🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
Caloroga Shark Media hardly. Oh, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. The eight hundred Pound Gorilla website, a fantastic website. Asked to Nick swartzon a Nick Wartson how long you spend between your hours? Nick said, the new one I wrote pretty quick.
He was pretty surprising. I couldn’t believe it. It came out really fast. I’m already chipping away at a new one. I think I have maybe ten minutes.
I try to write as much as I can. I always trying to tell young comedians that they go, what device do you have? Write NonStop? Even if the joke doesn’t make sense now, ten years from now, you put it in your notebook or on your phone and you’ll figure out how to crack a joke. That’s happened to me several times.
The Gorilla said it’s amazing how people work at different rates, like Jim Gaffigan and has a new hour every year. Swartan said, I know, it’s super annoying. I love Gaffigan, He’s an old friend of mine. I’m just saying it puts so much pressure, like f I’ve got to turn out another one. Gaffick, it’s a machine.
Guys like him, Brian Reagan, Luis c kse at Bash and they keep dropping it. Look at somebody like Chris Rock. Chris Rock’s been doing it forty years and what does he have? Four specials? Maybe five and forty years.
Gaffigan’s been doing it as long as I have. He is what ten? It’s amazing. I plauw them. I’m a fan of all of them.
I asked David Spade, why don’t you have more specials? And he was like, because you burn that material. I’d rather just tour it for as long as I can because it’s so hard to write a new hour. Vogue interviewed Nikki Glaser. No, when you interview Nikki Glaser, what do you ask her about Taylor Swift?
Nikki, other than meeting Taylor Swift backstage, have you spent much time with her in person? Nicki said, we had an interaction on Instagram that you’re probably familiar with where I apologize for talking out of line and then she wrote a comment back. But nothing since that, Nicky, how many concerts have you been to? The final number, unless she adds more shows, will be twenty two. Right now, it’s seventeen, so I have five more to go, and I’m so excited.
I feel like she’s the Beatles in terms of a once in lifetime performer artist and songwriter talent. I don’t have liked to see The Beatles live, so I just need to capitalize in this while I can, and it’s the most fun thing I’ve ever done. Initially, when she announced the tour, I wanted to go as many as possible, but it’s kind of embarrassed by how much I like her. I’ve been mocked for it by my family and friends, and I’ll add people recording a podcast in their basement. My boyfriend was the one who actually said, I’ve never seen you happier than when you’re at these Taylor Swift sing alongs.
I’ mean going to a few of the Taylor Swift nights at different clubs and music venues when they just play Taylor Swift and you dance and sing with everyone. And I’d done some Taylor Swift day parties on Zoom. He said, you should go to every show you possibly can. I’m almost slipping in a triumph here for some reason. I might look ridiculous and people can make fun of me, but I honestly think anyone who’s making fun of Swifty’s is jealous that they don’t like something that much.
I really think that’s at the heart of it, like they’re too cool to let themselves like something that much and they’re not even capable of it. I do think it’s a special kind of personality that I have that leads me to be obsessed with things this much. But I’m so happy that I have that personality. It’s brought me so much joy. I make the joke that being a swift eye has brought me so much joy as being an ant.
It’s probably brought me more joy. To be honest with you, your niece is gonna love this article. In about ten years, I’m not gonna have kids, and this just felt like the right time and spent thousands of dollars in something I love. When all my friends were spending thousands of dollars on fertility treatments and kids, I was like, let’s do something fun with it. I’m always impressed by how on point Taylor Swift is and how she can just nail everything as well.
Listen to this. I’m always impressed by how on point she is and how she could just nail everything I really find similarities between how I do my act sometimes and how she does her thing. I’ll love a joke written. I like to make it fun for myself and to change it up for myself, but you still get the essence of what it is. So yes, I see differences in Taylor’s shows, and it’s been well documented, but her dancing has just become more free.
She’s become more comfortable within the steps that she’s learned and memorized. I’ve seen the comfort level grow. There seems to be more easy with her performing, and I respect how much fun she’s having every time. I’ve really never been able to sense any kind of performativeness that makes me think maybe she’s hiding something. I don’t think you’ve ever seen her pretend to root for a touchdown talk about performative geez.
People always ask how the concerts are different, and I’m like, they’re really not. She’s always ten out of ten perfect with the thing she says in between songs. You can tell when she likes a crowd more than another crowd. Boy, I’m gonna hear from the Swifties now, you don’t want to make fun of Taylor Swift. I mean, one time Joe Koy was hosting the Golden Globes and he made a Taylor Swift joke.
Here, let’s listen. As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL. On the Golden Gloves, we have fewer climber shots of Taylor Swift. That did not go over well.
That joke was so poorly received that Scott Becker right now is banging his dashboard because I brought up the Taylor Swift recurring joke. Hi. Scott phil Wang spoke to the Indie one hundred and said I would not be a comedian if I wasn’t mixed heritage. Of his new special, he says, it’s the trifecta of my material Asian ness, food and some kind of smut. When I got in a comedy at seventeen eighteen, when I first did stand up for me, was a way of dealing with my alienis of owning it.
If putting in front and center, in front of everyone, in front of this new country I was trying to assimilate into. Without that point of difference, I felt like if I fitted in, I felt like I was just like most other people. I don’t think I would have done that. So I think my heritage is central to me being a comedian. I think it’s why I am a comedian.
Hasan Minhaj had that big profile. In Esquire, his new specials out on October twenty second, he tells the story of when he started performing stand up twenty years ago. He wouldn’t get home until late at night. His parents thought he was on drugs or dealing drugs. Are both.
His dad said, I don’t think you’re pursuing a career in comedy. Hassan said, I wish I was cool enough to be dealing drugs. I was actually performing at a bar in front of eight people. They discussed his YouTube rebuttal to all the back and forth about his previous special. Hassan explains why he made the choice in the first draft, which he wrote to convey how scary the incident was.
His comedian friends thought that his wife came across as a knack when the envelope with the white powder arrived at their home. Being up, became upset about what it might have happened. Expressed her fear that her husband’s career put the family in danger. By altering the anecdote to have the white powder land on their daughter, he was able to convey faster and more sharply how the consequences of his career choices at something and they become very real. Plus Minaje, not his wife, was now the butt of the joke.
He says, it was a shortcoming on my part. I could have made the exposition better. I didn’t need to pull in my daughter. That’s the one thing where I’m looking back at it and like, hey could have changed that, but kept it the way it was. Our daughter was right there and we had this full on thing.
Write the scene, keep tweaking it. That’s the toughest thing about being a performer is that everyone has a character in your life. I have to balance that. They have to win and I have to lose. You never get it right, you know.
Taylor Tomlinson was recently in Portland at Helium. She posted a video celebrating this girl on National Daughter’s Day. In the clip, she’s talking with a member of the audience who says, my dad’s a bong. Tomlinson’s like, your dad’s a what? Oh, your dad’s ashes are a bong.
The audience member says no, they’re made into a bong. Tomlinson says, God, we’re in Portland right now. If you’d put me in this room right now and we’re like, we won’t tell you. If you’d put a sack over my head, put me in a big suitcase, driven me around for three days, put me on the stage and been like, guess where you are? And I heard they turned my dad’s ashes into a bong, I’d be like Portland, Oregon.
Molly Kearney, who’s no longer on Saturday Night Live, which, by the way, I don’t know if you know, this is turning fifty this year, and we are going to talk about SNL every day for the next nine months, including this sentence. Molly is joining that sitcom DMV that’s the one that stars Tim Meadows. DMV’s a workplace comedy set at the place everyone dreads going. Most the DMV are quirky and lovable characters and making minimum wage doing a thankless job where customers are annoyed before they even walk in the door. Good thing they have each other.
Carney will play Barbara, the boss, who considers herself one of the gang, even though the gang does not. Barbara is a glass half full oversharer who’s incredibly inappropriate and terrible at reading a room, so she’s Michelle Scott from the Office. Barbara cares deeply and tries very hard but misses the mark, so she’s Michelle Scott from the Office. Tim Meadows plays a driving examiner. JB.
Smooth is getting a game show. Apparently Prime Video was all about the game shows. They’ve already announced pop Culture Jeopardy with Colin Jost, who’s on Saturday Night Life, which I don’t know if you know, is turning fifty and we’re going to talk about it every day for nine months, and Wishless Games with Nick Cannon. The JB. Smooth one is called Buy It Now.
It’s a business competition where entrepreneurs get ninety seconds to pitch their product to an audience of potential customers. They’re called the one hundred. If the one hundred like the product and price, then the entrepreneurs get to a panel of Amazon executives and celebrity entrepreneurs. The panel selects which products join Amazon’s exclusive Buy It Now store and award one entrepreneur twenty thousand dollars whoa Jeff Bezos Way to open up the wallet. There twenty thousand dollars.
Woo, big spender wy Gred al Roker was on Instagram and he announced his comedy crush. It’s Kate McKinnon, who was on Saturday Night Live. I don’t know if you know this SNL’s turning fifty. We’re going to talk about it every day for the next nine months. In the picture, al Roker is smiling at Kate McKinnon, seemingly listening to her as she spoke to him during a break.
He captured the post I had here Kate mckinn and she is my hashtag comedy crash. One word. Her inventive goofiness and goodness shines through and is genuinely nice. Here’s an idea you didn’t think was gonna happen, and maybe it’s not a terrible idea. The UK is thinking of doing their own version of Cheers.
You may recall Cheers Ted Danson played Sam Malone. Now some of you were like, yeah, we know what Cheers is, and then some people are like, I was born in two thousand and four, I have no idea what you’re talking about. All right, So Cheers was a sitcom in a bar Ran for eleven seasons and two hundred and seventy five episodes on NBCC. Back in the twentieth century they made more than six episodes of things. I mean two hundred and seventy five episodes on something on Netflix would have to run what thirty years Kelsey Grammer was on this show Cheers.
He played a character named Frazer. You may have heard of him. A quick overview of some shows that have crossed the pond, as they call it. You may have heard of The Office. Yes, that was a British show.
Originally Ghosts was a British show heading the other way. They tried to make a British version of The Golden Girls called The Brighton Bells didn’t work. The seventies show called Days Like These didn’t work, and Married with Children called Married for Life didn’t work. One of the suits over there said the British pub is an endangered species. So there’s an answer for the why now about it.
The attitudes of Cheers of the eighties are very different to the attitudes of today, so there’s a massive amount of work to be done around taking inspiration from the original characters but creating something fresh. The daughter of one of Australia’s most famous comedians claims her stand up gig was canceled because she makes jokes about trans people. Biddy O’Laughlin, who was due to perform at the Cranker Comedy Show on October fifteenth in Adelaide. Biddy’s mother is the famous comedian Fiona o’lachlan. Biddy has been kicked off the lineup following a complaint made by a pub staff member.
Biddy told the Advertiser, I know some of the bartenders see me as a churf that’s trans exclusionary, radical feminist, but I don’t consider myself a feminist. Biddy’s Instagram involves clips of her making jokes about trans women, along with photos of her and a red cap with the slogan make Women Female Again and giving off some Trump vibes there. She caption one photo fighting for you ladies and for your daughters, she continued. Even if you don’t think it’s an issue, and you want to call me a hateful bigot, I’ll take the hit. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and men are not women.
They call me the JK Rowling of the Adelaide comedy scene. There’s put that on a poster, which is weird because I’ve never written a book. She also shared a clip from one of her stand up gigs where she responded to a heckler, but he said, I saw trans comedian once and he was so bad that I thought for a second he might actually be female inside.
All right, let’s wash that off with this from The Toronto Sun.
Comedian Ben McKay, a rising star on the comedy scene, blend’s lighthearted fun and punchline heavy humor with personal stories and spontaneous moments. So again to recap here and The Toronto Sun’s done this before. He is a comedian who blends stories, spontaneous moments and punchlines hmm, innovative. He’s influenced by Sean Mlandy, Gary Goldman, Hannibal Burris. How would you describe your comedy series, Ben McKay, Ben says, I’d like to think my comedy is lighthearted and fun, yet precisely written and punchline heavy.
Plus I get distracted easily, so there’s lots of in the moment stuff as well. John Mulaney’s probably been my biggest comedic influence. He was the first comedian I really identified with. Beyond that, I’d say Gary Goleman and Hannibal Burris were also influential to me early on growing up, Mullany was always my favorite. Wow.
Imagine growing up to Mullaney. I saw it like Mulany’s new to me. He’s like new wave to be Wow. I’m old. When I was young, I just fell in love with stand up in general.
I’d take any opportunity to see stand up, so I was always watching Comedy Now specials just for laugh galas and anything i’d get my hands on. Who are you into these days? Some Canadians Alex Wood, Andrew Barr, Nigel Grinstead, Adam Christy and Jarrett Campbell. They’re all fantastic and I feel fortunate to get to work with them. I’ve also discovered a lot of American comedians that I really like from the Don’t Tell Comedy tapings on YouTube.
We’re hearing only great things about Don’t Tell Comedy. I might have to get out to one of those shows, but then I would have to leave the house. That’s your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it. They might like it too.
If you’d like the program without commercial interruption. Check think of the show notes, so to tell you how that works. Four ninety nine is the short version, all right, see tomorrow