Month: September 2026

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Featured: David Letterman, Dan Rather, George Meade, Mayor Giuliani, Jerry Lewis

What’s in This Episode

• Comedy after 9/11 attacks
• David Letterman’s first show back September 17 2001
• Late night TV response to September 11
• WOR New York radio station coverage of 9/11
• 25th anniversary of September 11 2001

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac. Let me do some house cleaning before we dive in today. So on Saturdays, I’ve been doing these deep dives, and today’s also a deep dive. And I’m aware today’s not a Saturday, but the calendar forced my hand.

Yesterday, I wanted to talk about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, and that was an episode yesterday that I feel came out pretty well. And today I want to talk about comedy after 9-11 because Friday is the 25th anniversary. And let me just table set before we get into it. I was in New York City that day. I was the assistant program director of WOR New York.

Our offices were on 40th Street and Broadway, so I don’t want to make it sound like it was across the street. But we had a large bay window in the main studio where the morning show was, and you could directly see the Twin Towers down there. And on that particular morning, I was editing some tape. It was about 8.50 something in the morning. And I noticed on the TV that there was a fire at the Twin Towers.

I walked down the hall. The boss wasn’t in yet. And I said, hey, let’s keep the morning show on the air. The Twin Towers are on fire. I remember a couple of minutes later, George Meade, who was the helicopter pilot who did traffic reports, he was in studio that day.

And he immediately said, I flew copters over the city for 25 years. It’s crystal clear out there. There’s no way you would accidentally crash into that building. And we know how the rest of the day went. I watched one of the towers fall with my own eyes while looking out the window.

The other one I saw fall on TV. I was running the board, even though that wasn’t my job anymore. But whoever was running the board that morning needed a bathroom break. So I jumped behind the board for 10 minutes. So all that growing up in New York City, dealing with the stress of that day.

Having staffers who we had sent down to the World Trade Center. I’d had one co-worker, Mara, we had sent her down to cover. We didn’t hear from her for like six hours. I happened to be in the lobby when she showed up and I gave her a hug and she looked at me like, and in modern times, I’d probably get in trouble with HR. She was like, what are you doing?

And I’m like, I thought you were dead. So I share all that because it shapes everything about me. And the weeks after September 11th in New York City were unlike anything before or since. It was very disorienting. Everybody knew somebody who was in those buildings that day.

Everybody knew somebody with a story of, oh, normally I would have been at work except I was sick or the train was delayed or I went to my parent-teacher meeting. Everybody knew a story like that. Everybody knew somebody. The late night shows went dark immediately. No Letterman, no Leno, no Conan.

News coverage ran continuously for days. That was the time when we first got the tickers on the bottoms. I mean, what would you even do on a talk show that night? I’ll tell you a story from the radio days. So I wound up in charge of the radio station all day, and I immediately gave the order.

It just sounds like, you know, you know what I mean. I was in charge. And I said, OK, don’t play any jingles. You know, the W.O.R. No jingles, no commercials.

Keep the air stark. As the day went on, I even told people, don’t even screen the calls. Just plop people down. This is just about raw emotion. Just let people talk.

And that’s what we did.

And then my overnight producer comes in and I’m like, OK, I’m going to me and…

So let me see if we all get four hours sleep. And she’s like, yeah. And I booked these guys. They do like phony phone calls. And I was like, what are you?

Are you insane? No. And I didn’t let her do the guess. I’m like, just just take callers. Are you crazy?

So, you know, how would you even do a late night talk show on September 11th in New York City, right? And I’m looking at the list. Letterman and Conan were in New York. Leno, I guess, was out in L.A. Those days.

You know, when there was a time, like, how is anything ever going to feel normal again? The first person back was David Letterman, September 17th, 2001, six days after the attacks. Broadcasting from the Ed Sullivan Theater, so about 10, 9 or 10 blocks north of where I had been on September 11th. The city smelled like smoke, and oh yeah, every surface of the city had missing person flyers. Do you remember those?

Have you seen this person? I mean, in those early days, we thought people were just missing, or they were somehow disoriented from the explosions, or they were going to somehow crawl out of the rubble. There were people lined up at the emergency rooms, just waiting for all the bodies to come in, and none of that happened. Nobody ever.. You know, there was none of that.

So you would see all these missing person flyers and it was just, oh, I can’t even. So there’s David Letterman and the band is there and Paul Schaefer’s there. Letterman walks out. He doesn’t do a monologue. He sits at his desk and talked.

He talked about being confused about what to do. He talked about his son. He talked about the city. This is our first show on the air since New York and Washington were attacked. And I need to ask your patience and indulgence here because I want to say a few things.

And believe me, sadly, I’m not going to be saying anything new. And in the past week, others have said what I will be saying here tonight far more eloquently than I’m equipped to do. But if we are going to continue to do shows.. I just need to hear myself talk for a couple of minutes, and so that’s what I’m going to do here. It’s terribly sad here in New York City.

We’ve lost 5,000 fellow New Yorkers, and you can feel it. You can feel it. You can see it. It’s terribly sad. Terribly, terribly sad.

And watching all of this, I wasn’t sure. That I should be doing a television show because for 20 years we’ve been in the city making fun of everything, making fun of the city, making fun of my hair, making fun of Paul. So to come to this circumstance that is so desperately sad, and I don’t trust my judgment in matters like this, but I’ll tell you the reason that I am doing a show and the reason I am back to work is because of Mayor Giuliani. Uh. Very early on after the attack and how strange does it uh..

Sound to invoke that phrase after the attack uh.. Mayor giuliani encouraged us and here lately implored us to to go back to our lives go on living uh.. Continue trying to make uh.. New york city uh.. The place that it should be twenty years we’ve been here in new york city we’ve worked closely with the police officers and and uh..

Firefighters And fortunately, most of us don’t really have to think too much about what these men and women do on a daily basis. And the phrase, New York’s finest and New York’s bravest, did it mean anything to us personally, firsthand? Well, maybe, hopefully, but probably not. But boy, it means something now, doesn’t it? They put themselves in harm’s way to protect people like us.

And the men and women from the firefighters and the police department who are lost, are going to be missed by this city for a very, very long time. And my hope for myself and everybody else, not only in New York but everywhere, is that we never, ever take these people for granted. Absolutely never take them for granted. David Letterman, whose whole persona was ironic distance, got emotional. Dan Rather came out as a guest.

He cried on camera. The face of CBS News, crying on a comedy talk show. And that’s what you did. You put two people in a room and you let the cameras run. Towards the end of the show, David Letterman said, if we’re going to continue, we must be allowed to be funny again.

He said it quietly, almost as a question. And the audience responded like it was the thing they’d been waiting to hear someone with authority say out loud. Not that everything was okay, not that the grief was over, that the laughing could come back without it being a betrayal that people had died. That permission, from a man who had spent 20 minutes being about as unfunny as ever been, was one of the more important things said in public in that specific week. Now, I don’t know if you can hear it in my voice.

The emotions are coming back. I’m going to take the break because I need to regroup. That same night, September 17th, 2001, Jon Stewart returned. That was the same night Letterman did. Letterman came back with grief.

Jon Stewart was grief plus anger plus the beginning of the political argument that he would spend the next decade making on The Daily Show about media failure and institutional dishonesty and the gap between what the country was being told and what was actually happening. John talked about his view from his apartment and how he could still see the Statue of Liberty after the towers fell. He talked about what the towers had meant, what their absence meant.

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And then he made the argument that the view from his apartment told him that …

There was the show that existed before 9-11 and the show that existed after 9-11. Related, but different. Jon Stewart gave himself the permission to be serious about things that mattered. Saturday Night Live returned September 29, 2001, with a cold open. Lorne Michaels standing on stage with New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Time out there. The last 25 years have definitely changed Rudy Giuliani’s legacy, but in 2001, he was a massively respected figure. Out of the Letterman clip I cut, Dave did about two minutes just praising Mayor Giuliani. In my old basement in Long Island, I had a framed photo of Giuliani at one of the funerals, and the guy went to every funeral and it was just such a striking photo. I probably still have it in the back.

I don’t have it hung up right now in the new house. But if we can separate the Giuliani in our mind in 2026 from the one in 2001, this is Lorne Michael standing on stage with the mayor of New York City, surrounded by police officers and firefighters. Lauren looked at Giuliani and asked, can we be funny? Giuliani said, why start now? The audience laughed.

Paul Simon came out and sang the boxer. And we had begun the transition from before to after. The acknowledgement that the after was going to include comedy again. Bill Maher was on Politically Incorrect that same September 17th. A guest claimed that the hijackers were cowards.

Bill Maher said, whatever else you could say about the hijackers, cowardly wasn’t the right word. The timing was catastrophic. I even considered not even repeating this segment here 25 years later. FedEx and Sears pulled their advertising from the show immediately. Several ABC affiliates refused to air it.

ABC canceled Politically Incorrect in 2002. Officially, ratings, but the timeline made the relationship to that comment hard to deny. Then there’s Gilbert Gottfried. October 5th, 2001. It’s three weeks and three days after the attacks.

It’s the Friars Club Roast a Few Hefner being held at the New York Hilton. Now, let me jump in again, because I’m sure you’re picking up how raw this is for me. So as I set up the Gilbert thing, I’m like, let me pull the clip. Now, to pull clips, I do this five, six days a week on the podcast. I use a program called Audio Hijack.

And what it does is it hijacks the sound card. So if I play something, say, off YouTube, it grabs the audio. It hijacks the audio. I do this every day. Today, in the middle of doing this episode, I saw the word hijack, and I’m having that emotional reaction that’s coming out on the show today.

Anyway, it’s the roast of Hugh Hefner, and Gilbert Gottfried explained he wanted to discuss the elephant in the room, and here’s the joke. The room booed him. Not politely. Booed him. In the way a room full of comedians boos someone who’s gone somewhere the room isn’t ready to go.

Too soon? Too soon, 24 days after the attacks, in New York City, making a joke about flying planes into buildings. Too soon. Gilbert stood his ground and then pivoted. He started telling the aristocrats.

And he kept going. And by the time he finished his version of the aristocrats, the room was laughing. It’s textbook. Gilbert tested a line, found it too far for the room, and instead of retreating, he went a different direction in a way that gave the room permission to laugh without having to endorse the original joke. It’s so disconnected from 9-11, laughing at the aristocrats doesn’t feel like it’s laughing at the attacks.

It feels like laughing at something that exists in its own separate universe of comedy transgression that has nothing to do with what just happened. Gilbert found the room. As we went into the fall, there were also, that’s when I was producing Joan Rivers’ radio show, and that’s when the anthrax was hitting New York. That was like October, if I’m remembering correctly. So we’re not even done with 9-11, and now working in the media in New York City, opening the mail every day might get you killed.

The comedy cellar stayed open. The performers working at the cellar were working through something, not necessarily material, but through the grief and trying to find jokes that still worked in the new world. Something had shifted. Some comedians addressed it from the stage, others avoided it entirely and did their regular material. That in itself was a statement.

I remember it was weird at that time when people didn’t want to talk about 9-11. The first wave of comedians to incorporate 9-11 material into their actual stand-up acts did so carefully and mostly through the side door. Not so much here’s a 9-11 joke, but here’s a joke about airport security, or here’s a joke about the news. By the time Louis Black and David Cross and others were doing explicitly political stand-up about the war in Iraq, comedy had fully absorbed the event and was using it as subject matter rather than navigating around it. That brings us to this clip.

I’ll let Joe Rogan and Louis C.K. Take it from here. Louis C.K. Caught some grief for this upcoming joke. Giuliani, at one point in time, people thought he should be president.

After the way he handled 9-11. That’s right. Everybody’s like, he’s our leader. Yeah. And just because he walked down the street with a coffee and said, oh, boy, it’s rough.

That’s basically what he did. He didn’t stop 9-11. He didn’t solve 9-11. He didn’t save anybody. There was no one to save.

That’s the most up thing about that day is that there was no, you know, they had the hospitals were all ready and there was not like one. There was like nobody was injured. Were you living in New York City when that happened? Yeah, I was. I was not in the city.

The day before on the 10th, I flew to L.A. To pitch a TV show. Wow. And my wife was pregnant. And we were living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which was right.

I mean, it came out of our house. The towers were our view right out the door. And so she was there six months pregnant and whammo. And she called me. It was like 9 in the morning in L.A.

Or earlier, I guess. It was like 6. And she called me and she was just bawling. And I was like, what’s wrong? And she couldn’t say anything.

Partly I’m like, am I in trouble?

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And then she says, turn on the TV.

And I saw these towers on fire and I was like, okay. It’s nothing to do with home. This is a big, it’s a world problem. Not a me problem. I’m pretty sure that’s not my fault.

No. No. Anyway, she handled it really well. Todd Barry, you know Todd, right? He called her.

She’s the one who told him what had happened. He woke up not understanding what was happening, and he was really scared, and called my ex-wife, and she calmed him down. She’s a good person.

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Speaking of Todd Barry, I think this is actually the best 9-11 material that …

I’ve always liked this one. You guys want to hear my favorite September 11th story? I know, that’s probably not the way I should have phrased that. We’ll rewind that one. Want to hear my most bizarre September 11th song?

Is that better? I’m walking down the street. It’s smoky, it’s sad, it’s awful. I see a guy I know a little bit coming towards me. He comes within a foot of me, looks up, and he goes..

The new Mercury Rev album is out. Are you sure about that? Because I just watched the news, and I didn’t see that. Comedy works around the edge of the thing, finds the angle that allows the room to breathe, and eventually, when the room’s ready, looks at the thing itself. The room eventually did get ready, it always does.

That’s what comedy is for, and that Here’s your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Ed McMahon, Don Rickles, Sammy Davis Jr., Ralphie May

What’s in This Episode

• Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon history and legacy
• 1976 Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis reunion on live telethon
• Telethon’s move from New York to Las Vegas in 1973
• Jerry Lewis’s film career and French critical reception
• Don Rickles’s relationship with the telethon across decades
• 44-year run of the telethon from 1966 to 2010

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

On Saturdays, I’ve been doing deep dives into single topics. Today, we will talk about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. I don’t know how well this episode is going to do. I’m doing this one for me for reasons I’ll explain after the break. But let’s dive in and start with the number that’s almost impossible to process in 2026.

In 1976, guess how many people tuned in to watch at least part of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day telethon? That number? 85 million. That’s more than the Super Bowl was doing back in those days. Now that’s 1976. It’s 50 years ago at that point, but that’s when I first got into the telethon.

We’ll get into that later. 85 million Americans tuned in to watch part of Jerry Lewis hosting a 21 and a half hour live TV event from Las Vegas, surrounded by a rotating cast of celebrities, raising money for kids with muscular dystrophy, smoking, visibly deteriorating in real time as the hours wore on, and occasionally doing something weird that it burned itself into the memory of everyone who saw it. The Jerry Lewis Telethon ran from 1966 to 2010. 44 years. Boy, it’s been gone that long already. I still miss it every year. I’ll talk about it after the break.

Almost every significant comedian of that era, 1966 to 2010, performed on it at some point. Some performed before anyone knew who they were. Some at the height of their fame. All of it was live. Some performed at three in the morning.

Like I talked a couple weeks ago about Ralphie May. I saw him in the middle of the night. To a casino audience that had nothing else to do. All of this was live. None of it was repeatable, and as a comedy document, the telethon captures something about four decades of American stand-up that no other archive can match.

All right, I gotta jump in a little. If you never saw this thing, it would come on at nine o’clock on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, and it would go until six-something the next day. It never seemed to end at a regular time. In the 6 p.m. Hour, it would kind of Rap.

Jerry looked wrecked, destroyed. He’d been up for most of the 21 hours.

And then Tony Orlando here in New York would finish it up and maybe they’d ro…

But it would it would end at like six something. And over the years. So I got into this kid. Here’s why I was going to do this after the break. But let me do now.

So my dad was a bartender and my dad worked nights and my dad loved TV. But when he would get home in those days, remember TV signed off? If you were up at like midnight, one in the morning, they’d play the national anthem and TV would go off. There wasn’t younglings. There was no TV to watch.

If you put on channel two at three in the morning, there was static. There weren’t things to watch. One of the reasons younglings like me even knew about Johnny Carson was because your choices at midnight might be the second half of Carson, an old black and white movie, and nothing. The channels actually played the national anthem and signed off. Channel 2, New York.

So my dad, who loved TV, but was working when TV was on, would get home and there was nothing on. So he didn’t get to watch TV except Labor Day because this thing went 24 hours. So he loved the Labor Day telethon, which is why I’m doing this today. I’m indulging myself. He’d make himself a bowl of like fruit and he would sit there and smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes and probably drink a Rheingold or a Schaefer and watch this thing.

And there was a time when the guest would be the ilk of Frank Sinatra. But by the time this thing was wrapping down in 2010 and my father was long gone, this was a relic. I mean, I would watch this thing and have the memories of being a kid and be like, oh, even though I’m a kid, I understand that Frank Sinatra is a major star. And by like the 2000s, it was like, who are these people on this show? It just had become such a relic that I couldn’t stop watching it because it was amazing.

Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch in Newark in 1926 into a vaudeville family where show business was the household language. He developed a comedy act by 12, miming to phonograph records. One would say he was the Sarah Cooper of his day, founding the physical vocabulary that would define everything that came later. He met Dean Martin in 1946. They paired up.

Dean as the suave, effortlessly cool singer. Jerry Lewis as the manic, rubber-faced kid who couldn’t hold himself together. They were enormously successful, and then in 1956, they split up, and they barely spoke for 20 years. Jerry went into films, The Bellboy, The Ladies’ Man, The Nutty Professor, movies where he functioned as his own director, in ways that French critics took seriously while American critics were dismissing him as a clown. Yeah, remember that whole thing that the French loved Jerry Lewis?

He received the Legion of Honor in France in 1983. The telethon began in 1966, broadcasting from a single New York station, Channel 5 here in New York, at least. I’m not 100% sure about it, 1966, but by the 70s, it was definitely on Channel 5, raising over a million dollars in its first year. By 1973, the telethon had moved to Las Vegas, which was the decision that made everything more entertaining and more revealing. Vegas in the 70s and 80s was still Rat Pack territory.

Entertainers staying up all night was recent mythology, and the telethon fit naturally into an ecosystem built around performers doing things at 3 in the morning that wouldn’t happen anywhere else. And again, remember, I’m watching in New York, so if Ralphie Mays popping on at 3 in the morning Eastern, it’s only midnight in Vegas. Not absurd, right? The show moved to LA for a little bit, then back to Las Vegas. The co-host, Ed McMahon, co-hosted 38 times.

So that gave it a little weight, right? Because he had Carson’s sidekick there with Jerry Lewis, so it made it feel more legit. Frank Sinatra would come on. Sammy Davis Jr. Appeared.

Now, by 1966, the Rat Pack wasn’t really a thing anymore. That era was becoming mythology, but the people were still around, and Jerry Lewis was genuinely of that world and genuinely friends with those people, and the telethon was where those friendships could be visible without it feeling like promotion. Then there was the 1976 event. I feel like I saw this live. I feel like I was watching this.

I feel like they did this on Monday afternoon. I might be making all this up. Frank Sinatra walks out and surprises Jerry Lewis.

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And then behind Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin.

It was the first time Lewis and Martin had been seen together in public in more than 20 years. Cameras running, live TV, no script. I have a friend who loves what you do every year. And who just wanted to come out. Would you send my friend out, please?

Where is he? Would you send him out here? Come here. Break it. Up.

What is this here? Break it up. I think it’s about time, don’t you? Thank you. I think it’s about time.

Thank you. I don’t know. How you been? You know, it seems like we haven’t seen each other for 20 years. Well, you know, there was all those rumors about our breaking up, and then when I started the show and you weren’t.

Here, I believed it. Don Rickles is the comedian whose relationship with the telethon deserves its own look. Don did enough appearances across the decades that the MDA later compiled a dedicated episode of just Don Rickles on the telethon for their highlight reel series on streaming. Both Don and Jerry came out of the same entertainment ecosystem. Las Vegas showrooms, the Rat Pack, Orbit, the world where insult comedy and Jewish comedy and Italian-American showmanship existed in close proximity and fed each other for decades.

Don Rickles insulting Jerry Lewis on live TV in front of a Las Vegas midnight audience was two people from the same world doing the thing the world did. Jerry, it’s such a treat for me to get up early, to be here for this wonderful, wonderful occasion. I mean, I know the children, and I know the problem, but I say from my heart, really, I’m so annoyed with you. I really am. I was never a fan of yours.

You know that. And yet, you’ve asked me to come, and it was very sweet of you to ask me. Ed wanted me to come, but he thought I had a bottle of booze in my hip pocket. But you I’ve never liked. You know that.

But, and look at you today. You’re the same age as me, only on you it shows. Everybody’s Sammy. They all told you you look handsome. You look wonderful.

Look at your neck. You can tell your age right away. The neck hangs a little bit. You know what I mean? In a year, you’re going to be on a fence going, ah, ah.

Ah, ah, ah. The insults were real enough to be funny and safe enough to be affectionate, which is Don Rickles exactly. It worked because everybody in the room, the audience, the TV audience, Jerry, understood the difference between an insult that draws blood and an insult that says, I know you well enough to do this. Don Rickles was at his best not doing material. He was best at responding.

At a telethon at three in the morning with a depleted casino audience and a host had been awake for 16 hours was a great canvas for that approach. Don Rickles didn’t need a good room. He needed a real situation. Now you might be like, Johnny Mac, all right, enough with the 1960s. Well.

Fast forward to 1995. You know who did the show? Jerry Seinfeld. The telethon was still kind of operating at the high end and could get Jerry Seinfeld, an A-lister, appearing not to promote himself, He already had the top sitcom, but because the telethon was significant enough that people came. Let me tell you how you can improve your show.

You know what the trouble is? I got to tell you, Jerry, it’s very important that you understand that with comedy and You have to be the rooting interest. Yes. Right. You stand too damn tall.

Too tall. Yes. You should crouch a little like this. That’s good. Okay.

Good. How does it feel? Is it comfortable? It feels shorter. Yes.

You could make a fortune from this. They would know you in every country in the world. Really? All around the world? Yes.

I mean, right now you’re just local, but you could be very good. I would love to go statewide. During the 80s, Billy Crystal, big star, appeared regularly. Crystal was what the telethon needed during prime hours, skilled enough to read the room, warm enough to fit the charity, funny enough to justify the airtime. In earlier days, Jackie Gleason would come on.

Then in 1997, Jimmy Fallon performed stand-up on the telethon. He was 22 years old. This is a year before Jimmy Fallon joined Saturday Night Live. He was taking classes at the Groundlings, hadn’t landed anything. Somehow, he got a slot on the telethon.

That’s what this show was, especially as we got into the later years. Who’s this James Fallon kid? Who is he? Why is he on? Hello, my name is Jimmy Fallon, and welcome to the auditions for Troll Productions Incorporated.

Remember, we’re looking for a star or celebrity to sponsor our new line of Troll Dolls and our new series of commercials. So let’s start the auditions. Thanks for coming. First up, Mr. John Travolta.

She’s like, thanks a lot, I mean, I swear to God, this news is so weird over here, right? I mean, like, who does his hair? Like, his hair’s so frizzy, I mean, like, you know, like, you guys probably get some, like, anti-freeze shampoo or something to freeze. Him, right? We talked a few weeks ago about Ralphie May showing up.

Seeing Ralphie May in a casino showroom at two in the morning before people knew his name was a specific memory that people like me hold on to clearly, and I played the clip. I won’t do it again. Go back and listen to, it’s like three weeks ago now. The Ralphie May episode. I played the clip there.

And you can hear the audience not knowing how to deal with this guy and Ralphie winning the room. The telethon put comedians in conditions that revealed something about them that normal contacts don’t. Midnight to six in the morning on a Jerry Lewis telethon was its own ecosystem operating by different rules than the primetime portion of the show. The big guests were gone. The network affiliates were running reduced staffs.

Jerry Lewis had been doing this thing for eight or ten hours, smoking continuously, running on whatever combination of adrenaline and who knows what else got him through the night. And into that context came comedians whose agents had gotten on the slot because exposure is exposure. You were doing material at four in the morning to an audience that had arrived at a casino and stumbled into a free show. Right after a video about a child in a wheelchair and right before another desperate phone appeal for money. The whiplash was the entire experience.

A comedian doing tight, constructed stand-up material right after a tear-jerker video segment. You had to reset the room in your first 30 seconds. If you can’t do that, the next five minutes, long, awkward. By hour 15 or 16, Jerry Lewis was no longer performing in any controlled or calculated sense. He was on camera, exhausted, wired, smoking, completely invested.

He would cry. He made jokes that didn’t work. He didn’t care. He moved on. He argued with the production team in front of the camera.

Again, this is all live. Did I mention he smoked? In 2007, he said a gay slur on camera. Live TV. He apologized.

In another era, that might have been handled quietly, but by 2007, the show was in decline. Donations were falling. Affiliates were dropping the show or only airing part of it. Couldn’t draw the celebrities anymore. A lot of the people he had been friends with were gone by then.

And in 2011.. The MDA informed Jerry Lewis he had completed his run. He was 85 years old and had raised $ 2. 5 billion for them. Let’s remember it like this. It’s hour 18, and there’s a guy in a tuxedo who hasn’t slept.

He’s standing in front of a tote board in Las Vegas, smoking and doing whatever he needs to keep the thing moving for another hour. For charity. That’s your comedy news for today.

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Featured: Ricky Gervais, Frank Caliendo, Jay Leno, John Mulaney, Leanne Morgan

What’s in This Episode

• Ricky Gervais dismisses knighthood as meaningless
• Frank Caliendo reveals John Madden wanted to sue him over impressions
• Jay Leno took pay cut to keep Tonight Show crew during NBC cuts
• John Mulaney recalls attending Georgetown with Ivanka Trump
• Leanne Morgan discusses late-career success and mainstream comedy preferences

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

May the weather gods be kind and may there be a beach day in your near future. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac as we make it to the end of summer and the final weekend with your Daily Comedy News. Ricky Gervais was asked about knighthood. You know, the Brits, they do that whole knight thing. Would Ricky Gervais accept a knighthood?

He dismissed the honor as meaningless and remarks shared on his YouTube channel Ricky doubts the offer will ever come his way. Oh, no, no, no, no. You have no idea. I am the writer of Palace Intrigue, a daily podcast about the royal family. If they want people to stop talking about Meghan Markle, they’ll take a picture with you.

These royals don’t worry. But Ricky doubts the offer will ever come his way. But acknowledge he would have accepted it without hesitation for one reason. That reason, if my mom was alive, I’d definitely do it. Mom is no longer alive.

Would I do it now? Do I care? Does it matter? It doesn’t matter. If it was close to my house, I might.

He sounds like me. Oh, I have to go all the way downtown into London to Buckingham Palace to get knighted. Sounds like a lot of work. I mean, I wouldn’t go into New York City to get knighted. I think he’s right.

We do it in the suburbs. I digress. Ricky described himself as neither a committed royalist nor an opponent to the monarchy, likening the institution to tourism and calling a knighthood so irrelevant. But he said one thing might sway him. Oh, I might do it to annoy people.

Maybe I would. All the people that would be really annoyed, that would just tip the balance. I like that. It’s my favorite. If a knighthood meant like it did in the olden days, I could ride around on a big horse with a sword, I’d take it.

He then playfully hinted that maybe an offer had been made And noted if he had turned one down, he would have kept it quiet to spare anyone embarrassment. He said, for all you know, they’re calling me all the time and I’m going, nah. Frank Caliendo was on the Sage Steel pod cutting to the chase. We learned that John Madden wanted to sue Frank Caliendo. Let’s listen to Frank Caliendo tell the story on the Sage Steel show.

I have cut this down for pacing. The Kelsey podcast was the biggest one I heard where John Madden didn’t like me forever and he wanted to sue me on something. And he called Charles Barker and said, we got to sue Caliendo. He’s like, come on, man. Every time he talks, he makes us money, man.

So it was this interesting thing where Charles came up and told me about that. He’s like, you know John Madden wanted to sue you, right, man? I’m like, what? And he tells me the whole story. And I would never tell that story out in public because I didn’t know if I had permission from Charles.

He told me that in confidence. I’m like, I’m not going to tell somebody that, even though it probably would have been good for me to tell it. I held onto that story for like 10, 15 years.

And then Charles just told it recently on a couple of podcasts and people lik…

I’m like, yeah, I’ve been holding it as a secret for 20 years. It’s, it’s crazy. Why did John Madden want to see you? Uh, there were some commercials I did and he probably was, I did myself indemnified. I was like, I don’t know if I could do them or not.

And it was like doing like a Madden kind of thing. And I did a video game that was a similar, I took it away more on the video game. It wasn’t John Madden. I probably talk like this a little bit instead of just like that. So he was, he just didn’t like anything I did.

And Charles didn’t care. I mean, Charles was not the type of, he doesn’t care. He’s like, he’s like, do whatever. But he also got to know me and know me, knew me as a person. Madden just stayed clear.

But again, those football coaches can be really weird about that stuff. The video game in question. So it seems that Madden’s issue with Caliendo was about him using the impression in commercials or video games. Caliendo did a Madden parody in the 2008 video game Blitz of the League 2. Run a sweep, throw long, maybe dry hump a cheerleader or two.

I don’t think Madden was all that wrong about that. Now, while I was making the rounds, a few clips showed up on my radar. I don’t know when this is from. This is Jay Leno on the Adam Carolla podcast. Not sure when it’s from, but visually, Jay looks younger here.

If I had to guess, this clip is probably like 10 years old. Who knows? Maybe Jay put on some weight, and it’s from earlier this week. Anyway, let’s listen to Jay Leno tell Adam Carolla a story, and then you tell me if Jay Leno was the worst guy who ever lived. When I was doing The Tonight Show, I probably..

I was making $ 30 million a year. It was ridiculous. Okay. And NBC said, well, we’re going to have to cut half the crew. You know.

So we had a big meeting. I said, all right, but show of hands, how many feel I should take a 50% pay cut so we can keep everybody? Well, I got outvoted. Boy, I got screwed on that one. But really, I.

Already have $ 15 million. I’m doing pretty good. I never thought I’d get this far. And you know something? They were the best crew for the rest of the days.

You know, everything was always terrific. It was a union crew. Everybody made a good living. You know, guys would come up and show me the car they bought or the house they got around the corner or whatever it might be. And it didn’t cost me anything, really.

Because I had plenty of money. I was making plenty of money. Doesn’t sound like that bad of a guy. I can see why Conan O’Brien and David Letterman might be a little annoyed with him. More so Conan than Dave.

Dave should just be mad at NBC execs or Dave should just be mad at younger NBC Dave who didn’t play the game. Jay Leno did. I digress. Another clip. John Mulaney was on Larry King.

That’s definitely not from earlier this week because Larry King passed away. When did Larry King pass away? Larry King passed away in 2021, and there was that pesky pandemic. So this clip’s probably at least seven years old, and John Mulaney, his chin is a little thinner in this clip. You know, he’s filled out over the years.

You know what I mean? His face is much more filled these days. So here’s a young, skinny John Mulaney talking to Larry King about working with Ivanka Trump. Yes, I did. She went to Georgetown?

Yeah, we were both freshmen at the same time. You remember her? Yeah, she was in my Euro Civ class. Where we studied pre-Renaissance Europe. Was she good?

She was very nice, a good student. And we all smoked cigarettes, so I’d see her out on the patio. Oh, really? Oh, do I get sued for that? She smoked.

You know you smoked, Ivanka. And we all smoked out on the patio. She was very, very nice. And she left after one year, and I thought, well, that’s the last I’ll ever see of her. Little did I know.

Eric went there, too. Leanne Morgan sounds quite grounded in my kind of people. She told USA Today, I’m going to the grocery store. I go to Costco. I’m still doing my laundry.

I love doing laundry. I feel like everything’s the same. I really do. She is now 60 and talked about having success later in life than some people do. I couldn’t sell 12 tickets and now I’m doing arenas and that’s crazy.

And then the television part, even though it’s hard and I had to learn a lot and I’m still learning a lot, it still feels right to me. It feels like I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m thankful, but it’s just bigger and sweeter than anything I dreamed of. During a recent appearance on the Women of Joy show podcast, Leanne Morgan said that women want quality content, but without women in their panties shooting bows and arrows and all the things like that. Honest to goodness, I think in the secular world, I think a lot of people don’t want to see all that, and I think they’re in a bubble out there.

And they think people want to see that, but they’re not in the middle of the United States. I talk to my college students about this all the time, and I go, there’s this whole thing out there called America, and on the coast, you don’t live in it. Morgan recalled telling the director that a southern mother of four.. Wouldn’t curse in front of her children, she said. The mother wouldn’t talk like that in front of these children.

The director said, you know better than I do, Leanne. Do what you think is best. So I think they think in their minds, oh, everybody’s talking like this, everybody wants this, but I don’t think the majority of people do. Or not in the South, especially when you’re portraying Southern characters, or anywhere, really. She explained in her family, growing up, no one used swear words, and while it’s okay if someone else wants to use it, she doesn’t care for them herself.

The Verge caught up with Emily Canelon. She’s been a guest on this program. She’s got a new special, The Introvert. And in the special, Emily talks about joining high school friends to go bra shopping. So she was telling a version of the joke in San Diego, where she filmed the special, and her punchline, which she told better, was, It’s weird shopping for something you can’t fill yet.

It’s sort of like if the Padres went shopping for a trophy case. Yikes. Ouch. Padres fans, take that one to the face. Catalano says, I use whatever sports team is not good at the city.

Oh, come to Queens and talk about the Mets. This is funny. In The Introvert, spoilers, she tells a story about wanting a Theragun massage gun for her birthday. Dad misunderstood, thought she wanted an actual gun, but what he bought her was a Hitachi magic wand. Don’t Google that.

Or if you do, you’ll have to explain to your loved ones what you were looking up. And the answer is, I was just toasting a podcast in the basement. I don’t know what you think I’m doing. Anyway, Emily unwraps the gift at a restaurant dinner. And she’s pretty sure she and the waiter were the only ones who knew what a person might use the Hitachi magic wand for.

Don’t Google it. I’m telling you. Don’t Google it. I know you’re curious. Don’t.

She says, Dad knows what it is now. But adds, but I never talked to him specifically about that joke. That is hilarious. Another random story that I collected for today’s episode. Back in 2025, Bill Burr poked fun at former SNL cast member Kevin Nealon as the two hiked through the woods together on an episode of Kevin Nealon’s Hiking with Kevin.

Wilbur pointed out that Kevin Nealon isn’t quite the nice guy he appears as, telling Nealon, I find personality fascinating because people think you’re a nice guy and you’re not. What you do is you draw information out of people, you find out what they’re good at, and then you crap on it.

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And then when the person reacts to it, you turn around and put it on them.

It’s very toxic. Very toxic. I feel like there’s a bunch of women I used to date watching this right now going, yeah, that’s exactly the Kevin Nealon experience. That’s funny. This is interesting, too.

Bill was talking about never knowing how good you are as a comedian. He said, it’s hard to tell how good you are as a comedian, right? You don’t know. People say you’re good or whatever. What does that mean?

Does that mean they think you’re good? What if they want some work on the road? You have no idea. I always wish someone could just pick up a guitar and play at the level comic I was so I could tell where I was. This weekend on the schedule, I’m going to do two deep dives, not because I want to to pre-tape.

It’s because there are things I want to talk about that are tied to the calendar. Saturday’s deep dive, I don’t know how popular this one’s going to be. Sometimes I do an episode for me. I want to talk about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Tail-a-thon, which if you’re a certain age, you remember. And for me, I have a personal connection with my father with that one.

So I’m going to talk about the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon tomorrow through the lens of stand-up comedy. Then on Sunday, I’m going to talk about 9-11. It is the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in 2001, coming up one week from today. And I thought we’d talk about that through the lens of comedy. So two deep dives over the weekend and a normal episode on Monday.

It is Friday. It is time for the Comedy Stock Market. Comedy stock market. Thank you burt reynolds voice of the comedy stock market every friday we take a look at the comedians we treat them like stocks we try and buy low and sell high and make some money on the comedy stock market i’ve got three recommendations now four recommendations for you this week and they are all positive Johnny Mac you haven’t been selling anybody lately are you in a good mood or something no i’m not in a good mood summer’s over i i whatever Move on, John. Okay, we’re going to buy more Stavros Halkias, and I think we’ve bought him three weeks in a row, but he’s just great in everything, and he’s got a new special coming out on Netflix on Tuesday, and just everything seems lined up for Stavros, so let’s get in before the casuals, and we’ll buy a little more Stavros.

Okay, then on the 15th, there’s another special coming on Netflix. We’re going to buy Joe Coy. Again, it’s Comedy Stock Market. Buy low, sell high. I know not everybody loves Joe Coy because he one time told that very mean joke about Taylor Swift, but we’re not going to play that today.

People didn’t like him hosting the Golden Globes. But, you know, meanwhile, he’s out like playing SoFi with Gabe Iglesias. But I don’t think the casuals are hip to Joe Coy. So let’s buy low on Joe Coy. Let’s also buy more and more and more and more Shane Gillis.

I know it’s like buying Apple stock, but your Apple stock goes up. So does your Shane Gillis stock. This guy can’t lose right now. Let’s cash in on that. And here’s another buy low.

I was doing some research for the podcast that you’re listening to right now. On Netflix, September 22nd, they are going to start airing all three seasons of Party Down. Now, if you’ve seen Party Down, you know Party Down is fantastic. But most people have never seen this show about a bunch of underemployed actors working as caterers. The cast, Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Ryan Hansen, Martin Starr, Lizzie Kaplan, Megan Mullally, Jane Lynch.

Did you hear me? What a cast. Party Down comes to Netflix September 22nd. Let’s get way in front of that before the casuals discover Party Down. So we’re going to buy Party Down, buy Shane, buy Joe Coy, and buy Stavros Halkias.

That is your comedy stock market on a Friday. The LA Times has been recommending cool shows you could go see in Los Angeles. One of them, Not Enough Comedy at Reserve Venice. And we are told Not Enough Comedy provides so much comedy that it’s full service. Do you have an awesome room?

Its team will travel to you. Hosted by Phil Cohn. Each show features a mix of familiar names and comics still making their way up the L.A. Stand-up scene. They have a growing presence in Venice.

They do a show monthly. The next one is September 19th at 6.30 p.m. Tickets will run you $ 32. 67. How about right after you left at the Vinyl Room? We were told Imagine Deaf Comedy Jam, hosted inside a speakeasy of an iconic music venue.

Right after you left is a summertime event thrown by seasoned comedy bookers Chris Burns, Sarah Mello, and Sean Dickens. The glowing bar is decorated like a DJ lives there, with shelves of classic records, ghetto blasters, plush couches, upscale food and craft cocktails. Comics who have come to the stage include Donna Rawlings, Eliza Schlesinger, Morgan Jay, Josh Johnson, and Cam Patterson. The show is seasonal, but it’s Tuesdays at 8 o’clock and runs until September 22nd. The promoters plan to come back in December, so go see it while you can.

How about Wrong, an effed-up game show at the Elysian? Tagged as a 50% comedy show, 50% game show, and 100% effed up, it draws on the past to lean into a comic’s darkest humor while welcoming playful banter. After each comic performs their crudest humor, the show then turns into a discussion where panelists try to guess the missing words of an old social media post the producers dug up from the pits of the internet. They do this one monthly. The next two are September 24th and October 22nd.

Tickets are $ 18. 90. How about Queer Roast for the Straight Host at Beaches Tropicana? This comedy show invites queer comics to roast street comics in between stand-up sets and dares. Monthly, $ 10 presale. You have to subscribe on their sub stack to find out the dates.

And Papooses and Punchlines offers a place where Latinx performers, along with comics that belong to other underrepresented groups, can joke about the immigrant experience in the U.S. And the absurdities of the American dream. Multiple shows per week. Tickets are $ 9. 75. Oh, I’ve got one more.

I miscounted there. Vermont at Beverly Station. The monthly show’s essences do not fit in with the rest of the programming you’re likely to see at the Improv. It’s the comedy show equivalent of the Misfit Kids at the Cafeteria. That’s also why it works.

It gives traditional stand-ups license to get weird, and the weirdo acts a chance to find their people. The next one is Sunday, September 27th at 7pm. Check the Improv calendar for future dates. The Academy of TV Arts and Sciences has announced that I Love Lucy will receive the inaugural Legacy Award. This will happen at the 2026 Creative Arts Emmy Awards Night 2 on September 6th.

You may have heard of a show called I Love Lucy that starred Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. The Chicago Tribune did a nice piece about Joan Rivers a few weeks back. I held on to that for today. Joan passed away September 4th, 2014. From a heart attack during a medical procedure at age 81.

Now, one part I don’t agree with this. They are saying, just as Rodney Dangerfield’s legacy has been tarnished and his artfulness diminished by the movies of his late career, I don’t agree with that at all. So has Joan Rivers’ memory been sullied by the red carpet antics and what many considered the nastiness of her last decades? I don’t agree at all. If you’re a longtime listener, I knew Joan personally, been to Joan’s house, worked with Joan when she had the radio show, WOR.

I know Joan Rivers. But they add there’s good reason that on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2017 list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.. You know what? I should dust that list off just to see how it looks 10 years later. I’m going to click on that right now.

And we’ll do that on one of the weekends. Joan Rivers ranked 6th on that list, just below Chris Rock, but ahead of Jerry Seinfeld. How do you feel about that 10 years later? Born Joan Alexandria Malinsky in Brooklyn on June 8, 1933. Maybe we’ll do a deep dive on Joan Rivers one weekend.

In 61, she came to Chicago, joining the cast of The New Second City. Female comics were rare at the time, as one writer put it then. Women in nightclubs were either audience members or cocktail waitresses, but Joan Rivers worked tirelessly, sometimes paying Rodney Dangerfield to write jokes for her. One night after she bombed on stage, Lenny Bruce, her comedy hero, sent her a note, You’re right, and they’re wrong. Her first appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, February 17, 1965, in the quote-unquote Death Slot, At the end of her routine, Carson said on air, God, you’re funny.

You’re going to be a star. You know what? This is good stuff. We’ll do a deep dive on Joan. Look at that.

Just on the fly. Just came up with two ideas for a weekend stuff. Let me tell you about Joe Lysette. He’s got a new show out today. The Lysette Arms, live on Channel 4 in the UK, Friday nights at 10 o’clock, starting tonight.

The headline, though, Joe Lysette addresses his sexuality after becoming a father for the first time. When he announced he even had a girlfriend, some eyebrows were raised. Known for his off-the-wall elaborate pranks, there were some fans that suspected that it was a stunt. He was on the podcast Happy Place and said, Lots of people were surprised when I had a child with a woman because they were like, But you’re the gay man. You know, I never said that I’m gay because I’ve never been gay, but because I’m camp and I do innuendo and all those sorts of things, people have this idea of what that is.

On stage, I kind of played on these things because they’re funny ultimately, but how much of that is filtered into what I actually am? And it’s the stage persona the same as me. You know, these things sort of oscillate a lot. On his new show, he opens up an East London pub for just an hour a week on Fridays during the duration of the live episodes. For the show to happen, he had to become fully accredited with a license to serve alcohol and underwent a training course and exam to obtain a Level 2 award for personal license holders.

In each episode, Joe will be accompanied by a celebrity pub manager on a trial shift. Joe said the live performance sector, if you want to call it that, is under great threat and the pub industry is as well. And I think anything we can do to celebrate our British boozers is a good thing. Because, yeah, they provide a watering hole. And as I’ve said, I do think they’re really good for society at large.

It’s good to have a public house where the public can come in and mingle with one another. It’s good for people who are lonely. It’s good for people who need to connect with their community. The Lysette Arms, Channel 4 in the UK, Friday nights, 10 o’clock, starting tonight. And that is your comedy news for today.

All right, two deep dives over the weekend. Jerry Lewis, and then we’ll do 9-11 on Sunday. Have a great weekend. Again, I hope the weather gods are kind.

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Featured: Pete Davidson, Colin Jost, Shane Gillis, Hannah Burner, Jeffrey Curry, W. Kamau Bell

What’s in This Episode

• Pete Davidson and Colin Jost’s Free Staten Island Ferry Comedy Show with Snapple
• Tires Season 4 Renewal at Netflix
• Hannah Burner’s Jaw Injection Incident and Recovery
• Jeffrey Curry’s Five Tips for Crowd Work and Improv
• W. Kamau Bell Interview on Technology and Apps

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Do you like comedy? Do you like fairies? Pete Davidson and Colin Jost are doing a free comedy show on their decommissioned Staten Island Ferry boondoggle that they paid $ 280, 000 for back in 2022.

The free comedy show will feature rising comedians and it takes place in New York City, September 17th. Wait, I should probably go. I actually have to be in New York City that night for the podcasting conference. I’m already in town. I’m already crashing at my daughter’s place.

I should go. Well, John, fans can claim free tickets online starting today. You may recall back in 2022, Pete Davidson, who’s now 32 years old, Colin Jost, 44, They purchased the decommissioned John F. Kennedy Staten Island Ferry at auction for $ 280, 000. Since then, they’ve hosted a number of events on the vessel, including Tommy Hilfiger’s 2025 New York Fashion Week show.

But on September 17th, when Johnny Mac will be in New York City and should probably just go, you’re already there. The ferry will become the Snapple Island Ferry. I see what the sponsor did there. A one-day-only free comedy club built to give New Yorkers an unexpectedly refreshing break from the daily grind, says Snapple. The show, hosted by Pete and Jost and produced by the Stand Restaurant and Comedy Club, the show will feature sets from the fastest rising stars on the comedy scene.

Pete Davidson in a statement said, Turning the ferry into a floating comedy club with Snapple makes more sense than anything else we considered. And it still doesn’t make much sense. That’s Pete saying that, not shouting back. Either way, we’re giving people a chance to take a break, have a laugh, and do something completely ridiculous with us. A limited number of free tickets will begin dropping daily at 3 o’clock today, Eastern Time, and continue through the 8th.

Fans can claim a pair of free tickets for themselves and a guest at register.snappleislandofferry.com. There’s a limit of one pair per person. Where is Pier 17, Johnny Mac? It is 89 South Street in New York City, so that’s the Lower East Side, very lower. If you can’t make it, Snapple will share clips and content from the events on their social channel, including Snapple Instagram, don’t act like you don’t follow it, and TikTok.

Pete said he and Jost will also be giving people a ton of free Snapple. Pete was asked if he’ll crack open a Snapple and he said, oh, I’ll give you a nice crack and sip. Tires will keep going. Picked up for season four at Netflix. No surprise there.

What a great show. Are you watching it? How come you’re not watching it? What are you doing? How funny does Shane Gillis have to be to get you to watch something?

Shane gave his usual short quote and he said, it’s cool to get to make another season of Tires. He never says much. I love it. Tires recently released third season, reached number five on Netflix’s top ten English list, its highest position yet. Since its debut in 2024, Tires has amassed more than 45 million views across three seasons.

Tracy Picosta, Netflix’s VP of U.S. Comedy, said Tires continues to deliver the unapologetic comedy and authentic point of view Shane, John, and Steve’s fans know and love. And season three, hitting its highest ever top ten ranking, proves this fandom just keeps growing. See what happens when you don’t cancel things after one season, Netflix? Huh?

And good news for Hannah Burner, the story’s finally making the podcast. John, is it getting close to Labor Day weekend and there’s not a lot of news? There’s enough news, but I’ve bounced this enough times. The headline from the New York Times, Hannah Burner is having the last laughter. What if she could?

You see, since a jaw injection went awry and left Hannah Burner unable to smile, she’s made the most of her predicament. Hannah has been calling this Smilegate. She had received injections to eliminate symptoms of TMJ, a condition that can cause jaw tightness, pain, and headaches, which she had dealt with since childhood. Then she went to receive Dysports, an injectable similar to Botox that smooths wrinkles, but is sometimes used off-label to treat TMJ symptoms. The Times tell us Hannah Burner quickly felt a stiffness she had not experienced before.

Hannah recalled that smile felt like weightlifting. Four days later, she was unable to smile or speak clearly. That is terrifying. Hannah Burner told the Times, Right before everything went down, I was bragging on my podcast about how your 30s are so great because every possible bad thing that can happen to you happens in your 20s. And by your 30s, you’re like, I can handle anything.

And then this happened. My worst nightmare is hurting my own podcast because I’m an idiot who got something done on her face that was not necessary. When she noticed her face wasn’t getting better, she decided it was time to open up. About two weeks after the injections, she showed her smile on her video podcast. He now says, I’m one of those people who’s excited to age looking like myself.

So this was a good learning lesson to treat your face with love. I think that should be on a T-shirt. Treat your face with love. Jeffrey Curry, who’s Netflix special Nice to Meet You, is very enjoyable if you haven’t seen it. He spoke with How Success Happens and shared his five tips for like crowd work and improv stuff.

Number one, prepare before you improvise. Jeff says, I always have a plan. I always have a reason to bring something up. You’re never going to see me like kind of floundering and then going, all right, so what’s your story over here? Instead, he’s always trying to find trigger words to go into my own material and own stories.

Tip number two, don’t let success distract you. He says he moved from a decent apartment to, quote, living in a basement with rats with five other guys. You have to be OK with struggling financially. I’d rather live in a basement filled with rats doing stand up than living in a high rise. Being an accountant, it’s a matter of love of the game.

Not sure I agree with all that. Three, take one risk per show. In every set, he tries one new, unproven joke. Tuck between two he knows will land. That makes sense.

That’s how you build a set. Tip number four, don’t blame the audience. A brutal cruise ship gig taught Akiri to look inward before pointing fingers. He followed someone who crushed, then he watched half the crowd walk out mid-set. He said, I’m a comic who blamed the audience in the past, but I also blame myself.

I’m never going to 100% blame them. I always try to think, hey, you still got to learn from stuff. Have you ever taken a cruise? I’ve gone to some of these shows. By the evening, I’m quite tired.

It’s not always about the act. It’s about sleep. Number five, adapt or get left behind. That is good advice. I tell my college students all the time, don’t become a dinosaur.

It’s advice for creators who guard their content too closely. Well, then you need to write more to compensate for that. You have to find another niche. There’s no, hey, if I get into this club, they’re going to get me a network deal anymore. It’s all up to you to get into people’s brains.

Throw stuff at the wall, man. Some of it’s not going to land, but that’s fine. The only way to build momentum is to stay fresh in their minds. The Verge asked W. Kamau Bell about technology, specifically phones and stuff.

Hey, Kamau, what’s your most indispensable tool? He says a charger. All of this is just shiny paperweights without a charger. Which app is most underappreciated? Now, he answered this before a recent news development, but I think you’ll see where we’re going here.

He said, I wish MapQuest app was better so I didn’t have to use the Trump billionaire guy’s apps. You know who I’m talking about. The map apps that have the Gulf of Mexico listed as the Gulf of America. All caps. So embarrassing.

Three exclamation points. I wonder how he feels about Lake Ontario. Send your letters to W. Kamau Bell. Hey, I want to shout out Patrick, and thank you, Patrick, and bad form for me.

I was cleaning up my inbox, and I saw Patrick had bought me two coffees at buymeacoffee.com slash dailycomedynews. It’s one of the many ways you can support the show, but you can throw a couple bucks in the tip jar like Patrick did, and I will thank you on this podcast, apparently two and a half weeks later. Thank you, sir, and sorry, dude, that’s bad form by me. I actually feel really bad that I didn’t catch that in time, but I don’t have a time machine, so this is all I can do. But I thank you for the support.

Another way you can support the show is if you’re on Apple Podcasts, click the banner where it says Uninterrupted Listening, and for $ 5 a month, you’ll get this show ad-free around 7.15 in the morning. There’s just technical reasons that I can’t put the commercial-free version up at 3.05 a.m. Eastern when the regular episode comes out, unless I set an alarm and get up every morning at 3.05 a.m. And I’m not doing that. I produced morning show radio for four months one time 25 years ago.

No, it’s 30 years ago now, and I hated it. So Johnny Mac’s not getting up at 3.05. You’ll get your commercial-free episode at 7.15 a.m. And I hope that’s okay. But for $ 5 a month, click the banner that says Uninterrupted Listening, or just buy me a coffee.

I mean, I’m at the Donuts chain every single morning. Lately, I’ve been getting two. I don’t know if it’s the weather or what, but about half the time, I’m getting two coffees now. Patrick, thank you. Hey, remember I told you the whole thing with the Lion King people were mad about the comedian?

Who had joked that the Lion King song translated to mean, look, there’s a lion, oh my God, and the Lion King people freaked out. Well, the Grammy-winning lyricist behind the Lion King’s famous opening vocals is being ordered to pay nearly $ 40, 000 in attorney’s fees after unsuccessfully suing a comedian for making fun of the song. You may recall South African comedian Jonasie was hit with a $ 27 million lawsuit earlier this year from the songwriter. The joke that the lyrics at the beginning of The Circle of Life translated to, Look, there is a lion, oh my God, and the songwriter was so offended that he sued for $ 27 million for a joke made on a podcast. A March 16th lawsuit filed in the U.S.

District Court for the Central District of California labeled Jonas’ humorous mistranslation as a, quote, fabricated, trivializing distortion meant as a sick joke, saying it damaged the, quote, royal praise poetry. Now, the lawsuit translated the line as all hail the king. We all bow in the presence of the king. Again, I’ll remind you, the joke was that it translates to look, there is a lion. Oh, my God.

Which is both funny and not the translation. I don’t want to get sued here. Let me be clear. That is not the translation. I don’t want to trivialize the lyrics from the Lion King cartoon song.

In a now deleted Instagram post, Jonas E. Had said this was just a joke and comedy always has a way of starting a conversation. I told him this. This is now your chance to actually educate people, because now people are listening. I was even ready to create a video with him, to be honest.

Personally, I had no idea it had a deeper meaning. Anyway, the lawsuit was struck down, and the songwriter ordered to pay thousands of dollars, $ 39, 560 dollars, The order says the prevailing defendant won the case due to an anti-slap-with-two-p’s motion, which means the court struck down what it believed was a frivolous and costly suit designed to punish Jonassey for his joke. But as we like to say here in the basement, all hail the king. We all bow in the presence of the king. Now, if you’re heading over to Abu Dhabi, it’s Abu Dhabi comedy season.

They have shows spread out for months, but the newest addition is Whitney Cummings, who will perform at the Etihad Arena on January 31st. Abu Dhabi comedy season also includes Morgan Jay on October 11th, Russell Peters on October 25th, Mo Amr November 6th, Maz Jobrani November 7th, and Paul Smith on the 31st of January. British comedian Stuart Lee did one of those Q & As with The Times, the part I will pick out. They asked, you know, some boilerplate questions, and they asked Stuart Lee, Hey, what did you waste an evening watching? And Stuart Lee said, Dave Chappelle at Leicester Square Theatre, which was lazy, boorish, clichéd, and unpleasant.

I’m going to shout it out of correction to factual inaccuracy. His bespoke heavies got heavy, so I split. So, Stuart, you heckled Dave Chappelle, is what you’re saying? What are you doing, dude? Respect the work, even if you don’t like it.

The New York Times apparently publishes special crossword puzzles for subscribers, and I’m a subscriber, and I was playing around with this one earlier today. It’s a Saturday Night Live-themed crossword puzzle. Constructed by Times Puzzle editor Christina Iverson and former cast member Rachel Dratch. One across asks you, what is the L of SNL? Do you know the answer to that one?

What is the L of SNL? Four letters. Can you get that one? Fifteen across. One named Singer, who was a two-time musical guest and one-time host.

I got that one right, too. I’m not telling you. We are told as an entry, SNL, and I’m not telling you what the L stands for, originally clued as Variety Show Since 1975 Abbreviations. SNL has since appeared 270 times, its clues often featuring trivia about its hosts, cast members, and the show itself. But I’m not telling you what the L stands for.

But I will tell you that the L in LA Times stands for Los, or Las, as those East Coasters say, Los Angeles. Anyway, the LA Times has been highlighting some comedy nights. We did a few of these on yesterday’s episode. They’re into the Cantina Comedy Club at King Harbor at the Riviera Mexican Cantina. Hosted by high-energy L.A.

Comedian Sean Leary, the cantina keeps the laughs coming with rotating lineups. Add in incredible South of the Border cuisine, drinks, and stunning views of King Harbor Marina. You get one of the best nights in town. These are monthly shows. The next one is September 18th at 8 o’clock.

Tickets start at $ 28. 52. They’re also into open mic comedy night at Lyric Hyperion. Sets are $ 4 for four minutes. Oh, that’s not for you to watch it. That’s for you to perform. 20 people chosen each night via lottery.

Performers can vary from Silver Lake artists testing their stand-up skills for the first time to established local comedians working stuff out. That happens Mondays at 9 o’clock. Again, free to watch. $ 4 for four minutes to perform, a.k.a. A buck a minute. What happens if I go over?

What if I run the light? Do I have to give you five bucks? At Chatterbox, it’s Chatterbox Comedy Night. We are told the audience walks into a bar. A disco ball illuminates the room as early 2000s hip-hop plays.

It already sounds awesome. The aesthetics set by Chatterbox, a bar in Covina, have all the elements of a drunk heckler’s dream. Headliners are known acts usually touring big cities. The rest of the lineup includes open mic standouts. That’s Sundays at 8 p.m.

Tickets $ 5 in advance, $ 10 at the door. And you know I’m going to love this one. Chris Fleming and friends at the Largo at the Coronet. Love this description. If your complaint about stand-up is that it’s too much of one person standing in place while talking, then Chris Fleming and friends is the solution to your problem.

The high-energy comedian, who should host Late Night with Chris Fleming on NBC at 12.30, make 12.30 great again, but I digress. The comedian delivers the most fine-tuned stream of consciousness comedy you’ll ever hear. Fleming’s trademark physicality makes the show original, exciting, and borderline bouncing off the walls. The next one is September 15th at 8 o’clock. Tickets are $ 50, though.

Hmm, I mean, 50 bucks? I mean, love Chris Fleming, but 50 bucks? Are you kidding me there? No pricey, no. That is your comedy news for today.

See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Jon Stewart, Brian Baumgartner, Michelle Obama, Bill Burr, Anthony Michael Hall, Leigh-Anne Morgan

What’s in This Episode

• Jon Stewart discusses political comedy’s impact on society
• Brian Baumgartner golf skills and joint pain management
• Last One Laughing UK Season 3 contestant lineup announcement
• Bill Burr discusses Massachusetts bar pizza with Anthony Michael Hall
• Leigh-Anne Morgan Netflix show explores dating and elderly parent care

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Jon Stewart went on Michelle Obama’s podcast and discussed the president of the United States. Jon Stewart said, I never confuse cultural power with power. There’s nothing more fragile than someone who wields real power, who feels that the power will be diminished by satire or commentary.

It’s kind of a shocking fragility. I mean, he’s made all our shows relevant again in a weird way. John wonders whether political comedy actually helps. Does this help? Does it corrode?

Does it pervert? Is it ultra-processed food that’s given the country kind of political diabetes? I don’t know. He says he tries to operate in good faith. It may not be an honorable thing we do, but we do it as honorably as we can.

Brian Baumgartner, you know him as Kevin on The Office. He spoke to The Healthy about golf and joint pain. Brian, who was Kevin on The Office, said when people ask who was the best golfer on The Office, that’s an easy one. Hold on. Who’s asking that?

Like if you ran into John Krasinski, would you be like, hey, John, who was the best golfer on the show? Would you ask John Krasinski that? Would you ask Oscar Nunez who was the best golfer on the office? Hey, Steve Carell, nice to meet you, boy. I love the show.

Anyway, Brian says it’s him. And nobody would argue it because he was the only one that played. That’s another reason not to ask them that. Brian said they were always looking for ideas. Pitching a client on a golf course.

That’s a fairly obvious setup for an episode. It’s the only sales call that Kevin, the accountant, was ever on in 10 years, nine seasons. So I think that pretty much indicates I was the driving force behind that idea, and they wanted me out there because I knew what I was doing a little bit. Then the healthy was curious. Hey, Kevin, I mean, Brian, when did you first start noticing joint pain?

Brian said, for me, primarily it’s standing for long periods of time. But you know, all the professional golf tournaments that I’m playing in now, at least professional in terms of this sort of celebrity crops up, I’m playing three, four, five, or six rounds in a row over the course of a week. More than just the repetitive motion, the swinging, the walking, the hills, it’s also just the standing. People say golf takes four hours, and it should take four hours normally, but for these tournament situations, it’s five hours. You’re putting nine to 14 miles at a minimum on your leg, so joint pain happens.

This apparently was a whole setup for a product called Voltaren because the healthy-ass Brian Baumgartner, hey, you’re serving as Voltaren’s relief caddy. What does that role mean? And how does Voltaren help you manage joint pain? Brian, who might possibly perhaps saw a couple bucks out of this conversation, said, if I’m playing golf, there’s somebody helping me, right? Not just somebody helping me, but what a lot of fans don’t see.

Sorry to spoil these professional golfers who it’s all the news about how fit they are and how much time they spend in the weight room. Let me tell you, there are trainers, there are massages happening, there’s stretching that’s happening before rounds, after rounds, there’s medication being administered, there are gels, including.. While Taryn being put on joints to help both before and after a round. So I think what’s so clever about this, well, the golfers have a caddy. Why don’t the fans who are walking around and standing around have somebody to help them as well?

The healthy was smart enough to get back to the office and ask Brian, which character from the office would you most like to hit the links with and why? Brian said, I would say having some laughs and playing with a friend is what I enjoy about golf, so I’m going to say Oscar. I am jazzed for Last One Laughing Season 3. I might have to wait many months, but I love that show, Last One Laughing UK. Jimmy Carr once again will host.

Now, on the first two seasons, his sidekick was Royceon Conaty. However, she is one of the contestants, and what a list this is. Are you ready? Lee Mack, who you may know from What I Lied to You. Katherine Ryan.

Who you may know from just listening to my podcast every day. Harry Hill, who I am under-familiar with. Katherine Parkinson, Michelle DeSwart, Jen Richardson, Morgana Robinson, Josh Jones, Royshen Conady, and Richard Ayoade, who came in second in the first season. Metro wrote, it’s unfair that Richard is back. By the way, Richard would be a great Doctor Who.

Somebody needs to listen to me. Make him Doctor Who. That would be amazing. And it will resurrect the show. He should be Doctor Who.

On social media, one person said this is not good news for the rest of the comedians and claimed that Richard Ayoade is the Usain Bolt of poker faces. Bill Burr chatted with Anthony Michael Hall about pizza, as one does. We learned that Bill Burr is a fan of the Bay State’s famous bar pizzas. Bill said, I’ve gone all the way up to Marblehead. I’ve gotten everything.

I can go down Route 3. I can go down 95, 93, whatever you want. Not so good out on the 405. So if anybody has some suggestions. The South Shore is more inviting.

You can just join the group. At the North Shore, I felt like I had to jump through a few hoops. I’m like, all right. They’re a little more guarded. What is there?

Pizza a little better? Anthony Hall did not have any bar pizza suggestions, but he did reveal that he’s a fan of the region’s lobster rolls and enjoys seafood. And tells us he can always trust the fish on the cape. Now, when I was prepping this show, this particular story I grabbed Friday night, and it made me crave pizza, and as I’m recording right now, once again, it’s making me crave pizza. The difference is, on Friday, my wife had brought home a slice of pizza.

Right now, no such luck. My wife has been watching Leigh-Anne on Netflix. She is enjoying it. Leigh-Anne Morgan spoke with Decider about her character getting flirty this season. And they were curious how her husband in real life, Chuck, feels about Leanne living single on screen.

Leanne said, Chuck doesn’t care, honey, if I’m bringing in money. In real life, if something, God forbid, if Chuck Morgan left me, I’d be dating, honey. I’ve loved men all my life. I think he knows she’s in menopause and she’s tired or heat hurt and she’s not going to go out and honky tonk. I think that’s what Chuck Morgan thinks, because he’s right.

You know, I just talk a big game about dating. In season two, one of the plot points is taking care of elderly parents. Leanne said, my mama and daddy are 83 and 86, and I begged them to move in with me, but my dad wouldn’t leave the house. I thought it was so relevant for what people are going through in the United States. You know, when you’re trying to launch your kids, then you’ve got elderly parents you’re tending to.

And I thought it just hit perfectly.

And then my character is going through this big change in her life.

You can’t imagine how many women have come to me since season one and said, I went through the exact same thing. You don’t know how much hope that gave me that I can find love again, that I’m going to be all right. I’ve got my family and friends to lift me up. It’s been really sweet. It’s been more than comedy, I would say.

As for the elderly parent storyline, I think in my stand-up, I talk about things that everybody goes through, like menopause and all that. And I just think it’s a time in life. I don’t know if it was after COVID or what happened, but I think people want real and people want stories that are reflected in their own life. And I do that in my stand-up. I just think there’s something about it that’s comforting and just something everybody can enjoy together.

I also thought it was important for this multicam, if little children want to watch it, all the way up to elderly, all people. I think it’s important to reflect on what’s going on in real life. There’s an episode where they talk about getting plastic surgery. Leanne said, I’ll go back and forth thinking, should I get my neck done? I look at my neck and I think, oh Lord, then the next day I go, no, I want to be me.

I’m going to age gracefully or whatever. I think with my generation, we’re more vibrant than we’ve ever been. But you know, we’re living longer. We want a better life expectancy and we’ve got supplements. I’m always about a supplement, but I think women my age are feeling younger.

It’s like the new 40. We want to go and do and have purpose and plastic surgery is part of that, but I love a good laser. Ha ha ha. Well, I bumped the Anna Burner story yet again. Someday we’ll get to it.

Trevor Noah announced more shows in South Africa. It is the lineup for Bafani Bafani. I’ll let Trevor Noah take it from here. I have edited this clip for pacing. You’ve asked and we’re responding.

Bafani Bafani tickets are available on the 4th of September. We’ve added a show in Johannesburg. Cape Town, we’ve added one more show. Durban, we’ve added one more show. There’s no more shows we can’t add.

So thank you to everyone who’s coming to the shows. I will be there. I’ll be on stage doing comedy. Eugene might be there. I guess now we have to tell him about it.

Now would be a good time.

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And then we’ve got amazing comedians.

Joining us as well. The LA Times. No, we’re not talking about comedians the LA Times is into. Now they wrote about comedy nights that they’re into. One of them is the completely different Late Show at Groundlings Theatre.

The director takes suggestions from the audience, the cast hears them, characters are immediately developed, and laughs ensue. A trio of musicians provide musical cues for each scene. The result? Create scenes that play as if they were part of a sitcom. You’ll find that 9.30 at the Groundlings on Fridays and Saturdays. 22 bucks, that’s not bad.

They also recommend Stand Up and Clown at the Elysian. That show acts as an intro course to both the audience and some of the show’s performers to the art of clowning. Nine comics get a crash course in Clown through a series of games, challenges, and interruptions by various eccentric characters that make full use of the Elysian’s main stage. The next performance is October 30th at 10.30. Tickets are $ 18. 90.

At The Fable, you’ll find Mike Erdos. L.A. Stand-up Mike Bridenstine curates a lineup of killers that are usually headlining the comedy store, starring on TV shows, or hustling to become the next big comedian. But more importantly, he books comics that are willing to try anything to get a laugh. The vibe here is the polar opposite of the hungry Hollywood race.

We’re told people are as chill as the beer. That sounds great. 8 p.m. On Wednesdays, tickets are free. So that show is Microdose at the Fable. How about the wonderfully titled Ha-Ha’s and Ta-Ta’s at Plan B?

We’re told if your ideal night out includes big laughs, cold drinks, and a little eye candy, then Ha-Ha’s and Ta-Ta’s at Plan B Gentleman’s Club in West L.A. Is calling your name. And apparently the venue normally has adult entertainment. Uh-oh. Food, drinks, laughs, and maybe mischief?

What more could you want on a Thursday night? It’s the first Thursday of the month, which would be tomorrow, wouldn’t it? Yes. Tickets are free with an Eventbrite reservation or $ 10 at the door, 8 p.m. And they also recommend Don’t Tell Comedy at secret spots.

We’ve talked about that in the past. Those are the secret shows that pop up. LA Times has a great comedy section. Let’s get one more story in here. Veronica Slowakowska from SNL and Tires.

She apparently has been releasing pop music under another name. That other name is Me as a Girl, an indie pop project that’s been releasing music since late 2025 without connecting Veronica to it. Late Nighter learned she has plans to release more music in September and will play her first live show as Me As A Girl in New York City this month. Her first single is called When You Had Me, You Ran Away. And that was followed by a four-song EP, wherever you get your music.

And that is your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Bill Maher, Dolly Parton, Tom Segura, Michael Che, Sacha Baron Cohen, Pete Davidson, Simon Cowell, Kenan Thompson, Blake Griffin

What’s in This Episode

• Bill Maher backlash over Dolly Parton mourning comments
• Tom Segura developing new material at Acme Comedy Club
• Michael Che Netflix special filming at First Avenue Minneapolis
• Ali G film backlash and racist caricature controversy
• Pete Davidson costume for Tommy Karate movie
• SNL cast announcements pending
• Late night ratings with Rosie O’Donnell on Kimmel
• Blake Griffin hosting new late night show The Step Back

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Oh no, it’s September. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. We are like in overtime of summer now, like in September, but it’s not quite Labor Day. Get to the beach while you can. People are mad at Bill Maher.

I know that’s shocking to you. Let me give you a second to take that in. I know you’re like, wait, people are mad at Bill Maher? No way. No way.

But yes, Bill Maher complained on his HBO show Real Time that America mourned Dolly Parton too much after her death at 80. Way to be popular, Bill Maher. He scalded the country because you guys grieved Dolly Parton instead of paying attention to politics. Bill Maher did a monologue. He talked about the dispute we’re having with the Canadians.

Are we having a dispute with the Canadians? I think one guy is having a dispute with the Canadians. Moore said, all this is going on and all America could really talk about this week is how sad it was we lost Dolly Parton. He conceded that everyone around the country, even around the world, had been honoring Dolly.

And then told this joke much better than me.

London, they’re doing things. The Santa Monica Ferris wheels lit up with hearts. The Empire State Building was put up in pink. The Sphere in Las Vegas added a nipple. In the studio, that got some laughs.

Online, it got groans. The Minnesota Star Tribune has a really good comedy section. Neil Justin goes and sees shows. He went to see Tom Segura at Acme and said Tom Segura’s Acme shows offer a rare treat of a top comic starting from scratch. Spoiler is ahead.

Quoting Tom Segura, Tom’s opening line apparently is, you know, the Nazis got a lot of things wrong, but that’s a hell of an opener. Neil writes, the most shocking thing about the set was how smoothly it went, except for his occasionally glancing at his notebook and struggling to find the right word. It was nearly impossible that he had only started telling these jokes in August. He joked about watching the World Cup, again quoting Tom Segura. Tom said, I’m old enough to remember if you watched it here in the States, you were gay.

Neil writes, the most noticeable difference may have been his appearance. With his black-framed glasses, trimmer build, and groomed beard, he looked more like a college professor than your neighborhood bartender. As with most comics building a set, Segura often ignored transitions. In the course of about one minute, he threw out one-liners about guys with pet snakes, people who live on houseboats, and dealing with ice without bothering to tie them together. But it was a mostly tight set.

He did not do any material related to his split with wife Christina P. Neil also went to go see Michael Che at First Avenue, is the venue. We’re told the four shows had a weird rule. No bathroom breaks. Why?

Because they were filming it for Netflix. Che dressed in a gray hoodie and baggy jeans doubled down on jokes about Charlie Kirk supporters being hit on by a gay patron at an after-hours bar and his unorthodox thoughts on fatherhood. We’re told that Che’s routine about how we shouldn’t be so timid about using the R-word got some big laughs. Che said, that’s why I want to do this show here. Minneapolis is the center of the fight.

This is like the new Selma. Jay ignored the main stage, opting for a square box that took up a huge chunk of the main floor that left room for less than 250 folding chairs and a limited number of stools in the balcony. We’re also told that the place was cold, like actually cold, like wear a hoodie cold. Jay is expected for the new season of SNL now on September 1st. And unless this came out late yesterday after I recorded, I should probably check.

We still don’t know who’s going to be on the SNL cast. All right, it’s 1.35 p.m. On a Monday afternoon. We type in SNL cast and make sure there’s no late news. You never know.

Deadline sometimes drops things on Monday. There is no news at the time of this recording, as they say.

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And now my script has jumped down.

I could edit this out, but that’s no fun. I have to find where we were. Ah, yes. Oli G. The headline from Variety, a pretty big entertainment trade.

Oli G. ‘s grand return. Has not exactly been meant with widespread celebration. Ali G, Who Is I? Is due to be released on October 23rd, but Variety says backlash against the film has steadily intensified. Many have taken to social media to accuse Ali G, of course played by Sacha Baron Cohen, who is seen in clips wearing fake dreadlocks and a Rastafarian hat and discussing a desire to be an absent father of being an outdated and racist caricature.

News Cord is apparently a news comparison and media monitoring platform. They have started a campaign urging cinemas around the world to refuse to screen the film Ali G. Who is I? Is spelled I-Z. Emailing major chains with the request on behalf of those who register as of Friday, it claims to have been instructed to send more than 36,000 emails.

The campaign accuses Sacha Baron Cohen of using satire as a cover for enforcing racist stereotypes. There’s been controversy at least since 2000. In 2000, comedian Felix Dexter argued that the character allows the liberal middle classes to laugh at black street culture in a context where they can retain their sense of political correctness. Jeanette Winterson added, I don’t know what the difference is between him and the black and white minstrels. In a new Substack post, British writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch writes, Black people don’t dress like that anymore.

Even white people imitating black people don’t talk like that anymore. Sexualizing black women and casually mocking working class women is not accepted anymore. Baron Cohen’s so-called humor is a crude compound of all those things. Pete Davidson has a new look featuring long hair and bright blue eyes. Why?

What’s going on? Well, it is Pete Davidson, but no, this apparently is for a movie. Pete Davidson was spotted working on the set of crime thriller Tommy Karate. Pete wore a dark wig with curtain bangs and a middle part instead of his typical short style. He used piercing light blue contact lenses during the shoot to enhance the terrifying illusion.

Pete wore a crimson Japanese mask and a black bomber jacket reading Okinawa. The jacket was worn over a black button-up shirt with a beautiful bird motif. The exquisite bird pattern on his shirt stands out against his black clothes. The film explores the lengthy pursuit of the character by a dedicated federal agency agent. Tonight on America’s Got Talent, Simon Cowell is off.

Kenan Thompson will sub in for quarterfinals round three. Simon has been sidelined by back surgery described as routine and linked to the serious e-bike accident he suffered in August 2020. You may recall Simon missed the 2020 season and had guest judges filling in, including Kenan Thompson. Quick note, I didn’t do a little short afternoon episode on Monday. There won’t be one today either.

I’m just tinkering with stuff back and forth, so a little experiment there. We’ll see where that heads in the future. Late Nighter took a look at the late night television ratings. This was the week of August 16th, which was Rosie O’Donnell week, which apparently did a lot better than Jelly Roll week. Jimmy Kimmel Live, starring Rosie O’Donnell, averaged 2.167 million total viewers.

Week of August 16th, up 40% from Anthony Anderson. In the 18 to 49s, Rosie averaged 237,000 viewers, up 34% from the week before. Fallon did all right, 1.429 million total viewers, unchanged week to week, 18 to 49s, 171,000. Comics Unleashed, Byron Allen’s Moneymaker, 654,000 total viewers, up 3%, and 75,000 adults in the 18 to 49s. At 12.30, Seth Meyers has a show for some reason and is in seven weeks of repeats.

He averaged 727,000 total viewers and 94,000 adults 18 to 49. Yikes, what a terrible number. How about this for a late night show? Blake Griffin, yes, the six-time NBA All-Star, will host The Step Back with Blake Griffin, a new weekly late night show premiering Tuesday, October 20th. I think that is the opening night.

Yes, it is the opening night of the 2026-2027 NBA season in which the world champion New York Knicks will defend their title. Blake has dabbled in comedy over the years. You know, he’s pretty good on TV. So sure, why not? The Step Back with Blake Griffin will find Blake Griffin weighing in on some of the bigger and thornier subjects surrounding sports with topics expected to include gambling, NIL, taxpayer-funded stadiums, analytics, and the state of sports journalism.

All that is boring, Blake. What you want to do is you want to study Charles Barkley and do that and have a couple celebrities on and just be fun. Nobody wants to talk about taxpayer-funded stadiums. Interview Miley Cyrus, trust me. Now, as I read ahead here, I’m even less excited.

The Step Back began taping episodes in June before a live studio audience with installments now in post-production. A new episode will arrive each Tuesday with Griffin’s documentary driving the format rather than a traditional parade of celebrity guests. Yeah, this is all awful. Blake Griffin said, I’ve watched and idolized shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, so to follow in their footsteps while putting my own stamp on the genre is an amazing opportunity that I’m grateful to take part in. But it’s not going to be timely at all if you taped it in June.

This is a terrible idea. Who approved this? The project comes from Amazon’s Wondery and Blake Griffin’s Mortal Media. Yeah, this ain’t going to work. Oh, this article also reminds us.

Remember when ESPN aired five episodes of They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelsey? Yikes, that bombed too. Anyway, the Step Back with Blake Griffin, October 20th on Prime Video and YouTube. Gold Comedy has launched a podcast called Funny You Should Ask, not to be confused with the Byron Allen 1230 CBS show of the same name. This Funny You Should Ask features candid conversations with comedians including Maria Bamford, Jeff Hiller, and Judy Gold.

The Bamford episode is already out. Each episode features an in-depth conversation with a comedian, writer, performer, or other entertainment luminary about their career, their process, and the realities of making a living by making people laugh. George Lopez will host the Big Boys Comedy Fiesta in October, October 15th, featuring co-headliners George Lopez and Marlon Wayans. And from the LA Times, some more of those comedians to watch. Let’s see how many of them are door people at the Comedy Store.

First up is Macy Isaacs. We’re told she’s an effortlessly dry say-it-like-it-is comic with an impeccable ability to twist the way we see the world. She was on Netflix’s Funny AF with Kevin Hart and was plucked to open for Chelsea Handler. No mention of being a door person that’s good alright next up is Ainsley Bailey Ainsley turns the darkest personal experiences like having too many daily meds and diagnoses including being allergic to bananas into the most perfect and surprisingly relatable jokes she offers fresh takes on subjects most comics won’t even dare to tackle Somebody’s PR people wrote that sentence. Number three today, Curtis Cook.

Curtis is a big, loud, disarming presence, which also makes him a Trojan horse for some pretty subversive ideas. His writing is so creative and original that it borders on poetic. No mention of working a door. All right, we’re making progress here. Ray Lau.

We are told by Josh Sandoval, the booker at the Ice House, that Ray’s ability to connect with an audience makes everyone else on a lineup step up their game. And our final comedian today is Jackson Banks, who won set of the night on a Sunday at the Comedy Store, giving him a guaranteed spot on the potluck open mic the next night, which led to him being hired as a door guy. Damn, we almost made it all the way through. Two years after that, he became a paid regular at the club, and he was one of the Just for Laughs new faces this year. He’s a menace on stage in the best way possible.

There’s a 70s rock star element to his appearance, but his rhythm on stage is that of a jazz musician. Never knowing what note is coming next. And that is your comedy news for today. See you tomorrow.

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