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Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Interesting story from Greg Fitzsimmons about the classic era of Howard Stern. He said, a lot of comedians used to cycle through the Howard Stern Show. They called it Jackie’s Chair because when Jackie Martinley left the show, it opened up a spot for people to sit in, usually during the news.
It was a very jokey segment. Me and Howard had great chemistry. Kennison would come in and he would have stayed out all night and it’d still be drunk, and they’d have a couple of hookers with him. He’d take over the show and it was magic. It was amazing.
But that wasn’t what I was doing at all. I was just there to be a team player. They wanted to replace Jackie’s Chair permanently, and they brought in Doug Stanhope. I was one of the guys that brought in a lot already Lang. Jeff Ross an article in The New York Post that it came down to me and already Lang obviously already got it, which was well deserved.
He just had a lot more to offer in terms of what he had done last weekend than the guy was married with two kids.
Also, he’s one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
When they didn’t get it, Howard told me the door was open. Anytime you want to come on the show, just let me know, and he was true to that. Anytime I’ve ever asked to come on the show for a thirteen year period, I just came on and it was great. Jim Jeffries told Rolling Stone News Zealand about the time in Manchester a remember from the audience assaulted Jim. Jim says, I distinctly remember what happened.
I got punched in the face and I sort of fall to the ground and then he hit me in the back of the head, and the audience came up and rushed him. To this day, if I go out drinking, which I don’t do anymore, he’s been sober for three years. If I go out in Manchester, someone will come up to me and say they were one of the guys that jumped on the stag. Should defend me. I think I’ve bought about thirty drinks, but I only saw four people get up on stage.
Jeffries rallied and rather than be afraid. He decided to go bigger, and he said, because I was the person who put it up on the internet. What it did do is it sold out that tour. GQ spoke to Lucas Zelnik about his viral TikTok crowd work. In one clip, which has been viewed six point seven million times, he takes on a growing number of hecklers, one at a time and his shows, and another he banters with a person integrating back into society after a state a psychiatric facility.
In another, he stumbles into a conversation with a drug dealer who winds up delivering a sales pitch. Lucas tells GQ, I grew up in Manhattan, rich kid. Everyone was going into business and being a CEO and consulting in fancy schools. Zelnik founded at Sesh Comedy, a Lower East Side club that eventually sold so he could tour. He said, year one was about figuring out what the show that I’m giving is.
Year two is about making the show better, and now year three I’m looking at his coming into my own as who I want to be as a comedian. He does not identify as a crowd work comedian, but he’s not offended if other people use the term. A lot of people come to the shows, can even be surprised by how little crowd work I do. The length that I set on tour sort of accordions, because I’ll try and build a new chunk of material, which will make it longer, but then if I don’t like it, it’ll get pulled out, or once I do like it, I’ll pull out something old that I don’t like. Longer than shorter, longer than shorter, so hopefully it improves towards the end of the tour.
Last year I was writing new material for this upcoming tour. Sometimes the set was like an hour, ten hour, fifteen, and of that probably fifteen minutes would be crowd work and an hour would be jokes. GQ was curious, I feel like I don’t see much of your traditional stand up on tiktoku work clips just work better, Lucas said, I think the biggest thing is to stay in front of people’s faces. You just have to put out so much content. Jokes take so long to ride out.
Put out chunks of material, but very selectively, and frankly, I probably won’t put out any more material until I’m ready to release an hour long special, which I think I want to give that a few more years. Stand up has changed so much, and by most definitions, I’m very new. I’m about to hear my five year anniversary. But I put out ten minutes of material with Don’t Tell In another ten with Comedy Central, so I’ve put out twenty minutes and then the rest has been pretty much CrowdWork. GQ said TikTok, CrowdWork comics are kind of a genre now, or are you resentful of the label?
Lucas said, What I feel is overwhelmingly grateful for the fact that I can perform for crowds of people who come to see me. In The notion of sitting in my house resenting who my fan base is or who I’m referred to is pretty insane, given that it’s enabled me to do my passion, get overpaid for it, and be here at twelve thirteen pm on a Thursday talking to you. So I hope when people watch my comedy, whether it’s crowd work and material, I’m able to convey what I’m trying to convey, which is who I am, and I hope that comes off as someone who’s intelligent thawful, not too freequ leading into hackey things, or try ways of making people laugh, subverting the expectations of where people typically make jokes, whether that’s in their written material or crowd work. Lucas says, I think in a perfect world, my career could look something like John Mulaney’s career, which is to say, involvement as an actor in TV while still always doing stand up and touring. Mulaney is very much primarily still a stand up but touring’s just personally very challenging.
Traveling as much as I do, so, I think in the full course of time, i’d like to have different outlets. My view is everything you should say should be really funny, and you shouldn’t be making points to make points. But I have points I want to make. I think I’d just rather make them in TV or film rather than be on stage and be like, now, let’s get real for a second. I don’t want to be that guy.
Ever. I’m not looking to be staffed in a writer’s room right now. But if the SNL cast decides they want another a mediocre white guy who’s decent looking, I’ll give you my phone number and you can have them reach out to be. Shane Moss, known for his uncanny description of psychedelic experiences, tapes his next special today at the Perplexiplex in Denver, A great name. The Washington Post spoke to Ben Schwartz about improv He says, audience members asked came the same question and time and time again.
Is it scripted? Schwartz says, literally, not a word of this is written. That’s almost the fun part when someone is like, I can’t believe you just made that up, or they think it’s magic. He explains, it’s about balance. If one improviser specializes in broad characters and physical comedy, Schwartz might combine them with more cerebral comics.
As The Evening’s MC takes it upon himself to facilitate the scenes, play to his guest strengths, and keep the show moving with savvy edits. So those are moments when a scene is interrupted or ended, He says. It’s like picking a basketball team and finding your point guard, your center, your small forward. On the Ben Schwartz and Friend’s Tour, the go to prompt has been tell us about the most exciting day or night of your life. There’s three thousand people in these audiences, it’s a lot of pressure.
Some of the things I do at the beginning of the show are very much to make the audience feel comfortable, to tell them we got this. I know it’s nerve wracking because we don’t know what’s gonna happen, but it’s gonna be good and it’s gonna be a good time. As for the audience, Schwartz notes and over excited, a patreon is often not the best choice. As soon as someone starts telling their answer, Schwartz can tell almost immediately if it’s a story worth falling or if you should gently move on to someone else. Specific characters are great, and intricate narrative is better, but he keeps an eye out for detours, perhaps a detail that the audience member gloss is over, but Schwartz recognizes is curious enough to pursue whatever they say.
I’m listening to every syllable. As the show finds a rhythm, Schwartz monitors the audience’s enthusiasm while deciding which gags to double down on. Around the halfway point, they start looking for references from earlier in the show to call back on. As they head towards the hour mark, they work overtimed weaves together of the show’s disparate threads, and no matter how wildly delightfully far they may have strayed from the original premise, Schwartz tell’s The Washington Post, I look at the clock, and we’re around fifty five minutes. That’s around the time where I’ll be like, let’s start calling everything back.
Let’s see if we can connect. Sometimes the stuff you’ve been building connects perfectly, and you can call back everything and every character and it almost looks like it was perfectly written. The biggest thing for me is to try and make everybody look funny, everybody look good on stage, and to give the audience something great. Francesca Duva is one of vulturous comedians you should and will know. Worst show ever.
Very long time ago, I was in college. I was in a sketch group that I thought was amazing, invited to perform at some kind of parent weekend event with other campus groups. The venue was a cafeteria, which is tough to begin with, and then very few parents actually came. The ones who did were mostly parents of children who were in one of the mostly amazing dance groups that were also performing. Due to a couple of sketches we thought our best, and not a single parent laughed.
It was silence for ten minutes. It was so hard for me, seriously, because I love parents my whole life. I love winning the approval of people’s parents and making them laugh. And that day they all stared at me with disgust, like I was some weird, random girl. It was just sad, and I learned a tough lesson at that show, which is should have been a dancer.
That’s your comedy needs for today. If you enjoy the program and tell a friend about it, they might like it too. If you would like the program without commercial interruption, there’s a link of the show notes that to tell you how that works five bucks a month. It’s the short version there. See tomorrow.