Author: johnnymacdcn

---

Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny mag with your Daily Comedy News, A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence that I can’t memorize for the life of me. But also the algorithm loves I’ll keep saying it. Mark Maron once performed a comedy show so terrible that it cost him three weeks of work and forced him to fly on a twenty two hour flight around the globe.

That’s the headline from Entertainment weekly I love It. Maren was on Eric Andre’s podcast and said I was sent home from Australia because I bombed so hard it was the worst. Apparently, Maren was booked to headline three weeks of shows plus one week of previews at a club in Australia in the early nineties, but the problem was Maren only had thirty minutes of decent material when he took the job, so he says, So I flied Australia, I get there, this is billboard of me, like a painted billboard of me, with a fake quote about my act, like this guy’s a star. So right away that’s not true, and I knew I was gonna have to stretch, but I thought I could handle it. I don’t even like being away.

I was springing out on all levels. Didn’t have the confidence, didn’t have the act. Do not like to travel. Maren said he wasn’t used to shows that have intermissions, explaining the first time you deal with it, you’re like, what are you doing? You’re stopping the whole flow.

So I’m just sitting there watching the show going. I’m eft and I go out there the first night and struggled. It’s okay. I stretched at the end, but it’s okay. And I got through a whole week of previews where it’s just getting worse and worse.

I get out there, I’m the headliner and I’m smoking. You could smoke. Then some guy yells, where’d you get that jacket? And it was an America dude? And I was so effed up in my head confidence wise, that just shut me down.

There was a point where all I could hear in a room full of four hundred was the embers of my cigarette burning. It’s not just a silence, it was like a suction to it, and I felt myself leave my body. It was literally like I’m gonna go watch from over there.

And then I got off stage and the owner comes up to me and he’s that look of s…

This is weekend. I’m supposed to do three more weeks. And he goes, I don’t think this is working out, and I’m like, okay. He goes, I think maybe you should just go home. Wow.

Andre asked if Maren got paid. Maren said, I don’t even know. I don’t even think I cared. I knew I had to play along and be like, oh, really, I think it’ll get better. So I said that on my mind, I’m like, thank god, less funny.

I had been sober for about a year, and on that plane ride back got totally s face, totally relapsed. I just drank the whole way home. Dan Soda recalled having his confidence shattered during a twenty fourteen set, and the person who turned his night around was Conan O’Brien. Soda said of Conan, he did one of the coolest things that I’ve seen in the business. The second time I did Conan, I did, like my set didn’t feel like it went well.

He called me to the couch to say good night. He did something cool where at the end of the show he went, all right, that’s all my time. He thanks the guest. He’s like, Dan, Soda, thank you guys, good night. Conan turns to Soda.

How do you think you did? Soda said, I hated that set, And as Soda remembers it, ConA looks at the crowd and goes, day effing sucked. Soda says, it made me feel so much better instantly. Nate Bergatzi explained to you people why he moved back to Tennessee ten years ago. He wanted his daughter, who’s now thirteen, to have a grounded, average upbringing.

Got to keep getting average in there. That’s the whole brand, apparently, got to keep working that word in. Nate said, we live in a great neighborhood. We’re in a cul de sac. No one who’s really an entertainment lives there.

It’s people have regular jobs or friends. So everything that she’s around now she’s not around this, meaning the entertainment business. She knows I do it, and I have her introduced me in my specials. So she sees sights of it, but overall she’s going to school and living a normal life. Johnny Mack, you never talk about Chris Fleming.

I know, did you guys watch the special yet? Did you stick with it? Did you trust me? Did you go through the whole? Hey, this is weird.

Johnny Mack must be on crack. Why is he telling us to watch this thing? And an hour lady, We’re like, oh, yeah, that was really good. Have you done that yet? Rolling Stone profiled Chris Fleming.

Chris Fleming would like to make one thing clear. He’s not weird, he said over zoom. I’m very normal. Maybe I’m insane, because I don’t think I’m insane, but I don’t see my work as weird. I like to keep things surprising, and I like to surprise myself in my writing.

That’s how I would view it as a surprise party. I would describe it as weird, but very very funny. Fleming tells Rolling Stone, my comedy is like hear me out, it’s too frantic to describe. I had a locksmith who I made the mistake of telling I was a comedian, and then he was watching my clips on his phone silently for the entirety of trying to fix my locks. In Live at the Palace, there’s no thematic through line, rolling Stone writes.

In fact, many times in the show it feels like Fleming is just hearing his own material for the first time. Sometimes he pauses in the middle of the act, noting punch lines that the audience doesn’t laugh at, and redoing the joke with a pointed aim. Other Times he abandons a tangent altogether to point out and audience members laugh. The end result is a charming, surprisingly intimate look into fleming stream of consciousness. Fleming’s not worried about the numbers, he said, we’re focusing too much on numbers.

Virality whatever, people can go viral and then they can’t sell out one hundred seed venue. You could have one million followers and not be able to get twenty people to show up to a show. So if you can land in people’s hearts, it’s way more important f awards, f numbers, f viral. If there’s something that I’ve done that you think about a feel later down the road, that’s the key. That’s what art should be.

The Guardian went to see Maria Bamford. They gave Maria four stars out of five and describe Maria Bamford as an unflinching comedian in complete command of every joke and every step. Maria Bamford asks the audience why did Americans decide to elect a dictator for a second time? The answer money. She sounds like she’s teaching my college classes.

I tell them. No matter what question I ask you, guys, ever, the answer is always money. We are till Despite inheriting what she calls generational wealth after the early deaths of both her parents, Bamford still approaches the world with a fundamentally economic mindset. That’s the idea on paper. In practice, Bamford has never been one for clean narrative arcs.

Instead, she draws us in with bursts of manic physical expression. She runs in tiptoed circles before dropping fully outstretched to the floor, all while holding the mic. Bamford is a comedian in complete command of every joke, every step. Is this her most focused work? Probably not, but she remains a gloriously absurd and rapid fire presence.

She tells the audience about being a comedian, this is a job. The New York Post caught up with Charlie Barns, who says there’s enough polarization going on right now to or I don’t have much interest in that. I have interest in finding ways to bring us together, like out to a club or to a theater or whatever. I think when you get people in the same room, and you get people who may not connect on other things, connecting over something just gives more touch points to know. They’d even have someone has an opposite view to you.

They’re not the devil, you know. You gotta have common ground. Barns was raised in Wisconsin and has eleven siblings. He explains, my first special was sort of about the Midwest. The new one, Neighborly, is more about the world from a Midwest guys perspective.

It also goes deeper to my family. I love gambling with my grandma, I love fishing with my family. It’s just kind of a lot of stories about growing up. I’m one of twelve kids, so I’m mass produced. I got that going for me.

In Minnesota, comedians have been responding to the presence of ice up there. Ben Kantzener is one of three Minneapolis comedians who hosted a roast of ice. He had seen some videos of ice agents and Cassner said that could easily be me. There’s no reason it wouldn’t because all the indiscriminate nature of how our government and our police and our agencies all out towards people of color and people in the community. So yeah, it’s fear all the time.

Another Minneapolis comedian, Comrade Tripp, said, when you’re going down swinging, you’re always punching up. It’s the elephant in the room, it’s the donkey on our necks. Jenny’s a Greenow talk to the Minneapolis Post and she said, I would have loved to have been a political comedian in a world where your politics aren’t your sole identity. F ice can I say that? Don’t forget to vote for Comedy Survivor.

What you do is you go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. There you will find a picture of me extinguishing the torch of Kevin Hart. Write down the name of the comedian he would like voted off Comedy Island this week. No Knicks game tonight after two nights. Tracy Morgan is a big Knicks fan.

He explained how he got Daniel Radcliffe, who also become a Knicks fan. They’ve been attending games together, and Tracy gave some tips to Daniel Redcliff and said, Daniel, chill out. He’s yelling clean that glass eye raf as soon as the referees missed a call, clean that glass eye, and I gave him that to yell out. DJ Miller is dropping hints that he could get back into these Deadpool movies, said he had recently spoke to Ryan Reynolds, the guy’s at WRIF Radio. Asked TJ Miller, all right, to you back in or is that chip sailed?

TJ Miller said it has not sailed. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Okay, Marvel gets so weird about this stuff. They’re just like, don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it. Mike Epps is tired of apologizing.

He was on Dion Cole’s Funny Knowing You podcast. Mike said, look, I’m exhausted. I’m tired of apologizing. I’m a comedian, a crack jokes. Everything I say is not to be analyzed and put on blogs like I’m a bad person at crack jokes.

It’s funny. I’m a comedian. The stuff is exhausting. F off Man, it wasn’t even a real story. It was a joke.

No, I didn’t leave a homeless family on the street. Did I meet a homeless family help them? Hell yeah, I help them. Did I crack a joke and make a joke of it at the end? Yeah, I made it funny.

Damn I’m a comedian. TMZ reported some SNL staffers were scared after a musical guest, Cardi B, had a meltdown over joke during weekend Update. The joke was about Nicki Minaj aligning herself with the President of the United States after hearing the Maga manage joke. Sources at SNL alleged that Gardi B destroyed equipment, punching a screen in the producer’s office until it was broken. They also claimed that the rapper threw her phone at a TV backstage after threatening to leave the show and not perform during the episode Wow.

TMZ says the joke was then taken out of the show. That is your comedy news for today. All right, go vote for Comedy Survivor and meets you back here tomorrow.

---

Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy and Hews, A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithm loves. On Late Night, they were talking about the war. Did you see the President was running the war out of mart Lago over the weekend?

Because you know, why would you run it out of the White House? Seth Myers said, I had a more secure room when I was trying on jeans at Old Navy. You started a war in the Middle East and you didn’t even go to the office. You’re gonna work from home? It How am I going to get my writers to come into work when the President of the United States treats war like a team’s meeting.

Stephen Colbert said, fun fact epic fury is an anagram for forget Ebstein. An interesting article in Deadline about how these comedy specials are doing in the ratings. They say Kat Williams’s latest special, The Last Report, released on February tenth, has gotten seven point one million views in its first week. That’s up ten percent from Kat’s previous special, twenty twenty four’s Woke Folk It is the eleventh biggest US debut for any Netflix special going back to twenty seventeen. Some other info, Dave Chappelle’s twenty nineteen Stix and Stones has the biggest US viewership of any Netflix special in the last decade, plus thirty five point three six million debuts.

However, that trails Shane Gillis Live in Austin on YouTube and fifty two million plus views. Shane’s Netflix special twenty twenty three’s Beautiful Dogs has twenty eight million views on Netflix. Deadline points out YouTube counts thirty seconds of streaming as a view. Netflix divides the title’s total hours by its runtime to calculate views. Over on Amazon, Jim Gaffigan’s twenty nineteen Quality Time sixteen point four million views.

Nate Berghatzy’s Hello World thirteen and a half that came out four years later than the Gaffigan one, Eliza Slessinger Is a Different Animal came out last year one point three two million views so far. The biggest on Amazon this year is Kathleen Madigan, hence The Family Thread, which came out in November of last year that has one point two eight million views. On Hulu Kamail Nanjianni’s Night Thoughts, which came out late last year, is the Streamers number two special in the fifty two weeks ending February fifteenth, twenty twenty six, Hul’s third biggest specials since twenty twenty four, trailing Jim Gaffigan with The Skinny and Bill Burrs the Drop Dead Years. Nola caught up with Kyle Kinane. Kyle was recently asked if he wanted to perform comedy during Fish’s four day takeover at a Cancun resort.

Kyle was like sure and ended up seeing Fish three times that weekend. He said, I’m like, well, I’ve kind of made my mark on that community and they don’t like me. Anytime I kneed jerk reaction is like this is gonna suck. I kind of have to do it. If it sounds like a bad idea, well why don’t you go find out for yourself instead of just from a distance pointing your finger and judging.

So I said yes to it and woind up having a great time. Kyle told the gambit try to find the micro happiness because the world will not make you happy. The universe is crappy, so try to be a champion of yourself and find the happiness in your own little microcosm. Kyle says, over the last couple of years, I’m realizing that fame and success are different. I’ve accomplished what I want to.

I might not be outwardly successful in terms of what other comedians have, but I’m grateful for what I do have and appreciative of the friends and what I’ve gotten from comedy. Johnny Mack, you never talk about Chris Fleming. I know, right, Vulture did a big profile of him. Have you watched the special yet? It’s really good, Vulture says.

Chris Fleming arrives at the hotel and an absurdly tiny, sea foam green car, a Nissan Figaro, an obscure nineteen fifty style convertible with chrome detailing and tiny around headlights and a right side steering wheel. Fleming is six y two, and when he sits in the driver’s seat, his knees falled up to his chest, so they started driving around. The writer says, this is like Seinfeld doing comedians and cars getting coffee. Fleming says, f that’s a huge problem. If this is what this is giving off, damn it Chris is asked if he cares about cars in general.

Is this a hobby? Oh god, no, this is pure esthetic. I love it. I got to look up now, I’m curious what this car looks like Nissan figure O. Oh yeah, you gotta look this thing up.

This thing looks like it belongs in a retro movie, said in like Europe somewhere. This thing is tiny. What a cool looking car? Though, we learned in the profile, Chris Fleming’s mother realized his talent, and when Chris was sixteen, mom drove him to his first open mic. Flemming remembers mom saying, you want to be like Robin Williams, Right, well, you got to do stand up mf R.

I was like, oh, I don’t want to do stand up. Stand up sucks. I don’t like watching it. I wanted to be in movies and I found stand up tedious. People Magazine profiled Nate Berghansey as part of the game show Yeah it’s Wednesday, It’s Scrubs Night, Trivia night, game show night, Schrodinger’s Dree Duty Night.

And I’m a little worried as I record this on Tuesday. Now, I was expecting they would tell me to call back on Wednesday. They told me to call back on Tuesday nights. I’m a little worried that they’re gonna get me. I might actually record two episodes while I’m sitting here in the studio and actually home.

Nate cleared up some other rumors about him quitting stand up. He said, I’m not quitting stand up right now. I got this current tour. We’re doing another tour, but there’s gonna be a point where it’s gonna get hard to travel on the road. Is We’re creating so much stuff and making these movies, and then I want to go help find the next generation of comedians or actors writers.

At least I wanted to stand there and tell them I’ve done what I’m asking them to do. Last week, Jason Zenniman, friend of the show in The New York Times, he wrote, the most popular comedian You’ve probably never heard of. That person is Maximini, who I had never heard of. Remember, at the end of the year, Deadline kind of was like, Hey, Maximedi’s selling out places, and I was like, who, Well, Maximedi is the most popular comedian you’ve probably never heard of, Correctly pointed out by Jason Zenneman of The New York Times. Jason went to see Maximedia at the Garden.

All this before the current war. I just want to point that out, Jason writes. Arenas like the Garden aren’t built for crowd work. In the upper balcony, you can’t hear, let alone see half the conversation. But this didn’t stop a meeting who made small talk with ticket buyers for twenty straight minutes.

Jason writes, the Maximini phenomenon reflects a transitional moment in an increasingly globalized comedy scene, upbending two common beliefs. The firstes that fans just want great jokes some do. What you see from Amini is an artist less interested in putting together clever punchlines than in creating a sense of an event, a warm vibe, a show that becomes a community. On Sunday, when Dean Cook introduced Amini, he didn’t trumpet the younger comics funniness, but his ability to connect and unify. Dean Cook didn’t expect that name in this story.

At one point, a drunk audience member hijacked the show, and another woman told a long story about seeing a medium that almost no one in the arena, could hear I mean, he got his biggest laughs, mocking the audience members, calling back to them, weaving them into a story. What becomes clear is they’re not just seeing the show, they are the show. Judging from the crowd of the garden, his audience comes from nearly every continent, and a meaning made sure that his material is accessible to them all. As subjects were universal and bland, dating, family music, and he never went deeper specific enough to confuse anyone. His examination of Iranian culture often applies to other immigrant experiences.

Again, this show and the article are from before the war. Jason Zinnemann wrote at that time, A Meanie’s only really challenging material came at the end of the show when he stopped choking and told the crowd that thousands approacheds had been killed in Iran and that what was happening there was quote the biggest revolution in our time unquote. Then he showed a series of short videos of scenes of violence, protesters getting run over and attacked, and as a narrator in towned freedom is not a punchline, don’t forget to vote someone off the island. On Comedy Survivor Regular Survivors on TV tonight too, so we got that and Scrubs Trivia and I got a nixed the nix aer. On tonight they’re playing the champions Big Night Comedy Survivor sixteen comedians one island.

Half of them have already been voted off by the listeners. What you do is you go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. There you’ll see a picture of me extinguishing the torch of Kevin Hart from last week, and this week you’ll vote someone off the island. I took a quick look this morning. I look like Burt Kraser is in trouble.

So if you’re part of the Bert Krascher alliance, you’re happy. And if not, you guys want to form an alliance and vote someone else off to save Bert Kraser. All that’s up to you, guys. I’m just the host. Radar Online says that Stephen Colbert’s ratings are pretty bad and the CBS can’t wait for it to be over.

The phrasing from Raider Online is bosses are counting the days until he’s out while telling him not to let the door whack his behind on the way out. The series finale is May twenty first, that it can’t come too soon for CBS big weeks, who note that the comic is facing his worst January ratings in the twenty five to fifty four age group. Ever, with just two hundred and eighty five thousand viewers, that is not a lot of people. An insider said, the final show can’t come soon enough for most folks at the network. They’re sick to the back teeth of Colbert’s raging ego, his constant attention seeking and petty historyonics.

The feeling’s pretty mutual, to be fair, Steven’s only going through the motions at this point, but that makes for a lousy vibe, and it’s doing nothing to improve the shattered morale of his employees. Most of them will be out of a job soon enough, no thanks to him, The insider said. The fact his ratings are in the pan does justify the decision to cut Ties, but it also means the sharp decline in revenue, and there are some folks at the network who are fled a lot out, accusing Steven of sabotaging the show on his way out the door. Whatever his motive, the next few months can’t pass soon enough. Wow, Jimmy Carr is getting another season of his TV show, Am I the a Hole?

Car said of UKs Comedy Central, We’re bringing back m Ida Hole and I’m hosting again a guest. Comedy Central figure when it comes to a Hole’s game recognizes game. On m Ida Hole, judges judge members of the public on their questionable behavior and morally dubious actions. For example, say you played the ri Odd Comedy Festival, they would say, hey, are you an a hole?

And then the judges would decide whether or not that was something that would…

But hey, at checks at check right. President Trump has announced on social media that he will participate in this year’s White House Correspondence Association dinner. In the past that was hosted by comedians who would roast everyone in the room, including whatever person was the sitting president. This year’s host is celebrity mentalist Oz Perman. I’m not familiar with mister Perlman’s work.

Roman was profiled, apparently by The New York Times back in October. The headline on that article said, it’s not cheating, it’s reading minds. Oz Perlman has revealed Joe Rogan’s ATM code on air and entertained NFL stars. Now the manosphere’s favorite magician wants more. Okay, that’s all I know about this person.

And now he’s hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner, which will be attended by the President of the United States, who posted on social media during the war in honor of our nation’s two hundred and fiftieth birthday, and because these correspondents now admit that I am truly one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country. The goat wait is the President, saying he’s only one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country. I thought he was the greatest according to himself. No, he’s only one of them. I wonder who else is on his list.

Anyway, the President said he will help make the dinner the encaps greatest, hottest, and most spectacular dinner of any kind ever. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levin, taking a break from answering questions about the war that Congress did not approve, posted will be fun. And I’ll leave you with this today. I put this last on purpose. Listen to me, because I’m going to prove it, and you’re you’re going to struggle to make it to the end of today’s show.

But this will prove my point. This is why I put it last. When Jim Gaffigan is not doing polished written material, he is horribly, horribly unfunny. I will prove it to you. Jim Gaffigan went on social media.

He had a message for you. I defy you to make it to the end of this clip. Hey everyone, it’s Jim gaff again. I just want to let you know that my forehead is still large. I do have some kind of exciting news coincidence.

I don’t know, maybe conspiracy theory. Recently I passed a million subscribers on YouTube. Now I’m not saying that had anything with the Supreme Court overturning the tariffs, but it seems a little like, you know what a coincidence, right? You know, It’s like stock market reaches fifty thousand and then it goes down, Big coin goes down. You know, all those ships are moving to you know them, you know, in position in Iran, you know, and then my YouTube subscriber goes up to a million.

I mean, I don’t anyway, Thank you if you have subscribed and watched the Bourbon. Side Jim Gaffigan, Holy cow, that was bad. Not your comedy news for today. I think I’m going to record Thursday while I’m here. I got a bad sense about this Jerry duty call, so so let me make sure you have a show so I can see you tomorrow

---

Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Shinny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. I’m freezing es in the morning again. Please stop. This is your Daily Comedy News and daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry.

A sentence the algorithm loves for some reason. I’ll keep saying it. Conan O’Brien caught up with Chris Fleming for Interview magazine. Did you watch Chris Fleming on HBO Max? I’m curious what the quote unquote the normies think of this.

This is not you know, Bill Burr in front of a brick wall. This is something else entirely. I sent it to my friend Mark and I’m like, watch Chris Fleming and when you think it’s weird, stick with it. And he wrote back to me, I’m glad you told me to stick with it, because I totally would have bailed it’s weird. I loved it.

I thought it was fantastic. That is currently the number one special of the year. Chris Fleming and Conan O’Brien in Interview Magazine. Fleming said, have you seen this magazine? Usually it’s like Alexander Scoresguard interviewed by Judge Judy or Fiona Apple interviewed by the Tinder Swindler.

But you and I actually make sense together, Gonu said. This makes sense because I have a hard time imagining who I can relate to more than mister Fleming. Here, your ridiculous figure. I’ve been enamored with you for a long time, and I wish I were talking to the late illusionist Doug Henning. Conan said, I can see you took my advice.

I told you long ago, don’t move around so much. O’Brien said, I said, I want you to wear very masculine, working class clothing. Fleming said, you gave me a Men’s Warehouse gift certificate, and you whispered in my ear stillness is king. Now, if you haven’t watched the specially, you have no idea why that is so funny. Gonan, make sure all the references are accessible to all age groups.

That means none of your trader Joe’s marginalia no takes on NPR. And I insisted that you talk at length about the nineteen seventy five Red Sox and bring up fred Lin repeatedly, and you said, got it.

And then to my surprise.

I tune in and you’re up to your old high jinks. You imp. Chris said, I had a manager who said, I don’t know what you’re talking about ninety percent of the time, Conan, you’ve established a rhythm. It’s completely yours. You lull people into the state where suddenly they know what everything about this specific guy who’s serving you a boba t and we’re all just there with you, even though I shouldn’t know what you’re talking about because I’ve never had bobat in my life.

Funny shange here, Conan says, just today, Jon Appatow found a clip at me from nineteen eighty six in the background at some comedy event that he’s doing a documentary about. Chris said, oh, I didn’t know he did documentaries, Conan. It’s a documentary about the time he stopped doing documentaries. Fun stuff there at the interview magazine. We’ll talk more about Chris Fleming in the second half.

Are you following this Jim Carrey thing? Did you see this? Last week? There was an award show and Jim Carrey showed up, or maybe it wasn’t actually Jim Carrey. Did you see this?

People are like, is that Jim Carrey. It kind of looks like Jim Carrey, but yet not at all like Jim Carrey. Is Jim Carrey doing a bit? Did Jim Carrey have botox? Did Jim Carrey have plastic surgery?

Did the Illuminati replace Jim Carrey with a clone that’s not that good? Nobody knows what’s going on. Well, there’s a new wrinkle to this that I love. Makeup artist Alexis Stone claims that it was he who appeared last week week as Jim Carrey. On Instagram, Alexis posted Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey in Paris.

The post included two photos of quote unquote Jim Carrey at the event, and one photo of a masked teeth and a dark wig that resembled Jim Carrey’s new look. Now, the Cesar Awards say that Jim Carrey worked on his speech in French for months and that there is no clone. In a statement, Gregory Collier, the General Delegate of the Caesar Awards, said the rumors are a non issue. Jim Carrey’s visit has been planned since this summer. From the outside, it was extremely touched by the Academy’s invitation eight months of ongoing constructive discussions.

He worked on a speech in French for months, asking me about the exact pronunciation of certain words. He came with his partner, his daughter, his grandson, of twelve, close friends and family members. His longtime publicist accompanied him. His old friend Michael Gondrey, who’s made a film and too serious with him, was there and they were delighted to see each other again. For me, it’s a non issue.

I just remember his generosity, his kindness, has benevolence, his elegance. I think this is hilarious. Stavros Halkias is pairing up with manscaped together. They are auctioning off a hair ball collected from the head of Stavros Halkias. At least I assume it’s the head.

Jimmy Stark is the creative director at Quality Meats, a creative agency with a quirky name. Jamie Stark says, we can neither confirm nor deny the sources of the hairs for making of this hairball. We’re pretty sure there’s one hundred percent genuine human body hair in it, including Stavros’s. We like to think of it as a hot dog styled hairball and that you don’t exactly know all the sources of the hair meats it’s made up of. You’ve already missed out on the auction.

Sorry I didn’t tell you in time. You could have had the hairball for just five hundred ten dollars. Proceeds from the auction went to Manscape’s brand partner, the Testicular Cancer Society, supporting awareness, education and resources for men’s health. Are you in Hollywood? Once you head on over to the Hollywood Walk of Fame around eleven thirty today and you might see Gabriel Iglesias.

I hope you see him because he’s supposed to be there to get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A bunch of the cast from the Office reunited at Sunday Nights Actor Awards. It was Mindy Kaling, Jenni Fisher, Angela Kinsey, and Ellie Camper, which let me decide by here. When I was driving around with my wife over the weekend, I was just raving about scrubs. Have you caught on that Alex Scrubs?

And how hard it is to even get everyone back together. And I said, for example, if they brought the Office back, you would get Jenna Angela, Kevin Creed, Oscar, they’d all do it in a second, and yet there’s no way Steve Crall would do it, and there’s no way Krasinski would do it.

---

And then my wife was like, what about Dwight trut And my take is that Rain Wi…

Jenna Fisher recalled the relentless schedule of the Office. She said it meant Christmas episodes and Valentine’s episodes and super Bowl episodes and sometimes filler episodes that were kind of bad. Ellie Camper said, but it didn’t matter because there was always another one right around the corner. The Actor’s Awards revealed the reunion was all down to Mindy Kayling, executive producer, who told Variety we had reached out to her about being presented, and she came back with the idea of what if I did at reunion with all the women of the Office, and we were like yeah. Within like an hour, she had texted them all.

She basically booked them all for us. Some folks are mad at Saturday Night Live for a sketch that didn’t even air. Apparently, there was a Cut for Time sketch in which SNL sent up the BAFTA racial slur incident. Anyway. In the Cut for Time sketch titled Turet’s, a host of celebrities including JK Rawling, Mel Gibson, Army Hammer, Louis C.K.

And Bill Cosby claim they suffer from Tourette’s, which would explain the problematic stuff they’ve been involved with. Tourette’s Action CEO Emma McNally was not happy with this. She apparently sent an email to Deadline. This is not acceptable, she wrote. Mocking and disabilities never acceptable.

It would not be tolerated for any other condition, and it should not be tolerated by people with tourets. In the sketch, host Connor’s story played Army Hammer saying not many people know this, but one of the most common side effects of Tourett’s cannibalism Ashley Pitty is JK. Ralling said that Tarrett’s isn’t just blurting out offensive word. It could be a year’s long obsession with something like trans writes Keenan Thompson. As Bill Cosby claimed to suffer from drink.

Turett’s Kanye West, played by Cam Patterson, in a rare appearance, declared he has like three different types of Turetts. Even Michael Jay made an appearance saying Tourett’s makes us do horrible things to the white guy we work with. The sketch was sponsored by the National Workforce of Rethinking Disabilities aka n WORD. Late Night reports that they had to scrap the original cold open. In the original version, it would have been The State of the Union, with James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump making jokes about deflecting from the Epstein Files and claiming that New York City Mayor zooron mom Donnie was thirsty for him.

That all got scrapped and we got a pretty bad version of James Austin Johnson as Trump at two in the morning announcing the war. I used to really like James’s impression. It is really drifting now, and I don’t know what SNL’s got to do with Trump. I don’t know if James needs to just like sit home for a week and tweak it, but that impression is just really drifting. Let me just take a second here to just like thank so many of you.

First of all, the feedback I got on the Pete Holmes interview, thank you. I got a lot of lovely notes. It seemed that people really dug it. First of all, thank you to Pete Holmes for doing it and the people at the eight hundter Bound Guerilla who made that happen. But thank you.

You know, the notes on the side means something because otherwise I’m just a guy in the basement, you know, basically talking into the wall, and sometimes the dog stares at me while I do it, So thank you for that.

---

Also, people have been sending in things.

I’m sitting on a few things from a production standpoint. Jay Leno had talked about his Mount rushmoref comedy. I’m sitting on that. There’s a great article about how Scrubs was able to recreate the hospital. I’ll probably do that later in the week, but I’m still on Schrodinger’s jury duty.

I had a call again on Monday night. I have to call again Wednesday night, so like, I never know what my next day is going to be. So some of this stuff that I’m holding on to is just because I can’t even judge my own production schedule right now. There is in the back end. There’s an episode it’s probably like four years old and definitely has the old theme music on it.

Of like just me riffing on what at that time was somebody’s list of the top fifteen comedians. That was like my what if I get COVID episode that I was just gonna play someday if I couldn’t talk. I’ve never had to use it, but it’s just sitting there knock on wood anyway, thank you for all the notes, and Richard sometimes sends me notes when I screw up the uploads. Richard appreciate that my email address is in the show. Not It’s always great to hear from people.

Don’t forget Comedy Survivor roles are in oh wait, Actual Survivor. I’m still picking away at episode one of that first of all is up against Scrubs three hours of Survivor of like, Real Survivor is like way too much, guys, Just you can’t hand it in a three hour episode, Like it’s just my numbing. I’m sitting there and I’m like, there’s still an hour left of this. I can’t But Comedy Survivor is a lot of fun. Head to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News podcast group Vote Someone Off.

It’s starting to get down to it now, and I’ve already started scribbling down. I’ve got this idea for Comedy Survivor, Heroes and Villains. I’ve got an idea for that. But when we get to the end of Comedy Survivor, I’m gonn I let it take a break. I don’t want to, like endlessly do it.

I think I think that kind of thing works best if like, we do it for a while, then we don’t do it for a while, and then we bring it back again. But I’m kind of scribbling down a heroes and villain’s idea for season two of Comedy Survivor. Take a look at the ratings. Scrubs did pretty well. The debut episode pulled in four point four to one million viewers, did a point six six rating in the eighteen to forty nine s.

The second episode average three point five to two million viewers and a point five to five in the eighteen to forty nine So I did see sim people on the Reddit saying they didn’t realize there was a second episode. After the second Scrubs was the premiere of Nate Brighetzi’s The greatest average American that true two point three eight million viewers. So we had Scrubs with four forty one, then Second Scrubs three fifty two, and then Nate two thirty eight, which seems like a bad number. However, it did better than The Golden Bachelor did in the same spot last fall. And you know how much budgets there was on The Golden Bachelor and Nate’s thing, you know, giving away sixty seven grand is probably dirt cheap to produce.

That thing might run for fifteen years just because of the money of it all. Friend of the show, Jason Zinneman in The New York Times wrote an article five great specials to stream this winter. He writes, Taylor Thompson, Kevin Neal and Chris Spencer, Isabelle Hagen and Jackie Kashan deliver very different but very funny hours to get you through the cold. Let me go first, I watched a bunch of specials. Chris Flemings is the best of the year.

It’s hilarious. I totally get if you put this on and you’re like, this is not for me, I get it, Okay, something a little more traditional, Pete Holmes. I think we all have a crush on Pete Holmes right now. All right, So Pete Holmes special was really good. Jackie Caation’s special on YouTube was very, very funny.

Enjoy that a lot. Cant Williams, I liked a lot. I have that probably at two, maybe Pete at three. Right now, it’s early in the year. I’m not sure Kats was pound for pound funny, but he’s an entertainer, and just the hour went by really quickly.

I did not like Taylor Thomason’s special. It just did not grab me. I just was not interested in at all. Jason Zinniman in The New York Times says Tominson makes her most deeply felt points through confessional jokes. Not takes a comic who favors concision.

Sheakespan’s her palate in this special, offering an elaborate theatrical spoof of a Christian comedian, but also digging deep into Bible stories, finding a fresh comic take on the absolute bleakness of Noah’s Ark. Jason like Kevin Nila, and even though he’s been a successful comic for four decades, I did not realize how funny Kevin Neilan was until I heard him on Conan’s pod Neilan is a terrific joke writer, alert to paradox statements of the obvious and the silliness of language. Chris Spencer’s goat adjacent on Hulu and you know my take on Hulu specials Zinneman writes. In the middle of this well made fifty minute special with the feel of a confidently hosted Hollywood dinner party, Chris Spencer interrupts a joke to look down at a man in the front row and offer a note that note, I’m gonna need you to laugh sometime today. That’s pretty funny.

Isabelle Hagen at the bitter end. That’s on veeps. Isabelle tells dirty jokes in between playing the viola. She’s a Juilliard trained artist who uses classical music to set up punchlines. Love it Once, she gets last from Mela Conolly, premises like a persuasive, defensive regret.

Hagen is not the first comic to deliver deadpan one liners with resting sad face. As she puts it. At first, the viola music merely helps match the respectable with the raunchy. What becomes clear is that Hagen is something more ambitious in mind. She wants to introduce Bach to comedy fans, to build a place where she can play her instrument and have that stand by itself independently of jokes.

Love it Jackie Kashan’s altercation Cashen is the kind of comic who turns fury into eloquent goofiness. I thought that one was very good, and I’m going to leave you with this. I haven’t talked about the war. I suspect on tomorrow’s show there will be a lot of stuff about the war because we’ll have cycled through the late night shows at least once, so tomorrow is likely going to be somewhat political. But there was a video that started circulating on Saturday and I have played it, I don’t know fifteen times.

It is a AI generated music video by a Flock of Eagles and a Flock of Eagles hit song Iran. I will play the audio for you here. I encourage you to seek out the video version of this on Twitter, where we see President Trump in a new wave flock of seagulls style hair singing the song Iran. It looks like an old style MTV video. It is just amazing.

I’ve sent it to everybody I know, and I keep playing it. So that is your comedy news for today. And we’ll pick up midstream here with Iran by a flock of eagles. I feel like I’m getting this. This is like a Route Warner Mergin, a rock quarn, no legend, I go go those oil supplies.

Be a shamed of someone invade you, if someone invade ed. You, and iron I ran so far away above them night and day. But to show USA, a. Drone appears above you, and a more bounds of falling down on you, falling down on you. The fleet is moving.

Here is still the straight of warms. It comes in mute. After the oil must flow through, and there a RN so far away. Upomb married upomb them n M. But just for USA, that’s sunny.

Here. It’s a big rid. Button, atomic bombs composing down on you. How much room clouds in view? Send out a tweet.

To let you know well, because Israel told me too often. It’s a Yahoo. And r D wrest so. Far away, bombard upon them night. And day, and ur arres so far away.

From end upon them night and hoday. What destroyed us a

---

Full Transcript

Callaroga, Shark Media, Oh outbit outlaugh Outlast. This is Comedy Survivor. I’m Johnny Mack. We are now halfway through Comedy Survivor Week eight. Still in the game.

Comedians Nicky Glazer, Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, ots Good, Kotska, sumbashion Manascalco, Tim Nataro, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, and Bert Krascher. The listeners went to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. They clearly wrote down one name, so we don’t have a controversy. They wrote down one name. They made it super clear everybody paid attention to this week.

They wrote down one name and one comedian. We’ll go home. It’s time to tell you the votes. Matt votes for Kevin Hart. Josette votes for Sarah Silverman.

Heather votes for Nicky Glazer. Lindsey votes for otso at Cotska, Barn votes for Kevin Hart, two votes for Kevin Hart, Dylan votes for Kevin Hart, three votes for Kevin Hart. Michelle votes for Sarah Silverman, two votes for Sarah Silverman. Avon votes for Otsco at Cotska, two votes for Otsco, two votes for Sarah Silverman, three votes for Kevin Hart. Mike votes for Nikki Glaser, Andrea votes for Nikki Glaser, three votes for Nikki Glaser.

Heather votes for Leslie Jones. Mary votes for Leslie Jones, two votes for Leslie Jones. Are we heading for another tiebreaker? Oh no? Aaron votes for Kevin Hart, four votes for Kevin Hart.

Cheryl votes for otsgo At Conska, three votes for Otscoe. Mike votes for OTSCO, four votes for Otsco, four votes for Kevin Hart. Oh No, not another tie breaker. Robie votes for Leslie Jones, Andy votes for Kevin Hart, and Richard votes for Kevin Hart. The listeners have spoken, Kevin Hart has been eliminated from Comedy Survivor.

We won’t need the AI to break the tie this week. To take a break, and we’ll take a look at what all this means. What a fascinating result, because there have been a few comedians who almost went home and did go home. It’s go at Coska is a Comedy Survivor. She’s in danger every week, but she is still here.

The AI analysis says this was not a subtle vote. Kevin Hart didn’t get clipped in a split. He got a full multi line pileon now this is interesting. AI is rating you guys. Are you ready now?

If you want to be part of this, If you want a shout out, go to the Facebook group, Daily Company News podcast group and vote this week. I didn’t tell the AI to do this. I’ll tell you what I do here. I do the votes live. I go to the Facebook group and I hit all comments and I do it live.

Then I asked the AI to check my work. All I wrote was tally the votes, and itally the votes for me, and then I wrote quote, okay, give me the AI analysis, and all on its own, guys, it wrote who drove the vote? The power block right now is if I say your name here, you’re part of the power block. According to artificial intelligence. The power block right now is Dylan an early anchor vote, Aaron momentum and persuasion.

Richard closer vote that legitimizes the outcome. I love this. We are now focused on the listeners. Is there an alliance between Dylan, Aaron and Richard to steer the results of Comedy Survivor How Much Fun? Here’s the updated power rankings safe Tig Nataro and John Mulaney.

I can’t recall have we had a vote for Malani yet. If we had, we’ve had one strong position. Bert Kreischer and Nikki Glaser. I don’t think Bert has had a vote yet. Still in trouble, Otsko at Kotzka and Leslie Jones and Sarah Silverman has moved into the in trouble list.

According to the AI, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. You were going to clearly vote for one person. You will say, I am voting this person off. A couple of people were like super explicit about it.

Both the AI and I appreciate it. Be super clear. We don’t need controversies. I have enough stress in my life. I might even have cherry duty.

Yeah, it was a two week district court thing. I might be sitting in Newark right now while you’re enjoying this wonderful podcast. So you’re going to go to the Facebook group and you’re going to vote someone off Comedy Island Still in the game, Otska at Kotzka, Nikki Glaser, Leslie Jones, Sarah Silverman, John Mulaney, Burt Kreischer, Sebastian Maniscalco, and Tig Nataro. We are down to seven comedy survivors otsgo, Nicki, Leslie, Sarah Mulaney, Krascher, Sebastian and Tig. So much fun and we’ll see if the listener power block is a real thing.

Have fun in the Facebook group guys, See you in the morning.

---

Full Transcript

Caalorokashock media. Wow, big hot news just came in. I am Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News, A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithm loves. So I just in in my world.

I recorded Sunday, and then what you do is you recorded. I use a program called Logic on my MacBook and you then you have to bounce the file so it mixes down everything, and then you send it off somewhere and that takes like a minute. So during that I did what I usually do and I checked my email. Now this is not in my script. This just hit my inbox.

I’m doing this as cold as it gets. The headline Netflix is a joke festival. Just added one hundred and seventy plus shows added to Netflix is a joke festival. So you’re getting this as I’m getting it, unless, of course, you read the email on Friday afternoon. Again, I’m not working with a script.

Let me scroll down here. Is there actual No, there’s just a lot of artwork. So I’m gonna have to see if they sent this out to deadline or something. But let’s just do it. This way.

This is fun. This is how the show gets put together. Okay, this is a graphic thing. They have announced comedy for the community, the Altadna Eaton Fire Relief, hosted by Dion Coldion’s Fantastic Timmy No Breaks at the Comedy Store on the fourth of May. Individual shows from rosewud Baker Cheryl Underwood.

This is an interesting title. The end Ari Shaffer’s renamed Storytelling show. I guess others on the rights to the various this is not happening. Tag it with the scar Brothers, Chris O’Connor, Jay Jorden, Ron Funches, Cristella Alonso and friends, Guy Tory and so many more and in the end, so many more, Box Mally, Kearney, Yakoff, Smirnoff in a bunch All right, let’s bunch over our deadline. Let’s see if there’s a story there.

We are producing the show live on tape, my friends. Nothing there, We’ll check variety. This is how the show gets put together. I could edit this out. No, no there either.

Also, Friday afternoon is a weird time to announce anything. No, hasn’t hit the wires yet. Maybe I’ll have more for you tomorrow. My original number one story very similar south By Southwest Unveil’s twenty twenty six comedy line up their lineup Bill Burr, He’s back from Riot as you know, Chelsea Peretti, Devin Walker, Eric Andre, Frankie Conunius, and Natasha Lazeriro among dozens of participants. It is the nineteenth edition of south By Southwest Comedy.

Let me see who else hear? Some names you might know Jared Freed, Pete Lee Nope, I think i’ve I mean, I could read you fifty names, but I think I read you the big ones. During south By there will be an edition of Don’t Tell Comedy All Stars featuring alumni of the Don’t Tell Comedy Secret Sets series. That’ll be the Creak of the Cave on Saturday, March fourteenth. Some of the events include Bombing with Eric Andre, eric Andre Hanks with Friends to Talk About You Say with Me, Bombing, Comic Relief, and The Moth Present Funny Story Two Paarhouses unite for an Unforgettable evening of stories.

The Moth, whose live storytelling events and Bloff podcasts have broad over sixty five thousand true personal stories to audience as worldwide partners with Comic relief. Dropout will host crowd Control, a live stand up show where the audience is the main material. Looks like dropouts all over this thing. They’ll also host Dirty Laundry, which is for guests telling secrets and then you have to guess who the secrets belong to, and you can also have some beverages. Drop Out improv in this show, hosted by Kurt Maloney.

Improv skills will be on show for a night of varied games and freewheeling comedy. Facebook Presents Stand Up Comedy. Now maybe like twenty years ago, that sentence sounds cool. That just sounds really vanilla corporate. It’s titled Facebook Presents stand Up Comedy.

Could you just suck all the cool out of that sentence? Facebook is excited to present an unforgettable evening of stand up comedy where the global stage meets the comedy stage. Exclamation point. With three billion people connecting on Facebook globally every month, comedians are able to showcase their talent and grow their audience around the world. Now we’re bringing this vibrant community to south By Southwest Comedy.

Oh my god, that is so corporate. Please south By has gotten really, I mean, this is just this is like the establishment pretending that they’re all the next up. Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase featuring The Dress Up Gang and Friends. Let me read that again because I deliberately skipped the last four words. Look be the full title this time.

Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase featuring The Dress Up Gang and Friends, hosted by Bill Burr. Bill Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, you had a terrible You had a terrible, terrible twenty twenty five. You had I think the worst year of any of the big comedians. Last year. You just lost the plot, Buddy.

And now Bill Burr’s hosting the Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase featuring the Dress Up Gang and Friends. Bill, just call your nex special. I’m in this for the money. I know we’re all in this for the money. I’m hosting this podcast right now so I can run some commercials during the break.

I’m in this for the money. But let’s just be honest, Bill, the coolness is gone. What are you doing? Bill? Hosted Biami and Grammy nominated comedian actor and director Bill Burr.

The evening embodies the bold, fearless spirit of the Fox Comedy brand. Guys, The Fox Comedy brand is Dennis Leary’s military show. What is that called Going Dutch? That’s the Fox Comedy brand. The Fox Comedy brand is Joel Mchall’s Animal Patrol or whatever that’s called.

That’s the brand if you want to tell me, but the Simpsons. The Simpsons came out in the eighties. Guys, Bill Burr, face of the fearless Fox Comedy brand, Funny or Die Approved, in partnership with the stand Funny or Die is resurrecting their legendary live comedy legacy. Think the spirit of the original epic oddball festivals back and blessed by the comedy gods themselves. This isn’t just another stand up show.

It’s a handpicked, ruthlessly curated night of comedy that’s earned the ultimate stamp Funny or Die Approved, and it’s hosted by peat Lee The Gotham Comedy. For nearly thirty years, Gotham has been one of New York’s top stand up venues. That is true. They’re good guys over there, like them. Used to regularly see them back in the day when I worked at the Old Place.

My favorite lyrics live. Welcome to the first ever live recording of Devin Walker’s podcast, My favorite lyrics, the show where we talk about music lyrics. The Stand is producing a couple shows. Okay, now we’re doing on time. I feel like I’m long already.

Now we got some time still. Okay. You know who’s coming out with a book, Dusty Sligh. Yeah, you know what Dusty Slay called his book. That’s right, he’s calling it We’re having a good time.

I guess that makes sense. What else Wouldusty Slay call his book? That’s his catchphrase in We’re having a good time. Dusty Slay looks back in his early days, including dropping out of college at age eighteen and getting arrested at nineteen, which interrupted his plans to join the army. In his early twenties, Dusty Slay left his Alabama hometown for Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked in a seafood restaurant while building a stand up career.

During evening open mics, Dusty Sleigh recounts his journey from pesticide salesperson to touring comedian, along with stories from his childhood performances and more. The book teases his trademark humor and wit I have it on my calendar this morning to reach out to the publicist and see if I can get Dusty Sleigh on this show, which reminds me I forgot I got distracted by the Netflix email. If you skipped the weekend shows Saturday, Pete Holmes for forty minutes was really good. Make sure you go back and listen to that one. Love Pete, Dusty’s and I wanted to write this book to capture some of the stories that I think are really funny, orterest thing, but have never made it to the stage.

Now this next one, I might have to leave my house, which would just be amazing. And I’m not going to leave my house, but just down the road for me. At the Horseshoe Tavern in Morristown, New Jersey, ron On Hirschberg is performing at Horseshoe. I hang out at the brewery, which is differently. It’s the breweries where the trivia guys go horseshoes for the young kids.

Although sometimes this if you’re from this area, you know who the nerds are. They’re like, this is a local legend cover band. They’re really a lot of fun. They play horseshoes sometimes, but horshes for the young kids. But tonight it’s poor him.

A comedy night at the Horseshoe Tavern Ronnin Hirschberg will be there. Rabbi Moishe Gerwitz as Purim is about joy, resilience, and Jewish pride. Comedy night is a way to celebrate the holiday in a fun, meaningful, and uplifting way. I love this. So if your local head on over to the Horseshoe Tavern, we’re told security we’ll be present to ensure it is safe and welcoming environment for all attendees.

Now, as it turns out, I happen to have a Ronin Hirschberg. Oh my god, I was about to tell you that people keep calling me. Hold on, I have to take this phone call. Hey John, all right, I made an edit there. I’m all discombobulated.

I even get to tell you that my wife called in the middle of the Ronin Hirschberg story. But that was the hot tub guy I’ve mentioned. It was like negative of forty degrees for like six months. I think hot tub sprung a leak. Can have to run some more ads.

Buy me a coffee, you might have to buy me, let me do some math. You might have for buy me four hundred coffees and buy me a coffee. Dot Cops last daily comedy. It is to fix the hot tap. Oh my goodness, first world problems, where worry.

I’m trying to tell you. I could edit all this out, but that’s not fun. I’m trying to tell you this Ronin Hirschberg story. But my wife called and like now, and I scrolled down and I lost it and I’m all discombobulated now and I had this all pulled together? Where did that story even go?

Ronin Hirschberg was found it. Ron Hersberg was profiled by the Telegraph in twenty twenty two. Hirschberg opened for Louis c. K in Germany, and he said they laughed at every joke because they feel so guilty. I said I was Jewish, and they gave me a standing ovation.

He had a little more serious. I think there was a time when Germans couldn’t laugh about that stuff, but now they’re happy to let me make fun of them. Hirschberg says his early tries and stand up. We’re just trying to make rednecks laugh. Then he moved to New York.

He talked about his complicated relationship with the arts and said, I think as a Jew It’s a little easier for me to separate the art from the artist because I’ve had a love so many great artists who are anti Semitic, Shakespeare, Dickens, basically any writer before nineteen fifty. Hirschberg appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and said, I hate Joe Rogan. I think he’s a danger to society. He’s always spreading misinformation. The only way I’d ever go on his podcast is if he asked me.

Rogan did ask, and on twenty twenty four they talked about everything from having children to conspiracy theories. Hirschberg says Rogan was extremely nice to me. A lot of my anger towards him started later. I didn’t make fun of him until hen On Elon Musk defending the defunding of US aid that was such a horrible atrocity, and to see him there with Joe Rogan laughing his stupid jokes and made me furious. I don’t think Joe Rogan has bad intentions, but I do think he’s an agenda to attack the credibility of academia and mainstream journalism, and that’s really dangerous.

Like endorsing Trump using his influence to help him get elected. If you can’t get mad at someone for that, who can you get mad at? I’m exhausted. I don’t know why this particular episode that you’re listening to right now is taking a lot out of me. I don’t know if it’s the phone calls or the distractions, or my computer’s jumping all over the pages.

I’m trying to read a script I don’t know. Coming up at noon today, Comedy Survivor. The results are incredible. I had so much fun recording the results of Comedy Survivors. So you’ll find out who went home.

But there’s also a new fascinating twist in all this. And I didn’t invent the twist. The AI did. The AI pointed something out. Every week I throw the votes into the AI just to check my work, and the AI has identified you know what.

Come back at noon and you’ll find out what the AI identified. If just I’m fascinated by this. It’s so much fun. If you’re new to Comedy Survivor, it’s a distinct legal parody of whatever you think I’m at, distinctly legally parodying. It’s called Comedy Survivor Or.

We put sixteen comedians on an island and every week the Facebook group votes someone off the island. What you do is you go to Daily Comedy News podcast group after noon Eastern today Monday. You’ll see a drawing of me and the latest person voted off the island, and in there you will write down the name of one of the people who remain. Come back at noon. I’ll explain all that then currently still on the island.

Only I know if she’s been voted off or not. Otsgo at Cotska is becoming a celebrity man. She’s working to pair two lucky singles and transport them to an anti approved first date to Singapore thanks to the Singapore Tourism Board. Hey Singapore Tourism Board, you got any extra ad money? I got a hot tupper pair.

Plus I’ve never been to Singapore. I’ll go. I’ll read anything. Otsko says it’s more important than ever to lean on the matriarchal support system of anties, especially in dating. She explained her thought experiment to People magazine and said, imagine them going swimming.

That’d be good because if she was always looking for someone who has her back, and she felt like that never happened, putting herself in a dangerous situation like swimming, can really test chemistry having a common enemy. She talked about her own dating experience. One time, I was at a grocery store and this guy bought a raw squid for me. She was initially flattered and agreed to the date, but he was super immature and he was like, do you like my house three stories? And I’m like, yeah, I do like your house.

And then I started seeing photo of him as a kid everywhere. There were a lot of family photos about, and then I found out it was actually his mom’s place. He’s like, we have to hurry with this date because she’s gonna come home. And I was like, can you even afford that squid that you bought me? That’s really funny.

And from Nola dot com we learned that Catherine Blandford enjoys the Kentucky Derby. Catherine Blandford learned that name that is a comedian to watch. Catherine says, my parents started let me go to the Derby by myself, maybe sophomore year of high school. I understood why they were hesitant. As soon as I walked in, I saw a bunch of men in suits in a circle.

I was like, what’s going on. I pushed through and there were girls in nice pressby dresses diving into a mud pit for one hundred dollar bills for her special Catholic cowgirl. She wanted to film it in Louisville and have a painted horse on stage. The Louisville filming didn’t work out. She decided to do it at the Riot Comedy Club in Houston, but still wanted a horse.

She said, Once I had my heart set on having a horse on stage, it wasn’t going to not happen. I flew down there to look at party rentals and I couldn’t find one. Then I found one on Facebook Marketplace. It was the Renaissance Horse from Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour. I was like, oh, I’m not buying it.

I’m just renting it for a day. And she was like, yeah, just don’t sit on it. Ah, And my voice is shot. I have to edit like five of these things, and hopefully I don’t have jury duty, because if I do, I’m gonna have to call the hot tub guy back and be like, yeah, don’t come Monday. After all, I’ll let you know what happened eventually.

And that is your very messy addition of Daily Comedy News on a Monday, see at noon for Comedy Survivor

---

Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey, I’m in a good mood. I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News, A daily briefing on stand up comedy comedians in the comedy industry. A sentence to the algorithm. Just loves why in a good mood, John Well.

Pete Holmes I thought was fantastic. If you missed yesterday’s episode, I just loved talking to Pete Holmes. I’m still thinking about it three days later by the time you hear this. Pete was just so gracious with his time and just what a cool guy to hang out with. I also just recorded Comedy Survivor, which will come out tomorrow at noon Eastern, and the results are incredible and the AI analysis even better.

I can’t wait for you to hear Comedy Survivor. And it was actually fifty degrees out yesterday, not fifty below zero, and actual fifty like you could go outside and leave your house. Can you imagine? The Washington Post profiled Robbie Hoffman. I think a lot of us came away was that December really impressed with Robbie Hoffman’s John Mlaney produced a special.

The Post writes, Robbie Hoffman is not on TikTok, which is surprising for comedian these days until you meet her and realize she might be the oldest thirty six year old on the planet. Robbie says, my friends, go, are you mental? Why don’t you do this clip and post it on TikTok? I said, I have one of the apps I have Instagram. I was born as seventy three year old man her origin story.

She left accounting for a writing gig on the Chris Getherd Ship. For that show, she moved back to New York City despite having been born in the city. She told the Post, I felt like a tourist in many ways. She had only known the four square blocks of her religious enclav up until that point. She said, this was my first time seeing New York too.

During the pandemic, she crossed paths with Paul W. Downs, the co creator and star of the TV show hacks Downs, remembered being struck by how unfiltered Robbie Hoffman could be. Robbie eventually guest starred on hacks Down. Said, the whole show’s about people who are cast aside by the industry. We wanted Robbie to fit into that tapestry of people on the outside looking in.

The post tells us though in real life the industry likes Hoffman, she’ll be back on Hacks. She’s also part of Rooster. Now. Rooster is interesting. It is a Bill Lawrence project.

You know Bill Lawrence, the guy from Scrubbs and Ted Lasso. He knows what he’s doing. Rooster stars Steve Carell, you know, the guy from the Office. And the reason John C McGinley isn’t in many of the Scrubs episodes is because he’s working on Rooster. All right, So it’s HBO, Bill Lawrence, Steve Carell and Robbie Hoffman and John C McGinley.

That’s gotta be good, right on paper, that’s like amazing, right, better be good. I don’t think Bill Lawrence is missed yet, so looking forward to that one. John Mulaney is quoted in this article. He said of Robbie Hoffman has not taken into consideration any rules or accepted wisdom on show business. And to bring it back home, Hoffman said, I’ve never been the overnight success.

I’ve always been the slow and stead he wins the race kind. We may have waited a little longer, we didn’t do the TikTok pop off or whatever, but we did it in a way that felt good.

Meanwhile, Chris Fleming, did you enjoy Chris Flaming Special on HBO on Frida…

Chris Fleming got the fancy schmancy New York Times profile. Mike Birbiglia said, Chris is one of the most exciting comedians to watch right now, and interestingly didn’t accuse Chris Fleming of ripping off John Mulaney. I don’t know why you would do that, but you know it’s something Berbiglia sometimes does. I don’t see it. We learned from the Times that Chris Fleming got his start doing stand up and finding his exaggerated style at a club above a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square.

He recalls being at a bookstore next door and looking over rockstar photos Mick Jagger, Prince Stevie Nicks, Freddie Mercury, Big pictures of these people rocking out, and I was like, how do I bring that to one hundred person cap room. Since wearing hoodies was out, I gotta wear bird armor. I love it. By the way, you caught on Friday’s Comedy stock Market, we said buy some Chris Fleming. I hope you bought some Chris Fleming, because just minutes later the New York Times did a big profile here.

I’m also sitting on the Chris Fleming press. People earn their money on Friday. I kicked it to in the middle of the week in case I have the jury duty. Have I mentioned that you never know when have to pre tape an episode at midnight so you can spend the day in Newark? I digress.

Conan O’Brien and Chris Flemings did a whole interview. We’ll get to that in time. So if you bought stock and Chris Fleming on Friday, per the Comedy Stock Market recommendation, you’re doing quite well right now. Chris explains he sometimes choreographs his routines by drawing them, but doesn’t watch himself. He finds the humor from the audience.

He explains a lot of what I put out on social media, I’m doing it for the first time. In an improv dance class, he learned, don’t do something unless you feel the impulse to do it. It has to be organic. Good description. Here.

Fleming’s routines are densely layered confections of references, space movies, college life, animal encounters, the economy confetied with digressions, and Bonker’s turns a phrase. One song at dance Routine is about why a young professional had a tasteful made well sweater was the most terrorizing thing at a haunted house at a skyward rechion. People are always laughing. What a great paragraph there in New York Times. Fleming also has a competitive body fearlessness.

We learn from The Times. Fleming said, I love putting as much weight as I can on the stool. I love drop kicking and flanling different ways. To this day, I leave every performance completely bruised. Are you guys listening going?

What’s going on with the show? He’s been in a good mood for like four days? Did Scrubs completely changed my life? Can I get back to being Curmudgeonty? More wonderful writing here in the Times?

Chris is somewhere between six foot one and six foot three, with a long legged hips wivel that can make them appear even taller. When he frog leaps or tumbles over a chair, flieser laps around the stage, there’s an element of controlled danger, a glam firecracker on the loose. Oh yeah. Vulture also profiled Chris Fleming. Let me bounce this as well, because we you know, I like to fix up the topics.

I don’t want to do ten minutes like Chris Fleming. I love Chris Fleming, but this thing’s quite long here. It must have been comedian week in the big newspapers. Back to the Washington Post, they caught up with Hannah Gatsby and we learned that Hannah has broken up with the Netflix is. Hannah explains, Netflix was a launching pad for me, and I’m very thankful for it.

But I’m creatively a risk taker, and I like to take things apart and rearrange them to do things differently. I don’t want to go with the flow right now. The flow seems quite toxic. But Netflix, being an algorithmic first machine, they’ve worked out what comedy is. Now they’ve got the formula, and that doesn’t actually give a lot of space.

The Post said, Well, the formula is to pump out endless specials for which they’ve paid a lot of money. That’s the formula you’re talking about. Hannah said, I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to live there. It’s not to say that I can’t won’t work with them again.

I just wanted to make a decision and take some creative risks, and also a lot of the subjects that I talk about in Wolf and the placement of myself, I wanted to put myself outside of that particular story. Hannah’s out promoting Woof. The audio to woof is free online with a twenty minute video version that features hannagas By speaking through an animated sock puppet. They asked about the sock puppet thing. Hanna said, every decision is almost like what is the algorithm?

Wan, I’ll do the opposite. Now, this is an interesting show. Today. I’ve talked about three comedians, Hannah Gadsby, Chris Fleming, and Robbie Hoffman. And of the three comedians I’ve talked about, Robbie Hoffman is the most mainstream comedian.

I like the alty stuff. The Washington Post was speaking on Zoom with Hannah Gatsby. Hannah was in Tasmania. I love details like that. We learned that Wolf was originally going to be about the death of Hannah’s father.

Hanna explains, Yeah, and the dead Dad’s show is a universal show, particularly for people of a certain age when you start to think about your mortality. But as I realized as I was going through this, I’m the only person on earth who hasn’t adapted to my fame. I was a creature of the Milbourn International Comedy Festival, in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Every year I’d write a show, maybe it gets to tour a little bit, then the next year I’d set it down right another one. I’m pushing forty.

I’m not thinking about cracking in the US market or having high powered agents in LA And then all of a sudden it was more than possible. And I was so ill equipped for that good follow up by the post who asked what was the biggest challenge of all that? And the answer the change in my audience. My audience beforehand were definitely people I was talking to in the room. I was a live performer that had slowly built a solid, sustainable fan base that’d bring a new piece of work to every year, maybe every two years.

I was making a living. Was in the scheme of things modest, but I was successful. Then the net happens and my agents said, are we going to give up? For a stadium tour. I wouldn’t survive that.

I don’t want to be in a crowd of thirty thousand people, and I don’t want to talk to thirty thousand people. Music can work it well in a large crowd, but that’s where comedy goes to die. When you get to those big venues. The last don’t come back. They disappear out the back.

I don’t want to sell tickets to the Apocalypse, and that’s what it feels like. It feels gross. I don’t actually cast judgment, it’s just what they’re doing. They can do it. Power to them.

If you want to be a court jester to the Saudi regime, go for it. Some news news on a Sunday, Jeff Ross is one man show. Take a Banana for the Ride. We’ll be on Netflix. Hanna Gatsby’s not gonna like that.

On March twenty fourth. You can watch you Take a Banana for the Ride. We see Jeff Ross sharing personal stories about his upbringing, family, loss, resilience, and how humor has carried him through tough times. I just made a Hannahatsby joke, But isn’t that pretty much what Hannah Gatsby does? Maybe Hannah and Jeff Ross could be friends.

I don’t know. I was just riffing on the Netflix of it all. Hulu still into the Ralph Barbosa business. They announced a new project titled swamp Meat, a half hour series created by Ralph Barbosa and comedy animation writer Isaac Gonzalez. This will be a cartoon.

Ralph Barbosa voice stars and serves as an executive producer. Swap Meet coming to Hulu. If you’re in La, go check out the Henson Puppets. They are doing improv comedy in puppet Up Uncensored. Puppet Up Uncensored combines the style of puppetry originated by Jim Henson with improv comedy games fueled by audience prompts.

It can get raunchy, he said, don’t bring your kids. You know. There are no official muppets, but we’re told the production includes recreations of several original Jim Henson puppets from early in his career. And it’s Brian Henson that created this thing, so it’s not like this is totally rogue. Brian Henson says of the recreations, they’re really old.

It’s super fun to rebuild those puppets and actually perform those scenes in front of a live audience. That hasn’t happened in forty to fifty years. Probably. We’re told that Henson puppets are tailored for the camera, but in Puppet Up, uncensored audience members see both the stage for screen performance on video projection, and you also get to see the puppeteers work in a way that’s usually hidden from view. Henson said, it’s really fun to let people see how we do it because it’s clever and it’s chaotic.

It also means our audience watches the show in a different kind of way. Hanson was asked about the Muppet Show. I haven’t gotten around to that yet, but people seem to really liked that. That was back Henson’s take. The AI craze has created a backlash of please let me see human craftsmanship, human artistry, where I know this is coming from a human artistic mind.

So I think right now there’s just this enormous appreciation for artistry that’s not computer generated in any way. That’ll benefit all sorts of arts, but it certainly benefits puppetry for sure. That your comedy news on a Sunday catch you back in the morning,

---

Full Transcript

Calorokashock Media. Hi there, I’m Johnny Mack and I’m high on life. I just hung up with Pete Holmes. He’s got a new special. It’s called Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on eight hundred pound Gorilla.

I grabbed it myself and watch it the other night. It is fantastic. If you don’t want to do that, it’ll be on YouTube Tuesday, March twenty fourth, but spend a couple bucks. Pete Home special. Silly Silly fun Boy is really good.

I gotta tell you, I been doing this for a while. I always get nervous before interviews because you never know if you’re gonna click or not. And boy, I felt like I could have talked to Pete Holmes for three hours. He was awesome. I just feel good about everything we talked about.

Here a couple square words. You know, normally I keep the show pretty clean, but there are a couple words we don’t normally use on the show. I’m sure you’ll get over it. Let’s jump in. Here’s Pete Holmes.

Got a couple random things to ask you about before we get to the special proper. I was watching the Scrubs reboot last night during the commercials, so I started playing on my phone. I’m on Reddit, I’m in the next effing level Reddit, and I put up this clip of you on Pyramid, just like absolutely murdering, crushing. Are you a Pyramid savant? Because you got cocky at the end and you were like, do you want me to slow down?

I hate to correct you, but I remember it so vividly. I believe I said, do you want to take a break? It’s a little bit embarrassing how proud I am of being good at Pyramid, just because I did no lie grow up watching that, and especially when comedians were on, like Billy Crystal obviously one of the goats, so when they started using me for that show, it was very meaningful.

And then when you’re playing with somebody, it’s inevitably like a school tea…

I take it so seriously. It’s like the level of humorlessness is just Pyramid and like going to the airport, Like those are my two areas that I take it very, very seriously. So I get all jacked up on caffeine and dialed in and when we get in the Winter Circle, which I’ve done a couple of times, if they’re good at it, as that person was, I’m just like, we’re gonna we’re gonna win. It’s it’s really you just have to have bad luck and get a category that is just kind of unknowable. There isn’t that mind mild.

But she was there and we synced up, and it was a thrill. It was like, none of that is Hollywood. When I’m putting my hands up and when I’m celebrating, it’s one of the biggest thrills. I can’t imagine. It’s so fun.

It’s so fun. I’ve got about ten years in you I remember it was ten thousand dollars pyramid, which you know, if you didn’t now you’d be like, gee, thanks guys, Yeah, exactly five fifty. And at one hundred thousand dollars pyramid for primetime that was was Dick Clark, right. I believe so. And that’s always our joke is they win one hundred thousand dollars and they tell you what they’ll do with one hundred thousand dollars, and we’re always like, these people don’t, well, they’re not factoring in taxes from like, this is not on the sly.

Everyone knows you just made a one hundred thousand dollars So all of your family members, Uncle Sam, it’s gonna it’s gonna get whittled down. You gotta be careful. It’s like winning the lottery. I was shading Nates. He’s got his new game show and you win sixty seven grand before taxes, and uh, you know he’s looking at the BARGATSI yeah, it’s the greatest average American.

So the average American salary is sixty seven whatever, So he’s giving that amount, so it works for the bit, but you know after taxes, et cetera. And I’m like, and then ABC runs one thirty, and you know they’d make it out on that show. I that I this is my first time hearing about it, and I take issue with that. You should do it household. Then you should be both parents are working, and you make one hundred and thirty or whatever it is.

That’s just sixty seven. That’s that’s no good for me, just because they’re gonna walk with thirty, you know what I mean? Like, now that’s not a game show. Comeline, all right, let me get your web team in trouble if you will, Pete Homes, this is really props to the people at Cannabis and Tech Today. The biggest picture of you if you google Pete Homes is they’ve got it stamped Cannabis and Tech Today.

I guess you did an interview with them years ago, but that’s the number one. Then it comes out. I love to face your throwing at. Me when you well, I have no memory of that. How appropriate, but I really don’t remember doing that.

And when you say biggest, do you mean the highest resolution? Yeah, so there’s like a big square in a couple of smaller squares. I went to steal a picture of you from the Internet to post on my Facebook page. But the I’m Google image searching Pete Homes. Oh you get Cannabis in Tech Today.

Pete Holmes says, cannabis users ask the best questions. That is, that’s a reach right there. As you’re looking at that. So the other thing, and just because I was listening to you, I think it was with Bert and you happen to mention on that episode that you’re kind of done with the massage bit and they’re surfacing the massage bit there as well. On cannabis in tech No, no, no on.

The Google page. So if you as you search Pete homes, it’s. Every day. Yeah, yeah, No, I’m proud to say that the time in my life where I Google myself is over. That is a part of your life as a comedian when you’re beginning.

This is so funny. I wonder why you know it’s interesting. It’s not what you asked, But the massage bit is done. I retired it just because I’m at a place in my career where, for lack of a better, can we swear on this show? But it’s not really swear.

But like Dick jokes, right, I like Dick jokes. I think they’re very, very funny. I just having done you know, five or six specials now where the last joke usually has something to do with sex, I just kind of got it. I wouldn’t say I got it out of my system, but I’ve moved on to other areas where I’m like, can I mind something here? Instead of just going like, yeah, we can get a cheeseburger.

There’s nothing wrong with a cheeseburger. That’s that’s what those kind of jokes are. But like having been to stay with the metaphor a chef for twenty plus years, I just rather cook something else, even though I know everybody loves a cheeseburger. So when I did that joke, So that clip, that YouTube clip is the first time and the only time I did that on stage maybe twice, and it really works. But what’s great about YouTube is you can film it and you can throw it up and it’s not like it was to waste and I don’t have to do it seven hundred times on the road and feel sort of bored with the subject matter.

I want to ask you about the art of putting together a special versus an hour. So again, just a reference bird. Again. He put this in my head about a year ago. I forget who he said it to, and was talking about how in modern times because the TV viewing audience has, you know, some sort of add TV add that comics are moving the closers up to the first third and even sequences being thing.

So as I watched a couple specials this week, Kat Williams came out and did the old school, walked out to music, kind of settled it on the stage, grabbed the water bottle and then went into a set. Taylor does the the fake open, and hey, we’re backstage, and what do you know? The cameras are rolling and now suddenly I’m on stage and I think she’s into a chunk. So for you, what I wrote it down. You open with let’s see if we can laugh at this?

And I won’t touch the material there, but your first words are let’s see if we can laugh at this? So as we hit play on the special, we’re midstream. Yeah, I if I had seen you on tour? Was that the opener? Is that?

Later? I I draw the line at moving my closer up. I don’t think that this is just me. I’m old in comedy in the sense that like the closer works because of what came before it. It’s not just a great joke.

Closers are closers. You shouldn’t put a closer in the first five minutes of a special because it’s the best joke. That’s that’s ridiculous. That’s what they’re kind of doing in action movies and stuff. Let’s have the biggest set piece at the beginning.

But again, I’m forty six. I will cheat that. I’ll cut out what I’m doing to warm up an audience, and that is often bits about doing stand up. It’s bits about like, oh it’s seven o’clock, it’s the early show. Oh I’m kind of this way, I’m blah blah blah.

It seems like kind of handshake bits. I’ll cut those out. And what we did on this special jump to what I would consider still the beginning, but we’re warm, we’ve gotten the hello, how are you out of the way, because I actually think there’s something even more honest about that, because sometimes the early bits do better because there’s still the titillation of the show is starting. So like those opening ones will get a like a thirty percent boost. So we’re cutting all that grab ass and all that sort of overjuiced part, which is the woo.

Nobody needs to see that. We cut that out. I like that trend, but that on my set list was probably like, you know, the third thing I talked about, which is I think it’s Q tips or Mormon face or whatever it is, But like I like, I like what we’re doing with specials, which is like, let’s get to it because stand up isn’t compromised by that, It doesn’t doesn’t hurt the art to just kind of throw you in. You can’t do that live. I have gone out and just been like, hey, can the people that make you take your shoes off before you come to their house just fucking cut it out.

Nobody wants that. I mean, like you can’t you kind of do. But for me, I would much rather the comedian be there, be in the room, be in the city, address what’s going on before, just kind of like going into and doing the album, as we say, but when it’s the album, just do the album now. That makes sense. I had the fortune I got to know Jerry Hamseley was George Carlin’s manager, and he explained to me how Carlin would put together a set and that George would open up with the ratitat tat you ever noticed that, and then go into the long sweeping that he would warm up the audience, but then he had to let them breathe and go into the big statement of this particular hour that George was doing, and then finish up with the rat of tat tat.

So I always look at this stuff analytically. It’s right on and everybody can relate to this like you have a date. The beginning is when the nerves are high. Everybody’s kind of like just sniffing each other’s butts, you know what I mean? Like do that?

Don’t skip that? Like is a good date? Where like they just go like, so tell me your biggest fear? Like, that’s not that’s like a douchebags idea of a good date. You warm up to that.

But then if I’m going to cut a movie and I want to give you the best part of the date, I might cut into so what’s your biggest fear? Like, because that’s a weird thing to say on a date. As the delivery system has evolved, I suspect I know the answer to this one. In your case the specials on the eight hundred pound Gorilla, it will eventually be on YouTube. Is there any thought into pacing for YouTube that let me do eleven minutes here and then take a breath so they can throw in the commercial break so that you know the AD’s not stepping on mid sentence or mid chunk.

I just assume whoever’s doing that is doing an awful job, and it’s terrible. I’ve never I’ve never been like, I can’t think about things like that. I hope this is literally the first time I’ve thought about that. My first special is on Comedy Central, and you did think you had some say you were like, and this will be where the commercial goes. You call it an act break.

This is where the act break is. With this and with all YouTube, I’m just sort of like, God, I hope they have the sense to not put that little fifteen second go daddy ad in the middle of a bit, But I don’t know. I can’t control that. True, nobody asked me to control that. If they did, I would, I would chime in, But like it’s an online streaming service, I’m at their mercy on that one.

Sure, I felt like you were using more swear words early in this special that I’m accustomed to. Is that a conscious choice or am I imagining that? Then once we settled in and you were surfing the room, I felt they were less swears. But it just as I watched it, I was like, oh, interesting, I’m not offended. I just thought it was different.

No, I appreciate that. I think you’re right when I watch it, I noticed that. And what’s interesting about filming a special is you’re watching I’ll go back to the date metaphor, like you’re watching a date right, You’re seeing this exchange of energy and different dates, different crowds respond differently. All I’m doing, and I’ll use any color in my toolkit, is I’m trying to get them to laugh as hard as possible. I really want, I want to be understood, I want to be seen.

That’s in the mix, to just want to delight them and that crowd. I think the majority of the special was the late crowd. That’s not entirely true, but the majority is the late crowd on a Friday night at the Aladdin in Portland. It might have been a Saturday, but I think it was a Friday. So I remember we were starting and like there were seats empty, and my opener, my friend Matt McCarthy, is doing a set, and I’m noticing people are rushing in, like there’s stress in the room, like it’s fucking Friday, it’s late.

We had to find parking, it was hard to get here. I’m feeling that energy. So when you’re very right, when you’re looking at an ingredient like swearing, I would include the volume and the pitch of my voice, like how am I delivering these jokes? It was that night. It was that crowd needed.

That was my interpretation needed. That play called I’m mixing all my metaphors, but that was the play. It’s not because this material needs it. It’s not because that’s how it was every time I did it. It’s because that night I felt you need like, hey, I’m just now another metaphor.

I’m the coach of the team, and for some reason we’re starting the game. We kind of feel like we’re down a little bit, like I can feel your Friday stress a little bit. That’s a completely different play than that you would call on a Saturday at seven or nine o’clock. This felt, you know, every special I’ve ever done the first show, I go, well, that wasn’t it, And then I’m going in hungry for the second hour. We end up always using a lot of the first hour, but I inevitably think it’s worthless the second one.

I’m going in and the vibe the room is big, the energy was whatever. I mean, there were a great crowd, but there was a little chunk in the water. And the swearing is a and the and the way that I’m saying it delivering it, there’s there’s more oration going on. All of that is addressing a certain crackle in the room that I’m like, if I don’t harness this and claim it. Here’s another metaphor.

Like a pilot going on the PA, there’s a little turbulence, you have to get on and you speak in a different way. When there’s turbulence, you’re more calm, you know what I mean, You’re more authoritative. So yeah, I bet I could play you the other three hundred times I’ve done that hour and I might not have said, like do the Q tip. People know what the fuck we’re doing, But like I, I’m a scrapper, I Am not going to do badly on my special. You’re coming with me on this joke?

Would I prefer to be super laid back because, like you said, after I slap them around a little, my hands in my pocket, I come down. I bet you could look at my data, but my heart rate is lower. We’re all eased in. But guess what, everybody sat. Everybody snapped in.

Here’s another metaphor. I’m like a substitute teacher that those first couple minutes, that’s when they’re deciding does this person have our respect? So that’s why the beginning of that set I’m so with you has more fervor to it, and one of the symptoms of fervor. Is me saying fuck more because I’m like, this is happening. We got to do this.

I need you to come with me.

---

And then once they’re with me, watch you know, once we get to the Mexico scor…

Yeah. As a watching, I made note of that that once you settled in this wearing kind of went away. Now I come out of talk radio, so everything you’re saying makes sense to me. I always teach my producers. We make a rundown, we make a script, but it’s not a blood oath.

You gotta feel the room. You gotta feel what’s happening with the show. That’s what I is infinitely fascinating about stand up. And I know we have too many podcasts with comedians talking about what’s beautiful about stand up, But I’ve always envied golf and racketball, these games you can play your whole life, you know what I mean, and stand up talking about Carlin imagine being something so compelling as to keep in mind, like George Carlin’s engaged until he died. And that’s why it’s like it’s never the same.

It’s not an album. In a musical sense. It’s way more like jazz. It’s way more like a conversation. And that recording was that night, that mood, that dinner, that night’s rest.

It’s a living thing. Like remember in Sideways, They’re like, you open a bottle of wine, it tastes different than if you had opened it on any other day. That to me is stand up. I’m all over with the metaphors. But I think you understand what I’m saying.

Sure, can I ask the magician? Are we looking at one show or two cut together? I think it is, Yeah, it’s. Two in fact, same night, two shows Mexico. I think is the first time we cut to the first show because that gopher broke tone isn’t always what you want, and you’re like, let’s bring it down, and it’s always nice to have that that variance.

So it’s happened with this special and I’m not for everyone. Every single one of them is two, and every single one of them, I said, except for Nice Try the Devil, I believe that was one, But every single one of them. I said after the show that that was garbage. We couldn’t use a second of that.

---

And then it ends up being about thirty forty percent of the special, which is…

You don’t know you have to be humble enough to be like or or feel paid. You don’t have to be humble. I find one way to avoid the suffering of the process is to just go, yeah, I’m wrong all the time, I don’t know what I’m talking about, and listen to great directors like Ricky and my wife who helped edit it this special as well. You mentioned podcasts. You’re one of the ogs.

You might be the og now that Maren gave up. Hey, should we tell maarn he retired five minutes too early? There was Netflix money that was about three weeks away. Bro Oh no, right, Ah. I just saw Mark.

I was crossing the street in La and I saw him and it was he. I think he plays up how much he doesn’t like me question Mark. But he’s certainly like a big brother, like annoyed by my Golden Retriever energy kind of guy. And that’s fine. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

But I again, this is me for the first time, considering that maybe Marin could have been acquired but his wasn’t. Video Yeah, and I guess who knows. Who knows. I won’t put you on the spot here. I could see you on a streaming service and I would absolutely watch that.

I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, we’d do it. I’ve got you a couple of times. I definitely maybe five years ago you opened up Sorry, you hosted New Faces up at Montreal and I’m trying to remember did you do one of the shows? I know John Marco did one of them this year, and I’m like, did I see Pete this summer?

And I’m just getting old and I can’t remember or not, but you definitely did it in the past. I’m trying to remember too, I didn’t do it. I think there was one I didn’t do because I did it two years in a row. And I do to answer the question I think you were about to ask, I do enjoy I sound old, but being with the young people, I think it’s really fun to do what no one in particular did when I did Montreal. And by the way, it turns out a lot of the kids don’t even need this, So it’s more about me feeling like I’m doing something because I noticed that so many of them are way cooler than I ever was.

But The fantasy was do new faces, just to say guys like, we’ve all been here, please please just have fun and I’m here if you want to talk, and some people did. Some people did, but I really just wanted to be like, fuck this, they have a festival. You guys are the real thing. Own it. Own it, You’re why they have the festival, Like you’re the thing.

Don’t let them think they’re the thing. I’m grateful for Montreal, but it’s not the thing. It’s container. The thing is the comedy. That’s the thing.

So I just wanted to, in an appropriate way, blow some wind in their cells and be like, just go do it. This is a victory laugh. Auditioning is when you should be nervous, go out and just fucking be yourself, all that classic stuff. I didn’t do a big speech. I just wanted to say like, if anybody wants to talk, and like these kids were amazing.

I didn’t get the sense that they needed that speech. But then the other thing I wanted to do was just have the tone as the host way more than anything I would say in the green room, just have the tone of like fuck you laugh, like you have to laugh, stop taking notes. This is their dream, like give it up, don’t? Oh is that good? Shut the fuck up?

This is the kid’s future. Give And I think that helped I could be pretty as a warm up comedian. I think I can be pretty insistent in a helpful way because I’m just like sweating, yelling at them, and then comedians who are amazing come out and clean up. That’s a nice you know what I mean. I’m not going out trying to crush, trying to set a nice tone for the whole show.

I’ve talked to other new Faces hosts about that. You. I was explaining my my son came with me one year and this was the one like twenty twenty two in the nice theater, the one with a balcony, and I said, I said, Pete’s throwing at about eighty six here. I’m like, he’s got more. But if he comes out and he does his a material and passes it off to a new bee, that’s a little unfair.

So I’m like, he’s just soft tossing it in there. It’s still that’s all you do. Very funny. Yeah, it’s more about when I every almost everything I’ve done, like when I did my talk show, I went out first and did my own warm up, and I just said, like, guys, no pressure, but this is my dream, you know what I mean. Like we’re filming a pilot to maybe have a talk show, and I’m not trying to freak anybody out, but I’m you know, hey, this is real, this really matters, and please give it up, Please please be generous, and please have fun.

And I had them chant let’s not fuck this up. Let’s not fuck this up. And that honesty and that icebreaker really made a difference. I was trying to do that for those guys, and then look who it was. Now.

The people I’m talking about are Shane Gillis, Jean Marco, you know what I mean. Yeah, it’s an incredible group. So yeah, they didn’t they didn’t need it, it turns out. More coming up with Pete Holmes. His special Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla and it’ll be on YouTube Tuesday, March twenty fourth.

Pete Holmes is on tour right now. He’ll be in LA on March seventh, and you get to ask him about the tour because we went so long. I asked for twenty minutes and I kept him for forty so I didn’t get to ask him about the tour. It’s just curious he’s doing like two dates than taking a break, than doing some others. But let’s see Royal Oaks, Michigan, Tallass, Irving, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin, Denver, During, North Carolina, Charleston, Vancouver, Hey, Vancouver, October, Mike Chisholm, you’re listening Seattle and then Portland, Oregon.

Now interesting to me. He taped this special in Portland. He has taped a previous special in Portland. I didn’t get ask him about that either. I wonder if he’s going to wrap up the Pete Here Now tour by recording another special.

Time will tell. But let’s get back to Pete Holmes. As I watched this special and listen to you with Taylor, I couldn’t quite get a feel for where you are on spirituality or religion these days. You know, I don’t want to go deep here, but just at a top level, are you? Is there a higher power?

Or where are you these days? I? You know, I love that question. I’ll starve by thinking. It’s really hard to talk about these things without while maintaining some sort of felt experience of it, So I’m going to try and do that.

Usually you start getting in your head and all that feeling of connection or whatever goes away. So I’m going to try and keep one foot in each pool. The way that I would phrase it is is what science calls consciousness is what I would call God, meaning we’re talking about the same mystery. So it’s awareness. But the difference with awareness as opposed to like thinking, oh, I believe in God or I don’t believe in God?

Is you right now? John, You’re having the experience of awareness, like you are present and you are aware. So that’s what makes it different from like reading a book like the Bible all respect. I’m just saying reading someone else’s experience. It could be an Indian sage and reading about their experience.

What’s interesting, infinitely interesting about awareness is you’re having that experience right now. So we’re moving outside of the realm of belief and we’re moving into what mysticism is. Mysticism is experiential spirituality. So you’re going, Okay, I am present, I am aware. Meditation or self inquiry is going in and asking yourself what are the qualities of that awareness.

It seems like Pete’s personality. Like, let’s say my thoughts, my thoughts emerge and they recede in what do they emerge and into what do they recede? We could call this consciousness. This is almost you seem interested, by the way I’m just saying for the listeners, this is almost over. We’re looking at that which doesn’t change.

Your thoughts change, your body changes, your feelings change. We might think of awareness like a blue sky and everything else’s weather. So it’s not just oh, I know what the meaning of life is. That’s sort of meaningless. What’s meaningful is going, oh, I’m not who I think I am.

I am the awareness in which everything that I call Pete and everything that I call the world emerges. Now, what are the qualities of that awareness? Well, it’s very peaceful, it’s spacious, it’s empty, it’s quiet. You could also say it’s full of itself. It’s fresh, it’s alive, it’s present.

These are all the attributes human beings would like. And the good news is why they call it good news, is that’s what you are. You’ve just sort of forgotten yourself. Like when you’re looking at a movie, you think you’re looking at a landscape. You’re actually looking at the screen in the same way you think you’re talking to me.

What you’re actually knowing is knowing, and the qualities of that knowing is fresh, alive, peaceful, no matter what’s going on in your life. That’s what in the Bible they call the piece that passes understanding. That’s something greater than oh I have this teacher, or I have this tradition. I’m talking about something that you can tap into an experience on a normal day like today, when you’re dying, when the chips are up, when the chips are down. Spirituality is the exploration of that which does not change.

And I would call that your awareness. That’s where I’m at right now. So we can do that on our own, unorganized. We don’t need a physical building. Absolutely not.

I like churches. I think they’re very cool. If you look at them. A lot of them are very trippy. So churches can be very evocative places.

Reading books can be very evocative. Teachers can be very evocative. But what are they evoking. They’re evoking an experience that’s so familiar to you and I that we’ve overlooked at and why should we recognize it? Because its qualities are the qualities happiness.

You might call it peace, you might call it because it’s what you really are, and that’s what people that are meditating are doing. But it is sort of snuggling with your true self. But when it starts bleeding into your life, you recognize that we’re all, to use a very overused metaphor, we’re all waves in the same ocean. So if I’m a wave and you’re a wave, I’m not going to be mean to you. I’m not going to be cruel to you.

I’m going to be I’m going to love you. I’m going to be concerned for you to I’m going to recognize our shared being. That’s what love is. It’s not just I like Johnny, he asked good questions. It’s actually recognizing that what I fundamentally am and what you fundamentally are is the same awareness.

Because there can only be one infinite, boundless, boundaryless space, so we’re sharing that in the same way that Mario and Mario Brothers is made out of pixels, and so are the clouds, and so are the blocks, and so are the piranhas, and so is bowser. Mario recognizes that whatever his essential nature is must be the essential nature of the whole game, which it is, which ends up at the end of the day being the mind of the programmer. Let’s do some ketamine. I picked up somewhere in one of the things I listened to in the past week getting ready for this. Like many of us, you hit your forty and you just kind of hit that spot of this is who I am.

I hope people like it. If you don’t, I don’t care. And you just seem very comfortable and understanding of who Pete Holmes is in twenty twenty six. Oh yeah, I didn’t know you were saying that about me. Yeah I was.

I’m right there with you the forties. There’s a great surrender to it. I think you know we can try. Obviously, I’m still interested in growth. I still go to therapy, I still accept feedback from friends I need to.

I’m always making an ass of myself. But the great gift of your fourth decade is like, I think I kind of know at least what my patterns are, and I go, oh, there, I am overreacting here. There I am, like I said, jackass, Like I’m a jackass all the time, Like stand up stand up is being a jackass at an allotted time, you know. So I’ve seen the pattern, I’ve seen the strings at the pot A show, and that makes me take it a little less personally while still being interested in improving whatever that means. I’ll head for home.

I want to be respectful of your time. But for the listeners, can you talk about that awesome Chicago comedy series at the turn of the century. I think we’re far enough now, and then I can say the turn of the century. Wow, I mean they were just in the century. There were killers, and you were one of them.

I know. I sometimes am stupefied at you know. I don’t want to Please don’t take this as me puffing myself up. I just noticed that there are certain trends. Bill Gates was seventeen when computers became available, so you remember that phenomenon.

So he was young enough to be porous just when computers were becoming available in schools. Obviously, I’m not saying i’m Bill Gates or at that level. I’m just saying there’s something about time and place, and when you look back in your forties, you go, oh my god, I’m the pro of a time and a place, and that time in that place was Chicago in two thousand and one, two thousand and two thousand and one, and what’s crazy, John Is? I swear I had a sense of it at the time. I said to people, they’re going to write books about this, Like I’m a kind of a mania kind of person, so that’s not entirely out of character for me.

But there was a sense. And Kumil was there when I said that, and he didn’t disagree with me. There was a feeling of like, you know what it was. It was like bad news bears. We weren’t, you know, like nobody cared about Chicago in a sense.

It was the improv city, but here for some reason, the open mic scene was really alive. And Hannibal and Cumale and John Roy, Matt Bronger, I always forget people, but like Matt Bridenstein, just really really good comics all coming together at this one open mic in two thousand and one. And it gets even weirder for me is I was resisting stand up because stand up is rather scary. I had done it maybe five six times. Then I moved to Chicago to do improv because I wanted to be with a group.

I thought that was and it is in a sense more fun. You know, you kind of have five people to either lick your wounds afterwards or celebrate with. It’s more communal. I started getting frustrated with that because I realized I noticed that I was way more committed and driven, Like I knew I wanted to do it for my job, so I wanted to rehearse more. I wanted to do more shows.

I was insatiable. So then I started getting curious about doing stand up again. I’d only taken a couple months off. It wasn’t like I retired, but I every day it was the Irving Park brown Line in Chicago. I would go to work at Bennegan’s restaurant downtown and I would take the Irving Park brown Line.

So I’d walk fifteen minutes to that train stop and I would pass the Lions. Then, which was the open mic, and it just said Monday comedy. It didn’t even say stand up comedy. You didn’t see open mic. It just said Monday comedy.

And I was still so, you know, like every hero’s journey, you’re supposed to resist the call. Like I’m feeling called to do stand up, but I’m resisting it. I’m a little afraid of it. It’s a lot, you know, these smoke filled nightclubs and people talking about their balls, and I didn’t know if I could fit in there, very much like the show Crashing, Like I really was that version of myself, a little doe eyed, kind of sweet, didn’t know what if I could do it. Talking about Nate Bargatsi, he and I had a similar experience in that way.

You walk into these clubs and everybody’s talking about the g spot and you’re just kind of like, golly, like, what am I doing here? My closer’s about RoboCop, you know. But I had to walk by the Lions then every Monday, and one Monday, I remember it wasn’t even a Monday. One day, I just walked in and looked at the stage like talk about putting a toe in, and then I left.

---

And then one Monday I went and I watched, which to this day is still my advic…

I’m like, just go to an open mic and watch. Don’t sign up, what are you insane? Don’t sign up the first time you go to an open mic, Just go and watch. Like it’s masochistic to go. I’m gonna go to this crazy thing.

I don’t know what it is, and I’m gonna do it. No, go and watch, don’t sign up. That’s what I did, and I met Robert Ruscemi that night. The next night I did Covey Bear, which was another open mic. I met Kunail He and I became really close, really fast, and then I signed up and did it, and you just see it’s not It’s like driving in Manhattan.

You think the people that drive in Manhattan have to be special people. They’re not. They’re just people who took the wrong exit off the FDR. They’re just They’re just like you. And the people at the open mic are also just people.

They’re just people. They’re just trying. They don’t know. So you’re in good company, don’t be afraid. So then you know, as that scene got better and better, it just it just blew up.

There are so many great comics that had such a huge influence on all of us, and you know, I don’t want to say the rest is history, but like it really kind of baked a certain generation that I will always feel a kinship towards. Yeah, all Stars, you mentioned crashing and I was checking before we jumped on here to see where it’s streaming, and it’s pretty much streaming everywhere except Netflix. So here’s my prediction. At some point that show is going to land on Netflix and it’s you know, we see this with shows like Suits was the big one. This thing that’s been a you could have watched it on some other streaming service like mad Men now right, so everybody was watching mad Mental stuff.

But I feel like at some point, if Crashing gets on Netflix, people are gonna be like, oh my god with this. I had a college student today just in my class I teach, and I was telling them what I was doing later today and she knew about Crashing. I’m like, oh, good, this thing has legs because that was a fantastic. I look, I would love that. Obviously it happened.

I don’t know talk about my forties. It’s not that I’d given up on those things. There was a time when I was a little itchier and I was like, why can’t we get that on whatever? I’m happy it’s on HBO. I had that more for some of my specials, some of my Comedy Central specials.

I was like, if we could just get those acquired by Netflix, more people would see them. I always just got the run around. People were like, they don’t really do that, and I was like, what about Millennia. They did it with Millennia and they’re like, well it’s mullany and I’m like, this is a weird phone call, Like I hate this phone call. So I stopped.

I stopped kind of sniffing around in that way. But then something interesting happened was we’re just doing Silly Silly fun Boy on YouTube, and then my special that was on Netflix because Netflix now leases special so they’ll do it for three or four years. I don’t know, so I Am Not for Everyone, which was my Netflix special, became mine again. So after I don’t know when we’re doing it, but in like a month or so, we’re going to put I Am Not for Everyone on YouTube as well, so when you watch Silly Silly fun Boy, it’ll say, hey, there’s also this. I saw that happen with Nice Try the Devil, so Comedy Central put my full hour on YouTube.

I don’t know how it’s doing it. Like I said, I stopped googling myself, but more people tend to see these things, and at the end of the day, anything that gets something I’ve done in front of people that would like to see it. That makes me, That makes me happy. Yeah. Final question, could you tell me how you say the title of your book?

And the reason I’m asking is there are no commas and there are three different fonts. And I read it one way and I go, that doesn’t sound like Pete and then I read it the other way. But there are no commas. So how do you say the title of that book? I say, comedy sex god.

Okay, I put I. Put in You’re not a comedy sex god. No, I wouldn’t. I don’t do a lot of regrets. I I did consider after we published it, calling it comedy and sex and god.

You know those T shirts you see that say like Bono and Bruno and you know, like their favorites. I said, Bono, I’m old. But that could have been the style doing it again, Like you know, I tinker with another book from time to time. I would do a title that might be a little bit more clearer. That being said, my editor Luke Dempsey really loved the title.

He loved the people would be like, what, like wanted the to use the word itchy again, the itch that picking up the book would solve. It’s like, what does he mean, oh, it’s about these three topics. It’s about comedy, it’s about sex, it’s about God. But he really he was British, so he got a real kick out of the cheekiness of comedy, sex God. Pete Holmes, thank you for your time, my.

Sincere pleasure, John. I really I enjoyed every moment. Thank you for having me. Boy. I love him.

Pete Holmes. His special Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla. Why don’t just support Pete because he was really awesome. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I do. Back in the morning with a normal episode.

Pete Holmes, thank you. Go Asian, African American types of people, races, mermaids, sunken ships, things under an aquarium, things in the sea, things in the ocean. I’m what you used to point at. People on your hand. You might say what a fingerprit said, the.

Obituaries, parts of the newspaper, the ocean, the sky. Things that are blue. You want to take the time, little break Ramen, things he might be eat in a bowl. Let’s get this don

---

Full Transcript

Callarogashock Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mack with another bonus episode. This is a recap of Scrubs season ten, episode two, my second first day original air date, February twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. It’s been two days since the Scrubs revival and I am still thinking about it all the time. I wrote about it on my substack today link in the notes.

It’s free, you can read it. I just I’m in love with this show. I almost rewatched episodes one and two again last night, and I’m like, yeah, let me wait a couple days, and I wound up just watching wherever I am in my season five rewatch. But boy, I can’t stop thinking about this show.

All right, let’s do a recap, a mix of my memory and the AI.

Hopefully the AI is not hallucinating now in this episode. No John c. McGinley, No Judy Rayis. We’re gonna have to get used to that. That not all the regulars around all the time.

Plenty of articles about it. We’ve learned at mcginley’s in three of the nine episodes. I’m not sure how many Judy Rayis is in as Carla. But the crux of this show is the Big Three and the New Kids. So in the new episode we get a little dynamic of Churk versus Elliott with JD having to make a decision.

The decision is about are we’re going to get a new surgical robot which is super cool or some new simulation thing that I still don’t understand what we were trying to get. JD as chief of Medicine in the old doctor Kelso role, he has to decide. We also get a lot of Joel Kim Booster’s Doctor Park. I didn’t talk about him yesterday, but doctor Park is jealous that JD has gotten the big job and is kind of in the janitor antagonist role on the new show. And we also get into the first plots with the New Kids.

Asher is one of the young doctors. He has a patient, Stanley, who’s on heart medication. However, Stanley hasn’t been taking his medication because medical bills. JD encourages Asher to get on the phone with the insurance company. Interesting to me, I’ve mentioned this before before the pit my wife said Scrubs was the most realistic medical show.

So during this episode, when Asher calls the insurance company and he’s on hold for like hours. My wife said that is the worst that she’s done this serious. Creator Bill Lawrence kind of agrees with my wife. He said, I’m going to give Scrubs a pat on the back until the pit. It’s my favorite show.

I love it. My wife and I’ve been doing promo for it essentially. But you can type on the internet what’s the most realistic portrayal of medicine on television? Scrubs was number one for the last fifteen years, So my wife is on point. Laurence says, I’ll tell you why our medical cases were real.

The reason we did the show initially was because my buddy JD, the real JD s said, I rarely kick open a door, and Neil stat and all the medical shows at the time were like, there’s a bomb in his chest, we need two blood stat He’s gonna die. Real life. JD said, the real stuff was using gallows humor to get through the day and trying not to get torn up emotionally with the stuff you’re dealing with. The real JD. Back in the days when he was an intern, if you got paid to a code and you’re the first intern there, you had to run it, and on his first day of work, you got page two code and he hid in the closet.

We put that in the pilot of Scrubs, and that felt very familiar to the medical community, the fear of treating someone. Laurence says. This year, there’s a story that was taking from one of the doctor’s residencies of a family that didn’t want to come into the r and stayed out in the parking lot, hoping it would get better because they knew that once they got into the er, whatever savings they had would be decimated, and unfortunately someone passed away in the parking lot. That’s just a true Lifted story. As for the main dilemma, Turk is getting excited about he surgical robot.

His department is getting Turk and the team starts celebrating. Elliott shows up and she’s mad because it looks like JD has picked Turk over Elliott. She says, this isn’t just about the robot, it’s about the divorce. She feels like Turk took sides in the divorce and has been avoiding her. That leads to a nice scene between those two who really weren’t paired up all that much.

In the original series, and we see that they are indeed friends. JD has to make the call, are we getting the robot or are we getting whatever Elliott wants. He did pick what Turk wants and the reasoning, much like doctor Kelso, it’s better for the business of the hospital. We all become what we hate, right, We’ll come back. And there’s more from the Bill Lawrence interview in Deadline.

He talked about why to bring Scrubs back now. Deadline has a very good interview with Serious creator Bill Lawrence, very interesting. They were curious why to bring the showback. Deadline says, not all shows age well. Bill said, yeah, time’s change.

I’m not afraid of this because people that whine about, oh, it’s hard to do comedy now, I think you have to evolve with the zeitgeist of the time. I think that’s one of the things that makes comedy fun. I think funny always wins, and if you’re going to be dangerous, you got to be careful and make sure it’s funny. There was some I think it was in episode two, some fantastic the Todd moments, and as I’ve been saying since I got on the Scrubs, kick a week ago. Yeah, have to understand what the Todd is.

I’ve said this twenty five years ago. We weren’t like, Hey, that guy at the Todd he’s really cool. I like the way he harasses all the female staffers. We knew what it was, but it can still be funny. They’re all basically that’s what she he said jokes.

He’s a cartoon character. It’s fun Bill Lauren said, the one thing that held up from the original Scrubs is the humanity and the feeling that all these people in the teaching hospital were doing it because they were trying to be of service. The one thing that was canon was the medical advisors all said, you can’t make fun of the patients, and you have to show people that are actually sacrificing their lives to try and do good. But yeah, the comedy winds up with the actual show. In real life, interns and residents aren’t nearly as abused and treated the way they were back in those times.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t still stressed out, and doesn’t mean that they don’t still burn out, but times have changed in the medical world. Donald Faison talked about Turk’s storyline. We’ve seen at times a moody Turk In the new series, Donald Faison said, Turk is stuck. Before it was great to be stuck with your best friend because you guys could play after work and do so many great things. But his best friend’s gone and he’s stuck still.

How does he combat that? How do you combat doing the same stuff over and over again and losing patients? Sometimes there’s a win, sometimes there isn’t, and you don’t have anyone to share it with, someone to laugh about it with. It breaks him down. Even though he holds a brave face for the hospital, his wife and kids.

It breaks him down. Nian doesn’t want to talk about it. JD shows up and acts like everything’s normal again. It’s like, no, no, no, no, we got history, bro. We got to fix first before all that happens.

Faison said, I studied that scene for about a month and a half because I really wanted it to work. Bill Lawrence ads one of the few things that people loved about the early shows is a portrayal of a very non toxic, emotionally open male friendship, and a lot of that involved the joyful, childish exuberance of Turk and JD and fantasies and a voiceover monologue. The thing that convinced us we could still do it is Zach MacDonald’s Super Bowl commercials or their podcast. You can see their friendship as authentic. They still behave like they’re twelve years old when they’re together, and you can still be the people that are patriarchs of their families and directing movies and running businesses and stuff.

So we were like, what a cool thing to hold onto from the old show. Faison said, in real life we are man children. But let’s be honest, I do have to prevent my kids. Scrubs season ten loving it. If you haven’t watched it, check it out on the DVRs and on Hulu.

It’s a separate series. They have it posted as season one. We’re all calling it season ten, but for whatever legal reasons, behind the scenes writes and all that, it is Scrubs season one. Set your DVRs appropriately all right, back in the morning, Pete Holmes, it’s in the can. It exists forty minutes with Pete Holmes.

He was fantastic. It’s one of my favorite episodes I’ve ever done. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Catch you here tomorrow.

---

Full Transcript

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, once again, I’m Shredger’s surer, Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News, daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence. The algorithm loves am I on jury duty that even survive long enough to see the Scrubs reunion? Who knows?

Hopefully you tune in tomorrow and my guest is Pete Holmes. If there’s no episode at all, uh oh, who knows what even happened? But while we’re all still together, Tonight on HBO, Chris Fleming Live at the Palace Chris, maybe off your radar. I like Chris a lot, but I will warn you this is not guy in front of a brick wall stuff. This is out there and I love it.

Chris Fleming Live at the Palace Well premiere at ten East and West tonight. But the knicks are on, man, So I’m not getting to this until Saturday. I need to catch up on my comedy specials. Boy, I got to dig in, I silliv and watch Cat or Tailor yet, And it seems that Friday night is becoming the night for the for lack of a better word, the weird stuff. This is when you put on the Chris Flemings and the Sarah Shermans.

This isn’t I don’t know, Mark Maron in front of a brick wall. This is the quirky stuff. Chris Fleming Live at the Palace, Filmed at the Cadillac Palace Theater in Chicago. Chris Fleming bounds across the stage, good description, sharing his takes on masculinity, Congo lines, Trader Joe’s oreos, NPR, dog Breeds and more. You’ll see, trust me tune in.

Fleming said, I hereby decream my first HBO special will soon be available for you to consume. Please enjoy and feel free to dance along. Thank you and thank you HBO. Conan O’Brien is getting ready to host the Oscars. What’s today the twenty seventh?

There, we’re two weeks out from Conan O’Brien hosting the Oscars. Conan, have you started writing and rehearsing for the Oscars? Is a question you would ask Conan if you were with The New Yorker, and Conan would answer it saying something like, yeah, I started writing a while ago. Ideas are like RAF pilots in nineteen forty. You have to generate a lot of them, a lot of them fall by the wayside, and then some duor so.

We’ve been going for a while. We’ve got a great writer’s room, and I’ve already started going to clubs to try out material, which is really fun. It’s good to keep you in shape and get you ready. Apparently Conan doesn’t do Apple Fitness Plus like I sometimes do. Because if Conan did, and he did a cycling class with Tye, ty would tell him you stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready.

Write that down Conan. The New Yorker asked Conan, Hey, where does politics play a role in that kind of night? Conan said, it’s tricky. I’ve done political comedy over the years. Certainly, I’ve done two White House Correspondents dinners on Late Night.

We used to do lots of political comedy. We do it on the TBS show as well. It’s never been in the front of my comedy brain. I don’t think it’s what drives me. I, for better or worse, have a brain that scrambles things, loves cartoon imagery, and probably is influenced by old movies or literature.

As I am by Frankly Warner Brothers cartoons, and it all gets mixed around in my head. It’s very impulsive. I don’t know where my sense of humor comes from, but I know that when I do political comedy or make a political joke, it has to really resonate with me. And I can’t tell you what that is, but it has to feel true to my comedic voice, or it feels hollow. Hey Cony asked The New Yorker, does Trump feel funny to you anymore?

Conan said no. I mean, I’ve talked a little about this, and I’ve said I think he’s bad for comedy. Years ago, when I was at Harvard and working on the Lampoon, we’d try and think of magazines we could do a parody of. There was one magazine we always knew we couldn’t parody, which was The National Inquirer. If a magazine has as its cover Elvis Still Live, Mary’s Alien and they have a baby that’s a three speed blender, if that’s what the real magazine’s coming out with, you can’t do a comedic take on that.

It’s very difficult, or I think I’m possible to do. I do think Trump, if he were a magazine. It’s the National Inquirer. There’s a lot that’s so bombastic and outrageous and so unprecedented that how do you do. Oh, I’ve got a great Trump oppression.

I have him saying this, Well, that’s not crazier than what happened yesterday. So I don’t know how this is funny? Does that make sense? Send your letters to Conan O’Brien. The conversation turned to things like SNL or John Stewart or Trevor Noah.

Conan said, no, that’s a different thing. There are comedians and when they talk about Trump quickly get very angry. And I’ve said this before, but I think it’s possible to surrender your best weapon. Your best weapon is to be funny. And if it involves in a name calling, I mean, I’m all for people trying.

And when there’s a really good joke about the president or the administration, if there’s a joke about the right left and it’s a good one, I’m elated. I just think of the current climate. Things have gotten so stretched out. Think about that Dolly melted watch that it’s hard to find purchase. The New York here was curious, when does the network get involved.

That’s a great question, Conan said, there’s always some issues. I’ve been dealing with networks for most of my life, so they’ll be stuff and that’s when you roll up your sleeves and you start arguing. Back the New York he was curious, so you win, Conan said, yeah, oh yeah, you can win. You can also lose. Certainly, there are rules about what could be said and what can’t be said.

The Academy is rules. I mean, everyone has rules. And I love this. You explain this. This is so great, Conan said, once you’ve leted in New York for a period of time, you come to this awareness that, oh, everything ultimately isn’t your co op.

They have their rules. You could say, hey, but on this other award show, I got to do this. Let’s say I’m living and I’m making this up. I’m living at one seventy two West eighty ninth Street, and they’ll say this is the Drake Building and you live here at the Drake Building. Yeah, I do.

What I’d like to do is put in my kitchen window. No no, no, no, we don’t let people alter the windows here at Drake. And you’ll say, well, okay, it’s funny because when I lived over at the Malcolmore and they’ll say, yeah, we know that’s the Malkilmore. I’ll say, well, I once did the People’s Choice Awards and they’ll say, oh, we know that’s the People’s Choice Awards. They don’t have standards.

Their windows and their kitchens are hard. Good stuff. I have to listen to. That’s a full podcast on the New Yorker. I think it’s called The New York or Radio Hour.

Have it in my I seriously have two hundred hours of podcast queed up because of the snow. I had a shuffle for two hours on Monday. I had to shuffle again on Wednesday, just nightmare. Taylor Solinson got the wax Job cover story out of the Hollywood Reporter. Now, I found it odd that the cover story came out Wednesday instead of Tuesday, which is when her special came out, because usually those things are at the same time, neither here nor there.

I just found the timing interesting. Like all Hollywood Reporter cover stories, it was very favorable and they wrote it’s not hyperbole to call Taylor Thomson a wonder kin. In her twenty she became a top grossing touring stand up, was tapped to host a late night’s show, and developed her own material more than plenty of her peers will over a lifetime. She started at age sixteen and told THHR Now I’m thirty two and I’ve been doing this half my life. It’s crazy to think about.

They asked her, there’s a moment early on in Prodigal Daughter where you say your team was nervous about you leaning too foreign to religious material. What’s the deal there, Taylor said, my team has never given me notes creatively, so that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. When we’re doing like the tour name Save Me, and they arn’t work for the tour where I’m wearing crosses and stuff, I think they were just like, well, Cake, we make it clear to people that it’s not all that and that we’re not just bashing religion the whole time, and we’re not. But I understand once they saw the hour, they got it. Their job is to think of it more like from a marketing perspective, so they were doing their jobs.

If you go back and watch my other specials, all of my jokes about religion are coming from a very wounded place because of the way I grew up a lot of resentment towards a lot of things that I was told and taught growing up in church. I had to work through a lot of that. She talked about her first sets at age sixteen, a lot of jokes about going to prom and being a loser and feeling ugly, and observational stuff about my family. Obviously I had no life experience. A lot of the jokes I were doing was apologizing for how young I was, because I could feel it was making people nervous for me in the audience, which I think is completely I’d be nervous if a sixteen year old god in stage was like, I’m a comedian.

I think I was pretty self aware and maybe that was a strength of mind back then, but obviously I was not good. People always ask about starting in churches because it’s a weird Oargin story, and for years I was embarrassed of it. Part of the growth in this new hour is me talking about a way as grateful and appreciative as opposed to ashamed and embarrassed. There is a lot more there. You can read it in the Holodaporter.

I’m gonna hold on to some of it for next week. In case I find myself on the OJ trial and need to pre tape a lot of these episodes. I’ll tell you, though, as somebody who does this every day, it is better to have too much content than not enough content. I can assure you of that. Earlier in the week, I thought this was fun.

Drewski went to Indianapolis, where he caught up with Mike Epps, who suddenly is in the news three times a week after never being in the news. I don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe Mike EPP’s got new pr people they were hosting auditions for It Could Have Been Records. Drewski’s Could Have Been Records is a popular comedy music label parody series, sometimes featuring celebrity guests, say Mike Apps. Drewski plays a record exec where auditions aspiring singers, rappers, and dancers, and even quote unquote signs some of them to the label.

That’s a good Time. Tonight’s in Tampa. Sam Morrill will be taping his new comedy special That’s at the Tampa Theater. The Netflix comedy lineup all of a sudden got a lot clearer. They made a few announcements.

Derek Stroup will have his first full length special, Nostalgic, which is produced by Nate Pergatzy’s Nateland Entertainment that’ll be out Tuesday, March tenth. In Nostalgic, Derek Stroup dives into his experience being a nineties kid in rural Alabama and everything that comes along with it, from partying with friends to board games and printal relationships. The special was taped at the Lyric Theater in Birmingham, Alabama. We’re told while Stroop is indeed a waffle house enthusiast, he’s not your average slow talking Southerner, known for his detailed stories and over the top energy with the cadence of an angry auctioneer. He’s set to make his third appearance next month on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, and he’s also in that Nate Brighatzy movie The Breadwinner.

You know that the why that I think Kevin James must have turned down? So that’s more tenth than hey. The next week, Mark Norman, He’s got a special yeah titled None Too Pleased Mark Norman March seventeenth on Netflix. In None Too Pleased, Mark Norman turns married life, fatherhood, and hot button topics into rapid fire punches in this witty free for all where nothing is off limits. Yeah, Norman has a good joke in the trailer, which is here in the copy.

I went to pull the trailer, but it’s naughty. It’s too naughty for this. But the good opening joke there is Mark Norman say, I actually got caught going to strip club recently by my wife. I don’t know how she caught me. I only talked about it on four podcasts Comedy stock Market.

Thank you, Bert Reynolds, Voice of the Comedy stock Market. If you’re a new listener, every Friday, I give give you some recommendations for buying and selling stock in comedians. Now, the premise here is we’re not saying someone is good or bad. We’re looking for the value. Just like in the actual stock market, you try and buy low, sell high.

That’s what we’re trying to do here now this week, you know, for all my curmudgeony negativity, I’ve got six buy recommendations and no sells. What got into me this week? Is it the jury duty? Is it because Scrubs is back? Who even knows?

Here are the recommendations. Let’s buy some Conan O’Brien. Now, John, everybody knows about Conan O’Brien, I know, but nobody’s been thinking about Conan O’Brien, and the oscars will suddenly sneak up on people and Conan is going to crush it. So let’s buy some Conan O’Brien. Let’s buy some Pete Holmes because he did this show.

I think hopefully, hopefully he recorded it yesterday and you will hear it tomorrow. You’ll find out tomorrow what happened. Let’s buy some Pete Holmes. Let’s buy some Chris Fleming. Chris Fleming on HBO tonight.

I’ve got a good feeling about this one. But Chris is a little out there, just warning everybody. We gotta buy some Max Amini. Remember that guy. That’s the guy that I saw was selling out the garden and I was like, who’s that.

Well. In the last week Friend of the Show, Jason Zenneman for The New York Times wrote a big piece about Maximedi that I think was subheadline something like the biggest comedian You’ve never heard of, something like that. I’ve had to kick that a couple times this week. I have it in the script right now for Monday, and then like a day or two after Zennemann wrote about it, Deadline wrote about Maximini. So there’s something in the air, and Max’s people are getting the word out that he’s getting a time at bat.

So let’s buy some Maximini before everybody else figures it out. Although apparently a lot of people other than me have figured it out because he’s selling out the Garden without me mentioning him. Let’s buy some Mark Norman. Yeah. Norman is a really solid comedian.

He hangs out with the cool kids. He’ll have a Netflix thing, which means Rogan will have him on. I mean, Rogan has him on all the time. But I feel like Mark Norman’s been in the on deck circle for next up for quite some times. So let’s load up on Mark Norman.

I got a feeling this Netflix special will push him into the mainstream. And I didn’t originally have this one, but I just added it only I kind of liked that story. I just told you about Derek Stroop, and I’m like, all right, the Nate Berghetzi thing, Yeah, okay, so let’s buy some Derek Stroop. So that’s your comedy stock market for this Week by Conan, by Pete Holmes, by Chris Fleming, by Maximini, by Mark Norman, by Derek Stroop, No sells this week. Look at Johnny Mack being all positive.

You know what else Johnny Mack did? He didn’t put any stories in the second half of his script. There’s supposed to be another storier here too, because we do comedy stock Market and then we do other things. What are you gonna do now, John? I guess I could pull something out of the Saturday script, especially if hopefully that’s going to be Pete Holmes got this whole Robbie Hoffman thing that’s too long.

Do I have anything quick in here? And I can tell you I have a Jim Brewer story, but my voice is too shot to get into that. How about Jackie Kasan? She caught up with the Shepherd Express. She said, while growing up, I wanted to act.

I think I certainly played a lot of What If FONSI was on the Starship Enterprise and acted out all the parts. I vaguely remember answering that I wanted to be a lawyer, or teacher or forest ranger. When asked, I went to U. W. Madison and there was a comedy club we went to it went to the open mic three weeks after seeing the show, and I was hooked.

She then told the story I told the other day about heckling Sam Kinneson. As for comedy right now, she says, it’s crazy out in the world, and there’s two kinds of comedy I like seeing now. One very open about the things we’re all living through, mostly to relieve the pressure, and it make people know that they aren’t alone or crazy. The other is just normal driving, family, food and relationship material, which is just the kind of fun comedy that you can just keep writing no matter what the situation. She’s got that new special out this week, Altercation, so there’s plenty for you to watch watch Jackie Caason, Pete Holmes, Taylor Tomlinson.

If there was one other this week, what’s the other one? I don’t know. My brain is full. Okay, Now, hopefully tomorrow you tune in and Pete Holmes is the guest. If Pete Holmes is not the guest, that meant I have jury duty.

If there’s no episode at all, that means something horrible happened. So come back in the morning and we’ll all find out together, What the hell happened, See you then,

---

Full Transcript

Caalarocashock Media. Hey bonus episode. I’m Johnny Mack and this is a recap of Scrubs Season ten, episode one, my return. Original air date February twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. I just needed to get on Mike today.

Sometimes I just do a show for me, and this is one of those. Boy, am I happy? I watched that show last night, and I was so happy that Scrubs landed properly. So many things that I love, specifically Star Trek, have gotten ruined in modern times, and that Scrubs came back and felt like Scrubs and made me laugh and gave me the feels. Oh my goodness, so fantastic.

So if you haven’t watched yet, bail out of this episode because we’re gonna break it down as a recap here seen by seeing him doing this from a combination of memory and AI, and I’m hoping the AI isn’t hallucinating spoilers. We open up with a cold open. It’s a prestige medical drama fake out, perhaps kind of sort of like the Pit. The coloring is a little different. It’s blue, gray, handhaild cameras, tight lens, no music, a Gurney slams through the er doors.

Doctors are speaking in clipped jargon, BP crashing and get me a line, and we see JD in the center of the frame. He’s calm focused, completely different body language from classic JD. It’s like we’re in the pit, except it’s JD.

And then cut suddenly we’re in a luxury apartment.

JD is in concierge medicine. He’s checking a rich guy’s pulse. The guy asked if kombucha counts us water onto the title sequence. It’s a lot like the original. The music is back, we see the new interns, and then last is JD, who doesn’t hang up at X ray puts it on some sort of electronic skinner thing.

Creator Bill Lawrence spoke with Deadline. He said the new season is conceived as if the original series ended with season eight. Okay, so we’re just gonna hand wave there is no season nine. Don’t ask any questions. It just want we meet up with the old folks.

Turk is stuck in a rut, Doctor Cox is doing his tough love thing. But you know, times change in these kids today, there’s a new annoying hr rep played by Vanessa buyer, who I think is gonna get old real fast if they don’t modify that character. Elliott is there. She heads the simulation lab now out to the parking lot for the first scene. It’s the same physical geography as the pilot episode, but JD is walking slower.

Nobody recognize him. We check in with Carla. She’s at the nurses station. She appears to be some sort of boss. Now he runs into Turk in the hallway.

They scream like children, JD Churk and they decide to do the eagle thing. That’s where JD jumps on Turk’s back. They make a couple steps, they collapse in a heat. Turk has a bad back. Now we’re all fifty years old.

He’s excited to see JD.

---

And then the big reveal spoilers.

We run into Elliott. We find out that they are divorced. We find out that she ended it. Bill Lawrence talked about the divorce. He said, here’s the scoop.

The eighth year of Scrubs ends with just once, I’d like to believe my dreams came true. We all felt that way to be dark about the world. But even though I’m very grateful about how my life is gone. Not everything works out the way you want to work it out of a huge believer in writing what you know and what you see. Our show runner is someone that when I left Scrubs was married and having a young child and now is a single parent co raising that child with somebody.

That doesn’t mean it’s acrimonious, and that doesn’t mean that it’s his own journey. I’m sure you have that same experience. Some people in your lives work out, some don’t. Bill said, I was really resistant at first, and the one things these guys all drove home to me, They’re like, if you watch the nine thousand episodes of Scrubs, you would say Turk and Carla are gonna make it, and then you would say, I don’t think j D and Elliott have had more than an episode and a half that they seem like a functioning couple. So it’s a good storytelling device.

Doesn’t mean their story’s over, but it’s certainly something that adults have to navigate all the time. Zach braftag Danny said, what JDC’s projected on the sheet at the end of season eight again ignore season nine, is what he hopes and dreams will happen, but that doesn’t necessarily come true, especially when you’re fifty years old. Things that you want to happen happen. Some marriages fail, some don’t. You have the contrast with Turk and Carl where they’re as happily married as ever, compared to us who are learning how to copare it and eventually work together.

So I think that was a good way of showing a wide array of how marriages can turn out in midlife. On to meet the new characters. Now, I kind of like the new characters. I mean, I’m not in love with them, but I didn’t hate them, which for me says a lot. I was ready to not like them.

I think Star Trek has done a lot of damage to my brain. But they’re all fine. And one of the things I’m really enjoying about the show, and I said to my wife as we watched it, it puts the characters twenty five years later or twenty years later, you know we’ve all changed. One thing you learn as you get older is you can’t put the band back together. You can maybe get together for dinner every now and then for one night, but you just can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

People change things move on anyway. We meet the interns and then in walks my personal hero, doctor Cox. He’s older, his voice isn’t as strong as it was. I don’t know if that is how McGinley sounds now or if that was a choice it did. Keep noticing it.

JD thinks he can’t call me nuby and doctor Cox now calls him, which got a chuckle out of me a few times. As viewers, we can tell that doctor Cox is setting up JD for success. He kind of manipulates JD into watching over the terrans for a couple of minutes. There’s a thing with a patient. We see JD come in, takes over.

He’s very confident, he’s a veteran doctor.

---

And then the big twist at the end of the episode, it’s Cox and JD.

Cox gets very serious. This is John McGinley dropping the guff doctor Cox character. He invites JD to come back. JD mentions as he’s excited to work with doctor Cox. Doctor Cox says, you’re not going to be working with me.

You’re going to replace me, and he offers JD the job of chief of Medicine. Now it might brain I don’t know how that works. Like in the Chief of Medicine, it’s not the monarchy just to point the next guy. But maybe we’re gonna learn that Jordan is still on the board. Anyway, doesn’t matter, it moves the plot along.

JD accepts he is now the Chief of Medicine, so he is now in the role that doctor Kelso was in twenty five years ago and Doctor Cox was in towards the end of the original series. Doctor Cox seems kind of worn down by these kids today and he says a line, I’m tired. I’ll talk about that in the second half. What that might mean. Doctor Cox says, I feel like this particular time has passed me by.

Let me take a quick break and I’ll talk a little bit about John C. Mcginley’s Doctor Cox. Now, unfortunately McGinley is only in two more episodes. He’s not in episode two, so it seems like he really is not in the show all that much. I thought they were just going to do the dynamic where he was JD’s boss, but it seems like they’re going for something else.

And as I read the interviews spoilers, it seems like there might be something with doctor Cox’s health now. Deadline asked McGinley. Is doctor Cox a relic? How does his character fit into today’s world. McGinley said, I think people who understand fatigue and being exhausted will understand doctor Cox’s dilemma.

I think he accomplished everything he set out to accomplish, and he’s ready to move on. Bill Lauren said, the showrunner when they came to me with their idea was it’d be cool to see these students teachers now, and to do that, you need somebody to take doctor Cox’s role. Then to do that, it was really important to see JD maybe entered a little bit of cush your life, because when you work at a teaching hospital, you’re there because you’re being of service. There’s no other side to it. But even then we knew that meant in the opening of the show, JD had a step onto the mantle of you need to be there for these kids.

What I was to you, Lawrence says, Doctor Cox is a huge character on the show. He comes back at the end of the year and will continue on next year. Now that’s interesting is Lawrence telling us that this show has secretly been picked up for season two. I’ve been assuming that they would do one of those day one. Oh my god, the ratings were so big that it’s immediately coming back.

So it looks like Bill Lawrence knows that this will be back, which is great now possible major spoiler here. McGinley said, I’ll come back to the hospital in a profoundly different capacity. Deadline said, I hope doctor Cox is not dying. McGinley said, we all die. Nellie, yikes, can you imagine.

Don’t do that to me. Don’t just don’t do that to me. I can’t handle that. Zach, how do you feel about JD being the new Doctor Cox? Zach brav said, I think one of the things you see in the pilot is that JD hasn’t been a teacher in years, but you can see how good he is at it, how much you miss is it.

Whereas Cox is such a tough love kind of teacher that doesn’t really work, and as we learn from researching, isn’t not really in a loud anymore, and he sort of burned out. He’s like a dinosaur.

---

And then he clocks JD helping the interns and being able to actually speak to…

I’m too old. The line is they need someone to do for them what I did for you, and I think that’s one of the main themes of the first season. Plenty more to unpack. I’ll do another one of these tomorrow, but Johnny Mack is thrilled that Scrubs is back. If you haven’t checked it out, please do make sure you set the DVR.

This is technically season one according to YouTube TV, so if you go to record Scrubs, make sure you’re not recording old Scrubs and you record the new one. But great to have the show back. So happy. I know I’m rambling today, but I’m so excited about this again. We’ll do another one of these tomorrow, back in the morning with a normal episode by