Author: johnnymacdcn

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Featured: Patton Oswalt, Jay Leno, Hugh Grant, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Dave Chappelle

What’s in This Episode

• Patton Oswalt’s William and Mary commencement speech
• Jay Leno reflects on 1995 Hugh Grant interview
• Jay Leno named godfather of Carnival Venezia cruise ship
• Emmy Awards category shake-up for Last Week Tonight
• Dave Chappelle backs new comedy club in DC redevelopment project

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The shark deck hidly home. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Patton Oswalt talk to the graduating seniors at William and Mary and said, to the graduating class of twenty twenty three, I say three words, you poor bastards, He said, don’t think of me as your commencement speaker. Think of me as your shift manager at the Walmart. Patton said, if he was giving the same speech back in twenty thirteen, it would be the Walmart manager equivalent of a pep talk.

Clean up the spill near the sporting goods, set up the Halloween display, easy manageable task expected of any employee. But in twenty twenty three, a go get him pep talk won’t work anymore. The environment in twenty three is like if a tornado had ripped the roof off the store, while an eighteen wheeler has overturned and set looser truck rolled of rabid white Nashalist possums in the gun department. This is some speech, Patton said. Your concerns as you stumble out into the reality tomorrow.

Massive democracy is crumbling, truth is up for grabs, the planet’s trying to kill us, and loneliness is driving everyone insane. Took a pause and said, let’s hear it for the nihilists out there. Huh. Patton said, when he graduated, he basically breezed into a world full of trivia and silliness and fun. The new grads are about to enter a hellscape where you have to fight for every scrap of your humanity and dignity.

At that point, he stopped to check his notes and he said, in the margins, say something positive here, He says, I’m a comedian. I’ll get out of this. I’ll watch this. This will be amazing. He looks the grass in the eye and says, you do not have a choice but to be anything but extraordinary.

It’s been truly amazing to see how your generation has rebelled against every bad habit of mine and every generation that came before me. Everything we let calcifa, you’ve kicked against and demolished. You’ve rejected that whole twenty four seven no days off grind. You’ve rejected apathy. You’ve rejected ignoring your mental health because you’ve got a muscle through it.

No matter what. You’ve rejected alienation and cruelty. You’ve rejected not trying to include everyone you’ve rejected, not looking out for each other. And those are hard things to reject because accepting them sometimes makes life way easier. Great speech, Huh.

Patton had some advice for people with lesser GPAs his was at two eight, and he said, obviously you should work hard and bully hard, but you should also wander easier. Right and by the way, in the spirit of my two point eight GPA, the last two pages of my speech I finished an hour before I gave this his final thoughts. Be human in all of its bedlambon, beauty and madness and mercy for as long as you can, and in any way you can. It’s time to live. Jay Leno looked back on his famous nineteen ninety five Hugh Grant interview.

Wow it doesn’t feel that long ago, does it, Jay told the Hollyer reporter. I called him up and I said, you’re still in for tomorrow, and he goes, yeah, Hugh greenk goes, you know, I affed up, but you know it’s my fault. Leno asked the famous question, what the hell were you thinking? Chris Wallace interviewed Jane was curious how he came up with that question, Jay said, just off the top of my head, you know he was great. Nowadays you’d have one hundred handlers more.

Jay Leno news the total press release clickbait, and I clicked, and I took the bait, but all right. Carnival Cruise Line has announced that Jay Leno will serve as the godfather to its new ship, Carnival Venezia. Yeah, okay, I’ll play. Press release. The ship is the first to incorporate the Carnival Fun Italian style.

Jay will perform a special comedy show exclusively for Carnival’s event guests. Jay said, I’m truly ownored to be named the godfather of Carnival Venizia. I was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Carnival’s focus on fun, combined with the Italian theming of the ship is something that’s truly unique. I’m also excited to at my very own cruise ship, although I think I’ll need a bigger garage.

They also used like a picture of j that’s I don’t know, forty years old. He’s got a little gray hair in the picture, but not that much, and he’s a couple of pounds lighter. John Oliver will not be picking up an eighth straight Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series at the Emmy’s if we have the Emmys. Wow, that’s shocking. But there’s a reason the Academy changed the categories around a little bit last week.

Tonight, we’ll be battling it out with SNL and A Black Lady Sketch Show in the Outstanding Scripted Variety Series. Deadline says, now the race for late night show is more open than it’s been for years. You could consider Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, or Seth or the Daily Show. Seth Meyers said, I liked the answer to how does somebody beat John Oliver is you just move them to another category. Deadline spoke to a number of late Nights sources over last few months.

The general consensus is that the Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel, Alive Late Night in the Daily Show will get nominations. Multiple people suggested that Jimmy Kimmel will now be the front runner to win. He’s well liked, and some highlight the fact that he’s an LA guy, which could play well with voters, as well as Jimmy’s kept his profile high with jobs like hosting the Oscars or Voters have been known to give a nod to an exiting favorite that appened with Conan and Trevor. Noah’s final year is eligible here, so we’ll see same note on James Gordon HBO lobby to keep Last Week Tonight in the talk category, but because it’s more scripted and Oliver doesn’t regularly have guessed, so they were kicked out. The Academy rules state a scripted variety series is defined as a variety program that is primarily scripted or loosely scripted improv Scripted variety may occasionally feature unscripted elements, but the main intent of the series a scripted or performed entertainment.

So that puts Last Week Tonight in the same category as Saturday Night Live, which did not have a good year. So we’ll see a Black Lady Sketch Show also expected to be nominated in that category. We’ll see what happens come September if there’s even an Emmy’s telecast. There is a writer strike. You know, hey, Dave Chappelle back in the news.

DC’s mayor has announced plans for a major redevelopment designs who honor the district’s historic Black Broadway and add affordable housing. It’s a project at the northwest corner of fourteenth and U Streets in Northwest. It will include a bunch of things, including a new comedy club back by Dave Chappelle. So I’m recording this on Saturday afternoon, which I usually don’t do, but I flipped my schedule around because it was so nice out Friday. And on Saturday, my kids’ soccer game was canceled, and I was so sad because I’ve been a soccer dad now for oh let me do some quick math in eighteen years, most weekends and this was the last game of the season and it was canceled.

So that’s sad because some of the kids are graduating and we’re not going to see those kids anymore, and I’m not going to see the parents anymore. And these are people we spent a lot of time with. It goes so fast. So as a soccer dad, let me tell you you want to capture all these memories, Let me tell you about my postglow dot com. My postclode creates a personalized gift to recognize once in a lifetime moments in your child’s life.

Well they’ll do is they’ll produce a feature story about your high school athletes accomplishments. Right, So, in my case, my daughter’s soccer team, custom storytelling personalized layouts. Each creation could be printed on either an eleven by fourteen or sixteen by twenty piece of high quality metal. Can you customize it yes? Can you check it out before it’s actually printed?

Yes? Can you put a custom messenger quote in it? Yes? Do you need to frame it? No?

It comes ready to display and the metal itself acts as a sturdy backing. It gives support protection, So don’t worry about a frame. All right, What do you do here? You go to the website, answer a few milestone related questions. You schedule a free design consultation.

Then you’re in a virtual session. You customize the article layout, you make any changes you want, any personalizations you want. Go on the website right now. There’s a limited time offer of ten percent off. You’ve got to do that before the fourth of July, and check your watch it’s June fifth.

Do it. Once you prove the layout, it usually takes less than two weeks. I’m on the website here, which is my postglow dot com, my postglow dot com, and I’m looking at the samples here and these are like cool looking articles. You know. Here’s a baseball themed one.

It looks like a magazine article says big day at the plate and you see the happy little leaguer is playing baseball. There’s another one heroics lift team to victory, and there’s a football player kicking a ball up in the air. I’m telling you, as a soccer dad, it goes by in a heartbeat. You want to capture these memories my postglow dot com. Check out my postglow dot com again ten percent off before the fourth of July my postglow dot com.

Shannon hit me up on the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News podcast group. Shannon wrote, John, you’ve noted that you don’t think some shows are really stand up, like John Melaney’s Baby Ja and maybe you mentioned Burgatsis Show. What’s your criteria for including something as stand up as opposed to one man show? Would you say Milaney’s older stuff was stand up? To me?

It just seems like different flavors of stand up. So I thought about that, and I gave Shannon an answer on the Facebook page, and I said I’ll elaborate a little more on the podcast. So as I think about out it. So first of all, look, everybody I’m going to talk about here is great. It’s all comedy, it’s all funny.

Also, I want to point out I’ve never performed. I’m not a stand up I’m not a comedian. I’m not a performer. So definitely don’t want to take away from anybody that we’re going to talk about here. But to get to the question, I think as I think of stand up comedy as I sit here in the basement in twenty twenty three, I tend to think of something that has a punchline at a pretty rapid pace.

It’s a bit of dated reference, but the person who keeps coming to mind is Sam Kinnison. Sam getting up there telling jokes about being married and just slamming home a punchline every few seconds. A more modern version might be a Bill Burr. But you know, there are different forms of stand up comedy. I think of Bob Newhart doing those one sided phone gags Bob’s Hall of Fame.

I guess that’s stand up. So the term I coined on the Facebook group was stand up stand up. Kinnison’s doing stand up stand up. Burr is doing stand up stand ups, Louis C.K. Is doing stand up stand up.

Then you get things that are a little more storytelling, like a lot of what Mike Berbigley it does, And I think Mulaney did that on his most recent special. That wasn’t like set up punch, set up punch, It was more humorous storytelling. Seinfeld is a stand up Jerry just gets up there and chucks jokes. Jackie the Jokeman nothing but jokes. Gilbert Godfried was nothing but jokes.

Hannah Gatsby storyteller.

And then we can get into the gray of all this.

Dave Chappelle kind of weave stories and then drops in a punchline to keep you engaged. So, yeah, Shannon, you bring up a good point. It’s one of those I don’t know, I know it when I see it. That’s probably not helpful at all. Mulaney just felt more one man show, more like what Hannah Gatsby is doing than say a Bill Birthing.

Hope that made some sense. Happy to discuss this with everybody. You can submit your comments on the Daily Comedy News podcast group.

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Speaking of Hannah her a little up Picasso exhibit, it’s getting savaged in t…

Jason Farrago wrote in The New York Science, if you studied art history or another with humanities in the nineties or two thousands, or to say, if you’re around the age of forty five a Anna gats you may remember the word problematic from your long ago seminar days. Back then, it was a voguish noun borrowed from French that described the unconscious structure of an ideology or at sext Soon. Though, like so many other efforts had think critically, the problematic got left behind in the centuries great shift from reading the scrolling. These days we encounter problematic exclusively as an adjective, an offend judgment of moral disapproval from a speaker who can’t be bothered by precision. At the Brooklyn Museum you will find a few parentheses, very few paintings by Picasso, plus two little sculptures in a selection of works on paper suffixed with team quips by Gatsby on adjacent labels around and nearby, or works of art made by women, almost all made after Picasso’s death in seventy three.

Finally, in a vegetable clips from Nanette play on a loop there’s little to see, there’s no catalog to read. The ambitions here are at gift level. The actual number of paintings by Picasso here is just eight seven or borrowed from the Picasso Museum in Paris, which has been supporting shows worldwide for the anniversary. There’s a fixation though, on genitals and bodily functions. Each sphincter, each phallas is called out with adolescent excitement, with adolescent vocabulary too.

What jokes there are, example, Meta hardly know her museum really could have rained in this immaturity, though to their credit they’ve at least fleshed out the show with some context on the cult of male genius or the rise of feminist art history in the nineteen seventies. And I’ll leave you on a downer from the Washington Post. A former Playboy centerfold model who says she was drugged in rape more than five decades ago by Bill Cosby, has fought lawsuit against Cosby under a new California law that temporarily lifts the statue of limitations on civil sexual assault cases. The suit was filed on Thursday. It’s the first known use of the lawn California against Bill Cosby, opening a new front and a year’s long and multi pronged legal battle against the eighty five year old Victoria Valentino eighty years old, so old, The Washington Post.

It’s not about money, It’s about accountability. Rape, steal something from you that cannot be repaired or restored. You can file the show for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, but then it is your come. Many News for today, See you tomorrow.

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Featured: John Mulaney, Mo’Nique, Harry Kanabolo, Kathleen Madigan, Wanda Sykes

What’s in This Episode

• John Mulaney’s failed 2014 NBC sitcom Mulaney and the scrapped alternate version Mulaney Don’t Drink
• John Mulaney discusses SNL as protected environment versus network sitcom pressures
• Mo’Nique on personal vulnerability and emotional breakdowns while filming
• Harry Kanabolo on how growing up in Queens and post-9/11 era shaped his political comedy
• Kathleen Madigan on the difficulties of touring life and maintaining stability
• Wanda Sykes on anti-LGBTQ+ comedy before her coming out and progress in the industry
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia returns with record-high words per minute in dialogue
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan anniversary and Khan the musical

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. I’m Jenny Mack who with your Daily Comedy News. The Hollywood Reporter talked to John Mulaney about his twenty fourteen sitcom Mulaney. Do you remember that one happened? Nobody watched that.

I remember that one coming out, and I paid attention to it because I was running Seo Sex I’m comedy at the time, so I was hip to John Mulaney a little earlier than most. But yeah, that bombed pretty hard. Anyway. Calling the show Mulaney was the title risky John, John said, very anonymous. I think they thought I was bringing a sensibility to it that was, I don’t know, more widely appreciated.

And then I was also trying to turn that on its head by doing a multicam like, look, we can really make this form weird and interesting. Again, there were a lot of challenges, and I really suffered from high self esteem at that time. There was another version at NBC called Mulaney Don’t Drink, which was about me getting sober twenty three. Interesting right, John said. It was based on the time my life when I got sober twenty three and a two roommates, was just trying to figure out, what does good person too?

That was an actual part of my life or a pointless gauntlet I threw down in front of myself. That was the NBC show and it was really something lost when I, on the advice of others higher up, took that out. But I take full responsibility. I lost the thread that made it something. John also discussed SNL, saying people talk about how high stakes and stressful it is.

It’s also the most protected environment and entertainment we don’t get notes. I saw Jeff Zucker maybe once when he was the president of NBC. Nothing reached us. So to suddenly be the writer, producer and star of a network pilot, let alone a series, it was suddenly being the captain of a cruise ship. I was like, I have to worry about personnel, menu binders, meals for people, hours, how late everyone’s there.

Would you do another sitcom? John? My immediate thought was, oh should I? One thing I learned from doing that was I wasn’t sure what my story was, like, what exactly am I bringing everyone and why do they need it? But ye as before I die, I’d like to write one film as good as Searching for Bobby Fisher or any of those films I saw as a kid that really packed a punch and just got life right.

If I could do that once, I’d be very happy. Moamer talked to the highly reporter about the line, and mo said, you don’t know where the line is, tell you across it. Anytime I was fearful about something in the show was because it was so personal. It was scary. There was one scene where I literally broke down.

It was about my father being tortured and about dealing with that and suppressing that. In the series, I thought, oh, man, I didn’t warn this in my actual life. Whoops, I’m walking off and nobody can even look at you in the eye. Years ago, Dave Chappelle told me be so honest that it’s hard to make eye contact with you. I didn’t get it until that moment.

It makes me emotional just thinking about it. Yeah. Who asked Harry Kanabolo if he thinks his experiences growing up in Queens, New York City, not too far from where I grew up, helped shape him into being a quote unquote political comic. Harry said, I think it developed into that the same thing that made me want to work in immigrant rights is the same thing that made me want to write honest, confrontational material was this idea that things aren’t fair and I want to do something about it. Then after a while you start to realize comedy’s not going to fix anything.

But initially I just had this fire off. I want to say something. Post nine to eleven, everything changed. Before that, I was a kid sheltered in the diversity of Queens and really didn’t question us history as much as I probably should have. And after nine eleven, I’m all of a sudden thinking about work critically.

I thought a lot about racism and how that manifests made me rethink everything I thought about the country, So that really spurred my intellectual curiosity and that spurred my stand up development. As for the comedy climate today, Hurry says, there are all these social movements happening at the same time at a much faster rate as results of the Internet, and people for the first time you’re getting their voices heard, and that comes with the power dynamics that come with any form of expression. In this country. Generally, it’s mostly a white audience in the mainstream who controls the studios, and it’s usually white people out of control and most of these things. There’s institutional racism in this country, and so everything you’re creating as an artist is always up against that background, and all of a sudden you’re seeing this period of great change, at least great questioning.

There’s growing pains and that people don’t know how to communicate with each other, They don’t know how to talk about critical things, and certainly Twitter doesn’t help. The Internet doesn’t help on that, and navigating that is really hard, especially as an artist, especially as a stand up who edits live. Unlike other art forms, we make mistakes as part of the gig. And so I think people will look at this period as one of great transition and like a tug of war of videologies and also of opinions on how free speech works and how it should work. The Good One Podcast talked to Kathleen Madigan about touring, and she says it’s very difficult to have a normal life.

Most people will hate you because your gun all the time. They think it’s funny in the beginning, and then you miss another baptism and another birthday. That’s never the life I wanted. You can’t have stability. You have to be comfortable with organized chaos.

I do really well and organized chaos because it keeps my attention. It’s activity base versus with my one sisters. Safety would be her number one thing. She wants to be organized, safe, nothing, unpredictable. That’s her idea of happiness.

Mine is I like to be very unpredictable. I like it to be chaotic, but I want to know I have control over it. I’ve always been like this, even when it’s a kid. I think my parents would say that too. Like my one sister, every night before school, she had her uniform out, her things set out.

Everything was perfectly organized and neat My side of the room looked like it had been looted. Variety asked Wanda Psychs where there are times when comedians were anti gay or anti trans before you came out, when you were still coming up and want to said yeah, people would say all kinds of horrible things. So we used to let people get away with but you know in this country they would hold public lynchings and people that have picnics any potato salad. While watching We’re evolving, We’re getting better, the steps back in both the news and comedy. That’s what makes the most noise and so the progress we’re making, I think they’re just louder, all the Trump supporters and all that.

But I like to focus on the winds. I mean, there’s not a lot of them, but I like to celebrate them. Hey, you know what’s back this week? It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I’m looking forward to that, one of my favorite shows.

A new study determine that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has the highest words per minute, at one hundred and seventy six point two words per minute. The av Club rights that might not be ideal in terms of accessibility. You see there’s a six second rule in subtitle creation that suggests a two line stipit of dialogue should be on the screen for about six seconds, which is roughly one hundred and forty words per minute, not one hundred and seventy six point two The nearest competitor, Brooklyn nine nine one hundred and seventy four point six words per minute. Today is June fourth, and if you were a friend of mine, you know that every year I watch Star Trek two The Wrath of Khan for the anniversary that was the Saturday night movie Be in the Basement last night and I’m a little sad I didn’t get to go see Khan the musical. Today’s the last day that it’s playing.

Con the musical based on Star Trek two The Wrath of Khan, except this time it’s a musical and trickmovie dot Com said the script is flat out funny, all the jokes landed, delivered at a machine gun paste and rarely misfiring. The humor covered diverse topics like Shatner’s Tupai. By the way, there is an entire plog about Shatner’s Tupai. I think it’s actually called Shatner’s Tupei. Wonderful deep dive, the historical unreliability of the Hamilton musical and the inherent comedic gold of chickens.

The nerdiest Trekker, the lifelong theater kid, and the newest arrival to the fandom will all laugh until their sides get sore. While there are deep cut Trek references around every bend, and some of the jokes will warp past Trek newbies, the writers nevertheless go out of their weight to ensure the play remains accessible. Songs benefit from a variety of musical styles, with tap jazz group showstoppers and heartfelt solos. Standoutlets include Admiral Kirk’s character theme and Khan’s flamboyantly vengeent my ram. The set up here Data from Star Trek the Next Generation.

He’s doing some sort of holidack simulation of the events of the Wrath of Khn. So we’re seeing this through Data’s eyes. Data acts not just as the narrator of the musical, but also plays certain characters in the story. I listened to an interview with the creator of the musical on a podcast called Inglorious Trek Sperts. If you were a Star Trek fan, that should be the next thing you download.

Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic Star Trek podcast. So for memory, I think they said Data steps into play David Marcus. He plays Cohn’s sidekick, and I think he plays one other character. Anyway, I’m sad I did not get to see con the musical. But if you’re in New York City and you got up early today and you download the podcast and now you’re pumped.

It’s playing today at the Players Theater in New York City. The creator did say on the Inglorious Trek Sperts podcast that he hopes to do more versions of this in the future. I just may was a real bearer and I didn’t get a chance to get out there, but call the musical.

Speaking of star Trek, William Shanner is the guest on the most recent Mark M…

So I met Shanner and I’m a big Captain James T. Kirk fan in case you can’t sell but Shatner when I met Shatner in real life, he’s got a reputation for being difficult. I think I’m on team George de kay here. If you listen to the Marin interview, especially in the beginning before Shatner warms up, you can hear a little bit of the difficultness or the Okay, this guy’s just a pain to get along with. That was my experience when I met Shatner.

The second time I saw Shantner, he was leaving Serious XM and I was walking in and again, I’m a big trekky and I couldn’t even be bothered to attempt to say hello. So turn off from this first visit. And I’ve met a lot of cool celebrities over the years, but Chanterer wasn’t one of them. Unfortunately, soars Trek to the wrath of Cohn. If you’ve never seen it, pretty good film.

That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. To see tomorrow.

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Featured: Ronny Chieng, Neal Brennan, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Joe Rogan, Kevin Hart, Bert Kreischer, Christian McCaffrey, Jay Leno, David Mitchell

What’s in This Episode

• Ronny Chieng on differences between stand-up comedy and acting
• Neal Brennan discusses new DC show material about friends in controversy
• Neal Brennan on cancel culture and comedians as reliable voices
• Bert Kreischer’s $10,000 bet with NFL running back Christian McCaffrey
• Jay Leno on retirement plans and recent accidents
• Brody Fast benefit concert returning August 18th at Comedy Store
• David Mitchell stars in new BBC detective comedy ‘Ludwig’

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. I’m Jenny Manic with your Daily Comedy News. Esquire asked Ronnie Ching, is there a difference between how you approach actor Ronnie Ching and comedian Ronny Chieng. That’s a good question, Ronnie said. Stand up comedy is a very direct form of self expression.

It’s very me focused. I know what to say and how to say it because it’s coming from me. I’m a little bit more fearless with it because it’s a live medium. The nature of live mediums as you say something in the moment in the room, everyone gets it and you move on. It’s not recorded and play it out of context forever and ever.

You know what I mean. When you’re acting, you’re doing someone else’s project. It’s more of a team sport. So I defer more to the creators and the directors.

And also, I’m very much out of my comfort zone.

I’m not a trained actor, so there’s fear with it in terms of what I’m like, Am I holding my own with these other trained actors. When you’re doing a scene with someone else, you have to do with them. You can’t just talk to them. You have to listen to them. You have to care about them.

All things that you don’t have to do in stand up comedy. You literally don’t have to listen to anyone, to care about anyone when you’re doing stand up quick anecdote for me in my podcasting career, I was doing some voice acting and use that term extremely loosely for a documentary and I really struggled with it. I’m not a trained actor, I’m not a performer, but the words because they weren’t mine, the sentences weren’t structured the way I speak. So I was reading the dialogue and I couldn’t nail it.

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And then I asked the guy who was producing the session, I’m like, can I do it…

And took the gist but phrased it the way I would say. I was playing a cop, and that just felt more natural to me. I don’t even think they used any of my takes. I’m not offended. It was not a good session by me.

Ronny Chieng, Hey, what’s your favorite Chinatown? He said, I don’t have to go with the country of Malaysia, It’s probably my favorite Chinatown. I feel the most at home there, the food is the best there, my family is there. Esquire was like, that’s a cop out answer, and Ronnie said, oh, you want American Chinatown, I’ll have to go with Sorry, everybody, New York City, come with me, guys, New York City Chinatown and the best Chinatown. I agree in New York City Chinatown is pretty good.

Neil Brennan spoke to the Washington Posts and they had some good questions, good questions. Press Hey, Neil. In your twenty seventeen special Three Mics, you use those three microphones to deliver three different styles of comedy. In Blocks, you used toy like figures to represent facets of your personality. What do you like about structuring your stand up in such unconventional ways?

Great question, Neil said, it’s a way to stand out. It’s a way to express more than just a monologue. We’re certainly a monologue of glib self confidence. Now, having said that, the show I’m doing in DC as no structure, I mean as a structure. But it’s not like that.

It’s not three mics, it’s not blocks, it doesn’t have a different dramatic ethos. There’s two big sections to the material I’m doing. One sort of living online. The second half is the world I inhabit now is where almost every time you pick up my phone, there’s an alert of like, hey, your friend is in trouble. Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Joe Rogan, Kevin Hart.

Comedy is such a focal point in culture now. It’s an on situation of being comedy. There’s always something yes, hence this podcast. I personally love it, and because it’s an interview with the comedian Neils asked about say it with me, cancel culture. Neil’s take same as everybody else, the thing that comedians are under attack, I just reject.

I don’t believe Chapelle’s under attack. Most of the people I know that are quote under attack or doing arenas. I think it’s just a matter of all these other quadrants of society of fail. I’ll go with clergy and politicians. They’ve proved to be sort of corrupt, so somebody like Chappelle or Chris Rock or somebody like Joe becomes reliable.

I don’t think it’s because comedians are morally superior. I think it’s because we don’t ever pretend we are. Because we never pretend we are, people go, wow, there’s an honest broker. Bert Kreischer told a story about how we bet ten thousand dollars to prove he could take down San Francisco forty nine ers running back Christian McCaffrey. Bert told Rich Eisen I cornered Christian McCaffrey, and I was struck, and I said, hey, I think I can catch you, and he goes, what ten thousand dollars if I can catch you.

McCaffrey has confirmed the bet was put forward, but no actual tackle attempt was made. McCaffrey said, it’s a true story. He asked for ten thousand dollars in this I don’t know twenty by twenty five foot square foot room to paint the picture. He’s in a full swet about nine to ten beers deep, and he has a shirt off, of course, and he’s asking me this question. For a moment, I was like, you know what, maybe with the conference level you’re at right now, you might be able to do it.

I think it’d take ten steps to be out of breath, so there’s no shot it’d even make it to three hours to take a nap for an hour and a half to hour number two. I’d tell him Bert, there’s guys train all year and get paid a lot of money to try and do that, and they still can’t do it. So I don’t know if you’ve got a chance. Man. Jay Leno has no plans to retire, he told Page six.

You retire when you have a stroke. Then you slow down. That’s when you retire when you have your stroke. You may recall Jay had a few incidents earlier this year, and he said, I’m fine. Look when you’re in my position, when you’re any kind of celebrity, you’re luckier than most people.

So when something bad happens to you can’t wine explain about it because bad things happened to people every day. Either they get burned or they get cut, and they don’t have the financial wearwithal I did, so I just make jokes. Plus, it’s Hollywood. As long as you look okay, you’re okay, nobody really cares how you feel. Jay has learned to live in the moment because show business is fleeting.

You enjoy it while you can, and it’s fun. Some days you’re popular, some days you’re not. Is his wife Mavis worried about his hobbies, you know, like riding a motorcycle where somebody could get hurt, or fixing an old car where somebody can’t get hurt, and Jay Leno says, as long as they’re not cocaine and girlfriends, she’s fine. Believe me. Brody Fast will come back in August for a third year.

It’s the annual benefit Comedy Gives Back. It is named after Brody Stevens, who passed away in twenty nineteen. Part of Brody’s trademark was eight one eight, So the benefit is held every year on August eighteenth. This year Friday August eighteenth at the Comedy Store. Then on Sunday there will be a walk followed by a star studded softball game.

No names yet. Joining the walk acost you fifty dollars, but you get a special Brody gift bag with Brodie swag and all the postwalk festivities including music, comedy speakers. I think that means people speaking. You’re not walking away with things that you listen to music on, and a ticket to watch the star studied comedians softball game. David Mitchell, you know him from Mitchell and Webb and also from Peep Show.

He’s got a new BBC genre bending detective comedy. It’s called Ludwig. David Mitchell plays a man who takes on the identity of his brother DCI James Taylor. DCI James Taylor has disappeared off the face of the earth. Mitchell’s Ludwig lives in quiet solitude, designing puzzles for a living under his number plume, and he struggles to adapt to being a twin who happens to be a successful DCI leading Cambridge’s busy inner city Major Crimes Team.

It’s a comedy, but it’s also a cop show. The concept the hero is a fake coup and this article points out I didn’t realize this peep show, which I love, was created and written by Jesse Armstrong. Now you’re like, I know that name, Jesse Armstrong. Who’s that again? Jesse Armstrong, the creator and show owner of Succession, also did peep Show.

Dude, that’s one heck of her resume.

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Meanwhile, BBC Comedy Boss John Petrie is spending the year identifying a pac…

As the chief corporate clown and television comedy I feel a huge sense of responsibility to help try and protect our incredible genre. That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. See tomorrow

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Featured: Dana Carvey, Robin Williams, John Mulaney, Mo’Nique, Carlos Mencia

What’s in This Episode

• National Donut Day AI-generated jokes segment
• Dana Carvey reveals why he wouldn’t let Robin Williams appear on Church Lady sketch
• John Mulaney discusses vulnerability and people-pleasing in new comedy special
• John Mulaney on always playing himself in television appearances
• Mo’Nique and John Mulaney discuss pressure of second comedy special versus first
• Carlos Mencia interview about comeback and addressing joke-stealing accusations

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. Happy National Donut Day. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News now regular listeners. Now, I hit the National donut chain every day. Here’s my large iced coffee.

Then I’m almost done with well. Today, being National Donut Day, the Late Bot decided to make fun of me. These are pretty good. You’re ready from the Late Bot. I heard Johnny Max celebrated National Donut Day by setting a new world record.

He ate so many donuts at the local baker he had to take out a loan just to restock. Johnny max love for donuts knows no bounds. He’s the only person I know who orders a dozen donuts as an appetizer. They say Johnny macloves donuts so much that this blood type is actually powdered sugar. To commemorate National Donuts Day, Johnny Mac organized a marathon called the Run for Donuts.

The Catch the finish line is at the nearest Krispy Kreme. I heard Johnny Max celebrated National Donut Day by going out on a donut crawl across town. He claims he hit every donut shop. Let’s be honest, he probably just stayed at the first one do honor National Donut Day. Johnny Mac invented a new game called to Pin the Sprinkles on the Donut.

And finally from the Late Bot. These are all good AI generated jokes. You know, they say you are what you eat, and if that’s true, Jenny mc must be a giant, walking talking donuts. Dana Carvey revealed why he would not let Robin Williams make an appearance in a Church Lady sketch. This from The Hollywood Reporter.

Dana Carvey said this on his podcast. Dana said, Robin was a really good friend and he really wanted to do church chat. This was in the early days. This was my golden ticket and I was very careful. I thought if Robin got so excited, I was just afraid of it.

Robin called Dana Carvey one Saturday morning asking to be on the Church Lady Sketch. Carvey said no. It was heartbreaking, but you know we got past that and we were friends. But in those days, your character was very precious. I wanted to keep it quasi reel in a sense.

The Hollywood Reporter had an actor round table several comedians on it. One of them John Mulaney, and they said to John, John, your comedy historically has been about telling personal stories. This hour felt more confessional. You said it was fun. Was it also cathartic?

Mulaney said, that was the challenge I wanted to give myself to be vulnerable. What I wanted to see is could I say this much about myself but still own the room and be an entertainer. That just seemed more of a challenge as opposed to more somberly or groundedly presenting the facts of what the specials about. John Mulaney said, I don’t think people set out to be likable. I think they put themselves out there in some way, and speaking for myself, they enjoy the feedback that others relate to you, to what they’re saying or doing.

It starts off with though I must be honest something or there’s something about me these people get I find that one most dangerous. When they don’t get you. Then that’s phase two and you go, oh, I like the positive, but why aren’t they getting this part? Why did they miss this aspect? Then if people are disappointing in direction you take, I wouldn’t say that that’s hard because it’s very music at first, because it’s so parental, like we’re disappointed in you.

It’s just not feeling because I didn’t know we had that kind of relationship. The thing I found during the tour was this idea of I’m not going to people please as much in life. Is all great and it’s very liberating, but it’s interesting to see when you stop people pleasing, some people are not pleased, like not everyone will just applaud it. The Hollered reporter asked John Mulaney about his TV appearance, is pointing out on guests he plays basically chan Mullaney, and Millaney said, if you go through my work, most of my television is me playing myself on my friends shows. Illi reporter followed that up with it also seemed to fit into this repackaging of you, or at least of who the audience thought you were.

If likability is jail, how conscious and freeing is showing this other side? Mullaney said, We’ll see, because am I still doing the same thing? Am I trying to communicate? Hey, there’s a lot going on with me, y’all get it now? Am I still looking for that?

Of course? I am one of the other comedians on the panel is a mayor. They asked him, if a fan approaches you on the street, how do they recognize you? And Mo said, I usually get I’m a huge fan of your music, and I’m like, I’m not DJ Khaled Mullaney turned some Mo and said, I don’t know if you felt this with your first stand up special, but you basically have from age zero to twenty fives or rumin eight on things and come up with the sensibility and figure out the jokes you like. So your first special is the first twenty odd years of your life, and your sex special is one year.

It was made while you were mainly touring. That the musicians say that a lot right. You get your whole life to make your first album in six months to make your second one. MO said, it’s a really great point for me. I was always explaining myself was Wait, you were born in Kuwait but you came to Texas when you were nine, so you’re KUWAITI.

And I’m like, no, I’m not KUWAITI. My parents are Palestinian. Wait o’t come, you’re not Kuwaiti. You were born there. I don’t get it.

And I was like, I’m effing tired. Of these questions. So the whole first special is going to be answering all your questions, and then I just want to be a comedian. The Albuquerque Journal caught up with Carlos Mencia. I should see how young the writer is.

I don’t think they got the complete picture of Carlos Mencia’s career. The Journal writes he’s known for his raw and unfiltered style of comedy, which he has showcased a great success on comedy stages and in television shows and movies. Yeah, I think he’s known for two things, one being mind of Mencia, the attempt by Comedy Central to keep doing the Chapelle thing after Chappelle kind of blew up there for a minute. And the second the whole Joe Rogan Carlos Menstelia joke, theft thing that Mancia has admitted to. I’ve been in a room with Mencia at Sirius XM where he admitted to it.

Anyway, The Journal rights mean Sia only shot two stand up specials due out later this year, and apparently he’s on a Disney Plus series, The Proud Family. Mencia says, I don’t consider any of this work, especially right now. People need comedy the most. After big, major events in the world, we need to be able to laugh through all the seriousness. It’s time again for me to perform.

I remember doing might Have Mencia and talking about the impending great divide of the left and the right. If you go back and look at it, it’s happening now. That’s when I get excited with a sense of purpose. Beyond there’s this extra level of relevance. He says.

The past ten years have been difficult, and it feels like two different personas are merging together. Interesting, Carlos said, I have people who’ve seen me live and talking about the live shows. Then I have the Internet who’s been trying to cancel me since two thousand and five. The two personas are coming together, and I’ve been defending myself on social media. I needed to be heard and corrected what’s being said about me.

So I don’t know what’s being said about Carlos Mencia on the internet these days. But here’s a clip of Carlos Mencia talking about Carlos Mencia. A lot of people out there are going to ask, why did they interview Carlos about the CEO. Carlos is a joke cleief steal’s jokes. And we know this, and listen to me and look at me when I tell you this with all honesty.

If you think that I steal jokes, yeah, you’re right, of course that’s steal jokes. Are you out of your mind? When I come to a comedy club, you better run, You better get off stage, because if anything you say is even remotely funny, I’m gonna make it mine. And all I’m gonna do is say Mexican in the front. I had a clip that down.

He used a lot of salty language in there. Is he joking? Is he telling the truth? I don’t know what is Joe Rogan think? Anyway, Let’s not unpacked that all Rogan mid Sea I think today.

Speaking of Joe Rogan, he said he saw Sam Kinnison for the first time. Was like, oh, that’s comedy too, And that was like one of the first times I thought I could do comedy. I was like, maybe I got a wrong idea. That comedy was Seinfeld, Richard Pryor polished. It’s all done, and like you can’t do that.

You don’t know what you’re doing. Rogan’s inspirations Kinnison, Bill Hicks Richard pryor all them, Lenny Bruce. But I saw an open Mike Wants and gave me the confidence because I was like, oh, everybody to the beginning, because you see someone like an open mic night first time I went. When I did my show afterwards, Teddy Bergeron did the set, so Teddy Bergeron went up it just like showed everybody out. It’s done.

This cracked me up. The Sun, British tabloid, they were writing about Harry and Megan. By the way, I’m the writer on a podcast called Palace Intrigue. We cover the British royal family every day, and by that I mean we pretty much talked about Harry and Megan. Always play the hits and all formats play the hits, Megan Markle anything big downloads.

But I laughed at this. They quoted Tim Dillon as Hollywood broadcaster Tim Dillon, and I’ll read you what Tim Dillon said. I heard Tim Dillon’s podcast. I think the Sun missed that Dylan was kind of doing a bit. Anyway, Tim Dillon did say all I want to do is hang out with celebrities.

I was at a party the other night talking to somebody about these people and it’s just constant with them. Megan was texting the person I was with there. The point is they just won’t stop. These two. They’re like low grade reality stars trying to attach to anything.

I’m literally at the party and they’re showing me text of this woman begging people to hang out. She’s trying to get places. It’s sad, a lot of it isn’t working. And they’re all in their eyes at mellol and we’re having a good laugh about this. I respect the huzzle.

I get what they’re trying to do. Again, I just read you the transcript. I heard Tim say the words. I think he was kind of joking, but anyway, that’s Hollywood broadcaster Tim Dylan. New album out today from Rachel Mack.

It’s her debut comedy album, Teacher of the Year. She’s a Wisconsin Natives. She started doing stand up in LA and then moved back to Wisconsin to record this album. She jokes about her job as an English teacher, being a hopeful tilf. I assume that’s a teacher I’d like to be friends with, and army teachers as well as a solution for solving teen pregnancy Revelations about her Christian upbringing and the Tedium of motherhood Rachel Mack Teacher of the Year.

The remainder of today’s podcast will be massive spoiler discussions for the finale of ted Lasso. If you haven’t seen it yet, why don’t you hit pause? Come back after you’ve seen ted Lasso. But this will be the last topic of the day today. All right, are they gone?

Let’s talk ted Lasso spoilers. In three two one, it was all right, like everybody else. I started watching ted Lasso during the pandemic and it hit the spot during the pandemic, was like, oh, this is just bright and fun, and it became one of those shows I watched with my wife and we liked it together, and we just liked it. It was just happy, and it was about soccer, and it was light and flighty, and like most people, Season three were like, what is even going on? The show started to fall apart when Nate went evil, and then towards the end of season three, suddenly Nate’s not evil anymore, and he quits his job because he loves the girlfriend.

He loves the girlfriends so much. She’s not even in this season finale or series finale. We’re still unsure if there’s going to be spinoffs or whatever. I’ll talk about that in a second. But yeah, Nate loves this woman so much, and then she doesn’t even pop up in the last episode.

Weird decisioned by the creators. The Guardian wrote, good riddance ted Lasso. How the nice comedy became utterly dreadful television. You know, my wife and I we decided we were kind of behind. She hadn’t seen the second to last episode and I hadn’t seen the last two, and I’m like, let’s just skip to the finale because none of it matters anyway, and we’re gonna get spoiled on the internet.

So yeah, I haven’t actually seen every episode. I haven’t seen the second to last one. The Guardian says, rubbish jokes inept plotting a week script should we go on? Characters veered into incongruous demonstrations of whimsy or cruelty or wit, none of which train true to their personalities, but served whatever the script needed. Conflict, typically a driver of plot, went out of the window.

We got episodes dedicated to solving bad fathers, homophobia and racism, while genuine plot developments happened off screens, such as Nate quitting his job at west Ham so he could wind up back at Richmond, or the revelation that Ted’s folksy charms are not an inherent quality but a learned defense mechanism, and that was abandoned as quickly as this therapist was written out of the show. And yet we saw the therapist like nine times during the finale watching the soccer game Why Rolling Stone had a review that was on point Ted Lasso Season three finale the end of a frustrating bad season. They write without Ted and by extension, the team he coached as an organizing principle. Season three felt more and more unfocused with each week. I agree.

Big ideas were introduced and then dropped. Huge moments took place entirely off camera. Characterization was all over the map. The worst offender was the storyline about Nate yep. Rather than show him gradually recognizing what an abusive person he’d become, that’s terribly he’d betrayed Ted, the show seemed to view his redemption as a matter of Nate learning to love himself, and the writer’s method of doing it was with a bizarre love story involving Jade, the hostess at Nate’s favorite restaurant, who had no personality and no apparent reason for wanting to go out with Nate other than taking pity on him after another one was meeting him in front of Jade.

Nor were we given any reason why Nate was so hung up on Jade, given how repeatedly cold she was prior to him to that moment. Yeah, this is a bit of a mess. Will there be spinoffs? I think they gave us a major hint. It’s in a scene where Ted Lasso was talking to Trent Krim, who was fantastic this season.

Trent was really good. Trent is showing him the book, which I think was called The lass Away, and Ted said, I’d changed the title. It’s not about me. It never was. So we’ll see if we get Ted Lassos season four.

I hope they do. I like a lot of the characters, even though the season was a mess, and there’s plenty of things to be done without Ted on the series. Anyway. That is your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, or YouTube wherever you get your shows.

And I’ll see tomorrow

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Featured: Ricky Gervais, Felicity Ward, Sam Morrell, Weird Al Yankovic, Madonna, Sam J, Hannah Gatsby, James Wade

What’s in This Episode

• The Office Australia adaptation with Felicity Ward
• Will Ferrell in talks to play John Madden in theatrical feature
• Sam Morrell on comedy writing process and cancel culture concerns
• Weird Al Yankovic biography movie and why he stopped making albums
• Sam J taping HBO special ‘Salute Me or Shoot Me’ at Brooklyn Steel
• Hannah Gatsby’s Picasso exhibition at Brooklyn Museum
• 15th century Huge manuscript discovery featuring medieval comedy

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. I’m Jenny Mack with your Daily Comedy News late night writers on strike. The Late Bod says, Taylor Swift fans say they’re suffering from post concert amnesia. Yeah, you get this after getting too excited during a Taylor Swift concert. But the Late Bot says, I suffer from post Taylor Swift concert amnesia.

I can’t remember the lyrics to any other song now. My friends say it’s like I’ve been shaken off my musical knowledge. Scientists are still trying to figure out if post Taylor Swift concert amnesia is a real condition for just a way for people to forget they pay two hundred dollars for a T shirt. Ricky Gervaiz says he cannot wait to see how Australia interprets The Office. The Office Australia will be set in post COVID present day Star’s Felicity Ward.

She’ll play Hannah Howard, who is the managing director of a packaging company. They go in a survival mode after being told her branches shutting down and going remote. She attempts to keep her work family together. Hannah begins making promises she can’t keep. Eight episodes filming in Sydney starting this month.

This is for a prime video. Maybe we’ll get to see it here in the States, which would be great. It’s the thirteenth version of the Office. But why I would be excited about this one is it would be an English language version and a little easier to watch. Ricky Gervais says off as politics have changed a bit in twenty years, so can’t wait to see how they navigate a modern day.

David Brent will Ferrell is in talks to play John Madden. It won’t be about the football coaching, It’ll be about the video game. No detales yet other than it would be a theatrical feature, not a straight to video. Interesting. The ut Daily Beacon caught up with Sam Morrell.

He says he doesn’t necessarily look for audience interaction. I honestly feel like I’d do it less than people think like if it doesn’t present itself, I won’t do it. I think it just sort of breaks up the rhythm and makes things more fun for them. You look at Rodney Dangerfield and how he broke rhythm with his stuff, and I think that’s where I get the inspiration from trying to emulate that As for his writing, he says, sometimes in the moment, I’ll make a note of something, but usually it takes some reflection on it to come up with a joke. It’s definitely a process.

I wish it was easier, but I guess we’re easier. Everyone would do it. He says he was always a pretty funny kid. I was never going to be a pro athlete, and I wasn’t especially good looking. I wanted friends and girls, so from there I had to be like, all right, well, what’s my thing?

So I think that kind of pushed me to being funny. Being in a blended family definitely did two. I think it was an awkward transition for everyone but me, but I was like six. I didn’t how uncomfortable it was for everyone. I was just happy to have more people around trying to make me laugh.

Sam says, I’ve always been sarcastic. I like short swings. Short swings and sarcasm are always your quickest root in comedy. Sarcasm is always the fastest of the punch line. I’ll just say that.

Sam is not worried about cancel culture. He says, I’m not on TV or a risk of a network pulling a show. The only way I’d be starving is if venues wouldn’t have me. But then again, there’s a lot of comics saying way more outlandish stuff and they can still book shows, so I’m not really worried. The only true opponent is social media.

He said. TikTok algorithms don’t account for nuance and jokes, so I could say Nazi in a set, even if it’s totally berating them or whatever, and the algorithm is still going to push it to the bottom because it flagged a word, I said, not taking the context into account. Weird Alice Books of Variety. Apparently one scene in the weird Biography is getting a lot of attention. Al says it brought me so much joy to see that the number one Google search was did Weird al and Madonna have a fling?

I don’t know if Madonna is even aware of this movie. I’m very curious what she thinks, and I hope she’s okay with it. Don’t expect a new album from Weird al anytime soon. That makes me sad. Al said, I signed a record deal in nineteen eighty two for ten albums, then I renegotiated it twice, and it became a fourteen album contract, which I finally fulfilled in twenty fourteen.

I just don’t want to sign under the contract. I like being a free agent doing whatever I need to do or want to do. I’m more in the one off stuff now, because when you do an album, if you’re doing my kind of material, it’s hard to have twelve songs ready to go it all at once and having them to be topical and timely. I like having the freedom and being able to just put out material whenever I feel like. Granted, I haven’t done a lot of that since twenty fourteen.

Al is aware there are petitions to get him to perform the Super Bowl halftime show. That would be amazing. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be on the short list, he said, I’m just being real here. I don’t see it ever happening. Maybe the Food Fighters will do it and have me on as a special guest.

That kind of stage scares me for a number of reasons, one of which is, no matter who you are, when you’re put in front of that many eyeballs, you’re gonna have a lot of haters. And I know I don’t like being hated. His inspiration for the weird biopic was Bohemian Rhapsody. I’ll said, biopics, historically, I’ve always been pretty inaccurate, and I kind of bug me. I’m a big Queen fan.

I liked the movie and it won awards and it was very popular, but it bothered me. There was so many artistic liberties taken, just flat out changing the facts, changing the chronology, just making it more quote unquote cinematic. And I thought, all right, well, maybe if I do a biopic like that, just throw the facts out the window and go completely off the rails. Sam j will tape early to Stand Up Special this month. It is titled Salute Me or Shoot Me.

That’s an aggressive title. She will film it at Brooklyn Steel on June seventeenth, two shows, seven and nine thirty. This will eventually air on HBO. Hannah Gatsby is working on her Pablo Picasso curated thing at the Museum. She critiques Picasso’s relationship with teenage Marie Terice Walter, who was seventeen when Picasso was forty five.

Anna says, I hate him, but you’re not allowed to because of Cubism. She says Picasso sold to us as this passionate torment to genius rather than, by her definition, a misogynist. Hannah sums up the history of Western art Picasso included as men painting women like their flesh faces for their thing. She jokes, I think everyone any chance of getting a job at a gallery now, Well, not true, because she’s part of the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, which addresses Picasso’s complicated legacy through a critical, contemporary and feminist lens. It’s Pablo matic Picasso, according to Hannah Gatsby Brooklyn Museum in New York, June second through September twenty fourth, and scientists are all excited about finding a fifteenth century huge manuscript.

James Wade is an associate professor at Cambridge University. Wade says most medieval poetry, song and storytelling has been lost, but the fifteenth century Huge manuscript was recently rediscovered. And it’s not a perfected, respectful final draft, or a play or a parable. It’s account of a raucous live comedy show, complete with irony, slapstick, satsire and a killer rabbit joke. Were they of its own monty python sketch wow, Wade said manuscripts often preserve relics of high art.

It’s mad defense. Manuscripts often preserve relics of high art. This is something else. It’s mad defensive, but just as valuable. Stand up comedy has always involved taking risks, and these texts are risky.

They poke fun at everyone high and low. Part of the Hunting of the Hair poem in the Huge Manuscript features the killer Rabbit. The first alliance read Jack Wade was never so sad as when the hair trot on his head, in case she would have ripped out his throat. That’s like Adam Sandler level funny, isn’t it. Wade says he can find echoes of this minstrel’s humor and shows like Mock the Week, situational comedies and slapstick the self, irony and making audiences the butt of the Joker is still very characteristic of British stand up comedy.

People back then partied a lot more than we do today, so minstrel’s had plenty of opportunities to perform. They were very important figures in people’s lives right across the social hierarchy. These texts give us a snapshot of medieval life being lived. Well, that’s your comedy news for Today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify YouTube.

I didn’t mention mister b A or mister s M today, did you notice. Yeah, taking a break from that, but I’m grateful for their movies because otherwise slow newsweek. See tomorrow

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Featured: Sebastian Maniscalco, Bert Kreischer, Robert De Niro, Joe Koy, Mark Hamill, Kevin Hart, Tom Segura, Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, Taylor Swift

What’s in This Episode

• Sebastian Maniscalco’s ‘About My Father’ box office bomb with Robert De Niro
• Bert Kreischer’s ‘The Machine’ disappoints at box office in fifth straight Sony press blackout
• Analysis of Bert Kreischer’s career decline and potential downside of peak popularity
• Bert Kreischer’s Fully Loaded Comedy Festival touring strategy and control of ancillary projects
• Tom Segura teases upcoming project with Bert Kreischer
• Apple’s 3 AM Ted Lasso finale release frustration and comparison to HBO’s Succession release strategy
• Johnny Mac’s Taylor Swift concert experience

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. Yikes. Rough weekend for the comedy movies. I am Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, Sebastian Meniscalco, I got nothing but bad news for you. His film About My Father co starring Robert de Niro, By the way, four point two million dollars over the weekend, they estimated would make five point two million through Monday, the second lowest opening Memorial Day release in over two thousand theaters, ever lower than even nineteen ninety five’s Johnny Nemonic.

On the Tomato meter thirty one percent with critics. About My Father had a budget of twenty nine million dollars. If you need a comparison, Easter Sunday with Joe Koy, remember that happened last year. Even that made five point four million and finished with thirteen million. Yikes.

The news not much better for Bert Craisher The Machine four point nine million dollars over the weekend, estimated five point eight million dollars for the long weekend. Rotten Tomatoes points out it’s the fifth straight film that’s Sony has withheld nationwide from press in the States. In case you’re curious, the Little Mermaid won the weekend fast X sitting at number two, Guardians of the Galaxy sitting at number three, Super Mario Brothers still at number four, than The Machine in fifth That about my father. In sixth sebashion Maniskago did use a stunt butt in his movie. He told people, I’m very physical and in my comedy, the intention was for me to do the jet mooning.

My wife wants people to know that’s not his butt. Apparently that guy’s but doesn’t look like mine. Set Sebastian and my wife wanted to let the world know.

Meanwhile, finally saw a review of The Machine.

I haven’t had an opportunity to see the movie myself yet. Yeah, who says Byrd is certainly believable as quote unquote himself, but never feels quite like a lead. The movie excels when it leans into insane levels of action violence. It’s less effective when it relies on Chrysher’s comedy. Well that’s not good, They say.

He needs a movie that does for him what forty eight Hours did for Eddie Murphy. As his reactions to Danger his best moments. Mark Hamill is the MVP, continuing to deliver some of his best work as an older man when Hamel leaves the action for a spelled the energy leaves the movie. So I was thinking about these two films, and I will editorialize here. Sebastian Meniscalco, I think will be okay.

I can see Sebastian with a CBS sitcom, can’t you? If he dialed down the affectation he does in some of his stand up. He is a very stylized version of speaking. If he dropped that back down towards his normal voice, I could see him in a CBS sitcom for sure. Bert Kreisher, I’m not sure where we go from here.

I know Bert has legions of fans and I’ll probably all attack my podcast. But that last stand up special As I saw the reviews and I saw the chatter on the internet, I saw the churning of the Tide, and people didn’t really like that one as much. And I’m wondering if the Bert Kreisher No pun machine is starting to run out of steam. If you think about it, this was the big story, this was the big dream. Okay, we made a major motion picture around you.

It co stars Born Camel. The premise seems pretty good on paper, and nobody went to see it, so I’m wondering for Burt are we now on the downside of peak? Bert Kreisher time will tell that said he’s a machine when it comes to touring. Fast Company did a profile of Burton, talked about this summer’s Fully Loaded Comedy Festival, which the Krasher’s Burton wife Leanne, manage this summer. It features Mark Norman, Shane Gillis, Tiffany Hattish, David Tell, Lewis, Black and Moore and No Slouches, any of those playing sixteen ballparks and arenas around the US.

Bert says, Hollywood is changing, but I think we’re at the front of it, even with the Fully Loaded Festival. That used to be something you’d put in the hands of a promoter or management company, but we took control of that. We wanted to move faster than the pace it was traditionally moving. Lean said he’s always been at the forefront, even ahead of his agents and managers. When COVID hit, he was in New Orleans and wanted to find a way to keep touring.

It’s not just about him personally, but all the people connected to these shows and weren’t working. If he keeps working, that keeps others working he had the drive in movie theater. Idea called his agent and his agent wasn’t sure, but he made some calls and figures it out. So we did this thing that no one had done before. And he’s done that with his podcasting being so early into it, he knew podcast fan was a button the seat.

Bert says, I remember going on a meeting one time and bringing a list of my top fifty markets for the podcast, and they were like Bismark. Bismark is the capital of North Dakota with a population of seventy five thousand. Bert said, and I was like, yeah, I’m big there. It’s fascinating because there are places where I’m big today where a lot of comics just don’t go. Now, if you look at my tour, I’m littered in the Midwest where some comics don’t do shows.

I’m in Mississippi twice a year. It’s all based on metrics and going where the fans are. Ten thousand people that might not sound like a lot for a podcast, but that’s an arena. Burt admires Kevin Hart’s Heartbeat productions and says, what I love about what Kevin’s done is how we brought everything in house and said, I wanted to do business with you, but I want to be in charge of all the ancillary projects. I’d love to work with studios when we’re marketing movies, because we’ve taken steps in that direction.

It’s worked well. So the things were good at. I want to keep being good at and then create relationships with networks and studios through that. Tom Segura was at one of the previews of the Machine and he was asked what he’s up to. Tom said, I have a special coming out July fourth.

We knew that, and he added, and then Burt and I actually have a project together two. It hasn’t been announced yet. All right, we’ll keep an eye on that one. Today the ted Lasso finale. By the time you’re hearing this, it’s already out.

Apple. Please stop releasing things in the middle of the night. I’m going to have woken up this morning on Wednesday two spoilers, and that’s annoying. I’m not getting up at three am to watch ted Lasso, and I can’t watch it before breakfast. I watched TV at night like normal people do.

I don’t know if you noticed. Over the weekend, HBO released Succession at nine pm. It did quite well. It captured the cultural zeitgeist. People talked about it, and it wasn’t spoiled.

Had HBO released Succession at three am, we would have woken up to find out who quote unquote one in the end. I’m not even gonna spoil it for you four days later anyway, Ted Lasso. I’ll get to it tonight. Maybe I play volleyball on Wednesday. I’m don’t even get to it tonight because it’s gonna be ruined.

I hate the three am stuff and Casey, you can’t tell oh by the way, i’d see. I’m thinking now back to Friday with the cranky Johnny Mac jokes that the late Bot wrote Taylor Swift’s concert amazing three hours, forty minutes. I had such a good time and played Taylor on the car radio all week and long. It was so good. I’m not sure any concert’s worth twelve hundred dollars, but one hundred and twenty five that I paid face value to get in.

Oh my goodness, she’s fantastic anyway, Ted Lasso. The character Ted Lasso tweeted on Tuesday. A few years ago, I hopped on a plane with Coach Beard head into a little town in London. Tonight we play our final match. It’s like what I say about the films of David Lynch.

I can’t tell you what’s happening, but I sure as heck don’t want it to end. Co star and writer Brendan Hunts coach Beard told Entertainment Weekly back in twenty twenty one, to three season arc was Jason Sidekis’s idea. But even back in twenty one, Brendan said, even as committed to that idea as Jason may have been, none of us were prepared to the greet which people love the show. I think that could make hard hearted old Sadekas soften up a little bit. The solution seems to be spinoffs.

Sadekas himself has all but confirmed them, saying I think we’ve set the table for all sorts of folks to get to watch the further telling of these stories now. One of the problems with season three have been all the side stories. One person on Reddit wrote, I’m still waiting for season three of ted At to begin. In the meantime, I’m watching this odd spinoff show about a pr startup mixed with heavy handed moral public service announcements. Not the worst description in my opinion, and my wife shares the opinion.

When Ted Lasso’s about soccer, it’s so much more enjoyable. All they have to do is show some soccer, Let the coaches hang out a little bit. Repeat. I don’t need the other stuff. The Daily Beast asked some of the cast for their ideas for spinoffs.

Jeremy Swift, he plays Rebecca’s assistant Leslie, his idea Higgins and Coach Beard become detectives, but Beard is secretly corrupt and committing all the crimes himself. Higgins doesn’t know anything about it. I’d watch that. James Lands, who plays Trent Krim, said I’d be pretty interested to see what Will the Kitman is up to in his private life. Actor Charlie his Cock is a little superstar.

He’s funny as hell. I’d like to see him or Meanwhile, his Cock said he’d like to see Trent Krim on his next journey. Where does he go now now that he’s writing the book about the team, what happens next? But of course the best idea is to do The Roy Kent Show with Brett Goldstein, who’s been the breakout star of the series. What about a show about Roy and his niece Phoebe.

And the idea that’s not going to happen comes from Christo Fernandez, who plays Danny Rojas. He said, people have talked about a spinoff for Danny and that would be cool. Nobody’s talked about that. That’s not happening. If you enjoy what I do here, you go to buy me a coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News.

I wanted to thank the members. I was a little slacking during May and thanking the members in my personal life, May has been a bear. I don’t even want to bory with the details, but it’s been a crazy, crazy month. So Tommy and Andrea, and Gary and Shannon and Mike and Kenny, thank you so much for being members and supporting the show every single month. Again buying me at coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News.

I was annoyed at the National Donuts chain this morning. I went there. Every now and then they try and pass off hot coffee poured over ice as an ice coffee. I can tell the second I touched the cup, Folks, never mind the flavor. Come on anyway, members, thank you so much.

It means a lot to me. It’s not even the money or the coffee. It’s knowing that somebody actually gives a hoot about the podcast, and that is the most important thing. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Comedian Bobby Lee is suing WONDERYE for breach of contract.

This from the Hollywood Reporter. They are poor that Wondery allegedly canceled a multi year ad sales a distribution deal for Bobby Lee’s podcast, Tiger Belly. The complaint, filed in LA last Thursday on behalf of Lee’s Tiger Belly company, alleges that Wondery was under pressure to cut expenses and roll back its financial commitments and anticipation of a podcast market slowdown in twenty three. In the termination notice sent to Tiger Belly, Wondery also alleged Lee cited a moral’s clause and pointed to a twenty thirteen story that leads Old and Lee later said was made up for shock value about paying a young looking sex worker who had tears in her eyes and Tijuana. Remember that, Yeah, I told you that story.

So you know, I don’t know the specifically the deal here, but I have some expertise both in comedy and podcasting. I can tell you the ad market has indeed been soft in twenty twenty three. That’s no surprise. You’ll see that in every industry newsletter. As a podcast company giving a multimillion dollar deal for several years, there’s elite talent that you give that too, and there’s a talent that you don’t give multimillion dollar deals too.

You got to be mighty confident that you’re gonna get that money back. We’re seeing fewer and fewer of that type of deal, so who knows. That’s between wondery and tiger belly. And as for the morals clause advertisers, if you start playing on the shady side of the street, the advertisers don’t hang out there. So you can tell a joke story about a young looking sex worker who had tears in her eyes.

You can make up that story and get some laughs out of it. But I got news for you, A Coca Cola ain’t gonna be anywhere near that. Oh, we’ll keep an eye on that one. Did I say too much? Hi?

Graham Norton is going to fronts LLOL last one laughing Ireland told you about this one before. But I’ve got more details now. The competitors include Ashling b Who’s Fantastic, Amy Huberman, Katherine Bohart, David mc savage, Great Name, Deirdre O’Kane, Emman, Doran Jason Byrne, Martin Angelo, Paul’s Hylack, and Tony Cantwell last one. Laughing has done well in several countries, including Italy, France, and Germany. Trevor Noah’s going to host the South African version of it.

There is no American version of its. Rebel Wilson hosted the Australian edition. Jay Barrichell hosted the English Canadian version. Anyway, here is how it works, per the Wikipedia, ten comedians stay in a living room style studio with hidden cameras for a few hours usually six hours, okay. During that time, they have to make their opponents laugh in any way and by any means.

While not reacting to their competitors attempts to make them laugh. At the first laugh, the competitor is giving a yellow card. A second card eliminates the player from the game, a red card, you know, like football, Like soccer. However, large infractions may be given an automatic red card. Eliminated players join the host in the observation room, but may return as an external challenger to the remaining contestants.

The comedians can also be eliminated if they aren’t active enough. The only way to communicate with the outside is the telephone controlled by the host and Freevie is going to milk Jury Duty and then milk. It’s some more. Okay, Jury Duty is a fun show, did better than everybody thought. Well, they’re rereleasing it with commentary from the director and the guy that was tricked, Ronald will also get some commentary from the characters Noah, Vanessa and Nez and James Morriston as James Morriston.

They are also releasing merch, So if you’ve always wanted to wear a Dwarf T shirt, I think you’re going to be able to do so very soon. The merch will be out tomorrow. That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. The Sea tomorrow

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Featured: John Mulaney, Chris Rock, Bert Kreischer, Mark Hamill, Jason Mantzoukas, Sam Jones, Ricky Gervais, Adam Schiff, Roy Wood Jr., Emily Page, Ben Brainerd

What’s in This Episode

• John Mulaney’s Netflix special streaming ratings
• Bert Kreischer movie with Mark Hamill as his father
• SmartLess documentary on Max
• Ricky Gervais BBC project about suicide contemplation
• Roy Wood Jr. on starting comedy over journalism
• Emily Page’s tweets stolen by ex-boyfriend
• Congressman Adam Schiff doing stand-up comedy

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck Johnny Mac with your Daily Company News. John Mulaney’s first stand up special in five years doing really well on Netflix, So streaming ratings are delayed a little bit. This is for the week of April twenty four through the thirtieth. No, I didn’t record this a month ago. That’s just how long it takes them to put these out.

John Mulaney’s Baby Jay gathered three hundred and seventy nine million minutes of viewing that first week. It ranked tenth among original series. It’s the second stand up special to make the Nielsen streaming rankings this year, after Chris Rock’s Special. Chris Rock Special had four hundred eighteen minutes his first week, although that was in thirty six hours because that came out on a Saturday, so Saturday and Sunday, Mullaney had a couple more days that week. That following week, Rock had seven hundred ninety eight million minutes.

So we can compare those two in case you’re curious what else does well. The Diplomat was the number one overall title that week, and over on Apple TV, Ted Lasso had a series high growing seven hundred and ninety five million minutes of viewing John. You never talk about Bert Craish, I know, right. He spoke to the La Times about Mark Hamill playing his dad and they were curious about their chemistry. Bert said, our first week of working together was on Zoom during the pandemic.

We started talking about the movie. The first thing he said was, why do you perform with your shirt off? Couldn’t you wear a nice collared shirt or a blazer? And my dad says that to this day. Mark was my dad through the whole movie, even off camera.

Remember one time asking Mark for parenting advice and he gave me advice, And that night I was on the phone with my dad and he gave the exact same advice Mark Amil did. He talked a little more about doing his own stunts. He said anytime they were like, we’re gonna need you to do like a flying double kick, or are we gonna have a stunt man do it? And Burt was like, no, I can do it. I was really good at that.

I think it’s because I grew up in Florida and we all practiced professional wrestling growing up. I did way more of putting my body into harm stuff than I thought I would do.

And then the stuff I thought it’d be good at, like the fight scenes.

That took a lot of work, and memorizing it right because it’s a fight sequence. Just memorizing the choreography, it’s hard. If you don’t do it correctly. You can punch people’s faces, which I did a lot, and all the fight scenes I punched someone. I paid the piper.

When I got home, I went to get an MRI and they’re like, you’re ruptured your tenants. He needs surgery. So I did the surgery and then I sold out a show at Red Rocks in Colorado. What are you gonna do? Mark Hamill told the Music dot Com there’s no off switch with Bertie’s so genuine and so authentic.

It’s not like he created a character. And he’s very much different on stage. What you see is what you get, and I think that’s what’s so appealing about it. He just has an exuberance that’s infectious. So Bert tells the story is Colade in the film.

I’ve a Babbic. She’s from the Eastern Bloc and she has never seen Star Wars. She says to me, I’ve never seen Star Wars. Don’t bring it up. Bert goes really, and she goes, yeah, I don’t want to be embarrassed.

So we sit down for dinner and I go, hey, you’re a big Star Wars fan, right, and she goes, I love it. It’s such a wonderful film. And Mark Hamill goes, what did you like about it? She goes, ah, you know, typical good guy baguy thing. Bert goes, what’s your favorite character in Star Wars?

She says Chewbacca and then he says to her, can you do an impression of Chewbacca? And she goes, of course, and in a weird gravelly voice, goes, Hi, I’m Chewbacca. Mark Camill goes, you’ve never seen the movie, have you? The smart List guys have a documentary streaming on Max. Hey Max, people put the HBO back.

Max just looks like dime store streaming service. It just looks so cheap. You’ve ordered it down with crap but not crap. Is SmartLess on the Road a limited series currently streaming. It was directed by Sam Jones, and he follows the SmartLess guys as they travel across the country to Boston, Brooklyn, DC, Chicago, Wisconsin, and La.

How to come about? Sam Jones says, Jason asked me if he thought there was a documentary. I kind of pitched them with the trust me enough and give me a key to your hotel rooms. I asked if they’d stay in the same hotel and travel together and not of a big crowd of people with them, if they could let me have access at all times, that could be really cool because it’d be like we’re on the road together. And they agreed to it.

I think they’re all such brilliant comedians. They’re all very open to being themselves. That was the thing, whether camera’s on them or not, those are the guys. They did have some questions before showing to them, wonder if they’d want me to cut things they felt were too personal when they’re not in the public, but they wanted to be transparent as possible. They have minds are quick enough to find the humor without prepping anything.

Ricky Gervais has directed his first BBC project in a decade. Ricky has directed Seven Minutes, a show about two people awkwardly contemplating suicide. The description a desolate train track seems the perfect spot to end at all until someone else turns up with the same idea. Awkward The head of BBC Comedy, John Petrie, he’s spending in the year identifying quote a package of measures that industry, government and regulators can come together on a safeguard comedy’s future. He says, comedy producers remain concerned about the rising costs of making comedy for TV.

As the chief corporate clown in TV comedy, I feel a huge sense of responsibility to help try and protect our incredible genre from TMZ. Congressman Adam Shift tries his end at live stand up comedy once a year. I had no idea. He was working on a set at the la Improv that one hosting a fundraiser introducing professional comics, and he likes to mix in a few jokes of his own. He says he’s performed full stand up acts at his annual fundraiser in the past, usually writing his own jokes during a cross country flight.

Keep an eye on that one. Roy Wood Junior remembers his first set. He said, I had a joke. I was about nineteen, and I was mad because my roommate would eat some of my food but not all of it. That joke, eat all of it if you’re going to eat it.

I had a seven up. He drank six of them. I had a one up, he said, in nineteen ninety eight. That’s what I had. It was the best I could do.

This is interesting. He got a journalism degree from Florida A and M, but he said it fiscally made more sense to continue comedy after college than pursue a straight up career in journalism. My love was print, but print didn’t pay. I had two print officers for fourteen grand. But my projections for stand up I was going to make seventeen that year, twenty two the next year, and the second year I wound up making twenty seven.

He says, I’m a stand up but also within my jokes, I’m trying to inform you, I’m trying to give you new information. I’m trying to give you a different way of looking at something and at its core. To me, that’s what journalism is. New Jersey stand up Emily Page recently found out that her ex boyfriend has been stealing her tweets and kind of tweaking him a little bit and then passing them off as his own jokes months after she originally posted them. Emily tweeted side by side screenshots at the original jokes and their knockoffs.

In an attempt to reclaim custody of her comedy Wow and from The New York Post, a comedian has ignited a debate over the best karaoke songs to perform. Ben Brainerd has three million TikTok followers. Huh. He says, if you don’t know what makes a good karaoke song, that’s fine. I’m here, and I’m objectively correct when I say these things.

He didn’t name the songs in any particular order, but he did name some songs. He said. One of those songs Kelly clarkson Since You’ve Been Gone, obviously, also Aretha Franklin’s Respects. He calls it a great song, even better karaoke. The next one up one of my favorites.

But I don’t know how people do this one, because what the heck are the lyrics? I know you think you know the lyrics, but think about it, do you? Dexi’s Midnight Runners. Come on, Eileen, now, I know you think you know the song. Here, I’ll do it for you, all right.

Poor old Johnny Ray, you’ve got that line sounded sat upon the radio, moved a million hearts in Mono. You don’t know that line. Next one, our mothers cried sang along. Who’d blame them? But I’m sure the end of that song is very good.

Okay. Next one up, Weezer’s Island in the Sun. It’s kind of a I love Weezer. That’s kind of a flat song. Is that a good karaoke song?

See? He’s got me doing it now. And the most controversial song he listed rims it’s the end of the world as we know it. He said. Listen to me.

If you get on a stage with a mic in your hand and you don’t know every word, the audience is going to find it the worst thing they’ve ever heard in their lives. No saving it, all right. Social media users him, Dan, I know you’re thinking about the list. One said, how about the I Would Walk five hundred miles song? That’s a good one, Sweet Caroline, kind of hackey, mister brightside piano man living on a prayer, and one commenter said, any song by weird Owl’s a good karaokee song, even better if you choose the song it’s a parod of, but still sing weird Al’s lyrics.

And that’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows, Hey, tell me your list, Jump in the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. Why not something to talk about see tomorrow? Can I interest you in some meatballs made out of mammoth meat? No?

All right? Hi, I’m Johnny Mac, host of Five Good News Stories. It’s a twice a week podcast where you share some upbeat stories like the dog who only will respond to commands if you use an iro brogue, Or what about the guy who’s filling potholes with noodles? Or the woman who Congratulations, she passed her driver’s license. Oh by the way, it was her nine hundred and sixtieth.

Try you heard me correctly. It’s five Good News Stories. Nice easy way to start your morning. Five Good News Stories the number five Good News Stories. Wherever you get your podcasts.

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Featured: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Robin Williams, Louis C.K., Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, Kevin Hart, Jim Gaffigan, Eddie Murphy, Ricky Gerzais, Adam Sandler, Sebastian Maniscalco, Bert Kreischer, Dana White

What’s in This Episode

• Damian Scott’s top ten comedians of all time list and Twitter backlash
• Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival July 2023 schedule highlights
• Ricky Gerzais sets record with $1.74 million grossing stand-up show in Los Angeles
• UFC and Adam Sandler develop comedy series about UFC offices
• Bert Kreischer injury during action movie filming and fitness regimen
• Comedy Cellar opens Las Vegas location at Real All Suite Hotel and Casino
• LA Times asks comedians to evaluate Elon Musk’s joke about congressional tweet

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck Johnny McK with your Daily Comedy News. As I put today’s show together on Friday, Eddie Murphy was trending, and I was like, why is Eddie Murphy trending? Somebody named Damian Scott on Twitter posted a top ten comedians of all time list and it didn’t go over. Well. You’re ready for the top ten comedians of all time according to Damian Scott, let me go from one to ten?

All right? Number one George Carlin to Richard Pryor. That’s most people’s list. You know, you could flip those back and forth, but Carlin Pryor generally accepted as the one and two. He’s got Dave Chappelle at number three, okay, Robin Williams at four, Louis C.K.

At number five. I guess not canceled. Jerry Seinfeld six, Chris Rock, Amy Schumer at number eight. Kevin Hart, who’s a wonderfully talented, charismatic, funny person with awesome movies and cool TV shows and side businesses. It’s Kevin Hart, the ninth best stand up comedian of all time?

No, just stop a number ten. Jim Gaffigan, the one that really annoyed people seemed to be Amy Schumer and people we’re asking why Eddie Murphy’s not on the list. Now, I’m really as I age thinking about Eddie Murphy, and as a teenager in the eighties, I loved Eddie Murphy. But the more I listen to Eddie Murphy, all I hear is a Richard Pryor cover band. He was a shooting star.

Obviously, he’s had a great movie career, and he’s funny, and everybody my age loves him. But he’s a Richard Pryor cover band. Just listen to the type of material, the voices he does in the material, even wearing the red leather suit is straight out of Richard’s thing. So I’m okay leaving Eddie off the list. I wanted to start looking at the Just for Laughs Montree All Comedy Festival schedule.

Maybe not a deep dive today, but just wanted to check it out. So the festival runs July fourteenth through the twenty ninth. If you’re planning on heading up, go to the second week. The second week starts to be stronger. I’ve opened up their calendar here.

The first shows they’re promoting July eighteenth, Just for the Culture and The Nasty Show, and it’s mostly those the first week. Once you get to July twenty fifth, Tom Pop is up there, Daniel Sloss, Ali Wong, Brad Williams, Who’s fantastic, Jessica Curson, Ronnie Chan please don’t destroy on the twenty eighth Brits Ish. That’s always a great show, Anthony jessinek May, Martin, Leslie Jones, Gala, Remy Yusef. Such good shows, Kyle Canine, Neil Brennan, Eddie Zard. They don’t have new faces up on the calendar yet.

My guest, based on the past, his new faces will be Wednesday, July twenty six. If I am able to make it this year, that is when I would go. I hope to make it. Got to convince somebody to go with me too. It’s no fun.

I’ve done the festival solo and while you’re at a show, it’s cool, and then it ends you’re like, oh, I’m by myself. So I’ll see if somebody wants to tag along. Montreal Comedy Festival. If you’ve never been highly highly recommended, Ricky Gervais made history. He did a stand up show in Los Angeles and made one point four one million pounds.

Let me throw that into Google and see what that is. An American A million, seven million, seven four to be exact. Ricky Gervais, congratulations boy, I guess he’s not canceled. The show has been dubbed the highest grossing one off by a British comedian. Ricky was on Twitter and said a career highlight, I should resire now thanks to everybody bought a ticket to find out about the record.

As the icing on the cake. I was happy enough when it didn’t rain. I can’t even imagine what my mom would think about me playing the Hollywood Bowl. I hope she’d be horrified by the language. Tell me I look fat, and I’d be secretly proud.

He added. I wish I’d filmed it now, if only to remind myself it actually happened. Hey, this is exciting. From MMA fighting dot Org. You’re home for comedy news.

The UFC is working on a comedy in development with Adam Sandler. Dana White, head of the UFC, says, we’re working on a show right now with Adam Sandler. That’s a comedy about working in the offices of the UFC. You know, maybe it’d be good? Can I be honest?

I was putting together the weekly comedy thing. That’s the show I host on Live One, and on this week’s show, I featured an Adam Sandler bit called gay Robot. It’s very, very funny, Adam, can you do more of that? Sebastian Maniscalco to the Crew Call podcast how important it was for the creative team of his new movie All About My Father, including the co writer and the director, to understand the nuances of family life on a personal level. He said director Laura Trusso won the job in part because she’s Italian American.

He said of his connection, We’re like dolphins. We have a secret language, Italian speak. I knew it. I’d have a shorthand with her. Sabashman was asked if his time working with de Niro on The Irishman helped him land at Robert Nio to be in the movie, and he said, yeah, I did The Irishman with him, but it’s not like we bonded over Canoli’s on set.

Hey, John, you never talk about Bert Kreisher. I know right well. He spoke to Yahoo and said, I did probably ninety five percent of my own stunts. The only sense I wasn’t allowed to do was go down the full flight of stairs. He got hurt during filming.

He said, I hurt myself midway through the movie. I tore tendons in my left elbow and my triceps. Prepare for all this action, he was on a strict fitness plan. He said, I worked out really hard every morning. I ran four miles and lift weights.

Had I not done that, I would have been a mess, regardless of being buff. He wasn’t allowed to do interviews shirtless. That’s his signature thing. He took Larry the Cable Guy’s sleeveless thing and next leveled that going shirtless. While Bert Kreisher had to put on a shirt for his press tour, and boy he’s been everywhere.

Bert told Collider, I hate wearing shirts and I’m gaining weights and on on. My shirts fit me right now. He was asked a publicist, say, you’re wearing a shirt today, and Bert said, yo, yeah. They have shirts for everything I’m supposed to do, and I’m so fat i can’t fit in them, and I end up taking them off in the middle of the interview anyway, because my buttons are just bulging. He loved every second of the movie.

He said, I felt like every day was the first date, and so everything we did was just a blast. The one thing that was tedious for me, I have tactile issues. Like in America were a little more sensitive to people’s mental health, and I didn’t like it when they put blood on me, and I had to have blood on me for half the movie. He was sticky. It was uncomfortable.

I’d be all over my hands and that was the most tedious. They’d just be like, put it on. I’d be like, well, can we wait until I eat?

And then once it was on, it was uncomfortable all day because I was sticky.

That was the only part of the movie that I was like, I’d never be able to do one of those movies like Eddie Murphy would do with the clumps, would all that makeup. I could never do that. I’d be losing my mind. New York’s famous comedy seller has opened a replica at the Real All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. That’s kind of neat This week Thursday through Sunday, a showcase with Rocky Dale, Davis, Joe Perino, Alex Koman, partist Parker and Mark Cohen two shows a night seven and nine thirty.

The LA Times asked some comedians about Elon Musk, thinking that Elon Musk is funny. In March, Congressman Jeffrey’s tweeted how stems are fighting hard for the American people, right wing extremists are fighting each other. In response to Jeffrey’s tweet, Elon Musk said, that’s what she said. Harry Knobol, who said the problem is fighting hard, doesn’t have a double meaning.

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Also, a second sentence preceded the jokes, so it’s not really clear what he …

Spencer Critten didn’t said what if he had just said chick please? It’s just as stupid, just as not sensible, but it fits a little better, right. Laurie Kilmartin said, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. It’s the kind of comedy that Ai writes, and this is what you can expect if they don’t settle the writer strike. I like what you did there.

Musk also made a joke about the pay attention here Texas Institute of Technology and Science. Right, so it’s the t I t S paying attention, trying to keep a clean Yes, the Texas Institute of Technology is science. Spencer kritten And said, saying that word out loud isn’t funny. Fun Bags is funny. Boobs is funnier.

There’s a lot of them, rocket dogs, chesticles. If you want to find the comedy in breasts, it’s there. And I’d sell to you yesterday about James A. Castor’s new musical album. I just thought this was cute.

A Castor remembers the moment he fell in love with music. He was six years old. He was at a party and somebody put on a compilation album and the songs on it men, it Works, down Under and Centerfold by the Jay Giles Band. Great tunes there, James A Castor And that’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows to see tomorrow.

Who does like vacations? Do you need some inspiration for next road trip? Are you excited to get out there and explore the world again? Hi? I’m Johnny Mac.

My podcast is called Travel Is Back. Travel is Back is travel for regular people. We hop in the car and we f like coach, muse or miles. We eat in normal places. We stay at normal places.

So what I do is I hop in the car, and I grabbed my quarterble recorder and I go somewhere. Season three kicks off on the road trip to Key West. You can check out the back catalog. There are popular episodes covered Chicago, Nashville, Vancouver, Seattle, a whole bunch more. Travel is Back road trips, or regular people follow a show on an Apple podcast or wherever you get your shows.

These are quick, these are casual, and it’s for regular people like you. Travel is Back.

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Featured: Bert Kreischer, Mark Hamill, Sarah Silverman, Bill Hader, Tig Notaro, Billy Presida

What’s in This Episode

• Succession series finale
• Barry series finale
• Bert Kreischer’s The Machine movie release and reviews
• Sarah Silverman HBO special debut
• Tig Notaro cancels Pride event performance
• Naked Comedy Show in Brooklyn with Billy Presida

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News late Night on Strike. The Late Bought says, tonight marks the end of Succession, the show that made us all feel grateful for our own dysfunctional families. It’s like therapy, but with more money and cousin Gregg. The ending of Succession as everybody talking, just like that infamous sent Brano’s finale, Cousin Gregg better hope they don’t invite him out for ice cream.

Barry also ends Tonight, Bill Hayter until the La Times. You’re always trying to write what’s honest for these characters as opposed to fan service. I’ve done fan service and the show immediately spits it out. We did something I can’t say what it is in the finale. I wrote it and Sarah said, why are we shooting this?

But that’s good. Hopefully you create an environment where people can come up to you and go this stinks. I put together today’s show very early on Friday morning. There was still almost no reviews available for Bert Kreisher’s The Machine. I find that very suspicious.

But at eight am on Friday, Rotten Tomatoes audience score was ninety nine percent not out if critics had reviewed it yet some of the audience reviews, and I would expect that Berts fans would like this movie a lot. One said, I was expecting a small movie better suited for streaming, but to my surprise, the movie was very cinematic and it actually had some great emotional beats as well as a wealth of comedy and committed fund from Mark Amil, maybe four stars. Another review, if you’re looking for something to laugh out loud out in public space, The Machine is a great deal of crude, obnoxious and provocative content delivered by the Machine himself, Bert Kreisher and Mark Amil is a treasure troph of talent he deserves well as Bert’s father. One professional review from the AU they wrote, The machines central story isn’t all that amusing. It’s played out by Jimmy Tasho as a strapping twenty something Bert.

The film’s flashback sequences surrounding his wild youth and how he utilized the pop culture of late nineties to make himself seem more humorous than he was aren’t all that funny. It’s extended exhibition that we just don’t need. But there’s an energy to Kreisher’s eventual story, and it helps that, in spite of his relative crudeness, that he’s watchable. The eventual story spoilers, ends up bringing Burt and his father played by Mark Hamill, to Russia, where the sleek villain and heel’s arena is described as camping it up just enough, demands Burt. He traces two decades plus steps and locate a watch that belongs to her mobster father.

There isn’t much here that demands to be seen on the big screen. If there was ever a movie that screamed streaming, it’s this. But you have to hand it to Sony Pictures for releasing This in theaters, playing into the welcome mind frame of a decade gone by, where smaller films such as This still got the most minute of lookins, even if it barely lasted as a theatrical engagement. Crazier fans are surely the machines target audience, and I suspect they’ll Gell enthusiastically with his brand of comedy. They gave it three stars out of five.

Movie Phone asked Bert Kreisher, what was it like playing an exaggerated version of yourself on screen? Where it said. Even in the shortcomings, I don’t fight people. I’m not a big fighter. So even in the fight scenes when I sucked, it was okay because Burt would suck.

That make a stress for me because I was really embarrassed because I didn’t know I had a kissing scene. I don’t read the action in scripts. I just read the dialogue. If I read the action, it’s going to take me a day and a half. So my wife comes to Serbian.

She says, you know you have a kissing scene tomorrow and I was like what. She goes, yeah, you have to kiss your wife. I’m like, hold on, are you being serious? She’s like yeah. I was so uncomfortable.

I hadn’t kissing another woman in twenty years. I’m not good at kissing people. I’m not the best kisser, and I don’t like it. I didn’t like first kiss as ever, So now I have to have a first kiss with someone in front of all these people. That made me uncomfortable.

He said he didn’t even pitch this movie. Did I do the story already? I can’t remember. Because I did a lot of shorts for YouTube, and I did the Weekly Comedy Thing, which is my weekly show on the Live one app. New episode out today, So forgive me if I did this one already, but I’ll do it quick.

He didn’t pitch the movie, pitch two others. This suit at the movie studio goes, so, i’ll make a movie with you. What do you want to make? Bert says, if you’re telling me, I get to make a movie, I want to make the Machine. The guy’s like, well, why didn’t you pitch that?

And Bert says, I don’t know. Pardon me? Is like, what if it’s a big hit and then I get kidnapped by the Russian mafia. The suit guy goes, sold, that’s your movie. It’s Godfather Part two meets the Hangover.

I love it. That’s some high praise for the movie. Movie phone lists other movies silvery to the Machine. Movie phone algorithm. I think you’ve lost your mind.

Here you’re ready, here’s the list. The Godfather and The Godfather Part two. You know, the two movies sometimes consider it be the two greatest movies of all time. Yeah, the Machine is just like that. They also compared it to The Godfather Part three, which you can’t even compare to The Godfather Part two.

So I’m not sure how this works also on the list they hang over the hangover port two, they hangover port three, which side unseen. I’m gonna guess it compares to the equalizer John Wick and clearly Sebastian Meniscalco is about my father. I’m not sure about your list. Their movie Phone. Sarah Silverman’s special debut on HBO last night.

She was on The Last Laugh podcast. In the special, Sarah jokes about how some of her humor might be selling out her culture for laughs. At one point during the special, Spoilers, Sarah asked the audience to the name of the book that Adolf Hitler once wrote. She said, some of the non Jews, I feel like the answered that as well. The answer mine comp She translates it to My Struggle and jokes My Struggle is there a more Jewish sounding book than actual Hitler’s book?

She says, I’m selling out my culture for laughs. I mean, if you think about it, what could be more authentically Jewish? I’m sorry, I can’t help it just makes me so much money. Ticknasarow canceled performance. This is making me go, Hm, what’s going on here?

It’s just odd to me. She has canceled her performance at the Walton Arts Center that was going to take place during the Northwest Arkansas Pride events. The reason given was a scheduling conflict. Now, in my experience in the entertainment industry, scheduling conflict is usually code for how do I get out of this gracefully? Maybe she booked a movie who Knows was scheduled for June twenty third.

That’s also when the Transmorchant Transfest we’re scheduled in Fayetteville. We’ll see what lands on Tig’s schedule on June twenty third. The New York Times wrote about naked stand up comedy. Billy Presida is the thirty three year old producer and host of the Naked Comedy Show. It’s exactly what you think you do comedy, but you don’t wear clothes.

The second time he performed nude, the woman he lost his virginity two showed up. At last she knew what to look like. He bombed, he said. Bombing is embarrassing, but bombing naked is the worst thing that can happen. He says.

For a good night of clothed comedy in Brooklyn, it can be tough to draw crowd, but starting last September, The Naked Comedy Show sold out ten days in advance. He now stages two nights every month and most have sold out. He books veteran comics, the kind of that have done sets on late night talk shows. Their material tends not to be that different from their regular gigs. He looks for for diversity not just in race, gender and sexual orientation, but also body type, and says it’s nice not to have five rip comics on one bill.

Main criteria are you funny? One comedian Twin Colin was the middle of a set. He stopped. He was pretending to forget a joke. He bends over and he grabs a small square of paper to remind him where the joke is.

Oh, where was the paper hidden under his foreskin? All right, it’s the last day of the New Zealand Comedy Festival. I’m going to miss you. I’ve played this guy before, Takashi Wakasugi. I played him when we were looking at the Sydney Comedy Festival.

I like him a lot. His show was called Welcome to Japan, and I found a few other unnecessary promby in No Sharyat, you are in trouble, fast Fast baping, Babe. You know so many people bape in Nosharyat, they’ve everywhere. I think that’s unnecessary, PRAMB. You know, smoking a cigarrette or stop smoking dolls?

Enough dollas enough, we don’t need to be treated. That’s necessary, RAMB. Some of my OSI friends they drink beer too much and they’re worried and they changed. They changed to the vodka. I’m soda.

Do you know Vodca I’m sada. That’s also unnecessary, RMB. But they drink much more, you know, drinking beer or stop drinking. That was enough, that was enough. We don’t need to between.

And you want to be to my country Japan, Japan is fantastic. You should go. You can go now. But in the pandemic Japan border clause for a long time, and so many of my OSI friends they wanted to go to Japan, but they could not because the border claused right then they went to South Korea instead, And I think that’s unnecessary, PRAMB. James a Castor has a new album.

He’s not sure if it’s serious, are funny. It’s a music album. It’s called Party Gator Purgat story. James understands if you’re writing it off because it’s music not comedy, says I do that when people do similar projects, I don’t listen to them straight away unless people tell me. By the way, William Shatner’s album with Ben Folds is actually amazing and should check it out.

Amen on that the William Shatner version of Common People is an epic, epic, epic, epic record that will just bring you joy. William Shatner, Common People pauses podcast. Your phone’s in your hand, go grab that song right now. William Shatner, Common People all right to you back eight. Caster hopes you’ll eventually feel the same way about Purgatory.

The album has its roots in comedy. Was part of a pilot from mockumentary in which a Caster, a former drummer, was making about recording an album as a costume alligator. The series wasn’t picked up, but it left him with a bunch of tracks. Not to say Party Gator, Purgatory is fully serious. It’s still inspired by the death, Afterlife and rebirth of the party Gator, but The Time says it’s also surprisingly polished, dynamic in times poignant.

A Castor says, just Lizard dies by its own merit and how good it actually is. And that’s it and I’m comfortable with that. That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows see tomorrow. Who does like vacations?

Do you need some inspiration for your next road trip? Are you excited to get out there and explore the world again? Hi, I’m Johnny Mac. My podcast is called Travel Is Back. Travel is Back is travel for regular people.

We hop in the car with like coach views or miles. We eat in normal places, we stay at normal places. So what I do is I hop in the car and I grab my portable recorder and I go somewhere. Season three kicks off of a road trip to Key West. You can check out the back catalog.

There are popular episodes covered Chicago, Nashville, Vancouver, Seattle, a whole bunch more Travel is Back road trips or regular people. Follow a show on Apple podcast or wherever you get your shows. These are quick, these are casual, and it’s for regular people like you. Travel is Back

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Featured: Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, Wanda Sykes, Joe Rogan, Stephen Colbert

What’s in This Episode

• Writers Strike impact on Late Night TV
• Netflix cracks down on password sharing
• Bert Kreischer’s ‘The Machine’ movie and how he found the story’s ending
• Tom Segura’s new special ‘Sledgehammer’ featuring family stories
• Tom Segura hints at unrevealed Hollywood project
• Wanda Sykes discusses Trump’s potential 2024 nomination

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

The Shark Deck. I’m Jenny McK with your daily company news. Late Night is off to the Writers Strike The Late Bought said. Netflix is cracking down on passwords sharing. It’s like they want us to break up with our exes and our best friend and that cousin we only see Thanksgiving.

Netflix is getting serious about passwords sharing. They’re implementing a new feature called the Awkward Family. Zoom. Call Bert Crazier. He’s got a new movie.

It’s called The Machine and the Light. Times asked him when did storytelling and drawing from real life experiences developing your stand up? Bert said, I was so obsessed with comics who had their own voice and their own story, and that’d say something you could tell wasn’t a scripted thing or something from the collective unconscious of stand up. It was something so authentic, and I remember being jealous of it and then realizing I have those stories too. I just have to be brave enough to say them.

It’s really tough to follow your own voice, in your own instinct. That’s the struggle, really. Bert said, I wasn’t someone who told my own stories. People told stories about me. I was the life of the party, the life of the party is never the one telling you he’s the party.

He’s just the life of the party.

And then someone’s like, dude, you hear what Bert did at the party last night.

And then I’d be in the room going, oh yeah, it was crazy, and I could tell you the story and Bell should a little bit and make it even funnier. But I was the guy that people tell the story about. I wasn’t the one telling the story about me. When I got in a stand up, it didn’t feel natural to tell your own story about yourself. So probably the first ten years of my career, I just wanted to learn how to tell a joke with a set up in a punchline.

I thought that was the craft, but it said the first time I’d told the machine, it was on Doctor Drew’s Love Line. An old college classmate of mine called up and said, hey, why did you tell the story about the time you robbed your friends on a train in Russian? And I was like, oh yeah, And that was like the most organic version of the story ever, because it was like I was in college again. I told it to Drew. He was blown away.

He literally said, that’s your story, that’s your movie. I trimmed it and I tightened it. I told it on a couple of morning radio shows and it was getting better every time, and I was like, oh, it’s a good radio story.

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And then when I did Rogan, that was the game changer.

I went on the show the first time and I was like, next time I come back, remind me to tell you the story about the time I got involved with the Russian MAFI and robbed a train. Rogan was like what. I came back the next week and he was like, you gotta tell that story. So I’d sold it and Rogan said, this is your story. This is your movie.

Okay, Bert really did two different people say, quote, this is your story, that’s your movie. I suspect that’s a little rehearsed. That one story changed my DNA as a stand up, like, I’m not even remotely recognizable to who I was ten years ago. With that one story, I learned that the most valuable lesson about storytelling is once the story has an end, you’re good. At first, I didn’t have an end to the machine.

I thought if I made the story funny in the middle, that’s all I needed to do. And I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. I thought the end was the tagline tonight you party with us. I was trying to punch it up, make it funny and edgy. One of the things people said a lot in Russia was they would remind you, this is Russia.

You’re in Russia. They would say that all the time. This is in America, you’re in Russia. I came up with the tagline after I asked the officer if I’ll get in trouble with my teacher. He says to me, f that bitch, this is Russia.

The light bulb went off, like I finally had an end to that story. Bert Kreischer said in twenty nineteen, I went to Legendary Studios and I pitched three things that weren’t the Machine. The producer there goes, all right, I’ll make it, and Bert says which one. The producer says, I don’t care. I just want to make a movie with you.

I think it would be fun. Which one do you want to make? Bert said, if you’re telling me I can make whatever a movie I want, it’s not going to be the three I just pitched you. And he said, what are you gonna make? And I said the machine, and he goes, I was wondering why you didn’t pitch me that.

I told him because I was so bored of pitching it. Best case scenario, it’s a hit movie and I got kidnapped by the Russian mafia. The producer looks at me and goes, sold, that’s our movie. It’ll be like Godfather meets the Hangover. SOSM Sigoura’s new special Sledgehammer July fourth, The Holly Reporter said, your whole family features prominently in the hour.

To what extents do they have in putting? Tom said, I mean, I don’t check with them at all. Actually, I had a much harsher bit about my mom that I didn’t do in the special. I was like, oh, I should do this when she’s dead, Like this is too mean. I remember when I was doing it for a while on tour and then she came to a show and I skipped it at that show and my sister was there, and I told my sister the bit and she was like, oh my god, Mom would have died in the room.

But my mom is seeing me do the closing bit spoiler it’s about his mom getting high off edibles and she came up to me after and goes, you’re a piece of crap. That’s what she said to me, but you know what, she still hung out. Sigoura says, yesterday I picked up my youngest he’s four. We were driving and somebody cut me off and I go idiot, and my son started laughing. He goes, you really are a comedian.

I go, and he’s four years old and he says, that was funny. You said that guy is an idiot. He loved it. And my seven year old saw me talk about him on Stephen Colbert and he was fascinated, and then he corrected something. He was like, I didn’t say that.

I said this, And I told him I just said it to be funny and he’s like, yeah, but it didn’t go like that, and I’m like, okay, okay. Sigoura was asked to describe his fan base, and he said it’s usually like, oh, this guy kind of looks like me. Like if I’m at the airport and he has a beard and needs to lose twenty pounds, I’m like, oh, this guy’s about to say something to me. He’s gonna be a fan. And they’re usually dragging their women over to me, I wouldn’t say.

The women are coming up to me left and right on their own, like, oh, I’m a huge fan. I mean I have a few and very lucky, but I don’t know. It’s always so much easier to talk about somebody else’s act and somebody else’s fan base because you just see it much more clearly. They asked Tom Sigoura, Hey, do you look at your pal berd Crazher and thank God? Like to do that?

Meaning a movie? And Tom said, actually, I have something I can’t tell you about just yet. Hmm. I’ll give you the scoop when the strike ends. The reporter asked him, do you feel like Hollywood executives know what to do with you and your talent?

Tom said, no, I don’t think they do. That’s the reason this thing is happening because I did it myself. I feel like I’ve been telling the past, Oh you know, this is the and like really, BS is how I’d describe it. But a big part of it, too, honestly, is that I’ve toured so aggressively that I just haven’t been available. There were offers for cool things that came in and I had to be like am in Toronto doing shows and they’re like, well, that’s when this show shoots.

But this store ending was kind of nice because I knew there was a break on the rise and to make this other stuff happen, and here was an interesting teaser. They said, does Brad Pitt have any idea prominently features in the special? And Tom said no, he does not. Varidy got a little political with Wanda Sykes and asked, Wanda, do you think Trump will be nominated again? Wanna said, I don’t see how.

I mean, they’re definitely pockets that he’s going to dominate, but I don’t see across the country how we’ll get the nomination, right? Are we that bad? Is the country that horrible? Really? Varidy pointed out he’s pulling higher than any other GOP candidate.

Wanda said, well, I mean they’re awful. Biden will beat him again. Yep, I said it, old man, Biden will beat him again. They asked Wanda why she didn’t talk about the slap again. Wanda was one of the presenters that night.

Why she didn’t talk about the slap in her special? And she said, I didn’t really have any jokes for it. I think people were tired of it, and I figured it was Chris’s face, so that’s his material. She wishes will Smith the best and says, I really hope you can come back, or really do Did he reach out at all? Yes?

He did when he called, I had the worst throat cold. It wasn’t COVID, but I was really sick, and I was like, hey, I appreciate you reaching out. When I feel better, I’ll getting such. But by then I was like he called, I don’t know what the call was for. I’m good.

Would want to Sykes ever host the Oscars again? She says, no, I don’t think so. I mean it was fun, but solo. No, thank you. Larry Wilmore addressed the Harvard College class of twenty twenty three and encouraged students to view success as a journey rather than a destination.

He offered three pieces of pseudo wisdom to the graduating seniors. These are phrases they can use in their lives. They are it is what it is, do what you gotta do, and play better. Larry says. It’s for when you’re just trying to take it to the next level, or you see some kind of improvement in your life, or you’re just unsatisfied with where You’re headed, play better.

John Cleese says the press has misrepresented him. He has denied reports that the Loretta scene is going to be cut from the stage version of Monty Python’s Life of Brian for fear that it’s transphobic. Last week, it was reported that the scene which a male member of the People’s Front of Judaea said he wanted to become a woman, the rumor was that scene would be dropped. The report was based on Klees receiving feedback from the actors that had run through that the scene would be problematic, but John said he was merely repeating the concerns but wouldn’t act on them. He said on Twitter a few days ago, I spoke to an audience outside London.

I’d told them I was adapting the Life of Brian so we could do it as a stage show, not a musical. I said. We’d had a table reading of the latest draft in New York City a year ago, and all the actors, several of them Tony Winners, had advised me strongly to cut the Loretta scene. I have, of course, no intention of doing so. So someone in the audience had called a journalist and misreported me.

Amazingly, none of the British media called a check. The reboard also said he was cutting the crucifixion scene but not the song Always Look on the Right Side of Life. Klees did not address the crucifixion report, but said the song would remain for very good reason. We don’t want to upset Eric Idol, and it’s his only contribution to the life of Brian’s script. Seems like those two aren’t getting along because Idol had suggested the song had been cut and tweeted, I have nothing at all to do with this production or adaptation.

As for the Loretta scene, a clease tell the Daily Mail, so here you have something that’s never had a complaint in forty years that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden, we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What are you supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way predictive of what was actually going to happen. Later in the original scene, Eric Idle plays Stan. He tells his fellow revolutionaries, I want to become a woman from now on.

I want you to call me Loretta. John Cleese’s character says what Idol says, it’s my right as a man. I want to have babies. It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them. Clease’s character, you can’t have babies, Idol.

Don’t you oppress me. Please, I’m not oppressing you. Stan you haven’t got a womb. Where’s the feet is going to jest date? You’ve got to keep it in a box.

From the Guardian, they took a look at Comedy Unleashed, a quote rebellion against the safe tramline orthodoxy of the contemporary comedy circuit. Wow, it’s a haven for freethinking comedians who leave their self censorship button at the door. Comedy Unleashed features some quote unquote canceled at figures, such as Andrew Lawrence and Grand Lenin. They’re both playing to night. The Guardian says that the man is there five years in.

The three hundred seat theater regularly sells out. It’s a monthly event. Co founder Andy Shaw said, if somebody’s canceled, we’ll put them on on prisable let the audience decide if they’re funny or not. Our red line is is it funny? If people are constantly worried about the possibility offending a single person in an audience that they’ll never follow their art nor be funny that your comedy needs for today.

Follow the show for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. See tomorrow. Who does like vacations? Do you need some inspiration for your next road trip? Are you excited to get out there and explore the world again?

Hi, I’m Johnny Mac. My podcast is called Travel is Back. Travel is Back is travel for regular people. We hop in the car and with like coach views or miles. We eat at normal places, We stay at normal places.

So what I do is I hop in the car and I grab my portable recorder and I go somewhere. Season three kicks off on a road trip to Key West. You can check out the back catalog. They are popular episodes covered Chicago, Nashville, Vancouver, Seattle, a whole bunch more Travel is Back road trips or regular people. Follow a show on Apple podcast or wherever you get your shows.

These are quick, these are casual, and it’s for regular people like you. Travel is Back