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Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithms really love. The numbers are up.
It’s incredible. All you have to do is say that sentence. I guess today is a mix of happy and sad politics and goofy will get to it all today, We’ll start with the sad. Conan O’Brien opened up to The New Yorker Radio Hour about the murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner. You may recall the Reiners where at Conan’s party earlier on that day.
Conan said to have that experience of saying good night to somebody and having them leave and then find out the next day they’re gone. I think it was in shock for quite a while. I mean, there’s no other word for it. It’s just very It’s so awful. I think about how Rob felt about the things that are happening in this country, how involved he was, how much you put himself out there and have that voice go quiet and an instant is still hard for me to comprehend.
Meanwhile, well, Nick Reiner pleaded not guilty. On Monday, Nick Reiner appeared in La Superior Court, spoke once, and agreed to a future court date of April twenty ninth. Nick Reiner is facing two counts of murder with an enhancement that could carry the death penalty or life without parole if convicted. No mention was made of Reiner’s mental state during the hearing. Reiner is being held without bail at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown LA.
Meanwhile, Conan spoke about what’s going on with Stephen Colbert, quoting Conan, Yeah, he’s pissed, I think rightly, but he’s got a big staff and cares about those people. I’ve been in that situation and that is excruciating, and so I think he has all the appropriate feelings. What I try to tell him is, there’s so much of this that doesn’t have anything to do with you. Those giant glacial plates are moving and you’re doing the best you can, and you’re such a talented guy, and he’s done an amazing job. And yeah, there’s definitely a thumb on the scale.
We all saw that with Jimmy Kimmel with the FCC that was just outratous and wrong. But the larger picture, when you look worldwide and see voices being silenced, they really get silenced. I don’t think that’s going to happen with Amy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert or anyone who’s doing a late night show. Conhan pointed out about life on the other side, there’s a lot of really beautiful opportunities, and I’ve been having a blast and getting to have these types of interviews I never could have had in that old you’re up in the attic format.
Speaking of Colbert, he’ll be live after Tonight’s State of the Union broadca…
This is a late show tradition and apparently will be the last one unless somebody uncancels the show. Tonight should be particularly interesting. If you’re not in the mood for the State of the Union, you can watch The Knicks like I’ll be doing, or you can watch Taylor Someilet send his new standup special, which I’m also going to watch, but not while the Nicks are on, you know what I’m saying, And I will also check out the State of the Union. I’ll probably be doing the side by side on the Big TV tonight anyway, Taylor Thompson. She’s on Netflix.
It is her fourth comedy special, this one called Prodigal Daughter. Filmed at the Fountain Street Church in Grand To Rapids, Michigan. We are told Taylor tackles topics ranging from coming out as bisexual in her thirties to why Easter is better than Christmas. Netflix says Taylor Thompson returns to her roots with a tight new hour about deconstructing your faith, processing religious trauma, exploring your sexuality, and confronting your fear of death.
Also out Pete holmes new special, Silly Silly fun Boy.
Now that’s a great title. That’ll premiere on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla is a YouTube channel at h pm Eastern tonight. We got lots to watch. We got the Nicks State of the Union tailor Pete Holmes. I still haven’t watched Kat Williams because the Olympics has been on for two weeks.
Pete’s always good. Definitely check this one out. In Silly Silly fun Boy, Pete Holmes delivers fresh takes on parenting, marriage and more. Pete Holmes Tell’s Deadline I’m very proud of Silly Silly Fun Boy, an hour of pure silliness and fun and boyitous. It’s my favorite special to data.
Love the way it looks, the amazing Portland crowd, but most of all, I love these jokes and hope people will too. As also out today on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla, Matt Rife and Paul Elia’s Low Key Comedy Special, Brian Posain caught up with Northern Public Radio and said I was always an alternative comic before they had a name for that. I just don’t feel connected to the mainstream, and I never did. Brian thinks the current climate of comedy is a little different than it was a few years ago. Brian says it’s a little bit of revenge of the jocks, if you want to look at that way.
It’s kind of a win for the good looking, tough guy. Jim Jeffries told Life Without Andy. I’ve always seen myself as a right wing Australian and a left wing American, and I’ve read this. This makes a lot of sense, he says. I believe in fairly type borders and things like that, but I also believe in a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body.
I believe in national healthcare, I believe in social services and all types of stuff, and I’m an anti gun guy. But those beliefs make me the biggest hippie on earth in America. I’m a left winging extremist in America, and then in Australia people are like, I’m all right. Jim says, I don’t think religion should be in our politics. They think religion should be in our politics.
God bless America all this type of bs. As Jim jeffries, eighty percent of us are moderate. It’s eighty percent of us are sitting in the middle, and we’re the most silent, and then we’ve got the ten percent extreme left and the ten percent extreme right. Jim, do you miss doing the Jim Jeffrey Show. Jim Jeffries said, I’m very happy that I don’t do that show anymore, because I wouldn’t want to be hosting a show right now and having to talk about people from ice shooting people the streets.
I don’t want to dissect the bloody Epstein files. I don’t want to talk about every week something stupid. The Trump said, I’m glad I don’t have that show. In twenty twenty six, had a great time doing the show. I made a lot of friends and that type of stuff.
But if I had to do another comedy program, I want to do a sitcom is all I want. I want to do a multi cam sitcom. I want to do friends. Imagine that with Jim Jeffries. Comedians are meant to perform in front of audiences, and that’s when we’re at our best.
Give me an audience and give me a script, then off we go. Jinny’s Agrino is raising funds for her new comedy special after Birth, which explores themes of transformation and draws from personal experiences like her sister’s death and a breakup. She caught up with the Minnesota Post and asked, how do I break the algorithm to go viral to make money? I think comedy is suffering husually on that because it used to be that these jobs paid us enough that we could focus on our craft. She explains.
I was in movies, I was in television. I was fully wrapped by agents and managers, and I felt like the world was my oyster.
And then COVID happened and slowly everything fell apart.
We learn her first special for Comedy Essential, produced in twenty seventeen earned her twenty thousand dollars. She says it felt really cool that money gave me two to three months a time. By twenty twenty one, she had to raise money herself to make a special tapping her fans through GoFundMe. That special, gen Z, was picked up by Comedy Central and released in twenty twenty three on YouTube and Facebook. On Facebook, she has a business page for videos that go viral or photos that get a lot of shares.
Facebook pays her. She says it’s not uncommon for some comedians to make two to three thousand dollars a month that way, but you got to feed the beast. Jenny says, I want to make great work, and great work doesn’t happen in one week. As for after Birth, I have to hope someone buys it, and if they don’t buy it, I have to put it on YouTube and then I have to pump my own marketing into that. Because Netflix won’t even look at you unless you have five hundred thousand or more followers.
It’s a cutthroat system that discounts comedians who might have families and kids and can’t dedicate all this time to social media. Now this next one. I can hear in my own voice that my voice is thin. So I’m not sure I’m going to be able to channel my best inner Jim Brewer today. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get gravelly enough.
But apparently Jim is mad at American Airlines. He’s even put out a video with the cringe title never flying American Airlines again. Jim Brewer reacts, Oh, Jim, all right, let’s do the story straight first. Comedian Jim Brewer has publicly criticized American Airlines after Jim Brewer says he was removed from his paid first class seat to accommodate a commuting pilot. The incident occurred on a recent flight from Honolulu to Phoenix.
Now I’ve gone ahead and pulled some of the clip, and I’ll play some of the clips for you. But for some reason, maybe I’m delusional. I prefer my inner Jim’s version of this to what we actually got out of real Jim. I’m flying back from Honolulu, right and they say to me, hey, we need your seat. We may need my seat.
We got a pilot and the pilot needs to sit down. Jim was flying from Honolulu to Phoenix. Jim claims he purchased a first class ticket but was reassigned to an economy seat shortly before departure economy. The comedian described the experience is unfair and labeled to move. Theft aviation blog View from the Wing published additional details about the incident.
Apparently the airline needed to reposition a pilot for operational reasons. Brewer says airline staff informed him that a pilot required the seat and Jim would be moved to Row eighteen in the main cabin. Brewer said he was not given an equivalent first class alternative and felt blindsided by the decision. We learned the Honolulu to Phoenix route is typically phone by an AID three twenty one, where first class is arranged two to two across an economy is three to three on a narrow body aircraft. The difference is not subtle so far.
I don’t think Jim is wrong here. Brewer said he was offered a next day option, but only in extra leg room economy and not seated together with his family, so there’s no real recovery path back to any sense of comfort. I’ll let alone first class. At the time, Jim’s video was recorded Jim had received a four hundred dollars refund and a five hundred dollars voucher. Let’s check in with Jim.
I know for a fact fact I am personal friends with an American Airline captain. There’s pilots and then there’s captains captains at different level even though they’re a pilot. I’m also a good friend with two flight attendants who tell me the way it works is they’re narrow when they show up, they’re not guaranteed to be on. A flight period. If they got to go in a different flight, they’re not even in uniform.
They’re not guaranteed. We learned that Jim Brewer, before boarding, was told fill out a complaint form, which I did, and I got an email several days later. I asked, Hey, can I speak to somebody from American Airlines? But that request has gone unanswered according to this report. I’ll keep you posted on what develops there.
My voice is giving out in case you missed it. Yesterday I dropped a surprise bonus episode with Mike Chisholm from The Letterman Podcast. Now. The reason I dropped it immediately rather than holding on to it is a couple of reasons. One, we talked about the blizzard that hit the northeast too, we talked about the hockey game, and three.
But I didn’t want to wait the weekend because by then Mike’s encounter with David Letterman would have been about two weeks old. So I just wanted to get it out. So I did like eighty minutes or so with Mike earlier today. So that’s I’m sure why my voice was shot. Plus doing Brewer never really helps, so you’ll find that in the feed.
Comedy Survivor really interesting last week, so we had to not count something that may or may not have been a vote. It was unclear if it was a vote or not, and the AI ruled that it was not a vote, So a mini controversy on Comedy Survivor. But Jim Gaffigan went home, which is really really stunning. So you want to get in the Facebook group Daily Comedy News podcast group. You’ll find a picture of me extinguishing the torch of Jim Gaffigan and you can vote for who is like left on Comedy Survivor.
I should actually tell you who they are still in the game. Nikki Glaser, Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, Osco, at Katska, Sebastian Manascalgo quietly going along in this game, Star Trek Ruiner, Tick Nataro, Sarah Silverman and Leslie Jones and Bert Kraser. A couple early votes here so far there’s a vote for Sarah Osco, Nicki and Kevin so Jump on the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group, and again, please be clear who you’re voting off, not just be like, ah, I’m thinking about maybe. No, just right, I’m voting off so and so. We don’t need any controversies and just a goofy bit that was designed to get us through the winter when comedy news is a little slower.
A Comedy survivor Daily comed News Podcast group here. Let me do this one. Since my voice is a little shot. I got an email from one of the listeners. Now, I don’t use anybody’s name just you know, because it’s an email, unless you tell me you want to be shouted out.
But this person knows who they are and they say they believe that my speaking voice sounds like Maynard Jay Keenan from the band Tool. Interesting. Now. The email was titled Today’s Comedy survivor so on Comedy survivor. I use a different speech pattern because there I go into the very deadpan and I’m making up these votes.
You know, Fred has voted for Joe Coy, Tim has voted for Jay Leno, and I’ll get very deliberate like that. So I don’t know if he means that or if this normal sing song delivery that I use on the podcast. This is not my normal speaking voice either. This is just a little bounsier than the way I would speak in real life because I’m reading you scripts and I’m trying to word paint a little bit. None of it’s fake.
It’s all just different shades of my speaking voice. Plus I have a little processing here. On the podcast. I had a little deeper end to my nasally voice, and I get rid of a little the high end. So even the podcast mix is a little different than if you met me in real life.
Anyway, I pulled some audio of Maynard J. Keenan from the band Tool, and let’s listen to mister Keenan speak, and I’ll let you guys decide does he sound like me. And I at this room effect, you’re coming back through the mic and you’re driving all the stuff, and you’re hearing the effect is now being applied to the snare drum right, or you know, or the base next to you, or you know, the art symbols, nemesis symbols. As a singer, you hate the symbols, of course. But what we’ve done is because around the grid we can then take effects that would be on the vocal open mic facts and that’s actually on the tracks.
And we’ll do one more here and we’ll go home. Well, I’m already home. I recorded in the basement, you know what I mean. Joel McHale and Dennis Leary were doing some press together to promote their sitcoms on Fox. Animal Kingdom is now also airing on Netflix, so people are watching that.
They did press together and spoke to the rap. Dennis Leary said, my dream is to literally do a musical one day. Is that because Bill Hicks did a musical? Oh? Sorry, did I say that out loud?
Sorry? Sorry, No, he didn’t. He didn’t mention Bill Hicks. They’re sorry. Why would Dennis Larry mention Bill Hicks?
My dream is literally to do musical one day? He said. His first experience with show business happened in high school when a nun stuck me in musicals and I hated it. I really don’t like most musicals, but he ad it’s. My two favorite musicals are the anti musical Spam A Loot, which is a brilliant show, and Book of Mormon, both fantastic shows.
I saw both on Broadway. Dennis Leary thinks he would be a good Sir Lancelot, a role once played by Hank Azaria. Leary then mentioned how Going Dutch and Animal Control, which is Joel Mchal’s show, are both on Hulu, but only Animal Control was on Netflix. Joel McHale explained they were like, we’re putting yours on Netflix and not Dennis. Joel says, I went why and they were like, just to tick them off.
It was a weird move. And that is your comedy news for today. Go vote on Comedy Survivor, and if you missed the late yesterday episode with Mike, check that one out to meet you back here tomorrow.