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Caloroga Shark Media. Hi there, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Tonight in New York City at the Beacon Theater. It is the Night of Too Many Stars. John Stewart is your host.
Some of the performers Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Amy Schumer, Ronnie Chan, Alex Edelman, Susie Smond, Jim Gaffigan, Sarah Sherman, Max Weinberg’s Jukebox, James Austin Johnson, and Sam Morrell. In a statement, creators Michelle and Robert Smigel said, we created a Night of Too Many Stars with our friends in the comedy world at a time when most organizations focused only on research for a cure. Seeing so many parents struggle to find appropriate services and schools for their children inspired us to create an event to support the vital programs and services that individuals with autism need right now. This was started back in two thousand and three.
Also back this week, the Boston Comedy Festival it’s twenty fifth year.
Congratulations to those guys. The lineup includes headliners Eddie Peppatonimo Phillips, My Michael Costa, Brooks Wheelan from Saturday Night Live. Remember Brooks Know Me Neither and Amy Miller, a bunch of stand up contests, a benefit show for comedians affected by the fires in LA, a diversity showcase, and a clean comedy show. Founder Jim McHugh says, every year we do stuff that works, and we do stuff that doesn’t, and we just keep rolling along. I love that sentiment fire call correctly.
Jim asked made me a judge at the festival a long time ago. I had babies and couldn’t go up to Boston to do it, but that would have been a lot of fun. The idea is to appeal to a wide range of taste. McHugh says, We’ve always had the feeling of whoever you think is the best comedian. You’re right.
The Boston Globe did a bit of a preview. The contest starts tomorrow. The idea is to showcase local acts, Jim says. The whole purpose of this thing we started twenty five years ago, was trying to get the industry to come here and see the acts. April third, the Funny Together Tour is Clean Comedy Providence.
Comedian Ronda Corey is joined by Bug Coulson and Mike Murray. Bug Coulson is a great name. Eddie peppatone also on the third at City Winery at two thirty pm. On the fourth at seven o’clock, a more reasonable time celebrating diversity in comedy. Your host is Beer with a Queer Jeff Klein.
Also a fun title, Emo Phillips on the fifth at seven o’clock. On the fifth, Daman Miller says, I think the most forty year old thing I do, though, is I have a special word for when I’ve had too much white wine and I want to get at a Fistfightchie headlines two shows with Courtney Reynolds, and on the fifth it’s the Boston Comedy Finals, where the final eight contestants will compete for the top prize in front of a panel of judges. Ryan Hamilton will receive Comedian of the Year. Seems like a really good festival, and the one over the weekend in Rhode Island also fantastic. Nice to see the comedy festivals back.
Somebody you may know started a comedy podcast six months before the pandemic, and boy in twenty twenty size stretching the New Republic seems to agree with me that everybody’s live with John Mulaney is an ambitious mess. They write, John Mulanie’s new Netflix talk show is filled with ideas that are funny in theory but only barely working practice, echoing some of what I talked about with zivin yesterday. How do you tell the difference between a talk show that reinvents the form so radically that it confounds the viewers’ expectations about what a talk show is and a talk show that just doesn’t work. The young man Philip who wrote this piece says, I wasn’t old enough to experience the nineteen eighty two Late Night with David Letterman, but I suspect that it did something like the former Letterman worked almost immediately. The Letterman was quirky, but it leaned into the it’s twelve thirty, the NBC bosses or asleep, No one cares.
Let’s just make ourselves laugh, which is kind of what Mlanie’s doing, but with a much brighter spotlight. This writer is wrong when he writes I imagined that the early viewers of Letterman’s Late Night initially he may have been confused about how the gap tooth Goofball was using the hour allotted to him. Nope, not at all right from the get go, even the initial opening credits for Letterman, let you know, it was low key. You know, over the years, the Letterman theme evolved into this big show busy theme by the time we got to the CBS version of it. But that initial version very very chill, and the understated vo no, no, no, this was not screaming showbiz.
This was screaming It’s twelve thirty and nobody cares. The writer says, I don’t yet know how to watch Mullaney. Mlaney opens with a monologue that is followed by pre tape bits of varying quality, occasional audience gag, celebrity guests on couches, and a musical performance. There are Johnny cars and Ed mcmh’s style exchanges between Mlanie and Richard Kind. I personally don’t know if Richard Kine was the right choice either.
I’m sure that’s an unpopular opinion, but I just said it. And there are lutterman esque absurdities, like the same old delivery robot that ranges freely around the set. That is true. This next paragraph is on point. There’s a kind of punk wonderment about shows like Letterman’s or Eric Andres throwing things at the wall to see if it’d stick.
As acidic as they are. There’s a hopeful spirit of formal exploration at work, but Mullaney show as a certain sourness, a deliberate lack of wonder that’s most detectable in his management of the panel portion. On one hand, it’s slightly funny to watch deliberately in Congress guests awkwardly squirm as they tried to offer advice to callers, uncertain what exactly they’re supposed to do. On the other hand, it kind of sucks to watch that good analysis there. Let’s stop off at gossip corner.
Shane gillis dating an Instagram model, Grace Brassel is building up her follower collection and people aren’t paying attention. On Instagram. Last week, she shared photos of the couple’s recent trip to the UK. They attended UFC Fight Night Edwards versus Brady in the O two arena. She captured one of her posts, drink fifty five Guinnesses and fifty five beers with my buddies in Europe that got a lot of attention.
One person accused her of being after Shane’s secret grilled cheese recipe. Another person wrote about Shane’s choice of hat, Shane hasn’t taken off that Eagles hat since we won the Super Bowl. All right, You’re not getting a forty five minute episode today. You got three in a row. We’re back to normal.
Andy Woodall has released a new album. It’s his seventh comedy album called Beach Brain. He says it is his silliest album yet. Andy says, my hope is it will appeal to like minded beach Brains. Have given Beach Brains a little taste of life by the water.
On the album, Andy explores the humor in second marriages, gaslighting, and buying toilet paper in Bulk. I am working with Andy’s publicist, have Andy on the show in a little bit. Yesterday you heard Jason Zennemann mention an Andy Kaufman documentary. The Guardian wrote about it. They point out Andy Kaufman constructed so many clever hoaxes to house this work that many assumed he must not have died young at the age of thirty five.
Can I tell you when I was at serious? I know I mentioned it every day. Sorry, it’s big chunkle my life and I am posting a comedy podcast. It’s relevant. I was having lunch with Andy’s brother, Michael Kaufman, now their sibling.
So Michael Kaufman obviously looks a little like Andy. And as I sat there letting my mind wander, looking at Michael Kaufman many years after Andy’s death, I started to wonder, is it possible I’m sitting here with Andy Kaufman. We had a cool idea for a broadcast at Sirius. So Sirius does these. They call them town hall, so you have a celebrity in like we did one with Bruno Mars, and you have a bunch of fans come up and the fans get to ask questions.
The Kaufman estate, led by Michael, was willing to announce Andy Kaufman town Hall, and I wanted to do a whole big put on of promoting this is the return of Andy Kaufman. They were on board. We had a press release drafted, and the Big Boss just didn’t get it. You know. I was planning on doing a live broadcast where we just dragged this thing out as long as possible, but again Big Boss didn’t get it, so it didn’t happen.
But I kept wondering is this actually Andy sitting here with me? The new documentary is called Thank You very Much, and the Guardian tells it’s it’s upfront about how alienating Kaufman could be to audience members, to casual observers, even a coworkers, while at the same time never framing his work as pure endurance tests. There’s a glee in his blurring the lines between reality and fiction, even when he does his best to hide it under voices or makeup. Thank You very Much doesn’t depend on the same old clips, and watching all this Kaufman footage emphasizes how inimitable the man was. Funny sentence here.
What’s more difficult to replicate is Kaufman’s dedication to his strangest whims. When Tim Heidecker passes away, it will probably not kick off a thirty year ambiguity over whether he’s genuinely dead. Thank You very Much is out in movie theaters in the United States. Out in Santa Monica, it’s the Bergamont Comedy Festival. The La Times covered it.
The lineup consists of ninety three percent female identifying BIPOC, LGBTQ, plus acts and other perspectives. Historically overlooked by gatekeepers and stand up. They spoke with Joe Stetler, who’s a third grade teacher who lives with an incurable cancer. Joel says, comedy has become away for me to sort it all out. My response has remained one of the few things I can control.
Storytelling and stand up given me a space to turn something dark into something meaningful, not just for myself but for audiences who know what it means to have life. Kick the door in among the highlights on Saturday, April fifth, an hour from Cameron Esposito with new material developed since she filmed her Four Pills Special. Four Pills will be coming out on Dropout on April eleventh. Oh, dropout is the old college humor. This article tells me now I know what it is, okay, and that is your comedy news for today.
If you skip the weekend for some reason, good stuff about Mitch Hedburg over the weekend. You might want to go back and check out both Saturday and Sunday’s episodes. If you are into Mitch Hebburg, meet you here tomorrow.