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The Shark Deck. I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. You’ve been listening lately, you know, I’ve been obsessed with artificial intelligence. Well, Whitney Cummings she had a robot made to her likeness in twenty nineteen for her Netflix special Remember that. Yeah.
Well, Wired caught up with her and Whitney’s not surprised that ais tell awful jokes. She said, why are people shocked that robots aren’t funny? Most humans aren’t funny. The only funny robots are rumbas when they get stuck under the couch. She’s pro robot in general.
She still has the robot version of herself in her house. She hasn’t expected to make her laugh. Comedy is one of the few things that’s so specific to the essence of a human being. Comedy is about the trauma that comes from a humans lived experience and how they cope with it. Robots can’t be traumatized.
Wired asked Spike Ferriston, he wrote for Jerry Seinfeld back in the nineties. They asked, Spike, why the nothing Forever? That’s the Ai Seinfeld thing I’ve told you about. Why isn’t it hilarious? Spike said, it’s like asking why Spock isn’t funny.
Spock is hilarious. Do you not watch Star Trek the original series? Spok is very very funny. He’s also very very funny in Star Trek three. What are you guys talking about?
Spok is hilarious? Pay attention, gang, Johnny Mack. You ever talk about Mark Marin? I know, right? Collider asked Mark Marin what was the process like of taking a raw show and then tightening up for a filmed TV special.
Marin said, that’s the biggest trick of all, and that’s the hardest thing. Usually comes up to literally the week before when I’m in a panic and I’ve got to get that down to an hour, So I really have to decide what stays and what goes, and it has to be big pieces. So I knew that the fifteen minutes of COVID riffing could go, because every comics do in their take on that stuff, and it’s not necessary. You also have to come through and find through lines and find a couple of callbacks and sort of tighten up things that already there. It’s tricky, man.
There’s a lot aloof stuff, and some of it was really pretty good. But I think when I ended up with was as tight as it could be, and some of the stuff that it took out was distracting from the emotional and comedic power of some of the stuff. The La Times asked Roseanne, Hey, you once ran for president in the United States of America. Any thoughts about running look offs again? Roseanne said, some people are saying, why don’t you run for president again?
That made me really happy. I did run in twenty twelve, and everything I was saying in my speeches then is exactly what’s happening now. I’ve ready declared myself president for life of the Republic of the United States of America. I don’t really need to run again since I’m president for life of the working people. I ran as a socialist and I’m still a socialist.
I do not remember this at all. Vulture from twenty eighteen in the headline, remember when Rosanne ran for president? Vulture? The answer is no, Vulture, what if I told you? She did?
Okay, Bar stage in national campaign back at twenty twelve, which was the focus of the twenty fifteen documentary Roseanne for President. The doc follows bar as she attempts to secure place in the national ballot versus the Green Party candidate. Later is the ostensible face of the Peace and Freedom Party. She came in sixth place in the popular vote, behind the Constitution Party. It’s a very long article anyway, you’ll find that on Vulture.
The New Yorker caught up with Kate Berlant. How did she went up in New York. My senior year of high school, the SNL Oral history book came out and I remember clutching it, crying to my English teacher, being like, I have to go to New York. The New Yorkers like, so the idea of S and L brought it in New York. Kate said, I never auditioned for S and L.
That being said, I was asked to test once. I was obsessed with Chris Forley, but really I was more focused on the alternative comedy scene. In my senior or of high school, we could do an independent study, and I chose to do one on comedy. That’s when I started writing stand up for the first time. That’s the last time I was sitting down and writing out stand up.
She says, I have footage of the first time. They were curious about it. She said, Ah, I came out in a wheelchair. Then I stood up. That’s kind of the first joke.
I’d be instantly canceled for it, and I was wearing a kimono. All the jokes were quite abstract. I told. Jokes about the Pope was bizarre. I was like, if the Pope sleeps on his side, does the word of God get in?
It was really borsch belt and totally psycho in my mind. It was half an hour, but there’s no way it was. It was probably like fifteen minutes. At the end, I remember I got kind of soulful. I talked about here, I was on the custom of going to college.
I was really obsessed with Sarah Silverman’s Jesus’s Magic, and I think one of the last jokes I told was sort of something talking about my fear of going to college or growing up. In the end, I was like, mostly I’m just scared that some of you think I’m fat. Just kind of a classic Silverman joke. I was just trying to find out what the hell to do, which takes forever. It’s Saturday in Vancouver.
Just for last, Vancouver must be rocking. Let’s take a look at the shows seven o’clock Jordan Carlos seven o’clock JFL Showcase Love the Show details the comedy industry big shots are in town for Just for Last Vancouver and they’re looking for the next big thing. That would be a show to go see. Sugar Sammy pretty popular in Canada. He’s playing at seven.
Ryan Hamilton also Canadian at seven, Margaret Show at seven, Mufaro Mudsy’s schedule Meditation at seven thirty. Let’s see what this is. Scheduled Meditation is the comedy, meditation and fashion brand Slash Agency founded by stand up comedian and fashion designer Ufaro and Budsy. Six comics on the bill That’s different eight o’clock. Citizen Hurricane David and Ken or Citizen Hurricane.
Citizen Hurricane is a one of a kind improvised comedy show and rock concert. Real stories, ridiculous characters, spontaneous songs. It’s whose line meets Tenacious d That would be something I would be interested in. Cutie Pie Comedy at nine o’clock, a bunch of locals, Another JFL showcase at nine thirty, Sugar Sammy at nine thirty, Benito Skinner and Mary Beth Broone at nine thirty, Hannah Burner at nine thirty, and Joe to Rosa at nine thirty. Okay, let’s reverse engineer this.
None of the late shows really did it for me, So let’s do the showcase at nine thirty. That leaves the front of the evening free. Ryan Hamilton’s really good, He’s at seven. Want to go see Ryan Hamilton’s. Maybe we’ll try and catch the end of Citizen Hurricane at eight, and then we’ll leisurely make our way to JFL Showcase at nine thirty.
Then we can be back in the hotel room at eleven thirty. Hey, you get your own room. We are not staying together. What do you think’s going on here?
Speaking of improv sort of kind of, Vulture talked to Colin Mockery.
He said, when I first started improv, nobody knew what it was. That’s true. I remember dating a girl in college right after college who’s really an improv and like really wanted me to go. And I always look back and I had no interest in it at the time, and I’m like, huh, I probably would have liked that. She was pretty cool too.
Stupid me. When I first started improv, nobody knew what it was the theater we were at. We were running into the McDonald’s next door begging people to come see our show. They said, what’s it about? And we said, we don’t know.
We have to yell at us and then we’ll make something up. There are times I still think, how did they pitch the show to a network and have it get picked up. There’s four guys who’ve never seen before, and we don’t have a show until the end of the taping, and it’s twenty two episodes of that. I’ll answer Colin because the UK did it, and you guys brought it to the States and swapped out hosts and put Drew carry on it. You’re on the British version.
You know this anyway. I’m proud. Then I got improv in the public mindset. I know there are a lot of people who looked down on Whose Line, which I understand. We never said it was the end all be all of improv.
I was always like, here, it’s the gateway and all these different forms of comedy there are. But I got the word out and there was a show that families could watch together. I watched the heck out of that back in the day. Whose Line once it became popular. Kids really seemed to be drawn to it, so there were improv club starting in college.
In high school. It’s not like any other kind of art form. People kind of played around with it to see what formats could be done, everything from an improvised one act play to improvise dungeons and dragons. I think the surface is still kind of being scratched. I always say the guys on Whose Line are pretty good.
They are fantastic improvisers hauling around the world who just haven’t had a series showcase them, and they’re constantly finding ways to play with the format and do different things. Well, Whose Line comes back? Some of this, he says. The short answer is, if it comes back, it probably won’t be with this cast. There is a complicated relationship with the show.
The cast love each other, and the actual shooting is always fun. The downside is we’ve never received fair compensation for the success of the show. We provide the content but don’t get paid as quote unquote writers. We’ve never received residuals for a show that’s been shown around the world since its inception. Seeing announcedence about the sale of the show overseas or to HBO, Max can get irritating.
I hope I don’t sound bitter, but I learned long ago that this business is not fair, and being bitter about it gets you nowhere. The longer, more vague answer is it’s like the mafia keeps pulling us back in. So who knows and Seattle King five they stop by the Disabled List Comedy Fest to tell me about this a couple weeks ago. One of the sacred rules of that festival is don’t hate yourself for laughing. Comedian Dan Hurwitz has a hand missing most of its fingers.
He gestures and says, I know there are certain things I’ll never be able to do, like use chopsticks and play chopsticks. Both got a laugh. Hurwitz and friend at Caleb Brown, who has muscular distrophee, have spent their entire lives using humor to put people at ease. Brown said, I truly believe comedy is a way to get to know people. On stage, she tells the story of a woman trying to be helpful by opening a door for her.
That door led to a staircase, and she said, is this at the rats? Comedian Greta Gimp said, anybody else in this room gets tired? Of being told they’re inspirational because they have a disability. They sit on my butt eighteen hours a day. I’m supposed to be able to inspire able bodied people to get off their butts.
The Disabled Liz Comedy Collective will put on another show April fourteenth at the Northwest Film Forum. And that is your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows tomorrow. Hello, I am Mark Francis, host of Palace Intrigue, the podcast that delves into the daily drama of the British royal family. These short daily episodes cover the latest news and scandals involving the likes of Prince Harry, Megan, Michael, Kate, Middleton, King Charles and the rest.
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