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Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. The comedy gods must have heard me, because after a week of nothing, there is a lot this week. But let’s start with the funniest thing of the year so far by a mile. If you have not yet watched Conan O’Brien’s Mark Twain Prize Award on Netflix, absolutely go watch it.
It is hilarious right out of the box. John Mulaney crushes the opening monologue. Other people that I wrote down notes about Nikki Glaser’s set is pretty strong. Bill Burr, you know, he was okay, And I thought that the set ended abruptly, and I started to post in the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News podcast group, hey was there an edit here? And I quickly got my answer because they cut to Kamil Nanjianni, who was already mid set.
But Kamil was also very very funny, sour silverman with a bit that I’m still thinking about day later. I don’t want to spoil it at all, but just trust me. For me, it proved once again, Adam Sandler not funny. Adam Sandler a fantastic dramatic actor. Go see him in Uncut Gems, in the Basketball Movie and the Space Movie.
He’s pretty good at os, but comedian not funny at all. And I know right now you’re like Johnny Mack, but he’s Adam Sailor. Watch the Mark Twain Awards. You tell me Adam Sandler’s funny, he’s not.
And then the King David Letterman at the end.
That was fantastic. Nate Bergatsy has a book out today. It is called Big Dumb Eyes, Stories from a Simpler Mind. And there’s a full court press happening, and I will talk about that at the end, but a big, big shiny profile in Esquire, the theme is basically, Nate has waited for his turn, and now that he’s getting his turn, he’s gonna let you know that he’s a little ticked off. The edit to wait, They opened up with the headline we keep seeing that Nate is going to step aside from stand up comedy.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Nate tells Esquire two more tours. I got this tour I’m about to go out on, and I want to do one more. Nate figures he will wrap up his stand up career in five years. He even knows the closer.
For his final set, he will deliver the joke and then say thank you, good night and leave the stage forever. As for that theme of having to wait for a while, Nate says, I never got to do letterman. I got told I was too mundane. I had to look the word up. I didn’t know what it meant.
Wasn’t good. He talked about Hollywood. They have a system. I like their system. I try to be in their system, and then I keep getting told no.
So I had to go create my own thing. I wanted to be great at stand up. I’m not trying to say him great, but I just knew I needed to figure out how to be great at this one thing and then the rest will come. That’s what’s happening now. You get a lot of stuff.
You either make it at twenty or forty. No one makes it in the middle. The Esquire article quotes Julian McCullough, an old friend and comic who MCEs Nate’s arena shows. Julian says Nate has a gift of camouflage. He’ll be sitting in a room because of the way his face looks and the way he talks, people think he’s not picking up on everything.
No one is more aware or observing people’s behavior more than he is. He’s like one of those stick you can’t believe it’s a bug because he’s watching the whole time. Nate discusses giving up alcohol in twenty nineteen, explaining I did not have a control on it. I’d go too hard with it, but I knew if I want to go to where I want to go, then this is the way. Does he miss it drinking?
Nate says, I think I missed the relief of drinking. But these days golf helps. I tell a lot of comics. If you want to do something, you’ve got to really obsess over it. That’s not always fun.
I mean that means you wake up to go pee in the middle of the night and you’re thinking about comedy. If I’m going to be obsessed over something, then I’ll use it to my advantage. The profile, which again thorough, and it’s going to take me three days to get through it. Here on the podcast, and Nate talks about incorporating his family into his material. His daughter is now twelve.
Nate says, I’ve backed off a lot on my daughter. She’s at the age where kids are going to pick on her or say something that is a good decision by dad there. As for wife Laura, Nate has a strategy for writing marital material. You’ve got to show love. If I want to talk about my family, you have to believe that I love them, or I’m the worst person ever.
The audience needs to know this is a happy couple. That’s a typical fight. So, as I said, I’ll pick it that for the next three days, and there’s going to be a ton of Nate’s articles this week. My sense here is this is a big push by the Hollywood people. We’ve talked about how Nikki Glaser has been being pushed.
Oh I forgot to mention that during the The Conan set, Nicki’s people got that done. How did Nicki get on that show? I mean, the rest of the bill was just at a level above Nikki Glaser. She was probably the least successful comedian up there. And I’m not dragging her at all, but you know, the other people were Adam Sandler, despite my opinion, and David Letterman and Bill Burr, and so Nicki’s people getting it done.
So behind the scenes here, stay with me here. I’m not complaining at all. But a year ago, when I saw the book was announced, I reached out to the publicity people and I was like, Hey, can I get on the listen. They’re like, yeah, check back in like a while. So all right.
So I checked back in a while. And the vibe I got from the publicist because I’ve been around the media for thirty years now and I kind of can read between the lines, I got the vibe from them that the book publicity is not being run through the book publicity department, that someone else has their hands in it. So I think this is coming straight out of Hollywood or wherever Nate’s team is. Yeah, it looks like Nate is with UTA, the United Talent Agency. Curious who Nicky Glazers with?
Nicki’s also with UTA. Okay, I’m onto something here anyway. So I don’t think I’m going to get an interview with Nate. He seems to be doing the Today Show and Esquire and things like that, And that’s fine, I tried. If you want to see how much of a push this thing is, let me read the credits for the Esquire article.
This is a print article that credits photography by Jeffrey Leeman, styled by Alfonso Fernandez Navaz, hair by Eric Miller, grooming by Katie Kendall. Production by Catherine Prado, Tailoring by Jason Jarrett, Visual director James Morris, Executive design director Martin Hoops, Entertainment director Andrea Cutt. This is for a print article. This isn’t Nate jumped on Zoom with Johnny Mack in his basement Anyway. More of that over the next couple days.
As the comedy Dearth is over, Thank you Comedy news gods. Hey is Colin Jost leaving SNL? People are thinking that I’ve talked about that in the season finale, Colin’s wife, Scarlett Johansson is the guest. However, Scarlett Johnson’s also in a Jurassic movie this summer, so it’s not absurd or random that she is the final guest host of the year. I saw some chatter over the weekend that some people thought Michael Longfellow might be next up for the guest Some of the chemistry between Jost and Michael during SNL this weekend and made people think that Michael Jay is now in fifth place for most appearances as an SNL cast member with two hundred and twenty, he is eight episodes behind Colin Jost.
Next up on that list Seth Meyers at two fifty three, Darryl Hammond at two sixty seven, which does not include Darryl as the staff announcer, and Keenan Thompson at a probably uncatchable at this point, four hundred and forty one. SNL makes between eighteen and twenty two episodes a season, let’s call it twenty, So to catch Keenan’s four forty one, first of all, Keenan would have to stop doing it, and then Joe ster Chay at twenty episodes and being around two hundred behind, would have to stick around another ten years. That’s if Keenan stops doing it.
Speaking of SNL, Marcelo Hernandez got what a coworker of mine used to call a…
He got his car waxed by Rolling Stone. This was a big fluff piece and the interviewer clearly a big Marcelo Hernandez fan. We learned that Marcelo is working on a Netflix special which he’s been writing. During breaks from SNL, Marcelo was at Helium and did three sets back to back to back, playing with the order and adding little bits here and there. Marcelo told Rolling Stone, you’re exploring because those are good crowds.
Jerry Snifellow, he said, good crowds help you explore, and tough crowds help you edit. So this was a very exploratory weekend. Now what do I mean by got his car wax? Let me read you this paragraph of bait him. Part of Hernandez’s lure is precisely that he seems so approachable.
He gives off supreme kid brother vibes, or, as one Vogue writer put it, golden retriever energy, and at the same time channels the class clown every girl had a crush on in high school. When I tell a few girlfriends I’m interviewing him, the news is met with some version of a squeal heard only a dog frequencies. He’s five feet eight and stocky. He was an snl short king ambassador for nothing, with curly hair that seems to get wilder than more energetic. He gets like an ECG for chaos, and although he considers every question seriously, hardly ever breaking eye contact, there’s always a twinkle of anarchy somewhere past his retinas.
When the waiter comes by, it off for drinks. Hernandez grabs my phone and presses pause on my recording, declaring his cocktail order off the record. It’s a secret for now, but people should know he had two of them. Sounds like somebody is a big fan of Marcelo Hernandez. Boy, this is exciting.
I actually bumped three stories after a week of nothing. The comedy gods have brought the news back. It is so nice. I shared a few things in the Facebook group, including the nay thing that I’m picking away at. There’s also a fantastic Bill Burr article in the New Yorker.
I’ll start picking away at that tomorrow. I shared the link. It’s paywalld. If you’re good at the Internet and you know how to get to things, you can read it. There’s also a New York Times article about late nights and specifically Malaney.
I’ll talk about that tomorrow as well. So I’m reacting to last week here. I didn’t want to go, oh my god, there’s so many things and do a twenty seven minute episode today and then wake up tomorrow and be like, oh, there’s nothing to talk about again. So I am squirreling away things because of how slow it was for the last week. It’s great to have news again.
I was also looking at the podcast numbers and the April numbers were down, and I was like, why are the April numbers down? Why doesn’t anyone like me anymore? And I got all sad, and then I looked the numbers in April have been down the last three years. So there’s something about April and comedy. Do people go on spring break?
Do people stop listening because it’s Easter. I don’t know what’s going on, but May usually rebounds from April, so I will calm down. Mike Myers and Colin Mockery are going to do a charity comedy show in Toronto. Mike Myers will do stand up as part of It’s Always Something Open Mike at the Second City in Toronto on May twelfth. The event is being hosted by Gilda’s Toronto, a charity named for Gilda Radner and a headline I saw from Australia ausie comedian left stunned as NBA superstar delivers sixty thousand dollars active generosity to a stranger.
It was Australian comedian Brett Blake he was filming a commercial in the United States with Shaquille O’Neal, the famous basketball player. Blake said it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life, and while on set, he witnessed something he’ll never forget. As Blake tells the story, a lady rocked up to the set and her car broke down along the way. So Shaq bought her a brand new sixty thousand dollars Chrysler and just handed her the keys. Now I’m not sure how that works, so like, hey, excuse me, can you guys help me?
My car broke down? And Shack, I don’t doubt that check bought somebody a car, But like, was there a Chrysler dealer next door? Did he go come with me, We’ll go next door. And he wrote a check or put down his credit card, And like, you can’t just like buy somebody a car on the fly. It takes at least an hour, doesn’t it.
Blake says the worst part I was technically homeless at the time. I was living in a camper by Roastbud Beach. I was like, Shack, buy me a house anyway. Fun story, and that is your comedy news for today. I will meet you back here tomorrow.
I can tell you off the bat we’ve got more Nate and the Bill Burr and the Malaney thing. So we’ll see you then