulture caught up with tignatsorrow and asked Tick about the joke she’s most excited to show her kids one day. Tick said, I’m very curious what they’re going to think about when I take my shirt off, and boyish girl interrupted. It was only from watching Drawn did they find out even had cancer. They had no clue that’d see my body, and they had no questions about my scars.

But I remember lying on the bed the morning after they watched Drawn, they had a lot of questions about what cancer was. They were pointing out my scars and they were like, and this is from cancer. So I guess I’m curious what they’ll think about that moment. When I took my shirt off, the first time I did it at Largo, I felt a little insecure because I like my son Max am modest. I was definitely uncomfortable, but I remember Bo Burnham was there and after the show he was like, whoa, my mind is blown.

This is not just about women or cancer. This is about body image. This is about being comfortable with the human body. That really gave me more strength and power behind what I was doing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what’s going on.

This is about bodies. The Old Reporter had a round table of comedians and they talked about not wanting to see someone you know in the audience. Taylor Thomlinson said, I’ve had people, people from high school come to sit in the front row and You’re like, no, please, not like there. They think they’re being supportive, and they are. We appreciate it, but I’m like, sit halfway back, right where the darkness starts.

And she also doesn’t like any folded pair of arms in the front row, no matter what they’re attached to. You’re kind of like, let’s unfold those over the course of the night. Mike bur Bigley has said people you know are not who you want in a stand up comedy audience. Jackie Novak and I swore together and we always compared it to being an exog dancer a stripper. It’s like you don’t really want your friends to be there when you’re stripping.

Vulture wrote five new comedy specials you should definitely watch when you have a moment. Got a holiday week coming up, we probably have some time. They point out upward of one hundred and fifty stamp specials were released in twenty twenty three. Here are some recommendations. Alex Edelman’s Just for Us.

This is the one about Edemun’s story at the time he went to a white supremacist meeting in Queen’s and tried to hide that he was Jewish. I’ve not seen that one yet. Kyle Kanane’s Dirt Nap on YouTube. I love that one. That has a nice fifteen minute chunk about fast and furious that I think is an all timer.

I don’t know how deep the ald timer list is, but I would put this up there with things like Eddie Murphy The Barbecue. Nathan McIntosh is Down with Tech on YouTube. I had finally gotten around to that one. That’s pretty good, A focused assault on a single topic, tech companies and the tech nerds, he argues who run the world. Macintosh’s strength is his frenzied performance and specifically is constantly cracking sky is falling voice.

I will recommend that one to you. You should watch that one. Christina Catherine Martinez her debut special Martinez a shot alone in an empty gallery space, surrounded by a fridge, oven and baking materials, wearing an unfinished pink dress will tighten the back with large steel clamps. It’s not the first Specials shot without an audience, but with how to Bake a Cake, it underlines the loneliness of the material and the emptiness of modern life that Martinez is commenting on this one sounds pretty cool. I haven’t seen this one.

When she mentions her day job at a startup, an ominous off camera voice asked her what she did there. She says, I honestly have no idea. As far as I could tell, my job was every day going on office and then I’d like touch base all day. That’s what they don’t tell you in college. You can work in any creative industry if you know how to touch base, if you check in and circle back, then you have upper management written all over you.

Boy, Now I really want to watch that Another one I haven’t seen. They recommend Natasha vain Blands We’re All Dads Here. This one, also on YouTube. We’re All Dads Here, they say, feels like a little Oasis time machine, because, unlike many recent specials, she’s just really, really silly. She tells a joke about how her old roommate used to know she was going to the bathroom because she’d hear vain Blant say oh boy to herself, which only gets sillier when vain Bland explains that she spilled water on her laptop after writing that joke, so that when the computer repair person brought it back to life, all they saw on the screen was the phrase, oh boy when I poop.

What makes the kookiness work is vain Blad is a deliberate, self aware joke writer and precise performer, able to gracefully slip an out of characters and voices. And while most YouTube specials are shot without much direction beyond just documenting the live show, We’re All Dads Here has some nice flourishes. That sounds like a really good special. I would like to check that one out, and perhaps this week, when I have a little more time, I will that your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about it hopefully they’ll like it too, and you can all hit follow on your Apple podcast app.

You know cool, See you tomorrow.

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. My guest today is Emily Catalano. Her debut album is out That is called Hey, and we’ll find out why it’s called that. That outum out on Blonde Medicine.

You can also get it in limited edition vinyl with a gorgeous mets finish. Here’s my conversation with Emily. Is it weird to put everything down as a recording by letting that material behind it? Is it’s a strange feeling because you’re saying goodbye to it, but it also feels really good to get rid of it at the same time, interesting phrasing and getting rid of it or you just you’ve been doing it for a long time, so it’s like sometimes it’s nice to go back to it, but like at the same time, like you don’t like the part of what’s fun about comedy is like the brand new stuff and like growing out of the comedian, So going back to the old stuff like a little bit of a crutch. So it does feel good to be like, okay, and now I’m onto the new chapter.

Did you approach it from the standpoint of okay? That hour is done, I’m putting it to bed. Or have you been trying out five ten minute chunks along the way so you have a new set. Yeah, I’m figuring it out along the way. I’m not really sure because a lot of this stuff from the album I’ve already posted as clips on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, So a lot of it was like I stopped doing anyways.

But then there was like a new chunk that like I saved for the album that then I recorded as like a video after that, and now I’m feel like I’m done with that and now I’m like starting fresh. I’ve been talking to a lot of comics who the topic of crowd work keeps coming up, and because of the need to feed the beast, do you find yourself doing I don’t mean this is a dig, but CrowdWork for crowdwork’s sake, just so you have something to feed TikTok or whatnot a little bit. I’ve always really enjoyed crowd work before even that was a thing I found TikTok just I think it makes a live experience a little bit better for the people there. But I try not to rely on it, like I’ll do my material, and then I’ll do a little chunk of crowd work just to make the people who like came to the show feel special, And sometimes that turns into something really funny. But I’m like, yeah, why wouldn’t I post this?

This is really funny? Yeah, good, crowd work is great. It’s I think I struggle with the set up crowd work. I’m gonna just be like, your hat is stupid, just so you can slam me, because you know how you have. There’s so many fake clips now and maybe I’m too close to it that I can just tell yeah, no, I get it.

Like it’s really tough when it when people post something that’s it doesn’t go anywhere. But I’m like really particular about what I post, Like I have to be really happy with it if I’m posting it. So I hope that people who follow me understand this is gonna be worth your time, This is gonna be worth your thirty seconds. It’s gonna go somewhere. Are you post everything yourself?

Is there a secret media team of eighty five people? No, just I have a background in editing, so I’m like, yeah, I don’t really trust that many people that do it for me. No, I hear you on that talk to me about editing. Oh, it’s just I was just always interested in like filmmaking, and so, like I think in high school, I just started like making little like sketches or whatever. And I actually taught myself how to edit before I had a computer or anything.

So I just had like my dad’s camcorder and a VCR player, and I would like edit that way like I would record onto VHS tape, So just bringing it down a generation basically, that’s the hard way. I’m antioned. I learned how a razor blade back me. Wow, yeah, I would have loved that, but I didn’t have It was fun. You have razor blade a grease pencil, and then you got quick enough that you didn’t need the grease pencil anymore.

You kind of had muscle memory with your thumb on where you grab the tape. You make a slice, let’s go for it. But you had to keep track of all the little pieces of tape. You’d take out a chunk and put the tape around your neck so in case the edit was poor and you could put the tape back in and if you lost the piece you had taken out. Once these computers came in.

These kids today, You guys have no idea what it was like back in the day. I know it was fun, though I would have loved to try the film stuff, but yeah, I had was a VHS on the crowd work. Are you finding people coming trying to be annoying participants in your show, like I’m gonna go and I’ll say something funny, so Emily could be even more funny. I haven’t gotten a lot of that. I’ve gotten more like people are scared, like they don’t want to be the butt of the joke, so they if I’m just trying to be nice or just trying to have a conversation, people will be like, I’m not talking to you, and that’s really annoying.

That’s more annoying than someone like trying to get a good clip. I’ve heard audiences are increasingly filling up from the back and not taking the thrush. Oh yeah, yeah, it’s tough. Are you in LA today? I am?

How’s the scene out there? I’m a little rough. I don’t think I’ve I know, I haven’t done a comedy show in LA since the pandemic. How’s the scene? What are the good rooms?

The good rooms? It took a while to come back from the pandemic. Everything just came back really slowly. So independent shows got wiped out and they’re like slowly starting to come back, but all the clubs seem to be back. Like anytime you do a club show, that’s good.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do shows at Largo, which I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but yeah, definitely, every show I’ve done there has been great, So it’s yeah, it’s good. I don’t know. Did you find for yourself doing some research, you had a conan appearance and then the pesky pandemic came along. Did you feel like kind of put things on pause or we’re all in this together, so everybody was on pause. What’s the difference or did you feel like that hit your momentum a little bit?

Oh yeah, I think it definitely took a hit. But I think it came at a time where maybe I was like a little burnt out where I needed a break anyways, so it was like a good reminder that, oh I should rest, I shouldn’t be out every night. I don’t know, just I should take some time just to be by myself and write. So I think that’s what it did for me, and now I just I love being home and I love writing. It like really got me into that groove.

I think the entire world liked, you know, in a weird way. The six months off of we just all got sick a stake from watched Netflix. Right, it was just as much as it was horrible, it was cool. Everyone admits four years later it was great. I was really excited about it, actually, like it was scary, but I was also like, oh, I’m so glad that everybody is just stopping.

I don’t have to keep up with anybody. Did you resort to zoom shows? I did. Yeah. I lived with a couple of other comics, so we did a monthly or weekly zoom show together, which was fun because we were all in the same room, or the three of us were.

And then we got pretty good following every week, and it was just something to keep our minds occupied and still writing jokes and interacting with people. Some weeks were like really rough and really, why are we doing this? That was terrible, But then some weeks it was really fun, and we’d do this thing where people could bend mels and we’d take a shot if we were like during our set, someone ben mode and then they said this is for Emily or whatever. Then someone would hand me a shot and we just started doing water by the end because they were like, we can’t do this anymore. This was a give makes, but we need some great money doing that.

As a civilian, I enjoyed the zoomshells. They were product their time, and I understand why people don’t want to do them, but they were pretty cool. Out here. There was a guy he had a restaurant and he started doing cooking classes. So I remember every Thursday at four o’clock, you would throw him a hundred bucks, go to shop where I’d pick up a box, come home, and he would do a live cooking class.

But the food was credible.

And then it all of a sudden stopped when the world came back and I was like, …

Yeah, stuff was fun. I know. Yeah, there’s definitely some good moments, and I think people really appreciated it, which that helped a lot. When people were like, this is I look forward to this every week, I’m like, Okay, at least somebody is enjoying it and we’re not doing it for nobody. But yeah, it was tough.

When you do comedy in front of a live audience, there’s no other feeling in the world, and so to go from that to you don’t hear anybody laughing, and you sometimes can’t even see their faces, like if they’re smiling, so you have no feedback whatsoever. So it’s really tough to do Zoom shows and so I’m glad I don’t have to do them anymore. I hadn’t really thought of that, right, because you can’t keep the crowd mics on because then you’ll have vidiots talking in your ears. Oh wow, we would keep it on. But the way I guess Zoom works is like, if you’re talking, it’s gonna mute.

Everybody else have to like pause and hope that someone laughs so there’s not an awkward pause. But yeah, live comedy is just a million times better. More with Emily after the break. I love your style, I love your writing, A lot of misdirection in it. Who are your influences?

I started doing some research and I came across an article that I’m convinced was written by AI. It just had a lot of that AI phrasing. Are your influences? Amy? Schumer and Louis C.

K Oh Interesting, I’ve never seen that before. Yeah, never, Probably when I started comedy, they were probably the most famous comedians at the time, So definitely I definitely am influenced by other comedians. But yeah, I would say more Sarah Silverman and like Nay Bargatzi is tak Nataro, like people like that. I could see that in the style and the approach to writing all great comics there. Your album is called Hey, which I love.

Is there a secret meaning behind Hey? Or is just Hey? That’s how I start every set. I just go up and say Hey. Then, so it became like just a fun way to start my set, and for some reason people laugh when I say Hey.

I know, if people laugh when I say Hey, it’s going to be a good show. But if nobody laughs, and I know, I got to put in a little bit more work. Do you have a chunk that you know works when you pull something up from later in the set, or go back to some greatest hits type material just to win the room. Yeah, I have a catalog of greatest hits, and sometimes those don’t even work. So you’re just kind of like, all right, I just got to power through this.

But yeah, I definitely I’ll just go back to stuff that I know works more than other stuff. As somebody who programs comedy radio stations. I appreciate that you named your tracks. Nate drives me nuts. He doesn’t name his tracks.

They’re all eight is twelve tracks tell a story like the guy went to the bathroom. I wonder if he is mad, And it drives me nuts because I’ll be like, oh, I’m looking for a bit about I don’t know airports, and I have no idea what his material is unless I play it. So thank you for labeling your cuts. How much did you work at that or are they just things that were in your mind? Like this segment is called this or did you sit there and go I’m going to name track for this.

No, I’ll always bring like a list up with me because I have a really bad memory, so i’ll forget the order of my jokes. So I kind of name sections of my material anyways. So it was just oh yeah, divorced, married, baseball, like just the one word things that just drogged my memory to let me know where I’m at. So it’s pretty easy to just be like, oh, this section is that, But I do. I wanted every joke to be its own track, but you can’t really do that with I think for like radio or whatever, they have to be like at least two minutes or something.

I had to like group a bunch of jokes together sometimes and then I just called it like whatever the first joke was or something. Yeah, I’ll tell you the secret behind that. As a programmer, you had like a five minute clip, you can play twelve of them in an hour. So if you start handing in forty nine second clips, because they mess up my scheduling, So that four or five minute thing from the radio person’s perspective is the sweet spot, and then you, as the artist wants the radio station to play it so you get some of those sweet royalties. So it’s my advice to all comedians if your goal is to get streaming royalties, don’t have a twenty five second play yeah clip, go for five five minutes, just perfect.

Yeah, that’s that’s what the label told me. I was like, yeah, this is the only plant I’m donas was to get the radio spins. When we started back in two thousand and four, the artists or the comedians were like, you’re stealing our material, I hate you, and then the Royalty checks showed up and I’ll name names. I ran into Ron White and Nashville and boy did he shake my funny how it flipped it.

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And then all of a sudden every comedian was like, why are you not playing my …

Was like, all right, six months ago you hated us. Yeah, but yeah, Sirius has been like a game changer. I actually have hope that we can make money as comedians. Yeah. Sure, it’s great for awareness.

I know a lot of people who bought into it and would come up and do guest spots and it definitely moved tickets for them. It’s anything else, it’s awareness. Yeah. So your album is also out on vinyl. Talk to me about that.

I didn’t know that was a thing, And I don’t mean that as a Weisenheimer. I know Chappelle would sometimes put things out on vinyl that I cynically think was to make sure it qualified as an album for the Grammys, that it was an actual album, not a Netflix special. But you put this one out on vinyl, which is neat. Yeah. I just like the idea of vinyl.

I have a record player, and it really like whenever I put an album on the player. I really just sit there and listen to it. Where if I’m like just listening on my phone or something, I’m like doing other things and not really paying attention. But I like the idea of someone just sitting down and listening to comedy because that’s it feels maybe more like you’re at the show in that way.

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Also, I just love the vinyl artwork, and it’s having a physical piece of art …

Yeah, everything old is new again. Vinyl is super cool. It’s like you said, Hey, here’s my digital release. It’s we talk about this with the kids at the holidays. There’s nothing to give anyone anymore.

Hey, in the day, even if it was just a gift for gifts sake, I could give you a video game or a DVD or an album. Now it’s here’s ten dollars, go on in Apple and buy something. It’s there’s no there there anymore exactly. Yeah, just to hold something is unique these days. So yeah, and then I can just bring them and give them to people or sell them at shows.

Just something to have or sign even it’s always good. Oh I didn’t think that. Yeah that’s neat. Yeah i’d like posters I was doing, but I don’t know. Posters are cool, but not everybody wants a poster.

But everybody can stash away YL even if they don’t have a fit record player. They’re cool to free. Yeah, they are cool. Are you touring right now? Is on your website?

I saw one date from memory. I think it’s in Seattle, and I just thought it was quirky that there’s one date on there and it’s only in Seattle and why Seattle? And I just had a million questions. Well, yeah, I’m planning a new tour starting in September, but Seattle is the only one who’s put up their tickets yet, so that’s why I just love it there. But yeah, I’ll be going out, but I’m just waiting for everybody to post the tickets before I start promoting it.

But this will be more like I’m gonna just try a bunch new material tour and try to work on a new hour and I’ll probably yeah, do crowd work too, just just to have some fun. But I won’t be it won’t be forced I think new material tours are cool. Kevin Hart just did a little one a similar thing. A few years ago. Weird Awl went out and it was like Deep Cuts, only if you want to hear eat it, do not come.

You’re just going to be disappointed the diehards. I love that kind of show that just is all right, we’re just having fun here tonight. Yeah. I like it too. It makes me feel like I’m actually, like, yeah, working on my craft.

But I understand if a tourists is like coming to a comedy club or a show and they don’t really know who I am, they probably wouldn’t care about it, or maybe they wouldn’t have a good time. But I think for people who know me and know me from my clips and stuff, I think that would be really cool for them to see the process, see behind the scenes of like how I come up with my stuff. And different shows, different venues, different days of the week, different timeslots, different expectations. Tuesday night, you show up at ten forty five unannounced, a lot different than your name being on the marque at a theater, right, yeah, yeah, But I don’t know. I think that if people are coming to see me, it’s my headlining show.

They probably have listened to my album or seen my reels and stuff. I don’t know if they want to see those again. So to me, I’m like to just like try new things and work it out with them. But I don’t know if other people like that, or if I just liked how timely or topical do you like to get You like to dive into particular current events, which I’m not going to get into. You stay away from all that.

I like to stay away from it. I think we get enough of that and people, Yeah, that’s all the late night talk shows are, so it’s going to be done, all the topical stuff, so I focus on other things. I do like to al write jokes. If I’m in a a new city, I’ll write jokes about that city or observations or whatever. But that’s the only really topical thing I’ll do.

So is that just walking around and taking it in by osmosis or is that asking a local for a topical joke or yeah, just walking around or even reading about the city before I go, because I’m going into cities that I’ve never been in and I don’t know anything about, so it is I think interesting just to see my observations from one who’s never been there before, in the vibe of the city or the vibe of the people that I’ve met. And that’s why I do crowd work too, because everybody is different in every city, so I got to get to know what they’re all about. What do you do when you’re not doing comedy? What do your other things? I love movies, like I’ll just go watch movies below.

Just being outside, like I love camping and rock climbing and just hanging out with family. I don’t know, I’m pretty boring, just boring, that’s awesome. I tried doing indoor and I discovered I have this terrible fear of heights. I was like, I did it exactly once. I’m hitting the rope and I’m like, did you, And all of a sudden, I had that innate response, Oh my god, I’m forty feet up, bah get me out of here.

I never knew I had this fear. It is. It’s scary, even like when you’re used to it, the heights are still scary because it’s a if something goes wrong, it’s over. But I think that’s why it’s exciting too. It’s like that adrenaline rush I guess it’s similar to comedy that makes your heart beat a little bit faster.

So how does one do it? Do you need an organized crew? I assume you need at least a buddy, right, you’re not going out there yourself and climbing or Yeah, you have buddies. Climbing buddies, they’re pretty easy to find. It got like really popular, so now the gyms are like way too crowded in LA especially.

Do you have any other projects coming up that we should know about other than the album? After the album, I filmed a special which has some of the chunks from the album, but a lot of new stuff too. I’m editing that now with the director and I’m not sure when it’ll be out, but that’s something that’s coming up. And I’m filming another I don’t tell taping next week, so that’ll be coming out too at some point. So I have, yeah, a lot of content coming out which hopefully people like.

I’m scrolling through my notes here and one thing that cracked me up when I was doing the prep. I don’t know how often you google yourself or not. Are you familiar with this other Emily in Pittsburgh that reviews food? Yeah, actually, I’m working on a joke about that. See, I was going to commentate with you could wreck her life if you wanted to, just by posting videos.

But oh that’s hilarious, right, I won’t. I don’t want to ruin your joke. I feel like she probably has heard of me, but I don’t know because I get a lot of messages from There are a lot of Emily Catalanos out there, so I’ll get message of the dms like hey, nice name or something like that. But yeah, she’s the one who I’m the most familiar with it because I set up like a Google alert for my name. Sure, and it’s only her.

I don’t get any press. It’s always her. So that’s what I’m start doing a killer ten minutes about it’s her. I’m sure even ben to pitt alert. But I would like to get a great city and then I’ll invite her.

She can fantastic me two her favorite food spots. Thank you for your time today, best of luck with the album, and looking forward to the upcoming special. Oh yeah, thanks. If you would like this program commercial free. In the show notes, it says Klaroga dot supportingcast dot FM.

You’re going to go to that ur L for four ninety nine, if you’ll get this program ad free, and a bunch of the others on the network also ad free. So do that and I’ll be back tomorrow with a normal episode. See then.

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Find me. Oh, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Gqsked Jerry had the Seinfeld finale bothered him all these years. Jerry said a little bit.

Yeah, I don’t believe in regret. I think it’s arrogant to think you could have done something different. You couldn’t. That’s why you did what you did. But me and Jeff Schaffer and Larry were standing around talking about TV finales which we thought were great.

I feel Madman was the greatest. A lot of people like the Bob Newhart won, Mary Tyler Moore was okay. I think mad Man was the greatest final moment of a series I’ve ever seen, so satisfying, so funny. And they said that they had sat and watched the Seinfeld finale trying to figure out what went wrong, and it was obvious about that final scene leaving them all in the jail cell. I think we were affected by some things.

People had said that they were selfish or whatever, and looking back in it, I think they were great. I love them. First of all, you’re not doing comedy without self directed individuals. There’s an essential element of comedies in Shakespeare in Forever. You can’t do comedy without selfish people.

That’s what people relate to. Jerry talked about revealing very little about himself. Jerry said, I do this one bit about I don’t have arguments to my wife. Now. When I say those things, the audience knows that they can’t be true, but they don’t care because they want to hear the joke.

The great joy to me is I’m making this up, but let me see if I can make it sound like it makes sense to me. That’s what comedy is to me. They know I’m lying from the first line, and they don’t care. I always say, I don’t want to hear amusing anecdotes from your journal talk about something that couldn’t possibly have happened. That’s what I want to hear.

I just think, if you’re a comedian and you want to survive, your only flotation device in the oceanic words of show business is real laughs. When you’re young and cute and interesting at twenty three or thirty three, a lot of things work when you’re fifty three. If you want people to get in their car and pay cash and schlep into those seats, it’s harder. I would just caution the next generation. If you want to do this your whole life, which every comedian does, make sure you’re getting real laughs.

GQ asked, Jerry, are you saying the more confessional style of comedy is anti laugh Jerry said, no, no, no, I’m saying I know a million comedians who’s work dried up at fifty three. You gotta be ready for that. Make sure you’re working to be ready for that. Forbes asked Brad Williams’s surprised you about doing stand up that you didn’t know beforehand? Brad said, one of the surprising parts about comedy is also one of the most beautiful.

You can be Jerry Seinfeld, And the process is still the same, and the stages are still the same. Jerry still has to walk through the kitchen. He’s a billionaire and he hangs out in the same tiny green room that all the other comics do. Comedy humbles you, it keeps you humble. Forbes also caught up with Billy Gardell.

He’s back out doing stand up after being a TV star for a few years. Here he says, at the beginning it was terrifying because I hadn’t done it in like three years. Obviously, I took some time to change my health, and I took some time off to rearrange the puzzle pieces. You know, I lost one hundred and seventy three pounds and I had to get used to this frame and what this body wanted to tell me. So it’s been fun to explore that.

Yeah, if you haven’t seen a picture of Billy Gardell, google him. You won’t recognize him. He looks great. The first show back was terrifying, But then I don’t know, man, something happens when you get that connection with the audience. You start to want more and more and more.

And now I’m really having fun again. I can’t believe I’ve gotten to do two hit TV shows. I don’t know who gets to do that. My wife says, I’ve got a horseshoe in my butt. But the common thread in both those shows is that love wins the day.

Where the world is right now. I’m so proud of that show. Bob Hart’s Abashola all right, how as I keep the weight off, I’m religious about it. I pack healthy stuff in my suitcase. When I get to a destination, my first trip is to get some healthy snacks of the room.

So I don’t tempt myself. I find a way to work out. I got a trainer who says there’s always time in the day. It just means you gotta get up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later. I’ve adapted that mantra man and finally learned it’s not torture to do this stuff.

It took me until fifty two to figure it out. I’ll be fifty five in August, but I’m a big believer that enlightenment doesn’t care when you get there, as long as you arrive. I’m learning to take care of myself and I’m finding joy in that. Maybe he’ll get me remotivated for someone who Humblebragg did the New York City Marathon. I guess it’s seven months ago now.

I can’t run two and a half miles right now. It’s just it’s unbelievable. Don’t turn fifty something, guys. Billy Guardell talks about localization. I try to find something cool in each city I go to.

I tell my son this all the time. You gotta go look for inspiration and it’s not gonna knock on the door. You gotta read. When I was in Kansas City, I went to jazz legend Charlie Parkers gravesite in Saint Louis. They’ve got toasted Ravioli.

In Philadelphia, it’s the Liberty bell Or Museums. And usually some kind of inspiration will come from that. Other things he does. I’m a big vinyl guy. I’m always adding to my record collection.

I also like to mess with my car a little bit. I’m a simple guy that way. When I got my downtime, I’d try to cherish it at home. Eddie Murphy didn’t think Beverly Hills Cop was going to go well. He was twenty three years old in nineteen eighty four.

He went to the industry screening and said it didn’t go well. A lot of times at industry screenings, they don’t laugh. I thought the movie was going to be horrible. I was with director John Landis and he was like, no, it’s great. I thought they hated it.

Then I went and I saw it with a real audience, and I saw the real reaction to it. But the very first time, it was scary. Beverly Hills Cop axl F on Netflix July third. They might even make a fifth movie, Murphy said, they’re developing it. If it comes together, we’ll be doing another one.

However, the latest film took a toll on his body. I messed my knee up before the movie started. I didn’t mess my knee up doing a stunt. I mess my knee up sleeping. When you’re getting your sixties, you get miss your body up just sleeping.

I hear you the only times really likes Jim Norton’s podcast sword Fight. Jim says, we have the typical married stuff and people can respond the way they want to. But the podcast is accurate, it’s truthful, and we’re not trying to put masks on to pretend. The best way to get people to change how trans people are viewed is to interact with trans people so they can realize, oh, hey, they’re just like everyone else. She laughs at weird things and wants to do stuff at eleven at night when she knows I have to work in the morning, so it’s like having a child.

Nikki said, I also think Jim’s friends know this is for real, and I think they can tell that Jim is very serious about this relationship. In my eyes, what a man Jim Norton is to take me to comedy clubs around all these men. When I’m from another world and foreign, you do get looked at a little differently. But what a man he is. I mean people might look at him as a little feminine or a little sub in a way, but you’re such a man, Jim says, you see what marriage life is like.

She makes me feel really good. Do you see what a man is? He’s a trans icon. Sure, the whole world thinks he’s a fruit and a sub and a bottom, but I’m telling you what a man. My guest on tomorrow’s podcast is Emily Catalano.

She’s got a new album out today. It’s called Hey Hey.

Also comes available pressed on limited edition vinyl with a gorgeous matt fi…

Emily Catalano’s Hey out today on the Blonde Medicine label, and I’ll speak with her tomorrow. It’s more of a twenty minute John interviews the comedians. If you’re looking for one of these one hour epics that I’ve handed in the last few weekends, it’s not that. John Christ will tape his next special tonights at Gas South Theater in Atlanta. Law Smith spoke to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

Law is making a comedy special quote unquote, Finally, law Smith says, I squandered previous album deals, made excuses like my divorced drama taking up all my ram space for years, been fourteen years in comedy without any asset to show for it. I turned forty on June twenty fifth, and it gives me something on the calendar to either net up or shut up. He’ll be at the Gimmick tonight and Sunday, where he’ll be taping his first special over two nights. It might wind up being called Sunny State for Shady People, or maybe not. He hasn’t finalized the title yet, but the main topic is all set Florida and tim Bah.

Smith said, My argument is that Florida is the most American state. It’s the f ups that important here to start a second life that make the Florida Man news. Smith also hosts a podcast called Sweat Equity that contains comedic elements, but is also focused on small business and entrepreneurial advice and strategies. As for the tapings, law says, I wanted to keep it local because Tampa Bay has amazing underrated talent. Go see him tonight at Vick gimmick.

British comedian Ted Robbins is related to Paul McCartney. Yes that Paul McCartney. Robin’s late mother was Paul McCartney’s first cousin. He told the Chattabis podcast that having such a huge star in the family has not been easy for everyone. He says, Paul and my mom are first cousins.

You know when people do the who’s the most famous person on your phone? Well that’s mister McCartney. In some ways, it’s a great thing, and for some members of our family I won’t name names, it’s kind of screwed their lives up a little bit because you’re compared, you know what I mean, Paul McCartney and all that you’ve become a dentist great. Robbins thinks that’s particularly true for Paul McCartney’s younger brother, Mike, who as a musician and goes by the name Mike McGear. I think Mike is brother who’s the loveiest lot of men and talented, but his fears on his gravestone here lies Paul McCartney’s brother.

Robbins also claims Paul McCartney’s nineteen seventy song Teddy Boy was written about him. You know, he wrote a song called Teddy Boy, which was on his first solo album called McCartney and you know it goes this is the story of a boy named ted and it was sort of inspired by me. Hm. The Washington Post has been looking at the DC comedy scene. They spoke with Shelley Kim, who has been performing since high school in southern California.

She describes herself as proud husband and father. No, I didn’t mess up. How do you describe your comedic style, Shelley Kim? Shelley says, when I’m starting out, I was described as deadpan, but I learned I was deadpan because I was mumbling a lot. I’ve really worked on my inflection since then.

My comedy is much more accessible and most importantly audible. But who knows what my style will be in the future. Maybe I’ll be using puppets. Tell us about a time you bombed, She says, Oh gosh, one time someone played cricket sounds from their phone. I still shudder when I hear crickets at night.

Do you have a day job. Let me know if you’re hiring. What’s your appreciate routine? I mount the first few words of my set, over and over. It’s more of a nervous tick than a routine.

I’m doing my best and not to be a mumbler again. What else should we know about you? Let me know if you’re hiring hilarious. And that is your comedy news for today. All right, Emily Catillano.

Tomorrow, a normal episode on Sunday. See you then,

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media and Hello, I’m Jennie Mack with your Daily Comedy News. The New Yorker said to Jerry Seinfeld, it’s possible that you’ve made a dollar or two from Seinfeld, yet you still work hard. Why, Jerry said, because the only thing in life that’s really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession. The things that money buys are fine, they’re good.

I like them, but having a skill. I learned this from reading Esquire magazine in the sixties. They did an issue on mastery. Do you remember that, The interviewer says, I don’t. I’m surprised you definitely read Esquire.

Oh yeah, of course I loved Esquire in the sixties and magazine for men. Remember, yes, I do. Yeah, And they did one issue. In fact, I gotta get this issue. I’ll get it on eBay.

I’m sure it’s there. It’s a very zen Buddhist concept. Pursue mastery that will fulfill your life. You will feel good. I know a lot of rich people, so to you, they don’t feel good as you think they should and would.

They’re miserable because if they don’t master a skill, life isn’t fulfilling. So I work because if you don’t stand up comedy, if you don’t do it a lot, you stink. They asked Jerry, who did he start listening to that made him say that was the skull I want to learn. Terry said, Robert Klin and Jay Leno were the two guys that and George Carlin, Bill Cosby I love, but I thought I can never be that good. Switching gears.

Jerry talked about naming the series. I thought, well, they’ll just call it Seinfeld no matter what we call it, so we might as well just call it Seinfeld because Carson wasn’t the Tonight show. You’re on Carson. It becomes the name of the guy, and that’s why we called it that. I never thought, well that’s a Jewish name.

What about Middle America never ever crossed my mind. The New Yorker pointed out that NBC executive Brandon Tartakoff said the show originally was to New York and too Jewish. Terry said, maybe we mentioned a bar Mitzvah one time. Maybe I don’t know. We would have done anything, and comedy do anything that you think might work.

Anything. The reason my show succeeded was the brilliance of Jason, Michael and Julia. They took this really esoteric material and the brilliant performers and actors that they were, they made this material accessible to a wide audience. That’s why the show worked. Those three people, Larry and I could never have done it.

Our humor is. I think maybe it’s a little more accessible now, but at that time no. Brandon Tartakoff was right, but he didn’t realize how great Jason, might and Julia were. That’s what he missed. A tip from Jerry, don’t try to be funny if you’re not funny, if people aren’t always telling you you’re funny, don’t be funny unless you’re drunk and you’re with your very very close friends.

I set out to find out if I was funny. I didn’t think I was any funnier than any friend I had growing up. I thought we’re all exactly the same. I drove to this club, the Golden Lion Pub one forty three West forty fourth Street, no longer there. I’m still a Queen’s college.

They have an audition. I think there were just a few people there, and I did this joke about being left handed and They got a laugh, and then they booked me. The interviewer says, I want to hear the joke, and Jerry goes, all right. The joke is I’m laught handed. Why are so many left things negatively associated?

Two left feet? Left handed? Cop of it? You go to a party, there’s nobody there. Where’d everybody go?

They left huge? It got a huge laugh. Jerry tells an anecdote. I saw comedian do a couple of Tonight shows and get bounced. I don’t want to mention the name.

He went on, He did well. The second time he went on, he did less well. The third time he struggled. They never had him back, and I went, oh, now I get how this racket works. This is a writer’s game.

If you can write, you succeed. If you can’t, you will not make it. The performing being funny on stage, that’s great. A comedy can be funny on stage, But the bullets are the writing, Jerry. Do you watch tapes of yourself?

For films of yourself? Jerry said, sometimes every artist is only showing you his best. When you watch a movie, every scene, they only show you the one take that worked. Seventeen times they missed it, you’re only seeing the peak of it, and stand up. You gotta make it happen every night.

That’s the difference. That’s why actors I think they like to do theater. They want to be honest, They want to be held to account, and only a live audience holds you to account. Jerry, do you feel constant pressure to make it new all the time? Jerry says that conversation would take another hour.

The short version is, there’s no answer. If I love a bit that somebody doesn’t, I go and they do the bit. I love it the comedian you’ve seen them after the show. You go, you did the Beana bit? I love the bean A bit and they go, I know I’m trying to get out of my act.

Do something new? You go, No, I love that bit. Who’s right, there’s no answer, Jerry? Will you do another special for Netflix? He says, no, why not again?

We don’t have time for that. Jerry. Do you ever go to clubs? Yeah? I go all the time.

I don’t sit there and pay for two drinks and watch the guys go. That guy’s fantastic. I gotta work out my own stuff, Jay Leno told uh New Jersey one on one point five radio to me, there’s nothing funnier than comedy in New Jersey. I was at Rascals once years ago. So next to Rascals is an arcade, literally right next door.

So I’m in the arcade. I’m playing one of the games. To see this guy looking at me and he goes, hey, you look like Jay Leno. Jay says, I am Jay Leno. The guy goes, no, you’re not.

Jay wouldn’t be here. Jay says, I’m playing Rascals right next door. I’m on in forty five minutes. Right now, I’m playing a video game. The guy asked leto for his ID.

Jay Leno declined to provide his ID. So I go on stage. I see the guy sitting like two seats right in front of me. I go, do you believe me? Now?

Wartschatter dot Com spoke to Mike Burri Bigley about what started him in comedy. Mike says, I want to say I was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. My brother Joe took me to see Stephen Wright, and that sent me into a rabbit hole of writing in my notebook like random thoughts, you know, because it perform what Stephen Wright does. So well as he performs this match a trick of here’s some things I was thinking about, and I’m just reeling them off the top of my head. And you know it’s an illusion because he’s written them and workshopped them, and he knows they’ll get laughs in these different places.

So I started writing a ton of jokes. Was acting ever going to be your focus? Mike? Mike said, When I got into comedy in the late nineties, the path success was you became a comedian, then you got a sitcom, and that was Ray Romano, that was Roseanne Seinfeld, et cetera. I was on that trajectory until about two thousand and eight, when I shot a sitcom pilot for CBS based on my life.

It was like an untitled Mike Birbiglia project. Then it didn’t get picked up. Then I kind of doubled down and tripled down on making these specials. I made Sleepwalk with Me my girlfriend’s Boyfriend. Thank God for the jokes, the new one and the most recent one, which is called the Old Man in the Pool, And weirdly those become what I do.

Forbes talk to Brad Williams about his new special Starfish. Brad, who is a little person, says, Look, there will always be dwarf jokes. I’m a little person. I don’t know how to write jokes from the perspective of a six foot guy. But on this special I dive into a lot of different topics and I’m really happy to leave my comfort zone.

I’m at the stage of life where I’m a father and I’ve been married a few years now. I want to give something new as a comic. I love the laughs, I live off those, but the moments that really get me excited to the silences, Because if the audience is quiet and that’s what I planned, I’ve got them. There’s a moment where I reveal something about my daughter and the audience goes quiet. I can tug it your heartstrings a little knowing that I have a joke to bring you back.

I want you to feel everything when you come to my show. I want you to feel joy and laughter, but I also want you to think a little bit this is great, and I also want you to be sad that I want to bring it back up and have you always leave happy. There was a famous speech by Jim Valvano at the sb Awards where he said something like if you can laugh, cry, and think on the same day. That was a hell of a day, and I want to make people do that, but just in an hour. So pretty profound answer there, right, What do they follow up with?

Do you find it hard to work out material for your specialist while people are taping with their phones? Wait to listen to the answer and follow up on it anyway, Brad said, I call people out. Hey, dude, I’m working on stuff. Let’s put the phone down. There’s a joke in my special and I’m most proud of about the bud Light transgender spokesperson controversy.

When I first told the joke was horrible and I got to a point where it was getting last, but it wasn’t kind of last I wanted. They were aggressive, so I kept tooling with it and I finally got the joke to point where it’s about the right laughter, The message reflects my personal beliefs. Nailed it, and you need to be allowed that process. Here’s some well written copy that I’ll read verbatim. Step right up, Comedy lovers, get ready to witness a night of hilarity and heart as the incomparable Gina Brillan takes a stage tonight at the legendary Gotham Comedy Club to film their fifth stan up special Mind Your Business.

The Washington Post has been covering the DC comedy scene. Matthew Deakins describes his comedy style as I wouldn’t describe my comedic style. Describing one’s comedic style is pretentious streetely like that answer? All right, what do you like to tell jokes about? Matthew Deacon says, Applebee’s Loreina Bobbitt Disney Adults, German adults seven to eleven.

What’s the best thing about the DC comedy scene? Matthew Deacon says, On any given night, you might be performing for the architects of the Iraq War. Tomorrow you might be performing for the architects of the next war. Someone in the audience works for Raytheon and Grumming. Somebody else works for a nonprofit that helps orphans in far away places that I’ll never visit.

They’re all here, and they’re all doing the same thing. They make spreadsheets and powerpoints, and most of them want to go home to somebody who loves them, and most of them will go home to an empty apartment for ninety minutes. They forget their apartment is empty, and they forget the mission statement of the organization they wish they didn’t work for. They don’t check email, they can’t look at LinkedIn for ninety minutes. They think about their dad, and their yard and their dawn.

They wonder if anything will ever be as good as their memories. Wow, all right, Matthew Deakons, What else should we know about you? I’ve told you everything. Democracy might die in darkness, but privacy thrives in it. If you want anything else, listen to my podcast.

It’s called half a Nice Day. Sounds like an interesting dude. That is your comedy news for today. If you would like this program, add free listen to the promo that you’ve heard five million times by now, or link in the show notes. Four ninety nine a month you get this one ad free, a bunch of others add free.

Pretty cool and nice? What to support the show? See you tomorrow

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Caloroga Shark Media finally know Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Jerry Seinfeld still thinks about a heckler from thirty years ago. Jerry was on the In Depth with Graham Benzeger show. Jerry said, I had this amazing bit about weddings. It was fantastic.

It was so long, covered everything, and I worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. It takes me forever starting to the bit and somebody else heard it. That was a tough one. I still think about it. I mean it was true.

Jerry explained it was a bit they had been working out until he thought he finally made it perfect. I guess the fellow had heard an unfinished version of it. Terry said, I think now audience is a little more sophisticated. There are pieces that we work on for months and months and months. You don’t do it once and works.

Every scene you see in a movie. They did that eighteen times. One time it was good. Same with comedy. I’ve done it one hundred times and now I finally got it.

Corey Holcombe called Donell Rawling’s recent special a new day mild. Rawling said people try to use the word mild as an, but I’m over fifty years old. I don’t even like hot sauce. I get heartburn. There’s nothing wrong with walking in the line, but not pushing it.

That’s where my comedy is. Donnelle Hall’s life been feel lately. It’s good and it’s gonna continue. The only thing we can do is try to evolve, especially as a stand up and artist. We have to be the best we can and give the people what they want.

I don’t think I’ll ever hit the max. I’m always gonna try to go next level. He talked about working with people like it Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. The notes I’ve taken from Rock and Chappelle are that anything is possible, and if you work hard enough, you give me in a situation where you could say I’m rich bitch and Philerinas as for his catchphrase, there’s been some good and some bad. The good is people recognize my voice from that phrase.

But the bad is when I go with my friends to dinner, they don’t even open their walls. They look at me and like, I thought you were rich, bitch. Ha Donelle filmed the special three times. What was missing? The first two Donnelle said, I don’t think anything was missing.

The first time I did it, I knew was funny, but Chappelle told me, Donnelle, you’re one of the funniest guys. I know you’d rip any room, but it doesn’t make it a great special. The second time we did it, I took his notes, but then we an issue with the production of it, but it was never a high level or frustration. A lot of times people don’t get multiple opportunities to do it, but Chappelle believed me enough and the product I could produce, and we got it together. I have no regrets, all right.

How’s that feud with Corey Holcombe going? The last time was an l I went to this club and Hulcomb was there. The first thing I asked him was could I be on his podcast? He said, yo, d why do you have something against me? I said, bro, you can’t say that.

I’ve always shown you love. My only issue was why he felt they need to put down some of the people who are moving the culture of comedy. He agreed with me, so I’m going to do a show. For some reason, the black comedy community thinks only one comic can make it at a time, and a lot of times they don’t support each other. This room for everybody.

There are different styles and genres of comedy. One of the hottest things now is social media influencers transitioning the stand up. They have the platform because people want to see them. Then you have their crowd work, which I’m not a huge fan of. It’s a muscle in itself, but it was shunned back when I was coming up because it usually meant a comic didn’t have an act.

But I don’t knock it. A lot of people my age think these young guns coming up don’t respect the art. But when I started, if you wanted to be rich or famous off this, you had to be good. That was the only way you can get noticed. But nowadays these kids are making hundreds of thousand dollars a month and of no incentive to be good.

You can’t tell them to work on that joke. They’re like, I heard what you said, but I just made one click and made ten thousand dollars. But if you’re a real comic, you can protect the craft by being good and evolving. One of the comedians I came up with hated shows when a YouTube guy would come on behind them. He wouldn’t go to those shows, but I told him, get your money, go to the show and teach them a lesson.

WPR asked Dmitri Martin about his creative process. Dmitri said, what I usually do is daydream a lot. A lot of my jokes come from that. I’ve teld some stories over the years, but once I’ve told a story five, ten, fifteen or whatever number of times, I get pretty tired of the story and myself because I’m usually in the story. But with jokes, especially shorter ones, I don’t get sick of them so fast, and if I do, I could drop one out of the set and it can reappear months later or years later.

Most of the jokes aren’t about me. They’re more about ideas or perspective. So in terms of the process, there’s a much more enjoyable pursuit because I’m daydreaming and brainstorming. Sometimes jokes just don’t float into my head. But I’m getting ready for a stand up special or tour I’m going to record now or something.

Then I’m trying to force them out. I’m really pushing it. That’s when I spend more time, especially on flights, when i’m touring, I bring a spiral notebook, write jokes, underline them, and then write as many as I can until the plane lands and see what I can come up with. Ali Sidiq spoke to Cracked. He said, I did Domino Effect my first special, and then people started asking me about the rest of the story.

The simplest way was to do it in chronological order. If they’re going to listen to the whole story, just do it off all the way until I got incarcerated, because people knew that I was incarcerated, but they didn’t know how I got there. I got out of prison October twenty first at nineteen ninety seven. I went to Just Joking Comedy Cafe December of ninety seven, and I learned observation, being able to look at an audience and determine what I’m going to do. Was Apollo Knight, and that’s where you had to start.

You get everybody on Apollow Knight. They were singing, doing poetry, magic, rapping. I didn’t understand that this was a younger crowd. I have on a suit because I worked at the men’s apparel store, and because I have on a suit, they brewed me. They didn’t even say anything other than hey, y’all doing and they started booing.

So I waited two weeks for them to forget me, and I went back up there with a regular shirt, jean sneakers, looking just like them. I did good, and I kept coming back every week. I remember what DL Hugley told me, The funniest you’re going to be is based on how honest you want to be. I asked Bruce, Bruce, you think you can become a great comic if you have a job, and he said, man, do not quit your day job until your stand up comedy is making more money for you consistently than your job. I wish I could have run into Don Rickles.

I would have asked him, how are you so brave? On stage. Seth Meyers is sad about losing his band. He told Deadline, I think they know how sad I am that they’re not going to be part of the show moving forward. Lord Michael saw the New York Times.

I think everybody had to go through belt tightening. Seth said, I feel incredibly grateful to have had the eight G band for ten years. Somebody like me never thinks they’re going to have the luxury of people playing music before they walk out on stage. I feel grateful for the time we had together. The band will be with the show through the end of the summer, Meyers said, I’m happy we get them through August, so we’ll value this time together until that comes.

But mostly I just reflect on it as a gift that I had for a great many years. Good article from Auto Straddle of Bennie Jones under the headline as a trans woman getting into stand up comedy? Can I avoid jokes about my identity? Benny writes, Throughout my teens, Dave Chappelle was my favorite comedian. That’s easier to admit that it might seem.

As a child, my favorite comedian was Bill Cosby. My father had a warn VHS copy of Bill Cosby himself and would sit my brother and I in front of it. That’s because Cosby was clean. I didn’t decide to take a stand up comedy class as an act of contrition, but I’m aware that this is an inauspicious origin story. If I ever decide to pursue comedy as a career, I’m gonna have to invent one with less problematic early influences.

This essay isn’t about them, though I didn’t give stand up a try in response to Dave Chappelle Ricky Gervais at controversial recent specials. I did so because I’m both a lifelong stand up comedy fan and a trans woman of color. And yet my current favorite working stand up comedians are James Acaster, Bo Burnham, and Dimitri Martin. All cis straight white men. I realized what I appreciate most about each of them and some older favorites like Bitch Edburg and Stephen Wright.

Is there a comedy typically focuses on one liner’s wordplay, absurdity, and playing with the form of comedy. They tend to tell jokes rather than stories. It seems as though their assis straight white maleness means they aren’t forced to comment on their identities and their work. They’re free to be funny in a way that others aren’t. There are three things in stand up that I’m tired of.

The first I share with most everyone hackneyed reliance on derogatory tropes i e. Punching down. The other two, however, seem to be the bread and butter of modern stand up comedy, amusing storytelling from one’s life that leans heavily on having lived through an interesting experience rather than having written a clever punchline, and observations and or explanations about one’s gender sexuality erase, I’m a trans woman of color, and being trans is frequently hilarious. But why should straight white men get to have all the fun writing one liners on wordplay jokes. Why should they get to be absurd and silly and observational rather than relatable.

I didn’t want to tell stories about my own life. I’ve done enough of that in my writing. The saying says, if you can’t find the art you want to see, you have to create it yourself. Good stuff, and that’s your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it.

They might like it too, and I’ll meet you back here tomorrow

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hi, I’m Johnny mack with your daily comedy and who’s some fun jokes from Jimmy Fallon. First, Chipotle is selling a new Chipotle Boy Bowl aimed at finance bros. It’s a normal bull, but instead of building it yourself, your dad just hands it to you. Love it.

Another one, a woman in Maryland brought a vase at a thrift store for four dollars that turned out to be a two thousand year old Mayan artifact. Experts were like, you’re either rich or cursed. Listener Richard actually sent that over as an item for five Good News Stories that’ll be showing up on that podcast, which I also host Five Good News Stories where you get your pods? Did Jerry Seinfeld listen to last week’s podcast and take advice from Johnny macko? And Hey, my Heckel game is pretty weak.

I better step it up because Jerry this time came prepared. Another group of pro Palestine Heckler showed up at a show in Australia, and this time Jerry had material. Let’s listen. Oh you’re bye, they’re by, the contesters are by, Why miss you? Oh you’re not doing well, it’s so hard for you.

You gotta guest. Listen, dude, listen, listen. Let me explain something. You and I are in the same business. We’re in the same business.

Our business is to get people to see things the way we see it. The problem is you’re in the wrong place. Do you hear how well I’m doing. This is what you want? You want to do well like I am.

Look at the people here to hear me. Look at what happened to you. I look because context is very important for your message. For example, if I was going to do my little comedy show that I do. If I went to a Australian rules rugby game and I told this guy I love this guy.

If I said to this guy, you check out, I’m gonna do my comedy act here, I would get that same reaction. I would get kicked out on my ass because that’s not where I blow. Here’s the other thing I think you need to go back and tell who’s ever running your organization. We just gave more money to a jew. That cannot be a good plan for you.

That’s not what you want. That’s the whole problem. That you gotta come up with a better plan. Now that was clearly rehearsed. Jerry was ready for that one, so he stepped up his game.

Hey is Michael Jay leaving Saturday Night Live? Let me answer No, he does this every year. Last week he posted a rather cryptic Instagram story that had some fans wondering if he was leaving SNL. On an otherwise blank post, he wrote, I’m a full time stand up comedian again. Some think he’s hinting that SNL is no longer his full time job.

Others are like, it’s summer, He’s a full time stand up comedian. We’ll see. I mean the Jost shape hearing has been so strong. To leave it as we walk up to the fiftieth anniversary would be probably insane. Do one more year with Jost, take the victory lap, then get out to get out now is crazy?

That would just be crazy. Mark Norman has a new short documentary for Punch Up Live. We get to see Mark Norman working on a joke from the first time he tried it to all the way to doing it at Carnegie Hall. The eight hundred pound Gerilla Websites spoke with Mark and said, do you get the impression that audiences are generally unaware of just how painstaking the process is. For one joke, Norman said, oh, one hundred percent.

It’s so much to do about word choice and trial and error, and hey, I thought this would work. Let me say this line. Maybe that’ll trigger something. It’s not pretty. Was there pressure or fear with showing yourself bombing and having to live through that again?

Norman said, well a little bit. We’re shooting another one right now. It’s so much bombing and people are like, what the hell. I thought this guy had a Netflix special. This isn’t great.

I thought the bombing part was what people needed to say, so let’s show them the nitty gritty. I say, bombing is work, But then watching yourself back just brings up all those feelings. Killing’s bad too, by the way, just watching yourself suck. So watching yourself bomb is really heartbreaking. The Gorilla said, I can’t imagine what it’s like having to edit a special.

Norman said, oh, yeah, it’s a nightmare. I have a friend he did an hour special. It was so painful for him to watch you till the editor just edited. I can’t even look at it.

And then he looked at it later and it was like, oh, shoot.

I should have watched it, so you have to do it, but it’s painful. Conan O’Brien is set to make a cameo in If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. The New York Times describes the upcoming part as a dramatic cameo. If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You was a comedy drama set to star Rose Byrne. The film follows a therapist and mother on Long Island who must navigate her child’s mysterious illness and absent husband, a demolished home, a missing person, and an increase complicated relationship with her own therapist, all while treating her own crisis laden patients.

So a dramatic cameo. Does he play Conan O’Brien’s talk show host Conan’s physicality he’s rather tall and has a shock of red orange hair, it might be difficult for him to disappear into a role we’ll see. I have told Jeff Foxworthy many times I’d like to see him go off type and play something like mean or nasty like Jeff Foxworthy serial killer would be amazing. But Jeff has not taken me up on my advice yet. Told you John Stewart’s in a band well Church and State.

They’re working on an album. Singer Rick Barry, guitarist Andy Bova, bassist Jim Bova, drummer John Stewart. Singer Rick Barry tells Late Night Or we’d been working on the songs for some time now and preparing to do a pop up show eventually. Since that’s kind of the whole vibe of Asbury Underground anyway, I thought it’d be the perfect event for us to show up and play somewhere unannounced in a non traditional venue. The folks at Asbury Park Brewery were extremely accommodating.

Now it’s back to the studio at Simple Sound Studios where we’re writing and tracking our debut record, so hopefully everyone keeps an eye out for that. John Mulaney will narrate the audiobook for former SNL writer Simon Rich’s short story collection Glory Days. Glory Days is a collection of stories the chronicles the plight of aging millennials. The story’s encapsulate a variety of perspectives, such as a forty year old super Mario who must take a stock of his life, as well as the trials of participation trophy reminiscing about how they were won by a jubilant Athmatic. In a statement, Rich tells people, I’ve been a John Malaney superfan since the day we met at SNL in two thousand and eight.

He’s the funniest person on the planet. I think he should read the audio version of every book, even the super intense religious ones run on. Hirschberg will have a special next week Comedy Dynamics will released It Could Have Been Better, theo D July second album version July fifth. It Could Have Been Better is his fourth special overall, and the second in two months. On June twentieth, the comic took to YouTube to debut his third hour Brave, taped to the Comedy Seller in New York City.

Also from Late Nighter, Sarah Sherman described her Weekend Update appearance as RFK Junior’s Rainworm. Sarah said, this season, I tried at different things that were new to me. I wanted to push myself to be like, what if I saw something in the news that week and try to write for it and do something timely that’s new for me, and that’s like the challenge of the show. I saw the new story and I immediately texted every single member of Weekend Update. I was like, I got this one.

Come on, y’all, let me do it. It’s so scared to do something like that because you only have two days in limited time, but you just feel so supportive because all the writers are so funny, everyone’s excited for the challenge. Sarah said, they had me try out a costume with no arms, and she said, I think it’s funnier if I have arms so I can slurp out of a brain smoothie, and that’s when the costume department goes we got this, and then they made the really gorgeous worm gloves. Ian Carmel was said to be the opening act on Ellen’s upcoming Farewell tour. Those plans have been scrapped.

Let’s see if you can read between the lines here. Carmel spent the last three months working closely with Ellen and says, I listened to her tell me about her life, and tell me about the last four or five years of her life specifically, and try to synthesize that into something funny and relatable. Okay, it was one of the great challenges of my career, but also super fun. Let’s really read between the lines. She’s very funny, she’s very creative.

She’s very direct in her feedback, which I appreciate. When the offer came through, I couldn’t believe it because you almost don’t think of her as human because it’s Ellen. She’s one of those one namers. I don’t know what do you think happened? I think I know what happened, but I’ll keep it to myself.

And that’s your comedy news for today. Enjoy the show, Tell a friend about it. They might like it too. And you know in the commercial Free and All that you’ve heard me read that fifty times and it’s a premo and stuff. You know what to do four ninety nine.

Click to thanks so Y

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Full Transcript

Caalaroga Shock Media. Hi, Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. A Thunderstorm Edition. I was sitting outside writing the show and it started a poor and the inter lettermaned me, said, let’s do a thunderstorm edition. And look at that the rain is letting up just as I begin to record.

Let’s start on gossip Corner. John Mulaney and Olivia Munn flaunting their love, says The New York Post. You may recall last week there were some rumors that perhaps, possibly maybe they had gotten married. They were seen holding hands as they made their way through the arrivals terminal at JFK Airport. Neither Munn nor Malaney appeared to be wearing rings, though we’re told m’laney looked dashing in a dark jacket laid over a black button down shirt, pants and moccasins.

Olivia Munn was wearing an oversized black overcoat with a great top and lightwashed jeans. When Malaniy recently did his late night show, apparently the set was inspired by Johnny Carson’s Malibu home. Lany tells Vanity Fair. I wasn’t going for an off putting aesthetic or anything. The set was actually modeled after Johnny Carson’s house in Malibu.

A lot of brutaliss gold things, plus grapes. Glass crapes are wonderful. I knew I didn’t want a shiny black floor. I knew I didn’t want anything chrome. I didn’t want anything that look like Late Night A reality shows as they do now.

Jim Norton has a new album out. It is called Gender Reveal Disaster. He got up with. The La Times is a profile of Jim and wife NICKI. How did you guys meet?

NICKI said, I was nineteen years old living in Norway. I had my first apartment and I started speaking to this American online named Jim. I saw a video of him on YouTube. I didn’t know he was a comedian because he was talking more seriously. I looked him up rode to him.

I think he also saw me online, so I guess he liked what he saw. Norton said, I was delighted. She sent me a message because I did this interview where I talked about trans women. I’ve talked about it so many times and occasionally get messages, so we talked briefly. I looked her up and saw she was doing cam stuff, So we started talking more in Around two months later, I was like, why don’t you come visit.

That’s when she got rejected for a very minor marijuana charge. Nicky says, I thought I’d have no problem getting in the States papers and the guy goes, you’re a convicted criminal. You need a waiver for this. A waiver was a nightmare because you have to overcome all these things. That started a really crazy process f us Jim said.

It was insane. She never even got call at drugs. It was literally a text message that was read at the police station. It also made it much harder to prove that it was a small amount because it was never an actual amount. Because of that, it was seven months before we met, which is a lot of talking and facetiming.

Bill Burrd always told me to go overseas and they love me, but I would never do it. I finally did it to meet her, so I knew I liked her. After the first week in a Norway, I knew I really liked her. Nicky says, Yeah, he came to Norway, we hit it off really well. Three days after that I went to Amsterdam with him.

Jim was the first man to take me out in public. The only times was like, wait, is being openly trans in Norway not allowed? NICKI said, it’s allowed, but I feel like it’s a good country to be trans in. But I do feel that Norway, although very liberal, is a little bit more conservative for my parents. It was definitely weird.

It’s way weirder there than it is here in America. I have excess in my life, but being in Norway, it was never asked out in public. I’d always felt hidden away. Jim changed that whole world for me. The rain is letting up by the way, which is good because I’m kind of try out here.

TMZ had someone at the Stormy Daniel’s comedy show. Apparently Stormy joked on a whole bunch of different topics, from her porn career to her political allegiance, and despite her issues with the former president, Stormy says she’s still a Republican. Oh yeah. She talked about him too, reportedly calling him tiny, while also touching on her financial woes, including the six hundred thousand dollars a judge ordered her to pay Trump following the defamation lawsuit she claims her lawyer filed without her consent. I think I guessed right about something.

My memory’s foggy. The National Comedy Center has announced that Nate Bergatzy will headline the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival. He joins Jeff Ross and Nicole Byer. They were already performing. I feel like I did a story where they hadn’t announced the headliner, and I just felt vibes that it was going to be Nate.

I didn’t know anything, but all right, I guess my Spidery sent still works. Oh man, it just got like eighty five times as humid, still raining, and there’s thunder in the distance. But boy, it is sticky out here. Tickets for Nate’s show at the National Comedy Center go on sale Tuesday. Go to Comedy Center.

I was actually up that way over the weekend. Didn’t pop into Jamestown, but it was up in the Niagara area. Very very nice. Jimmy Kimmel, he’s taking his annual summer vacation. Martin Short will sit in tonight as the host.

The rest of the week is Meryl Street tomorrow, Selena Gomez Wednesday, Melissa McCarthy on Thursday. That sounds like a lot of work for the producers could at least get one person a week. I don’t know if you saw this. Martin Short as his character Jimmy Glick, which I have no interest in, sat in for Bill Maher and in character as Glick interviewed Bill Maher on Bill Maher’s own show. Danny Jealous announced to heal the film his third special at the world famous Roxy Theater on September fourteenth.

Both shows are seven and nine point thirty. As with these past specials, there’s a large concept at the heart of this one. It remains a secret for now. The general theme of the hours marriage and evolving as a humor over time. Previously, for an example, he did six parts which saw Danny deliver his first Hour over six nights at six unique venues, including a Jim barbershop, a surf shop, an art gallery, recording studio, and a comedy club.

For some reason, they’re making Spaceballs two. Josh gadd and Mel Brooks are producing. It’s Mel’s birthday this week. I know that because he’s one of the topics on five Daily Trivia Questions. A whole day of mel Brooks Trivia.

Five Daily Trivia Questions where if you get your shows, Oh, the rain’s picking up again at de tails of four spaceballs, two have not been shared. This can’t possibly be a good idea, right, Remember History of the World War Two came out last year and none of us cared this. Don’t do this. Josh gadd had boasted on Instagram just handed in a film script that I think maybe the funniest and best thing I’ve ever worked on. And I’m so freaking excited.

I Carmel’s getting a lot of headlines. He has a new book, T Shirt Swim Club Stories from Being Fat and a World of Thin People. The cover of the book is a kid at the beach. Carmel said he was inspired to used that image because he thought that anyone who was a fat kid would know that feeling. He said, when you go to the pool and all of a sudden, your big, fat body’s hang out there, and you’re like, Okay, now I’ll fix that.

I’ll put on a T shirt which immediately gets and clings to every curve of your Torso it’s a very silly, active desperation by children. During his eight years working with Cordon on The Late Late Show, he reached his peak weight of four hundred and twenty pounds. My blood pressure was two hundred over one hundred and something, and I was really unhealthy. When a doctor comes in and says, very seriously, you could die for this. That’s the kind of bloo pressure where you could have a heart attacker stroke.

But those are very realistic things that can happen. The idea of having to lose two hundred pounds, well, that’s like saying, oh hey, why don’t you build a rocket ship climb to the top of Mount Everest. He did not do things like ozempic. He lost weight the old fashioned weight, he says. He prepares meals in advance, weighs himself regularly check his progress, and engages in his frequent hot girl walks, a phrase coin on TikTok to describe a stroll.

However, had ozempic been available at the time, he said, one hundred percent would have tried it when I was four hundred and twenty pounds, I would have been wearing an ozempic half shirt, drinking out of an ozempic water bottle, roller around Hollywood advertising. I would have been the poster child. Our entire society is built around simultaneously punishing fat people and trying to make people as fat as possible. At the same time, it’s easier to get a cheeseburger than to get a salad. Yeah, dude, I love chop salads.

They’re like sixteen dollars, and then the world is cruel to the person who eats the cheeseburger. So it’s ft he has a message you’d like to tell his younger self. Go about your life and find the people who love you for who you are. Some people are gonna bully you, and most of the other people really aren’t thinking about you at all. Good advice from Ian Carmel and that it’s your Daily Comedy News Thunderstorm edition.

Is it summer, Yes, it is if you skip the weekend. Both episodes were an interview with Mike Chisholm. He is the host of the Letterman podcast. We nerded out about Letterman both days. And that’s it.

I’m trapped out here in the rain. I’d have to get soaked to get back on the house, and I’m going to continue to sit here under the umbrella, and I guess I’ll let up the show and schedule it. See you

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Today is part two of my interview with Mike Chisholm. He hosts The Letterman Podcast, which celebrates the incredible body of work done by broadcast legend David Letterman and company. On The Letterman Podcast, Mike highlights folks who work with Dave or were part of the show’s productions.

Today is a little more nerdier than yesterday. We start to geek out about some specific subjects, including Chris Elliott, who I adore, But we’ll pick up the conversation here with me talking about Steve Allen. I think another influence that maybe for younger people goes unrecognized is Steve Allen. I think there’s a tendency to go work backwards and go Letterman, Carson, Jack Parr, and you have a version of the Tonight’s Show in your head that starts with Parr and goes through Johnny and Jay. But the Steve Allen Tonight’s Show, if you watch clips of that, you’d swear you’re watching nineteen sixty two Late Night with David Letterman.

I think he even did a version of the Alka Seltzer suit unless I’m totally hallucinating. Yeah, No, Dave in the Serial Bowl, Dave in the Alka Seltzer suit and some of these things. But Dave has never shied away from the idea of saying that he was influenced by some of the antics of Steve Allen. The man on the street again, the razor sharp wit of talking to people in the audience and the coming up with these responses, that kind of thing. There’s no doubt that there’s a Steve Allen influence there.

This is where we bring up Don Giller and his might of what he has done with this insane collection that he has, what he has done. If you go onto Don Giller’s channel on YouTube, he’s got a seven part in. Every single part is like an hour and a half. It’s called the Talk I think it’s called the Talk Show Guest Series, and it’s in chronological order every single late night host or talk show host and every appearance that they made on any of David Letterman shows. So Parr is there, Steve Allen, is there, Dick Cavott, who’ve had on our show, he was there, and it goes through every single time he interviewed or had these people on the show.

And the cool thing about it because he does it in chronological order of each guest or each host, I should say it’s both their yes and a host in this case anyway, because he does it in that order, you see the evolution of Dave, and you see the evolution of Dave’s interviewing skills and his courage is his self esteem. Early on, when he’s interviewing some of these people, he is really you can tell he’s in awe of some of these folks.

And then as his experience and skill level increased over the years, you just…

And it’s a fascinating That’s comfort food for me, Johnny. Honestly, if I’m having a bad day of some sort and i need to vege on, I need to take some time and just recharge, I’ll go and I’ll watch those Those are absolutely astounding in their insight, but of course their entertainment value as well. Highly recommend them. But yes, Steve Allen huge influence, as was Tom Snyder, as Johnny Carson you could throw, as was Dick Cavot for that matter. You can see influence in Dave from a lot of these folks.

Jack Parr of course as well. I shouldn’t, but you see it today too, younger people influencing Dave as well in my next guest. And I just love this evolution that he has had. If you look at it that way, it makes it a lot easier. That change is a lot easier to stomach if you look at it as an evolution.

And where Dave is at right now, as far as I’m concerned, he’s top of his game. I saw him a couple of weeks ago in La too. I saw two nights during his three night run in LA I saw him interview Nate Bergazi and Tim Robinson from I Think You Should Leave on Netflix, and watching him talk to these amazing comedians that are hot as all ghetto right now and not just hang with them, but they’re hanging off his every word. It’s quite astounding to see that, to see him become our Johnny Carson right now. But the thing is, Johnny Carson left, Dave didn’t, and I’m so grateful for that.

Did you watch Malini’s show the first couple nights, especially the first twenty month, and it’s of Malini’s show I was like, twelve thirty days back, this is chaotic, this is crazy. I love it. That’s exactly what I thought it was too. I was down in La while that was happening, and I was trying my very best to try and figure out a way to get to the episode where Dave was on it. And I think I’m glad that Dave wasn’t on the first episode because I think that there was You’re right, there was some chaos there, but there was also some of that chaos that was like, Okay, is this working?

Is it not working? But by day three or four you’re like, okay, this is crazy. And it was very much like Late Night. But then you throw in the idea of having a group of people out there unscripted. No real it doesn’t feel like that.

A segment producer came out and said, Okay, we’re gonna go from here to hear other than the special guest who was the expert topic on, Let’s make sure we give them some time. But other than that, it seemed to be pretty free form. Yeah, it was. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic.

I know that there’s a lot of people who are scratching their heads because they’re used to seeing no offense to Falon’s Tonight Show. But Falens Tonight Show is pretty buttoned up, is pretty A to B two C A to B two C formulaic, and mullaney show was anything but that. Putting Richard Kind as the as the sidekick, Holy, that was funny. Richard Kind is always He’s always just made me laugh. That guy is just a He’s like a cartoon character come to life.

What a genius move throwing Richard Kind on that in those suits on as that and I thought it was very funny. And the cool thing about it is the response to it. At the beginning, I’m down in La as it’s happening, and I’m watching, I’m going online and reading these responses while I’m down there, like right before. I think one morning I actually talked about when we had breakfast down there and it was just watching the responses and people were like, what the hell is this show? And they didn’t like it at all, a lot of people, a lot of people were like really against it.

But since then, you’ve seen, like Mulaney just had an interview again the other day talking about are you gonna be doing more of these? Are you gonna do more talk shows because there’s this audience that’s clearly there, that clearly enjoyed the strangeness of it, and I believe one hundred percent you’re exactly right. It can be directly compared in many respects to Late Night with David Letterman. I’ve seen a lot of people with the take, and I agree with it. The move from Malaney is to do that four six times a year, maybe take it on the road like Conan.

If he were to start doing that on Netflix at ten pm Eastern every night, I think I’d wind up with the same place I wind up with eleven thirty day of like you know what, I’m gonna watch something else to night. I don’t really need to see m’laney, but I love the potential there. I want to spend a couple of minutes just nerding out about Chris Elliott and I Another thing, you realize the influence on Late Night on me. I won’t get into it here. My audience knows.

I have a recurring joke about Joe Coy and Taylor Swift that I have beaten to death to the point where it went from funny to not funny at all, and it’s now back to funny because you know I’m going to do it, and that I’m thinking of the Chris Elliott bits of Guy under the seats. We all know where this is going to go, and we’re all laughing and we’re all in on the jokes. But let’s do it the Fugitive Guy over and over. It’s the same setup, it’s the same payoff, but I couldn’t get enough of it. Let’s just start about Chris Elliott.

Chris Elliott is as far as I’m concerned, he’s an international treasure. He’s just and I say that because Shit’s Creek up here in Canada. Of course, we’re very proud of Schitz Creek being a Canadian production. And I was so happy to see him in Shit’s Creek. I was so happy to see Chris Elliot back.

Chris Elliott is just He is incredible and one of the most humble people that you’ll ever ever talk to. He and I have had conversations. He’s reluctant to come on the Letterman podcast. Doesn’t want to talk about some of the stuff he did back then because out of just Again, it’s so interesting how these people can be so self deprecating and not understand the influence that they make. But again, a few weeks ago, watching David Letterman and Tim Robinson on stage, Tim Robbins Dave asked him, do you have any questions for me?

And one of his first questions to Dave was can we talk about Chris Elliott for a second. And one of the things Dave said on stage was, at one time was probably the funniest human walking the planet, I think was what he said. And it’s true Chris was Oh was he good? One of the things that I love about Chris Elliott. And it seems to be this way behind the scenes as well, from everybody that I’ve talked to.

And I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school when we talk about Larry Sanders and how people say nobody was afraid of Larry. If there was one guy on the staff that was directly interacting with Dave and performing with Dave that wasn’t afraid of Dave, it was Chris. At least I don’t know if he was or not, but at least he came across like he wasn’t he was, He wasn’t afraid. To give it back to Dave, and really play with him. And if they’re hockey players, I’m not afraid to hit each other, They’re not afraid to throw an elbow here and there.

It was edgy and dangerous and unpredictable. It had that unpredictable nature to it, even in some of these canned things that were gonna happen that were quote unquote predictable. They weren’t like the guy under the seats, But what’s he gonna do next? Is there something that’s gonna be different or is it going to be just the same. And you didn’t know that.

That was the unpredictable part of it. And you think about the family, the draft. I the name escapes me right now. I can’t believe the name escapes me. But Chris acting with this acting troupe and the little sketches and skits that they would put on night Light.

Oh my god, do you remember night Light? Yes? Oh, when Chris would have his own show, that night Light with Chris show, the middle of Dave Show, his own show. Yeah, he knew late night show. This is night Light with Chris Elliott right in the middle of Late Night with David Letterman, And it seems like a new show.

Is beginning and Chris completely lampooning day, doing almost a caricature of the types of jokes he would do, and some of the things, Oh boy, was that good. Chris Elliott is a genius. He is amazing and I don’t even know if he knows how much of an impact he has made on people. Yeah, he is absolutely incredible. There’s a great clip on YouTube.

I’ll encourage everyone to seek out. They don’t even explain it, which is why it’s great. It’s Chris Elliott is in Paul Shaffer’s place doing a Paul Schaeffer impression, exaggerated, jumping up and down, saying things Paul would say, not even like trying to be funny. He’s just doing a dead on ish Paul. And they don’t even knowledge that really that it’s Chris Elliott.

They just go with it, and it’s amazing. That was the thing. When Norm MacDonald was on SNL. People remember him mostly for his Weekend Update, and but one of the things that Norm MacDonald did on SNL was he imitated Dave. And it was funny watching Norm do that because one of the things that he did, if you really look at it and deconstruct it, all he was doing was just trying to imitate exactly what Dave was doing, and it was really interesting.

It wasn’t like where you look at when Dana Carvey would imitate Johnny Carson. He would put in some surrealistic things, not just Carcinio, but some of the other things he would put in. He would throw in some things there that made Johnny a little bit more cartoonish or whatever. Norm didn’t do that with Dave. Norm didn’t do that with Dave.

Norm basically just acted the way that Dave did. But it was so ridiculous because only Dave can act the way that Dave doesn’t get away with it, and it was just very very interesting to see the takes on that. And I think Chris doing that with Paul is something very similar. Paul Shaffer has the most amazing, you know, unique presence, personality, delivery, wit character, because part of that is character of course for the show, and when somebody else just imitates it but dead on, I think that there’s something that’s funny about that. Doing this every day, sometimes I’ll go and I call them half ass impressions.

They’re not meant to be impressions. But if I’ll read a quote from somebody, I’ll try and to approximate their cadence, if that makes sense. And both Norm and Dave have an if you’re going to do a really lazy letterman impression my next guest, and just it’s that little uh. And Norm has that as well. Yes, there’s no question about that.

Someone once told the like, it’s funny when I do these things. Someone once told the it’s funny when I do these things. I just did one right there. I don’t have a lot of us and OZ many times when you and I are communicating back and forth, it’s not like that. But when I’m hosting the show, I have some of these little noises that I make and I want I watch Dave.

I swear to god it’s because Dave has them too. And it’s something that I think there’s a lot of people out there that are trying to be you know, there’s a lot of stand ups out there who tried to be Hicks for a long time, and I think that I think there are broadcasters out there that try and be Dave in their delivery somehow, because he’s got that Auschuck’s Midwestern not perfect, even though it is absolutely perfect. Delivery and like I just said it there that sometimes I’ll do that. But it’s funny. When I do these shows here, I don’t, but when I’m hosting, I do them.

And Norm I could not agree more. Norm had this relaxed style. There’s a little bit of Canadian in it for sure. Every once in a while I hear the Canadian in him come out. But I guess say this to you, Okay, So we’re talking Late Night Late Show Norm MacDonald.

Nor McDonald is one of the highlights of Late Show with David Letterman. For me, anytime that he was on it was an incredible thing, including when he lost Weekend Update. He was fired from Weekend Update in the season NBC pulls in and fires him. The very next day or the day that it happened. He is on Paddel at Late Show with David Letterman and they’re talking about it, and Letterman’s calling, oh, which exec was, it doesn’t matter one of the NBC executives that he knew, you know, calling him a quizzling and doing all these things, and it’s just it’s this, it’s beautiful exchange.

Watching that to me is a little bit of Late Night that was in Late show and Norm McDonald always provided that.

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And then you know, after when Johnny Carson retired, he had this moment with …

Middler sang the song to him Dave when he retired from Late Show. I think there were two moments that to me was like Dave’s Bette Midler moment. They were combined. One of them was a song that Adam Sandler hit. The other one, though, was Norm MacDonald’s last stand up set on Late Show with David Letterman.

Can you recall that? Do you remember that set? Have you seen that? Johnny? Yes, incredible might be the greatest stand up set on a talk show ever.

And you look at those two guys, the mutual admiration from two very interesting personalities. Dave had gone on record many times saying that Norm was his favorite comedian walking the planet at that time, and Norm absolutely worshiped Dave. And when he came in to do that set, was completely nervous. The scuttle but is the night before, whether it was at the Cellar, he he bombed a lot of it. He was walking around the theater all day trying to figure out what was going to go in that set, what wasn’t going to go in that set, and it was just for anybody out there who likes Norm MacDonald And maybe you haven’t seen that set in a while, go look at the last Norm McDonald’s set on Late Show with David Letterman.

It is absolutely picture perfect. Norm’s one of those guys that in death I feel like has been elevated in class that we all rediscovered him instead of taking him for granted. Another great rabbit hole to go down on YouTube is the insane amount of OJ jokes, which is what got him fired. But there are these thirty five minute compilations of just one liner is like Prince Charles has a new book. It’s called of Course OJ did it like just but like that for thirty five minutes.

Oh I know, and it is that same guy who ran NBC. I just, oh, I keep forgetting I don’t know why normally I can pull out these NBC executives like out of the back of my no problem. For some reason, it’s just eluding me right now. But yeah, he was apparently friends with OJ, and so the OJ jokes were just. But it’s so interesting though, because okay, that’s the case.

Here’s the thing that I was wondering about though Norm MacDonald targeted at SNL. But yet at the same time, Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, you know, has the dancing ETOs, and they’re making fun of OJ and the trial and the circus. They’re making fun of that stuff all the time. In fact, Late Show with David Letterman didn’t do that. Dave went on record as to say, I don’t find double homicide that funny.

They called me crazy, but I don’t find double homicide that funny, and they didn’t do what the finan should. And part of that is is one of the reasons why some folks believe that Leno surged ahead again in the ratings was part of that. So there’s a lot of irony there because he’s on NBC. Norm McDonald’s getting fired from a weekend Update, but Jay Leno, no problem. That’s the entertainment industry.

It’s easy to fire the part time or the producer, the host. Can we replace the weekend Update guy who’s one of a twelve person ensemble. Yes, can we mess with the host of the Tonight Show. That’s front page of Variety and probably the New York Times for six months. It just the rules are never equal.

The entertainment business is not fair, Oh that’s for sure. And it’s funny how Dave can certainly point to that and how he was passed over for the Tonight Show. I maintain, of course it was the greatest thing that ever could have happened to him, because the industry was changing and he had such a reverence for that franchise that it was going to it was inevitable that the Tonight Show. Like people don’t understand that today, they don’t understand the dominance. I don’t know if there is a show in any form of entertainment right now that the Olympics might be the one of the only like certain big sporting events might be one of the only comparisons that might be apt.

The Tonight Show owned late night television. They owned it for thirty years. They owned it. They were dominant. There was no counter programming.

As good of a guy as Dick Cavot was and is to this day, love him. He’s one of my favorite broadcasters of all time. He could not crack The Tonight Show when it came to the dominance in the ratings, our Sineo flash in the pan in broad history, but was changing television. He started to for a little bit. But other than that, the Tonight Show was dominant.

Nobody had ever touched it. But at the time when Johnny retired, things were starting to dilute. There were more networks that were showing up. There was more things that were coming on to distract people or to put people’s attention elsewhere. And I just think about if David Letiman would have got that franchise that he loved so much, and it would have been on his watch that the industry would have changed and the Tonight Show would have lost its dominance, that would have been so sad.

But instead he got to be the guy that walks across the street to CBS, and he got to be the guy that started shelling this thing, lamparding this thing from across the street. And the fact that there was even a show that could even compete with The Tonight Show was astounding. It was unprecedented. Never mind the fact that they beat them in the ratings for eighteen months, when you could probably go really far down this rabbit hole when it came to the fact that CBS had a massive disadvantage from affiliates from they on paper should not have been able to beat the Night Show in the ratings, But yet they did it for eighteen months, and then the fact that they would go back and forth and be even competitive with them for thirty years. That was unprecedented.

It had never happened before. And I think if Dave was the guy in the Tonight Show chair where that happened, I think that would have really been a sad thing for him. But to be the guy that actually walked across the street with Johnny Carson’s blessing to do that, man, it was so much better that he got that show more worth Mike in a second, don’t forget. If you’d like this podcast, add free link in the show notes four ninety nine a month. Go to Calaruga dot com slash plus you can get this program and a bunch of others on the network commercial free just four nine nine nine a month.

If you’d like a National Donus chain T shirt, those are for sale in the show notes and subscribe. Please into my substack. It’s where I pontificate about the media in the written form. Mcteepod dot substack dot com. Link in the show notes.

Are you affectionate for Conan? I feel like I missed the boat on Conan, just because I was doing other things in the nineties. But I feel like once he found his fastball, Conan spiritually picked up the it’s twelve thirty, let’s just try stuff vib Oh gosh. Yeah. I love Conan O’Brien, I love Robert Smigel.

I would watch Conan at first again a little bit with with the John Mulaney thing you were talking about earlier. Okay, what is this Because my mind, of the four hosts that have hosted Late Night, You’ve got Letterman, You’ve got Conan, You’ve got Fallon, and you got Seth. I think Conan’s really the only one who wanted to take the spirit of Late Night but make it their own. Whereas Late Night may have had a little bit more of a sarcastic edge to it, Conan turned that dial down and turned up zany. But the creative stuff that they did, I did like him right at the beginning, even during the shaky times, the times where he’s getting week to week commitments for a show he’s about to be canceled, about to be canceled.

I liked a lot of the stuff that they were doing. I liked Andy. I loved the stuff that Robert Smigel came up with for them, and I thought that they were really inventive. It was certainly worthy of the title of Late Night in my mind. But the idea that he was making it completely his own to me was completely evident as well, which I respect the heck out of, especially now with the benefit of hindsight.

But at the time, I just really liked it. And I’ll tell you this because I really liked it. A couple of years into it, or maybe eighteen months into it, when Dave came back and Dave was a guest on that show, I was electric, Like that was as a fan. I was so happy the night that Dave came back on. He didn’t go on the Tonight Show on NBC No, but he did go back to Late Night, and then when Conan would start coming on Late Show, and then they would do things.

Do you remember the bit You weren’t watching Late Show, so you might not have remembered this. There’s a really cool moment where Dave took his stand by audience and sent them to the Conan O’Brien show. Oh now, they said a camera. They sent a camera. Oh it’s worth watching.

It is so funny and so he sends a camera with them, so there’s a stand by audience. You’re going to see Conan tonight. They bring them, brings them on the stage of the Insulimon Theater and says, hey, good news, we’re setting you to see Conan. Camera there and then you watch Conan, of course at eleven at twelve thirty, I should say, and you get to see the mirrored response Letterman show showing up. And it was just a beautiful little piece.

I wish. I can’t believe I’ve actually even said to a couple of writers, former writers for Letterman who now worked for Fallon, I’m like, why the heck don’t Seth and Jimmy do stuff like that? Like why don’t they call up Dave ask him if they can do elevator races they’re in the same building and bring back some of these old late night things in thirty rock. What if and you have team team Seth and team Jimmy and you do stuff like that. I love stuff like that, And Dave and Conan used to do that every once in a while and it was a really cool thing.

Yeah, I really liked Conan. During Late Shift two, when Conan went through his trouble Tonight. That’s my favorite run of Letterman of all time other than the last six weeks. The last six weeks was magic and perfect with his run up. But my favorite Letterman period in history.

I’m the host of the show. I love Late Night. I understand the people who love Late Night so much, But my favorite period in Letterman history was the time where Conan and Leno were going through their stuff at the Tonight Show, and every single night Dave on Late Show was just, oh, it was so great.

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And then he would have Kimmel on and they would talk about it and all of that…

That’s my favorite Letterman run in history is in twenty ten. Yeah, Dave unleashed. Maybe you could get a reunite the cast from the Late Shift movie, which if people haven’t seen, is probably somewhere on HBO Max. I love that film. I know they made fun of some of is it Daniel Roebucks prosthetics, But I thought that movie was fantastic.

It was really The Late Shift as a book is, in my opinion, one of the greatest. Even know Bill Carter when he talks about writing The Late Shift and the War for Late Night for that matter, The warf for Late Night is incredible and I highly recommend that one as well. But he wrote it like a thriller. He literally wrote it. Wrote this book that is the behind the scenes of late night talk shows and a lot of executive talk and contracts and stuff that would be considered boring by many.

He wrote it like it was a thriller, and it is a thriller. And so when the movie came out, if you watch Bill Carter’s first time he appeared on The Letterman podcast, he actually goes through the entire process of the movie being made, and it’s incredible because they had a writer and the writer totally didn’t you know. He wrote this fictitious scene of Dave and Jay drinking together. I think they’re having a beer together. Famously, Leno doesn’t drink and Letterman stop drinking.

And so the producers of the of the HBO guys come back to Bill and they’re like, what do you think of this? And Bill’s this is not my book. And so Bill ends up going and writing the screenplay and it gets made. So he tells that whole story when he he’s on the Letterman podcast. His first time that he was on the Letterman podcast, and we definitely talk about some of the things.

But you look at the portrayal of Helen Kushnik, incredible. She got nominated. Oh, Kathy Bates got nominated for an Emmy for that, And yeah, the prosthetics were interesting, a rich little being Johnny Carson now looking back at it, Okay, that might be a little campy. Yeah, but it was a really fun movie and I watch it. I’ll watch it every eighteen months still.

It is on up here in Canada. It’s on the HBO. We’ve got a thing called Crave that has HBO and Showtime and everything mixed into one. It’s in the archives there, and I’ll watch it every eighteen months or so. It’s a really fun movie.

There are some elements though that I’m not gonna say which writer, but there’s a couple of places where they truncate the culture of a behind the scenes of a late night television show where’s yeah, not even close happening like that, and things like that. But there are a lot of elements of it that are really fun and it does a good overview of the story. But it does not compare to reading Bill’s book. You can get a digital copy of the Late Shift now and Bill’s actually added some extra material semi currently, like within the last five years, I think, and it’s very good. I highly recommend it.

Yeah, both books are great opera plugs in for your podcast. Hopefully we turn some new people onto it today. One hundred and thirty episodes in, that’s a lot. We don’t have one hundred and thirty hours to kill. So if we were going to pick five, who do you want to point people towards?

Oh gosh, that’s hard, because Johnny seriously, Like last summer, for example, I had what we call the Summer Intern Series on and I had I think five interns, folks who literally interned for the show, and some of them went on to do some big things in entertainment and whatnot. I love them just as much as I love interviewing Robert Morton. You know. That’s the enthusiasm that I take to the show, This puppy dog type love and enthusiasm. So I really have a hard time choosing because I love them all, whether it’s the Obscure, whether it’s a guy who performed on stupid Human Tricks and he talks about his entire letterment experience all the way to somebody like Steve O’Donnell, legendary comedy writer.

But that being said, if I was to pick five episodes, I would probably pick Paul Shaeffer. I would probably pick Dick Cabott. I would probably pick Robert Morton. Early on, we had Steve O’Donnell on and I certainly hadn’t hit my stride, or if I have a stride now, I hadn’t hit whatever it is that I have now, but at that point. But I still I love Steve to this day.

He’s a good friend.

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And then another writer as well, Steve Young.

He’s been on multiple times. Steve and I are are friends now. He did the documentary Bathtubs over Broadway, and so I’ve had him on and we’ve talked about all sorts of stuff. We’re you gotta actually have him on. He just released a comedy album, and we’re gonna have him back on with a listening party with a few Letterman alum on there as well, and we’re trying to make the show to do some fun stuff with the show as well.

But those five episodes, probably Cabots is a talking to Dick Cavott, and I’m talking to a broadcaster here. So I don’t think it takes much to imagine the honor that was having him on the show. That was an incredible moment. When check he passed away, we did a tribute episode to him, and then the very next week, which is just me talking to camera for ninety minutes. Imagine that.

I don’t recommend that, but it was a special moment.

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And then the next week Alex Bennett came on and we talked about his connectio…

We’ve had some great moments on the show. It’s I’m really proud, and as somebody who suffered with imposter syndrome of a financial planner by trade when I was a little kid, if you had asked me what my dream John was, it didn’t exist. I wanted to be a ghostbuster. The job didn’t exist. And if you would have said to me even five years ago, Mike, one day, you’re going to host the Letterman podcast, I would have said, I would have looked at you like you had three eyes.

Like when Rupert g the owner of the Hello Deli, retired, I went up to New York and I spoke in the Ed Sullivant Theater in the Ed Sullvant Theater, the Worldwide Pants Thru in a party for him, and I got to speak at that party, and it’s are you kidding me? And I got to actually say some things that actually elicited an emotional response from an audience of about one hundred folks who worked for Letterman over the years. I’m so grateful and I can’t believe that this has happened. So I don’t know if people think the show is good or not good. I just know that it is one of the greatest honors of my life, and it brings so much joy to host that show, and the experiences I’ve gotten from it is just it’s unparalleled.

Are the bookings getting easier because they have a track record now, so you’re not some rando who’s going to do five of these and quit with one hundred and thirty and some people that the others have heard of? Is it the cool party to be at a little easier to get people a little bit of Colum, a little bit of columb It’s funny. There are some folks who gave me the absolute green light yes early on, and now they’re getting sheepish about it because it’s so funny because I just say, no, just come on, we just have a conversation, just would be you. But they’re sheepish about it because of a variety of different reasons. But part of it is the fact that, oh, you had Steve young on all these times, you had Steve O’Donnell on, you had more toy on.

What could I bring to this? You get some of that. Some of the heavy hitters were reluctant before and they’re still reluctant now, but there are a few who are coming around because of exactly what you said as well. So there’s a little bit of both. If you get Dave, is that good or bad?

No, that’s a great question. It’s good, absolutely good, There’s no doubt about that. But the show is not over because again, the Letterman Podcast is a celebration of the greatest body of broadcasting work in history, that of David Letterman and Company, and the company is equal, if not greater, to Dave. A Dave is a part of it, and that’s how we view this and Checky and I talked about that was one of the things about the show that we talked about. The guy who was on Stupid Human Tricks and at a life changing moment because of it, and got all these extra bookings and things because of it, and his life was changed because of that moment.

Is equally as important as if David Letterman comes on in how I present it now. Obviously having him on would be an incredible moment. It wouldn’t be the end of the show, though, because the show focuses on his body of work, and so I would love I hope to have him on. So far, I’ve had a polite no. I don’t think the door has closed forever.

The polite no is not what we do. I think if we get to a certain place, that might change. I also think if the beauty of serendipity comes into things and something happens where though just the right combination of events or doors open, it could happen as well. But it would be definitely be a good thing. You’ve been very generous with your time.

This has been awesome. We’re let me see, we are like twenty percent over what I even asked you for. So I will let you go and hopefully we can connect again somewhere down the road. But this was really fantastic. Anytime.

I will do this anytime and talk about this stuff for sure. I love it. You’re a fantast. Obviously you’re a pro. You’re a seasoned pro, and I appreciate this so very much.

It’s guys like you I wish I would have had a moment where I could have been given the permission to chase my dreams. I would have gone into broadcasting. I appreciate where you guys. I appreciate the skill set that you have. I really do, and I’m glad that you’re still doing it after all this time and not too jaded from watching this industry that you have been a part of that has changed in so many ways to where it is now.

I’m so grateful that you’re doing what you’re doing. It inspires me to do what I’m doing. Thank you so much, shawnny Oh, you are too kind. I hope you enjoyed that one. I love geeking out about Letterman.

I wish I had known about Mike when Late Night turned forty em back in twenty twenty two and we were kind of still in the pandemic and doing major filler some weekends. I think I did a month of Letterman back then. If you want to scroll back through the archives, maybe I’ll resurface those. I’ll put those in the feed as bonus episodes or something. Not today, maybe next weekend.

Let me think about that, all right. The Letterman podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and in the Facebook group Today Daily Comedy News podcast group. I have scheduled a few things, a couple of Chris Elliot things and some other stuff to check out. All right, hope you enjoyed that. I’ll see tomorrow.

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Yeah. My next guest is Mike Chisholm. He hosts The Letterman Podcast. Hi, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News.

I hope you caught my little lettermanesque tribute there. The Letterman Podcast celebrates the incredible body of work done by broadcast legend David Letterman and company. On The Letterman Podcast, Mike highlights folks who worked for Dave or were part of any of his show’s productions. People had an accounter with one of his shows, or are enthusiasts with relevant discussion points or memories pertaining to any of Letterman’s productions or endeavors. I’ve split this one up into two parts.

We did about eighty minutes ross. I’ll give you half today, half tomorrow. Here’s my interview with Mike Chisholm. I wear many hats, and when I look at my own stuff, For example, I host a comedy podcast, and as I explain, I know a lot more about comedy than most people, but the people that know more about it know a lot more than I do. So I was prepping for this podcast, I was like, all right, I know a lot about Letterman.

I’m a big letterman fan. Let me check out some episodes of Mike’s pod, and then I was like, oh, I’m out of my depth here. I can’t talk writers and producers. This guy knows his stuff. Props to you.

Where did the podcast come from? What gave you the idea? Oh? Man? Okay, So there’s a whole bunch of ways too that I can answer this question, because the answer, of course, has a ton of depth to it.

You know, it all really started. I mean, my love of Dave has gone ever since, you know, back to my first time. I can remember seeing the show. I was eight nine years old, and I remember the show that I saw, and the idea that adults could act silly was so charming to me. I had always attracted to broadcasters.

I love mister Rogers. Growing up. I’m a Canadian, so hawking it in Canada was always the thing to me. You know what. And it wasn’t Bob Cole and Harry Neil who called the play by play.

It was Dave Hodge. It was Ron McClean. I love Ron McClain. I liked pro wrestling, so Vincent man Agrilla Monsoon I loved broadcasters. It fascinated me And the thing about Dave is that he is not a pure comedian.

He’s got a razor sharp wit, no doubt, He’s a broadcaster. He’s a broadcaster in comedy, in variety. I don’t like using that word so much, but he’s He would take all of the chaos and things going on around him and he would almost treat it like he was a reporter. And I found that very charming. When Dave was going to finish his run on late night television in twenty fifteen, I knew I needed to go to New York and see him one more time that night.

I actually and you talk about this level of knowledge that I have, Yeah, I read all the books. I did my very best to try and learn as much as I possibly could about the show behind the scenes. But I had an encounter with Dave right before before the show that day April twentieth, twenty fifteen, where I was part of the Q and A that he did before the show that picked. That moment where he was looking back at Paul and using me. I like to say, he used me as a comedy speedbag was immortalized.

It was a picture of that moment was taken and put into the New York Times into the New Yorker, and just that moment was a seminal moment. After that, I became friends with some of the people who worked behind the scenes online. Became friends with some of the people who worked behind the scenes. And there’s a guy who you could see over my left. His name is Rich Sheckman.

That’s a picture from his memorial. Rick Sheckman was a They call him the film coordinator, but he essentially was an executive producer or a producer of Letterman for thirty two years. He and I became a really became very close friends. And I said, look, I’m a huge podcast fan and I’ve been waiting for the Letterman podcast to come out. I mean, as you know, there are these podcasts that do a deep dive on pretty much any subject you could ever want, and folks who are enthusiast if those subjects can enjoy the podcast, become part of a community, all of that stuff.

I was waiting for years for a Letterman podcast to come out. One never did. And so I said to Shaky, I said, look, I want to do this. I need a conciliaria, I need a Tom Hagen. Will you be that guy?

For me, he said, Michae, I’ll be that guy for you. He set up a couple intros for me, and the rest is an ongoing history that’s still being rewritten. So thank you for letting me spout off on that long winded answer. But we could I could give an equally long winded answer with other pieces of information that led to this podcast happening, and there’s just a lot there, So thank you for that. I was so excited.

I stumbled across the podcast. I had Mark Malkoff on from the Carson Podcast and he’s got a new one inside Late Night, And when I was doing that, I stumbled across this and I was like, Oh, I didn’t know about this one, And I’m so excited because for me, I’ve got what up to about one hundred and ten episodes or so that I can dive through now. I had no idea. I was psyched. I think episode one thirty comes out tomorrow.

Yeah, you know what, I get that a lot. I didn’t know that this thing existed. Yeah, you know, my savvy when it comes to getting it out there is almost nil. But I like that. People ask me all the time, you know what happens if Worldwide Pants that’s Dave’s production company, wants to scoop you up or something, and I heartily say, you know, if he’s the mothership, I’m just saying, beam me up please.

I like being indie. It feels like I’m an indie band, which I probably desperately wanted to be a part of. In the nineties as I was growing up, the indie music sometimes was cooler than the popular music that was out there being played on the radio. And I feel like there’s a little bit of that vibe with the show because I am so independent and I am I’m not doing anything to market the thing. I’m just letting it grow organically, and it’s on YouTube and Apple and Spotify, and there’s an audience, a genuine bonafide audience on each one of those platforms, and it’s a lot of fun growing this thing and letting people discover it organically.

It also takes the pressure off. Doing a podcast about David Letterman is a pretty high wire and there’s a lot of people with a lot of opinions, So being indie is fun. I think you’re smart there. Anytime something goes official, just top mind, like an unofficial Star Wars fans podcast is always going to be a million times cooler than the official Star Wars podcast, even if you get George Lucas the unofficial one. If it’s a fans podcast, you don’t have even if there’s no pressure from the official folks, there’s still If you’re doing the official Star Wars podcast, you’re not gonna get on and bash the Acolyte.

You’re just not gonna do that, whereas you might on the fans podcast. So I think you’re smart there. That said, if Dave calls, of course you’re gonna say, yeah, that’s the dream, Oh, it is the dream. And and I like the analogy with the Star Wars. Yeah, if it’s an official thing, Dave Filone’s gonna show up and he’s gonna have a list of five six things that he can talk about and an entire legion of things that he can’t talk about, whereas if he goes on something that’s a little bit more off the beaten trail, and I’ve had that.

I’ll tell you this with these staffers, Johnny, Like, seriously, some of these staffers, I think I got them on the show because we’re unofficial, because they’re also got that sort of punk rock kind of mentality, that indie mentality. They dig it, they groove on it. Now there are some also, though that’s a double edged sword. There are some who are like, so the reverence that they have for Dave and the company, you know, well, it’s not very many, but two or three people that said, but if you were officially, if you were officially affiliated with Worldwide Pants, we would come on. But we can’t out of respect because of that.

I respect that. But for the vast majority of them, I think you’re exactly right. I get a much looser conversation with people. And the ironic part about what you say, the unofficial Star Wars fans would bash the acolyte. Here’s the thing.

The Letterman Podcast is our tagline. It’s where a celebration of the greatest body of broadcast work in history, that of David Letterman and company. So we celebrate this stuff that show for thirty two years. They were miners. They would go down in the mine.

They put their little hats on and they would turn the lights on and they would go into the deep dark recesses of pop culture, of current events, and they would mine comedy and sometimes they would come out with diamonds bigger than their head and just amazing stuff. But guess what do they do. They just cast that diamond aside and they keep mining because there’s a show the next day, and our show is a celebration. So while you could easily go down the path of salaciousness or gossip or maliciousness or any of that stuff, I have chosen that our show will not focus on that at all. If things come up organically, okay, we might toss them around a little bit, but that is not the focus of it.

And I think a lot of shows that do deep dives into these topics enjoy going into some of the darker recesses of human behavior, and that’s just not something that I’m interested in doing. Because there were so many diamonds. I’d rather focus on the diamonds than the coal. I think you nailed it there. As you were speaking, I was thinking.

I talked to Malkoff. Then I had Jason Zinnemann on the York from the New York Times, and we talked about Letterman, and not once did I think about some of the gossipy stuff that Dave got trapped up in in the nineties or Zeros, and I haven’t even thought about this. When I think of David Letterman, I’m thinking about throwing stuff off a five story tower. And I think your stick is right. Let’s remember the good times and to do an episode on one of those other things.

Who cares? And I could tell that’s just why would you do that? That’s not what you do, and it’s we do live in a culture where clickbait is key, and if you can throw some gotcha stuff out there, you’re gonna get clicks, you’re gonna get views. The good news is I’m immune to that. I don’t care about clicks and views.

I care about putting out a show where I can have itches that I’ve had in the recesses of my mind for decades, scratched, and to talk about this stuff that I just love so much and these people that I love so much. Gosh, Dave made his producers, his writers, the crew around him a part of the show, and there was a secret to that. They made us all feel like we were part of a secret club. And as somebody who felt like it was in the club and gets to go and talk to the folks who were actually in the clubhouse, that is a great thing. You and you’ve probably born.

I’ve worked in an office for a long time. Certain that you’ve had a work environment where there are people around. Guess what, You’re going to see every type of behavior that is a known to man if you’re in a situation like that. I’ve also been part of a family for a long time. These people, a lot of them were together for multiple decades, and even the ones who weren’t won three, five, ten years together.

You get a group of people who are together like that, that are like a family, and in that work environment, you’re going to see every behavior known to man. The difference is in the offices that I’ve worked in, that stuff doesn’t get broadcast. You see it, it happens, but it doesn’t get broadcast out there. When you’re in something public, like a show like this, that stuff gets broadcast. And it’s one of the unfortunate things about entertainment, the entertainment business is that sometimes people are more interested in that than the actual product that comes out.

I’m just not one of those people. Let me ask you about twelve thirty versus eleven thirty versus. Now, this is I’ve been struggling with this, especially as I’ve gotten back into Dave, and I remember back in the eighties staying up till one thirty in the morning, four nights a week.

And then my godmother got me a VCR in nineteen eighty five, and then that sol…

But the amount of times I said, man, if Dave were on at eleven thirty, I would watch this thing every night. Then Dave moves to eleven thirty, and I lasted about a year and a half, and then I recently realized I didn’t watch most of the last twenty years. It’s like Howard Stern to me, like in that way that I consider myself a really big fan. And at some point the work stopped connecting with me. I don’t know if it was because I was in my twenties and you go out and you hang out in New York City and you’re dating people and you’re hanging out and you’re not watching TV.

But I also come back to the twelve thirty. We’re all in on this renegade thing versus eleven thirty. Now it’s an Armani suit and shoes, and it’s a little more. I always called it establishment letterman.

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And now we have this third period where again this guy that I love puts these…

So can you be my therapist here? What is wrong with me? Nothing’s wrong with you. It’s funny talking to You’d mentioned Zennman. I’ve talked to him, and I’ve talked to Bill Carter about this.

Bill Carter, of course wrote The Late Shift and The War for Late Night. Zenniman wrote, let him in the last giant of Late Night. Fascinating guy to talk to you. I’m sure you loved talking to him. I love talking to Jason.

Yeah. Just absolutely great, great guy, they both are. I think it’s part of it lays into where your formative years were. My formative years when I graduated high school, it was nineteen ninety four. Okay, so I watched I was right in my formative years, the cement very wet.

Yet there was still a measure of somewhat of intelligence and cognition that was there because it was at that time and place when Late Shift happened, when Dave moved, because it was a tumultuous move from eleven thirty to twelve or from twelve thirty to eleven thirty, I should say it was a tumultuous move, and folks who were that age, that was my formative years right there. I was already on team Dave and excited about what was happening, really fascinated by it. Dave was on the cover of Time magazine, he was on Rolling Stone multiple times. He was the biggest news story in entertainment around the world. Everybody knew what was going on because I was at that time and place Late Show.

For me, there was no problem. I completely understood the fact that Dave needed to go to a broader audience. I knew why I liked Late Night better than The Tonight Show. Whereas my dad was a Johnny Carson guy. I knew that I like that show better.

I also had this awareness that if Dave moved to eleven thirty, he would have to be more like the Tonight Show. In fact, Dave wanted the Tonight Show. He wanted to do that. He wanted to get a little bit more mainstream, but he couldn’t. In my mind, there’s a guy by the name of Don Giller.

If you go to Don Giller’s YouTube channel, he is the ultimate Letterman archivist. He has everything that Dave has ever done, and has put a lot of it on very thoughtfully and carefully put it on YouTube as compilations. And I asked Don about this very subject once because he is Don’s an older guy now and he has gone through the eras just like you have, and he competed to Mozart. He said, Okay, look, early Mozart is different than later Mozart, but it’s still Mozart all the way. And I feel the exact same way about Dave.

To be the therapist here, you don’t have David Letterman doing My Guest needs no introduction. My Next Guest needs no introduction, which to me is a phenomenal long form piece. You don’t have that if you don’t have Late Night with David Letterman where he’s throwing stuff off the building. When he was hanging out with Billie Eilish in the last season of Late My Next Guest, he’s doing go karts with her. So yes, he’s sitting down and having the intimate Tom Snyder and Tom Snyder of course a big influence on Dave.

He’s having these long form conversations with her where he’s really getting into and he’s talking with Phineas and he’s talking about these things, But then there are excerpts, and the excerpts are he doing go karts with her, or with Lizzo. He’s playing the flute with Lizzo, or he’s going out in Chicago, you know, for the places that Tina Fey went to when she was at Second City and eating this bad but very good food. And you’ve got these little things. Those are to me sprinklings of Late Night. They’re little nods.

They’re a little homagous to the stuff he would do on Late Night. But yeah, as he matured and as he grew, he knew he was appealing to a broader audience, and so some of the more subversive of some of the more weird stuff had to go in the back. But then you look at some of the stuff that they did on Late Show, like the stuff they would do with Alan Calter, for example, the announcer. You got Alan Caulter doing a mockup of a one in hundred collect commercial and he’s sitting there and then they’re combining it with Saving Private Ryan, the hot movie at the time, and he’s sitting there doing a one in harndred collect commercial with his guts hanging out of him because He’s part of a war zone, and it’s what the heck is this? So I think a lot of folks who loved Late Night didn’t necessarily look for those moments in Late Show where they were constant nods to the stuff that they would do in Late Night.

It was just done in a different way. I think the eleven thirty thing is on point. You’ll know this, But for younger listeners, there was a really cool, edgy comedian that was a frequent guest on Letterman and would crush and I will use the word edgy to describe Jay Leno. Sure, yeah, ye, just a great guest. You mentioned Tom Snyder.

I recently discovered it. It’s some sort of homebrew dock on YouTube about the Carson Letterman Snyder relationship. There. I feel like I missed the boat on Tom, and I want to go back and do a deep dive on Tom. But in that doc there were more clips than I’ve ever seen of the Daytime Show.

I have no knowledge of the Daytime Show because I discovered Dave with Late Night and maybe I saw the Daytime Show once. Do you have any command of that period of it. I’m on a mission to learn as much as I can about the daytime show that I can. I know our listeners here can’t see my set, but if you look behind me on my set there you’ll see a red folder with an Emmy on it. That’s actually that’s the Emmy.

Congratulations, you’ve been not nominated for an Emmy folder That was given out for the David Letterman Show, The Morning Show. And so you’ve got this show that showed up on Morning last It only lasted a few months in the morning time. It was ninety minutes long, and it was David Letterman doing the stuff that David Letterman did on late night television in the morning, and it was People were completely puzzled by it. And it was canceled unfortunately because of ratings and stuff, but still nominated for Emmy’s different, very excellent piece. Now, at that time, the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.

Tom Dave loved Tom. Tom would host The Tomorrow Show. That was the show that did come on after Carson for a long time, and it was a long form conversation show. We’ve actually had his daughter, Anne Marie Snyder on our show and we’ve talked a lot. She’s busting her butt to get a documentary made about Tom because he is.

Many do consider him the greatest long form conversationalist in broadcast history. A lot of people have a lot of reverence for Tom, including David Letterman, and back at that time, there’s a whole bunch of irony that’s here. Tom Snyder was on The Tomorrow Show. He and Carson famously did not get along very well. And when Carson signed his I don’t know if this is last, but one of his last deals, which gave him a tremendous amount of power.

Johnny Carson arguably one of the most powerful men in show business when he was at his zenith. One of the things that he got was a lighter schedule, and then he also had command of the twelve thirty slot afterwards. Subsequently, the Tom Snyder Tomorrow Show was canceled, and Late Night with David Letterman slid in because at that point Dave’s Morning Show was canceled. Now there’s a pulpach ironies here. Dave was on the Tomorrow Show as a guest.

Tom loved what Dave was doing in the morning, all this crazy stuff.

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And then we find ourselves a few months later, or maybe a year later, we find…

And there’s the ironic part really heats up later on when Dave goes over to CBS gets the Late Show or Late Show with David Letterman. He also he basically took the same Carson deal and moved it over to a new network. So Dave had a tremendous amount of power at that point, including the twelve thirty slot, his company being able to produce the show that comes on after Late Show, and who do they hire as the first host of Late Show but Tom Snyder. And it’s a very interesting scenario at the time. You can watch the Larry Sanders Show, and you know, with Gary Shanling, which was on HbA at the time, they wove reality into that as well.

That show predicted that Dave would have Tom on as the guest after. There’s a whole bunch of rich, beautiful, organic human storytelling in the history of these things, and Tom is one of those guys where I hope that Annie is successful in getting this dock out, not just out, but like really out there. So a lot of people get to see the genius of Tom Snyder. But Dave is one of those guys. If you look at the press conference of hiring Tom at CBS, Dave said, look back in the day and this is the time without as you mentioned without VCRs.

About that, Dave said that he watched probably eighty percent of Tom Snyder’s show as they were broadcast. Dave is a huge fan of it, and I think you’re seeing echoes of Tom Snyder in what Dave is doing now as the elder Statesman of broadcasting. He’s doing the Tom Snyder thing right now. You name check to Larry Sanders there, I call it showbiz adjacent. For thirty plus years, my legacy career is radio, and I’ve book shows, and I’ve been a producer and I’ve done all that things.

I don’t think civilians realize how accurate the backstage stuff at Larry Sanders is. There’s a particular scene I was producing John Gambling in New York, and I guess it’s Gane. Grofflow’s character goes in and goes, hey, do you want to talk to Barry White? And he goes why to F what I want to talk to Betty White and I’m like, I’ve been there with the host who’s half listening. I’m like, so, just a fantastic show, Larry Sanders is.

It’s groundbreaking in so many ways. There are a few shows out there where you can look at shows that are on TV today that are effective, and then you can go back and you can find their ancestors that kind of broke the ground for that. Gary Shannling had two amazing shows that did just that.

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Now here’s the thing about Larry Sanders.

I was just talking with I’m not going to say who it was, but one of Dave’s high up writer slash producers, and we were talking about Larry Sanders. It is just a few weeks back. We were talking about this and he said, Okay, here’s the thing. Here’s the thing about Sanders. And most people, like you say they love Sanders.

Most people who worked for for Letterman like it was a big deal. Every I think it was Sunday night it would come on. They were so excited when Larry Sanders would come on. But there was one major difference that this person made and it was I think it was I think that this is a part of Larry Sanders that might have had to do with if they were putting in elements of Jay Leno’s Tonight Show into the fabric of the show. But they said nobody was afraid of Larry.

He said, that’s the thing he goes. This is where the suspension of disbelief got interrupted for me, was nobody was afraid of Larry. They could all go up to him, and they could these real moments like you just talked about the host that’s half listening and half not and whatnot. Yes, but they weren’t terrified of him. And there were a lot of folks who had a deep reverence, respect, and fear flat out of Dave and that wasn’t represented in Larry.

However, there are a lot of folks who say that was more the atmosphere of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, that there was a little bit more casualness there. So that was something that was really interesting about that. I was listening to your interview with Morty Robert Morton, and I picked up a hint of that early on the Oh let me go recap the show with Dave? Has this actually gonna go? I don’t know.

I’ve never heard of Dave’s reputation one way or the other. Is there a street rep for that? Was it scary to go talk to Dave after a show? The post mortems of and Dave has gone on record about this, and you can read it in Zinneman’s book, you can read it in Carter’s book. I’m not throwing any shade here.

Dave’s attitude towards himself and his performance. He some would say he tortured himself because his and it wasn’t about anybody else and screaming at other people or yelling at other people or getting upset at other people. It was himself. He would get upset at himself. And when a show wasn’t good, and again his version of a show that’s not good.

The standard is completely different than someone say like myself or you who are watching thoroughly entertained by things. And if there was a mess up of any sort, this would celebrate it because that was the tone of the show. But then he would go back and lamb based himself. And you had people there who were the support crew watching this guy that they love so much torture himself. The good news is that evolved as well, just like Mozart’s music evolved, so too did Dave’s attitude towards towards this, and over the years he developed an attitude where, you know what, if the show doesn’t go, well, there’s another show tomorrow night, and he would be able to reconcile that better than he could early on.

But early on, yes, there was a lot of times where and the cancelation of the morning show I think was a big part of that. I haven’t asked him that specifically, That’s something I would love to ask him, but I think some of that behavior towards himself was a flat out was flat out fear that they canceled me once they could cancel me again. We need to keep a very high standard, and I need the standard I need to have for myself needs to be the highest of all. Because I’m the host. It also the buck stops with me.

I get it back. Early in my career, I remember a conversation I had with my host. We had an hour that I didn’t like, and I might have slammed down the headphones whatever. I’m not on the air at this point. I’m on the other side of the glass, and she said to me, all right, relax, it’s just an hour.

And I go when I stop caring, change producers, and I totally get the mentality. Yeah, I feel the same way. Believe it or not, anybody who’s ever seen or heard the Letterman podcast. Believe it or not, I actually feel the same way. It may not look like it when you look at the product that I put out there, but I feel the exact same way.

There are times where I will look back at a segment with somebody or a line of conversation. A lot of the time it’s missed opportunity. A lot of the time it’s like, why the heck didn’t I ask them this? Why the heck didn’t I ask them that? Or that could have gone better, I could have put a better shine on this person or that person or whatever.

And I’ll just absolutely blast myself. But yet you’re exactly right. It’s caring, and I think there’s a certain amount of personal development that can be added to that emotion. Like my life motto is, don’t focus on the problem, focus on the solution. But if I could focus on the solution quickly as opposed to lamenting on the problem, I’m going to be more effective at that.

But yeah, I think the best shows i’ve ever watched that I’ve ever attached myself to say this with my wife all the time. My wife is an unbelievable cook. And one of the reasons that she such an effective culinary artist is because she has that intangible ingredient, and that’s love. She puts love into what she does. And I think that all of us can look out and we can see things from an entertainment perspective that are manufactured, and we can see things that are produced with love.

And you want the produce with love stuff. That’s the stuff that’s going to connect, that’s the stuff that’s going to resonate, that’s the stuff that’s going to stand the test of time. During that interview with Morty, I was quite surprised to learn, I don’t want to step on your story, how much of he controlled chaos Dave knew about in advance. That surprised me. Yeah, absolutely, this is something that if and when I have a conversation with Dave, I certainly want to go down that path.

Early on in the show, the head writer Meryl Marco and this might even this might have even been knocked off before Late Night started. I’m not exactly clear. I get different responses from different people about this. But one of the things that Meryl knew about Dave was that he had this razor sharp wit. That is just his reactions to things off the cuff are nothing short of astounding.

He is just a genius when it comes to responding to things. And he was like that when he was doing stand up at the Comedy Store as well. Heckler’s would be absolutely sliced and diced, and he would do it in a way. I said this on another interview recently. He was like Muhammad Ali.

He wouldn’t use vulgarity, he wouldn’t have to use anything. He would dance around it and he would His weapons were vocabulary and wit and cleverness. And he just was tremendous and Dave still is to this day. The exchange I had with him in the audience, I made him laugh, but which is one of the greatest moments of my life. But it was only a second long because a second later he came back with another thing that made the audience laugh even more, and that was Dave’s.

One of the greatest attributes that David Letterman has, beside his broadcast ability, is that razor sharp wit. So the idea of surprise the host was something that was let’s surprise the host, let’s land, but that was knocked off very quickly because Dave does not like surprises. He likes to know what’s coming, and so at some point early on, a kind of culture was built where it would look like it was a surprise, and it might have been a surprise to the audience. You think about the Andy Kaufman Jerry Lawler incident, things like that. There are things that might have been a surprise to even the crew, but Dave would be in on it, and Dave’s logic behind it was, Okay, if I can just show that same I think this is what it is, but this is what I want to ask him about.

I believe his logic was, if I can just show that razor sharp wit or that spontaneity, but I know it’s coming, I’ve got the best of both worlds because I could put the shine on whatever I want because I know what’s coming. I’ve got some control there. But at the same time, I can still use those abilities to show spontaneity, and certainly spontaneity was included in the show. It was a hallmark in my opinion, but Dave knew what was going on. For the most part.

I loved in the late night era the they would experiment a lot or just totally deconstruct the format. What’s popping in a mind is they did at least one episode from the back office. Let’s not use the set, Let’s give paul A Cassio keyboard, and let’s just do the show from the back I love that kind of episode. Yeah, and there’s so many examples of it. They did an episode on a plane flying from New York to Florida.

They did an episode on the back of a truck where it was trucks that were driving on an expressway or a parkway. They did a show there. They did a show, but they would They did that even into the late show era. They did shows when they were renovating the set and building the bridges, putting the bridges in to the set. There after the initial first late show set, they did shows in the lobby for a week.

They would fly in audiences from different cities. They would all sorts of theme shows that they did it during it was it Hurricane Sandy. I don’t know if it was Hurricane Sandy, but on one of the natural disasters that hit nor’easters that hit New York. They did shows without an audience, the inventive nature of and then they would take the show on the road. Of course, they’d go to Chicago, they’d go to la they’d go to San Francisco, they would go all sorts of places with the show in London, England, and so yeah, that was one of the things, many things that they would do to, as you said, deconstruct the talk show and do something similar but different.

I think I don’t know that there’s an example of a program that has done that better than David Letterman’s productions. And you see the influence in those of us who grew up on it. You know, I’m just some dopey podcaster now, and I’ll sometimes friend me too. I’ll do the show from I call it a pool side edition, and the real truth is it’s eighty five and Sonny out and I don’t feel like sitting in the basement, so I take it out there. But like the landscapers show up next door, and I keep going.

And it’s that Letterman influencing me though, Oh especially because it’s a comedy show. I’m not doing the world news, but I’m like, oh, I’m just going to shout over the landscapers and make a bit out of it. It’s so much fun. Yeah, I love whenever I meet somebody who has been influenced by Dave that way, where they want to take something a little bit askew and put it into the events of everyday life. I adore that, and to me, that mischievous nature of doing something just for the sake of doing it, really not even knowing why other than it tickles you inside.

I think if we did that more as a culture, as a species, I think we would have a lot more smiles on our faces. It’s so fun to just to do something a little bit odd. I do the same thing like for the first I don’t know how many episodes it was until it was I said I was gonna do it until somebody discovered it. A fan of ours so named Andrew discovered it. But I have in the bottom corner it’s a zoom.

I used the zoom technology to build the show, and in the bottom corner, says The Letterman Podcast with Mike Chisholm, I for almost one hundred episodes, I misspelled the word podcast and every word it was every episode. It was misspelled in different ways, and only twice did I have somebody catch it beforehand. But it didn’t get caught on camera. Bill Carter caught it. He takes me spelled podcast wrong, right, I’m like, oh, I do that on purpose, but it didn’t get out there.

And then this Andrew saw it and said, hey, he put it out there. Heyes, everyone ever noticed that Mike spells podcast wrong.

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And then at that point I started spelling it correctly because someone caught…

But and there are a little l of that sprinkled into the show where it’s just a joke that I find as a joke and if somebody ever catches it, great, If not, okay, that’s fine too, That’s awesome. I love it. I was a program director at a radio station Long Island. My midday guy ed till he’s on the air one day and he’s taking a phone call and he asked the caller where they are, and they’re at some diner and he goes, hold on, I’ll be right there, and he takes a cell phone and he starts hosting the show from his cell phone, jumps in the car. He’s on the Southern State park Way.

He’s playing it up. Hey, stupid driver goes to the diner, has a cheeseburger with the listener, comes back and finishes the show in the studio, and I thought it was one of the greatest three hours I’d ever been involved with. And my boss did not get it was like he was on a cell phone and it sounded lousy. I’m like, that was amazing. Are you kidding me?

Yeah, it’s okay. And I say to the director, Okay, are you kidding me? We can have the helicopter guy talking about traffic, but we can’t do something like it’s not like the listener. I think many times the viewer of the listener is treated like the lowest common denominator, and I don’t like that. I don’t like when audiences do that.

I gotta ask you this, What years were you doing radio in New York? I started professionally in November of ninety two at WOR, New York. I was there until April o two, had the station on Long Island for a year and a half. We ran out of money, and then I was at Serious for a decade. Okay, did you ever cross paths with a guy by the name of Alex Bennett?

I heard your name check Alex Bennett on the Morty episode. I Love Alex. Back in the day, Alex and I used to do a twenty minute non radio show in the hallway every day discussing Bush carry somewhere near the cubicles on the twenty third floor of Serious No. Thirty six four Sorry, and we would just talk. But it wasn’t the current political discourse where it’s you like the red team and I like the Blue team, so you’re stupid and they hate you.

The deal you can have meaningful discussions. And we were friendly and we did it every day, and we knew we were going to do it and just let’s get each other’s goats. And he is a great guy. Alex is a he’s been on this show. When I talk about Rick Shechman earlier, he was, he is and to this day, even though Shecky’s left us, now Rick Sheckman’s best friend, this show would not exist if it wasn’t for Alex Bennett.

And so Alex and I are friends. And he does a panel show weekly over Zoom and has since I believe he started in the pandemic. You know, he’s in his eighties now, but you can’t as when you’re a longtime broadcaster like that, you can’t turn it off. And so he started and GABNet. He started building GABNet and does shows he calls it The Ramble every night, but on Mondays, every Monday, he does this show at four o’clock Eastern and he brings on I don’t know seven eight people who come on, many of the more fans of his show.

I came on because of Shecky, because I got to know Shecky, And honestly, I think it was because Shecky was he was vetting me. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t a crazy Okay, I’m a crazy person, but I’m not I’m not a dangerous crazy person. I’ve just got I’ve got the good crazy. If that’s what it is, that’s the thing that makes me dive deep into the things that I love, whether it be Letterman or Star Wars or music or whatever. The things that I love, I dive into it.

But Checky was betting me, and so he said, Hey, why don’t you come on this show with Alex Bennett every Monday? And That’s what I would do. And that was one of the ways that he and I got together and got to know each other, and then as the show would progress, he and I would then start connecting via phone calls or video calls over the Internet. That kind of a thing outside of the show, but Alex Bennett, and to this day, every Monday at four pm Eastern, I try and get on that show with Alex. He’s just he is such a great guy, a legend.

And I like to say this, he paved the road that Howard Stern drove on. When you look at Alex back in the eighties when he was let go at one of his positions at wm I want to say it’s WMC, but I don’t think it’s WMCA, but one of them in New York if there were two thousand people out there the next day protesting, and Alex was that guy, he was the rebel rouser. He had a little bit of that. One of the reasons I think I like Alex so much is because he’s got some of that stuff that Stern has, that letterman has, that impish, mischievous behavior and just a great guy. And I dig that you and Alex know each other and now you and I have made that connection.

And folks, by the way, Johnny had no pre interview here. We did this organically. We came up with this revelation together. So it delights me to know and respect Alex and love to connect you guys. And it’s random because I, like I said, I discovered the podcast and I’m like, all right, let me do some prep here.

What five episodes can I listen today? And I picked Morty and I heard the random Alex Bennett. He also had a run in San Francisco, and he’s got a lot of all the big San Francisco comedians of that era. Robin Williams for sure comes to mind, but Alex legendary radio personality. Letterman reruns late night reruns I used to they used to mess around with them.

There was the one that they rotated it three hundred and sixty degrees just for no reason. I remember, and I’ve looked. I can’t prove this in the internet. Maybe the story or maybe I hallucinated this. I remember tuning in one night and they had redubbed the entire show with merv Griffin revoice Dave, and I remember walking into the middle of it and being like, what is going on here?

Yeah, we need to this is a really good one. That we need to get the official Letterman channel to put back on there. Good call. I’m gonna now that this you’ve said this, I’ve got a message to them and say, hey, here’s a clip that we should throw on. Letterman reruns are tricky because there’s so many rights issues that are there, and then Worldwide Pants and Universal have come to an agreement.

So when you watch Dave’s YouTube channel, and by the way, anybody who fancies themselves as an enthusiast of David Letterman subscribe to his YouTube channel, but they’re putting clips on from those eras, and I think that it would be a very cool thing to revisit that there was the episode where the everything was in reverse, the reverse angle right. Any times that there was a camera trick of any sort. You saw this in Stupid Patricks. One of the things about Stupid Stupid Patricks at the beginning, or Stupid Human Tricks, was the advent of slow motion, and anytime that there would be something that was added to television, be it dubbing, be it fans, the camera trick or whatever, they would mess around with it and it was so fun to watch them do it and make fun of it. They just there isn’t a show out there that I think that poked fun at themselves, at television, at broadcasting, at culture the way that they did.

One of the things that Dave said to Tom Snyder early on was that nothing on television is sacred. And to me, that’s okay. There’s a young guy who’s got this morning show that’s crazy giving himself carte blanche to lampoon anything he wants. I’m super curious today the Dave that went through led the nation after nine to eleven in some respects, the Dave that went away and then came back from his heart surgery and there was some really major heartfelt moments. I’m very curious if the David Letterman of today would still say that nothing on television is sacred.

That’s the question that I want to ask him. So are you saying the Mirv thing did happen? I didn’t make that up. I believe it did. I now that being said, I don’t have it off the top of my head.

I haven’t seen it recently, but that does make sense. Mirv was Oh my gosh, was Mirv. Ever there’s a scene with Jeff Altman with Merv Griffin meowing like a cat that I remember. They used to make fun of IRV all the time. Paul would every once in a while throw the name MERV out there.

They used to They definitely used to make fun of MRVS. That sounds right to me, but I will dive onto this immediately after this episode here and see if that’s there. That does sound right, though, I just can’t recall the clip you mentioned Camera Tricks, and I saw Late Night many times I’ve recently been reliving. It was my fifteenth birthday. It had to be fifteen to get in, and my mother knew somebody at NBC and I got tickets on my fifteenth birthday and I went with my friend Sean.

And unless we’re conflating different episodes, we think that was the night Zippy the Chimp bit Sandra Bernhard and got cut out. But Zippy the Chimp was a good example of all right, let’s strap a camera to a chimp and let him rollerskate around in the studio and you just you hadn’t seen this before, and it was amazing, was mind blowing. Oh, you can do that so much fun the monkey cam. I’ve talked to Sandra on her show, and she’s aware and she has said, yeah, let’s do this. I haven’t jumped back on getting her on the show.

That’s a moment I want to talk to her about. For sure. You talk about Sandra Bernhard as a guest. And this is where a lot of folks who love Late Night and they call Late Night a superior show to Late Show, because you’d have some of these performance artists on and give them a podium, give them a platform and a microphone where they could just go and be as creative as they want to be, whether it’s singing, whether it’s an obscure type of comedy piece, whether it’s a monologue, whether it’s whatever. And Sandra, I think is a phenomenal example of that.

I really like Sandra Bernhardt a lot. I think she is a trailblazer in many ways. I think she gave her Like Vett Midler, I think did a really good job of breaking the mold of what women should be when it comes to a comedian or a performance artist or whatever. And her stuff with Dave on Late Night was magic. It was good on Late Show, but it trickled off because Late Show became more it had to be come more like the Tonight Show.

But One of the casualties of that is you saw less and less of the performance artists as opposed to the celebrities plugging a movie. And he did. Don’t get me wrong, the booking staff and Dave, they did try and keep that element in late show. But certainly, if you’re going to broaden the appeal and broaden the audience, some of these pieces that you’re talking about here, they have to be cut along the way. All right, more tomorrow with Mike Chisholm.

This helps me accommodate some travel ahead during the week. Mike did look into my MERV Griffin thing and here’s what we’ve learned, and they did dub an episode. You can find the episode on YouTube and I’ve shared it in the Facebook group Today Daily Comedy News podcast group. But it’s not nerv. The voice is in Merv’s ballpark like.

It sounds more like MERV Griffin than it sounds like me. But it’s not MERV. But they definitely did dub an entire episode. I didn’t totally make that up. Some other things to plug.

We’ve got T shirts, National Donuts Chain t shirts. Get one link in the show notes. You can subscribe for free to my substack. That’s where I pontificate about the media in the written form. Mickdypod dot substack dot com.

Link of the show notes And if you would like this thing, ad free calaroga dot com. Slash plus get this show and a bunch of others on the network. Four ninety nine a month gets you the whole shebang. No ads, all right, More with Mike tomorrow See then.

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Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Shoenny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Shane Gillis was on Hot Ones. You know what that is. That’s where you go and they feed you increasingly spicy wings while you answer some questions.

You know, that thing’s pretty popular. Probably heard of it. Shane explained where the name Beautiful Dogs came from. That’s the name of Shane’s most recent Netflix comedy special. He shared that it was a spontaneous decision made from one of his shows at Joe Rogan’s club, The Comedy Mothership in Austin.

The booker stopped him as he walked off stage and told Gillis that’s the name of the special. It’s Beautiful Dogs, and Gillis goes, all right, great, if someone names it few, it’s a lot easier than trying to be cool and creative. Shane Gillis is a favorite mediocre US president Ulics assessed Grant he failed at the beginning, that became a general at the end. It’s pretty sick. Gillis acknowledges how much of a loser Grant was while working for his father in law’s drug store.

The story continues on how Grant then became a clerk when the Civil War broke out, and by the end of the war he was commander in chief. I with Shane on this one. He said, how unimportant comedy special intros are. Just walk on stage, amen. I hate those specials that have the four minutes of I don’t know, green room stuff or walking backstage and with the camera falls down and says, just walk on stage.

Shane is absolutely right, exclaim dot ca a with a fun one for the last decade. Duff McKagan you know him from Guns n’ Roses. He plays bass. He has claimed that the Simpsons beer Duff Beer, is named after him. No it’s not.

Jake Cogan, is an original writer producer on the show, told TMZ it’s very weird that this Duff mccagan guy wants to claim credit for Duff Beer. He had zero to do with it, according to Duff McKagan, So I was Doff the King of beers. But this is nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and our management, I remember they called me and said some art house like cartoon wants to use your name as the beer, like a college arthouse cartoon. There weren’t any adult cartoons at the point, I didn’t know anything about branding or anything like that took off and they started selling merchant stuff. I never went after him, but I’m like, hey, mfrs.

You know, no, dude, No, it’s not named after you. Cogan says we named it Duff because it’s a synonym for butt, tushy, booty, and so on. It wouldn’t have been funny to name it after a rock star as Duff as a beer for people who sit on their fat ass all day, Excelain points out. Cogan said no one working on The Simpsons at that time knew any Guns N’ Roses member beside Axel Rose, a burn for McKagan, but a worse burn for Slash Entertainment Weekly. Uh put out a fluff piece.

A coworker of mine used to call it waxing your car. I don’t know what the point of this article was. It was just gushing. Executive producer Stephen Colbert says he’s long been a fan of Taylor. Thomson was thrilled when she agreed to host.

Colbert explains, when she was just starting out, the algorithm started feeding her to me years ago. I remember thinking, who is this special Woman. We then get a recap of Tomlinson’s career. She builds her career as a stand up comedian, winning fans with frank confessional Netflix specials, including this year’s Having On twenty twenty’s Quarter Life Crisis, but she’s since embraced the joys of staying up after midnight. Taylor explains, I think hosting is an entirely different skilled and stand up which is why I decided to take the job.

I wanted to try something new.

Also, you know, forty plus weeks of steady work that probably pays well.

Some internet rumors have her salary at three million dollars, you know, so there’s that, and plus her on network TV.

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And then you show up on things like the Tony Awards.

She was on the Tony Awards Sunday night, and people are like, I know who that is. You know, maybe if somebody offers you a twelve thirty show on a network, you say yes, Tomlinson said. I remember being incredibly nervous and feeling excited but also pretty overwhelmed. I don’t think I could have or would have taken a show like this without someone like Steven producing it. He’s been super generous with his time and advice.

I can’t imagine tackling something like this entirely on my own. Oh yeah, here’s ten million dollars. But the executive producer is I don’t know who’s someone horrible Marjorie Taylor Green. She’s executive producing it, and it’s ten million dollars. You.

In weird article, Late Nighter recapped a recent FYC event for John Mulaney’s Late Night show. Nick Kroll was hosting it. Nick asked writer Langston Kerman what their favorite pieces for the show were. Kerman revealed they had shot a tribute to LA’s many Kobe Bryant murals. Mlani explained, there were four hundred of varying quality, but then the lawyers got involved.

Oh, I’ve been involved with lawyers. They ruin everything. Mulleny explained, you can’t show an outdoor mural legally without compensating the muralist. We filmed like one hundred murals. We just thought they’re on walls.

The co executive producer, David Ferguson clarified, well, they’ll let you do it as long as you make commentary. Mlanie also mentioned one argument that didn’t work for the lawyers. John said, when the muralists put their name in the corner, you can’t go. We had no idea who did it. Our lawyers called it due diligence.

Thanks lawyers. Dean Cook is going to reteam with Greg Coolidge. You’re like, who’s Greg Coolidge? Well, he’s obviously the director from the two thousand and six lines Gate comedy Employee of the Month, which starred Deane Cook. How did you forget that film?

While this comedy duo is back, they’re working on an indie comedy based on the twenty eleven Blacklist script by Christopher Baldy. The film follows a man who, after hitting a major rut in his marriage, is convinced the only way to save the relationship is to have the ultimate night out with his male co workers. Dan Cook is fifty two, so I guess it’s kind of sort of The Hangover with a fifty two year old Dane Cook in the middle. Some more evidence of that seth Yankelwitz, who casted The Hangover, is casting for this one. Can’t wait for it, Dane says.

He sets to release another comedy special, this one called Gritty in Pink. Although there was not yet a date for that one.

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Also, he’s working on an untitled documentary chronicling his rise to comedy …

W Magazine caught up with Hannah Einbinder, and I like W Magazine because they mentioned her mother’s Lorraine Newman, who was on Saturday Night Live and is a founding member of the ground Links. It’s relevant. It doesn’t mean Hannah’s not talented. It just means, you know, people know Peo. People make a call.

For example, say I wanted to have the Pope on, I could go to vatic and Media Relations and be like, hey, my name’s Johnny Mack. I host a podcast. Da da Da da da. I’m not gonna get anywhere. But if I reach out to Deacon Mike, who talks to the Bishop, who talks to James Martin, who talks to the Pope on my behalf, I’ve got a shot.

That’s how the world works, you know. So let’s not pretend Hannah’s mother’s not Lorie Newman, and it didn’t help. Doesn’t mean she’s not talented. It helps. Before landing Hacks, Hannah said she was really enjoying stand up I love the art form.

I love storytelling and characters and straight up stand up comics, alternative comics, clowns, bur lesque. It’s just pure to me. Before I started acting, I was still a local comic. I had just started featuring for other comedians on the road. Being an opening act Hacks gave me the ability to tour on my own.

She was excited to release her special. There are some jokes that are months old. There are some jokes that are years old. It feels like a time consul this hour of my life artistically, and I’m ready to move on to the next thing. If you have been watching my next guest needs no introduction with David Letterman, you saw his interview with Miley Cyrus, who invited Dave to one of her family and friends shows.

Letterman apparently is one of the very few, if not only, straight men who’ve ever been granted entry. Miley tells him from the stage, it’s invite only, and it’s kind of like you got to be gay to get an invite. Letterman got to see Miley doing her interpretation of talking Head cycle Killer, which she describes as David Byrton does Johnny Cash doing Kylie Minogue Letterman said this was so good. As I’m sitting there, I’m thinking I might be gay. If you like David Letterman, listen to tomorrow’s podcast.

I’m talking with Mike Chisholm, host of the Letterman Podcast, and we talk Letterman for eighty minutes. I might even split into two ports forty and forty. You know, it’s a weekend. It’s a summer, all right. If you can make your way to Columbus, Ohio, it’s the Columbus Comedy Festival.

It’s the inaugur one August fourteenth through the eighteenth. Co founder Walker Evans says, we could be more excited to not only bring major headliners to Columbus from New York, LA, Chicago and beyond, but also highlight her incredibly talented local comedy scene. The multi day festival will be spread out at the Columbus Funny Bone, the Key, Columbus Performing Arts Center, Mad Lab, the Attic Comedy Club, the Nest Theater, the Hashtag Comedy Company, and Don’t Tell Comedy Columbus. Among the performers Michael Ian Black, Jason Banks, Tony Rock, Irene Two, Who’s Fantastic, Sam Jay, and there’s about fifteen more names on this list that you probably don’t recognize, but that sounds like a really good festival. The New York Times did a fluff piece for Lauren Michaels Lauren Hirsch.

On the byeline, Lauren Hirsch writes some jokes could have landed better, and Lauren Michaels is second guessing his choice to shorten certain skits. He’s likely to spend the weekend thinking about every detail. By Monday, he’ll find some degree of contentment until he has to do it all over again. The article points out it’s gotten harder since the pandemic because a lot of the live venues that served as farm teams for SNL have closed. Michaels is well versed in the challenges that New Star’s facing.

If you were the funniest kid in the class at your school and then you’re working professionally and everyone else in the room is that it can be upsetting or can be really stimulating. No one can handle the fame. Generally, we’re more tolerant of it because you know people are going to turn into a holes because it’s just part of the process, because no one grew up that way. Is Lauren going to sticker around. He won’t answer.

He says, I’m gonna do it as long as I feel I can do it. But I rely on other people and I always have. Josh Gondoman is taping his next special at the Bell House in New York tonight. A very funny comedian you should check out. Brooklyn based comedian Eva Evans is being praised for making a hilarious yet respectful joke about the LGBT plus community during a recent show.

A clip from her set was posted on Instagram by Don’t Tell Comedy. It has gone viral. The set is called dating a trans Man. Eva says, I didn’t know he was trans from his profile, but you know in person, I figured it out. But I didn’t give a hoot.

I’m too poor to have a phobia. As long as you identify as a man who’s paying this check at the end of this MF and meal, that’s all I care about. As long as your pronouns are zell and cash app, I don’t give an f about what else you got going on. And that’s your comedy news today. All right, Mike Chisholm and I doc Letterman tomorrow.

Have a good weekend. See you