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The Shark Deck. I’m Johnny Mack with your daily comedy new who stand Up for Heroes. We’ll be back for its seventeenth year. The annual benefit is returning November six that David Geffen Hall I was like, where’s that. I’m from New York.
I don’t even know where that is? Lincoln Center. The lineup this year Jimmy Carr, Awesome, Ronny Chieng, Shane Gillis, Josh Grobin, John Mellencamp listed. John was in a little social media hot watered last week. Should we go there?
And I guess we’re there? From the New York Post, let me read verbatim. Liberal comedian Bill Maher got into a tense exchange with musician John Mellencamp on Monday last week after the Pink Houses singer songwriter claimed only one percent or two percent of black people living in America today have better lives than slaves. During an appearance on mars at Club Random podcast, Mellancamp revealed he wrote a song called From the Cotton Fields to the Playing Fields that he never recorded because he believed it was wrong. The song’s message was an attempt to show how white people love to hate black entertainers and often exploit them.
Twenty nine minutes in the interview, Moore said, I would say that the playing fields are a lot better than the cotton fields. That’s what I’d say about that. Maybe I’m crazy, John, but it seems like making no money as a slave picking cotton who was not as good as playing left field for the Yankees. The Post write says Maria attempted to continue his argument. Mellancamp interjected and said, there’s no doubt one or two percent of black people in America have a better life.
More said, oh, stop, that’s what you think one or two percent. Mellancamp said, okay, let’s say ten percent. I just pulled a number out of my ass. Mare then told Mellancamp that’s where his opinion belongs. It was a feisty week over in Bill Mooreland.
Anyway, you’re lineup Jimmy Carr, Yay, Ronny Chieng, Shane Gillis, Josh Groban, John Mellancamp, Tracy Morgan, John Stewart, the War and Treaty, Rita Wilson, and Moore. Bob Woodruff said, I’m thrilled to announce these seventeenth Anuel stand up for heroes, an amazing night of hope, healing and laughter and honor our nation’s veterans and their families. Today is September eleventh. I’ve put together a bunch of stories here related to nine to eleven in comedy. I found some really very fascinating anecdotes, including a George Carl story that I’ll share.
I just want to tell you that’s what the next big chunk of the show until the commercial break is going to be. So you know, if this is something that you just don’t want to go there today. I’m from New York City. I was in New York City on nine to eleven. Totally get it.
And I’ll tell you even as I was putting this together, a lot of the articles had pictures of the towers on fire, and yet brought me back to that place. So just want to let you know that that’s what I’m going to do here, all right. From Vulture a few years back, they had a compilation of comedians talking about how they reacted to nine to eleven. So I pulled a couple of those stories out. One from Mitzy Sure, who owned the comedy store.
Ahmed Ahmed told the story that Mitzy made him a paid regular a year prior to nine to eleven because quote, she had an epiphany that Middle Eastern comedians will be necessary in our society at some point. She’d always tell me there’s going to be a war between America and the Middle East, so get ready. I called her the morning of nine to eleven and said, he’s seeing what’s going on, and she replied, I told you so. Mitzy decided to open the comedy store the Friday after nine eleven and request for me to go on stage, open the show and talk about being Middle Eastern and Muslim, to which I replied, nope, I didn’t know what to talk about, and she said, just be yourself and you’ll know what to say. I’m Damed.
Took her advice and said his first joke was Hi everyone, my name’s I’m ed Amed, and I had nothing to do with it. Please don’t follow me out to my car after the show. He says. That got a few chuckles, and then he proceeded into more self deprecating jokes and the crowd loosened up. About a month later, he was touring with Master Brawny and the Arabian Nights.
That’s who are Evolved into the Axis of Evil tour, which was just a great name for a tour. His manager called and said, you guys are getting death threats. It’s probably not a good idea to continue with the shows. Amed called Mas and they both laughed and said, well, we’re gonna die, die laughing. So they did the shows, which were all sold out.
Mas said he flipped his act so it didn’t lead with being Iranian. Quoting Mas, at one point, I said, oh, by the way, I’m Iranian, and then said something along the lines of yeah, I know, I’m disappointed too. I remember I brought an American flag and put it on the back of my car. I don’t know if it was out of fear of having somebody shoot me or if it was just out of patriotism. It was probably of both.
I was pulling into the parking lot at the comedy Store and there was this comedian Marylyn Martinez. She was just laughing at me in a funny way. She was like, oh my god, look at Master Branni. He’s got his flag trying to blend in, and I go, hell, yeah, Marilyn, I’m blending in. Alonzo Bowden said, I remember Vegas being empty and deserted.
I think they said the normal week in occupancy was over ninety percent and we were under twenty five percent. I joked that Vegas was so empty that the hookers were handing out their own flyers. I was also joking at the time that we black people were glad was the Arabs because it took the pressure off for a while. I didn’t do jokes about the attack. I joked more about the aftermath.
The crowds loved it. They always do. We comics relieve the pressure. People weren’t angry. I won next Big Star, so that was cool.
I also remember flying about two weeks later after the airline started up. I ran into Doug Stanhope at the airport around five or six am, and we laughed about how only comics were getting on planes, which brings us to Gilbert Godfried’s infamous performance. About two weeks after nine eleven, A few minutes into a set, Gilbert cracked the joke, I have to catch a flight to California. I can’t get it direct flight. They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.
Gilbert later recalled that he lost an audience bigger than anyone has ever lost an audience. Gilbert told Vulture, Now, if there’s something that should not be said, I like to say it, and I’m standing at the podium, and I wanted to be the first one who address the elephant in the room. So after a few jokes about Hugh Hefner, I said the joke had shared with you. Well, no one in the history of show business has ever lost an audience. Worse, there was booing and hissing.
One guy yelled out too zoon, which I thought meant I didn’t take a long enough pause between the setup and the punchline. Well, after standing there for what felt like five hundred years, I decided to go to the bottom level of hell. I told the aristocrats joke. If you know anything about that joke, it’s beyond defensive. It has to do with loads of incest and beastiality, and those are the clean parts.
To my shock, the audience went from brewing and hating me to laughing uproariously. The laughter just kept building. When I got to the punchline, people were cheering. One review said, it’s like he performed a mass tricky out of me on the crowd. What that show proved to me is that after horrible times like September eleventh, people desperately needed to laugh.
Dina oh Badalia was a young comic in two thousand and one. He’s currently out on the Arab American Comedy Festival tour. He remembers changing his name for some shows post nine eleven at the suggestion of a booker and consciously avoiding talking about the Palestinian side of his ethnicity. He’s also part Italian. Some of them material he does it.
This year’s festival deals with his personal arc post nine eleven, as he became more defiance of the bigotry thrown his way. He says, when it became political than it became of interest to me. The idea of using a vehicle a comedy tried to tell people our story and who we are has always appealed. The Arab American Comedy Festival come to New York there at Gotham November sixteenth through the eighteenth, and New York City’s town Hall November nineteenth. And I found this wonderful story from twenty sixteen from The New Yorker.
I knew some of this, but not all of this, and it’s really interesting. The New Yorker writes On the nights of September ninth and tenth, two thousand and one, George Carlin performed shows at the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas, working through material that he planned to use at the taping of his next HBO special that November. The special is going to be called IT kind Of Like It A Lot of People Die. After nine to eleven, Carlin abandoned much of the hour had been working on. He rewrote other parts, and that special became complaints and grievances.
However, they eventually found some recordings of those shows. Those were eventually reworked, and eventually, in twenty sixteen, I kind Of Like It When a Lot of People Die was released as an album of sorts. The track listings on that album, Boston ran from nineteen fifty seven, Rats and Squealers, Cocaine, the Fecal Differential, Tired of Songs, the first Enema, Uncle Dave, an interview with Jerry Hamza, his manager, an interview with a guy named Rocco Orbiskie I’m not familiar with, and then the track I kind Of Like It When a Lot of People Die, recorded on June twenty third of two thousand and one, but as for those shows. On September ninth and tenth, The New Yorker writes, the most striking thing about the show listen to this, this is amazing is that Carlin made a joke about Osama bin laden and an exploding airplane. They write, and fashion typical of the comedian.
It started as a fort joke quote. These planes get flying so fast that the most vicious, lethal, volatile, flammable, unstable forts get pushed toward the back of the airplane, where they begin to build up pressure. And they build, and they build, and they build until they reach critical fort density CEFD, and they continue to build throughout the flight until some kid turns on a game boy and boom, the whole back of the plane blows off, and you know who gets blamed, Osama bin laden terrorists get blamed for those explosions that are nothing more than cabbage fort detonations Again September ninth and tenth, two thousand and one. Wow. Carlin then goes into an extended riff, one that he’d repurpose on the two thousand and six special Life Is Worth Losing about a broken water made in Los Angeles, setting off a cascading series of increasingly gruesome disasters across the country.
That is a wonderful bit if you’ve never heard it, Carlin says, I know some people think these kind of thoughts are gaulish and demented and sick, but I know they’re not. I know these things are normal and quite common. Societies tell you that nice people don’t take pleasure in mass death, but you’re wrong, because I think mass death is terrific and I’m a really nice fffing guy. The only thing I care about is fun. That’s all entertainment.
By the time of his HBO special that November, he had given up most of the death obsessed bits, but he didn’t ignore nine to eleven completely. He told members of the audience that he had to bring it up to get it out of the way, because and then he did that voice he would do otherwise the terrors win switching gears and this is a lot more fun. The Australians are mad at. Shane gillis the Daily Mail, writing Wonderfully, a comedian hailing from the United States, has been called up by Australians after his bizarre claim that the country is doing nothing and as zero exports. There’s a clip that’s gone viral.
You can find it on the Daily Mail site. And this is from Shane Gillis’s new special. Shane says Australia is good. Australia might be number two. That’s a good country, dude.
It’s just a whole country doing nothing. That’s what I like about them. They’re just down there, zero exports, creating nothing, dude. The only export I’ve seen coming out of Australia is that YouTube video the guy punching that kangaroo in the face. The Daily Mail rights Australia does in fact have many exports.
They include iron ore, whole natural cast gold, agricultural products like beef and wheat, minerals such as aluminum copper. Our university system, which attracts students from around the world, is also considering an export because it brings in money from overseas. Australia is also responsible for many inventions and innovations that shape the modern world, including Wi Fi, the black box, flight recorder, hearing aids, the polymer bank note, the HBV vaccine, and the ultrasound scanner. One Aussie responded on social media, Australia might be number two. Pretty bold from someone who lives in a country without free ambulance usage, free hospital coverage, four weeks of sick leave, and of course the fact that we can send our children to school without fearing that they’ll be mass murdered.
Yikes, John, you can’t go into the commercials after that school children line? And after ten minutes about nine to eleven, do you have anything upbeat to break the ice here? Okay, let me move a story up. Trevor Noah has a new book coming out is called Into the Uncut Grass. Trevor said, few memories in my life bring me more joy than the first few books I read as a child, either with my mom or reading alone.
Those simple stories shape so much of how I saw the world. I hope this story can bring a little bit of that same joy to readers of all ages. Into the Uncut Grass is a moving modern fable about forgiveness, acceptance, and solidarity for readers of all ages. From the Hollywood Reporter Adam Sandler is most recent movie, You Are So Not Invited to My bat mitzvah. My wife liked it, by the way, I didn’t watch it, has managed to draw a higher Rotten Tomato score than any of Adam Sandler’s previous films over the last thirty four years.
You Were So Not Invited has a ninety six percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. News story here totally changing topics. This has nothing to do with that Adam Sandler story. I just telled you congratulations, Adam Sandler. But there’s a story going around in Vulture.
Apparently a pr company has been accused of paying off critics for Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Yeah, Vulture wrote an article called the Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes claims that a particular company manipulated the Rotten Tomato score for a movie that had nothing to do with Adam Sandler. But it seems there’s a thing going on where maybe some movies should perhaps possibly who knows, getting reviews that you know, maybe you’re a little better than the movie. Actually, yes, again, this has nothing to do with Adam Sailer. Let’s be clear, You were So Not Invited to my bot mitzvah fantastic film.
I mean, ninety six percent fresh score and Rotten Tomatoes. What else can I tell you about? Let’s see football Monday Night football. Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions did a gag that got a lot on promotion, suggesting that Peyton and Eli were going to had a third host to their Little Monday Night Football additional alternate telecast as the word I’m fishing for There, they showed thirty five people auditioning for the third seat. Some of them included comedians like Will Arnett and Sarah Silverman.
The eight hundred Pound Gorilla has released a specials called Tory Piskin Pretty Skirl. At the special school filmed at the Brooklyn Comedy Club. The set begins with Piskin on stage with family photos. Piskin is immediately animated Land’s a joke and begins to do impressions of the people who populated her world. A small impression of Frank, her boyfriend at school, leads quickly to the lines we had no idea what Frank’s disability was.
I think just from Staten Island. She then does an impression of her mother. The portrayal situates her mother as a Jewish New Yorker who’s of a certain generation that prioritize suspicion, caution, and these near imperceptible characteristics helped bring it to life in the best way possible. Piskin’s mother is able to play dumb when maybe claiming she’s slept with someone besides her husband, be critical of men her daughter dates, and be both self congratulatory and untrusting when describing the principle as a big druggie because he doesn’t tailor his pants. You’ll find that on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla website or their YouTube Tory Piskin Prettiest Girl at the Special School.
That’s your comedy news for today. Thanks to Draft Kings for supporting today’s show. Fall the show for free on Apple podcast, Spotify YouTube where you get your shows. See Tomorrow