Author: johnnymacdcn

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Featured: Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman, Russell Peters, Dave Chappelle, Killer Mike, Patton Oswalt, Sam Morril

What’s in This Episode

• Daily Show considering permanent guest hosts instead of replacing Trevor Noah
• Jimmy Fallon’s 2003 guest hosting debut on Late Show with David Letterman
• Upcoming Daily Show guest hosts including Roy Wood Jr., Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, and Dulce Sloan
• Russell Peters interview on W5 about his career and comedy evolution
• Dave Chappelle collaboration on Killer Mike’s upcoming album
• Patton Oswalt giving commencement speech at William and Mary on May 19th
• Sam Morril discusses comedy writing techniques on The Good One podcast

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. Jason Zinniman in The New York Times asks what if the Daily Show used guest hosts permanently? Me being me immediately overacted to that and went, what he’re insane? But Jason writes, fillins for Trevor Noah have shown, well, they’re not fill ins for Trevor Noah, they’re fillins for nobody.

There is no host. Jason Ziniman of The New York Times. They’re not filling in for Trevor, He’s gone, Jason writes. Fillins for Trevor Noah have shown how exciting the lack of a permanent replacement could be. It’s an option with an illustrious history in television.

The most impressive accomplishment is how everyone, with the benefit of a typical daily show video and script is at least fine. It’s evidence that this vehicle, more than a quarter century old, has become a smooth, running, user friendly machine, a strength and a weakness. You saw both sides and the Trevor Noah error, which was competent, charming, if a little dull. The current guest host shows are not that they display passion unpredictability and the looming possibility of disaster. Particularly in the interviews.

Jason reminds us that back in the day, Johnny Carson always had guest hosts, and then in the nineties when Letterman went over to CBS and Jay Lenos took over the Tonight Show, the whole guest host thing kind of stopped for the most part until Jimmy Kimmel brought it back. Although when Letterman had it was it a heart attack. He had a couple of guest hosts back in the day, and I forgot this happened, and I have shared the clip on the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. In two thousand and three, the Late Show with David Letterman’s guest host was Jimmy Fallon. It was Jimmy Fallon’s first late night hosting gig, and Jason Zinneman writes, watching it now reveals an altogether different Fallon, more sarcastic, wiseacre than chipper enthusiast.

It’s clear he loved and was influenced by Letterman’s early comedy, and one of the fun aspects of guest hosts is seeing comics working out their personas. So I shared that clip and I watched it. I was mesmerized. I like Jimmy Fallon. I’ve got some Jimmy’s faun stories.

They’re good ones in the I’ll say them for a different day. But when you watch young Jimmy Fallon hosting Letterman Show doing the Letterman vibe, he even like walks up into the camera the way Dave Wood, it’s like, oh, you’ve got a different gear here that, for whatever reason, he’s not doing on the NBC Tonight Show. The Facebook group is Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. The Daily Show has announced some of the upcoming guest hosts. They include Finally Roy Wood, Junior, Desi, Lydick, Ronny Chieng, Michael Costa, and Dulce Sloan.

Roy Wood gets week of April third, check your calendar, Hey, that’s Monday. Then Jordan Klepper Desi on the twenty fourth, Sloan May first, Costa May eighth pick somebody already Comedy Central. Huh from ctv W five a weird, weird article with Russell Peters. I shared it on Sunday on the Daily Comedy News podcast group page, and the article gets kind of into the booking of Russell Peters and the waiting for Russell Peters, they wrote, W five went back and forth with Peter’s people. They were scheduling conflicts on both sides.

It took weeks of negotiations and finally we were given a day in time for an interview with Peters California home, although it was almost canceled at the last minute because the comic was juggling touring in downtime. That sounds like he really wanted to do it juggling downtime. The W five team arrived at Peter’s sprawling, contemporary, eight thousand square foot home in LA’s San Bernardino Valley. We set up on the main floor in a room and jampack with Peter’s memorabilia, next to an open tread, steel and wooden double staircase that ascends to the upper floor against a wall of glass. Several of his comedy buddies sat outside on the covered patio next to an a zoo colored pool.

Unfortunately, they didn’t mention who his comedy buddies are. I would love to know. Peter’s wife, Ali greeted us warmly. While waiting for her husband to show up. She casually sat on the staircase and chatted about the home’s architecture.

So time out, so Russell’s buddies are hanging pool side and Russell’s not even there all right, W five says. We also talked about the community we’re in. June of ninety four, residents had a front row seat to the famous O. J. Simpson high speed police chase.

A roar of a sports car pulling into the driveway signaled the arrival of the man of the hour, who entered the house and Breeze passed us to chat with friends and family. It was only when he recognized us that Peter’s laser focused humor and charm shifted in a high gear. He was excited to chat with a group of Canadians about all things Canada, excited to make me laugh. The interview was quintessential Peters, engaging, energetic, and unapologetic. He said, we’re free thinkers.

The minute you try to put reins on our brains, you ruin the game. Does he have any regrets, He says not really, but he tells us we made gay jokes freely, and we wouldn’t just say gay. We would say the F word, not that F word, the other F word. And that was perfectly normal back then and perfectly acceptable. But your job’s pushed the envelope.

Then you understand that the envelope keeps him moving away. So I was constantly chasing the envelope. Dave Chappelle will appear on Killer Mike’s upcoming album. During south By Southwest Killer Mike, he held a private listening session for the project inside a cathedral. One guest in attendance was Milwaukee radio host at DJ Kenny Perez, who told fans to run and embrace it when it drops.

He said, there are collabs with Andre three thousand, Lil Wayne, Dave Chappelle, and Moore. Samarell was on the Good One podcast back in October and I missed it, but there’s some really great stories in there with them. Shipping away at one of them, he said, Gary Goldman is great at getting laughs out of places he would never think to get laughs. I remember he had a joke where he just said, karrate, that shouldn’t be that funny, but it is because it’s very honest to his voice. He would just say, I don’t know why you guys are laughing.

That’s the proper pronunciation. You learn to get laughs in between the jokes, and the more you write, you need those because holy cow, storytellers, guys like Thomsigora, Jim Jeffreys, people who write these long stories, they have to find those little laughs. But joke riders need that too. You learn how to bring yourself to a joke so that it’s not just a joke, like a joke book joke. Patton Oswalt will speak at William and Mary’s commencement ceremony on May nineteenth.

I was on the William and Mary website and I loved how serious they took all of this, and they wrote some paragraphs and I’m going to share them with you. Oswalt, who was known for such roles as Spence on the TV show King of Queens and the voice of Remy in the movie Ratatui, will receive an honorary degree at the event scheduled for blah blah blah. When asked about giving the commencement keynote at his alma mater, the comedian quick to show is Williamsburg knowledge, stated I would like a bag of bread ends at a dip from the cheese shop from my services. Thank you. Then they had his official bio.

Patton Oswalt, ninety one. Oswalt started performing in comedy clubs as a student at William and Mary, where he wrote for The Flat Hat and was a member of Phi Capital and the Fencing Club. You didn’t know that? Did you? Did you know?

Patt? And Fedz? She didn’t Know That. After graduating with a degree in English, he embarked on a career in entertainment, earning accolades for his more than two hundred TV and film credits, as well as comedy specials and books. Oswalt has been prolific as an actor, appearing in such films as The Circle, What’s That, The Secret Life of Walter Middy, Zoolander, The Informant, Observe and Report, Magnolia, and Starsky and Hutch.

He received critical acclaim and a Gotham Award nomination for his part in Big Fan, and he was nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award for his role in Young Adults. On TV, he could be seen in leading roles and shows ranging from The Heart, She Holler Huh to the United States of Tara Well Patton. Those are not the strongest of credits. He has also appeared on such series as Parks and Recreation, Veep, Justified, two and a Half Men, and Seinfeld, where he made his acting debut. He recently competed on Celebrity Jeopardy, finishing the tournament in second place and earning two hundred fifty thousand dollars for the nonprofit Alice’s Kids.

His voice can also be heard in many animated films and shows, including The Secret Life of Pets Too, Rick and Morty, and Archer. Are you watching Kunk on Earth? You should be. It’s on Netflix. Kunk on Earth is currently the number one thing on my Top Funny Things of twenty twenty three list.

It’s not stand up, so it’s not the top stand up special. So I have like a list within a list. It’s the top funniest things, and then a subset of that is the top stand ups. But the overall number one funniest thing is Kunk on Earth. I’m now watching it for the second time.

The Wall Street Journal spoke to Diane Morgan, who plays Filamina Kunk, and she says, as Philamina Kunk, I narrate the history of civilization and ask posh experts funny questions with a straight face. They took me seriously at first, but now the cat’s out of the bag and they play along. What’s her favorite? Kunk Line school is far easier in Shakespeare’s day because he didn’t have to study Shakespeare. She says she no longer watches as much comedy except Curb Your Enthusiasm, and adds if Larry David stops making those, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Ellie Eater caught up with Otsko at Kaza. She immigrated to the US at age ten and settled in West la at her uncle’s apartment with her mother and grandmother. She said it took a while to get used to the sprawl of la and the less than dependable public transit. She said, I was on Kolbe Avenue near Barrington. I did think, God, we’re walking a lot just to get to McDonald’s.

And then if we didn’t want to eat at McDonald’s, it was just Marie Calendars right next door. So in my head, it was either McDonald’s or fine dining. At home. Meals were mostly cooked by Grandma, who served simple, stir friyed vegetables, steamed white race and sweet slimy chicken. Osco said, as a kid, I didn’t really dabble in spices.

And things like that. It was very simple. I just went with whatever flavors of the adults are recommended. Japanese curry’s probably the most flavorable thing that I was eating back then. When I’m eating Japanese food now, simple flavors.

If I do get rolls, it’ll just be one fish in it. I won’t do the ones with three or four fishes, flakes of Temporea and drizzles of different things. I usually don’t go for the ones that are named the Obama roll. All right, when you want to celebrate, where do you go? She said, cheesecake factory, go big or go home.

I don’t really eat that typically day to day, so we’re like, where do people go or used to go before they got all cool, the olive gardens, cheesecake factories, red lobsters. I really like the jambal eye there. When it comes to America or Western food, I really get into the creamy, the ranch, the cheese. So that’s a sign for me to get gluttonous. You can barely make it out of there alive.

But I kind of like that, Hey it’s my birthday. It sounds like Paget Brewster is not in the community movie. She tweeted last week, I miss Frankie Dart too. I hope to get a call. I’ll be in the movie, even just one line or no line, standing behind someone.

That surprised me. I thought that the extended cast in there. I mean, if you can have Jonathan Banks in anything, you gotta ask him, right, Professor Hickey, I would have him in. The Milburn Comedy Festival kicks off doing the story today because I understand how time zones work, and it’s probably already Wednesday in Melbourne as you’re listening to this. More than six hundred shows.

Melbourne is an awesome city. Guys, invite me down there next year. I tell my wife, Hey, I gotta go down to Melbourne for a month and record podcasts. She’ll be happy with that. The fun kicks off with the famed opening night Comedy All Stars super Show, this year hosted by Hannah Gatsby Concrete Playground Rights.

Other big ticket highlights to follow include the National Grand Final of Esteem to open My Competition Raw Comedy and the Deadly Funny National Grand Final, set to spotlight the country’s funniest First Nations talent. Some US comedians heading down there, the Lucas Brothers, Patty Harrison, Shalouis Sharp and Shang Wang. Hey, if you’re in Melbourne, don’t miss Shang Whang. I’m looking at the lineup for Wednesday night Boy one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten eleven. So well, thirty forty five, I mean, wow, twenty twenty five.

Wow, this is a ton of shows tonight. All right, I’m not going to read them, ALTI let’s see what catches my ass. I scrolled down. Would be stupid to go all the way to Melbourne at six o’clock to see British Invasion when there are five different shows at six o’clock, probably right, same question at six fifteen for the full Irish same question for six fifteen, keep comeds British comedy. Boy, I am scrolling down here.

There’s a good fifty shows tonight. It’s insane. Joe Avante I’ve heard of that’s at eight fifteen. Let’s go see that and then nine to forty five Best of Milbourne Comedy. We’ve come all this way.

That sounds like a good parent, right boy. I’m scrolling down here. I can’t get to the bottom, and I keep checking weight. Am I on to the next day? No here, let me pause the recording and I’ll actually count.

All right, I’ve counted. There’s one hundred and fifteen shows on Wednesday night. That’s insane. One hundred fifteen and I’ve checked the website. I’m not looking at the whole festival.

That’s just Wednesday night. I also saw a show called Lord of the Zings, a Keywie comedy showcase. That could be fun too, and on Tuesday night. Now, if you’re in Milbourne by the time you’re hearing this, you’ve missed all this. But US Americans, if we have a time machine, we can show travel.

I don’t know how that works. But also, like one hundred shows on Tuesday night. What a big festival. So I’ll be keeping an eye on this for the next month or show. But wow, that’s your comedy needs for today.

Follow the show for free on Apple podcast, Spotify YouTube. Melbourne is an awesome city, a walkable city. Spends a couple of days there, loved it. If you want to hear about that, check out my travel podcast. That podcast is called Travel Is Back and go down to like the end of season two.

So like I don’t know, September October, somewhere in there. I talked about Melbourne in an episode Wonderful Place if you can ever get there, one of the greatest cities on the Earth. That’s your comedy is for today, c 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 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 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 for 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, Will Smith, Dana Carvey, David Spade, Patton Oswalt, Kumail Nanjiani

What’s in This Episode

• Bert Kreischer’s Will Smith story from Dana Carvey and David Spade’s Fly on the Wall podcast
• Bert Kreischer’s 1997 Rolling Stone cover story as top partier at FSU
• Bert Kreischer’s meeting with Will Smith in the 1990s and private movie screening
• Patton Oswalt and Kumail Nanjiani join Ghostbusters cast

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 Jinny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. I have to go slowly and get this one right. Movie maker was recamping Bert Kreisher’s recent appearance on the Dana Carvey David Spade podcast Fly on the Wall. Burt starts telling a story about Will Smith, and I’ve done a little digging and I see he has told a Will Smith story as far back as twenty fourteen. Okay, so this is not Bert being opportunistic here, but the story caught my eyes because MovieMaker’s headline is Bert Kreisher mistakenly thought Will Smith and twelve other dudes wanted to have sex with him.

Okay, I’ll read. So it’s way back when Rolling Stone did the cover story about Bert Kreisher which launched his career. If you don’t know what that is, he was named the top partier at the number one party school in the country. Shall we stop off there? Sure?

Why not? April seventeenth, nineteen ninety seven, Rolling Stone the headline, Bert Kreisher the undergraduate. It’s taken the Florida State University students six years to become the man he is today, the top partier at the number one party school in the country back in ninety seven, they wrote the other day. On a Tuesday, shortly before the noon hour, Bert Crazier splashed a bit of peach tree schnops into a glass of orange juice, topped it off with zovadka, and thought he’d probably skipped class. He was a student at FSU.

Bert yawned and scratched at some of the stubble on his chin. He stuck a finger to his drink and tinkling the ice cubes floating around there. He thought about the day. If he didn’t go to class, he’d played frisbee instead in the early evening. He had always a few beers at home, then hit the bars until some o’clock in the morning.

Tomorrow, maybe he’d go to class, but without doubt he’d be drinking again by sundown. Hopefully he wouldn’t black out. Odds were against his blacking out because he hadn’t in a while. Then, looking forward in time, Burt saw Thursday evening a great big bash on his back deck with a live band and lots of beer. Friday evening getting sasas wherever.

Finally Saturday, he’d be super loaded before, during, and after the football game beyond that, into the further reaches of adulthood. He could not see why should he. He was deeply in the moment of now again. This from nineteen ninety seven fascinating right skipping ahead. He’d run twice for office at his fraternity Alfa Tau Omega.

The first time he made his big campaign speech in the nude and lost. The second time he dropped the idea of a speech. Instead, he appeared before his brothers in the nude and took a crap on a pizza box. General Bedlamon sued he won by a landslide. The rest of the story is Paywald.

All right, let’s get back to having sex with Will Smith, Gracier told David and Dana six months in Will Smith discovers me, I’m doing stand up. Six months I’m working the door at the Boston Comedy Club. I go to meet Will at the record studio or wherever, and he goes, you’re cool, man, we should go. We should hang out. And I’m like, yeah, thinking call me and we’ll hang out one day.

And he goes, what are you doing to night? And I’m like nothing, and he goes, let’s go to the movies. Gracier calls his dad, and Dad goes how to go, and I say, good, We’re going to the movies, and my Dad’s like on a date. Oh buddy, I think he wants to clean get up hook up with you. Gracher says, Dad, that’s impossible.

Dad says, what’s more likely the fact that you’re so talented in the six months of doing stand up that the biggest movie star in the world wants to do a sitcom with you, or that he’s tired of and I’m really cleaning this up women parts and he wants to hook up with you. I quite paraphrase there. Bert says, what do I wear? Following his father’s advice, Kreisher said he dressed as sloppily as possible and overalls at a sweater. He meets Will Smith at Planet Hollywood.

Someone tells him to go downstairs, quoting Bert here, Then there’s ten black dudes in this room waiting for me. I’m doing the math. I’m like, I’m sure he’s bringing Jazzy Jeff. That’s the thirteen dues I’m gonna hook up with tonight. He shows up with Jazzy Jeff.

I swear to God there was no sex involved, and he said it was a good movie, so it’s curious about this. And back in twenty fourteen, Bert Kreisher told the version of the story to the A V Club. In that version, he says, Will Smith’s boys discovered me in a club and they told me, I want to do a deal with you, but you have to get Will to like you. If Will likes you, it’s a deal. And I was like, done my head, this was my sweet spot.

I’m a huge hip hop fan. I’d have been a huge Will Smith fan since parents just don’t understand. I knew everything there was to know about Will Smith’s I was like, you just sent the stallion into the Kentucky derby. Anyway, I went to the music studio where he was working. They were like, mister Kreisher walking here, mister Smith will be in a second.

I walked in. It was a huge dance studio. I mean mirrors everywhere. There was a ballerina bar and two folding chairs in the center, and they said grab a seat. I grabbed a chair with my back towards the door, and Will Smith walks in two minutes later like a hurricane of personality, and I’m like, oh, oh my god, I love you.

I love hip hop, but I love Biggie. I love Tupac? Who killed Tupac? Who killed Biggie? Did you know he was on the cover of my Rolling Stone magazine?

I love Jada? Did she have sex with Tupac? I love black people. I literally rambled to him for an hour and he listened. When there’s a break, he would interject with a very poignant inside and I was like, this guy is amazing.

It was almost like a perfect date. Then all of a sudden, he was like I like you, and I was like I like you. And he said, what are you doing to night? And I said and I was like nothing. And he said, let’s go to the movies and I was like perfect.

He said, meet me at Planet in Hollywood at seven. I was like done, So I get up and walk out. Bert then tells a very similar version of what I just told you about the conversation with his dad. In the twenty fourteen version, Bert shows up wearing overalls on a sweater gets the Planet in Hollywood. He asked if Will Smith is there, and a woman says he’s in the back.

Bert goes to the back and there’s a mannequin of Will Smith and I go, no, I’m looking for the Will Smith to see Will Smith. And she was like Sun movie stars don’t hang out a planet in Hollywood. But I was like, do you mind if I wait for him? And she said sure, knock yourself out anyway. And I’m sitting there and all of a sudden there’s a six foot seven three and or fifty pound black dude named Charlie Mack who’s a real dude.

There’s a song about him. And he says, hey, are you Burt? And I go yeah, and he goes downstairs. I get downstairs. There’s nine black dude sitting in a room with a folding table in the middle, and I’m like, are you joshing me?

It’s one room with a velvet curtain on all walls. And he goes down here. I sit down. I don’t make eye contact with a soul. All I’m thinking about is the math of how much paraphrasing here sex?

I’m going to have this evening. Will Smith comes in with Jazzy Jeff and I’m like, how many guys is this? Will looks at me and he’s like, guys, this is the guy, and everybody starts walking right at me and I’m literally about to grab aty when the curtain’s open and a beautiful private movie theater shows up. Well, it looks at me and says, grab a seat. I’ll grab his drinks.

We watched American Pie. It was beautiful. I had the greatest time. He was awesome. At the end of the night, he goes, what’s you think?

And I go, it was great. He goes, no, what’d you think of the room? I go, it was beautiful and he said, what about the people at it? He said, you were a hip hop fan? Look around?

So I look around it. He goes, that’s bismark key. That’s cool mood. And I’m like, holy crap. And all I’m thinking to myself is I could have had sex with bizmur Key.

I quite cleaned that up. Cracked has some more about that. William Shatner’s story I’d Telled You. Shatner shared an anecdote where he did stand up as James T. Kirk.

Shatner’s idea was that he would perform as Captain Kirk. The arising would be really funny if the Starfleet captain wants to be a stand up comic but he doesn’t know how to do it. That meant delivering purposely hacky material, telling the worst jokes possible that take my wife please kind of humor. Shatner recounted the crowd stared at him with their mouths open and awe realizing they were in the middle of a complete disaster. Nobody laughed because they were too busy being stunned at this colossally bad idea.

Shatner said, it was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. Nashville Seeing caught up with Sarah Silverman. They asked her, do you find your jokes hit differently in red states or blue states? Sarah said, I mean, yeah, sometimes I know about this drag bill had just passed. That’s gross, and obviously I have a lot of abortion material.

It’s why to go to states where it’s illegal, But I think all the more reason to be talking about it’s just so bizarre. Every state is both, really. I mean, people think of California is so blue, but there’s so much red in California if you go to Orange County and Sacramento and all those blazes. That’s why I love doing those days, because people are like to come out for it doesn’t represent everyone in every state. And I like to think I can be entertaining at anybody, but I’m not for everyone.

I’m far less political in my stand up, but I still am. I talk about abortion, gay rights, gay stuff, so yeah, it’s always interesting. But I feel like in red States it’s even more appreciated to be honest. But yeah, Tennessee, man, I love it, love hate. I mean, I’m from New Hampshire, which is the same kind of like blue and red, but lots of red, but loud, proud blue.

Two. Not to be so partisan, I’m as left as you can be, but I get annoyed with others on the left as well. Nashville Scene followed up and said, you mentioned the drag bill. Sarah said, yeah, like, are we gonna stop car shows because that would be fair as well. It’s just so bizarre to Sandison, Florida two.

This is kind of like anything this is anti WOGA doesn’t matter if it hurts people, helps people. It’s just vindictive. It’s purely ego based stuff, and they’re hurting people. Just gross. I mean, and this is the Party of Less Government telling us what shows we’ve been put on.

Fu Sarah adds, I bet Dolly Parton will speak out because she’s Tennessee Royalty and no one supports drag more than her. She considers herself as drag. She’s putting on a face, a mask, in a wig, and she puts on this outer shell that she thinks of his drag. And there are so many drag dollies and she loves them, she supports them. I hope she’s outspoken about this.

I bet she will be. I love her so much. She’s one of the few things that right and the left can agree on. The Delli parton is the stuff. If you enjoy what I do here, one way you can support the show is become a premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts or five dollars a month.

You’ll get the episodes ad free and a little bit early. By a little bit early, I mean usually the afternoon before official release, and you can test drive that for free for a month if you want to check that out. They’ve announced a sequel to to Ghostbusters Afterlife, and I don’t know. I get what they’re going for here, but I wonder if it’s two on the Nose added to the cast. Patton Oswalton, Camil nan Gianni and I’m really reacting to the patent casting.

I feel like it’s two meta. I can’t imagine watching that movie and not being like, that’s Batton Oswalt, that’s Batten Oswalt. James a Cast also in the cast, joining Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon. The movie slated to come out December of this year, so they’re gonna have to get moving. I don’t know.

Quick note, I’ve been on the various reddits about stand up comedy and I’m noticing a lot of negative reactions to Bert Kreisher that the latest special did not go over well, and people are discussing if Bert Kreisher is a hack. He apparently had a couple of bad podcast appearance as well, and people aren’t feeling the special and the buzzes off Burt right now, we’ll keep an eye on that. That’s surprising. Jimmy o Yang, he’s fantastic. He’s got another special coming to Amazon.

It’ll launch May second, in good Deal. Jimmy Oyang will poke fun at Love Languages, Loser Friends, and negotiating with his Asian parents and the Chief Comedy Festivals coming to Trinidad, Colorado May fifth and sixth. In the Big Boxes, Ron Lynch and Emma Arnold. Are your headliners Emma Arnold? You know where she’s from?

Canada? Nope? Ohio Nope, Idaho, Yes, Boise, Idaho, Idaho apparently the hotbed of comedy in twenty twenty three. Among the people performing at the festival a friend of the show, Dan Booblitz. If you missed the episode eight days ago, I spent an hour talking comedy with Dan, and he hinted about an unnamed festival at which he might be appearing.

Dan, looks like we’ve solved the mystery. Huh, can’t keep anything secret from Daily Comedy News. I’ve got sources everywhere. I found out about this from an insider. Sources close to Dan Booblitz told me he’d be at the Chief Comedy Fest again.

That’s coming up in May. And that’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, or YouTube wherever you get your shows. See you tomorrow.

All right, here’s the pitch.

Five stories. They’re all good news. It’s called five Good News Stories. No negative news, just kid news. Nice easy way to start your day.

Hopefully smile. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac, host of five Good News Stories. So you get the premise, there’s five stories and they’re all good news, So the number five good news stories. Five good news stories follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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Featured: Adam Sandler, Lorne Michaels, Lauren Michael, Robert Smigel, Conan O’Brien, Greg Daniels, Bob Odenkirk, Jim Downey, Dan Olmeier, Queen Latifah, Josh Safdie, Jennifer Aniston

What’s in This Episode

• Adam Sandler receives Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
• Washington Post interview on Sandler’s career and respect in comedy
• SNL executives and cast divided on Sandler’s comedic style during 1990-1995
• Sandler’s early film success despite critical dismissal (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore)
• Dramatic acting breakthrough in recent films (Uncut Gems, Hustle, Myerwitz Stories)
• Sandler’s approach to ignoring negative reviews and trusting audience response

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 haven’t even looked at this yet. From The Washington Post, your headline, Adam Sandler doesn’t need your respect. Well, he came to Alora. He plays Adam, but he’s getting in anyway.

In a rear sit down interview with The Washington Post, the former SNL star and comedy icon reflects on his career as he receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. I am in Baby, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, The Post writes, for Sandler, popularity and praise have really come hand in hand. That’s right. There are people in the world who think most of the Adam Sandler movies are really, really, really terrible, but the Post writes that’s changed in some recent years. Sandler’s dramatic acting performances in twenty seventeens The Myerwitz Stories, last year’s basketball film Hustle, which as you know, is probably the second best Adam Sandler movie of all time, and especially twenty nineteen’s Uncut Gems, which as you know, is the best of the Adam Sandler films.

Those brought unlikely and ultimately fruitless Oscar Buzz twenties throwback comedy Huby Halloween and we’ll put that one in the garbage pole. Confirmed why Adam Sandler has been packing movie theaters and arena since the Clinton administration. The Mark Twain Award puts Adam Sandler in a company of such figures as Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett, and Steve Martin. Lauren Michael says the nature of comedy, as you get the audience, you get the money, respect is the last thing you get. Jimming ahead a few paragraphs until all the time when Adam Sandler had started.

Billy Madison debuted at number one of the box office. It also got terrible reviews, and then the Post writes for a second time terrible reviews with terrible and italics. Sandler said, when Billy Madison came out and I realized I’m going to be a newspaper, that was a big deal. When I was a kid. If I got a couple of hits in baseball and was in the Union leader, Adam Sandler, you know shortstop, I got a single into double, I got excited, and then I read a couple of reviews and I was like, woof that hurts.

I thought they were gonna a good sign with it like I did, and then Happy Gilmour was getting trash when my friends were getting all riled up, and I just said, nah, I don’t need to read that stuff. I decided I wanted to talk through what I like to do, to do my stand up, I’d like to do my movies. I was just happy doing that. Lauren Michael has talked about Adam’s SNL audition. Lauren said, most people audition in the style of things that have already been on the show.

But what I’m looking for is something that makes you laugh because you haven’t seen it yet. Both of them had that. Adam was truly funny, but in a style it was completely new and fresh. During Sandler’s SNL run from nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety five, there were two factions emerging inside thirty Rock, those who got it and those who didn’t. I didn’t work at thirty Rock at nineteen ninety five, but you can count me in the those who didn’t.

Executives were known a lodge complaints about his work, and within the clicky cast and writer’s room there was also a split. Robert Smigel was a writer on the show for eight years and said it read through. Adam would do a weekend update piece like we was a travel guy, and the joke would be that he was just not doing what a travel guy is supposed to be doing, but he was delivering the information with a blissful idiot’s enthusiasm, and it was incredibly funny. I remember me and Conan and the nerds Greg Daniels and Bob Odenkirk giggling uncontrollably in one corner of the room, the room that otherwise had a black cloud hanging over it. Jim Downey, writer on the shows, that Sandler was the closest thing s and l ever had to Jerry Lewis wacky voices off Gilter characters he could also sing down.

He said. Ordinary people had no problem with Sandler, and really smart people had no problem, but there was this group in the middle who would just take great offense at this kind of thing. They thought it was self indulgent, in infantile. Hi, Jim, nice to meet you. That’s me I think about.

Adam was most performers, it’s very important that they’d be respected as intelligent and often more intelligent than they really are. Adam was a guy who did not care if he thought he was smart, and in fact, when out of the way to obscure the fact that he is, I dare say a lot more intelligent than ninety percent of the performers I’ve worked with. Dan Olmeier, a network president, targeted Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and David Spade. He would tell Lauren Michaels, these guys aren’t funny. Michael said, I think they are the exacts long for the past for Rosanna, Rosanna data where Chevy Chase’s prat falls.

They didn’t understand Sandler singing a turkey for me, a turkey for you, Let’s eat turkey and a big brown shoe. I like these executives. They sound like smart people, Lauren Michael said, whether it’s in painting, or in music or in writing, style changers are disruptive and their action to Adam on the show in the world was growing, but it wasn’t visible in the mainstream because they were all baby boomers in occasional gen xer with a podcast in his pastment, Sandler said, I don’t think I ever met Don all Meyer. I shook it off. It’s not what I heard when I walked down the street, and some kids talk to me about crazy pickle arm.

I was going by the response of my New Hampshire friends calling me up, my father telling me his buddy’s kid thoughts such and such was funny, or my brother what he liked. I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t sit there and go, maybe I should change. By nineteen ninety five, Adam had been on SNL for five seasons and Lorne Michael said, listen, I could protect him at the show at least for now, but they’re so adamant about his not being funny and not being good, so I think he can go. He can leave, and so Adam Sandler left Saturday Night Live.

He wondered if he would keep getting opportunity. Sandler said, maybe the other companies are gonna say don’t hire him because of this. They don’t like him over there, and maybe there’s a reason. And I was probably nervous about that, but I didn’t doubt myself. Billy Madison comes out.

Ticket sales keep increasing. The water Boy made one hundred and eighty six million dollars on a twenty three million dollar budget. Big Daddy from nineteen ninety nine made two hundred thirty million dollars. Queen Latifa It talked about one of the very few, rare, actually good Adam Sandler movies, fifty First Dates. That’s probably the third best Adam Sandler movie.

The queen said, I love fifty First Dates. Adam knows how to play the romantic comedy. And I think a lot of it is because this is a guy I’d like to meet. This is a guy that would make me laugh. This is a guy who’s sweet.

This is also a guy who has real feelings and gets ticked off. Josh Safty talked about Uncut Gems, which is of course the greatest of the Adam Sandler films, and there’s only like five good ones. Does the Basketball one, Uncut Gems and the ones with Drew Barrymore. Josh Safty said, there’s this rage and deep sweetness to him, and he’s the only person who could have expressed what made Howard lovable for us. Jennifer Anniston has made three movies with Sandler, including Murder Mystery two.

She remembers watching Adam Sandler Rhyme Delhi with Arthur Fonzarelli when he did the Hanakah song. Anniston said, and personally, I think you Don’t Mess with the Zohan is one of the funniest movies that he has the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Airs eight o’clock tonight. If you like what I do here, you’re probably not Adam Saidler. But the rest of you can go to Buy me a Coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News. There are a couple of bucks in the tip jar.

I would take your money. I won’t go to an Adam Sailor movie. Nope, That’s not what I’m gonna do with your money. I’m going to go to the National Donuts chain and I’m gonna pick up my large ice coffee with caramel and almond milk that I ordered on the app Come Home. Probably won’t watch an Adam Sailer movie, but if I do, it would be uncut Jams, although I like the Basketball one a lot.

That was kind of fun. Buy Me a Coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News. Hey, Jim Gaffagan, do you prefer doing stand up at arenas or theaters? Jim said, I think the technology has advanced so much that arenas aren’t a bad experience, but a smaller venue in a theater setting, I think that’s ideal because comedy clubs are great, but at a theater you’re not disrupted by waiter service or anything like that. There’s a focus.

The environment kind of makes people behave better. But yeah, I would say that theater is are probably the ideal thing. That’s why whenever I tape a special, I always do it in a theater setting. Yeah. Can you imagine, like Jim Gaffagan live at Giant Stadium.

That wouldn’t work. Jim, who would you cite to some of your influences other than David Letterman? Jim said, gosh, you know, since I started, it has changed so dramatically. But I would definitely say that Seinfeld and Brian Reagan were influences once I started. But I think that growing up listening to George Carlin was a big thing.

It’s ever evolving. I’ve been doing it for thirty years, so what inspired me before? I’ve gotten to this very much self assignment thing. So like, I really love the observational comedy when I started, but now very much in a storytelling. I also want to deal with different topics in an interesting way.

It’s a very strange thing because after you do stand up for so long, it’s really this evolution of this relationship you have with your audience. Like the big advantage is that know your sensibility. But then it’s like any good friendship, the conversation has to evolve. We’d like to think we have the same conversation with our friends, but we really don’t. It’s always kind of evolving, and that’s what makes some of our friendships so interesting.

So some of it is delivering the show, but also challenging myself and not just being repetitive with the type of comedy I’m doing. If that makes sense. That does make sense. Jim Gaffing, And that’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple Podcasts or Spotify YouTube wherever your shows.

See you tomorrow. Hello, I am Mark Francis, host of a daily podcast about the British royal family called Palace Intrigue. Did you see what Megan Michael did in her latest documentary or what Prince Harry said in his new book? While the Kings and Queens and Princes and princesses are ready to explode, Andrew is ready to implode, Royal sources are jumping at the bit. The inlaws just can’t stop the UK tabloids are about to burst.

Americans can’t get enough, the kids can’t get any cut, the press can’t get any uglier. And Wills and Kate, well, they’re just wonderful. Get your daily dose of gossip and news from the world’s most royal family. Follow Palace Intrigue on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your shows.

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Featured: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Jerry Seinfeld, Joan Rivers, Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Bill Cosby, Dave Chappelle, Robin Williams

What’s in This Episode

• Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Stand-Up Comedians of All Time list from February 2017
• How comedy reputations have changed since 2017, including Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K.
• Rise in popularity of Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer since 2017
• Tig Notaro’s ranking at #35 on the list
• Analysis of the top 10 comedians on Rolling Stone’s list
• Johnny Mac’s personal comedy favorites and ranking challenges

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 and something a little different today. I’ve wanted to revisit this topic. I did it originally back during the pandemic. It’s from Rolling Stone their fifty best stand up Comics of All Time list.

Now, a couple of caveats. This list is from February fourteenth, twenty seventeen, so obviously between then and now some things have changed. For example, it’s not as cool as it once was to say, yeah, I love Dave Chappelle. It’s definitely not as cool as it once was to say, yeah, Louis C.K. Is the new Carlin.

Right. So there’s that, and there’s also things like, was Tom Sagora any kind of name in twenty seventeen, I don’t think so Bert Kreischer, I don’t think so. Now the Cigar and Kreischer fans they were great, you know what I mean, They’re more popular now than they were in twenty seventeen. What got me started here is I was recently doing a story and I saw the tig Nataro was on the list, and I was curious. I’m like, okay, I like tig Nataro.

She’s probably like forty nine forty forty seven. She’s like in the mid thirties, and that made me want to revisit this list and see, all right, what’s up here? So I’m just going to read the list and comment as I go along. I have not prepped for this. Number.

Fifty is Wanda Sykes, Okay, kind of have to see who else is on the list or not before judge. Forty nine is A Z’s. I’m sorry, I’m not sure if you made this list today as Z’s would still be on the list. For one thing, he was comedy canceled, and two I don’t think the body of work is there. I think maybe back in twenty seventeen he was a bit of an IT comic and he’s not it at all right now.

Forty eight is Margaret Show Forty seven Elaine Boozler. Nice to see her on the list. She may not be a name, you know, Rolling Stone wrote, imagine the prototypical female comic of the nineteen eighties, big hair, suit jacket with shoulder pads and the sleeves rolled up the brick wall behind her. You’re imagining Elaine Boosler. I used to really enjoy her back in the day.

Forty six Reggie Watts. I just think that’s crazy. I like what Reggie Watts does, But is he one of the fifty best stand up comics of all time? I don’t think so. Forty five Freddie Prinns.

You maybe two youngs remember Freddie Prince, not Freddie Princes Junior. Freddie Prinns. He was a comet that big sitcom Chico on the Man. He died by suicide at age twenty two. He only had one album called Looking Good and one early HBO special.

He was a comedy monster for a very brief time. Forty four. Russell Peters good pick. He’s under the radar in the States, international superstar. Love it good name to have on the list.

Forty three, Amy Schumer forty two, Phyllis Diller forty one, Bernie Mack forty Gary Shandling. Yeah, he was a really good stand up starting to become forgotten, which is a shame. Probably more known for his sitcom work or television work. Now and You Forget. He was in the running to host The Tonight Show Johnny Carson had two rotating permanent guest host, Jay Leno and Gary Shandling.

Gary passed away in twenty sixteen. Wow, it’s been a minute. Thirty nine Mom’s mably interesting pick there. I’m not that familiar with her work. Thirty eight Roseanne Barr.

So there’s an example of someone who if we redid this list today, I bet Rolling Stone doesn’t put Rose and Board thirty eight. Who knows? Thirty seven Sam Kinison. I probably would have Sam Way higher on the list. Again, another shooting star, but for a few years they are Wow.

Sam was amazing and one of those acts that when you first saw him you were like, wow, this is different. Thirty six Daniel Kitson Are you like who? Am I like? Who? Let’s read the paragraph using stand up in theater into carefully structured silla ventures.

This British comic scrutinizes bits of his biography while contemplating bigger issues than a nature of time, memory and individual perception. Kitson’s incredible command of language and craft is apparent, whether mulling the death of an ant or a scathing review of his act as he swirls in and out of odd tangents. Interesting pick to put on the list here. I’ll be curious to see him any other British comedians make the list. I don’t know what to do with that.

That just that totally through me. Thirty five Tig Nazaro, I like, take a lot. Is she the thirty fifth best stand up comedian of all time? It seems a little high to me. I don’t know.

Thirty four Patton Oswalt thirty three Jeanine Garoffalo, all right, so right there, I would put ahead of Jeane Garoffalo. Thirty two Patrese O’Neil. The comedians love him. I never enjoyed my time with him. He just had this thing where he would go at everyone just to make uncomfortable and just made himself a person he didn’t want it being around.

I know the comics love him, but so I can’t judge him. Clearly didn’t enjoy my time with him. Thirty one Sarah Silverman. I would put Tick Nataro ahead of Sarah Silverman, no doubt. Thirty Woody Allen, didn’t we cancel him?

Twenty nine, Dick Gregory twenty eight, Robert Klein twenty seven, Red Fox twenty six, Rodney Dangerfield twenty five Eddie Murphy. So it’s interesting, right, Eddie in some ways was the Beatles, and in other ways there’s not much of that work there, and none of it in the last forty years. So yeah, I guess it is hard to put him in the top five. And yet for people of a certain age, being my age, Eddie Murphy was the man, partially because we were too young to realize he was just doing a cover actor Richard Pryor. Really, well, let’s take the break here and come back and do the top twenty five, twenty four Susie Eddie Izzard, twenty three Don Rickles love it.

Maybe he should be hard. We got to see as we get closer. Twenty two Jonathan Winters. I know people love him. I never got at twenty one.

Bob Newhart fantastic. Have you ever listened to Bob’s stand up work? I know you know him from the sitcoms. Have you ever listened to his stand up comedy? It’s all fifty check your calendar.

John sixty years old now, but it’s really fantastic. Number twenty Mitch Hedberg, all right, I love Mitch Hedberg. I don’t know if Mitch Hedberg should be ahead of Bob Newhart, and I love Mitch Heedburg. He’s in like the top five of my personal list. Who’s your personal list.

Johnny Mac. Maybe I’ll do that at the end. Nineteen Albert Brooks. M seems high to me. Maybe I’m just too young.

Eighteen Kevin Hart all right? Kevin Hart sells out arenas and he’s really famous, and he’s in movies and everybody who loves him. Is he really that good of a stand up? Though? I don’t know about this list at all?

Seventeen is Bill Burr all right? Sixteen Billy Connolly love it? Fifteen Stephen Wrights fourteen Andy Kaufman, interesting pick Andy, Andy’s like his own category. I don’t know. You could tell me any Kavian is the greatest of all time.

You could tell me he’s not really a statup. I don’t know. Fourteen Andy Kaufman Sure Thirteen Bill Hicks. That’s bad news for Dennis Leary twelve Robin Williams. Eleven Steve Martin, you’re ready for the top ten here?

Ten marked Saul rolling Stone. Writers just trying to prove they did some homework. Nine Dave Chappelle eight Bill Cosby. I told you that Sliss would probably be a little different if we did it now. Seven.

Jerry Seinfeld six, Joan Rivers five Chris Rock, four, Louis c. K He’ll be lower now. Three Lenny Bruce. Interesting to George Carlin. And can you figure out who number one is?

If I gave you all those other name James, Yes, of course number one. Richard Pryor. All right, nothing egregious there in the top ten Johnny Mac, what is your personal list? M I don’t know how to rank them, but off top of my head, I’m a big fan of Carlin. I’m a big fan of Headburg.

Being my age, I loved Eddie Murphy, but I can’t ignore that Eddie Murphy’s doing a really good cover actor Richard Pryors. I’d have to throw Pryor in the mix. Even though I’ve always enjoyed Eddie’s material more than Richard. It’s a little challenging there for me. I do like the kind of comic like Matt and Hospital Brian for saying I do like that style of comedy a lots.

I do like Bill Burr a lotts h. I don’t know if I’m ready to give you a definitive five Kennison. Kinnison was awesome. Don’t have to give you a top five. How about this?

It’s five hundred years from now, we’re alpen Heaving at the cool comedy club. Who’s playing? I want to see Hedberg, Kinnison, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, that’s for given, one more named John, and Shang Wang. I want to see Shang Wang. He can open.

I’m not your comedy news for today, John, there was no news today. You know what I mean. It’s how I lock out the show. Follow show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. See you tomorrow,

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Featured: Dave Chappelle, Katt Williams, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden, Sam Morrell, Tim Heidecker, Justin Royland, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Matt Besser, Tig Notaro

What’s in This Episode

• Dave Chappelle’s fake Twitter account war with fake Katt Williams
• Trump indictment and late-night comedy jokes
• Sam Morrell’s 45-minute Netflix special strategy
• Tim Heidecker’s Two Tims Tour announcement
• Justin Royland charges dropped due to insufficient evidence
• Cheech and Chong biopic in development
• Tree Fort Comedy Festival in Boise with multiple shows
• HBO renews A Black Lady Sketch Show for season four
• Broken Lizard’s Quasi trailer release for Hulu

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 Chenny Mack with you Daily Comedy News. Jimmy Kimmel had a great question. If Trump goes to prison, does the Secret Service go with him? Like do they have to be in?

Do they have to serve? It sounds like the premise for a Mark Wahlberg Kevin Hart movie Right Jail to the Chief, Love It. James Gordon said, tell you what, I bet Trump’s ready to fund the police. Now Cordon again, Milani is at Marlago, Like, please don’t put him under house arrest. Please don’t put him under house arrest.

Anything, but how’s arrest? Dave Chappelle, it’s all the story. On his podcast, he said the story took place when Twitter first started. Chappelle tried to sign up for Twitter, but he found out the name Dave Chappelle was already in use. He thought that was odden, checked out who was using his name.

Turned out to be somebody pretending to be him, who he calls fake Dave Chappelle, Fake Dave Chappelle at pictures and everything. At first, Dave was like, I need to put a stop to the page. Then he started reading the guy’s tweets and thought they were hilarious and figured, hey, I’ll get a good comedy reputation without having to pay this guy. Chapelle became so intrigued with Fake Chappelle that he would get coffee every morning and check Twitter just to see what Fake Dave was up to. Then Fake Dave Chappelle went rogue and started attacking celebrities and friends of Real Dave.

One of the celebrities that he attacked was Kat Williams. Fake Dave Chappelle and Kat Williams started going at it on Twitter. The problem for Real Dave was that Kat Williams was saying things to the fake Dave that we’re actually hurting Real Dave’s feelings. But wait, there’s more. The guest on the podcast, Cat Williams, Kat told Chappelle he never had a Twitter accounts.

Turns out, Fake Dave Chappelle and Fake Cat Williams we’re having a war. Real Dave and Real Cat find that very funny. So do I. I apparently missed back in October a really good interview by A Good One podcast with Sam Morrell, and I found this exchange really interesting as I went back and looked at it, A Good One asked Sam, hey, you filmed seven shows for your Netflix special same time tomorrow, but the running time is only forty five minutes. Sam said, the Netflix deal I got wasn’t incredible, so I’m like, why am I giving them a full hour for material?

I look at his at a teaser for the road. I cut a lot of stuff, so it’s kind of like I can self release that stuff. It’s like bonus crowd work. I could start the new hour with some of that material. I’ve also put out three specials in the last three years.

I’m tired. Follow up question, do you care about the sanctity of an hour as an idea? Sam said, I think it’s a backwards idea. They have all this data showing that people’s zone out after like minute fifteen, So why am I giving a full hour? I think it was Ari Shaffier who told me the Comedy Central demanded he gave them over an hour, So he gave them like an hour nine minutes, and the special aired forty two minutes long, and he’s thinking, did I just waste twenty seven minutes?

This is crazy. I don’t think they realize how hard it is to write jokes that you please with and also promote gigs all the time. Tim Hidecker is going on tour. It’ll be the two Tim’s Tour, where he does his serious musical stuff with his very good band, plus a set of comedy featuring his quote no More BS Persona. This kicks off in Monterey, California, July twenty eighth, heads back to the East co including Webster Hall in New York on August ninth, and then finishes up in Oklahoma City.

The one in Oklahoma. On August twenty fourth, the charges against Justin Royland were dropped. That’s the Rick and Morty co creator charges involving an ex girlfriend would dismiss to quote due to a lack of sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, said a spokesman for the Orange County District Attorney. Royland tweeted the word justice and set him. Still deeply shaken by the horrible lies reported about me, he wants to move forward.

His statement, I’ve always known these claims were false. Most of all, I’m disappointed that so many people were quick to judge without knowing the facts, based solely on the word of an embittered X trying to bypass due process and have me canceled. The into statement, saying he plans to move forward and focus both on my creative projects and restoring my good name. They’re making a biopic of Cheech and Chong. That sounds cool.

The Hollywood Reporter has some nice boiler plate here. Cheech and Chong came to prominence in the seventies and eighties, becoming You can’t come to prominence in the seventies and eighties. You come to prominence and then you’re prominent. Come on becoming synonymous with stone culture by riffing on and lifting up the counterculture of the time, from hippies to of course, cannabis. Their combined output included successful stand up shows, comedy albums, and low budget feature films, including Up in Smoke, Cheech and Chong’s next movie, and Nice Dreams.

In a joint statement, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong said jointly, and I don’t know how. I’d never understand how joint statements work. Are they like the borg? Do they just say this at the same time together? On three one two three, We are excited to show the world how two dudes from completely different backgrounds got together, change comedy and made cannabis mainstream.

Are you in Idaho, home of Ryan Hamilton. Well, gone on over to the Tree four to Comedy Festival. Eight o’clock tonight at the Boise Center East. It’s early show featuring one two three four six seven comedians. Shane Taurus will be the most famous on that list.

Meanwhile, at eight fifteen over at mad Sweedebrew Hall, one two three, four five six comedians, Matt Besser being the most famous there ten fifteen at the Boise Center one two three fo five six seven different comedians, And at ten thirty at matt Sweed six different comedians. Again, all right, plenty of comedy tonight, John, you always do that. What should we go see? We saw Matt Besser recently in our hypothetical travel so let’s go see the Shane to Horror show early. And since I won’t want to walk anywhere, since we’re already at the Boise Center, we’ll see the late show at the Boise Center this weekend.

For the first time in a long time, I have some weekend filler, which I’ll tell you about in a second. So I’ve already recorded and didn’t include what should we do on Saturday? So let’s just do this now. Five thirty Improv for Humans with Matt Besser podcast taping. All right, another reason not to see Matt Besser tonight eight o’clock.

Boyse Center has an early show. There’s also a late show and guess what, Matt Sweed also has an early show and a late show. But the headliner in town which shows at eight and ten thirty the Egyptian theater tig Nataro. Let’s try and see Matt Besser early at five thirty and then we’ll go see tig Nataro. How’s that sound.

HBO is bringing back A Black Lady Sketch Show for season four. All the main players will be back. A Black Lady’s Sketch Show returns April fourteenth. Remember a Broken Lizard? Yeah, they haven’t had a movie in a while, it’s been five years.

Well, they’ve dropped. The trailer for Quasi Quasi is a send up of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. A hapless hunchback yearns for love but finds himself in the middle of a murderous feud between the Pope and the King of France, when each orders the hunchback to kill the other. That’ll be on Hulu on April twenty eight, which is probably not accidentally four twenty and Johnny mag Ye ed said, you were going to get back to that thing from Vulture where they had the chat gept write some jokes in the style of comedians, and you never did. What’s with that?

I know? Anyway, Vulture had the chat cheept write some jokes in the style of Maria Bamford. I don’t even do a half, asked Maria Bamford. So I’ll just read this straight the chat gebt, as Maria wrote. And I’m not sure how to feel about getting older.

On the one hand, a more experienced than wiser. On the other hand, I can’t remember anything. I went to the grocery store the other day and forgot why I was there, so I just walked up and down the aisles until I found something that looked familiar. That’s how I ended up with a cart full of butternut squash and cat food. It’s like my brain is slowly turning into a random number generator, you know.

I kind of like that. Let’s see what Maria said. She said, I thought it was interesting that this says in the style of me, because it isn’t personal my stuff. It’s about mental health and personal experiences. And the way the chatbot did it was very observational and crowd pleasing, nothing that anybody would be uncomfortable with.

It felt more like a very popular club comic act, which can be great. One more from the chat GPT. As Maria Vanford wrote, you know what’s the worst thing about getting older? You can’t do anything without making weird noises. You stand up, you’ve grown, you sit down and grown you bend over your wheeze.

I feel like I’m auditioning for a sound effects library. And don’t even get me started on how long it takes me to get out of bed in the morning. It’s like watching a sloth trying to pull vault. Maria locked into the line I did too. She said, it’s like watching a sloth try to pull vault is a legitimate, excellent punchline.

It’s taking a low energy animal and then having them do something spectacular. If you read comedy books, they say the way to make something funny so to amp it up to the nth degree and say something unexpected. So in that way, it’s done a great job. All right, this weekend, So what do I have for you? On Saturday.

You remember a couple of weeks back, I said I wanted to revisit the fifty greatest and up comedians of all time, as listed by Rolling Stone back in like twenty sixteen or so. I revisited it. So that’s tomorrow’s episode. I just felt like doing that. And last week I had so much that I had recorded the whole weekend and still had stuff left over.

So I planned out my editorial counter and I said, I will play that card on Saturday, March twenty fourth. On Sunday, it’s Adam Sailor Day because, as you know, Adam Sandler won the Mark Twain Prize for Humor and CNN is going to telecast it, and The Washington posted an article about Adam Sandler. So I decided to take a look at that. So that’s this weekend, and you can follow the show for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. And I’ll see you tomorrow.

So you’re at McDonald’s and you get your bag and you open your bag. You want to grab a couple of fries or something, and there’s five thousand dollars in it. Yeah, this happened at one guy Hi, I’m Johnny Mac, host of Five Good News Stories. He gave the money back. Don’t worry.

If you want to start your day with a smile. Twice a week, I’ve got five good news stories for you. For example, there’s an airline for dogs. Or what about the woman in her eighties who just released her debut album. How about the dude who found one hundred and fifty corn on the cobs under his floorboards?

Is corn on the cobs even the way you say that? Who cares? And yes, that was a pony at the supermarket? Five good News Stories, the number five good news Stories. Five good News Stories, the number five Good news Stories.

Wherever you get your podcasts

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Featured: Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Jason Sudeikis, Tom Brady, Tim Dillon, Roseanne Barr, Taylor Tomlinson, Leon Morgan, Brian Regan

What’s in This Episode

• Mark Twain Prize ceremony and Adam Sandler tributes
• Chris Rock’s comedy special and positive reception
• Tom Brady roast conditions and family rules
• Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen separation rumors
• Leon Morgan Netflix special announcement
• Taylor Tomlinson secures two Netflix specials
• Kill Tony episode review with Tim Dillon and Roseanne

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 mag with your Daily Comedy News. More details from the Mark Twain Prize. The other night, Conan O’Brien sold the Kennedy Center, You’re making a terrible, terrible mistake. He talked about Adam Sandler and said a lot of amazing, amazing people have flown to DC to say nice things about Adam Sandler.

But if he asked yourself why so many of Adam’s friends were able to speak tonight, I’ll tell you why. Because when Adam isn’t working, they’re not working. Sandler was asked if he thought Chris Rock went too far during his recent comedy special. Sandler said, never thought that in my life. I thought it was unbelievably relaxed, funny, thoughtful, crushed it and was real to himself, and it was exciting to watch us when the super Bowl is on, I thought about it all weekend.

All right, Rock is doing this thing tonight. I agree with Adam Sandler on that it did feel like a really big event. Rob Schneider also commented about the Chris Rock special and he said he’s outrageous. He’s incredible. He really does set the bar.

He’s able to take really complex socidal ideas and make them hilarious and bring us on board to some place of sanity, some place of reason. He’s so hilariously reasonable. He’s subversed us to his point of view, and that’s his genius. And modern comedy changed after Chris Rock. Truthfully, twenty five years ago, I think David Spade had the line of the night.

He said, in these walktimes we live in, the one person who would not win the Mark Twain Prize was Mark Twain. He had some miffy material. Chris Rock himself was there. He discussed current events and said, are you guys are really going to wrest Trump? Do you know this is only going to make it more popular.

It’s like arresting Tupac. He’s just gonna sell more records. Are you stupid? Trump banged a porn star and paide someone off so his wife couldn’t found out. That’s romantic.

We’ve all been cheated on. Don’t you wish the person that cheated on you paid off somebody so you wouldn’t find out. Trump was so bad as a president. He was so bad that Joe Biden had a burst off a monument. Biden was dead for sixteen years.

Chris Rock also gave a shout out to Paul Pelosi, who was in the audience and said, Paul Pelosi got it. He knows how I felt staying political. From the Hollywood reporter, Jason Sadacus and members of the Ted Lasso Cast dropped in on the White House on Monday. They discuffed mental health awareness. Sadeka slash Lasso took one question.

It was from the actor who plays journalist Trent Krim on the series. Krim asked Sadeka slash Lasso how he felt about Kansas City being considered as a host city for the twenty twenty six World Cup. Again, I’ll remind you this was real life at the White House, and for some reason we’re doing this bit, sadekas Lasso said, I mean, I love this town. What I’m generally worried about is once we get all these folks from all over the world to come to Kansas City to see your food, eat our food, meet our people, You’re gonna have a lot of folks that want to move away. That’s what I’m worried about.

Bizarre from Radar Online. Tom Brady’s got one condition for the upcoming roast of Tom Brady the rule no jokes about Gazelle. Bunchin Radar Online quotes insiders who say Brady has no intention of performing his own material. At the Roast. Tom is fine being the butt of jokes.

Say whatever you want about him, but not about his family. It’s the one rule that’s non negotiable. A source says. The biggest obstacle between them which Gazelle’s complaints about Tom putting football before family. So he decided to show her he’s willing to focus on them before taking that TV job at Fox.

His only goal right now is to get his family back quick stop. At Gossip Corner, there were some rumors about her hanging out with her jiu jitsu instructor, and a report suggests Gazelle has begun dating Tom’s billionaire friend, Jeffrey Sofur. A source A lot of sources, it’s like a British press story. A source claim that Gazelle Tom lived near Jeffrey in Florida during their marriage. Sofur’s net worth is estimated to be two billion dollars, while Tom Brady has a fortune worth of reported five hundred twelve million.

Leon Morgan getting a Netflix special on April eleventh. What’s the title, Johnny Mac. It’s called Leon Morgan, I’m every Woman. The special will celebrate women in an observational and instructional way. Some of the experience that we talked about during the program will be Morgan’s experience while growing up in Tennessee and being married for over twenty years.

She’ll also joke about raising three children and the fact that she has become a grandmother. Philadelphia Weekly they have a great comedy section. Asked Brian was saying if there’s anything you want to do before retires. He said, Yeah, for sure, I have a horror movie or two in me that I want to get out there before I’m done. Not that I’ll ever fully retire, and yeah, it’ll definitely involve my comedic muscle, but more in the dialogue and crafting characters that deal with a brutal or scary situation, grounded and with a sense of humor intact.

He also talked about meeting Don Rickles. I’d shared that anecdote not too long ago. We got a little more here, he said. I got to be around Don Rickles a handful of times. He was such a fantastic post and one of the pure funniest people I’ve ever been in the room with, so quick, so quintessential.

Don Rickles. He busted my chops whenever I saw him, which is all I wanted from the situation. I still quote his put downs. A kid, next time I see you, can you at least put on a suit. I’d invite you to the house.

But the wife, I’ll think you’re the gardener. Cute kid? Where’s his rake? Zany’s comedy called a Nashville tweeted out that comedian and Zany’s favor, Brett Turhune’s new special, it’s called What on Flat Earth, is now available on Amazon Prime. I haven’t seen that yet, but that sounds cool.

Taylor Thomason she’ll get two new specials on Netflix, but she’s not going to make the Best of twenty twenty three list. Here’s why. The first special is not due out until twenty twenty four. Thompson’s psych She’s told Variety that’s a level of security you don’t get very often in this business. It’s a huge weight off your shoulders.

I feel incredible, grateful and lucky. The twenty twenty four special will be shot at the end of the current tour, which is currently dubbed the Have It All Tour. Taylor says, I’m a pretty personal comedian. I’m not super topical or political. I am generally writing about things happening in my own life and what I hope is a very relatable way.

And the question I think everybody around my age, which is almost thirty, grapples with, and my friends around me you’re grappling with, is comparing yourself to everybody else. She’s kicking around series ideas for Netflix. That’s interesting, but she is not looking to sacrifice stand up. She says, when it comes down to it, I love touring so much every week and I’m gone, and if you want to make a TV show or a movie, you have to take a significant amount of time off from touring. Touring is the most fun and the most lucrative thing for me to do, and for a lot of stand ups to do, you don’t really ever have to do with show or movies.

So all the projects I’m developing or I’m interested or thinks that I really love and think would be great, because I’m so happy with where I am with stand up, That’s all I ever wanted. I was working out this morning in the Apple Fitness Plus Spin program, and I wanted something to stare at, so I put on Kill Tony on the YouTube. Tim Dillon and Roseanne were the guests, and I loved Tim Dillon. I’m like, oh, this is gonna be really good. And at one point Roseanne was so annoying.

I’m in the basement by myself while the dog was there, but by myself, and I said out loud, Holy f she’s terrible. I said that out loud. That’s how annoying Roseanne was on this show. If you’re not familiar with Kill Tony, you should check out Kill Tony. They pull names out of a hat.

If you get picked, you come up and you do a minute of stand up. It’s mostly amateurs, most of them not good. Then Tony doesn’t banter with the guests. Roseanne kept talking to these civilians at length, and by at length, I mean eleven twelve minutes. I had to keep grabbing the remote and I’m like, Okay, they’re boring, you’re boring.

Can you stop. I was shocked that Tony didn’t try and take control of the show. He just let Roseanne go.

Meanwhile, Tim Dillon gets it.

He would speak once every ten minutes, assassinate and then get back out. That’s how you do it. It was one comedian on there. I was in the middle of a workout that I mentioned that humble Brax. I didn’t write down his name, but skim through the show.

The comedian who has cerebral palsy, which is central to what his material is and I don’t want to spoil it. Fantastic kill Tony is the name of that. Shrine Lover left a five star review on Apple Podcast. Thanks so much. Shrine Lover wrote a daily listen so great.

Thanks for the Dusty Slay five o’clock somewhere advice, Wow watch three times. Keep up the great work. Thanks shrine Lover. Yes, Dusty Slay hilarious comedian has a bit about the Jimmy Buffett song. It’s five o’clock somewhere.

I’m not going to even dance with the devil. I’ll let Dusty tell it. Just go on YouTube type in Dusty Slay five o’clock somewhere and enjoy the nine minute bit. It is fantastic, an all time bit, really great. Dusty will be coming to the North Charleston Performing Arts Center.

They announced a huge festival Chucktown Comedy Week, a weeklong rotation of top comedians. Listen to this lineup. May seventeenth, Jeff Foxworthy, Lean Morgan, Dusty Slay Killer, May nineteenth, Tim Dillon, Shane Gillis, Big Jayokrison, Nick Mullen Killer, May the twenty first, Nate Bergantcy Chucktown Comedy Week Chucktown Comedy dot Com. As we’ve learned, there are a lot of listeners to this show who are very hip to the comedy scene in Idaho. Idaho, of course the home of Ryan Hamilton.

Now Ryan is not performing in Idaho at the tree Fort Festival, and tree Fort has music and comedy. The comedy kicks off tonight with an open mic at ten o’clock. That’s in Boise. If you’re there, your headliner this weekend will be on Saturday, Tignazarrow two shows.

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Meanwhile, in Vancouver, some organizers are trying to host a Vancouver versi…

They want to do this September fifteenth through the seventeenth in Stanley Parks, Brockton Fields. I have been to Stanley Park and it is an awesome park. The promoter is Trickstar Live They already have locations in Halifax in August that’ll feature Jerry sign Felt in Bill Burr, right, so they’re not messing around here. Calgary and late August featuring Jonathan van Ness and Andrew Schultz, and Edmonton July fourteenth through the sixteenth, with lineup at TBA. The Parks People put out a statement said the vision for this festival is to create an inclusive and safe experience that celebrates and features all forms of performance comedy from local talents, a star attractions.

Past festival headliners have included Bill Bird, Tom Segura, Amy Schumer, Melissa Vias and York Chris red Donal Rawlings, Chelsea Handler, and David Spade. The capacity for the proposed Vancouver event would be ten thousand, It would run from five to eleven PM, and tickets to the gated event would range from sixty nine to three hundred and ninety nine dollars, presumably Canadian dollars. The Vancouver Son Ads. Given that most of the performances will be comedic monologues, organizers aren’t too worried about excess noise. Stanley Park is fantastic.

If this festival happens and you’ve never been of Vancouver. You might want to strongly consider that one. Let’s keep an eye on that and see who winds up performing there. Are you watching How I Met Your Father on Hulu? Well you can now watch it on Reform.

Will not yet, I lied you gotta wait till April twenty fifth. Variety says How I Met Your Father will premiere on Freeform April twenty fifth with the first two episodes of season one. They’ll then air two episodes every week on Tuesdays as if it’s nineteen ninety four until they’ve run through the whole first season. How I Met Your Father is currently in a twenty episode second season, and twenty episodes in the era of streaming is a lot of episodes. Andy Kaufman, he’s going to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of twenty twenty three.

Variety rights Andy Kaufman made his mark on the world of professional wrestling when he declared himself the inter gender Wrestling Champion of the World, offering money to any woman who could pin him as part of his act. That led to a feud with fellow Hall of Famer Jerry the King Lawler. Despite Lawler and Kaufman being friends, they successfully convinced the audience they were bitter enemies. Kaufmann claimed that Lawler broke his neck when Lawler performed a pile driver on him, with Kaufmann appearing in a neck brace. Thereafter, they made an appearance to get her on Letterman in nineteen eight two, during which they traded insults before Lawlor slapped Kaufman, knocking Kaufuman out of his chair.

Now, if you were too young for this, listen to me. This was a major bleeping deal. This was huge, and it was early enough that we didn’t quite know for sure that wrestling was fake. And Calfman was really good at this, and the whole thing on Letterman. I don’t know if it was as big as the slap, but it was slap esque.

This was well discussed. This was a big deal, and even Kaufman doing the things saying he could wrestle any woman, people lost their minds over that. Do a deep dive on YouTube. Just google like Kaufman Wrestling. You’ll find all kinds of clips.

It was a fantastic piece of work. The twenty twenty three WWE Hall of Ceremony March thirty first, ten thirty pm Eastern on Peacock. I guess none of us will see it, and that’s your comedy needs for today. Come on Peacock. Spent some and dollars, I’ll shill.

Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows. See tomorrow. Did you hear about the border collie who recycles trash and when he’s out on his walks? Or how about the bear that stole so much Chick fil A? But good News left the salad behind.

Hi, I’m Johnny Mac, host of Five Good News Stories. Don’t worry. I have stories about humans too, Like there’s a woman who makes a living because she looks like Jim Carrey. It’s my podcast. It’s five Good News Stories, Five Good News Stories the number.

Five good News Stories twice a week. Five Good News Stories. Oh, and Shamrock shakes her back too. Good News Five Good News Stories, wherever you get your shows

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Featured: Joe Rogan, Bert Kreischer, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, William Shatner, Ricky Gervais, Whitney Cummings, David Spade, Dana Carvey

What’s in This Episode

• Biden administration orders TikTok sale or ban
• Adrian Aya Pellucci rising comedy talent
• William Shatner’s failed stand-up comedy performance as Captain Kirk
• Ricky Gervais Armageddon special review criticism
• Joe Rogan Spotify controversy over Jewish media comments
• Ronny Chieng Hulu pilot not picked up to series
• Whitney Cummings roast special on OnlyFans
• John Belushi vs Chris Farley comedy dynamic comparison

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. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Jimmy Fallon points out the Biden administration is ordering the Chinese parent company of TikTok’s either sell the app or face a possible band and fallon ads. If he bands, TikTok, China will only be able to spy on us with literally everything else. Seth Meyers tags in, don’t mess with Biden.

He has no use for your addictive apps. Biden’s the kind of guy who can make it through a whole two week vacation with nothing but a deck of cards and a print edition of Sports Illustrated. I was listening to Rogan with Bert Kreischer. They were raving about adrian Iya Pollucci. I agree.

So here is an instance of Bert Kreischer, Joe Rogan, and Johnny Mac being on the same page. I say that like, we’re not often on the same page. I mean sometimes not exactly on Joe Rogan’s page, but today we’re all united. Adrian Aya Pellucci. Keep an eye on her, very very funny and if you want to hear her, let me cross promote.

I spotlighted her on this week’s Weekly Comedy Thing that’s the show I host on the free Live one app. Get out your phone download Live one. Look for something called the Weekly Comedy Thing. You’ll find me doing something like this, except I can play comedians including Adrian Iya Pellucci. I saw this story out of south By Southwest.

William Shatner was your panelist, but he said his worst role ever was one time when he attempted to give a stand up comedy performance as Captain Kirk. I’ve never heard of this. I have to deep dive and see if I can find this. So Shatner is doing stand up as Captain Kirk. The joke being that Kirk would say cliche one liner jokes and not understand why he wasn’t funny.

That’s awful. Captain Kirk is cool. He wouldn’t do that. Kirk should be able to get by on charisma alone. Shatner said the bomb spectacularly.

It was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. Shorto reviewed Ricky Gervais or mcgeddon. Ricky’s been touring the show for some time, but Shorto went in because Ricky’s getting very close to recording it for Netflix. Let me give you the lead here. They gave it two and a half stars out of five.

Spoilers for the special Coming up, Shorta writes, how nice would it be to write about Ricky Gervais without going over the same old cancel culture talking points, which so consumes those who rarely actually see live comedy. But he’s the one leaning into it, setting himself up as the crusading defender of saying bad things in jest, whatever the wokeye snowflakes say, Quoting from Schorto. Too often, Jervais’s plan of attack is just to tell off color jokes about Now, this is the second time I’m reading the sentence, and the first time I got to the ind of it, and I was uncomfortable quoting as Shorto wrote it, off color jokes about pedophiles, aids are written, African babies, the Holocaust, rape, severely disabled kids, dwarves, and pedophiles. Again, sounds like a funny show, Rickie Shorto. Right.

Sometimes the sheer brutality of these lines is crushingly effective, but the effect is diminished by constant repetition. Any element of surprise is gone. Will all you ever do is voice the worst, most inappropriate things, like an excitable teenager testing boundaries. He sniggers away at how naughty he’s been, as the grown ups roll their eyes, hoping he’ll grow out of it. At sixty one, there’s a little sign of that.

They add that, unlike Dave Chappelle, Ricky now steers largely clear of the sort of material it attracted valid plaints of transphobia. On his last special, he laments about politicians getting applause breaks by just telling liberal crowds precisely what they want to hear, conveniently oblivious to the fact that he’s doing the exact same thing. They ended there two and a half star review with. Even though Ricky’s position on the free Spache debate is always clear, it’s also getting boring now Wow. From The Daily Mail, Joe Rogan’s podcast comments about Jewish people quotes controlling the media unquote leave spotifying Nervous.

Sources tell Radar Online that comments like those, plus Joe’s past use of racial slurs and COVID misinformation, have pushed Spotify bosses to the edge. However, chief executive Daniel Eck sat at a company town hall there are many things that Joe Rogan says that I strongly disagree with and find very offensive. But if we even want a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with. That’s interesting. Bad news are Ronny Chieng.

His Hulu comedy pilot is not being picked up to series. In untitled pilots, Ronny Chieng would have started as the new hired general manager of the Brooklyn Nets. Not much was known about the pilot other than the announcement.

Meanwhile, Whitney Cummings spoke to Page six and said, I don’t have to tell …

It became super obvious that there were some issues in our society, which you know, it’s usually our job to comment on and confront, and all of a sudden, comedians started becoming like the enemy. Whitney said. Previously, comedians would tackle sensitive subjects to help everybody cope and laugh at horrible things. That all of a sudden, for a litany of reasons, people started saying comedians are bullies and they’re causing violence, and we’re like, wait what. She’s out promoting her upcoming roast.

She says the reasoning behind the show is she’d like to create a space where comedians don’t have to be scared anymore, so we can be the country that, at least we’ve been trying to be. She thinks it’s the perfect time to bring Roast back and adds, in my opinion, the roast Sun Comedy Central started getting racist, actually homophobic, which she partly blames on the decision to roast non comedians Pam Anderson being on a roast is like verbal mma. Her upcoming roast will be on Only Fans, and she said, my thing is always follow the sex workers. That’s what comedians have always done. We’ve always been hand in hand with sex workers.

Stand Up in America really started in strip club and you know, comics are kind of emotional sex workers. Whitney Cummings presents on Only Fans Saturday, April First stop me in the basement with the door closed and only fans watching a roast? What do you think I’m doing? Bert Kreischer was on the podcast with David Spade and Dana Carvey. Bert said John Belushi wasn’t the comic that Bert Kreisher saw and Chris Farley he says, I was a Blushi slash Farley guy and says he was talking about some fellow comedians.

We were talking about Tommy Boy, and immediately you think Belushi is Farley and David Spade is Akroid. But when you look at the Blues Brothers, technically Akroid is Farley and Belushi is you David Spade because he’s more straight laced. Blushi’s the straight man the entire thing. Acroid’s the one who’s putting the superglue on the bettle. He’s the one doing all the tricks.

He’s the one driving crazy. It’s so fascinating. Greisher thinks we may misremember John Belushi as primarily anarchic, points out the only thing Belushi did was Animal House and he didn’t even speak. Then they got into the weeds with this and started comparing the Fourley Belushi thing to all sorts of things, including Wayne’s World. David Spade argued that he and Foley are total opposites, while Wynne and Garth are more complimentary.

Graisher pushed back on that notion, citing the times Mike Myers would turn to the camera and points a Curvey with a can you believe this guy? Reaction? Graisher says someone has to be off, and someone’s got to be on. And apparently Lauren Michaels has been quoted that Furley was the son that John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd never had. SNL’s Chloe Fyneman as part of a new scripted fiction podcast on Audible.

They keep making these things. I guess they do well because they keep making them. But I see press release and then it seems to have no cultural impacts. As the Guy in his Basement, mccornic podcast Excessive comes out on Thursday as stories Chloe Fyneman, Joshua Jackson, Kim Cattrall, Amy Sedaris, and a bunch of others. It’s a story about a woman whose behavior is described as too much, a trip to Las Vegas, a disappearing romantic interest, and a barrage of text messages she sends to her missing bow and short overparts.

Graham Lennon turned down two hundred thousand pounds to take his name off the Father Ted musical I’ve ever seen Father Ted a very very funny show. If you ever come across it on a streaming plot form, you should watch it. Graham was offered the two hundred thousand pounds to walk away from the musical so could be staged without toxic links to his gender wars fights, but he turned it down. Shorto says the producers offered him the money so the attachment of his name would not turn into box office poison. They remind us the writer has been effectively canceled over his vehement campaign over the trans lobby, and backers felt the show had no chance of success if Lenahan’s name was attached.

Graham apparently claimed that the producers wanted him off the project because they were quote terrified of their younger members of the staff. Shorto says that Lenahan had made a similar claim against the producers of Steve Martin and Martin Shortz Comedy Only Murders in the Building. The version of the story he tells is they asked him to direct an episode and then withdrew the offer. His telling is, I said yes, please, fantastic and they were like, yeah, we’ll get in touch with the Ragel, we’ll set it up. Maybe five minutes later the phone rings again.

I pick it up and they’re like, oh, sorry, someone else has taken it. Graham said, I know exactly what happened. They went out and said, hey, guess what, everyone, we got Graham Lennon and then some cookie intern is a lot of Liner said, oh, he’s a bigot. In an interview with The Times, he expresses anger at the lack of support he’s received from others in the industry. He said, I thought this would be over in a few months and someone would step in.

I really didn’t think as soon as people heard what’s been happening to my children, all my friends, satirist comedians, progressives people and marched against the Iraq War, lesbian’s, gay men that all come rushing to my aid. No one turned up, just no one turned up. All I got was dirty looks, people ghosting me. I’ve met people, people I’ve worked with, big names and begged them, have become involved, begged them please just say gran Lennum is right, or grand Lennon has some important contributions to make on this Anything that makes it sound as though I’m doing this for anything other than recreational cruelty. That’s how I’m portrayed, like a recreational sadist.

And none of them will stand up for me. This all started up in twenty twenty. He was permanently banned from Twitter. The Mirror says he reportedly tweeted men aren’t women, though after the Women’s Institute sent a happy Pride message to its transgender members. After Elon Musk took over Twitter, Lenahan was reinstated.

That’s your comedy needs for Today? If all the show for free on applepa, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows, See you 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 f like coach. These are 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 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 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: Adam Sandler, Pete Davidson, Joe Rogan, Drew Barrymore, Steve Buscemi, Jim Gaffigan, Andy Samberg, Mike Vecchione, Nate Bargatze, Sam Morrell

What’s in This Episode

• Adam Sandler wins Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
• Pete Davidson performs at Joe Rogan’s Comedy Mothership club in Austin
• Jim Gaffigan weekly CBS This Morning segment on comedy accessibility
• Andy Samberg’s new show ‘Dig Man’ on Comedy Central
• Mike Vecchione special ‘The Attractives’ released on Nate Bargatze’s YouTube channel
• SNL post-production editors reach contract deal with 60% pay increases
• Sam Morrell discusses comedy career and influences in Miami

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. Congratulations to Adam Sandler, winner of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. As Sandler said, as I look at this Goofy Award, I can’t help but think that one day it might be the weapon used to bludgeon me to death. He’s the twenty fourth comic to be awarded the honor. Before the ceremony, Sandler said, it’s just a part of my life that I never expected to happen.

It’s nice that my families and friends get to say that goofy guy. Adam won a Mark Twain Award. A lot of a listers They are including Chris Rock, Conan O’Brian, Jadapataw, Ben Stiller, Steve as Shemmy, Luis Guzman, Dana Carvey, Rob Schneider, David’s Bad Drew Barrymore, and Jennifer Anniston. Drew Barrymore, who coach, stars in two of the Four Good Adam Saidler movies, The Four or of Course, Uncut, Jim’s The Basketball, One Hustle, Fifty First Dates, and The Wedding Singer. Drew said, every award that was ever created on the planet should go to Adam, I’ll add, and should co star Drew Barrymore Steven Shimmy said his comedy songs alone deserve this reward.

Pete Davidson was one of the comedians who has played Joe Rogan’s new comedy Mothership and Austin. You may recall Pete Davidson had played Joe Rogan on Saturday Night Live in character. Davidson on SNL said I use the whole sphere factor and now doctors fear me. You know he can’t take any shots at Joe with a Rogan eastas show him in believe me. I see the comments on YouTube, So how did they react to Pete Davidson playing Joe Rogan’s Club.

One fan said, I was in the audience when Peter jumped on such a fun night. Can’t wait to come back Sunday and Monday. We’re addicted, all right, that’s good. Another fan said, lmfao, didn’t Pete talk stuff about Joe on SNL and now he’s performing at Joe’s Club. Someone else asked, has Pete Davidson ever said anything funny?

A fourth Pete Davidson roflmao legendary club status revoked. Another said Pete Davidson is just not funny. I try to like the bloke, but he just isn’t a comedian. Jim Gaffigan does his weekly thing for CBS This Morning. From this week’s Jim said, for decades, stand up comedy has been accessible everywhere at cable TV, satellite radio.

You’re welcome, Jim. You can calling me back anytime you want to. Actually, I don’t work SAT right anymore. Don’t return the call at all. Don’t call those guys back.

Screw satellite radio, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and all the social media platforms. It’s a good thing and it’s changed many comedians lives. For example, Jim Gaffigan, who got a lot of airplay early in this century and became a much more popular comedian, presumably leading to selling more tickets and having a really nice, comfortable life. You know, it would have been nice to talk to the guy and have him up and catch up with them once he got a little more famous, But you know they scheduled and allow it, I guess, and allowed me to be the medioc or father of too many children. People can discover comedians they enjoy and immediately listen to that comedian.

It’s a win win for everyone. Now, recently I’ve noticed a trend that I think is odd. On more than one occasion, I’ve been told often by a stranger, my ten year old son listens to you to fall asleep. My kids listening. He was a nighttime ritual.

Your stand up helps my teenager at bedtime. I’m always like, okay, Jim Man’s anytime you can’t sleep, don’t count sheep, just say hey play Jim Gaffigan, Mackpacker. Andy Sandberg has his new show this week. It’s called dig Man. It’ll be on Comedy Central on Wednesday.

It’s set in a world where archaeologists are massive celebrities and the coolest people on the planet. Melissa Famaro Coast stars are right at Nice Brooklyn nin nine Reunion, Tim Meadows, Tim Robinson, some others on that one cool Also this one. I didn’t know this from the laugh button. Mike veckyone has a new special coming out on Friday. It’s executive produced by Nate Bergatzy.

Where can you find it? Nate Berg Gatzy’s Nateland Entertainment YouTube channel. Interesting place to release that. It’s called The Attractives. In the special, Mike Veckion talks about everything from relationships to running with the bulls.

You know, I didn’t know, and maybe I’m just a stupid New Yorker. I didn’t realize spoilers. At the end of a bull run, they kill the bulls. I don’t know what I thought, because I was in Spain and I was like, oh, I want to go do that, and people looked at me like I was the worst person possible, and I was like, wait, what I thought? You just like like an idiot.

Let a bull chase you down the street.

And then the bull gets on the truck and goes back to where the bulls live, an…

But no, at the end, they like spear the bulls to death, and I’m like, oh, I don’t want to do that at all. Good news, no Saturday Night Live strike. Over the weekend, the post production editors at SNL reached a deal. Laugh Button says the agreement results and pay increases up to sixty percent ahead of a three year deal. Sam Morrell is in Miami this week could be playing down there.

On Thursday, he spoke to the Miami Hurricane and tell them. I loved comedy in college. I actually started right before college. I remember becoming kind of obsessed with it at the time, and guys like Bill Burr would come to my college and we’re nice enough to let me open and do a set. Wow, how awesome is that.

While studying at NYU, Morrell majored in ancient Greek comedy, noting comedy hasn’t changed that much in four thousand years. He says performing on stage is different than his everyday conversations with friends. You go on stage, it’s a different type of funny. You have to be Your friends are rooting for you, and you start an open mic and people are like, who told you you were good at this? How do you prepare for shows?

He usually drinks coffee and goes on a walk. He says, the job is to be an entertainer. I think of what I love growing up, and I love guys like Roddy Dangerfield, who’d go up and kill, guys who would unite rooms. I love the community that is forming in the Daily Comedy News podcast group. Increasingly the listeners are going back and forth and discussing topics with each other, which is the whole goal.

I really appreciate it. Aaron shot me a note and this made me smile so much. Aaron posted John, I have two questions for you. One, have you ever been at Amarillo? The answers no.

Two, have you ever met anyone who’s been at Amrio? The answer is also no. Why do I say this because it’s pronounced like Zillo. Sounds like you might need to put a trip to Emmaillo in a seventy two out stake on your list for travel is back. Apparently I said ama Rio last week, and I have been corrected that it’s Emma Rillo.

I am becoming the Ralph Kiner of comedy. Ralph Kiner, Hall of Fame baseball player in his later years, was a Mets broadcaster known for getting names wrong, a notable one. The Mets had acquired Gary Carter, the famous Montreal Expo, also a Hall of Famer, and in one of Gary Carter’s first games, maybe the first game, he referred to him as Gary Cooper. And I feel like that’s what I’m doing here. Amarillo, Amarillo, Amarillo.

Thank you Eron. That made me really laugh, and I also like and it’s a sign of a healthy show. I’m a radio executive. I’ve been doing this for thirty years, so trust me, when the listeners start using the language of the show, you’re onto something. So I like that you use the Bob’s Burger’s bit and threw it back in my face.

Well done, Aaron. Thank you for the note, and yes, Travel is Back is my casual travel podcast. Today is another episode of my recent trip to Key West that’s out today if you want to check our travels back where you get your shows. David is another listener. He was appreciative that we do a thing where we welcome the new people in the group.

So if you want to be shout out out on the show, joining the Facebook group Daily Come a news podcast group. David wrote, Hey, thanks so much. I really love listening to Johnny Mac and I think I’ve been doing it since around the time the podcast started. I live in Japan and I’ve been out of it in terms of what’s going on in comedy thanks to this podcast, and I’m more up to date now. If Jim Gaffigan could just give him a call, same note.

I love that you’re using the language of the show and I’ve thought about it just this morning as I’m doing the show. I don’t want him Gaffigan to return anyone’s call fifteen years ago would have been nice. Now they’ll set like guys, don’t call them back, don’t even go up there anymore. Jim do Podcasts. I watched Jay McBride’s new special on YouTube.

That special is called Daddy’s Girl. And did you like it? Johnny Mac? It is the number two special of the year. Yes, wow, yeah, all right.

Here’s the updated rankings. Number one Night Bergatsy two, Jay McBride, three, Jim Jefferies four, Chris Rock five The Roast of Mister Peanut. I know you think I’m insane. Why don’t you watch the full version on YouTube and then come back to me? Not on the list, Mark Marion, Andrew Santino, Burt Kreisher.

But Jay special is just really funny. It’s in a small club. Like the way it’s lit, it looks like there’s five people there. There’s probably forty people there, maybe small theater in Brooklyn, CrowdWork ish. It’s one of those specials where Jay is just riding the waves and having fun with the people who were there, and then going back into the act and then slipping out of the act they’re just feeling the room for five ten seconds and then going back in real comfortable ride with lots of solid laughs.

I liked it a lot, and it’s it’s not big. I don’t want to call it an intimate special because it’s not that. It really feels like you’re just in a small comedy club and catching somebody on fire. So high praise for Jay McBride Daddy’s Girl. You should watch that one.

I’m noticing as I’m recording today, my voice is a little thin, good thing. I have this iced coffee with me. By the way, if you want to be an advanced listener, see if you can catch which stories I added to tomorrow’s podcast after the fact. See if you can catch the difference in my tone of voice with the two things I cut in here. Anyway, I have discovered at the National Donuts chain there’s a new flavor.

It’s chocolate caramel, not just regular caramel. Chocolate caramel. And here’s what I’ve learned doing some extensive research. Doesn’t work that well in an iced coffee. Iced coffee, I suggest you just stick with regular caramel.

But over the weekend I did a fifteen K and it was cold out and I was freezing after and I got a hot coffee, which is actually rare for me. I usually get a nice and I got the chocolate caramel and the hot coffee. Fantastic. So if you’d like to buy me a coffee after all, you can hear my voices getting thin for whatever reason, go to buy me a coffee. Dot com slash Daily Comedy News among the eight billion things I do.

I’m the writer on a podcast called Palace Intrigue. We talk about the British royal family, and by that I mean we make fun of Megan Markle. So anytime you see a story that fits both that podcast and this podcast, I’m happy to do it. A former friend of Harry and Megan’s, it’s all the express that neither of them would have thought that disclosing their family drama would have resulted in them getting made fun of by Trevor Noah, Chris Rock and others. Nick Eade said, I don’t think they would have thought that people like Trevor Noah, for instance, would joke about them at the Grammys, and that it would be humiliating.

James Gordon said, Harry on his bus and now suddenly he’s joking about them. I think there was a massive miscalculation there from them. Humor has always been about the zeitgeist of what’s going on. It’s about what’s happening now, so they’re sort of the low hanging fruit. I do think with the documentary and the podcast and the book that it’s become, as a lot of people say, a pity party.

I’m really look at it and really looking at the world. It’s difficult when we see what’s going on in the world with a huge economic crisis and wars, et cetera, to kind of sympathize anymore. The first interview with Oprah really did open up people’s eyes to a lot. I think it was really significant. But they keep saying, here’s my life, it’s terrible.

We’re here at educ get you guys. And to be honest, I think that’s starting a great on people. Yes, yes, it isn’t it’s great for downloads, Palace Intrigue, wherever you get your podcasts. From The Daily Mail, how Netflix clawed its way out of financial ruin by going anti woke, The Daily Mail opines Netflix appears to be steadily climbing its way out of financial ruin after canceling woke programming and deciding to back controversial figures like Dave Chappelle. And Philadelphia Weekly caught up with Jeff Ross and they asked him if current comedy club owners curate comedy the way the ogs did.

Jeff Ross up where they are literally is at the back of the club, judging us. It’s interesting. My feeling is the comedy club owners, the old ones and the new ones, seem to be just where they should be, standing their ground and the protection of comedians. More and more I see the clubs adding security and looking after putting phones and pouches yuck, so that the audience isn’t recording us, but rather laughing at us and being in the moment. I feel as if comedy clubs are the last bastions of free speech in America where there were little or no repercussions for saying whatever is he want to say.

You’re allow to say what you want, allowed to make mistakes, a lot, to try things, an experiment. That’s one of the reasons I love the clubs. Philly Weekly asked him, are you a pouch guy or not a pouch guy? I’ll jump in not a pouch guy, Jeff Ross said, I’m a pouch guy. I preferred I feel more embolded on stage knowing I’m not being recorded and having my words taken out of context.

That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple podcast, Spotify YouTube. Feel highly encouraged to join the conversation on the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group 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 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 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 show on Apple podcast or wherever you get your shows. These are week these are casual and it’s for regular people. Like eat Travel is back,

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Featured: Joe Rogan, Dave Chappelle, Trevor Noah, John Mulaney, David Byrne, Pete Davidson, Sarah Silverman, Jeff Ross, Whitney Cummings, Charlie Chaplin

What’s in This Episode

• Joe Rogan’s comedy club tickets reselling for $900
• Trevor Noah wins prestigious Dutch Erasmus Prize
• John Mulaney new Netflix special ‘Baby J’ with David Byrne music
• Pete Davidson sitcom ‘Bupkiss’ coming to Peacock May 4
• Sarah Silverman discusses her podcast as advice show and stand-up lab
• Jeff Ross on roasting culture and Whitney Cummings’ Only Fans roasts

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. Last week, a US drone was forced down by a Russian fighter jets. Seth Meyers said. Russi’s ambassador of the US denied that the two aircraft collided boot and is claiming the drone just fell out a window dateline the Hague. I don’t say that much.

Trevor Noah, former host of The Daily Show, has won the prestigious Dutch Erasmus Prize. Congratulations Trevor Noah. He’s the first humorist to be awarded the honor since Charlie Chaplin back in nineteen sixty five, and Hall of Famer Charlie Chaplin by nineteen sixty five was kind of passed his prime, wasn’t he. Chaplin was born in eighty nine, and by eighty nine, I mean eighteen eighty nine, so that rough math there, so he would have been what seventy six or so when he won that award. You may have heard of the movie The Greek Dictator starring Charlie Chaplin.

That one was from nineteen forty, so they got around to it twenty five years later. Anyway. Trevor Noah, who’s thirty nine, received the prize for his inspired contribution to the theme in Praise of Folly. That theme was named after Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus. Erasmus lived from fourteen sixty six to fifteen thirty six, and his most famous book is called In Praise of Folly, and it’s filled with humor, social criticism, and political satshire.

Kind of like this show, but much better done. Fox News on the scene in Austin, Texas, where Joe Rogan’s new comedy club shows are a hot ticket on the resale market. Tickets are going for up to nine hundred dollars. Let me give you some device here. Joe Rogan’s awesome.

I’m sure the comedy Mothership is awesome. I’m sure Dave Chappelle performing at Rogan’s club is awesome. No comedy show’s worth nine hundred dollars. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

Don’t do it. Per Fox News, attendee said there’s a high demand for anti woke and anti cancel culture content. Brady came in from Arizona to see a show and said it just really speaks to the demand. People are hungry for something like this. Reagan from Minnesota told Fox you probably can’t cancel it if people are paying that bunch of money to get into it.

Billy from Dallas added, people are against the wol culture that’s going on. Edie recent show, Joe Rogan himself introduced Dave Chappelle. Joe said, I’m about to bring up one of the greatest comedians ever walk the face of the planet. What of my dear friends, what are my personal heroes in comedy? Please give it up for the great and powerful Dave Chappelle.

That got a good reaction from the crowd. They erupted in cheers. Some fans also went on social media, presumably much later because Joe uses Yonder pouches again nine hundred dollars and I can’t bring my phone no. One fan said the expression of the goat could not be more fitting than for mister Chappelle. I call him mister Chappelle because he has utmost respect and administration.

That’s what the person wrote. Another fan said of Joe Rogan, You’re gonna need a bigger ship if you’re going to bring in guests like that. But my favorite comment was one fan who commented on Joe Rogan’s dressing style and right now, I’ll tell you I am wearing sweatpants, and this hoodie is not too bad. You wouldn’t make fun of the hoodie. I have a pretty cool if I say so myself, third Party Star Wars theme sweatshirt where it’s a storm tumor helmet over a skull and bone, so that’s not awful.

The sweatpants are a little cheesy, and these sneakers are kind of worn out, so you can make fun of me from the bottom down. I think today, I think top I got my game going. But one fan made fun of Joe Rogan’s dressing style and said Rogan will always dress like the nineties. You know what I’m thinking about it? If Joe Rogan’s man at me for sharing that crack, I challenge you to an mmma fight Joe anywhere you want, any time you want.

I will fight Joe Rogan in the octagon. Why can you think of better publicity for the podcast? Oh my God, come on, Joe, are you scared? David Byrne, we’ll do the music for John Mulaney’s new Netflix comedy special. We now have a title for the special.

It’s called John Mulaney Baby Jay. It was recorded at Boston Symphony Hall in February. It’ll be on your Netflix April twenty five. Burn and Millany have worked together before. David Byrne appeared in the Netflix children’s special John Mulaney and the sack Lunch Bunch.

Remember that happened yes back in December twenty nineteen. We also have a date for Pete Davidson’s new sitcom, Bupkiss. This one on peacocks, So you’re probably not going to say nobody’s peacock. Peacock drop some money on my show I’m a Shell. I will sell peacock left and nine all day.

Come on, guys, it’ll drop all eight episodes on May fourth, four subscribers of the streaming service. Similar to the King of Staten Island movie, Bupkiss will be partially based on Pete Davidson. The series has compared to Curb Your Enthusiasm. No Pressure there, Pete Geez. Nashville scene caught up with Sarah Silverman.

Hey, Sarah Silverman, you know you’re Sarah Silverman podcast. Has that served as an arena for you to practice stand up material? Sarah Silverman said a little bit. Yeah, there’s some stuff that I just said organically on the show, and I was like, oh, I bet that’s something. Not much, but definitely there’s a little crossover in the Venn diagram between the podcasts and stand up, but the podcast has become way more serious.

They don’t share a lot of DNA. I’m a lot more earnest on the podcast. Nashville Scene followed up, Hey, you give a lot of advice on that podcast. There has that helped you improve? Of it giving advice to people in your own life?

Sarah said, I think it has, and just because obnoxiously, I think so many people who really do therapy become therapists in their own mind. I no exception, but you learn so many lessons that are easy to pass on, and it’s interesting. I mean it’s a comedian. Most comics are interested in what makes a dynamic between people. That’s what therapy is.

Another follow up, not to say you pretend to be a therapist on the podcast, but is that a direction you ever imagined it would go? Sarah said, no, not at all. I mean I’m interested in that stuff, and I knew I wanted the audience’s questions to kind of dictate the trajectory of the episodes, but it really became an advice show. And I will mostly preface things with I’m completely talking out of my hat here or I don’t know stuff. But I mean it’s a pretty good exchange of ideas, and you know what, I might give someone advice and then somebody else calls in and says, actually, you know X y Z, and it becomes this kind of interesting community.

Philadelphia Weekly caught up with Jeff Ross. Hey, Jeff Ross, because of your roster’s reputation, do you believe people are suspicious of meeting you? Dare they get burned? I like, good question. Philly Weekly’s comedy coverage awesome, great job guys, and my guys, I mean a D.

M. ROSSI he’s the guys. Ross said, it’s interesting people assume that all the time and are leary of meeting me. I can’t, however, promise you if you meet me in public, I come in peace. I’m off duty.

I don’t roast you, and I definitely don’t want you roasting me. Wait. Is Jeff Ross sensitive to the topics we shouldn’t do? Jeff joked, my looks very sensitive about my parents that I’m just putting that out there. I’m kidding.

I would be such a hypocrite if I put guidelines or guardrails on the insults, I can take I dish it out. I could take it even if it looks as if it hurts. I’m not going to let people see that. I feel like being able to take a joke because a very important part of life. They asked him his opinion on Whitney Cummings bringing back old school roasts on Only Fans.

That’s right, Johnny Mac. Why are you in the basement with the door closed. What are you doing? I’m on only Fans watching a roast. What do you think I’m up to?

Jeff Ross said, I went to taping. I totally enjoyed it. It was thoroughly off the rails, hilarious. It was a real punk rock roast. I love roasting in all its forms.

I love the only Fans joke. I’m cracking myself up. I want all my friends to do it. The bigger the roasting is, the better of my life is. Then they talked about how they were both going to see Springsteen.

Jeff Ross said, I’m seeing Bruce Springsteen at the same show you are coming in early at the very generous invitation of little Stephen van zand two straight days of Stephen van zandt references on this podcast. Should I save a Stephen’s story for tomorrow and make it three? You’ll find out tomorrow. Jeff said, I’m very excited. I’ve good friends in that band, Nils Lofgren, Max Weinberg, and I recently got my first tattoo.

What does the tattoo say? Born to roast. I’ve been doing a good job with the running lately. I’ve been running more days than not. I’m on a streak.

I’m a believer in the Power of the Streak, which is also totally coincidentally the name of a book by Kara Wood. That’s right. The Power of the Streak is an easy to read book by Kara Wood that answers the age old question of how to stay consistent with exercise and keep motivated over time. I have a streak going, let’s say, trying to think one, two, three, four, five, five days streak going. Now, recently, I had snapped a streak because it didn’t snow here all winter, and then March came and March is like, hey, it’s gonna snow every Tuesday.

So one day I shoveled, and then I was curious dishoveling count as exercise, and Carra sent in the answer, Hi, Johnny, it’s Karawood. I just wanted to let you know that snow shoveling does not count. And I also want to let you know that I’m uniquely qualified to opine on this matter because I used to shovel a lot of snow when I lived in Idaho. Well, you know who else is from Idaho? That’s right, Ryan Hamilton.

Everyone knows where Ryan Hamilton is from. I mean, you think he’s from Canada? What are you stupid? If you struggle with working out regularly, I’m laughing at my own jokes to day, or if you started exercising only to be back where you started a couple of weeks. You need to check out the power of the streak.

Seriously, I’m not looking at the copy now, I’m looking at my bottled water. I didn’t bring a coffee. Streaks are awesome because you don’t want to break the streak, and then you get negative streaks. I did a negative streak of like three or four days recently after the snow because like I work down two days, I might as well make it three. You might as well make it four.

But once I get going, I don’t want to snap the streak at all. Kara herself had zero motivation. So Kara has a twelve year streak going. She had kids and a career, and she keeps it going. So if you want to hear the story, get yourself motivated.

It’s funny, it’s relatable, it’s inspiring. She’ll give you a step by step guide how you can do this with any exercise doesn’t have to be running. I’m a bit of a running snob, okay. I also like Apple Fitness plus spin classes. That’s my other jam on the days my knees are a little iaky.

The book has a low key, authentic and relaxed style. It’s also entertaining and motivating even a cynic. Will you feeling inspired and excited to commit once and for all. A percentage of royalties is donated to the Special Olympics, so that’s pretty cool. The Power of the Streak, but Kara would available in all formats on Amazon and bars A, Noble Online.

Check out the audiobook on iTunes Audible. Are you on Instagram? Of course you are at the Power of the Streak? Or are you on Twitter? Maybe at Power of the Streak.

Thank you to the power of the Streak sponsoring today’s show. You heard the mention their FTC. I flagged it. Yeah, there’s rules and stuff. If you missed yesterday’s podcast, go back and check it out.

I had quote working comedian and podcaster Dan Boublitz unquote as my guest. I was just in the mood to talk about comedy and I hit Dan up and I’m like, you want to jump on zoom And He’s like, yeah. We chatted for like an hour. I didn’t do any prep. You didn’t do any prep, Johnny Mac No way, I know, right.

But if you’re if you want to get into the weeds of like being at festivals or being a touring comic, or what it’s like to be on the road as a comic, we got We got pretty deep yesterday. It’s pretty good. Tim Dillon has joined the cast of a horror movie coming up. The movie is titled Thanksgiving. Interesting casting there.

I could see Tim playing you know, like Uncle Tim or something kind of a poor man’s Chris Farley. I could see that, right. Yes, the plot for the film is being kept under wraps. Oh no, but the horror thriller stores Patrick Dempsey, that’s right, Doctor McDreamy, and the ever so serious Horry Gondebolu. He’ll be doing a bunch of interviews soon.

That should be fun as he is ever so serious as a comedian. I love him, but every interview with him, dude, lighten up, stop taking the whole world so seriously. Harry Kanabuloo has a new special and album. It’s called Vacation Baby. It’ll be out April eighteenth.

Recorded live at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, Harry discusses these strange and new experiences of having a kid during a global pandemic and filming a special about it just days after Rov Wade was overturned. Vacation Baby is both political and his most personal work to date. Harry keeps his trademark style of smart cutting political humor with discussions of white replacement therapy and anti Asian hate crimes, while also remaining silly and light which jokes about fatherhood, why Steph Curry is the Goat, and how he once ghosted AOC. Vacation Baby available April eighteenth on YouTube. There will also be an album, like an actual album.

Hopefully he wins the Grammy for it, because I’m done with things that aren’t albums. Winning the Comedy Grammy Team Harry Plus, I would love to hear his each of the Grammys. It’ll be so serious. That’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show four free Apple podcast, Spotify, you Gibe, wherever you get your shows.

See you tomorrow.

All right, here’s the pitch.

Five stories. They’re all good news. It’s called five good News Stories. No negative news, just good news. Nice, easy way to start your day.

Hopefully smile. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac, host of five Good News Stories. So you get the premise. There’s five stories and they’re all good news. So the number five good news Stories.

Five good news Stories. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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Featured: Dan Bublitz, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Bert Kreischer, Bob Hope

What’s in This Episode

• Chris Rock Special flubbed joke and editing process
• Comedy special recording and production techniques
• Corporate comedy gigs and event entertainment
• Working comedian life on the road
• Art of Bombing podcast and comedy festival production
• Clean comedy requirements for corporate events

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 something a little different today. I reached out to Dan Booblitz. He hosts the Art of Bombing podcast. He is a working comedian and I’ve gotten to know Dan and through the show and we sometimes email on the side, And the other day I was like, hey, man, I’m just in the mood to talk about comedy, no agenda. I’ll probably ask you about Chappelle and Chris Rock and then we could just talk about the industry.

And that’s what we did. We went for just about an hour. There is no actual comedy news today. It’s just two fans of the genre talking about comedy and comedians. Dan talks about what goes into putting on a festival, electronic press, kids, life on the road as a comic.

We talked about some famous comedians, some non famous comedians. So it’s just a real casual chat in that podcast kind of style. So here’s my casual conversation with Dan Booblitz.

All right, let’s start with Chris Rock Special.

What’d you think? I haven’t watched it? No way, all right, wait, talk to me fun. I didn’t watch it because I had a gig for one so I was not home. I was doing comedy myself.

It’s hard to be available on the weekends to watch comedy, especially live comedy, when you’re out doing live comedy. That makes sense. But I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. That’s just I just haven’t sat down and watched it yet. I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the internet, obviously, both good and bad.

I just listened to a recent episode of the Daily Comedy News podcast and the edited version that they put out, or that they’re gonna put out, So now I’m curious what I missed. Yeah, he just flubbed a joke and he’s rolling. The punchline should have been tied back to the movie Concussion, and he misspoken. He said Emancipation, so he’s rolls whatever set up punch and instead of a starring in Emancipation, he gave me a concussion. I flubbed the joke, so they just took that out because he vamped for a few minutes and then circled back and did the punchline properly, so they may have even resequenced it.

I’m never going to watch it again. But it wasn’t like a major catastrophe. He just had a good joke and blew the rhythm of it. That’ll and that happens. That’s live comedy for you.

Yeah, it’s funny. I was watching Kreisher last night and I could tell what do I know? But I suspect it was two performances tied together. It just seemed like he physically was in a very different part of the stage at different points, jumping through time. Again, no harm, it’s a comedy special.

No one is claiming this thing is live. If it’s live, it might have a flub. And if it’s your polished work, it’s the same as a comedy album. Oh absolutely, And that’s that’s why they record a lot of times. When we do specials, they record more than one.

I’ve been to recordings of other comedians and I’ve had a special record in myself the same thing. My special was too. They did two tapings. I think they used most of the footage from one rather than other. But it’s good to have that extra footage just in case something happen.

I can’t string it together. I don’t even put out this podcast raw. I love a story and I go back and I clean it up. I can’t just put this out. Yeah exactly, all right, So as a working comic.

You’re not home at Saturday night at ten o’clock watching Chris Rock. That makes a lot of sense to me. Are you in the other comics talking about it? You don’t care? You got your own stuff going on for me.

Sometimes these specials like will come up and people will talk about especially within comedy. Most of the stuff I see is comics talking about it, not so much as in person, and that’s they probably are talking about it at like open mics and things like that. But like a lot of the gigs that they do, you’re only working with one or two other comics. It’s not like going to a showcase in New York where all the people are they like, all the comics are there. I’m doing gigs on the road where and especially if it’s like a corporate gig, then I’m probably by myself.

How many corporate gigs do you do? And explain everybody what a corporate gig is? Please? So it varies throughout the year, I’m trying to do more and more of corporate gigs. The corporate gigs are gigs that I guess.

Sometimes they are open to the public, depending on what it is, But a lot of times you’re performing for an organization of some sort. The company might be a holiday party. That’s the biggest form of corporate comedy, usually happens around the holidays. They want entertainment for their Christmas parties, things like that. One of the most recent gigs that I did, I performed for the smaller towns Chamber of Commerce their annual meeting and awards show or awards ceremony.

So they do a big annual meeting where they take care of some business, but it’s mostly just a dinner and giving away awards, and then they have entertainment, and so I was the entertainment. So I go in there and perform mostly clean comedy. That’s the other thing with corporate comedy, it’s you’re usually working very clean and then I just go in and do an hour of entertainment. And a lot of times with corporate gigs, the main difference is that you’re the only comedians, So there’s not like there’s no progression of warming up an audience. You’re just going up cold after whatever.

If they’ve been sitting through. Now, is this a scenario where we’re all sitting there, I need to see a comedian or is it the horror show of I’m also eating lunch. It varies. Some corporate gigs, that’s the case where they you know, that’s very well what it could be. In this last case, no, they knew there was going to be entertainment.

They advertised it to all the people that were going to be there. They did marketing, so people knew that was coming and that was part of the event. It wasn’t just a surprise, Oh hey, now we’re going to do some comedy. Keep eating your lunch because you got to get back to work or something like that. And did they set these up properly?

Is there a stage or a riser, or is it like you’re giving a best man toast. It depends on how that really, I think relies on the comedian booking the corporate gigs and how many questions you ask and what you require. This last gig we had, there was a stage, there was a microphone. I brought a light kit just in case, which we ended up using too, because they knew it was going to be essentially in a convention center, which in a hotel. But it’s really just depends on how many questions you ask and are prepared for, especially with corporate comedy.

You need to do that because a lot of the people that book comedy for these kind of events their event planners, but they’re not entertainment bookers or they’ve never put on our comedy producers, they’re not they’ve never put on a show, so they don’t know what to do. So it’s our job to ask those questions and make sure that we help them set us up for success. And one thing that with corporate comedy for me that’s been helping a lot is that I have in the last year, I started working with a corporate booking manager who is helping me find these gigs, but then also going through the contracts and making sure we’re set up to have a good show. Do you set up gigs? Where I’m going here is I’m a big Bob Hope fan and I’ve study a lot of his career and when Hope would do USA tours, they would feed him local stuff that General Johnson thinks he’s really good at tennis, so Hope would come out and do the right at TA tat, like, hey, yeah, I saw General Johnson over at the tennis court today and get a laugh just out of that.

Having no idea what the joke even meant but he knew what to do. Yeah, I don’t do that. I’m sure there are comedians that will try to do that. It really depends and what they want to because in a scenario like that’s where they really want you to. They want to have more participation with whatever company it is and the people and the inside humor, if you will.

But that’s not really my thing. I’m not really improv or right at the right jokes for a particular event, that kind of thing, unless something comes to mind, like I’d make some jokes of this particular event that I was at because this town. I’ve been stranded in this town before, and it’s a very small town. I got stranded because I got caught in a blizzard on my way back home from a gig. So I made jokes about that and how I was glad that I got to come on my own free will, that kind of thing.

All right, let’s switch gears and talk Chappelle. I recently caught a lot of flak on YouTube. I took a clip from the podcast and I made a YouTube short out of it, and I titled at something like, Dear Dave Chappelle, why do you want your legacy to be the trans guy. And what I mean with that is Dave is probably the best and up comic right now. He has something to say with capital letters there, and yet if he were to suddenly pass away, the second paragraph of his own bit is going to be about the trans community.

And I don’t understand why Dave keeps going there? Where With Dave these days, I feel like he’s going there because he can. I feel like it’s more of an egotistic thing. It’s that he the more somebody tells him he can’t do something, the more he’s going to lean into it because he’s where he is and knows that he can get away with it. That’s what I think on that, because he is a great comedian, and why that’s what you want to lean in on, I just don’t get it.

It’s like, you’re right, he has an amazing legacy, an amazing body of work, and why tarnish that with that? And Jervais kind of takes the same approach of if you tell me I’m not going to say it, I’ll double down on it. But Jervais does it for twenty seconds. Yeah, Yeah, he doesn’t do it like with every performance, or maybe he does, but it is it’s wild to think about that, how you do have this body of work and then that’s what you want to go in on. And I just don’t.

I just don’t get because at that level, he isn’t at the very top of the comedy food chain. He is at the top of this pyramid, and he could say a million different things to change the world, and instead of using his platform for something like that, he’s choosing to You can’t tell me not to say that. I’m gonna say it anyway, Well said there. I keep thinking if he puts out another Netflix special, there’s only two paths. Now.

It’ll either be, well, what did Dave say about the trans community? Or the story will be that he didn’t address the subject, which will become its own story, which gets back to my premise of this is you’ve turned into being the trans jokes guy and I don’t get it. Yeah, I don’t understand it either. Again, he’s at the top of the chain, one of the best in the business, and for this to be what you want to be remembered for is wild. So you’re out there on the road, who’s aside from yourself, We’ll talk about you, but who’s out there that we need to get to know, who’s good out there that’s under the radar, or even if it’s a name, who are you digging these days?

Oh, there’s a lot of comics that are under the radars, especially in the Midwest, because there are so many great comedy scenes throughout the country. I currently lived just outside of Denver, which has a tremendous comedy scene. Let’s put comics out like Sam Talent, Adam Caton halland and the Grolics, and they’ve all went on to do great things and they still kind of live in the area too, I think. But I lived in Minneapolis. A lot of great comics up there as well.

Some of my favorites doesn’t live in any of those markets, lives in a smaller market. Nathan Holtz is a fantastic comedian that nobody’s probably heard of. He based out of suit Falls, South Dakota, and he’s hilarious and charming and does all the all. He’s just so great on stage, but nobody probably way knows who he is because he’s just working it out. He does a lot of road gigs, one night ers and then the corporate comedy that kind of thing.

It’s interesting how it’s changed now too. It’s no longer the eighteen year overnight success like a Dane Cook, or the plus and minuses of people hating on Dane. Hey, he figured out my Space before you did, too bad, But he had also been a working comic. It wasn’t like he graduated high school and put out a my Space page and became super famous. But you know, on the other hand, we’ve got TikTok comedians now and the short cuts there when you factor in some of the platforms Instagram particular, how you look might factor in a little bit more now this is show biz.

How you look always has factored in. Let’s about that again. Not to dump on Dane, but nice looking guy. It doesn’t hurt, right, not at all. So how is it these days as a touring comic?

Is it I’ll do my eighteen years and then I’ll get to play theaters or it’s the window now three years? Where is it now? I don’t know that there is a window necessarily, like as far as like a timeline, I think it’s really up to the comic and how they choose it to be. I mean, with especially with social media. One thing that I’ve seen.

I know a lot of comedians, a lot of friends that have done really well on TikTok have been able to gain followers from that, and then that has propelled them to open for bigger comedians and get bigger gigs and things like that. And it’s because they took the initiative to sit down and not just sit down, but think out of content to put out, whether it was stand up clips or just doing funny reactions or whatever it might have been, and taking the time and dedication to make these videos and then consistently putting them out there, because that’s one thing with social it’s not so much what you’re putting out, and obviously you want to put out good quality because if you’re putting out bad jokes all the time and bad comedy, that’s gonna leave a distaste and people’s mouths and they’re not going to want to work with you unless they think you’re doing a bit. You know, so the media, it will work in your favor. But a lot of what I’ve noticed is it’s consistency and having that motivation to do it. And I as a comedian, I don’t put out nearly enough content.

And when I see another comedian blow up, and I know that they’re putting in the work. I’m just like respect, you’re doing what I’m just too lazy to do. I can’t be mad at you for sitting down and doing this because you’re creating your own path. And that’s what’s great about the Internet and social media now is in entertainment is that our careers are our own hands. Used to be a scenario where you had to go maybe do an audition or get discovered by some kind of industry folk, and then they had to give you the past to put you on TV or whatever it might have been, and then you would start blowing up.

Now you can just be a creator, put stuff out on your own and blow up and play the game by yourself. I have another great friend, Zoltan, another great comedian who he did a dry bar comedy special. It went really well, and he puts out a lot of content. He has his own fan base pretty much, and he goes and does a lot of his own shows and sells out because he’s doing his own thing. The dry bar stuff is a really interesting and they’re putting out clean comedy which doesn’t always get the media attention.

That’s the opposite dirty comedy. Blue comedy, I guess would be the tot. Blue comedy would be the term. But yeah, they’re doing interesting things. Talking about internet videos, I’ve seen an increasing amount of newbies putting out quote unquote stand up that is clearly shot in their living room where maybe they hung a curtain behind them so there’s no crowd.

It’s not it’s the weirdest thing. It’s just like telling two jokes. I know lately on the podcast, I’ve been busting into my very halfass Mitch Hedberg, but I’m doing it for fifteen seconds and clearly not taking it seriously. If I start putting out videos of me and my basement here as fake Mitch Hedberg, come kill me. Yeah, I think that is funny when comics, and to me, that’s probably somebody who wants to try stand up but isn’t brave enough to actually go try stand up, so they’re doing it like in their comfort zone.

But and then to put it on on the Internet. I don’t know. That’s wild. Yeah, it’s weird. On the incubation scene, I do feel like Austin is happening, and the Rogan verse Joe, I feel like he’s dragged that city uphill by himself and created this reputation that it’s a comedy hotbed, and you do seek like clearly if you go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, it’ll help your career.

But that has spilled over into things like kill Tony moving down there, and there’s just this whole ecosystem that’s very fascinating to watch it a very cool way. I love it. You get to know a lot of comedians out of there. But I feel like Austin is happening. Oh yeah, I think so too.

And you see it especially like you said, not just because you know that it formed like a whole migration during the pandemic, A lot of comics that were doing stuff in La moved out there. You brought up kill Tony Well, that used to be a Comedy Store podcast to say they did it. That’s where they did it. Every week was at the Comedy Store unless they were on tour. Right now, it’s moved to Austin, and the whole production team.

Brian Redbrand, who was one of the producers and one of the hosts on that podcast, he moved to Austin. I have other friends that are people that I started with in comedy. Brian Simpson is a good example. He’s been blowing up. He’s been on a couple different podcasts down there, and I think he now moved down to Austin as well, and he works with Rogan is open for Brogan does his own stuff.

Incredible comedian, but moved out there. I know some other people that I used to work with in southern California that have all moved out there, and now it’s like really booming. And I just saw that his new comedy club just opened up, which that’s gonna even further it, I’m sure. Yeah, especially early here. I was listening to Rogan’s pod earlier today where he had Kreischer on and Kreischer played the club, and Ron White’s been hanging out there.

So it seems like that could be a place where on a Tuesday Wednesday night you might see some heavy hitters. It might be a place where you hit town. He’d played Joe’s Club, you do Joe’s podcast, and maybe you’d do a theater show on the weekend. You could really one stop shop and hit a lot of avenues there. It’s really cool.

Oh absolutely, And they already they already had a pretty good scene, and they’ve had some They had some really good comedy festivals in Austin prior to all this, and that’s just kind of like you said, that’s just incubating it and making it even a better scene. Yeah, the Moontower Festival, even when they were on their own before they teamed up with Just for Laughs, was huge, and that lineup is starting to approach Montreal. It can’t underestimate the Netflix. What’s that. Netflix is a joke?

Thank you. Netflix is a joke in lac That’s why I can’t put these things out raw and they’re not doing that this year. But Moontower is right up there and a different part of the country. Like for me, it’s super easy to go to Montreal, hop in the car straight up by eighty seven, a couple hours drive, not bad. You have something else in Austin.

Those are two major ones, and then you throw Netflix in there. We’ll love three really great comedy festivals. Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely. And it’s just like and the same thing happened over in Nashville too, because the pandemic really did push people out of California for as far as entertainers, and they went. Nashville is another example of kind of a place that kind of got incubated because there’s some pretty big names that live in and around Nashville.

I think that’s where Theo Vaughan ended up going. Steve Byrne moved to Nashville. Nate Bargaski was already out in that area. Same with Dusty Slay. So you like already have some of these comics that are already great that we’re there, and then more moving in there.

Dusty is so awesome. I want to see Dusty Pop. He’s out there. He’s had a few videos go viral. He’s got a great bit about it’s five o’clock somewhere.

If you haven’t seen it, stop listening to this podcast and go do that right now. But I really want to see Dusty Pop. He’s fantastic. He is fantastic, and he’s really nice guy. I’ve met him a couple of times.

He did my podcast during the pandemic actually, and we’ve emailed back and forth and stuff, and just a really nice guy. And that’s one thing that I love about the comedy is when you see these people who are blowing up that they’re still humble and they’re just nice people. In addition, to being very talented. They have that. I’m also a nice person, because you know, there’s a lot of crummy people in the world, and he’s working clean and Nate’s working clean.

We’re seeing more and more of that. I’ve told this story on the pod before. When I first met Foxworthy, he explained to me that he was a normal speaking comic dropping in curse words as we say, swear words every now and then, and he decided not to do it. And he remember, he held out his hands and he said, and then I picked up the kids and the grandmas, and his audience just got bigger. So it’s interesting to me to see more and more clean comics out there.

And then conversely, I don’t mind swearing in comedy. I do appreciate somebody who can crush wall clean. But I teach a college class and I have often illustrated and I will do it here. I’m going to use a word that is a synonym for cat and I’m going to bleep it out. But Dan is going to hear what I actually say.

But I’ll say to the kids, I could just do the joke. So I punched her in the bleep and it gets a laugh out of the college kids. I didn’t even set anything up. I just said something vile. Yeah, that’s exactly it too.

That’s why I don’t have a preference if people use profanity, and a well placed profanity can really highlight and really sell the joke, it can make it that much better. But one thing in comedy is often the profanity becomes the punchline, and that’s a sign of weak writing. It becomes either a crutch or the punchline. And if your profanity these the punchline, then your comedy is not that great to begin with, and you’re not a strong writer.

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And now when you see comics like day Borgatsky, you’re Dusty Slay, who are do…

They’re not just funny and talented performers, but they you can tell that they’re a good writer because they’re not relying on a profanity for the punchline. And you might watch an entire hour of Nate and not even realize that he’s working clean. He’s good writing, like you said, Yeah, And that’s one thing for me that I and I’ve had people come up to me. Working in the Midwest, you end up working in a lot of bars, and there’s a lot of bar shows and things like that, and I’ve worked in any of them, and I primarily I worked clean. I don’t label myself as a clean comedian.

I just say I’m a comedian. But I’ve evolved into working as a clean comedian. It wasn’t necessarily I decided that I’m going to be a clean comedian. I just evolved that way because of great mentoring that I had early on, and so that’s just how I started writing. And so sometimes as a clean comedian, working in bars can be very difficult because they want more the low brow, blue humor.

But one thing that I’ve encountered, and in more on more than one occasion, people will come up to me after the show and they’ll say, Hey, I really appreciate that you were You were clean, You didn’t use any profanity, You didn’t you weren’t dirty. You you did your jokes. They were really funny. I could have brought my whole family to this show, even though it’s in a bar. I could have brought my whole family.

I could have brought my grandma to this show and it would have been fine. And anytime somebody comes up to me after a bar show and says that to me, I’m just like, I’m doing it right then, because that’s amazing to me. So that’s really interesting to me. I never thought about the concept of a bar show. So I would imagine like a comedian like Jimmy Carr, who can just bang really quick zings at rapid fire, would do really well.

But somebody doing some more storytelling or taking longer to go or clever wordplay probably doesn’t work in that setting, right, Yeah, it depends on how it all boils down to the marketing of how the show’s being marketed. Is it being marketed as a stand up comedy show? When people come through the door, do they know they’re going to a comedy show? And if they do, that gives them the mindset to be ready for comedy, whether it’s quick one liners or storytelling. They’re in the mindset for comedy, so they’re gonna it’s gonna you’re gonna have a little more leeway with a crowd.

Now, if it’s what I call hijack comedy, where there’s just people in a bar and then suddenly a comedy show is starting, and they had no idea that there was going to be a comedy, and they just came to watch the local sports team and drink some beers at their favorite watering hole. It goes a total opposite direction. That sounds like a nightmare. That is a nightmare, all right. One of my pet peeves is podcasts that in the middle of a conversation just drop at a commercial without taking a proper break.

So this, my friend, is a proper break. Dan. I brought a prop. The listeners think I make this up. Tell everybody, what’s what I’m holding here?

If you’re holding the famous iced coffee, that’s right, big iced coffee. It is a large iced coffee. I went to the National Donuts chain and I bought a large iced coffee with milk and caramel. I don’t lie, no, not at all. I’m witnessing it.

I saw with my own two eyes. Well, I made Coffee dot COM’s last Daily Comedy News talk to me about the back of the room, and from my time programming Serious XM, I think I caught the same disease as a lot of comics, where I will listen to comedy and I don’t laugh. And I know that makes me sound like a psychopath, but you may understand where I’m talking about you. I might be in the back of the room watching you and go, oh man, Dan is crushing it tonight. That was hilarious.

Oh what a great callback. Those hilarious Oh man, this is so funny. But I’m thinking it in that tone instead of laughing my ass off like a normal person would talk to me about that. In that scenario, you’re watching comedy as as a person in the industry, and we all do that. It’s the same as a comedian.

I do that as well. In fact, sometimes I can take it a step further where I can see somebody do a joke and I’m you know, I see the whole audience laugh at the joke, and to me, I don’t think the joke was that great or it didn’t hit me in the same way it hit the audience. But I can look at it and understand why it did well, Like I get why the audience laughed at that joke and why they thought that was a great joke, and then at the same time be like I didn’t like it. Yes, it’s that technical analysis of Oh, I see what that tag did there and got everybody back into circle on it. I’m trying to remember.

It was years ago. I was at the Chicago just for Left Chicago, and I’m trying to remember who it was. And it might have been Pussane, it might have been Pattent, I can’t remember, but I remember sitting there with my host Mark and we had seen like fifteen shows in thirty six hours, something like that, and I felt like I could see the matrix how we used to do in grammar school map out a sentence, and I’m like, oh, I can see all right, premise based in truth, exaggerated version of the thing that was originally true callback And I’m like, I’m watching it. I’m like, I see where you’re gonna go. I know what the next beat is.

I know what the next beat is. And it totally took me out of the show because I felt the famous meme where you know Charlie from It’s Always Sunny, He’s like graphing things out like I could see that in my head. I could totally see the act scripted out, even though I didn’t know what the words were. It’s terrible, it is. I do that all the time.

I produce a comedy festival. I’m one of the producers for a comedy festival, and a lot of times I’m working at the doing stuff with the festival, so I can’t watch a lot of the shows, but when I do, it’ll be the same thing. I go into that analytical mut mode, or even any comedy show, and people after the show be like, well, what’d you like about that show? Who is your favorite? And I’m just like, I don’t even remember any jokes, you know, if they’ll say, what was your favorite joke of the nine I was too busy analyzing it from a technical standpoint that I don’t even remember.

Yeah, I know a lot of people don’t understand when you work events, you’re actually working events and not hanging out attending shows. I used to do Comic Con radio, and everybody wanted to get on my team and go out to San Diego for Comic Con. I’m like, you don’t understand. These are fifteen hour days. We’re not sitting there buying merch We’re working.

Everybody was still a fun event, though, Oh it was great. It’s one of my favorites. I’ve got a picture of the entire cast of The Walking Dead right as that show was going to become super popular. In a season three and the Governor’s there and everybody’s there. It’s one of my favorites.

That’s awesome. Yeah, do you remember what year that was? It was the season that the governor was the villain. Okay, I’ll have to look back because I probably lived in San Diego, and there’s a chance I was there too, because I was an early on on that. I had fun moments.

We were in We had a room in the back and Andrew Lincoln needed to go to the bathroom. He’s like, where’s the bathroom? The one right here’s broken and he’s like, there’s an ext one. I’m like, you’ll have to go out on the floor. I’m not sure you wanted.

Let’s go. So I accompanied mister Lincoln to the men’s room in the middle of the floor and we made it there safely for lack of a better term, And on the way out, everybody noticed, Hey, it’s Rick Grimes and we’re at comic cons. So he starts getting swarm and I had to turn into some sort of half aass security slash public says, Hey, Andrew would love to hang out with you right now, but he’s gotta go. Come on, Andrew, we gotta get back to the thing, and just kind interference for it. But he was like cool as anything.

Oh yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. I couldn’t imagine trying to be our being a celebrity in an event like that. Just from being at those events, I’ve seen like Kevin Smith walking through the halls and people just go crazy and start like running towards them. And I’ve seen other celebrities and I’m just like, I don’t want to be that person.

Now I want to be that person, but I’m going to be restraints somebody who produces events you don’t have to name names, but I find the big stars are usually super cool and super chill, and it’s the newbies or people that have had five minutes of fame or just getting their first taste of showbiz they tend to be the major pain in the ass. In my experience, I haven’t had that experience yet, so everybody that I’ve worked with has been pretty good. I haven’t really had to work with anybody super difficult, which has been amazing because you’re always worried that’s gonna happen. You know that you’re gonna you’re gonna start working with this one comic that is going to be way more difficult than they need to be. But fortunately for us and the events that I’ve been involved with, I haven’t found that yet.

I have found that, I guess, not so much with the celebrity headliners, but once in a while one of the comics that aren’t at that level can be a little difficult, or they’re on a showcase and they think they’re way bigger than they are a thing. But and even then it was pretty mild compared to what it could have been. You’re lucky. Yeah, it’s usually that middle kind of person that once all the brown m and m’s removed, and then the biggest stars in the world to come and to be like, yeah, hey, no cool, I’m chill here. Oh yeah, absolutely, And that’s really what it is.

We had. Dennis Reagan was one of our headliners, not this last year, but the year before had our comedy festival. He was only doing one show, he was closing out the festival. He came for the whole festival and just hung out. Like he went.

He went to dinner with other comics that were there on the other showcases. He came to the other shows. He ended up participating in a game show that we were doing because somebody couldn’t do it, and he filled in and just was super chill and just hung out the whole weekend. It was amazing. I was very surprised because I just assumed you’re gonna come fly in, do your show, fly out.

Nope, he wanted to come for the whole festival, which was amazing. That’s awesome. When do you start working on a festival, probably ten minutes after the festival ends, you start working the next one. We usually give ourselves a little bit of a breather, but even so, we already as soon as one festival is over, before it’s even over, we’re already talking about what’s happening next year. You know, we’re getting an idea of Okay, what’s working this year, what’s not, what do we need to change for next year?

Because we’re always trying to improve our festival as well. We really believe in continuous improvement and wanting to strive to be better and better, so we think about those things early on. But yeah, almost as soon as we’re done, we start planning the next one. We might take a week month, but even within that week and month, we’re still having some casual conversations about the next year. It’s not a complete break.

How do you go about identifying talent? I’m sure budget factors. In my experience in radio audio podcasting has always been played the hits, which is why I mentioned Joe Rogan in the episode titles three four times a week. I’m open about that, but it does get the downloads. I’m sure if you would like to have a festival, sure, Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan and Bill Burrow are headliners, but maybe they don’t fit in budget wise, So what’s the matrix they’re figuring out?

Who’s the right comic to top this thing? So for us, because we’re a very small festival and we’re in a smaller market too, and everything is on budgeting, we’re also a nonprofit. We’re a five O one three seed nonprofit and our money that we get in and we get sponsorships and we try to get some grants and things like that, but the net proceeds that we make from this festival after our expenses, we donate to local charities. So we’re a charity working for other charities, and that’s always been our business model, and because of that, we do have a tremendously smaller budget than most festivals. We don’t have all the money that we can just throw at headliners.

So when we’re looking at headliners for our festival, we try to see who’s within our budget. And really a lot of it too is do we have a personal connect can we go around their management? Because one thing that I found and I get why they do it, they’re looking out for their client. They’re all looking up for them because how they get paid based on what their clients getting paid. They so they want to make sure their clients getting the most amount of money they can.

It’s a business. Think totally understand it. But for a small indie comedy festival without big budgets, sometimes that’s hard to I can’t drop fifty grand for one night for a comic, it’s not feasible. We’ll never make our money back on That doesn’t matter how big of a comedian they are, because now we’ll even try to make that we need to find a facility that would hold enough people in the area.

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And then to get that facility, you’re probably looking at another ten fifteen…

So there’s all those things that end up. So we look at that if we can get like a personal connect or if people have recommendations and things like that. One thing that we’ve also encountered which has been great is sometimes headliners contact us they’re okay, I would love to be involved in your festival. And I’ve been in comedy for almost thirteen years, and I’ve been producing shows and festivals almost as long. I think the first festival that I produced was maybe four or five years after I started comedy, So I’ve been producing festivals for quite a while, and so I’ve made a lot of connections throughout the years.

And I’ve seen a lot of comedians who’ve done these other festivals, who were just coming up, who are now a lot bigger comedians, and so I have these personal relationships too with them too. So it’s a little easier for me to reach out and say, Hey, I know you’re at this level and you deserve a lot of a lot more money, but would you give us a deal and if so, what do you have to come to our festival. That kind of a little bit of negotiation power there. But there’s a lot of different things that we have to factor in to it. This last year we had Jackucation headline, and I knew she was doing a lot of festivals.

She was gracious enough to do my podcast, shameless Plug, the Art of Bombing podcast. She was, now, Yeah, tell everybody what it is, because it’s really cool. Yeah, So yeah, yeah, that’s it is. It’s called The Art of Bombing. It is a comedy podcast where I talk to other comedians about their worst times on stage.

I get them to share their most horrible times on stage and they share all kinds of bombing stories and then we talk about what they learn from it. So if you’re a comedian and you’re aspiring to get better, there’s that angle where there’s a lot of insight that’s coming from comedians of all levels. It’s not just people who’ve been doing it for twenty thirty years. It’s comedians it might only been doing it for six months, and all the way to comedians who have been doing it for thirty years. Because I think everybody brings something different to the table, and we all have different perspectives and there’s something to be learned from everybody else.

So there’s that angle. But then there’s also the stories because They’re very entertaining to listen to a comedian talk about a time they did really bad and try to relive that memory. Sometimes it’s like therapy. They’re like, I don’t want to redo this, but here we are. So yeah.

So it’s a great podcast. It’s called The Art of Bombing Podcast. Jackie was on it. I was able to have Louie Anderson on it before he passed away. Rip to a legend.

But anyway, going back to the story with Jackie, she did my podcast and then we happened to be at the same festival. She was headlining a festival that I got into down in Texas, the Plane Comedy Festival, and she did her podcast live there and I went to it. And I had met her at a show here in Colorado. She headlined a club around here and I went to the show and so kind of had a little bit of a FaceTime with her, talk just a little bit. Then she did the podcast.

Then we’re at this festival, and so I just asked her. I just said, Hey, who do I contact about potentially having you do this festival? I told her I had this festival, and I said, who do I need to talk to? And so you can talk to me right now. She gave me.

She said, here’s my email, reach out to me and we’ll hash it out. And so I did.

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And then after and it was amazing because after we hashed out, the negotiated…

I’m not anti representation. Everybody should be paid what they’re worth. But if you want to do a project, if you and I agree, like, hey, would it be cool if we worked on this thing together. We’re really excited about it. And you and I have agreed to ten thousand dollars and your manager comes back and ask for a million, there’s no middle there.

I can’t meet you at five hundred grand. If you come back with twenty, there’s a number we can meet. And it might not be fifteen, it might be closer to the twenty but when you come back with these crazy ass it just totally kills deals.

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And also on the corporate side, it can kill the opportunity for the future be…

Again, people should be fairly paid, but sometimes as artists they just want to do things. Yeah. Yeah, And if they can do things and still make a little bit of mone doing them, that’s even to them. They’re even more excited about that, because, especially in comedy, there’s a lot of things in your career as you come up that you have to do for zero, very little to zero moneies. Yeah, that’s the other thing.

I used to get back to the office and be all cranky, and I’d be like, you know, meanwhile, so and so is gonna be up and down on the four train all night hitting spots for eight bucks if that? Yes, exactly, exactly. So as part of your festival, you were doing a thing yourself. You were explains to it. You were doing this ep K thing electronic press kit, and I thought it was really interesting, And that was one of the things when I poked at you a couple of months back to have you on, So what were you doing?

Explain to everybody what the ePK is, Why do you have it? What was your panel? EPK, like you said, stands for an electronic press kit, and it can be used in a variety of different ways. What I’ve found over the years is that a lot and even when I was early on, I didn’t know what it was. And that’s part of why I started learning about it is a lot of comedians don’t know what an ePK stands for, let alone what it is.

They don’t and then when you tell them it’s an electronic press kit, what’s that? That’s what my workshops as I teach comedians and know other people that want to take the class, other types of artists, what an ePK is, what they should put in it, how it should be used, because it can be used for a variety of different things, and it can come in a variety of different forms. Technically, a website could be considered an electronic press kit because it should have the same things that are in a press kit. But typically for a comedy, you use an electronic press kit to help with booking and has all your promotional materials. So it’s a way to sell yourself to, whether you’re selling yourself to a client for a corporate gig or a comedy booker, a comedy club, or a producer.

And then if they decide to work with you, it has all the materials that they need to promote you on that show. So it’ll have your head shots, it’ll head bio, should have some video, and then there’s a whole variety of other things that can be included that are an optional that I go more in depth on the workshop, But yeah, I just found that a lot of comedians didn’t know what that was. And so we’ve talked previously and I said that I’m all about getting better together and trying to help people grow and as comedians. So I seen that there was this missing piece and I wanted to help other comedians. So I started teaching a workshop on it.

And I try to keep the prices when I do it very affordable. I charged twenty five or thirty dollars for two to three hour workshop. It’s something like that, So I try to keep it pretty reasonable. But after people take the class, they can go build their own ePK. They don’t need to pay somebody else to do it.

They can do it themselves and then manage it themselves. So that’s what that’s all about. I think that stuff is so important. When I was a big, fancy radio executive, I would explain to people, I’m a nice enough person and I want to check out your stuff, But I would get pitched all day, every day. Every now and then there would be a Friday afternoon where maybe I had completed the task for a week and I would finally get to what I lovingly called the pile, and I would back in the day play your CD or listen to your demo tape or whatever.

And if you didn’t have your stuff together, if it didn’t just look good, even though I work in an audio industry, if you sent me a CD with you had written Dan Boublitz and Sharpie on it, as opposed to getting it professionally labeled, it mattered a nice picture of you, a nice press kit. What am I looking at? What do you want?

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And then, in the unlikely event I hit play, you had seriously four seconds to…

And it was just so you get these at bats, and you’ve got to nail them. So your stuff has to be on point. Oh yeah, absolutely, and that’s something with you. You mentioned press kits, because that’s what it used to be. You used to have to physically put these together and then send them through snail mail to bookers and producers and radio people and all that stuff.

And that’s where the electronic comes in. Now it’s something you know, hopefully can just send a link to or email or whatever. And technology has definitely helped with sending out the press. Kids. There was insanity back of the day, the Fox Network.

Their promotion budget must have been insane. So again, I was at Serious and anytime they had a new show, they would mail everybody at Serious a DVD screener, but also some swag. It’d be a T shirt for the new show. I remember for the Simpsons Halloween special, they would send out a bowl of candy to everybody, but we’d all have it and I’d be like, Okay, let’s talk about this. So you’re in La, put together this press kit, you get the candy together, it goes on a FedEx truck, it goes on a plane.

The plane flies to New York to JFK. Somebody loves it, goes to a truck. The truck comes to forty nine Street and Broadway. Somebody brings it upstairs to the mail room and finally hits my desk, and I eat the snickers and I probably don’t even watch the screener. And I was like, oh my god, the amount of money and time and energy.

And then when that quickly changed too, here’s your agin if you’d like to watch the screener. No more candy, no more T shirts. I had so much swag there for five ten years. We also used to get when DVDs were a thing, people would send out review copies of box sets, and I had so much stuff that, like, I couldn’t even keep it anymore. It’d be like, I’m never going to watch the complete series of six feet Under, Hey, Dandy, you want it?

No, I got a copy of it too. It was just insane. Wow. Yeah, I suppose in a situation like that, when you finally get rid of it, it’s I guess we’re taking a trip to Goodwill or something like that. Yeah, I hopefully nobody’s listening.

Probably no one is listening. But I donated them to the active soldiers because you’re in the middle of the desert and you have nothing to watch. So the complete series of six feet Under is a welcome gift. My mother was involved with a charity there, so I would run everything through Mom and I’d be like, here, donate this, don’t ask questions.

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And then the general wanted to send a thank you letter.

I’m like, no thank you letter, because if the thank you letter comes in, then people are gonna ask questions and there’s going to be no more DVDs. So we just did that on the slide because it was that or the garbage can. I’d rather yeah, and a soldier watched the way better alternative than the garbage can. So, as an ePK expert, let me ask you this because this has bothered me, probably since I was a young child. Why does every comedian headshot have to have a dopey face?

Why can’t you just have a normal smiley face. First, I’m want to say I’m no expert. I just know a lot of things and I share what I know. Am I to end all be all? No?

So let’s put that out there. But I appreciate, appreciate the compliment, and that is a very good question that I was answered too. I think it’s because the photographer insists they want you to be silly, because that’s the thing. When you’re a comedian. Everybody thinks you’re silly and you should be doing silly things.

So if you’re getting your head shots, be silly getting your head shots. If you’re going out to lunch, be silly getting your lunch. Like, people don’t understand that as a comedian, I’m a comedian when I walk on stage and have the microphone and tell my jokes, and then when I walk off, I stop. I’m not I don’t stop being a comedianist profession, but I stop being funny in that moment, Like I want to have a good time and joke around with people, but it doesn’t mean we’re always on. And I think that’s the perception of people when they say, oh, you’re a comedian, you must always be joking around one percent of the time.

That is not the case. No, the stage persona versus real life. And I’m not saying people are being faked. But if you met Gilbert Godfreed, Hey Gilbert, how you doing, Oh hey, we’re nice to meet you. Good and then the second the light went on, then he’s doing the Gilbert persona, Doug Stanhope, same thing.

I’ve been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with Larry the Cable Guy, and sometimes when the MIC’s not on, I’m clearly talking to Dan Whitney, and sometimes I’m talking to Larry the Cable Guy. Yeah. I worked with him one time in Lincoln, Nebraska, because he popped in on a show I was working with Nick Hough. I was featuring for Nick Hough, who is a comedian who typically opens for a Larry the Cable Guy, and Nick hoff was headlining this comedy club close to where later the Cable Guy lives. So Larry came in and did some time on the show, which was great, and the same thing in the green room.

He was not Larry the Gable Guy. He was Dan. Yeah, and both Dan and Larry the Cable Guy are the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. The I don’t understand the haters. I guess it comes out of jealousy or they don’t get the blue collar thing.

Larry slash Dan. He’s just chucking jokes. That’s it. Yeah, I think that you nailed it. It’s a lot of it’s just jealousy people and I think it’s people get jealous because they didn’t think of something.

They look at it and it’s, oh, that’s just just being a character. He’s not being real. Yeah, he tried a character and it took off, and then it made him millions of dollars, and so he decided to be at a smart business person and keep up with it and keep making millions of dollars. And it comes back to this is a total tangent. So recording us.

On Wednesday last night, Disney Channel showed a hockey game. Did you see this? It was a hockey game overlaid with some Disney Network cartoon. So if you put on the Disney Channel, you were watching a cartoon hockey game, the actual Rangers, Capitol’s game, Green City something, It doesn’t matter anyway. It was an animated hockey game live, and my cousin and I were hockey fans, were watching it, and they had instead of the actual NHL goalie, they overlaid it with somebody from the show.

So it was the equivalent of Homer Simpson is in net. And it was just fun. And we’re watching this and I’m like, this is just fun. So why that tangent? Larry the Cable Guy.

The act is just fun. It’s a guy with no sleeves, get or done. He knows what you want, he knows how to tea it up. He runs the playbook. You have a good time, and you go home.

I don’t think he’s claiming that it’s peak George Carlin. In terms of writing. It’s just Larry the Cable Guy. And my favorite is you know, and I bet he’s not even a cable guy. You think, oh, that’s amazing, amazing, because we know that’s true.

There are people that are literally, well, Bett, he’s not a cable guy. What’s on your calendar? These my calendar I’ve got. I’ve been concentrating on stuff here in the Colorado area. I’m mostly doing local, more local shows, and then I’m going to be up in South Dakota, Minnesota in May.

I’m gonna I don’t know if I can announce that yet, but I’m gonna be in a festival coming up at the beginning of May in southern Colorado. So yeah, you can keep an eye on that. I don’t want. We have Google. We can probably figure out May comedy festival.

We can probably put this to Colorado. You can exactly you can do the things that way. I’m not getting ahead of myself. Insiders tell me exactly, So there’s that. But yeah, Otherwise, all my dates are at my on my website Dan Booblitz dot com.

I’ve been I really focus on the podcast. If you really want to get to know me as a comedian and what I’m about and to listen to other comedians, that’s how you do it. Go check out My podcasts are a bombing podcast because that’s where I really open up. I try to be While I don’t aim to be an expert at comedy, because I have a lot to learn, but I’ve had a lot of experiences throughout my career that I don’t think a lot of people. We all have our different paths, and I don’t think people have been on my path.

So I try to be kind of a mentor I guess if you will. And I want everybody to get better at comedy. I want people to get better together, and so that’s a whole focus. So that’s what you can find if you’re on my podcast. I do feel like that’s the vibe these days.

I’m not sure that was true twenty years ago. I feel like comedians are for the most part, all in it together. Now, it’s not for you to win. I have to lose. I just feel like everybody’s into building the scene.

Yeah, and there’s enough for everybody. Yeah. And if you have a good scene, you’re going to have good comedians coming out of that. That’s it’s important to have that.

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Let’s talk about the realities of your travel.

All right, So you’ve got a gig, it’s not in town. What’s it actually like when are you leaving? Are you on the Concord in first class and you’re staying at the Four Seasons and you’re eating the finest foods. Talk to me about a real trip. Okay, Well, a real trip for me is not like that.

The description you just gave is for somebody like Bill Burr who was at that level. For regular old comics like us, who are relatively unknown, we are out of town gigs are a little different, and as of late, this is why I’m doing more local stuff. I’m getting tired of the pay in comedy. It hasn’t really went up since the eighties, and inflation has went up a bazillion times since then.

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And then a lot of gigs these days don’t want to include the lodgings, you hav…

So I’m very selective onmin gigs. But when I do go on on the road and do a gig, it just depends on how far the gig is. For example, this corporate that I did, but the town was five hours away, so I had to be there for a sound check between four and four thirty, and so I left. I was on the road by nine am my time, and I had to account for a loss of time because of the time I changed from Mountain time to Central time, so I had to make sure that was equated into having enough time to get there. So I left at nine my time, got there about three, was able to check into my hotel, get relaxed a little bit, go do my sound check, then go get ready for the show, go back to the show, do the show, and then the next morning, because I had a gig in my area, then I had to get up be on the road about the same time as I left to get home, so that way I could quick change, relax a little bit, and then head to another gig that was a couple of hours away, which was a great It was a fun show up in winter Puck, which is like a ski town in the mountains here in Colorado, and that gig because it was it’s close to my house.

You know, if a gig is within two two and a half hours from my house, I’m not gonna worry about lodging. I want to go home and sleep in my own bed. So that was a gig where I didn’t need lodging. It’s great. I just go out to the mountains, do a show, and after the show come home.

Unfortunately I got stuck out there. I think the travel and expenses part would probably surprise most people who don’t study this. I would imagine there’s a perception of oh, you know, not if you’re playing a bar, but if you’re playing anything that we could call a theater or a venue. I think most people would assume like, oh, all right, you’re gonna go there and you’re gonna make at least several hundred dollars and they’re bringing you in and they’re giving you meals and they got you there. But it’s not that at all.

No, not usually, And when you do get those gigs, it’s amazing. You’re like, yes, these are the greatest gigs. But yeah, that’s typically not what it’s like. And even a lot of comedians when they start comedy, they don’t think about it. I have a background in business and marketing.

I went to school for that, and I’ve always been and I’ve owned businesses in the past, so I’ve always had a business mind, and I came into comedy with that approach that this is a business. And that’s one thing that I see with comedy. It’s like comedians see, oh, I’m getting X amount of dollars to go do this gig, but then they don’t think about all the stuff that it takes to get to the gig and to get home from the gig. And like you said, people who don’t study comedy won’t know this either, that when you’re going to a gig, you’re gonna have gas money that you have, so that’s an expense. Technically, whatever clothes you wear, that’s an expense because it’s your uniform.

You’re gonna have to have food because a lot of gigs don’t don’t pay for meals. There are some that do. The good venues will give you a bar tab or food tab or whatever, and then a lot of times lodging isn’t included, so you have to pay your own lodging and figure out your own place to stay, and that’s another expense. And if say a gig is paying you two hundred and fifty dollars, before you know it, you might be breaking even on that gig unless you’re selling merch. And that’s why so many road comics sell merch, because they have to depend on that to actually make money.

It’s crazy and it hasn’t changed in a lot of years. It said, the merch thing. It was always so sad. You’d see somebody go up and crush and you’d be hanging out of the lobby with your friends, but hey, where’s your going next? You want to grab a couple of drinks and you see the same guy that was the king of the world five minutes ago sitting at a card table selling CDs, And it was always just, oh, I feel for you, yo.

I wonder how many comedians you probably know as you talk to people are smart about taxes or maybe running their business out of an LLC where you can write off the clothes you wear because it’s part of your business, or travel expenses or logic. These are all legitimate expenses. Disclaimer, Johnny Mac is not an accountant. This is not legal advice. This is some idiot in abasement popping off.

This is not proper advice. But I imagine there are all sorts of things, possibly perhaps maybe consulted local experts, that you could write off and minimize or expenses they are. I mean, that’s just it. You’re all the things that you said are potential expenses that can be written off if you’re running it as a business. But that also means you have to keep track of the income versus your expenses.

Like you can’t just spend all this stuff and then claim you make zero money. There has to be a paper trial that you had some money come in, even if after you pay your expensive you lost money. But otherwise, if you’re just not bringing any money in and you’re just losing it on these expenses, you’re going to get audited. Yeah, that’s begging for it, right exactly. But I don’t feel like there’s enough comedians.

I think about that a lot of comedians, specially newer comedians, And this is why I’m always trying to preach about this and try to get it through people’s heads that they need to think about this. You know, I’ve experienced it, Other comics have experienced it, but they don’t think about that. They just think, oh, this is an opportunity for me to get some stage time to get better at the craft. Yes, you do need to get better at your craft, but you can also do that through your local scene. You don’t necessarily need to go do a road gig that’s gonna potentially cost you to be homeless.

You don’t need to do that to get better at comedy that and if anybody tells you you do, they’re gaslighting you. That’s how I feel about that, because you have to think about it as a business, and to be successful in any business, you have to make money in how you make money is watching your expenses versus watch what you’re making or what you’re bringing in for the gross sales. What’s the geography of that though, because not every place has a scene. There are big parts of the country where you’re two hundred miles from Nowhere’s Ville. And I don’t know that as a pejorative, but just I live in northern New Jersey.

I’m not a comic don’t want to be a comic. I’ve never reformed stand up comedy. But if I wanted to, there’s probably a lot of open mics not all that far, and at worst there’s this place called New York City that’s an hour away, so I could hit that. But what if fum in the middle of nowhere? Do I just gotta move right?

You get? You either moved to the to a closer to a scene, or you create your own scene. I started in Watertown, South Dakota. The town is the about maybe twenty thousand population, and I didn’t even technically I didn’t even start in Watertown. I was just living there.

I lived in one of those places where there was not a comedy scene. They didn’t even have at one time. I think they had like a comic club and some comedy through there, but there was no scene. And to start comedy, I had to go to a town that was an hour and a half Suo Falls, because they had some clubs and open mics and things like that. And I couldn’t be traveling all the time to these back and forth because I had a regular day job.

It just didn’t seem smart. So what I did was created my own scene. I started my own open I found a venue that was willing to do an open mic. I got talked to other people into trying comedy, and then I started bringing in other comics from other towns. So I basically started producing my own show right away, where I would bring in a regional headliner, give them some money, put them up in a hotel.

We’d sell tickets to the show, and then we also had an open mic as part of the show, and just created my own thing. And even now, and I’m not haven’t been in Watertown for a long time, but there are other comics that live in Watertown now who are still doing the same things that I would do that I’ve did. There there’s an active small scene in Watertown and years ago that wasn’t the case. That makes a lot of sense to me, not that it’s the same thing, but I hang out at this trivia night and it’s at seven o’clock on Wednesdays, and a year ago I used to walk in at six fifty and sit down and play trivia.

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And then I started leaving the house at six twenty and my family thought I wa…

I’d be like, I got to get a table and the last few weeks. I’m getting there at six twenty and the place is already packed, and it’s I can see how something can get word of mouth. And if you put the work in and grind that, Yeah, that makes sense to me that you could build your own scene. That’s great. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And that’s what I would encourage people to do if you don’t have the resources to move or to go to these other scenes.

And I would also say, don’t feel like you have you can’t work a regular job and be a comedian. That’s another thing in comedy that I see a lot is people are embarrassed. You know, when somebody says what are you doing and you’re like, I’m a stand up comedian. It’s like, oh, what else do you do? They’re embarrassed that they have to have another job.

I don’t see why don’t be embarrassed that you haven’t the job that says that you’re a well stable minded person because you want to make sure your bills get paid and you’re not homeless, and you’re still wanting to practice an art in a craft that makes you sensible person. In my book, the whole what you do for a living thing is fascinating I think my oldest kid, I think understands what I do. The other two what are you doing? While are you down the basement? Why are you talking yourself?

What do you your podcast? Amity? Listen to this? And when I had the corporate job was a lot easier to explain what I do.

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And now it’s like that I’m just doing my own things for fun and I make a coup…

It’s what are you doing dad? What does dad do for a living? They have no idea, so I can’t even imagine I’m a comedian. Oh or you John Mulaney, No, I created my own seat on Wednesday nights after the trivia guys that would people would be like what yeah, no, exactly, And it does happen a lot all the time, even after doing comedy for a long time. I’m sure my part there’s people that are associated with my partner who still are like, is he really a comedian?

Does he really make money doing this? It’s no sense to me. You’re a comedian? Do you know Bill Bird? Do you know him?

Yeah? Yeah, yeah. That happens a lot. And surprisingly sometimes they’ll the question that I think I get the lotus. Who’s the most famous person you’ve worked with as opposed to do you know so?

And so I get that more when somebody finds out where I’m from, They’re like, oh, you’re from South Dakota and they lived in this town across the state from you. Who is the most famous person you’ve worked with? Dana Carvey probably you can see and you can see my picture his picture right behind me. That was from a show that I produced in San Diego, me and my business partner at the time, Brandon Young. We had this series called the Legends of Comedy that we were doing and we were trying to bring legendary comedians down to San Diego.

So we had Jimmy Brogan was one of the comedians. Jan Carram did the show and then she was the one that put us in touch with Dana Carvey because she was working with him a lot.

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And then he came down and did our show.

We did a couple shows with him, sold out. It was amazing, and he was one of those people and they say don’t meet your heroes. He was one where he is such a just a down to earth and sweet person like he just he was great. He had his kids opening for him, his nephew was one of the openers his hole. He brought his whole family down.

They hung out in San Diego to do and do the shows, and they were all fantastic.

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And then him and his wife went home and his kids stayed in San Diego and did …

It was amazing. Yeah, the old don’t meet your heroes. I met back in the nineties William Shatner and it didn’t ruin it for me. I still love Captain Kirk, but I’m not sure William’s other projects I’m has turned onto as I might have other I’m trying to think the most famous people I’ve worked with, and I have a joke among friends DEFINE worked with. So I was quietly lurking recording an interview with President Obama.

Did we work it together? I don’t know. On the comedy side, Hi, mister Seinfeld, come with me. Hey, there’s Jim Brewer who’s going to interview. Did I work with Jerry Seinfeld?

I don’t know. So I might have to go with Stephen van zand I definitely worked with Stephen van zandt on a project called The Wise Guys Show. I’m not a musician, either, well, that’s awesome. That’s I really loved his series on Netflix. The Oh what is that called?

We’re both blanking on? Man, Now, everybody’s yelling at their thrones right now, they are. I couldn’t google it, just tell us. But let’s just let everybody yell at their phones. Yeah, let them be mad at us for not remembering the name of that series.

That was way short lived. It should have been They should have had way another couple of seasons because it was so great. Yeah, that was early. Netflix was a little too early. Dan, thank you for your time.

I’m sure my listeners when they downloaded today’s episode and saw that it wasn’t twelve minutes longer? What the heck is this? But let’s say this every now and then. Man, this is a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on.

I hit Dan up by yesterday. I was like, I’m just in the mood to talk comedy, no agenda, and you very You’re you’re an easy booking my friend. Oh yeah, but I’m just like, hey, yeah, well, I’m a fan of the podcast. I’m one of the regular listeners. I listened to it every day pretty much as soon as I get up That is the first thing I do.

I download all my podcasts. First podcast that I listened to of the day while I’m getting ready for the day, Daily Comedy News. Thank you for the plugging part of this. Your kindness aside. That is what it is designed for, just to be easy into the morning.

Here’s what’s going on if you’re into the scene. Yeah, I’m not a yeller and a screamer, and it’s something you can do. I listen back to myself just to make sure I didn’t screw up an edit when I go to the Donuts Shane every morning, so it’s also part of my morning routine. I also listen to NPR up first and pod News Daily to keep hip on the scene. Those are my three on my little round trip drive there.

That’s great, that’s all right, plug your pot again. The two my podcast, The Art of Bombing, that comes out on Thursdays is the normal episode, and we just started putting out bonus episodes on Mondays. We have a new show called Queen Bombs. The episode callback and what we’re doing is we’re talking about takeaways that from the previous episodes. For example, the most recent episodes that came out we had Adam Mamah Walla on the podcast, who also a fantastic comedian.

If you love comedy, he’s a New York guy. Go find Adam mama Walla. I just worked with him three shows last week. Great comedian, very funny, supernice guy, but also did the podcast, and so Thursday his episode came out, and then on Monday we released an episode where me and my co host Josh Shirley are talking about some of the things that you could have learned from that episode. So we take it and we’d go we’d drill a little deeper into kind of the themes and topics that come up in the conversations with the guests.

So that comes out on Mondays, So go check that out wherever you find all your podcasts. Super awesome And you’re reminding me that, but it’s not like I know you from serious We met through the pot of verse in different ways, and we’ve communicated on and off throughout the last two three years, but we’ve never what I feel like we’re friends. Oh I do, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, It’s just such a great space. But thank you for your time today. Thank you