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The Shark Deck. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. I took an entire night and watched five stand up specials. I started with Jim Gaffigan’s Dark and Pale. Jim’s previous special, Comedy Monster, I had.
If it wasn’t number one on my end of the year list, it was way up there. So I’m like, all right, let me watch Dark Pale. And it’s not good. I could kind of tell right away Jim coming out in the mask didn’t work doing COVID jokes. Just felt like what are we doing?
And the material just wasn’t clicking, and I’m like, isn’t me? And I went on Facebook and I asked the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News podcast group, I’m like, is this special bad? And people kind of agree with me. So really surprised at that that will not make the end of the year list. So then I’m like, all right, let me switch over to Netflix.
I haven’t watched Mark Norman yet, but Netflix put in front of me Jared Freed’s thirty seven and single. I know Jared as Smidge. He had a podcast affiliated with a podcast company I used to work at, and I liked Jared a lot. I liked his podcast a lot, and I’m like, all right, this should be good. And immediately I was like, this is better because if nothing else, just the pacing and his snappiness on stage, and I was really enjoying that.
But I’m an admitted comedy snob, and a little while in I it kind of lost me because none of the stories felt real. They felt like they were well crafted comedy stories, but they didn’t feel like they were based in any kind of reality. So I punched out on that, I think it’s totally watchable. You’ll enjoy it, you’ll laugh. Like I said, I’m a comedy snob.
So then I went to Mark normand my notes much better. And Norman is faster paced. If you don’t like a Mark Norman joke, wait four seconds, he’s got another one right behind it. A couple of good laughs out there. I did note that he had to beg for clapter a few times.
He threw out a line and the audience didn’t do anything with it, just silence, and he kind of stood there for a second and got the claptor. Maybe some editing there might have helped that special a little bit. But Norman was pretty good. That’ll make the list. Then I switched over to Peacock and Fleming’s Hell, and right away I was like, oh, this is really fun.
I like all to your things. It was quirky, high energy, tickled my brain in a way that the other specials didn’t just because it was different. I’ll agree with the review that I read yesterday. The sketches kill it. It totally kills the momentum.
You’ll be in the middle of the stand up, you’re feeling the room and it cuts to a sketch, and the sketches are okay, but just in terms of a special, it just didn’t work. And by like the third time that the sketches interrupted the stand up, I was like I had enough. Chris Flemings Hell probably would work better as half an hour, but it will make my end of the year list.
And then it was Friday night at ten o’clock and I remember Joe List was debut…
So I’m like, all right, I’ll watch that, and I put Joe List on and perfectly fine hour of comedy at a comedy club. Really funny, you should watch it. Liked it a lot. I’m going to push back on the word special. We have to stop throwing special out there just because something is filmed and put on YouTube.
Not everything is a special. Joe List did an hour of comedy that was really funny and really good, and you should watch it. It’s not a special and just because of that, I can’t put it on the end of the year list. But totally watchable, totally funny. You should do it now.
The YouTube algorithm, after I switched Joe List off, oh my god, everything it’s suggesting to me is now a Joe List hour like I like. Joe List also was lightly affiliated with Joe and Mark Norman when they had their two Days with Stories podcast at the podcast company affiliated with my podcast company, so I know them. I had meat balls with them one day on ninth Avenue. But like, just in terms of the YouTube algorithm, it’s like Joelish joelas Jolis Jolist, like guys, I like stand comedy, but show me something else. Anyway, here’s the updated best of twenty twenty three list.
I’m going to include two things that are not comedy specials. The funniest thing of twenty twenty three so far conk on Earth. You’ll find that on Netflix. Number one special is Toom Sagoris. Two Kyle Canaine three, Naprigatsi’s Hello World.
You may have forgot about that. That came out in January. You’ll find that on Amazon Cocaine Bear. Cocaine Bear is amazing. I’m hearing more and more people talk about Cocaine b.
There are some laugh out loud scenes in that movie that’s streaming on Peacock. Fourth special of the year, Jay McBride’s Daddy’s Girl five Jim Jeffries that came out on Amazon in February. Harry Conabolo’s special that came out in April on YouTube. The last thirds little soft, but the front two were good. Chris Rock remember him, He had a big Netflix special that was live.
There was a big deal. Remember that one. That’s number seven. Jimmy O Yang’s Guess how Much is number eighth. I think that’s on Amazon.
The Roast of Mister Peanut Again. If you think I’m crazy, why don’t you go on YouTube watch the fifteen minute version of the Roast of Mister Peanut and tell me that that’s not good. Big Jay Okerson at ten. Mark Norman makes his chart debut at number eleven, number twelve, Nimshi pat Hill’s special was really good, Sarah Silverman’s isn’t bad at thirteen, Chris Fleming Hill slightly behind Sarah Silverman there, and John Early at number fifteen. Now, who’s not on the list.
There’s a lot of big names on this list. Jim Gaffing and Dark Pale not on the list, Joe List, Jared Freed, Amy Schumer, John Mulaney’s Baby Jay wasn’t feeling. Lewis Black wasn’t feeling. Hannah Gatsby’s third special didn’t feel it. Mark Marin, who I normally loved, didn’t make the list.
Andrew Santino Bert Kreischer’s special back in March. I didn’t love the middle and I didn’t love the end. Greg Warren, I wrote down hated sweetened audience is my note there? And Kevin Hart special did nothing for me. I have not seen Roseanne special, and I’m not seeing the eight trillion specials you’ll find on YouTube.
That’s my list. To be curious what your list is, once you go on the Daily Comedy News Facebook group and shear what you’ve been into. Will Farrell crashed the USC Trojan’s football practice on Friday. He gave the team a mini pep talk, which I’m sure they needed, before dropping to the ground and rolling around on the field and will Ferrell’s style hilarity. Several Trojan players, including raining Heisman Trophy winner and twenty twenty four projected number one overall pick Caleb Williams, posted photos with Farrell to their social media accounts.
So Sheer Zemata is excited about her current special. It’ll be on YouTube on August twenty nine. So Sheer said, this is first stand up special I’ve ever had, the first one I’ve produced, and I’m just excited for y’all to see it. I’d like to tell your friends, your family, your enemies, anyone who owes you money. In The First Woman, she jokes about dating woes, masturbation, menstruation, equality, and even Amelia Earhart.
And here’s some fun facts. Drinks were provided by Kendall Jenners eight one eight Tequila Taco’s courtesy of the Lime Truck, and guests went home with period cups as a callback to the chunk of the comedy special about periods. There has been so much drama at the fringe. This from Unheard dot Com Andrew Doyle rights, canceling our comedy show proves the point. This is the show I was talking about yesterday that was canceled, Andrew Doyle writes.
Five years ago, Andy Shaw and I set up a monthly comedy night in London called Comedy Unleashed. Our objective was to challenge what we perceived to be the group think that was developing within the industry. Promoters, TV commissioners, critics, even comedians themselves had begun to turn on X who failed to convey the correct political opinions, and many fellow comics confessed to me that that they had began a self censor for the sake of careers. And so we launched a night which would encourage innovative and freethinking acts, where we might cultivate a comedy literate audience who understood that the art form can’t exist with the potential to cause offense. Not that the acts we booked necessarily had to be offensive.
Rather they would be free to tease the limitations of the audience’s tolerance should they wish. The only condition was that they have to be funny. This year, we decided to make an appearance at the trade fair known as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We booked a venue in Leath on the outskirts of the city. That bill is to include Bruce Devlin, Mary Burke, Dominic Frisbee, Alice Stair Williams and the co creator of the classic Sitcom’s Father Ted and the It Crowd, Graham Lenahan.
Those are two great shows. Again, this is the show that was canceled that I told you about yesterday. Andrew Doyle rights, Given that we knew our show would sell out, we didn’t advertise Graham in advance, preferring instead to tease the audience with the prospect of surprised canceled comedian with the show just a few days away. We finally announced his appearance and within twenty four hours the venue, Leath Arches, had posted a statement on Instagram stating that they quote do not this comedian or his views, and he will not be allowed to perform on our venue and is canceled from Thursday’s comedy show with immediate effect. Doyle writes, the historyonics didn’t stop there.
We’re an inclusive venue, the statement continued, and will not allow such views to violate our space. The venue later deleted the post and replaced it. Doyle asks how a venue can claim to be inclusive when it excludes performers who do not subscribe to the ideology of its staff. Is anyone’s guests. Those who complain to the venue could simply have refrained from buying a ticket.
Instead, they sought to prevent the audience members of a sold out show from making their own decisions.
Meanwhile, at the Fringe, Evo Graham got two stars from The Guardian.
His show is called Organized Fun. The Guardian rights he may be making his tenth Edinburgh appearance, but you can’t accuse Evo Graham of coasting. He’s got three separate shows at this year’s festival, and the main one, Organize Fun, takes his stand up in a new direction. At the behest of his infant daughter, he explains this is a wholly inconsequential hour which begins with stand up below Graham’s usual standard and ends with a participarity game show below the standard of other comics to do that sort of thing much better. Some comics have a flair for this crowd work, heavy comedy.
Graham isn’t one of them. There’s no spectacle, nor much fun, organized or otherwise to the game he’s created, which in any case gets bogged down in admin. Props to the veteran for trying something new, but as task Masker fans may have anticipated, he does not make a success of it. Two stars, Pleasant Courtyard through August twenty seven. And that’s your comedy news for today.
And I’m wondering why my voice is raspy, because that often happens if I record three DS in a row. I only did this one. I feel fine. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify YouTube See tomorrow