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Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Somebody signed me up for the New York City mirv on tomorrow. I need some pasta. Jeff Foxworthy spoke to this CV Independent about his traveling, and Jeff explained, back in the day, I would lease a plane and I would fly home every night, no matter where my show was, unless I was on the West Coast.
I know firsthand because I worked with Jeff. That is accurate. Jeff said, I would fly home every single night and get in at one or two in the morning, and I’d get up at six and take the kids to school. I’d go pick them up from school, and then I’d go get on a plane and fly out and do another show. Did that for about twelve years.
In fact, not long ago. I said to my wife, when did I sleep? But he gave me one hundred more days a year with my kids. Once they grew up, I’m like, this is expensive. So I started flying Delta again.
So that’s what I do now most of the time. If I’m going to the West Coast, I’ll try and do two or three stops in a row and then come home. It’s more relaxed. It’s a little easier on the body and the wallet than it used to be. Really enjoying this season of life, and I still really enjoy what I do.
Some people say, when are you going to retire? And I’m like, crap. I still love doing it. I just don’t love doing it at the pace I did it twenty years ago. Now.
My joke is, you’re paying me to get on a plane and sleep in a hotel room, I’ll do the show for free. So every night, when those lights go down and the light hits the floor, I’m like, I’ve got the best job in the whole world. Hey, Jeff, you saw Ron White unretired right and you saw Bill Ingvall came out and did a charity show. I think you got to pick up the phone. I know Larry’s in.
You got to call the other two and be like, hey, guys, we could make a lot of money. One more ride. Let’s do blue collar comedy tour. One more come on, Jeff, pick up the phone. Jeff said, I maybe do fifty shows a year now.
When I first started, I think the first eight years in a row, I did at least five hundred shows a year. It was almost like the Malcolm Gladwell thing. You’ve got to do something ten thousand times to get really good at it. So that was kind of my approach. Jeff watches out for fatigue and says you can’t write when you’re exhausted, but it’s also something you can’t force.
Kenny Rogers said to me one time that the best careers in entertainment are like a lava lamp. You heat up for a little bit, then you kind of cool down, then you come back and you eat up again, and then you cool down. Yeah, Like if you came back with say the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Larry’s in, pick up the phone, convince Ron, and then Bill’s a cool guy. Bill will do it. You got to convince Ron.
What Kenny Rodgers meant by that, which is when you hit those hotspots, it’s exhausting. You can’t sustain at that level. I had that in the beginning with You Might Be Dneck stuff and then doing the Tonight Show in Vegas and stuff, and then it cooled off a little bit, and then we came back with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and it heat it back up for several years, and then it cooled off. A little bit, and then I was doing fifth grader. You know, Jeff, if you picked up the phone, Larry’ll do it.
You just got to convince Ron and then Bill will fall in line. It’s time to heat up again, Jeff said. For me, I think I’ve always remained interested in stand up because I’ve gotten to do other things that kind of satisfy, that urge your curiosity. There’s just something about standing there and making people laugh just makes you feel so good. C’lon caught up with Reggie Watts and they asked, Reggie Watts fine moving to Montana, what are the top five rules for a black guy moving to Montanagie said, rules for a black guy?
I don’t know. Growing up there, the thing is, people are genuinely pretty nice. They might be suspicious at first, but I noticed that sometimes that suspicious isn’t necessarily because you’re black. I mean, it’s definitely a part of it, but it’s not just that. It’s that you’re a stranger.
I don’t know anything about you, and I’m gonna treat you as a stranger till something clicks. When something clicks, everybody’s super sweet and they’re really nice, and you’re done that’s it. I get it. It’s like when someone comes into the village. It’s a tribal reaction, right.
It’s like you’re in your tribe, You’re in your village, and then someone comes in and you’re like, who’s the stranger. I don’t know who the stranger is. Well, the stranger help with water yesterday, and the stranger help build a fire. So stranger, okay, now, not a stranger my experience. That’s why I kind of learned to be as useful and funny as possible, and for better or for worse.
They asked Reggie Watts, how long can you stay in Great Falls before you get on the road. Ready said, yeah, I hear that. That’s a great question. I’d say in general about ten days. I think ten days is a good amount.
And then I’m just missing my friends because I have so many friends in LA and I do have friends in Great Falls, but there’s only so much you can do there. I do comedy and I do music. I kind of need to be around a place that is comedy in music. Great Falls, for as cool as it is, doesn’t have those things at abundants, so I do tend to miss it. I love this question.
All right, Reggie Watts, we’re making a movie about you. We’re not gonna ask you who plays you. We’re gonna ask you who doesn’t play you, who’s not on the list. His answer, not on the list, Bill Cosby, and they added Tyrese Geez. So I’m like, yeah, I don’t know who should play, and probably some young kid that no one knows.
I think that’s what it have to be, because otherwise I hate it when famous actors take on mundane characters. The whole time, I’m like, am I not gonna be able to tell it’s that actor? The whole time, I’m like, that’s pretty good. That almost made me feel like I don’t think it’s that actor. Just hire somebody that nobody has an association with.
It’s way easier. Healthline caught up with Howie Mandel about his OCD. How He shared that I wouldn’t learn to sign my shoes because I didn’t want to touch the laces because they had touched the ground. So everybody bullied me, and I didn’t have a friend in school because I would just rather them think I can’t tie my laces. He talked about his younger brother holding up the laundry hamper lid during fights to ward him off.
How He said, I’d melt and scream and terror and do anything he wanted. I remember I met Howie early in my run. It’s serious, he was. This was the first person I ran into that did the fist bump. Jerry Seinfeld.
I remember being the second person. The fist bump has become a lot more common, especially post COVID, but going back twenty years, that was like, Oh what I do here? I bump your fist. Okay, that’s new, that’s fun now, he said, everything bothered me. I just couldn’t move on in life unless there were things made my way, not only by me, but by everybody was in my periphery who just brushed off as the quirkiness of Howie.
Not anybody diagnosed or said, well, this is strange, this is different. Why I seem obsessed with the washing and the cleaning all the other things I needed to do. I didn’t want to tell anybody that I had a mental health problem. I thought it was a sign of weakness. It was embarrassing.
So, as you sit here and talk to you today, this is one hundred and eighty degrees from where I was in my forties. John Klees discussed Monty Python with gb News and said Python were the early targets of cancel culture. John Klees spoke to The Sunday Times and said Monty Python were the early targets of cancel culture. People don’t like to have their cherished ideas punctured a question. We all love to live in our own close systems of thought, to be surrounded by people who think a bit like us.
That’s what happens on the edge too, where you get those blasted echo chambers. It’s why comedy is even more important today as a way of pricking those bubbles, opening them up, letting in fresh air. It’s good for all of us. The problem is that cutting edge comedy becomes difficult if a joke transgresses someone’s idea of good taste, and that means a comedian has banned for life. It’s abverts the creative impulse.
All right, John, would your comedy from the seventies and eighties working today’s times? Clese said the trick with creativity is to understand that it’s not a talent, it’s a frame of mind. You have to get away from fear and doubt. You have to get into a place of playfulness and curiosity, so you can find connections and push boundaries. Cancel culture tends to make people less broaden their thinking more literal minded.
It is together to make funny or intellectually interesting associations. In cultural terms, it’s dangerous. I’m so old, I’m not bothered about getting canceled, but as a young man starting out, it might be different. Furied does to talk to Outlook India about choosing to play smaller venues. He said, I like to remove the trappings of comfort from my shows.
I could have done the comedy special at a huge stadium with numerous cameras focusing on me from different angles, but I wanted to keep it simple, and Netflix was gracious enough to agree to that. In this special, there’s no set, there’s just one stool. There’s no production as such. There’s only some sand on the floor. There’s not even any enhanced lighting.
The special rides on the words that come out of the comedian’s mouth. So I like to scare myself in that sense. Let’s see who’s at the three one to Twoter Comedy Festival in Chicago tonight where they don’t believe in posting the schedule with using calendar technology alphabetic will only really annoying. Let me scroll down and see if I see November fourth anywhere. Nate Pergatzy at the Chicago Theater eighty five South at the Winterest Arena, Russell Peters at the Rosemonts.
I’ve been in that venue. Good venue, good place to see Russell. That’s probably a good choice for tonight. Michael Chay at the Riviera, also good choice. Ari Shafir at the Vic ah Wow.
Combination of theater and performer. That might have to be the move of Ari Shafir at the vic tonight. Creig Robinson in The Nasty Delicious at Park West, Chad Daniels at the Chicago Improv In some smaller shows around town, and now let’s check out the New York At Comedy Festival, who totally understands calendar technology. Some of the show shows. Aaron Chen at Union Hall at five o’clock.
You may remember me playing some clips from Aaron when we were covering at the Sydney International Comedy Festival. Aaron’s pretty good at a five o’clock show. Doesn’t run up against anything. That’s a good choice. Aaron Chen, Union Hall, five o’clock you’re in a comedy, I recommend that one.
Jeff Ross at the hard Rock at seven, Lona Glazer at BAM at eight o’clock, Sam Morrell the Theater at MSG eight thirty, and some smaller shows around town. The festival’s just getting started here as we get into next weekend, and we’ll see some pretty heavy hitters, but not a bad night of comedy on a Saturday night. Unless you’re running a marathon tomorrow. You don’t want to be at a comedy show to midnight. Go to pet.
Sabrina Wu is one of Vulture’s twenty five comedians you should know. Vulture asked Sabrina about their writing process and they said, my answer might be more about style and joke writing. I realized that I kind of hate jokes. Puns give me a headache, and mister X make me feel hollow inside. Especially Hey, when the comedian uses a hot button issue like at trans writes or abortion as a cheap setup for some stupid take that I know they don’t actually believe in the joke anyway, because they know it can get a laugh.
An example of that they used is abortion is like pooping because and then said shut up, Shut up, Shut up. I prefer watching comedians who are giving me their honest take on things. When I was starting out, I spend a lot more time with pen and paper trying to force out set up and punchline. These days, I generate a lot of material through gossiping and ranting with my close friends. I feel like it’s stuff I care enough to talk about off stage tends to make more compelling material on stage.
And that’s your comedy needs for today. You can follow this show for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, pocketcasts, overcasts, wherever you get your shows. See you tomorrow.