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Caloroga Shark Media. Great advice from Ricky Gervais, who tweeted, hope you’re doing your own thing and not anyone else’s. Have a great day. Love it, Ricky. I’m really excited about today’s show.
Hi. I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. The Facebook group was super active over the weekend and I’m so thrilled it’s what was going on this weekend is exactly what I want. The Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News Podcast Group, feel encouraged to join. The first time you post, I have to approve your post just to make sure that you’re not a pornbot.
We had a problem with pornbots last summer, you know. So I’ll be like, ah, this person looks like they’re actually a human, and then you’re good to go. But there were so many discussions. There were people commenting about some opinions I had and disagreeing, which is fantastic. I like intelligent discussion.
We don’t have to agree on everything. People brought up their own topics. I thought it was fantastic. That’ll drive a lot of today’s conversation. Aaron in the Facebook group again Daily Comedy News Podcast Group, to share this from the Stranger dot com and Aaron gets the jokes and said, you’re home for comedy news.
Love it, but this is kind of awful. The headline right wing media targets Capitol Hill comedy bar club owners canceled for shows now they’re facing constant harassment. This is the story from last week where Kurt Metzger, Dave Smith, Lewis Gomez, and Jim Florentine were unbooked from a Seattle comedy club. My take continues to be, like I get, if you want to have a particular vibe at your establishment, you should be allowed to have a particular vibe at your establishment. Does it suck that they were booked and then unbooked?
Yeah, of course, because why booked them in the first place, And then you might have cost them some dates because they weren’t available, or maybe they booked some travel. So that’s not cool. But the larger point of should I be allowed to have who I want my club who I want? I think that’s fine. From The Stranger, Jesse Waters was hosting on Fox News and had a headline Seattle loves drugs hates comedy.
The co owner, Jess says she’s locked down her social media. People have been harassing her online and have come after her and her children, suggesting, I don’t even want to say what people are suggesting happen to her. I mean, just like I don’t even know what to say. Like I know, I’m babbling here. I have the words in front of me, and I don’t want to voice them.
People are saying really, really horrible things. Jess said, given the response, I think maybe we made the right choice. I think this might not be the people we want inside of our club. Dane, who co owns the club, said, I think if you’re a comedian your fans rack with threats of physical or sexual violence based on a canceled comedy show, maybe you have some self reflection to do. I don’t know, the owner said.
Nobody came after them about the book performances. No community group forced their hands. The booking and subsequent cancelations where their decisions alone. Lisa Anderson said this all began with Kurt Metzger’s agent reaching out, according to this version, and the agent wanted to book Metzger at the relatively new club. With the Google search, Anderson learned Kurt Metzger had won a Peabody Ward and an Emmy for his work on Inside Amy Schumer.
The agent then offered her three other comedians for headlining shows at her venue between April and October. Those Smith, Gomez, and Florentine. So these are four shows. This was not one big show. Okay, that’s new information to me.
Or maybe I’m just terrible at reading. The agent says. Gomes has since dropped him as an agent. Another press person said Jim Florentine could not respond to the questions. He did talk to The New York Post.
We’ll get to that. As a booker, Anderson was overjoyed and said, oh, I just booked four headlining comedians. I’m killing it. I thought I’d done an awesome thing. Then an investor told her that Mesker, Smith, Gomez, and Florentine were right leaning or transgressive comics who may not be a good fit for the club.
After discussing the matter with friends, other comics, and people in the neighborhood, they decided to cancel the shows privately over email, the only shows they’ve canceled in their short history. Again, I want to use unbooked because canceled is a loaded word these days. Anderson said, it’s like a stupid, dumb mistake that’s turned into a whole thing. Let’s see of these four comedians. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to Dave Smith.
I’ve been around Jim Florentine. Kurt Metzker was working at a podcast a former gig of mine was associated with, and I don’t recall interacting with Kurt and Lewis Gomes and I have had, you know, a few conversations. They were all probably eight nine years ago. I was enjoyed talking to him. I think he’s very talented.
The Stranger sites a twenty twenty one New Republic article titled the comedy industry has an alt right problem The Stranger Rights. Smith and Gomez were a pete guests on the Gavin McInnis show, hosted by the far right Canadian podcaster who founded the Proud Boys, Johnny Mack wants no part of any of that. They discussed some of the guests on that show. You can read the Stranger article. I don’t want to amplify the guests or what their messaging was the Stranger Rights.
The article also mentioned that Smith and Gomez left mckinnes’s Compound Media for a network, Gomez co founded Gas Digital, where they carried on a tradition of quote racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and flirtation with the far right. More recently, a significant portion of Metzger’s latest special, Thirty Minutes with Kurt Metzger, is dedicated to jokes about trans people in politics, Anderson says, it doesn’t mean censorship. You can say it, you just can’t say it here. Metzger in a radio interview with Jason Rantz from seven to seventy Ktt Metzker is quoted as saying, anyone who cave to this nonsense, they don’t deserve anything but mockery, some hilarious mockery, and it’s important that we do it. If you saw on Glorious Bastards at the end, Commando Brad Pitt karsaswastika into Christopher Waltz’s forehead, marking him as a Nazi for life, that stupid woke nonsense is dying.
It’s dying now. And what’s going to happen is all the cancel pigs they’re engaging with that are going to blend back into society. Gomez on his podcast said he thought the club was stupid for booking him and then unbooking him, and so was his agent for booking him at a super woke, progressive venue that the entire lineup is blue haired, effing freaks. He wasn’t planning to address any of it until Metzger posted on Twitter. Gomez quoted is saying, there’s plenty of places that won’t book me because I’m an effing jerk face.
Clean that up a little who says crappy things on the internet. That’s the right of any business. The same way I don’t have to put anyone on my podcast that I don’t want to, or anybody on the comedy festival skank Fest that I don’t want to, if they don’t represent the band or the fing core values you want to call it. It’s just they’re right. They didn’t make a big stink.
They didn’t fing publicly say these guys are pieces of crap. That email is pretty efing respectful overall. Sounds like Gomez and I are aligned on this whole thing. If skank Fest doesn’t want to have I don’t know, Patton Oswalt Great, don’t have them. Florentine has since book shows that the Tacoma comedy clubs replace the comedy board date.
So I think that’s a fair point that maybe these guys tied updates and or book travel that they couldn’t get their money back on. So that’s kind of a lousy thing about unbooking them. So I get that co owner Daine says, these guys may come and sell at the club for a weekend, but then we have to be here forever as a private business. Everyone that performs on our stage is there at our pleasure. To characterize this as censorship is inflammatory and correct.
There’s a big difference between saying a book should be banned and saying I prefer not to have that book in my home. Again, I think that’s all reasonable. The New York Post took this angle, quoting for the Post, the Capitol Hill Comedy Bar, which celebrates the vibrant voices of the queer community with a weekly queerst to the Front open Mic, had booked Jim Florentine, Dave Smith, Lewis Gomez, and Kurt Mesker for upcoming dates before the about face, which the owner said was to maintain the harmony within our community. Florentine’s all the post, I speak my mind on stage. I’m edgie.
I don’t kiss the audiences, but I’ll talk about the transgender stuff. Why are comedians so dug in on transgender stuff? Like why? And I’m not saying, don’t crack a joke about really anything, but like, why are they so dug in on this one? Florentine said, I didn’t know you had to check with the neighborhood.
I called my friends that own comedy clubs around the country and said, I’m coming in a couple months. You got to check the neighborhood and see if they’re okay with me performing there. Usually what happens is the club will research you before they book you and decide we don’t want that type of comedy. A lot of places won’t book you and you’ll never know. But in this case, they booked us.
That’s the way they’re gonna run their business. I don’t see how they’re going to stay in business that long. I’ll say for a third time, if it goofed up their travel, that to me is the sin here. The booking and the unbooking, not the decision not to have a particular act at a particular venue, or as previously said, not to have a particular artist. On say A Comedy Festival, Florentines said some of his jokes probably wouldn’t get big laughs at Capitol Hill Comedy Bar.
He was asked for an example, Florentine shared a joke about his son’s gender identity that has to do with the size of his stuff. Jim says, that’s why I got into comedy, to push boundaries. Like sometimes you tow the line with something and think, oh, that went a little too far. That’s the goals of comic. Try to find where that line is and just write it.
I think they’re going to book all of us there on different weekends. They said, well, take you guys. Absolutely, we don’t censor comics like they do. Come on over here. Gomez on his podcast speculated that young, jealous local comics pressured the decision.
He said, that’s what happens when comics don’t have anything going on, they just look for drama. So Anderson found drama within the comedy space there, and she was like, all right, I think they’re great, but I’m not you know, I don’t need to make it a thing. Maybe they were concerned with protests. Head was like a super woke area Hollywood and Toto listen to Noam Dworman’s podcast. It’s the Comedy Seller podcast.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to that or pull the transcript yet. The podcast is called Comedy Seller Live from the Table. Anderson on that podcast that she was a fan of Metzger from his days on Chelsea Lately, only when the club’s investors told her about their problematic jokes, that she regret the decision. Towarman pressed the owners again and again, says Hollywood and Toto to share what the four comedians had said to warrant their cancelation. What joke, what routine?
Is so hurtful that progressive fans couldn’t be exposed to it. Dorman discussed why edge comedians are important to the culture. He brought up a seventies era advertisement for Richard Pryor, noting how Pryor was built as harsh, vulgar, shocking offensive. That’s how things were marketed to liberal people, says Torman. Would Capitol Hill Comedy Bar turn Richard Pryor away, boy, there’s a loaded question, maybe they would.
Dorman said, you’re obviously nice people, well intentioned people. You’re in an industry that’s about free expression. You’re in an industry that has a history of having landmark incidents regarding free expression that affect the culture. So you chose that industry. You don’t have to live up to that calling.
But it’s not like you opened a deli and found yourself in this. You’re becoming a cousin, and you’re nice people, and you don’t want to be of the people smashing the windows. Apparently there is referencing a recent incident at Berkeley where violent protesters raged against Jewish speakers. He continued, saying, they started smashing the place up. This is a close cousin of the sentiment that you’re buckling to.
I can’t sign off on it because it’s wrong. It’s leading the country down a terrible direction. And everybody fueled their certainty that their position is the right one, so right that no one else should ever be platformed. And I will smash up Berkeley, and I will ride outside the comedy seller, and I will put this comedy club out of business if they should have the nerve, not the endorse of view I do not like, but simply allow that view to be heard. That was a lot.
I got a lot to get to I’ll tell you what the best special of the year so far is after the break. Wow, I really didn’t realize how long it was going to take to get through that first part there. This next section here normally would be in the A block here on the podcast. The best special of the year is David Cross. I should probably know what the name of this special is because I really liked it.
Worst Daddy in the World. I watched that on Friday night. I had a crazy busy weekend. I was at soccer all weekend, so I couldn’t freshen up Monday Show the way I would have liked to.
Also, I screwed up the title of You Were Up Early.
A couple of people pointed out to me the original title of Monday’s episode was something like DCN Monday Offphonic, so that I’ll let you know my naming convention behind the scenes before I put a proper title. But Cross, I almost declared that it was over and this would be the best special of the year. That’s how strong the first three quarters is. Once he gets to the part where he brings the audience up, I think that was in terms of editing. I think that was a mistake because the special was rocking, and then that kind of tapped the brakes.
He’s got a strong closer, but it kind of gets goofed up there. Right now. This is number one, So the entire best of twenty four list right now, David Cross number one, Dusty Slay number two, tailor Thomason number three. I think Cross and Sleigh will stay near that top of the list all year. I think Thomason will fall down to the high teens by the end of the year.
We will see. But I was glad I finally liked something because I felt like I was like Mikey with the Life Cereal and Johnny mack hates all comedy. Consequence of Sound interviewed David Cross and said one detail of note during the special, Cross stays hydrated on stage with a red solo cup. He said that’s not his normal choice when drinking a beer, but it’s a trick of the trade, as the cup’s opaque nature means the contents aren’t visible, avoiding the possibility of continuity issues. Is the cup between the sets, He says, if I had a bottle of beer, the level of liquid rise and fall depending on the take.
At other points, He’s not hiding the editing at all. When you watch the specially, you’ll see what that means. But he says, I’m already doing that, so there’s no reason I have the beer be distraction. You know, the way I crew material is I just go on stage. I do all my writing on stage, and the last phase of that process is sequencing.
I’ll put it all together and it’s not just disparate bits. It’s all with an eye towards you know, am I doing too much of this? Yere? Am I doing too little of that? Here?
Even asking the audience like does this feel like I’m dwelling on this thing too much? Should I lighten it up here? And that’s the last part of the process before he hit the road. The Chicago taping was show forty of a seventy six show tour. He says, I always tape the special in the middle and then record the album at the end, because there’s different material in there.
By the time it gets to the end, it’s the same title, but the audio will be like twenty to thirty percent different than the material in the special. That’s really cool. Can we give him the Grammy? Then? He likes taping a special midway through a tour because the materials had time to percolate and get crafted.
Some material was relatively new, the Ron De Santis chunk. He said he’d only done like eight or nine times before the special. But the album will be more polished because now the materials a little tighter and he found more jokes within it, so it’s a more realized bit. Very very cool.
All right, let’s see what’s in the Facebook group, because there was so many …
Again, feel encouraged to join us Daily Comedy News podcast group. I’m just gonna go in chronological order here. Dylan posted, excited to see some shows next month. We have tickets to see Brian Kallin, Nate Bergatzy, Brad Williams, and Shane Gillis. That’s great.
We don’t talk about Brad enough on the show. And Shane. I think Shane is so much fun and like I said last week, I don’t think there actually is a controversy. Dylan also pointed out Soda and gill Us on We Might Be Drunk came out on Monday. I just downloaded that looking forward to that.
There was a pretty big thread as I watched comedy on Friday night, I wrote quick takes. Dan Soder’s new roadwork thing. Nothing wrong with it, but skippable Joe List Works the Crowd is better. David Cross is currently number one, so breaking that apart my takes. I watched Cross and then I put on soda, and maybe it was just the positioning there.
Like I wrote in the Facebook post, it was fine, but I’m a comedy snob and an admitted comedy snob, so it wasn’t There’s a part of my brain that gets tickled by these things, and soda was just it was fine.
And then I checked out Joe List Working the Crowd, which definitely is not a …
He’s not claiming it’s a special. Soder used the word special on his I’m not sure it was a special, especially the way it was shot. It seems more like an hour. Ian chimed in and I appreciate your comment. I truly do, because this is what I want the Facebook group to be.
Ian wrote, skip sodas if you don’t like a forty five, that it’s the ground running and doesn’t waste a second. That’s awesome. Comedy is totally subjective. We don’t have to agree on any of this, and I love when people put things on my radar, and I might give Soda a second chance based on what Ian said, So I think that’s awesome. Dylan chimed in said I watched most of the specials.
I can watch a good one and laugh a couple of times. I laughed out loud several times during Soder’s, So yeah, maybe I’m totally wrong about Soder. Dylan wrote, watching Donnelle Rowling special now, and while it’s good, I haven’t laughed out loud yet. Yeah, that one didn’t do it for me. Aaron said, I saw the David Cross special.
I could not stop watching, though I honestly thought it was because I’m a lefty. Starts out solid, then builds to a hilarious finish that had me in tears. Yeah, his closures really strong. It’s just that audience chunk. I’m not sure it works one more firm.
Dlan watch four specials this weekend, Soda, Cross, Scovell, and Rawlings. I like Soda. The best Cross is always amazing, but the first half hour of his was a bit slow, and he finished really strong. I saw a cross and Patton oss whall together in two thousand and two or so. He was so great back then that no matter how good his stuff is now, it’s not on that level.
Scoville was fine, but it started slow. I love Donnell Rawlings, but a special as a B minus at not bad but not great.
And then the big thing that I watched Adam Sailor Spaceman.
That was what I let off Frinday Night with s planned. I was like five minutes in it when I was like, oh, man, almost invoke the name of a deity. There. Sandler is doing an accent. Sometimes he’s doing like bad Eastern European Ish accent in some scenes.
So, as you know from the trailer, he’s an astronaut. The mission is sponsored, so he’s doing camera work and he’s got the accent, and then the next scene he doesn’t have the accent, and I’m like, oh, is this like secretly brilliant? Is Sandler pretending to be a Czech astronaut because of the sponsor. No, he just drops the accent in the next scene and then it comes back when he’s talking to the alien creature. I was also eye rolling really early in the film.
Adam Sandler’s daughter has a role because she was the best actress for the role, of course, and I was like, here we go Adam Sandler doing a bad accent and in a but I enjoyed it. Is it terrible? Oh, it’s terrible. I’ve told a few people to watch it and they’re like, Oh, this is so boring. I’m falling asleep.
I found it strangely nice company. Bulk of the film turns into basically a two person stage play, and I don’t know. I enjoyed the dialogue. Maybe I like Sandlor as a dramatic actor, since those are the films that I seem to be attracted to, whereas I’m not a fit of his comedy films. I liked it.
I would be curious to know what you think. Again, this is what the Facebook group is for Daily Comedy News podcast group. Feel encouraged to join, as boy, I am long here. Today I listened to Mark Maren’s interview from twenty eleven with Richard Lewis, Can I be honest here? Well, I’m always honest here?
Can I be honest here? I came away not liking Richard Lewis, the person that was speaking to Mark Maren, As I listened, I was like, oh, I don’t think I would like you in real life. It’s a very honest interview and Maren got good stuff out of him, but I didn’t come away liking Richard Lewis. I know you don’t speak ill of the dead, but that was my reaction to it. So if you want to check that out.
David shot me a note and let me know. I had quote it last week for a review from the Was It nineteen ninety three sitcom that Richard did with Don Rickles. He pointed out the editorial style of that particular newspaper and said it’s probably not surprising that they didn’t like the edgy comedy and sexual jokes from that particular sitcom, so that may have been a loaded review on That’s a really good insight there as well. David says, appreciate your content and we’ll look forward to being an ongoing listener. David, thank you for listening every day.
Really great to hear from everyone. I’m going to drop a bunch of stories that can wait to tomorrow. What else that I want to mention SNL there was a great sketch. I don’t want to spoil it, but the setup is Sidney Sweeney has a crush on Bowen Yang. Oh my goodness, was fantastic.
In a story from Fox News, we begin with Fox, We End with Fox. Fox News host Rachel Campos Duffy is the mother of a child with Down syndrome, and she praised she and Gillis. The Huffington Post had written, although she and Gillis used the R word to highlight how it is a slur and wrong to use, the punchline of the joke didn’t exactly justify his usage of it. Campos Duffy said, the down syndrome stuff was actually really good because part of the thing that Shane Gillis gets a lot of credit for is not being hemmed in by political correctness. And he’ll say words that have now been stricken off.
You can’t say these words, and not only will they say the word will go deep on the topic at Campos Duffy said, he uses the R word and talking about down syndrome. However, at the end of the sketch, what he says is what everyone who has a family member with Down syndrome, liberals are so afraid. You know. He’s obviously referring to the eugenics that’s used against them, and he says, the funny thing is that they turn out to be the best person in the family, which is totally true. You guys have met Valentino.
He’s like the happiest person in our family. I actually really loved it because I think ultimately it was a very pro life message and a really great message about what we’re doing to people with Down syndrome through abortion and through eugenics. That is Today’s Daily Comedy News again Facebook group, Daily Common News podcast group chime in Love to hear from you guys. All Right, I really like today’s episode. I hope you like.
I know it wasn’t as newsy as usual, but hopefully it was a good discussion around the comedy industry. See you tomorrow.