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Caloroga Shark Media. Hi Ley Hoe. I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Rough start down at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It was the opening night Comedy All Stars super show twenty eight hundred people at the Palace Theater in Saint Kilda and it was halted just three acts in.
One audience member posted on Twitter. According to Chortal, something happened in the dress circle at the Palace Theater in Saint Kilda during the third Comedians act that the Comedy Gala show was paused and now canceled. We’re told there was a medical emergency within the audience upstairs. The festival said they will be in touch with all ticket holders. The festival runs from now through April twentieth, over one thousand performers, one hundred and thirty international acts and six hundred and ninety shows, one hundred and eighty two stages, one hundred and thirty three venues.
Some folks you may have heard of Julio Tore wh Is Danny Boy, Rhys Darby, Mark Watson. I’ve talked about him a few times on the show Eliza Slessinger’s heading down there. Some of these shows include the Annual Great Debate, the Aboriginal Comedy All Stars, and the Asian All Stars Gala. I’ll start to pick away at that a little bit next week. Part of that is because this weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, I’m going to focus on Mitch Hebburg.
Mitch Hedberg passed away March thirtieth, two thousand and five, and I’m a big fan of Mitchell. With the twentieth anniversary, we’ll’ll talk about Mitch this weekend. So the net effect of that from putting together show is some stuff that might normally go to the weekend is getting pulled up into Thursday and Friday, and some other stuff into Monday and Tuesday. But we have a month for me to play random auzzie comedians that you might not know. A one name you do know is Colin Jost.
The folks at the Cornell Sun caught his show. He told the Cornell students, it’s great to be at Cornell. Isn’t it so great? If someone’s like, where do you go to school? And you’re like Ithaca and then you don’t have to be like Ithaca College.
That got a good laugh from the hometown crowd. Joe said I’d like to tell you something inspiring for all the people majoring in a hotel administration. My aunt came here to study hotels, and now she stays in hotels. The Atlantic at a lengthy piece about married comedians, and we learned about the kraziers, who have two rules when it comes to jokes about missus Leanne Kraser. One is Bert can talk about her as long as it’s not mean, and he can talk about Leanne as long as it’s really funny.
Bert says, she’s yet to vito a joke. Sometimes she eggs him on. One time, Leanne farted during sex and said, you’re going to talk about this on stage, aren’t you, to which he replied, can I, And she goes, you have to. If it’s happened to me, it’s happened to other people. Bert says, I did it and it murdered.
In the same piece, Jim Gaffigan suggested that comedians traveling is a release valve. Jim said, maybe me traveling is helpful. It’s like she doesn’t have to deal with me. In some ways. My stand up is my golf.
Back to Bert, he spoke to the other times about the evolution of comedy They were curious, has anything changed since he started? Bert said, oh, f yes, you have no idea. There used to be a thing called a closer. A closer would be something you’d put at the end of your act because you were done, and then Netflix showed up and now audience will decide your closer for you. They were bored, they were done, and it turned out the majority of specials only got about thirty minutes of viewing.
Oh so it’s not just me interesting all right? Yeah, I don’t make it all the way to the end of a lot of specials, Bert said. One comic said to me, I actually can still tell my closer because no one watched the whole special, So I’m still using my closer on the road. I had this great closer about ziplining with my wife. It was in my special Secret time.
It’s like my favorite chokee with my whole set. Why would I put it at forty eight minutes? I have it closed up my special. Why wouldn’t I put it at twenty two minutes? So that if you’re telling me you’re only going to watch thirty, then I put it at twenty two.
If you just watched my closer. This is fascinating. Bert says, we got the notes back and forth from my twenty eighteen special and Netflix was like, your rate of retention was through the roof people that started your special, ninety five percent of them watched the entire thing, and that had never happened. As somebody who looks at completion rates for all sorts of things, from podcasts to some of the radio projects I’ve worked on, just seeing YouTube completions ninety five percent is insanely high. Burt says, Literally, they brought us in for a meeting.
They’re like, what did you do? And I said, I talked to some comics. You did specials here, and no one watches their own specials. I just put my clothes twenty two minutes. Literally.
Netflix said to me, is it cool if we give your special to other comics? And I was like, yeah, tell them what I did. So for this special, I had a really great joke that was like that, I think it’s the phone sex joke. That little chunk was really great and it said four minutes and twenty seconds, and I’m like, nice, I knew that I had closure. I could go nowhere else but the end the story about my dog that had passed away, so I was like, dude, that belongs.
At the end, Bert said, I think I was in Utah and I told the story about my dog and I saw dudes crying in the audience, and I was like, well that was weird.
And then I got so much feedback on social media.
They’re like, Birch Show was amazing, but that dog story, man, that killed me. Man, it was hilarious. We just put our dog down. That kind of stuff and stand up. You know, some comics look to the edgy of stuff for that stuff’s going to be like clickbait from me.
I look for the stuff that kind of brings us together and makes us all feel the same or equally as good about our broken parts. And I just thought it was a good bit to include in the special. Slaves wrote about the Bill burnaissance. I don’t know where I am with Bill right now. I listened to that Terry Gross interview and I came away liking Burr less and I’m not on like a Burer got woo kick.
I don’t know if it’s the overexposure or maybe being exposed to more off stage Burr, but I’m not feeling it right now. Slate Road If you’re looking for a snapshot of Bill Burr’s worldview, I recommend listening to the interview for NPR’s Fresh Air. That’s the one I was just talking about. Slate writs Burr’s current renaissance is not the result of a pivot on his part. If anything, it’s a sign of how much the popular culture has shifted around him, taking on a more popular sheen sake of both politically correct niceties and billionaire worship.
Burr’s superpowers a comedian has always been his ability to concoct a frothy exasperation that, when aimed in the correct direction, can have an exfoliating effect on the mind. Somebody had the thesaurus out, continuing thesaurus wise. The impact is most cathartic when burd employs that ability on the listless bourgeois. Can we speak English please? I’m educated.
I have a master’s degree, so it’s not like I’m uneducated, but nobody actually speaks this way. You think I’m kidding here. Let me read verbatim from Slate after his recent MANGIONI apologia picked up steam. A twenty seventeen clip from a Burr appearance on Conan resurface, driffing on Nesley’s attempt to privatize America groundwater, Burr, in a Mangionian turn stop. Whether you like it or not, a lot of people in America relate to Burr’s disposition.
Can you imagine an American voter who holds some shall we say, problematic views on pronoun policing or the me too movement while also harboring a very material sympathy for a Luigi Mangioni, someone who is anti woke but believes the housing crisis has got out of hand. Of course you can. They are legion the crowd, Facebook walls and Instagram feeds. They’re invited into our living rooms for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And they’re also the exact type of citizen that has been legislated out of the Democratic Party.
Bill Burr is their avatar. And the question becomes whether the next phase of liberal culture, for better or worse, will be shaped in his image, One primal scream at a time, woo all right. Tree Crowder in the La Times said, had the election gone the other way, he was planning on trying to pivot, not completely away from politics, but to doing just general comedy stuff. Online that wasn’t political. I do some cooking videos and stuff like that here and there, but then with the election going what it did, it just feels like, what else am I going to talk about?
All my favorite comics talked about real stuff, social cultural issues or whatever. So I always want to do some of that without being too overtly going completely after just one side or one political party. I have a chunk in there about making fun of the idea of white supremacy, talking about a very serious subject, but in my opinion, it shouldn’t offend anyone but a white supremacist. If you’re conservative but you’re not a white supremacist, it shouldn’t bother you to hear me make fun of white supremacy. And so that’s kind of how I try to think about it.
The l eight Times was curious about Trey being more liberal than most families in the rural South. Tray said, my wife and a lot of my friends are liberal people from small southern towns. Pretty much every single one of them is what I call the blue sheep. They’re from a typical southern conservative family, and they’re like the wacky liberal at the table. He discusses how his uncle is gay, and how growing up he didn’t go to church.
My dad didn’t send us to church because they’re very homophobic. My dad ran the video store in this tiny little town and was like, you know, in a David Bowie and David Lynch and foreign movies and stuff like that. So I’m pretty much just the way I was raised to be. It just happened in a very odd place for that to happen. I feel bad sometimes because a lot of people will ask me for our advice on how to deal with it, are crazy, insane maga relatives, and like I said, I almost feel guilty about it because I’m like, I don’t have any of those.
Sophie Budle told What’s Up Newport. It’s an interesting time to be a Canadian living in the United States. I had a gig once in Canada performing for the Canadian Navy, and honestly, they didn’t really seem tough, and so I’ve been offering that up to Americans they can just invade by sea. It’s so ridiculous that Americans are siding with Canada, which you know, you wouldn’t think that would help. I’ve always been really influenced by American comics.
I’m on the road with Taylor Thomason right now. She’s a big influence on Mete, Nikki Glaser, Bet Stelling, Sarah Silverman, tons of female comics. I’ve always looked up to them. Mitel Lane talked to The Windy City Times about growing up in Chicago. What do you remember most?
I love this, Mateo said. I remember the corner of Clark and Addison, across from Wrigley Field. It was just a parking lot with a taco bell and maybe an Irish pub, and that was that. Then I came back after the Cubs won the World Series and was like Woodfield mall, apartments, hotels, restaurants. I’m asking, what the hell is this?
But I didn’t hang out off the Red Line until I was twenty one and old enough to go to bars. I was hanging out in Jefferson Park in places like the Irish American Heritage Center because that’s where all my friends lived in the city. The Windy City Time said, it’s interesting when you said an Irish bar, because they are about three thousand of them in Chicago. Matteo said, I’ll never forget my friend Carrie. We were driving and it was on Clark and Addison.
There was a sign reading new Irish Pub coming and she said, yeah, that’s just what the city needs at Irish Pub. Amy Schumer has shared an update on her use of weight loss medication. She was singing any praises of Manjaro and then commented on the British royal family and said, that’s all I have to say. I’m not gonna talk any stuff. I’m not gonna stir the pot.
But why don’t we have to call Kate Middleton Kate of Wales. Random. By the way, if you want to keep up on the royal family, I rate for the podcast Palace Intrigue. We talk about the Royals seven days a week. It’s a lot of fun boy that Megan markles a lot of fun, a lot of Glazier will host the twenty twenty five Webby Awards.
It’s the twenty ninth annual ceremony in New York City. May twelfth. Johnny Carson would have turned one hundred years old this year. This Year’s Great American Comedy Festival is celebrating Johnny and who her to honor Johnny Carson with then Yakov Samirnoff and Soviet Union Johnny Carson honors you. Yakov will do Saturday, June fourteenth, your headliner on the thirteenth, James Austin Johnson.
The festival kicks off Thursday, June twelfth with the traditional family comedy Magic Show. All three shows I’ve mentioned are at seven o’clock at the Johnny Carson Theater, Great American Comedy Festival dot com. That new show, The Studio on Apple TV Plus is getting amazing reviews. Slate called it the best new comedy of twenty twenty five, and they warn us the Studio is not casual second screen watching. The episodes move fast and demand close attention from the viewer, with throwaway visual jokes cramped into the corners of the frame Simpson style.
I will get to that tonight. And I say that definitively because Thursday night is the night I watched The Pit that is, the medical drama on Apple TV Plus. Last week’s episode was amazing. So while I have the Apple TV Plus on, I’m sure I watched the Bit and switch over to that one unless my wife decides it’s one of the we watch this together show, in which case I’ll get to it. In about seven months.
I caught up in some podcasts Mark Marin had on Nick Fune. Nothing really interesting there, but I will recommend Mark Maron. With Chris Fleming, they talked about bombing the Boston comedy scene and show sequencing, specifically, you don’t want to go after Bobby Kelly. Apparently that was a very good listen, and Chris Fleming is a comedian I hope has a good year and deserves more people to know what Chris is up to. As I mentioned before, I listened to Bill Burr on NPR and came away going, I don’t know about that, just wanted to share with you guys.
I had been noticing a couple websites that used to be pretty I want to be positive, they were really great websites, The eight hundred Pound Gorilla. I’ve noticed since January first, they’ve kind of slowed down their comedy coverage other than the stuff that they’re promoting internally. They had bought out the Laugh Button website, so that’s kind of a loss.
Also, the Intero Bang has pretty much gone dormant.
I don’t know what’s up with that. Who does great coverage The New York Times, And I’m not just saying that because friend of the show Jason Zenneman. Obviously I’m a huge fan of Jason, but some other people write comedy pieces in there as well. The La Times at least once a week has a major headliner and they do a great job. Latenighter dot com is a great source and also von yu Land that covers the Boston comedy scene.
You should check that out. All week we’ve been talking about Indian comedian at kunaal Comra. You may recall he had made a joke about one of the local politicians at a statement released on Monday, commerce that he would cooperate with the police and courts for any lawful action, but will the law be fairly and equally deployed against those who have decided that vandalism is the appropriate response to being offended by a joke. I bounced this from yesterday because it got a little busy. The Sprung Comedy Festival has kicked off in Silver Spring.
If you’re in town tonight at seven o’clock. Improbable Comedy presents Funnier than Fiction in a partnership with Story District. Funnier than Fiction feature storytellers presenting their funny stories about real situations that are so ridiculous you just have to laugh. Six or seven comedians on that bill. Tomorrow at five pm The Originals All Native Comedy, Improbable Comedy has gathered Pan Indian talent from New Mexico, New York and the DMV to delight and entertain you.
Seventy five minute show. Friday Night, Daisy Comedy Night, and boy, whoever wrote the copy you tried too hard. They listed some comedians that wrote they will bring spice and laughter to the stage. Just don’t. At nine o’clock.
Also Friday, Law and Order Comedy turns laughter into law as attorneys, former criminals, and law enforcement bring hilarity to the often not funny criminal justice system. Saturday’s Science Comedy Night, I like what these guys are doing. These are very different shows hosted by science journalists and stand up comedian Kasha Battel, And Sunday Is Comedy as a Second Language, a live interactive show featuring the stand up comedy as immigrant and first generation performers. Nice job there on that one, and that is your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it.
They might like it too. Don’t forget this weekend doing Hebburg stuff. See you tomorrow,