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Caloroga Shark Media hither. I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. I’ve been trying to stay away from the Chevy Chase documentary. I just I don’t know why. I’m just not interested in it.
But there’s controversy involved, and Johnny Mack likes to talk about controversy. One of the things that is notable is that nobody from the cast of community talked to the documentary that screams volumes and now we are hearing from a vet Nicole Brown, or rather not hearing from a vet Nicole Brown. She posted on Instagram. There are things I’ve never spoken of publicly and perhaps never will. Anyone currently speaking four or about me, and she put four and about in caps four or about me with perceived authority is speaking without ever speaking to me about the things they claim to know about.
They actually don’t know me at all. They actually don’t really know me at all. They also have no knowledge of my relationship with anyone I’ve worked with, and can not credibly speak on any current or previous issues. I hate that all this had to be said in East Cleveland speak. Keep my name out of your mouth.
Wow, I mean, that’s the kind of phrase that somebody says when they’re about to slap Chris Rock. So she seems pretty upset. So, according to this new CNN documentary, which is called I’m Chevy, Chase and He’re Not, nobody from the community cast wanted to speak, and according to the doc Chase felt ostracized by the tight knit cast. Chevy also clashed with Dan Harmon, the creator of the series. Apparently, Chevy arrived with his family to a rap party and found Dan Harmon leading the room in a chant of Fu Chevy Wow.
We are sold the incident that led to Chevy’s firing from the show involved a scene in which Chase’s character Peers, performs a puppet show in which the hand puppet character performs a blackface. As the story goes, there was a discussion about the appropriateness of the scene between Chevy and event Nicole Brown. Some say during that discussion Chevy used the and Brown stormed off the set that wouldn’t come back unless Chevy apologize. As the story goes, we are told Chase did return to the set but didn’t apologize. The episode director says, Chevy goes, you know me and Richard Pryor I used to call Richard pryor the N word, and he used to call me the honky and we loved each other.
And I’m like, I know, man, I love that bit. And I said, you know, can we just have a little apology? And he goes for what that reference is to a pretty famous Saturday Night Live bit that I’m not going to share with you for obvious reasons. After this incident was recapped on The Hollywood Reporter, apparently Chevy had a full meltdown and worried that his career was ruined. Now concurrent to that controversy, Saturday Night Lives, Terry Sweeney has weighed in.
Terry Sweeney was SNL’s first out cast member during the nineteen eighty five eighty six season. I saw Terry’s name come up in the news, and I didn’t remember him being a cast member. That’s neither here nor there. It’s just my own personal lack of recollection. I was like, who.
But apparently, way back when Chase and Sweeney didn’t get along. In the CNN doc, director Marina Zenovich reminds Chevy Chase of the joke that offended Sweeney, quoting her, you said something to Sweeney like, oh, you’re the gay guy. Why don’t we ask if you have AIDS? And every week we weigh you burn. Michaels says, I think Chevy was just being chevy.
He would say things that were funny, would assume you were comedy people. He could speak that way. You know, we would say terrible things because that’s what would make us laugh. In the documentary, Chevy says Terry Sweeney, he was very funny. This guy.
I don’t think he’s alive anymore. Well, Terry Sweeney disproved that by both being alive and speaking to the Hollow reporter. He told the reporter, don’t you think he’s saying this and making himself look more like they ass he is. In the SNL oral history book Live from New York, The Complete Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, Sweeney recounts Chevy entering his dressing room and apologizing for the AIDS group, but was furious that he apologize. Chase responds, my memory is that he’s lying, and that’s my memory.
He’s not telling the truth. This is it’s not who I am. And if I am that way, my life has changed because I have to live with that now. For the rest of my effing life. Sweeney says, if Chase’s comments to the dock, it all reflects rightly horribly on him.
Boy, you know, at some point, Chevy, it’s you like the rest of the world is like this guy’s a jerk. It’s up pointed to you. Dude, are there coming for John Stewart? Did you get your talking points about why you’re supposed to be mad at John Stewart? Here?
Write this down so you’re on the right side of righteousness. You’re supposed to be furious at John Stewart. Currently on The Weekly Show with John Stewart. On the December eleventh episode, John Stewart made fun of people who still wear masks. John’s comments did not go down well with people who still are cautious and wear masks.
I wear masks on airplanes. I’ve been a germophobe way before COVID. Ask people who work with me and serious. If you had a cold and you were on my staff, I wouldn’t let you in my office. On social media, one person wrote, Hey, John Stewart, were you under the impression that people who are still taking COVID seriously and wearing masks need your bs on top of everyone else’s, isn’t part of your brand being a decent guy who thinks Another said, Hey, John Stewart, joke about wearing masks aren’t funny.
Would you ask someone why they wear corrective eyeglasses? Well, masks are no different. I mean, can we talk about a non controversy here again? I wear masks. My wife’s a physician.
She often wears masks when things are spiking a little bit, like this week where there’s a lot of flu going around in New Jersey, so she’s masking up. If John Stewart wants to goof on us and go, hey, look at the fat guy on the plane hosting a podcast as basement, What a loser wearing a mask? I don’t care. Just get the name of the show, right, Daily Comedy News. Just John, do twenty minutes on me?
Please do? Someone else wrote, John Stewart has some absolute effing nerve to be making fun of long COVID survivors and people still masking. He’s seen up close to the government to ie healthcare and resources for nine to eleven survivors who breathe in toxic air and suffering decades later. Anyway, that’s why we’re canceling John Stewart A little more serious here. Jimmy Kimmel is said to be quote unquote spiraling and feeling quote beaten down after the death of his best friend Clido Escovedo, who is the bandleader on The Jimmy Kimmel Live, a source told Raider Online, which again tends to be a little more gossipy but doesn’t mean they’re incorrect.
But the source told Rader Online, Jimmy is spiraling. He’s known Cleto since he was just a kid, and he never expected him to be gone this soon. It’s got Jimmy facing his own mortality and questioning everything. He’s in a very dark place. The same source says Jimmy’s not really over the brief cancelation there.
The source says, Jimmy got back on the air, so a lot of people assume that he’s moved past this and he’s feeling like a champ. But that’s not the case. The too Much TV substack wrote about Dave Chappelle’s special, they right, for the most part, stand up coming. He’s a young man’s game. Sure, you can keep telling stale jokes until you dropped dead while at the mic at some random casino and then they get this dig in, which is likely the way jay Leno’s life will end.
Should I just go there again? Like, I understand that you’re upset that Jay Leno took to tonight show back. Okay, he’s the worst guy ever, But other than that, why they hate for Jay Letto? He just it’s fine. It’s fine.
Mike Chisholm, who hosts The Letterman Podcast, which I’m the guest on today, by the way, so when you’re done here, go listen to the Letterman Podcast. We got onto the we got into this a little bit, the whole jay Lenell hate. I’ll share that clip in an upcoming weekend episode of Daily Comedy News if you don’t want to listen to Letterman Podcast. But just I don’t understand they hate for jay Letto anyway too much TV or about Chappelle rights. But like songwriting, great stan up requires a focus and unhealthy competitive compulsion that is much easier to pull off a twenty two than it is at fifty two.
However, staying relevant comedically also requires reinventing yourself to reflect both the change in your life and the changes the society. Comedians can go from super hot too unwatchable and a heartbeat. Dave Chappelle is fifty two and from what I can tell, over the past few years, has reinvented himself as a bit of a comedy troll. He consistently says things he knows will upset some people and channels their anger into a self righteous mocking that has become his preferred style of comedy. It’s a reflection of that new persona that when I tell people Chappelle had a new Netflix special, their first question was always did he do any trans jokes?
I think that’s true of Ricky Gervais. So I did watch Ricky’s new special. Ricky is clearly doing the thing where he’ll say things that he knows will upset people and then is like the well, why are you getting upset? I mean, that’s Ricky’s entire act. Chappelle, I feel, is trying to make bigger points, and like, if you look at the recent special where there are quote unquote trans jokes, you know part of it is like, hey, I no, you don’t want me to do this, but I’m doing it anyway.
But I don’t think he was trolling on this one too much. TV rights I have no idea what Dave Chappelle really thinks of trans people. I know what he says about them and how much he revels in his ability to tell jokes that would damage someone else’s career while writing the controversy to bigger successes. I half suspect it’s all just a giant troll. They then recap the special, skipping ahead, he begins that forty minute comedic Touri Force, which opens with a thoughtful take on how he’s feeling and how he thinks the audience is feeling in twenty twenty five.
But the part of Chappelle’s closer that is getting the most attention is also filled with the most historical inaccuracies, Although it makes for a solid bit those in act. Yes, Saretha Franklin’s funeral and McCain’s lying in state did happen on the same day, But McCain was not the only vote against the MLK holiday in the Senate. The final vote was seventy eight to twenty two, and McCain wasn’t even a senator. In Chappelle’s version, it’s ninety nine to one with a Senator McCain voting against it. So again, inaccurate and inaccurate.
McCain did vote against the bill as a congressman. Too much. TV asks the very good question why tell this complex web of lies at all? They suspected Chappelle’s way of entertaining himself and showing just how easily people will believe stories that sound real, even if they don’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. In fact, social media is filled with clips with the McCain story, with people taking the entire story at face value.
The problem with this approach is that it becomes hard to take anything he says seriously. I think that’s very, very fair.
Speaking of Ricky Gervai’s there were, of course the reaction articles.
I feel like they were pre written. I feel like the newspapers were like, eh, it’s Christmas week, nobody feels like working Ricky. He’s going to do a special and people are getting upset, so let’s just write the reaction piece in advance. The Mirror wrote one such piece, they did the quote people on social media thing. One person wrote, Ricky Gervay’s claiming victory over the elites while cashed out on a massive Netflix check is the ultimate safe space rebellion.
He spent a decade whining about being canceled from the center of the world’s biggest stage. It’s not edgy to mock things everyone already hates, it’s just profitable. Ricky shot back and said, I’ve never moaned about being canceled because I’ve never been canceled. I’ve moaned about nurses and teachers and office workers being canceled for stating honest opinions under certain authoritarian trends. Though luckily we’re coming out of that face though.
Thanks for watching. So, as I mentioned, I did watch it. I liked it. It’s good company. I woke up the next day thinking it was empty calories, so I watched it, watched it.
I wasn’t playing on my phone. My brain was tickled. I laughed a few times, and I’ve discussed in the past about how a psychopath with Emperor of Rome syndrome and don’t really laugh more analyzed comedy special. So you know, two three times I laugh laughed, which is a good sign. But when I woke up the next day, I was like, oh, yeah, that happened, and it made no impact on me.
On tomorrow’s show, I’m going to do the final Best of twenty twenty five list, and I’ll tell you where Ricky comes up on that. But it’s a good special. It is by no means his best though. All Right, I’ve got more controversy for you. I’ve been trying to stay away from this one as well.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the Russell Brand saga more charges against Russell. Comedian Katherine Ryan spoke out about her experience of working with Russell Brand on the UK version of Roast Battle. Katherine Ryan has a new stand up special on Sky called Katherine Ryan Firstborn Daughter. She didn’t name Brand during the special, but dropped several unsubtle clues. During the special, Ryan says, I was invited on a panel show and I was so excited to do it, but then I found out if I went on, I would be sat next to a man who I firmly believe but can’t prove to be a C word.
And that’s the lawyer’s choice of words, not mine. Initially I turned the job down. Then I thought, well, he’ll be there and is unnecessarily tight jeans, won’t he He’ll be there doing naughty things to Tucker Carlson, or doing differently naughty things to a Tibetan monk for views. Whatever he does now, I thought I’ll go on the show, and I made a moral decision. Her decision was that she would confront Brand, but in a fun way.
Ryan said. Brand was fine with it for a while, until he eventually had a hissy fit and threatened to quit the show. The channel got upset. They didn’t want him to leave, and they issued him a new contract, which he waltzed into my dressing room and threw under my nose. The next day he said, look, you’re not allowed to be meaning me anymore because I don’t consent.
Earlier in the week, UK police confirmed that there are two new charges against Russell Brand. The new charges include one count of rape and one count of sexual assault. The UK Metropolitan Police, in a statement said the women who have made reports, including those connected to the two new charges, continued to receive support from specially trained officers. The METS investigation remains ongoing and detectives urge anyone affected by this case, or anyone with information to come forward and speak with the police. Russell Brand is already facing five charges announced back in April, which involved four women, including two counts of rape, one count of indecent assault, and two counts of sexual assault.
Russell Brand is a scheduled to appear in court on January twentieth in connection with the new charges. Russell Brand has previously said to statement, I was a drug addict, a sex addict, and an imbecile, but what I never was was a rapist. I’ve never engaged in non consensual activity. Some quick housekeeping, Monday Comedy Survivor begins. I’m going to do the Comedy Survivors as bonus episodes on Mondays at noon.
So on Mondays at three am, you’ll get the normal episode. Then at noon I’ll drop the Comedy Survivor episodes. Part of that is so I can produce them in advance. So how is this going to work? In the Facebook group, which is Daily Comedy News podcast group, you will vote someone off the island so telling me, hey I really like so and so that doesn’t matter.
You’re voting someone off. Whoever gets the most votes off will be voted off. If there is a tie, I will ask chat cheap et to break the tie. So you’re going to go to the Daily Comedy News podcast group. You’re going to see a big cartoon image of Comedy Survivor, and in that thread you write down a name.
We’ll vote from Monday through Thursday, so that on Fridays I can record the Comedy Survivor episodes, which we’ll publish Monday at noon. Looking forward to that one. As we’re hitting January here, I’m going to use January weekends to play around a little bit. So this weekend tomorrow I’ll do the final list of the top specials of the year, and then on Sunday, I’m going to do who won and Lost Comedy in twenty twenty five. As we get deeper into the month, Mike Chisholm and I spent two and a half hours chatting the other day, and I’m going to chop that up into a bunch of things.
And I think Mike and I are going to do some conversation episodes where we just kind of talk about stuff and I’ll put raps on them. So I’m going to drop those in and then I’ve got some other things i want to do about comedy. So as you listen on the weekends in January, because January tend to be late, I’m going to play and try some different ideas and hopefully you’ll dig them. As I was doing some research for that, I ran the stats on twenty twenty five and I was like, oh, what do people like and what don’t people like? You know what episodes do well?
What do people like? And I guess I know this deep down in my soul. But it’s the negative things, the controversies, the fights, the cancelations. So that partly informed how I approached today’s show. If you go back and litle the first half, it’s negative, negative, negative, negative, negative.
I don’t really want to do a negative show, but that’s where the clicks and the downloads are, so hopefully I could tackle the controversial subjects but stay upbeat myself.
Also, while I were a housekeeping remember Sarah Cooper.
If you’re a longtime listener who’ve been with me since the pandemic, there was this woman, Sarah Cooper, who got pandemic famous. She was pantomiming on TikTok to Donald Trump. So she would play Donald Trump video and then she would just mouth the words to Donald Trump. She didn’t do makeup or anything, and for some reason this caught on and it fried my brain because it was just stupid. But people were like, this is the greatest thing ever.
Okay, fine, so you’re popular on TikTok. Then there were articles that like, Sarah Cooper was the next greatest thing in comedy. Here she is doing some research here. Here she is in Vulture’s twenty twenty Comedians. You should know, she got a development deal, she had a Netflix special, and like people are like, oh my god, Sarah Cooper, and I’m sitting here in the basement going what she’s panamiming to Donald Trump?
Anyway, she got bored pantomiming to Donald Trump, and then we didn’t hear from her anymore. And the reason I’m bringing her up is I noticed the other day it’s popped up on social media. You know, a couple of years ago, buying the career is not so hot. Guess he was pantomiming to Donald Trump again. That’s right, Sarah Cooper.
Sarah Cooper, welcome back. I mean, boy, talk about hype.
All right, let’s hit the comedy stock Market.
Comedy stock Market. It was a slow week, it was a holiday week, and I don’t have a lot for you here, So rather than force the segment, let’s just get in and out. I’ve got to sell recommendations for you. Let’s sell our Tom Segora stock. Tom had a good first half of the year.
I thought his sketch comedy show was hilarious. The new Specials is kind of like, eh, so let’s get out on Tom Sigora. Maybe we’re getting out high and we can make the little money we might buy back in. And the other person we’re gonna sell is Bert Kraser. I feel like this upcoming Netflix show is just r rated Kevin James, and my problem with it is I don’t think it’s gonna be cool enough for the bro dude so like Bert, and I think it’s gonna be too naughty for the sitcom audience.
So I don’t know who this show is for. So that’s it. Just two recommendations this week. Will sell Tom Sagora and we will sell Bert Kraser. Amy Schumer likes when we talk about her because otherwise she would stay the hell off the Internet and just figure out what’s going on with you and take care of your kid and find have a career.
But Amy wants us to look at her, so she went on Instagram and showed off her new slim figure, rocking a body hugging bodysuit from Kim Kardashian’s Skim’s brand. Amy appeared makeup free and had her hair pulled back into a ponytail. So there you go, Amy, We talked about you like you want and if you’re looking for something to do tonight in Las Vegas, it’s roastal Mania, a wrestling themed verbal battle that ignores the idea that comedy should be polite, quiet, or even seated. Roastal Mania is a live roast format comics face off and curated pairings. Sean Reddy is the co producer and said, if you’re in the wrestling world, you have the baby face and then you have the heel.
I’m the heel judge, so I kind of dig into them. His persona is called the trash Man and comes complete with a prop trash can and a crowd that chants on cue. Audience participation is not just encouraged, it’s necessary. Mike Krasner or the other producer, says, you go to comedy shows and they tell you not to heckle. Here, it’s like wrestling.
When you tell a joke, if it doesn’t land, they’ll boo you. They yell trash Grassner jokes If you can’t be the best, you gotta be the worst. It’s Rostalmania nine tonight at the Wise Guy’s Comedy Club, a nine thirty show that sounds like a lot of fun. And that is your comedy news for today. Boy, I don’t know what the edited down on this is, but it’s raw.
It was thirty two minutes long episode for a holiday week. A lot to talk about, but that’s always good. All right, tomorrow at the final top specials of twenty twenty five, and then on Sunday, who won and lost comedy in twenty twenty five. We’ll see you then,