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The Shark deck Man. Am I procrastinating? Hi? I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. You see a marathon training, Humble Brag and this week Hal Higden, who’s my guru, wants a four miler seven four arrest day and then a fifteen.
Now after I record this podcast here, I’m gonna go do the seven. But I have been taking my time recorded a couple episodes of five Good News Stories. That’s the podcast where I tell you five stories. They’re all good news wherever you get your shows. I’ve even wasted the first thirty five seconds of this podcast before I tell you Matt Rife is the latest performer to get pelted with a random object on stage.
This time it was a bra. While you’re laughing, Johnny Mack, it’s not nice, I don’t know, it’s just funny. It’s a comedy show. You’re really upset that I’m laughing that Matt Riffe got hit with a bra. Come on.
An eyewitness tells page six that Matt Riffe was performing in Atlantic City and a female spectator decided to shoot her shot. Writes page six. An eyewitness says it went down when Rife was flirting with an eighty five year old woman who had flown all the way to Florida for the show, and she got pelted with a bra. All right, that’s not funny. I don’t want eighty five ye old women getting hit by bras.
Why isn’t eighty five year old woman at Matt Rife anyway? Rife himself was taken aback because why would somebody throw something at an eighty something year old woman who was getting all of his attention. The insider notes that the woman’s daughter picked it up with disgust and then threw it the rest of the way towards Rife. A second eyewitness says Rife didn’t even bother to catch it. The bra land that at his feet.
An insider said, Rife did pick it up and notice something had been written on the bra. You’re curious, right, what did it say? It said, if you find my bra, tell Matt Rife to reach out to me, and it had her Instagram handle. It also had her hotel and her hotel rooms number written on it. The insider says, rather than keep that information to himself, Rife read it out to the crowd.
Paul Reiser is back in a stand up comedy, and the San Francisco Chronicle asked him what’s been the best part about getting back in stand up? Riser said, one of the things that was underscored for me after the pandemic was how much of the human element was missed. It’s part of why I always love stand up. I was reminded that human contact and interaction is irreplaceable. You can’t get that in a movie.
I don’t personally feel I can get it even in theater because there’s a wall of fiction between you and the audience. I was rusty, as to be expected. There’s no app that’ll make you funnier, better or stronger quicker. It’s only going on night after night after night and doing it. Stand up is technology proof.
There’s nothing you can do to be better other than doing it. He talked about his first time on stage. It was the summer of nineteen seventy four, the summer after I was a freshman in college. I actually found a cassette of that act while cleaning out a closet. Reacently.
I had written first time ever on it and it was five minutes and I listened to it cringing, going, oh, I can’t believe I had the audacity to go out and try and do that. But when you’re so young, you’re protected by a sort of embryo or shield of ignorance in Naivet’s hey, so you have no idea that what you’re doing is no good at all. On the other hand, I’d hate to look back and go, boy, I was much funnier at eighteen than I am now. It wasn’t a particularly great living, but we fellow comics, we’re all supporting ourselves. There were enough clubs, and you get twenty bucks here and a hundred bucks there and seventy bucks there, and it was like, oh, I think I got the rent covered.
We were sell thrilled to have three hundred dollars in our pocket and thrilled not to have to do a regular job. My goal was looking at George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Robert Klein and going, that’s what I want to do.
And then I stubbled into a casting office and I ended up in diner.
Then that got me on the tonight show, that gets me in Beverly Hills, cop All these things happened sequentially on top of each other, so I was like, all right, I guess this is what’s happening for me. Jane Curtain looked back on her early years of Saturday Night Live and doesn’t find it funny. Jane spoke to Deadline and said, we were sent the five year compilation video of S and l’s first five years a few years ago, and I gave one of my daughter. We were out visiting and her husband said, have you ever watched any of these? And I said, you know, I haven’t seen them in a long time.
He said, would you mind if we watched one? I said, no, great big one. So we sat around the TV and I had that sort of anticipatory, open mouthed grin that people have when they’re waiting for something to happen. They know it’s gonna be really great, and it never happened. It wasn’t funny.
Not one thing was funny. There’s not one utterance of a laugh or a giggle. Jane attributes the unfunniness of SNL to it being dated since it’s fifty years old. But after the rewatch, I was like, this really wasn’t a very good show. Was terrible.
Vulture asked Paul F. Tompkins if there’s a certain amount of salvation interesting word in embracing the successes of new comedians. Paul said, oh for sure. Yeah, I mean it does help to keep me away from the bitterness. I remember Beth stelling special Girl Daddy that came out.
Man, to watch somebody who has like when you see the thing where they’ve come in in their own they’ve got it and it’s down and it’s funny, and it’s deep, and it’s insightful, and it’s entertaining, it’s everything. When you watch them become that, I get chills talking about it. I had to refrain from texting during the special. I was like, watch the whole thing and to say, Beth, I love the special so much, congratulations. I have to pull myself back from saying I’m proud of you, because I don’t have any right to say that.
I didn’t have any hand in her ascension, but I felt that way, you know, I felt that pride to see somebody get to the point where it’s like, you did it, You’re so good. This is where you’ve submitted your status as one of the great comedians. When somebody puts out one of those hours that’s unassailable. How can you not be excited by it all right, Paul F. Tompkins, they give your own such a moment.
Yeah, I think Laboring under Delusions. I worked so hard on that and that was the special where I was like, this is me, this is who I am, This is the purest expression of me. Because it’s funny, because it’s personal, but it’s silly. I worked really, really hard in keeping it tight and funny, and I wasn’t afraid to go into the emotions of some of things. I wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable.
I think it was the best night of my career. I think that’s safe to say. I love this. Next story, it’s from the Times of Israel. Alex Edelman arrived at a senior living home for conversation about his solo Broadway show Just for Us.
You know that’s the one where Alex Edelman, who is a Jewish comedian, infiltrated a white supremacist meeting in Queens. I’ve told you about that one. So Edelman goes for the Q and a one of the seniors asked him, where are you from Massachusetts? Now what part Brookline? Now what street?
So he told him what street, But the senior citizens had more questions, where did you go to Camp Seneca Lake, Camp Yevna, a hockey camp, and a few others. Where’d you go to college? NYU? Did your parents ever want you to be a doctor or a lawyer? Edelman said, his father’s a doctor, as a mother’s a lawyer, and they wanted me to be happy.
Next question, what does your shared say? Edelman said, Jesus the Savior of a new generation. And it was written in the style of a Pepsi logo. That got silence. Senior citizen Maggie didn’t like the show.
She said he wasn’t prepared. I thought enough something else to say. If we hadn’t been asking our questions, I don’t know what he would have talked about.
Also, Maggie was offended by a mistake Edelman made.
He said, my friend Alfred was ninety three. He’s only eighty six. A TikTok comedian is going viral for a video where he explains multiple Southern US cities into quick, simpler terms for his California friend. For example, Austin is described as San Francisco but barbecue, and Joe Rugan Houston is described as Texas Atlanta. He calls Birmingham, Alabama murder Atlanta.
Wow. This TikTok has over a million point four reviews. People in the comments seem to agree with the Texas Atlanta joke, but one comments are pointed out one city is not mentioned and says, this is San Antonio. Eraser, I guess I gotta go do that seven a mile run now, all right? Follow the show for free on Apple, podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your shows.
Lace up see Tomorrow