Daily Comedy News Podcast Transcripts

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Featured: Nicky Glazer, Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, Bert Kreischer, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, Sebastian Maniscalco, Tig Nataro

What’s in This Episode

• Comedy Survivor Episode 9 elimination results
• Kevin Hart voted off Comedy Survivor
• Listener alliance theory among voters Dylan, Aaron, and Richard
• AI analysis of voting patterns and power dynamics
• Updated Comedy Survivor power rankings

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media, Oh outbit outlaugh Outlast. This is Comedy Survivor. I’m Johnny Mac. We are now halfway through Comedy Survivor Week eight. Still in the game.

Comedians Nicky Glazer, Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, ots Good, Kotska, sumbashion Manascalco, Tim Nataro, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, and Bert Krascher. The listeners went to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. They clearly wrote down one name, so we don’t have a controversy. They wrote down one name. They made it super clear everybody paid attention to this week.

They wrote down one name and one comedian. We’ll go home. It’s time to tell you the votes. Matt votes for Kevin Hart. Josette votes for Sarah Silverman.

Heather votes for Nicky Glazer. Lindsey votes for otso at Cotska, Barn votes for Kevin Hart, two votes for Kevin Hart, Dylan votes for Kevin Hart, three votes for Kevin Hart. Michelle votes for Sarah Silverman, two votes for Sarah Silverman. Avon votes for Otsco at Cotska, two votes for Otsco, two votes for Sarah Silverman, three votes for Kevin Hart. Mike votes for Nikki Glaser, Andrea votes for Nikki Glaser, three votes for Nikki Glaser.

Heather votes for Leslie Jones. Mary votes for Leslie Jones, two votes for Leslie Jones. Are we heading for another tiebreaker? Oh no? Aaron votes for Kevin Hart, four votes for Kevin Hart.

Cheryl votes for otsgo At Conska, three votes for Otscoe. Mike votes for OTSCO, four votes for Otsco, four votes for Kevin Hart. Oh No, not another tie breaker. Robie votes for Leslie Jones, Andy votes for Kevin Hart, and Richard votes for Kevin Hart. The listeners have spoken, Kevin Hart has been eliminated from Comedy Survivor.

We won’t need the AI to break the tie this week. To take a break, and we’ll take a look at what all this means. What a fascinating result, because there have been a few comedians who almost went home and did go home. It’s go at Coska is a Comedy Survivor. She’s in danger every week, but she is still here.

The AI analysis says this was not a subtle vote. Kevin Hart didn’t get clipped in a split. He got a full multi line pileon now this is interesting. AI is rating you guys. Are you ready now?

If you want to be part of this, If you want a shout out, go to the Facebook group, Daily Company News podcast group and vote this week. I didn’t tell the AI to do this. I’ll tell you what I do here. I do the votes live. I go to the Facebook group and I hit all comments and I do it live.

Then I asked the AI to check my work. All I wrote was tally the votes, and itally the votes for me, and then I wrote quote, okay, give me the AI analysis, and all on its own, guys, it wrote who drove the vote? The power block right now is if I say your name here, you’re part of the power block. According to artificial intelligence. The power block right now is Dylan an early anchor vote, Aaron momentum and persuasion.

Richard closer vote that legitimizes the outcome. I love this. We are now focused on the listeners. Is there an alliance between Dylan, Aaron and Richard to steer the results of Comedy Survivor How Much Fun? Here’s the updated power rankings safe Tig Nataro and John Mulaney.

I can’t recall have we had a vote for Malani yet. If we had, we’ve had one strong position. Bert Kreischer and Nikki Glaser. I don’t think Bert has had a vote yet. Still in trouble, Otsko at Kotzka and Leslie Jones and Sarah Silverman has moved into the in trouble list.

According to the AI, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group. You were going to clearly vote for one person. You will say, I am voting this person off. A couple of people were like super explicit about it.

Both the AI and I appreciate it. Be super clear. We don’t need controversies. I have enough stress in my life. I might even have cherry duty.

Yeah, it was a two week district court thing. I might be sitting in Newark right now while you’re enjoying this wonderful podcast. So you’re going to go to the Facebook group and you’re going to vote someone off Comedy Island Still in the game, Otska at Kotzka, Nikki Glaser, Leslie Jones, Sarah Silverman, John Mulaney, Burt Kreischer, Sebastian Maniscalco, and Tig Nataro. We are down to seven comedy survivors otsgo, Nicki, Leslie, Sarah Mulaney, Krascher, Sebastian and Tig. So much fun and we’ll see if the listener power block is a real thing.

Have fun in the Facebook group guys, See you in the morning.

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Featured: Bill Burr, Dusty Slay, Eric Andre, Chelsea Peretti, Devin Walker, Pete Lee

What’s in This Episode

• Netflix Is a Joke Festival adds 170+ shows for Altadna Eaton Fire Relief benefit
• South By Southwest 2026 comedy lineup announcement featuring Bill Burr, Chelsea Peretti, Eric Andre
• Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase hosted by Bill Burr at SXSW
• Funny or Die resurrecting live comedy events with Pete Lee hosting
• Dusty Slay book release ‘We’re Having a Good Time’
• Don’t Tell Comedy All Stars event at SXSW March 14th

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caalorokashock media. Wow, big hot news just came in. I am Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithm loves. So I just in in my world.

I recorded Sunday, and then what you do is you recorded. I use a program called Logic on my MacBook and you then you have to bounce the file so it mixes down everything, and then you send it off somewhere and that takes like a minute. So during that I did what I usually do and I checked my email. Now this is not in my script. This just hit my inbox.

I’m doing this as cold as it gets. The headline Netflix is a joke festival. Just added one hundred and seventy plus shows added to Netflix is a joke festival. So you’re getting this as I’m getting it, unless, of course, you read the email on Friday afternoon. Again, I’m not working with a script.

Let me scroll down here. Is there actual No, there’s just a lot of artwork. So I’m gonna have to see if they sent this out to deadline or something. But let’s just do it. This way.

This is fun. This is how the show gets put together. Okay, this is a graphic thing. They have announced comedy for the community, the Altadna Eaton Fire Relief, hosted by Dion Coldion’s Fantastic Timmy No Breaks at the Comedy Store on the fourth of May. Individual shows from rosewud Baker Cheryl Underwood.

This is an interesting title. The end Ari Shaffer’s renamed Storytelling show. I guess others on the rights to the various this is not happening. Tag it with the scar Brothers, Chris O’Connor, Jay Jorden, Ron Funches, Cristella Alonso and friends, Guy Tory and so many more and in the end, so many more, Box Mally, Kearney, Yakoff, Smirnoff in a bunch All right, let’s bunch over our deadline. Let’s see if there’s a story there.

We are producing the show live on tape, my friends. Nothing there, We’ll check variety. This is how the show gets put together. I could edit this out. No, no there either.

Also, Friday afternoon is a weird time to announce anything. No, hasn’t hit the wires yet. Maybe I’ll have more for you tomorrow. My original number one story very similar south By Southwest Unveil’s twenty twenty six comedy line up their lineup Bill Burr, He’s back from Riot as you know, Chelsea Peretti, Devin Walker, Eric Andre, Frankie Conunius, and Natasha Lazeriro among dozens of participants. It is the nineteenth edition of south By Southwest Comedy.

Let me see who else hear? Some names you might know Jared Freed, Pete Lee Nope, I think i’ve I mean, I could read you fifty names, but I think I read you the big ones. During south By there will be an edition of Don’t Tell Comedy All Stars featuring alumni of the Don’t Tell Comedy Secret Sets series. That’ll be the Creak of the Cave on Saturday, March fourteenth. Some of the events include Bombing with Eric Andre, eric Andre Hanks with Friends to Talk About You Say with Me, Bombing, Comic Relief, and The Moth Present Funny Story Two Paarhouses unite for an Unforgettable evening of stories.

The Moth, whose live storytelling events and Bloff podcasts have broad over sixty five thousand true personal stories to audience as worldwide partners with Comic relief. Dropout will host crowd Control, a live stand up show where the audience is the main material. Looks like dropouts all over this thing. They’ll also host Dirty Laundry, which is for guests telling secrets and then you have to guess who the secrets belong to, and you can also have some beverages. Drop Out improv in this show, hosted by Kurt Maloney.

Improv skills will be on show for a night of varied games and freewheeling comedy. Facebook Presents Stand Up Comedy. Now maybe like twenty years ago, that sentence sounds cool. That just sounds really vanilla corporate. It’s titled Facebook Presents stand Up Comedy.

Could you just suck all the cool out of that sentence? Facebook is excited to present an unforgettable evening of stand up comedy where the global stage meets the comedy stage. Exclamation point. With three billion people connecting on Facebook globally every month, comedians are able to showcase their talent and grow their audience around the world. Now we’re bringing this vibrant community to south By Southwest Comedy.

Oh my god, that is so corporate. Please south By has gotten really, I mean, this is just this is like the establishment pretending that they’re all the next up. Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase featuring The Dress Up Gang and Friends. Let me read that again because I deliberately skipped the last four words. Look be the full title this time.

Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase featuring The Dress Up Gang and Friends, hosted by Bill Burr. Bill Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, you had a terrible You had a terrible, terrible twenty twenty five. You had I think the worst year of any of the big comedians. Last year. You just lost the plot, Buddy.

And now Bill Burr’s hosting the Fox Entertainment Studios Comedy Showcase featuring the Dress Up Gang and Friends. Bill, just call your nex special. I’m in this for the money. I know we’re all in this for the money. I’m hosting this podcast right now so I can run some commercials during the break.

I’m in this for the money. But let’s just be honest, Bill, the coolness is gone. What are you doing? Bill? Hosted Biami and Grammy nominated comedian actor and director Bill Burr.

The evening embodies the bold, fearless spirit of the Fox Comedy brand. Guys, The Fox Comedy brand is Dennis Leary’s military show. What is that called Going Dutch? That’s the Fox Comedy brand. The Fox Comedy brand is Joel Mchall’s Animal Patrol or whatever that’s called.

That’s the brand if you want to tell me, but the Simpsons. The Simpsons came out in the eighties. Guys, Bill Burr, face of the fearless Fox Comedy brand, Funny or Die Approved, in partnership with the stand Funny or Die is resurrecting their legendary live comedy legacy. Think the spirit of the original epic oddball festivals back and blessed by the comedy gods themselves. This isn’t just another stand up show.

It’s a handpicked, ruthlessly curated night of comedy that’s earned the ultimate stamp Funny or Die Approved, and it’s hosted by peat Lee The Gotham Comedy. For nearly thirty years, Gotham has been one of New York’s top stand up venues. That is true. They’re good guys over there, like them. Used to regularly see them back in the day when I worked at the Old Place.

My favorite lyrics live. Welcome to the first ever live recording of Devin Walker’s podcast, My favorite lyrics, the show where we talk about music lyrics. The Stand is producing a couple shows. Okay, now we’re doing on time. I feel like I’m long already.

Now we got some time still. Okay. You know who’s coming out with a book, Dusty Sligh. Yeah, you know what Dusty Slay called his book. That’s right, he’s calling it We’re having a good time.

I guess that makes sense. What else Wouldusty Slay call his book? That’s his catchphrase in We’re having a good time. Dusty Slay looks back in his early days, including dropping out of college at age eighteen and getting arrested at nineteen, which interrupted his plans to join the army. In his early twenties, Dusty Slay left his Alabama hometown for Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked in a seafood restaurant while building a stand up career.

During evening open mics, Dusty Sleigh recounts his journey from pesticide salesperson to touring comedian, along with stories from his childhood performances and more. The book teases his trademark humor and wit I have it on my calendar this morning to reach out to the publicist and see if I can get Dusty Sleigh on this show, which reminds me I forgot I got distracted by the Netflix email. If you skipped the weekend shows Saturday, Pete Holmes for forty minutes was really good. Make sure you go back and listen to that one. Love Pete, Dusty’s and I wanted to write this book to capture some of the stories that I think are really funny, orterest thing, but have never made it to the stage.

Now this next one, I might have to leave my house, which would just be amazing. And I’m not going to leave my house, but just down the road for me. At the Horseshoe Tavern in Morristown, New Jersey, ron On Hirschberg is performing at Horseshoe. I hang out at the brewery, which is differently. It’s the breweries where the trivia guys go horseshoes for the young kids.

Although sometimes this if you’re from this area, you know who the nerds are. They’re like, this is a local legend cover band. They’re really a lot of fun. They play horseshoes sometimes, but horshes for the young kids. But tonight it’s poor him.

A comedy night at the Horseshoe Tavern Ronnin Hirschberg will be there. Rabbi Moishe Gerwitz as Purim is about joy, resilience, and Jewish pride. Comedy night is a way to celebrate the holiday in a fun, meaningful, and uplifting way. I love this. So if your local head on over to the Horseshoe Tavern, we’re told security we’ll be present to ensure it is safe and welcoming environment for all attendees.

Now, as it turns out, I happen to have a Ronin Hirschberg. Oh my god, I was about to tell you that people keep calling me. Hold on, I have to take this phone call. Hey John, all right, I made an edit there. I’m all discombobulated.

I even get to tell you that my wife called in the middle of the Ronin Hirschberg story. But that was the hot tub guy I’ve mentioned. It was like negative of forty degrees for like six months. I think hot tub sprung a leak. Can have to run some more ads.

Buy me a coffee, you might have to buy me, let me do some math. You might have for buy me four hundred coffees and buy me a coffee. Dot Cops last daily comedy. It is to fix the hot tap. Oh my goodness, first world problems, where worry.

I’m trying to tell you. I could edit all this out, but that’s not fun. I’m trying to tell you this Ronin Hirschberg story. But my wife called and like now, and I scrolled down and I lost it and I’m all discombobulated now and I had this all pulled together? Where did that story even go?

Ronin Hirschberg was found it. Ron Hersberg was profiled by the Telegraph in twenty twenty two. Hirschberg opened for Louis c. K in Germany, and he said they laughed at every joke because they feel so guilty. I said I was Jewish, and they gave me a standing ovation.

He had a little more serious. I think there was a time when Germans couldn’t laugh about that stuff, but now they’re happy to let me make fun of them. Hirschberg says his early tries and stand up. We’re just trying to make rednecks laugh. Then he moved to New York.

He talked about his complicated relationship with the arts and said, I think as a Jew It’s a little easier for me to separate the art from the artist because I’ve had a love so many great artists who are anti Semitic, Shakespeare, Dickens, basically any writer before nineteen fifty. Hirschberg appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and said, I hate Joe Rogan. I think he’s a danger to society. He’s always spreading misinformation. The only way I’d ever go on his podcast is if he asked me.

Rogan did ask, and on twenty twenty four they talked about everything from having children to conspiracy theories. Hirschberg says Rogan was extremely nice to me. A lot of my anger towards him started later. I didn’t make fun of him until hen On Elon Musk defending the defunding of US aid that was such a horrible atrocity, and to see him there with Joe Rogan laughing his stupid jokes and made me furious. I don’t think Joe Rogan has bad intentions, but I do think he’s an agenda to attack the credibility of academia and mainstream journalism, and that’s really dangerous.

Like endorsing Trump using his influence to help him get elected. If you can’t get mad at someone for that, who can you get mad at? I’m exhausted. I don’t know why this particular episode that you’re listening to right now is taking a lot out of me. I don’t know if it’s the phone calls or the distractions, or my computer’s jumping all over the pages.

I’m trying to read a script I don’t know. Coming up at noon today, Comedy Survivor. The results are incredible. I had so much fun recording the results of Comedy Survivors. So you’ll find out who went home.

But there’s also a new fascinating twist in all this. And I didn’t invent the twist. The AI did. The AI pointed something out. Every week I throw the votes into the AI just to check my work, and the AI has identified you know what.

Come back at noon and you’ll find out what the AI identified. If just I’m fascinated by this. It’s so much fun. If you’re new to Comedy Survivor, it’s a distinct legal parody of whatever you think I’m at, distinctly legally parodying. It’s called Comedy Survivor Or.

We put sixteen comedians on an island and every week the Facebook group votes someone off the island. What you do is you go to Daily Comedy News podcast group after noon Eastern today Monday. You’ll see a drawing of me and the latest person voted off the island, and in there you will write down the name of one of the people who remain. Come back at noon. I’ll explain all that then currently still on the island.

Only I know if she’s been voted off or not. Otsgo at Cotska is becoming a celebrity man. She’s working to pair two lucky singles and transport them to an anti approved first date to Singapore thanks to the Singapore Tourism Board. Hey Singapore Tourism Board, you got any extra ad money? I got a hot tupper pair.

Plus I’ve never been to Singapore. I’ll go. I’ll read anything. Otsko says it’s more important than ever to lean on the matriarchal support system of anties, especially in dating. She explained her thought experiment to People magazine and said, imagine them going swimming.

That’d be good because if she was always looking for someone who has her back, and she felt like that never happened, putting herself in a dangerous situation like swimming, can really test chemistry having a common enemy. She talked about her own dating experience. One time, I was at a grocery store and this guy bought a raw squid for me. She was initially flattered and agreed to the date, but he was super immature and he was like, do you like my house three stories? And I’m like, yeah, I do like your house.

And then I started seeing photo of him as a kid everywhere. There were a lot of family photos about, and then I found out it was actually his mom’s place. He’s like, we have to hurry with this date because she’s gonna come home. And I was like, can you even afford that squid that you bought me? That’s really funny.

And from Nola dot com we learned that Catherine Blandford enjoys the Kentucky Derby. Catherine Blandford learned that name that is a comedian to watch. Catherine says, my parents started let me go to the Derby by myself, maybe sophomore year of high school. I understood why they were hesitant. As soon as I walked in, I saw a bunch of men in suits in a circle.

I was like, what’s going on. I pushed through and there were girls in nice pressby dresses diving into a mud pit for one hundred dollar bills for her special Catholic cowgirl. She wanted to film it in Louisville and have a painted horse on stage. The Louisville filming didn’t work out. She decided to do it at the Riot Comedy Club in Houston, but still wanted a horse.

She said, Once I had my heart set on having a horse on stage, it wasn’t going to not happen. I flew down there to look at party rentals and I couldn’t find one. Then I found one on Facebook Marketplace. It was the Renaissance Horse from Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour. I was like, oh, I’m not buying it.

I’m just renting it for a day. And she was like, yeah, just don’t sit on it. Ah, And my voice is shot. I have to edit like five of these things, and hopefully I don’t have jury duty, because if I do, I’m gonna have to call the hot tub guy back and be like, yeah, don’t come Monday. After all, I’ll let you know what happened eventually.

And that is your very messy addition of Daily Comedy News on a Monday, see at noon for Comedy Survivor

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Featured: Robby Hoffman, Chris Fleming, Hannah Gadsby, Pete Holmes, John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia, Conan O’Brien, Steve Carell, Bill Lawrence

What’s in This Episode

• Washington Post profiles Robby Hoffman and her role in HBO’s Rooster
• Chris Fleming’s HBO special and New York Times profile
• Hannah Gadsby parts ways with Netflix, promotes audio special Woof
• Comedy Stock Market recommendation for Chris Fleming
• Robby Hoffman’s career path from accounting to Hacks and acting

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey, I’m in a good mood. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, A daily briefing on stand up comedy comedians in the comedy industry. A sentence to the algorithm. Just loves why in a good mood, John Well.

Pete Holmes I thought was fantastic. If you missed yesterday’s episode, I just loved talking to Pete Holmes. I’m still thinking about it three days later by the time you hear this. Pete was just so gracious with his time and just what a cool guy to hang out with. I also just recorded Comedy Survivor, which will come out tomorrow at noon Eastern, and the results are incredible and the AI analysis even better.

I can’t wait for you to hear Comedy Survivor. And it was actually fifty degrees out yesterday, not fifty below zero, and actual fifty like you could go outside and leave your house. Can you imagine? The Washington Post profiled Robbie Hoffman. I think a lot of us came away was that December really impressed with Robbie Hoffman’s John Mlaney produced a special.

The Post writes, Robbie Hoffman is not on TikTok, which is surprising for comedian these days until you meet her and realize she might be the oldest thirty six year old on the planet. Robbie says, my friends, go, are you mental? Why don’t you do this clip and post it on TikTok? I said, I have one of the apps I have Instagram. I was born as seventy three year old man her origin story.

She left accounting for a writing gig on the Chris Getherd Ship. For that show, she moved back to New York City despite having been born in the city. She told the Post, I felt like a tourist in many ways. She had only known the four square blocks of her religious enclav up until that point. She said, this was my first time seeing New York too.

During the pandemic, she crossed paths with Paul W. Downs, the co creator and star of the TV show hacks Downs, remembered being struck by how unfiltered Robbie Hoffman could be. Robbie eventually guest starred on hacks Down. Said, the whole show’s about people who are cast aside by the industry. We wanted Robbie to fit into that tapestry of people on the outside looking in.

The post tells us though in real life the industry likes Hoffman, she’ll be back on Hacks. She’s also part of Rooster. Now. Rooster is interesting. It is a Bill Lawrence project.

You know Bill Lawrence, the guy from Scrubbs and Ted Lasso. He knows what he’s doing. Rooster stars Steve Carell, you know, the guy from the Office. And the reason John C McGinley isn’t in many of the Scrubs episodes is because he’s working on Rooster. All right, So it’s HBO, Bill Lawrence, Steve Carell and Robbie Hoffman and John C McGinley.

That’s gotta be good, right on paper, that’s like amazing, right, better be good. I don’t think Bill Lawrence is missed yet, so looking forward to that one. John Mulaney is quoted in this article. He said of Robbie Hoffman has not taken into consideration any rules or accepted wisdom on show business. And to bring it back home, Hoffman said, I’ve never been the overnight success.

I’ve always been the slow and stead he wins the race kind. We may have waited a little longer, we didn’t do the TikTok pop off or whatever, but we did it in a way that felt good.

Meanwhile, Chris Fleming, did you enjoy Chris Flaming Special on HBO on Frida…

Chris Fleming got the fancy schmancy New York Times profile. Mike Birbiglia said, Chris is one of the most exciting comedians to watch right now, and interestingly didn’t accuse Chris Fleming of ripping off John Mulaney. I don’t know why you would do that, but you know it’s something Berbiglia sometimes does. I don’t see it. We learned from the Times that Chris Fleming got his start doing stand up and finding his exaggerated style at a club above a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square.

He recalls being at a bookstore next door and looking over rockstar photos Mick Jagger, Prince Stevie Nicks, Freddie Mercury, Big pictures of these people rocking out, and I was like, how do I bring that to one hundred person cap room. Since wearing hoodies was out, I gotta wear bird armor. I love it. By the way, you caught on Friday’s Comedy stock Market, we said buy some Chris Fleming. I hope you bought some Chris Fleming, because just minutes later the New York Times did a big profile here.

I’m also sitting on the Chris Fleming press. People earn their money on Friday. I kicked it to in the middle of the week in case I have the jury duty. Have I mentioned that you never know when have to pre tape an episode at midnight so you can spend the day in Newark? I digress.

Conan O’Brien and Chris Flemings did a whole interview. We’ll get to that in time. So if you bought stock and Chris Fleming on Friday, per the Comedy Stock Market recommendation, you’re doing quite well right now. Chris explains he sometimes choreographs his routines by drawing them, but doesn’t watch himself. He finds the humor from the audience.

He explains a lot of what I put out on social media, I’m doing it for the first time. In an improv dance class, he learned, don’t do something unless you feel the impulse to do it. It has to be organic. Good description. Here.

Fleming’s routines are densely layered confections of references, space movies, college life, animal encounters, the economy confetied with digressions, and Bonker’s turns a phrase. One song at dance Routine is about why a young professional had a tasteful made well sweater was the most terrorizing thing at a haunted house at a skyward rechion. People are always laughing. What a great paragraph there in New York Times. Fleming also has a competitive body fearlessness.

We learn from The Times. Fleming said, I love putting as much weight as I can on the stool. I love drop kicking and flanling different ways. To this day, I leave every performance completely bruised. Are you guys listening going?

What’s going on with the show? He’s been in a good mood for like four days? Did Scrubs completely changed my life? Can I get back to being Curmudgeonty? More wonderful writing here in the Times?

Chris is somewhere between six foot one and six foot three, with a long legged hips wivel that can make them appear even taller. When he frog leaps or tumbles over a chair, flieser laps around the stage, there’s an element of controlled danger, a glam firecracker on the loose. Oh yeah. Vulture also profiled Chris Fleming. Let me bounce this as well, because we you know, I like to fix up the topics.

I don’t want to do ten minutes like Chris Fleming. I love Chris Fleming, but this thing’s quite long here. It must have been comedian week in the big newspapers. Back to the Washington Post, they caught up with Hannah Gatsby and we learned that Hannah has broken up with the Netflix is. Hannah explains, Netflix was a launching pad for me, and I’m very thankful for it.

But I’m creatively a risk taker, and I like to take things apart and rearrange them to do things differently. I don’t want to go with the flow right now. The flow seems quite toxic. But Netflix, being an algorithmic first machine, they’ve worked out what comedy is. Now they’ve got the formula, and that doesn’t actually give a lot of space.

The Post said, Well, the formula is to pump out endless specials for which they’ve paid a lot of money. That’s the formula you’re talking about. Hannah said, I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to live there. It’s not to say that I can’t won’t work with them again.

I just wanted to make a decision and take some creative risks, and also a lot of the subjects that I talk about in Wolf and the placement of myself, I wanted to put myself outside of that particular story. Hannah’s out promoting Woof. The audio to woof is free online with a twenty minute video version that features hannagas By speaking through an animated sock puppet. They asked about the sock puppet thing. Hanna said, every decision is almost like what is the algorithm?

Wan, I’ll do the opposite. Now, this is an interesting show. Today. I’ve talked about three comedians, Hannah Gadsby, Chris Fleming, and Robbie Hoffman. And of the three comedians I’ve talked about, Robbie Hoffman is the most mainstream comedian.

I like the alty stuff. The Washington Post was speaking on Zoom with Hannah Gatsby. Hannah was in Tasmania. I love details like that. We learned that Wolf was originally going to be about the death of Hannah’s father.

Hanna explains, Yeah, and the dead Dad’s show is a universal show, particularly for people of a certain age when you start to think about your mortality. But as I realized as I was going through this, I’m the only person on earth who hasn’t adapted to my fame. I was a creature of the Milbourn International Comedy Festival, in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Every year I’d write a show, maybe it gets to tour a little bit, then the next year I’d set it down right another one. I’m pushing forty.

I’m not thinking about cracking in the US market or having high powered agents in LA And then all of a sudden it was more than possible. And I was so ill equipped for that good follow up by the post who asked what was the biggest challenge of all that? And the answer the change in my audience. My audience beforehand were definitely people I was talking to in the room. I was a live performer that had slowly built a solid, sustainable fan base that’d bring a new piece of work to every year, maybe every two years.

I was making a living. Was in the scheme of things modest, but I was successful. Then the net happens and my agents said, are we going to give up? For a stadium tour. I wouldn’t survive that.

I don’t want to be in a crowd of thirty thousand people, and I don’t want to talk to thirty thousand people. Music can work it well in a large crowd, but that’s where comedy goes to die. When you get to those big venues. The last don’t come back. They disappear out the back.

I don’t want to sell tickets to the Apocalypse, and that’s what it feels like. It feels gross. I don’t actually cast judgment, it’s just what they’re doing. They can do it. Power to them.

If you want to be a court jester to the Saudi regime, go for it. Some news news on a Sunday, Jeff Ross is one man show. Take a Banana for the Ride. We’ll be on Netflix. Hanna Gatsby’s not gonna like that.

On March twenty fourth. You can watch you Take a Banana for the Ride. We see Jeff Ross sharing personal stories about his upbringing, family, loss, resilience, and how humor has carried him through tough times. I just made a Hannahatsby joke, But isn’t that pretty much what Hannah Gatsby does? Maybe Hannah and Jeff Ross could be friends.

I don’t know. I was just riffing on the Netflix of it all. Hulu still into the Ralph Barbosa business. They announced a new project titled swamp Meat, a half hour series created by Ralph Barbosa and comedy animation writer Isaac Gonzalez. This will be a cartoon.

Ralph Barbosa voice stars and serves as an executive producer. Swap Meet coming to Hulu. If you’re in La, go check out the Henson Puppets. They are doing improv comedy in puppet Up Uncensored. Puppet Up Uncensored combines the style of puppetry originated by Jim Henson with improv comedy games fueled by audience prompts.

It can get raunchy, he said, don’t bring your kids. You know. There are no official muppets, but we’re told the production includes recreations of several original Jim Henson puppets from early in his career. And it’s Brian Henson that created this thing, so it’s not like this is totally rogue. Brian Henson says of the recreations, they’re really old.

It’s super fun to rebuild those puppets and actually perform those scenes in front of a live audience. That hasn’t happened in forty to fifty years. Probably. We’re told that Henson puppets are tailored for the camera, but in Puppet Up, uncensored audience members see both the stage for screen performance on video projection, and you also get to see the puppeteers work in a way that’s usually hidden from view. Henson said, it’s really fun to let people see how we do it because it’s clever and it’s chaotic.

It also means our audience watches the show in a different kind of way. Hanson was asked about the Muppet Show. I haven’t gotten around to that yet, but people seem to really liked that. That was back Henson’s take. The AI craze has created a backlash of please let me see human craftsmanship, human artistry, where I know this is coming from a human artistic mind.

So I think right now there’s just this enormous appreciation for artistry that’s not computer generated in any way. That’ll benefit all sorts of arts, but it certainly benefits puppetry for sure. That your comedy news on a Sunday catch you back in the morning,

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Featured: Pete Holmes, Billy Crystal, Bert Kreischer, Kat Williams, Taylor Tomlinson, Dick Clark

What’s in This Episode

• Pete Holmes new special ‘Silly Silly Fun Boy’ release and availability
• Pete Holmes’ Pyramid game show appearances and strategy
• Evolution of comedy special structure and closer placement
• Pete Holmes retiring the massage bit and shifting comedy material
• Google image search results featuring Pete Holmes with Cannabis and Tech Today

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Calorokashock Media. Hi there, I’m Johnny Mac and I’m high on life. I just hung up with Pete Holmes. He’s got a new special. It’s called Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on eight hundred pound Gorilla.

I grabbed it myself and watch it the other night. It is fantastic. If you don’t want to do that, it’ll be on YouTube Tuesday, March twenty fourth, but spend a couple bucks. Pete Home special. Silly Silly fun Boy is really good.

I gotta tell you, I been doing this for a while. I always get nervous before interviews because you never know if you’re gonna click or not. And boy, I felt like I could have talked to Pete Holmes for three hours. He was awesome. I just feel good about everything we talked about.

Here a couple square words. You know, normally I keep the show pretty clean, but there are a couple words we don’t normally use on the show. I’m sure you’ll get over it. Let’s jump in. Here’s Pete Holmes.

Got a couple random things to ask you about before we get to the special proper. I was watching the Scrubs reboot last night during the commercials, so I started playing on my phone. I’m on Reddit, I’m in the next effing level Reddit, and I put up this clip of you on Pyramid, just like absolutely murdering, crushing. Are you a Pyramid savant? Because you got cocky at the end and you were like, do you want me to slow down?

I hate to correct you, but I remember it so vividly. I believe I said, do you want to take a break? It’s a little bit embarrassing how proud I am of being good at Pyramid, just because I did no lie grow up watching that, and especially when comedians were on, like Billy Crystal obviously one of the goats, so when they started using me for that show, it was very meaningful.

And then when you’re playing with somebody, it’s inevitably like a school tea…

I take it so seriously. It’s like the level of humorlessness is just Pyramid and like going to the airport, Like those are my two areas that I take it very, very seriously. So I get all jacked up on caffeine and dialed in and when we get in the Winter Circle, which I’ve done a couple of times, if they’re good at it, as that person was, I’m just like, we’re gonna we’re gonna win. It’s it’s really you just have to have bad luck and get a category that is just kind of unknowable. There isn’t that mind mild.

But she was there and we synced up, and it was a thrill. It was like, none of that is Hollywood. When I’m putting my hands up and when I’m celebrating, it’s one of the biggest thrills. I can’t imagine. It’s so fun.

It’s so fun. I’ve got about ten years in you I remember it was ten thousand dollars pyramid, which you know, if you didn’t now you’d be like, gee, thanks guys, Yeah, exactly five fifty. And at one hundred thousand dollars pyramid for primetime that was was Dick Clark, right. I believe so. And that’s always our joke is they win one hundred thousand dollars and they tell you what they’ll do with one hundred thousand dollars, and we’re always like, these people don’t, well, they’re not factoring in taxes from like, this is not on the sly.

Everyone knows you just made a one hundred thousand dollars So all of your family members, Uncle Sam, it’s gonna it’s gonna get whittled down. You gotta be careful. It’s like winning the lottery. I was shading Nates. He’s got his new game show and you win sixty seven grand before taxes, and uh, you know he’s looking at the BARGATSI yeah, it’s the greatest average American.

So the average American salary is sixty seven whatever, So he’s giving that amount, so it works for the bit, but you know after taxes, et cetera. And I’m like, and then ABC runs one thirty, and you know they’d make it out on that show. I that I this is my first time hearing about it, and I take issue with that. You should do it household. Then you should be both parents are working, and you make one hundred and thirty or whatever it is.

That’s just sixty seven. That’s that’s no good for me, just because they’re gonna walk with thirty, you know what I mean? Like, now that’s not a game show. Comeline, all right, let me get your web team in trouble if you will, Pete Homes, this is really props to the people at Cannabis and Tech Today. The biggest picture of you if you google Pete Homes is they’ve got it stamped Cannabis and Tech Today.

I guess you did an interview with them years ago, but that’s the number one. Then it comes out. I love to face your throwing at. Me when you well, I have no memory of that. How appropriate, but I really don’t remember doing that.

And when you say biggest, do you mean the highest resolution? Yeah, so there’s like a big square in a couple of smaller squares. I went to steal a picture of you from the Internet to post on my Facebook page. But the I’m Google image searching Pete Homes. Oh you get Cannabis in Tech Today.

Pete Holmes says, cannabis users ask the best questions. That is, that’s a reach right there. As you’re looking at that. So the other thing, and just because I was listening to you, I think it was with Bert and you happen to mention on that episode that you’re kind of done with the massage bit and they’re surfacing the massage bit there as well. On cannabis in tech No, no, no on.

The Google page. So if you as you search Pete homes, it’s. Every day. Yeah, yeah, No, I’m proud to say that the time in my life where I Google myself is over. That is a part of your life as a comedian when you’re beginning.

This is so funny. I wonder why you know it’s interesting. It’s not what you asked, But the massage bit is done. I retired it just because I’m at a place in my career where, for lack of a better, can we swear on this show? But it’s not really swear.

But like Dick jokes, right, I like Dick jokes. I think they’re very, very funny. I just having done you know, five or six specials now where the last joke usually has something to do with sex, I just kind of got it. I wouldn’t say I got it out of my system, but I’ve moved on to other areas where I’m like, can I mind something here? Instead of just going like, yeah, we can get a cheeseburger.

There’s nothing wrong with a cheeseburger. That’s that’s what those kind of jokes are. But like having been to stay with the metaphor a chef for twenty plus years, I just rather cook something else, even though I know everybody loves a cheeseburger. So when I did that joke, So that clip, that YouTube clip is the first time and the only time I did that on stage maybe twice, and it really works. But what’s great about YouTube is you can film it and you can throw it up and it’s not like it was to waste and I don’t have to do it seven hundred times on the road and feel sort of bored with the subject matter.

I want to ask you about the art of putting together a special versus an hour. So again, just a reference bird. Again. He put this in my head about a year ago. I forget who he said it to, and was talking about how in modern times because the TV viewing audience has, you know, some sort of add TV add that comics are moving the closers up to the first third and even sequences being thing.

So as I watched a couple specials this week, Kat Williams came out and did the old school, walked out to music, kind of settled it on the stage, grabbed the water bottle and then went into a set. Taylor does the the fake open, and hey, we’re backstage, and what do you know? The cameras are rolling and now suddenly I’m on stage and I think she’s into a chunk. So for you, what I wrote it down. You open with let’s see if we can laugh at this?

And I won’t touch the material there, but your first words are let’s see if we can laugh at this? So as we hit play on the special, we’re midstream. Yeah, I if I had seen you on tour? Was that the opener? Is that?

Later? I I draw the line at moving my closer up. I don’t think that this is just me. I’m old in comedy in the sense that like the closer works because of what came before it. It’s not just a great joke.

Closers are closers. You shouldn’t put a closer in the first five minutes of a special because it’s the best joke. That’s that’s ridiculous. That’s what they’re kind of doing in action movies and stuff. Let’s have the biggest set piece at the beginning.

But again, I’m forty six. I will cheat that. I’ll cut out what I’m doing to warm up an audience, and that is often bits about doing stand up. It’s bits about like, oh it’s seven o’clock, it’s the early show. Oh I’m kind of this way, I’m blah blah blah.

It seems like kind of handshake bits. I’ll cut those out. And what we did on this special jump to what I would consider still the beginning, but we’re warm, we’ve gotten the hello, how are you out of the way, because I actually think there’s something even more honest about that, because sometimes the early bits do better because there’s still the titillation of the show is starting. So like those opening ones will get a like a thirty percent boost. So we’re cutting all that grab ass and all that sort of overjuiced part, which is the woo.

Nobody needs to see that. We cut that out. I like that trend, but that on my set list was probably like, you know, the third thing I talked about, which is I think it’s Q tips or Mormon face or whatever it is, But like I like, I like what we’re doing with specials, which is like, let’s get to it because stand up isn’t compromised by that, It doesn’t doesn’t hurt the art to just kind of throw you in. You can’t do that live. I have gone out and just been like, hey, can the people that make you take your shoes off before you come to their house just fucking cut it out.

Nobody wants that. I mean, like you can’t you kind of do. But for me, I would much rather the comedian be there, be in the room, be in the city, address what’s going on before, just kind of like going into and doing the album, as we say, but when it’s the album, just do the album now. That makes sense. I had the fortune I got to know Jerry Hamseley was George Carlin’s manager, and he explained to me how Carlin would put together a set and that George would open up with the ratitat tat you ever noticed that, and then go into the long sweeping that he would warm up the audience, but then he had to let them breathe and go into the big statement of this particular hour that George was doing, and then finish up with the rat of tat tat.

So I always look at this stuff analytically. It’s right on and everybody can relate to this like you have a date. The beginning is when the nerves are high. Everybody’s kind of like just sniffing each other’s butts, you know what I mean? Like do that?

Don’t skip that? Like is a good date? Where like they just go like, so tell me your biggest fear? Like, that’s not that’s like a douchebags idea of a good date. You warm up to that.

But then if I’m going to cut a movie and I want to give you the best part of the date, I might cut into so what’s your biggest fear? Like, because that’s a weird thing to say on a date. As the delivery system has evolved, I suspect I know the answer to this one. In your case the specials on the eight hundred pound Gorilla, it will eventually be on YouTube. Is there any thought into pacing for YouTube that let me do eleven minutes here and then take a breath so they can throw in the commercial break so that you know the AD’s not stepping on mid sentence or mid chunk.

I just assume whoever’s doing that is doing an awful job, and it’s terrible. I’ve never I’ve never been like, I can’t think about things like that. I hope this is literally the first time I’ve thought about that. My first special is on Comedy Central, and you did think you had some say you were like, and this will be where the commercial goes. You call it an act break.

This is where the act break is. With this and with all YouTube, I’m just sort of like, God, I hope they have the sense to not put that little fifteen second go daddy ad in the middle of a bit, But I don’t know. I can’t control that. True, nobody asked me to control that. If they did, I would, I would chime in, But like it’s an online streaming service, I’m at their mercy on that one.

Sure, I felt like you were using more swear words early in this special that I’m accustomed to. Is that a conscious choice or am I imagining that? Then once we settled in and you were surfing the room, I felt they were less swears. But it just as I watched it, I was like, oh, interesting, I’m not offended. I just thought it was different.

No, I appreciate that. I think you’re right when I watch it, I noticed that. And what’s interesting about filming a special is you’re watching I’ll go back to the date metaphor, like you’re watching a date right, You’re seeing this exchange of energy and different dates, different crowds respond differently. All I’m doing, and I’ll use any color in my toolkit, is I’m trying to get them to laugh as hard as possible. I really want, I want to be understood, I want to be seen.

That’s in the mix, to just want to delight them and that crowd. I think the majority of the special was the late crowd. That’s not entirely true, but the majority is the late crowd on a Friday night at the Aladdin in Portland. It might have been a Saturday, but I think it was a Friday. So I remember we were starting and like there were seats empty, and my opener, my friend Matt McCarthy, is doing a set, and I’m noticing people are rushing in, like there’s stress in the room, like it’s fucking Friday, it’s late.

We had to find parking, it was hard to get here. I’m feeling that energy. So when you’re very right, when you’re looking at an ingredient like swearing, I would include the volume and the pitch of my voice, like how am I delivering these jokes? It was that night. It was that crowd needed.

That was my interpretation needed. That play called I’m mixing all my metaphors, but that was the play. It’s not because this material needs it. It’s not because that’s how it was every time I did it. It’s because that night I felt you need like, hey, I’m just now another metaphor.

I’m the coach of the team, and for some reason we’re starting the game. We kind of feel like we’re down a little bit, like I can feel your Friday stress a little bit. That’s a completely different play than that you would call on a Saturday at seven or nine o’clock. This felt, you know, every special I’ve ever done the first show, I go, well, that wasn’t it, And then I’m going in hungry for the second hour. We end up always using a lot of the first hour, but I inevitably think it’s worthless the second one.

I’m going in and the vibe the room is big, the energy was whatever. I mean, there were a great crowd, but there was a little chunk in the water. And the swearing is a and the and the way that I’m saying it delivering it, there’s there’s more oration going on. All of that is addressing a certain crackle in the room that I’m like, if I don’t harness this and claim it. Here’s another metaphor.

Like a pilot going on the PA, there’s a little turbulence, you have to get on and you speak in a different way. When there’s turbulence, you’re more calm, you know what I mean, You’re more authoritative. So yeah, I bet I could play you the other three hundred times I’ve done that hour and I might not have said, like do the Q tip. People know what the fuck we’re doing, But like I, I’m a scrapper, I Am not going to do badly on my special. You’re coming with me on this joke?

Would I prefer to be super laid back because, like you said, after I slap them around a little, my hands in my pocket, I come down. I bet you could look at my data, but my heart rate is lower. We’re all eased in. But guess what, everybody sat. Everybody snapped in.

Here’s another metaphor. I’m like a substitute teacher that those first couple minutes, that’s when they’re deciding does this person have our respect? So that’s why the beginning of that set I’m so with you has more fervor to it, and one of the symptoms of fervor. Is me saying fuck more because I’m like, this is happening. We got to do this.

I need you to come with me.

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And then once they’re with me, watch you know, once we get to the Mexico scor…

Yeah. As a watching, I made note of that that once you settled in this wearing kind of went away. Now I come out of talk radio, so everything you’re saying makes sense to me. I always teach my producers. We make a rundown, we make a script, but it’s not a blood oath.

You gotta feel the room. You gotta feel what’s happening with the show. That’s what I is infinitely fascinating about stand up. And I know we have too many podcasts with comedians talking about what’s beautiful about stand up, But I’ve always envied golf and racketball, these games you can play your whole life, you know what I mean, and stand up talking about Carlin imagine being something so compelling as to keep in mind, like George Carlin’s engaged until he died. And that’s why it’s like it’s never the same.

It’s not an album. In a musical sense. It’s way more like jazz. It’s way more like a conversation. And that recording was that night, that mood, that dinner, that night’s rest.

It’s a living thing. Like remember in Sideways, They’re like, you open a bottle of wine, it tastes different than if you had opened it on any other day. That to me is stand up. I’m all over with the metaphors. But I think you understand what I’m saying.

Sure, can I ask the magician? Are we looking at one show or two cut together? I think it is, Yeah, it’s. Two in fact, same night, two shows Mexico. I think is the first time we cut to the first show because that gopher broke tone isn’t always what you want, and you’re like, let’s bring it down, and it’s always nice to have that that variance.

So it’s happened with this special and I’m not for everyone. Every single one of them is two, and every single one of them, I said, except for Nice Try the Devil, I believe that was one, But every single one of them. I said after the show that that was garbage. We couldn’t use a second of that.

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And then it ends up being about thirty forty percent of the special, which is…

You don’t know you have to be humble enough to be like or or feel paid. You don’t have to be humble. I find one way to avoid the suffering of the process is to just go, yeah, I’m wrong all the time, I don’t know what I’m talking about, and listen to great directors like Ricky and my wife who helped edit it this special as well. You mentioned podcasts. You’re one of the ogs.

You might be the og now that Maren gave up. Hey, should we tell maarn he retired five minutes too early? There was Netflix money that was about three weeks away. Bro Oh no, right, Ah. I just saw Mark.

I was crossing the street in La and I saw him and it was he. I think he plays up how much he doesn’t like me question Mark. But he’s certainly like a big brother, like annoyed by my Golden Retriever energy kind of guy. And that’s fine. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

But I again, this is me for the first time, considering that maybe Marin could have been acquired but his wasn’t. Video Yeah, and I guess who knows. Who knows. I won’t put you on the spot here. I could see you on a streaming service and I would absolutely watch that.

I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, we’d do it. I’ve got you a couple of times. I definitely maybe five years ago you opened up Sorry, you hosted New Faces up at Montreal and I’m trying to remember did you do one of the shows? I know Gianmarco Soresi did one of them this year, and I’m like, did I see Pete this summer?

And I’m just getting old and I can’t remember or not, but you definitely did it in the past. I’m trying to remember too, I didn’t do it. I think there was one I didn’t do because I did it two years in a row. And I do to answer the question I think you were about to ask, I do enjoy I sound old, but being with the young people, I think it’s really fun to do what no one in particular did when I did Montreal. And by the way, it turns out a lot of the kids don’t even need this, So it’s more about me feeling like I’m doing something because I noticed that so many of them are way cooler than I ever was.

But The fantasy was do new faces, just to say guys like, we’ve all been here, please please just have fun and I’m here if you want to talk, and some people did. Some people did, but I really just wanted to be like, fuck this, they have a festival. You guys are the real thing. Own it. Own it, You’re why they have the festival, Like you’re the thing.

Don’t let them think they’re the thing. I’m grateful for Montreal, but it’s not the thing. It’s container. The thing is the comedy. That’s the thing.

So I just wanted to, in an appropriate way, blow some wind in their cells and be like, just go do it. This is a victory laugh. Auditioning is when you should be nervous, go out and just fucking be yourself, all that classic stuff. I didn’t do a big speech. I just wanted to say like, if anybody wants to talk, and like these kids were amazing.

I didn’t get the sense that they needed that speech. But then the other thing I wanted to do was just have the tone as the host way more than anything I would say in the green room, just have the tone of like fuck you laugh, like you have to laugh, stop taking notes. This is their dream, like give it up, don’t? Oh is that good? Shut the fuck up?

This is the kid’s future. Give And I think that helped I could be pretty as a warm up comedian. I think I can be pretty insistent in a helpful way because I’m just like sweating, yelling at them, and then comedians who are amazing come out and clean up. That’s a nice you know what I mean. I’m not going out trying to crush, trying to set a nice tone for the whole show.

I’ve talked to other new Faces hosts about that. You. I was explaining my my son came with me one year and this was the one like twenty twenty two in the nice theater, the one with a balcony, and I said, I said, Pete’s throwing at about eighty six here. I’m like, he’s got more. But if he comes out and he does his a material and passes it off to a new bee, that’s a little unfair.

So I’m like, he’s just soft tossing it in there. It’s still that’s all you do. Very funny. Yeah, it’s more about when I every almost everything I’ve done, like when I did my talk show, I went out first and did my own warm up, and I just said, like, guys, no pressure, but this is my dream, you know what I mean. Like we’re filming a pilot to maybe have a talk show, and I’m not trying to freak anybody out, but I’m you know, hey, this is real, this really matters, and please give it up, Please please be generous, and please have fun.

And I had them chant let’s not fuck this up. Let’s not fuck this up. And that honesty and that icebreaker really made a difference. I was trying to do that for those guys, and then look who it was. Now.

The people I’m talking about are Shane Gillis, Jean Marco, you know what I mean. Yeah, it’s an incredible group. So yeah, they didn’t they didn’t need it, it turns out. More coming up with Pete Holmes. His special Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla and it’ll be on YouTube Tuesday, March twenty fourth.

Pete Holmes is on tour right now. He’ll be in LA on March seventh, and you get to ask him about the tour because we went so long. I asked for twenty minutes and I kept him for forty so I didn’t get to ask him about the tour. It’s just curious he’s doing like two dates than taking a break, than doing some others. But let’s see Royal Oaks, Michigan, Tallass, Irving, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin, Denver, During, North Carolina, Charleston, Vancouver, Hey, Vancouver, October, Mike Chisholm, you’re listening Seattle and then Portland, Oregon.

Now interesting to me. He taped this special in Portland. He has taped a previous special in Portland. I didn’t get ask him about that either. I wonder if he’s going to wrap up the Pete Here Now tour by recording another special.

Time will tell. But let’s get back to Pete Holmes. As I watched this special and listen to you with Taylor, I couldn’t quite get a feel for where you are on spirituality or religion these days. You know, I don’t want to go deep here, but just at a top level, are you? Is there a higher power?

Or where are you these days? I? You know, I love that question. I’ll starve by thinking. It’s really hard to talk about these things without while maintaining some sort of felt experience of it, So I’m going to try and do that.

Usually you start getting in your head and all that feeling of connection or whatever goes away. So I’m going to try and keep one foot in each pool. The way that I would phrase it is is what science calls consciousness is what I would call God, meaning we’re talking about the same mystery. So it’s awareness. But the difference with awareness as opposed to like thinking, oh, I believe in God or I don’t believe in God?

Is you right now? John, You’re having the experience of awareness, like you are present and you are aware. So that’s what makes it different from like reading a book like the Bible all respect. I’m just saying reading someone else’s experience. It could be an Indian sage and reading about their experience.

What’s interesting, infinitely interesting about awareness is you’re having that experience right now. So we’re moving outside of the realm of belief and we’re moving into what mysticism is. Mysticism is experiential spirituality. So you’re going, Okay, I am present, I am aware. Meditation or self inquiry is going in and asking yourself what are the qualities of that awareness.

It seems like Pete’s personality. Like, let’s say my thoughts, my thoughts emerge and they recede in what do they emerge and into what do they recede? We could call this consciousness. This is almost you seem interested, by the way I’m just saying for the listeners, this is almost over. We’re looking at that which doesn’t change.

Your thoughts change, your body changes, your feelings change. We might think of awareness like a blue sky and everything else’s weather. So it’s not just oh, I know what the meaning of life is. That’s sort of meaningless. What’s meaningful is going, oh, I’m not who I think I am.

I am the awareness in which everything that I call Pete and everything that I call the world emerges. Now, what are the qualities of that awareness? Well, it’s very peaceful, it’s spacious, it’s empty, it’s quiet. You could also say it’s full of itself. It’s fresh, it’s alive, it’s present.

These are all the attributes human beings would like. And the good news is why they call it good news, is that’s what you are. You’ve just sort of forgotten yourself. Like when you’re looking at a movie, you think you’re looking at a landscape. You’re actually looking at the screen in the same way you think you’re talking to me.

What you’re actually knowing is knowing, and the qualities of that knowing is fresh, alive, peaceful, no matter what’s going on in your life. That’s what in the Bible they call the piece that passes understanding. That’s something greater than oh I have this teacher, or I have this tradition. I’m talking about something that you can tap into an experience on a normal day like today, when you’re dying, when the chips are up, when the chips are down. Spirituality is the exploration of that which does not change.

And I would call that your awareness. That’s where I’m at right now. So we can do that on our own, unorganized. We don’t need a physical building. Absolutely not.

I like churches. I think they’re very cool. If you look at them. A lot of them are very trippy. So churches can be very evocative places.

Reading books can be very evocative. Teachers can be very evocative. But what are they evoking. They’re evoking an experience that’s so familiar to you and I that we’ve overlooked at and why should we recognize it? Because its qualities are the qualities happiness.

You might call it peace, you might call it because it’s what you really are, and that’s what people that are meditating are doing. But it is sort of snuggling with your true self. But when it starts bleeding into your life, you recognize that we’re all, to use a very overused metaphor, we’re all waves in the same ocean. So if I’m a wave and you’re a wave, I’m not going to be mean to you. I’m not going to be cruel to you.

I’m going to be I’m going to love you. I’m going to be concerned for you to I’m going to recognize our shared being. That’s what love is. It’s not just I like Johnny, he asked good questions. It’s actually recognizing that what I fundamentally am and what you fundamentally are is the same awareness.

Because there can only be one infinite, boundless, boundaryless space, so we’re sharing that in the same way that Mario and Mario Brothers is made out of pixels, and so are the clouds, and so are the blocks, and so are the piranhas, and so is bowser. Mario recognizes that whatever his essential nature is must be the essential nature of the whole game, which it is, which ends up at the end of the day being the mind of the programmer. Let’s do some ketamine. I picked up somewhere in one of the things I listened to in the past week getting ready for this. Like many of us, you hit your forty and you just kind of hit that spot of this is who I am.

I hope people like it. If you don’t, I don’t care. And you just seem very comfortable and understanding of who Pete Holmes is in twenty twenty six. Oh yeah, I didn’t know you were saying that about me. Yeah I was.

I’m right there with you the forties. There’s a great surrender to it. I think you know we can try. Obviously, I’m still interested in growth. I still go to therapy, I still accept feedback from friends I need to.

I’m always making an ass of myself. But the great gift of your fourth decade is like, I think I kind of know at least what my patterns are, and I go, oh, there, I am overreacting here. There I am, like I said, jackass, Like I’m a jackass all the time, Like stand up stand up is being a jackass at an allotted time, you know. So I’ve seen the pattern, I’ve seen the strings at the pot A show, and that makes me take it a little less personally while still being interested in improving whatever that means. I’ll head for home.

I want to be respectful of your time. But for the listeners, can you talk about that awesome Chicago comedy series at the turn of the century. I think we’re far enough now, and then I can say the turn of the century. Wow, I mean they were just in the century. There were killers, and you were one of them.

I know. I sometimes am stupefied at you know. I don’t want to Please don’t take this as me puffing myself up. I just noticed that there are certain trends. Bill Gates was seventeen when computers became available, so you remember that phenomenon.

So he was young enough to be porous just when computers were becoming available in schools. Obviously, I’m not saying i’m Bill Gates or at that level. I’m just saying there’s something about time and place, and when you look back in your forties, you go, oh my god, I’m the pro of a time and a place, and that time in that place was Chicago in two thousand and one, two thousand and two thousand and one, and what’s crazy, John Is? I swear I had a sense of it at the time. I said to people, they’re going to write books about this, Like I’m a kind of a mania kind of person, so that’s not entirely out of character for me.

But there was a sense. And Kumil was there when I said that, and he didn’t disagree with me. There was a feeling of like, you know what it was. It was like bad news bears. We weren’t, you know, like nobody cared about Chicago in a sense.

It was the improv city, but here for some reason, the open mic scene was really alive. And Hannibal and Cumale and John Roy, Matt Bronger, I always forget people, but like Matt Bridenstein, just really really good comics all coming together at this one open mic in two thousand and one. And it gets even weirder for me is I was resisting stand up because stand up is rather scary. I had done it maybe five six times. Then I moved to Chicago to do improv because I wanted to be with a group.

I thought that was and it is in a sense more fun. You know, you kind of have five people to either lick your wounds afterwards or celebrate with. It’s more communal. I started getting frustrated with that because I realized I noticed that I was way more committed and driven, Like I knew I wanted to do it for my job, so I wanted to rehearse more. I wanted to do more shows.

I was insatiable. So then I started getting curious about doing stand up again. I’d only taken a couple months off. It wasn’t like I retired, but I every day it was the Irving Park brown Line in Chicago. I would go to work at Bennegan’s restaurant downtown and I would take the Irving Park brown Line.

So I’d walk fifteen minutes to that train stop and I would pass the Lions. Then, which was the open mic, and it just said Monday comedy. It didn’t even say stand up comedy. You didn’t see open mic. It just said Monday comedy.

And I was still so, you know, like every hero’s journey, you’re supposed to resist the call. Like I’m feeling called to do stand up, but I’m resisting it. I’m a little afraid of it. It’s a lot, you know, these smoke filled nightclubs and people talking about their balls, and I didn’t know if I could fit in there, very much like the show Crashing, Like I really was that version of myself, a little doe eyed, kind of sweet, didn’t know what if I could do it. Talking about Nate Bargatsi, he and I had a similar experience in that way.

You walk into these clubs and everybody’s talking about the g spot and you’re just kind of like, golly, like, what am I doing here? My closer’s about RoboCop, you know. But I had to walk by the Lions then every Monday, and one Monday, I remember it wasn’t even a Monday. One day, I just walked in and looked at the stage like talk about putting a toe in, and then I left.

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And then one Monday I went and I watched, which to this day is still my advic…

I’m like, just go to an open mic and watch. Don’t sign up, what are you insane? Don’t sign up the first time you go to an open mic, Just go and watch. Like it’s masochistic to go. I’m gonna go to this crazy thing.

I don’t know what it is, and I’m gonna do it. No, go and watch, don’t sign up. That’s what I did, and I met Robert Ruscemi that night. The next night I did Covey Bear, which was another open mic. I met Kunail He and I became really close, really fast, and then I signed up and did it, and you just see it’s not It’s like driving in Manhattan.

You think the people that drive in Manhattan have to be special people. They’re not. They’re just people who took the wrong exit off the FDR. They’re just They’re just like you. And the people at the open mic are also just people.

They’re just people. They’re just trying. They don’t know. So you’re in good company, don’t be afraid. So then you know, as that scene got better and better, it just it just blew up.

There are so many great comics that had such a huge influence on all of us, and you know, I don’t want to say the rest is history, but like it really kind of baked a certain generation that I will always feel a kinship towards. Yeah, all Stars, you mentioned crashing and I was checking before we jumped on here to see where it’s streaming, and it’s pretty much streaming everywhere except Netflix. So here’s my prediction. At some point that show is going to land on Netflix and it’s you know, we see this with shows like Suits was the big one. This thing that’s been a you could have watched it on some other streaming service like mad Men now right, so everybody was watching mad Mental stuff.

But I feel like at some point, if Crashing gets on Netflix, people are gonna be like, oh my god with this. I had a college student today just in my class I teach, and I was telling them what I was doing later today and she knew about Crashing. I’m like, oh, good, this thing has legs because that was a fantastic. I look, I would love that. Obviously it happened.

I don’t know talk about my forties. It’s not that I’d given up on those things. There was a time when I was a little itchier and I was like, why can’t we get that on whatever? I’m happy it’s on HBO. I had that more for some of my specials, some of my Comedy Central specials.

I was like, if we could just get those acquired by Netflix, more people would see them. I always just got the run around. People were like, they don’t really do that, and I was like, what about Millennia. They did it with Millennia and they’re like, well it’s mullany and I’m like, this is a weird phone call, Like I hate this phone call. So I stopped.

I stopped kind of sniffing around in that way. But then something interesting happened was we’re just doing Silly Silly fun Boy on YouTube, and then my special that was on Netflix because Netflix now leases special so they’ll do it for three or four years. I don’t know, so I Am Not for Everyone, which was my Netflix special, became mine again. So after I don’t know when we’re doing it, but in like a month or so, we’re going to put I Am Not for Everyone on YouTube as well, so when you watch Silly Silly fun Boy, it’ll say, hey, there’s also this. I saw that happen with Nice Try the Devil, so Comedy Central put my full hour on YouTube.

I don’t know how it’s doing it. Like I said, I stopped googling myself, but more people tend to see these things, and at the end of the day, anything that gets something I’ve done in front of people that would like to see it. That makes me, That makes me happy. Yeah. Final question, could you tell me how you say the title of your book?

And the reason I’m asking is there are no commas and there are three different fonts. And I read it one way and I go, that doesn’t sound like Pete and then I read it the other way. But there are no commas. So how do you say the title of that book? I say, comedy sex god.

Okay, I put I. Put in You’re not a comedy sex god. No, I wouldn’t. I don’t do a lot of regrets. I I did consider after we published it, calling it comedy and sex and god.

You know those T shirts you see that say like Bono and Bruno and you know, like their favorites. I said, Bono, I’m old. But that could have been the style doing it again, Like you know, I tinker with another book from time to time. I would do a title that might be a little bit more clearer. That being said, my editor Luke Dempsey really loved the title.

He loved the people would be like, what, like wanted the to use the word itchy again, the itch that picking up the book would solve. It’s like, what does he mean, oh, it’s about these three topics. It’s about comedy, it’s about sex, it’s about God. But he really he was British, so he got a real kick out of the cheekiness of comedy, sex God. Pete Holmes, thank you for your time, my.

Sincere pleasure, John. I really I enjoyed every moment. Thank you for having me. Boy. I love him.

Pete Holmes. His special Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla. Why don’t just support Pete because he was really awesome. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I do. Back in the morning with a normal episode.

Pete Holmes, thank you. Go Asian, African American types of people, races, mermaids, sunken ships, things under an aquarium, things in the sea, things in the ocean. I’m what you used to point at. People on your hand. You might say what a fingerprit said, the.

Obituaries, parts of the newspaper, the ocean, the sky. Things that are blue. You want to take the time, little break Ramen, things he might be eat in a bowl. Let’s get this don

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Featured: Bill Lawrence, Donald Faison, Joel Kim Booster, John C. McGinley, Judy Reyes, Zach Braff

What’s in This Episode

• Scrubs season 10 episode 2 recap and revival analysis
• Bill Lawrence on bringing Scrubs back and evolving comedy with the times
• Medical realism in Scrubs versus other TV shows
• Donald Faison discusses Turk’s emotional struggles in the new series
• JD’s new role as chief of medicine and conflict between Turk and Elliott
• Insurance company healthcare storyline in episode 2
• The Todd character and comedy boundaries in modern television

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Callarogashock Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac with another bonus episode. This is a recap of Scrubs season ten, episode two, my second first day original air date, February twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. It’s been two days since the Scrubs revival and I am still thinking about it all the time. I wrote about it on my substack today link in the notes.

It’s free, you can read it. I just I’m in love with this show. I almost rewatched episodes one and two again last night, and I’m like, yeah, let me wait a couple days, and I wound up just watching wherever I am in my season five rewatch. But boy, I can’t stop thinking about this show.

All right, let’s do a recap, a mix of my memory and the AI.

Hopefully the AI is not hallucinating now in this episode. No John c. McGinley, No Judy Rayis. We’re gonna have to get used to that. That not all the regulars around all the time.

Plenty of articles about it. We’ve learned at mcginley’s in three of the nine episodes. I’m not sure how many Judy Rayis is in as Carla. But the crux of this show is the Big Three and the New Kids. So in the new episode we get a little dynamic of Churk versus Elliott with JD having to make a decision.

The decision is about are we’re going to get a new surgical robot which is super cool or some new simulation thing that I still don’t understand what we were trying to get. JD as chief of Medicine in the old doctor Kelso role, he has to decide. We also get a lot of Joel Kim Booster’s Doctor Park. I didn’t talk about him yesterday, but doctor Park is jealous that JD has gotten the big job and is kind of in the janitor antagonist role on the new show. And we also get into the first plots with the New Kids.

Asher is one of the young doctors. He has a patient, Stanley, who’s on heart medication. However, Stanley hasn’t been taking his medication because medical bills. JD encourages Asher to get on the phone with the insurance company. Interesting to me, I’ve mentioned this before before the pit my wife said Scrubs was the most realistic medical show.

So during this episode, when Asher calls the insurance company and he’s on hold for like hours. My wife said that is the worst that she’s done this serious. Creator Bill Lawrence kind of agrees with my wife. He said, I’m going to give Scrubs a pat on the back until the pit. It’s my favorite show.

I love it. My wife and I’ve been doing promo for it essentially. But you can type on the internet what’s the most realistic portrayal of medicine on television? Scrubs was number one for the last fifteen years, So my wife is on point. Laurence says, I’ll tell you why our medical cases were real.

The reason we did the show initially was because my buddy JD, the real JD s said, I rarely kick open a door, and Neil stat and all the medical shows at the time were like, there’s a bomb in his chest, we need two blood stat He’s gonna die. Real life. JD said, the real stuff was using gallows humor to get through the day and trying not to get torn up emotionally with the stuff you’re dealing with. The real JD. Back in the days when he was an intern, if you got paid to a code and you’re the first intern there, you had to run it, and on his first day of work, you got page two code and he hid in the closet.

We put that in the pilot of Scrubs, and that felt very familiar to the medical community, the fear of treating someone. Laurence says. This year, there’s a story that was taking from one of the doctor’s residencies of a family that didn’t want to come into the r and stayed out in the parking lot, hoping it would get better because they knew that once they got into the er, whatever savings they had would be decimated, and unfortunately someone passed away in the parking lot. That’s just a true Lifted story. As for the main dilemma, Turk is getting excited about he surgical robot.

His department is getting Turk and the team starts celebrating. Elliott shows up and she’s mad because it looks like JD has picked Turk over Elliott. She says, this isn’t just about the robot, it’s about the divorce. She feels like Turk took sides in the divorce and has been avoiding her. That leads to a nice scene between those two who really weren’t paired up all that much.

In the original series, and we see that they are indeed friends. JD has to make the call, are we getting the robot or are we getting whatever Elliott wants. He did pick what Turk wants and the reasoning, much like doctor Kelso, it’s better for the business of the hospital. We all become what we hate, right, We’ll come back. And there’s more from the Bill Lawrence interview in Deadline.

He talked about why to bring Scrubs back now. Deadline has a very good interview with Serious creator Bill Lawrence, very interesting. They were curious why to bring the showback. Deadline says, not all shows age well. Bill said, yeah, time’s change.

I’m not afraid of this because people that whine about, oh, it’s hard to do comedy now, I think you have to evolve with the zeitgeist of the time. I think that’s one of the things that makes comedy fun. I think funny always wins, and if you’re going to be dangerous, you got to be careful and make sure it’s funny. There was some I think it was in episode two, some fantastic the Todd moments, and as I’ve been saying since I got on the Scrubs, kick a week ago. Yeah, have to understand what the Todd is.

I’ve said this twenty five years ago. We weren’t like, Hey, that guy at the Todd he’s really cool. I like the way he harasses all the female staffers. We knew what it was, but it can still be funny. They’re all basically that’s what she he said jokes.

He’s a cartoon character. It’s fun Bill Lauren said, the one thing that held up from the original Scrubs is the humanity and the feeling that all these people in the teaching hospital were doing it because they were trying to be of service. The one thing that was canon was the medical advisors all said, you can’t make fun of the patients, and you have to show people that are actually sacrificing their lives to try and do good. But yeah, the comedy winds up with the actual show. In real life, interns and residents aren’t nearly as abused and treated the way they were back in those times.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t still stressed out, and doesn’t mean that they don’t still burn out, but times have changed in the medical world. Donald Faison talked about Turk’s storyline. We’ve seen at times a moody Turk In the new series, Donald Faison said, Turk is stuck. Before it was great to be stuck with your best friend because you guys could play after work and do so many great things. But his best friend’s gone and he’s stuck still.

How does he combat that? How do you combat doing the same stuff over and over again and losing patients? Sometimes there’s a win, sometimes there isn’t, and you don’t have anyone to share it with, someone to laugh about it with. It breaks him down. Even though he holds a brave face for the hospital, his wife and kids.

It breaks him down. Nian doesn’t want to talk about it. JD shows up and acts like everything’s normal again. It’s like, no, no, no, no, we got history, bro. We got to fix first before all that happens.

Faison said, I studied that scene for about a month and a half because I really wanted it to work. Bill Lawrence ads one of the few things that people loved about the early shows is a portrayal of a very non toxic, emotionally open male friendship, and a lot of that involved the joyful, childish exuberance of Turk and JD and fantasies and a voiceover monologue. The thing that convinced us we could still do it is Zach MacDonald’s Super Bowl commercials or their podcast. You can see their friendship as authentic. They still behave like they’re twelve years old when they’re together, and you can still be the people that are patriarchs of their families and directing movies and running businesses and stuff.

So we were like, what a cool thing to hold onto from the old show. Faison said, in real life we are man children. But let’s be honest, I do have to prevent my kids. Scrubs season ten loving it. If you haven’t watched it, check it out on the DVRs and on Hulu.

It’s a separate series. They have it posted as season one. We’re all calling it season ten, but for whatever legal reasons, behind the scenes writes and all that, it is Scrubs season one. Set your DVRs appropriately all right, back in the morning, Pete Holmes, it’s in the can. It exists forty minutes with Pete Holmes.

He was fantastic. It’s one of my favorite episodes I’ve ever done. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Catch you here tomorrow.

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Featured: Chris Fleming, Conan O’Brien, Taylor Tomlinson, Pete Holmes, Mark Normand

What’s in This Episode

• Chris Fleming HBO special ‘Live at the Palace’ premiering Friday night
• Conan O’Brien preparing to host the 2026 Oscars
• Conan on why Trump is unfunny and hard to parody
• Taylor Tomlinson ‘Prodigal Daughter’ special and Hollywood Reporter cover story
• Comedy Stock Market buy recommendation for Mark Normand

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, once again, I’m Shredger’s surer, Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence. The algorithm loves am I on jury duty that even survive long enough to see the Scrubs reunion? Who knows?

Hopefully you tune in tomorrow and my guest is Pete Holmes. If there’s no episode at all, uh oh, who knows what even happened? But while we’re all still together, Tonight on HBO, Chris Fleming Live at the Palace Chris, maybe off your radar. I like Chris a lot, but I will warn you this is not guy in front of a brick wall stuff. This is out there and I love it.

Chris Fleming Live at the Palace Well premiere at ten East and West tonight. But the knicks are on, man, So I’m not getting to this until Saturday. I need to catch up on my comedy specials. Boy, I got to dig in, I silliv and watch Cat or Tailor yet, And it seems that Friday night is becoming the night for the for lack of a better word, the weird stuff. This is when you put on the Chris Flemings and the Sarah Shermans.

This isn’t I don’t know, Mark Maron in front of a brick wall. This is the quirky stuff. Chris Fleming Live at the Palace, Filmed at the Cadillac Palace Theater in Chicago. Chris Fleming bounds across the stage, good description, sharing his takes on masculinity, Congo lines, Trader Joe’s oreos, NPR, dog Breeds and more. You’ll see, trust me tune in.

Fleming said, I hereby decream my first HBO special will soon be available for you to consume. Please enjoy and feel free to dance along. Thank you and thank you HBO. Conan O’Brien is getting ready to host the Oscars. What’s today the twenty seventh?

There, we’re two weeks out from Conan O’Brien hosting the Oscars. Conan, have you started writing and rehearsing for the Oscars? Is a question you would ask Conan if you were with The New Yorker, and Conan would answer it saying something like, yeah, I started writing a while ago. Ideas are like RAF pilots in nineteen forty. You have to generate a lot of them, a lot of them fall by the wayside, and then some duor so.

We’ve been going for a while. We’ve got a great writer’s room, and I’ve already started going to clubs to try out material, which is really fun. It’s good to keep you in shape and get you ready. Apparently Conan doesn’t do Apple Fitness Plus like I sometimes do. Because if Conan did, and he did a cycling class with Tye, ty would tell him you stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready.

Write that down Conan. The New Yorker asked Conan, Hey, where does politics play a role in that kind of night? Conan said, it’s tricky. I’ve done political comedy over the years. Certainly, I’ve done two White House Correspondents dinners on Late Night.

We used to do lots of political comedy. We do it on the TBS show as well. It’s never been in the front of my comedy brain. I don’t think it’s what drives me. I, for better or worse, have a brain that scrambles things, loves cartoon imagery, and probably is influenced by old movies or literature.

As I am by Frankly Warner Brothers cartoons, and it all gets mixed around in my head. It’s very impulsive. I don’t know where my sense of humor comes from, but I know that when I do political comedy or make a political joke, it has to really resonate with me. And I can’t tell you what that is, but it has to feel true to my comedic voice, or it feels hollow. Hey Cony asked The New Yorker, does Trump feel funny to you anymore?

Conan said no. I mean, I’ve talked a little about this, and I’ve said I think he’s bad for comedy. Years ago, when I was at Harvard and working on the Lampoon, we’d try and think of magazines we could do a parody of. There was one magazine we always knew we couldn’t parody, which was The National Inquirer. If a magazine has as its cover Elvis Still Live, Mary’s Alien and they have a baby that’s a three speed blender, if that’s what the real magazine’s coming out with, you can’t do a comedic take on that.

It’s very difficult, or I think I’m possible to do. I do think Trump, if he were a magazine. It’s the National Inquirer. There’s a lot that’s so bombastic and outrageous and so unprecedented that how do you do. Oh, I’ve got a great Trump oppression.

I have him saying this, Well, that’s not crazier than what happened yesterday. So I don’t know how this is funny? Does that make sense? Send your letters to Conan O’Brien. The conversation turned to things like SNL or John Stewart or Trevor Noah.

Conan said, no, that’s a different thing. There are comedians and when they talk about Trump quickly get very angry. And I’ve said this before, but I think it’s possible to surrender your best weapon. Your best weapon is to be funny. And if it involves in a name calling, I mean, I’m all for people trying.

And when there’s a really good joke about the president or the administration, if there’s a joke about the right left and it’s a good one, I’m elated. I just think of the current climate. Things have gotten so stretched out. Think about that Dolly melted watch that it’s hard to find purchase. The New York here was curious, when does the network get involved.

That’s a great question, Conan said, there’s always some issues. I’ve been dealing with networks for most of my life, so they’ll be stuff and that’s when you roll up your sleeves and you start arguing. Back the New York he was curious, so you win, Conan said, yeah, oh yeah, you can win. You can also lose. Certainly, there are rules about what could be said and what can’t be said.

The Academy is rules. I mean, everyone has rules. And I love this. You explain this. This is so great, Conan said, once you’ve leted in New York for a period of time, you come to this awareness that, oh, everything ultimately isn’t your co op.

They have their rules. You could say, hey, but on this other award show, I got to do this. Let’s say I’m living and I’m making this up. I’m living at one seventy two West eighty ninth Street, and they’ll say this is the Drake Building and you live here at the Drake Building. Yeah, I do.

What I’d like to do is put in my kitchen window. No no, no, no, we don’t let people alter the windows here at Drake. And you’ll say, well, okay, it’s funny because when I lived over at the Malcolmore and they’ll say, yeah, we know that’s the Malkilmore. I’ll say, well, I once did the People’s Choice Awards and they’ll say, oh, we know that’s the People’s Choice Awards. They don’t have standards.

Their windows and their kitchens are hard. Good stuff. I have to listen to. That’s a full podcast on the New Yorker. I think it’s called The New York or Radio Hour.

Have it in my I seriously have two hundred hours of podcast queed up because of the snow. I had a shuffle for two hours on Monday. I had to shuffle again on Wednesday, just nightmare. Taylor Solinson got the wax Job cover story out of the Hollywood Reporter. Now, I found it odd that the cover story came out Wednesday instead of Tuesday, which is when her special came out, because usually those things are at the same time, neither here nor there.

I just found the timing interesting. Like all Hollywood Reporter cover stories, it was very favorable and they wrote it’s not hyperbole to call Taylor Thomson a wonder kin. In her twenty she became a top grossing touring stand up, was tapped to host a late night’s show, and developed her own material more than plenty of her peers will over a lifetime. She started at age sixteen and told THHR Now I’m thirty two and I’ve been doing this half my life. It’s crazy to think about.

They asked her, there’s a moment early on in Prodigal Daughter where you say your team was nervous about you leaning too foreign to religious material. What’s the deal there, Taylor said, my team has never given me notes creatively, so that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. When we’re doing like the tour name Save Me, and they arn’t work for the tour where I’m wearing crosses and stuff, I think they were just like, well, Cake, we make it clear to people that it’s not all that and that we’re not just bashing religion the whole time, and we’re not. But I understand once they saw the hour, they got it. Their job is to think of it more like from a marketing perspective, so they were doing their jobs.

If you go back and watch my other specials, all of my jokes about religion are coming from a very wounded place because of the way I grew up a lot of resentment towards a lot of things that I was told and taught growing up in church. I had to work through a lot of that. She talked about her first sets at age sixteen, a lot of jokes about going to prom and being a loser and feeling ugly, and observational stuff about my family. Obviously I had no life experience. A lot of the jokes I were doing was apologizing for how young I was, because I could feel it was making people nervous for me in the audience, which I think is completely I’d be nervous if a sixteen year old god in stage was like, I’m a comedian.

I think I was pretty self aware and maybe that was a strength of mind back then, but obviously I was not good. People always ask about starting in churches because it’s a weird Oargin story, and for years I was embarrassed of it. Part of the growth in this new hour is me talking about a way as grateful and appreciative as opposed to ashamed and embarrassed. There is a lot more there. You can read it in the Holodaporter.

I’m gonna hold on to some of it for next week. In case I find myself on the OJ trial and need to pre tape a lot of these episodes. I’ll tell you, though, as somebody who does this every day, it is better to have too much content than not enough content. I can assure you of that. Earlier in the week, I thought this was fun.

Drewski went to Indianapolis, where he caught up with Mike Epps, who suddenly is in the news three times a week after never being in the news. I don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe Mike EPP’s got new pr people they were hosting auditions for It Could Have Been Records. Drewski’s Could Have Been Records is a popular comedy music label parody series, sometimes featuring celebrity guests, say Mike Apps. Drewski plays a record exec where auditions aspiring singers, rappers, and dancers, and even quote unquote signs some of them to the label.

That’s a good Time. Tonight’s in Tampa. Sam Morrill will be taping his new comedy special That’s at the Tampa Theater. The Netflix comedy lineup all of a sudden got a lot clearer. They made a few announcements.

Derek Stroup will have his first full length special, Nostalgic, which is produced by Nate Pergatzy’s Nateland Entertainment that’ll be out Tuesday, March tenth. In Nostalgic, Derek Stroup dives into his experience being a nineties kid in rural Alabama and everything that comes along with it, from partying with friends to board games and printal relationships. The special was taped at the Lyric Theater in Birmingham, Alabama. We’re told while Stroop is indeed a waffle house enthusiast, he’s not your average slow talking Southerner, known for his detailed stories and over the top energy with the cadence of an angry auctioneer. He’s set to make his third appearance next month on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, and he’s also in that Nate Brighatzy movie The Breadwinner.

You know that the why that I think Kevin James must have turned down? So that’s more tenth than hey. The next week, Mark Norman, He’s got a special yeah titled None Too Pleased Mark Norman March seventeenth on Netflix. In None Too Pleased, Mark Norman turns married life, fatherhood, and hot button topics into rapid fire punches in this witty free for all where nothing is off limits. Yeah, Norman has a good joke in the trailer, which is here in the copy.

I went to pull the trailer, but it’s naughty. It’s too naughty for this. But the good opening joke there is Mark Norman say, I actually got caught going to strip club recently by my wife. I don’t know how she caught me. I only talked about it on four podcasts Comedy stock Market.

Thank you, Bert Reynolds, Voice of the Comedy stock Market. If you’re a new listener, every Friday, I give give you some recommendations for buying and selling stock in comedians. Now, the premise here is we’re not saying someone is good or bad. We’re looking for the value. Just like in the actual stock market, you try and buy low, sell high.

That’s what we’re trying to do here now this week, you know, for all my curmudgeony negativity, I’ve got six buy recommendations and no sells. What got into me this week? Is it the jury duty? Is it because Scrubs is back? Who even knows?

Here are the recommendations. Let’s buy some Conan O’Brien. Now, John, everybody knows about Conan O’Brien, I know, but nobody’s been thinking about Conan O’Brien, and the oscars will suddenly sneak up on people and Conan is going to crush it. So let’s buy some Conan O’Brien. Let’s buy some Pete Holmes because he did this show.

I think hopefully, hopefully he recorded it yesterday and you will hear it tomorrow. You’ll find out tomorrow what happened. Let’s buy some Pete Holmes. Let’s buy some Chris Fleming. Chris Fleming on HBO tonight.

I’ve got a good feeling about this one. But Chris is a little out there, just warning everybody. We gotta buy some Max Amini. Remember that guy. That’s the guy that I saw was selling out the garden and I was like, who’s that.

Well. In the last week Friend of the Show, Jason Zenneman for The New York Times wrote a big piece about Maximedi that I think was subheadline something like the biggest comedian You’ve never heard of, something like that. I’ve had to kick that a couple times this week. I have it in the script right now for Monday, and then like a day or two after Zennemann wrote about it, Deadline wrote about Maximini. So there’s something in the air, and Max’s people are getting the word out that he’s getting a time at bat.

So let’s buy some Maximini before everybody else figures it out. Although apparently a lot of people other than me have figured it out because he’s selling out the Garden without me mentioning him. Let’s buy some Mark Norman. Yeah. Norman is a really solid comedian.

He hangs out with the cool kids. He’ll have a Netflix thing, which means Rogan will have him on. I mean, Rogan has him on all the time. But I feel like Mark Norman’s been in the on deck circle for next up for quite some times. So let’s load up on Mark Norman.

I got a feeling this Netflix special will push him into the mainstream. And I didn’t originally have this one, but I just added it only I kind of liked that story. I just told you about Derek Stroop, and I’m like, all right, the Nate Berghetzi thing, Yeah, okay, so let’s buy some Derek Stroop. So that’s your comedy stock market for this Week by Conan, by Pete Holmes, by Chris Fleming, by Maximini, by Mark Norman, by Derek Stroop, No sells this week. Look at Johnny Mac being all positive.

You know what else Johnny Mac did? He didn’t put any stories in the second half of his script. There’s supposed to be another storier here too, because we do comedy stock Market and then we do other things. What are you gonna do now, John? I guess I could pull something out of the Saturday script, especially if hopefully that’s going to be Pete Holmes got this whole Robbie Hoffman thing that’s too long.

Do I have anything quick in here? And I can tell you I have a Jim Brewer story, but my voice is too shot to get into that. How about Jackie Kasan? She caught up with the Shepherd Express. She said, while growing up, I wanted to act.

I think I certainly played a lot of What If FONSI was on the Starship Enterprise and acted out all the parts. I vaguely remember answering that I wanted to be a lawyer, or teacher or forest ranger. When asked, I went to U. W. Madison and there was a comedy club we went to it went to the open mic three weeks after seeing the show, and I was hooked.

She then told the story I told the other day about heckling Sam Kinneson. As for comedy right now, she says, it’s crazy out in the world, and there’s two kinds of comedy I like seeing now. One very open about the things we’re all living through, mostly to relieve the pressure, and it make people know that they aren’t alone or crazy. The other is just normal driving, family, food and relationship material, which is just the kind of fun comedy that you can just keep writing no matter what the situation. She’s got that new special out this week, Altercation, so there’s plenty for you to watch watch Jackie Caason, Pete Holmes, Taylor Tomlinson.

If there was one other this week, what’s the other one? I don’t know. My brain is full. Okay, Now, hopefully tomorrow you tune in and Pete Holmes is the guest. If Pete Holmes is not the guest, that meant I have jury duty.

If there’s no episode at all, that means something horrible happened. So come back in the morning and we’ll all find out together, What the hell happened, See you then,

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Featured: Bill Lawrence, Zach Braff, Donald Faison, John C. McGinley, Vanessa Bayer

What’s in This Episode

• Scrubs Season 10 Episode 1 recap and cold open breakdown
• JD and Elliott’s divorce storyline and creative reasoning
• Doctor Cox’s role in the new season and potential health storyline
• Introduction of new intern characters in Scrubs revival
• JD’s transition to Chief of Medicine position

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caalarocashock Media. Hey bonus episode. I’m Johnny Mac and this is a recap of Scrubs Season ten, episode one, my return. Original air date February twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. I just needed to get on Mike today.

Sometimes I just do a show for me, and this is one of those. Boy, am I happy? I watched that show last night, and I was so happy that Scrubs landed properly. So many things that I love, specifically Star Trek, have gotten ruined in modern times, and that Scrubs came back and felt like Scrubs and made me laugh and gave me the feels. Oh my goodness, so fantastic.

So if you haven’t watched yet, bail out of this episode because we’re gonna break it down as a recap here seen by seeing him doing this from a combination of memory and AI, and I’m hoping the AI isn’t hallucinating spoilers. We open up with a cold open. It’s a prestige medical drama fake out, perhaps kind of sort of like the Pit. The coloring is a little different. It’s blue, gray, handhaild cameras, tight lens, no music, a Gurney slams through the er doors.

Doctors are speaking in clipped jargon, BP crashing and get me a line, and we see JD in the center of the frame. He’s calm focused, completely different body language from classic JD. It’s like we’re in the pit, except it’s JD.

And then cut suddenly we’re in a luxury apartment.

JD is in concierge medicine. He’s checking a rich guy’s pulse. The guy asked if kombucha counts us water onto the title sequence. It’s a lot like the original. The music is back, we see the new interns, and then last is JD, who doesn’t hang up at X ray puts it on some sort of electronic skinner thing.

Creator Bill Lawrence spoke with Deadline. He said the new season is conceived as if the original series ended with season eight. Okay, so we’re just gonna hand wave there is no season nine. Don’t ask any questions. It just want we meet up with the old folks.

Turk is stuck in a rut, Doctor Cox is doing his tough love thing. But you know, times change in these kids today, there’s a new annoying hr rep played by Vanessa buyer, who I think is gonna get old real fast if they don’t modify that character. Elliott is there. She heads the simulation lab now out to the parking lot for the first scene. It’s the same physical geography as the pilot episode, but JD is walking slower.

Nobody recognize him. We check in with Carla. She’s at the nurses station. She appears to be some sort of boss. Now he runs into Turk in the hallway.

They scream like children, JD Churk and they decide to do the eagle thing. That’s where JD jumps on Turk’s back. They make a couple steps, they collapse in a heat. Turk has a bad back. Now we’re all fifty years old.

He’s excited to see JD.

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And then the big reveal spoilers.

We run into Elliott. We find out that they are divorced. We find out that she ended it. Bill Lawrence talked about the divorce. He said, here’s the scoop.

The eighth year of Scrubs ends with just once, I’d like to believe my dreams came true. We all felt that way to be dark about the world. But even though I’m very grateful about how my life is gone. Not everything works out the way you want to work it out of a huge believer in writing what you know and what you see. Our show runner is someone that when I left Scrubs was married and having a young child and now is a single parent co raising that child with somebody.

That doesn’t mean it’s acrimonious, and that doesn’t mean that it’s his own journey. I’m sure you have that same experience. Some people in your lives work out, some don’t. Bill said, I was really resistant at first, and the one things these guys all drove home to me, They’re like, if you watch the nine thousand episodes of Scrubs, you would say Turk and Carla are gonna make it, and then you would say, I don’t think j D and Elliott have had more than an episode and a half that they seem like a functioning couple. So it’s a good storytelling device.

Doesn’t mean their story’s over, but it’s certainly something that adults have to navigate all the time. Zach braftag Danny said, what JDC’s projected on the sheet at the end of season eight again ignore season nine, is what he hopes and dreams will happen, but that doesn’t necessarily come true, especially when you’re fifty years old. Things that you want to happen happen. Some marriages fail, some don’t. You have the contrast with Turk and Carl where they’re as happily married as ever, compared to us who are learning how to copare it and eventually work together.

So I think that was a good way of showing a wide array of how marriages can turn out in midlife. On to meet the new characters. Now, I kind of like the new characters. I mean, I’m not in love with them, but I didn’t hate them, which for me says a lot. I was ready to not like them.

I think Star Trek has done a lot of damage to my brain. But they’re all fine. And one of the things I’m really enjoying about the show, and I said to my wife as we watched it, it puts the characters twenty five years later or twenty years later, you know we’ve all changed. One thing you learn as you get older is you can’t put the band back together. You can maybe get together for dinner every now and then for one night, but you just can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

People change things move on anyway. We meet the interns and then in walks my personal hero, doctor Cox. He’s older, his voice isn’t as strong as it was. I don’t know if that is how McGinley sounds now or if that was a choice it did. Keep noticing it.

JD thinks he can’t call me nuby and doctor Cox now calls him, which got a chuckle out of me a few times. As viewers, we can tell that doctor Cox is setting up JD for success. He kind of manipulates JD into watching over the terrans for a couple of minutes. There’s a thing with a patient. We see JD come in, takes over.

He’s very confident, he’s a veteran doctor.

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And then the big twist at the end of the episode, it’s Cox and JD.

Cox gets very serious. This is John McGinley dropping the guff doctor Cox character. He invites JD to come back. JD mentions as he’s excited to work with doctor Cox. Doctor Cox says, you’re not going to be working with me.

You’re going to replace me, and he offers JD the job of chief of Medicine. Now it might brain I don’t know how that works. Like in the Chief of Medicine, it’s not the monarchy just to point the next guy. But maybe we’re gonna learn that Jordan is still on the board. Anyway, doesn’t matter, it moves the plot along.

JD accepts he is now the Chief of Medicine, so he is now in the role that doctor Kelso was in twenty five years ago and Doctor Cox was in towards the end of the original series. Doctor Cox seems kind of worn down by these kids today and he says a line, I’m tired. I’ll talk about that in the second half. What that might mean. Doctor Cox says, I feel like this particular time has passed me by.

Let me take a quick break and I’ll talk a little bit about John C. Mcginley’s Doctor Cox. Now, unfortunately McGinley is only in two more episodes. He’s not in episode two, so it seems like he really is not in the show all that much. I thought they were just going to do the dynamic where he was JD’s boss, but it seems like they’re going for something else.

And as I read the interviews spoilers, it seems like there might be something with doctor Cox’s health now. Deadline asked McGinley. Is doctor Cox a relic? How does his character fit into today’s world. McGinley said, I think people who understand fatigue and being exhausted will understand doctor Cox’s dilemma.

I think he accomplished everything he set out to accomplish, and he’s ready to move on. Bill Lauren said, the showrunner when they came to me with their idea was it’d be cool to see these students teachers now, and to do that, you need somebody to take doctor Cox’s role. Then to do that, it was really important to see JD maybe entered a little bit of cush your life, because when you work at a teaching hospital, you’re there because you’re being of service. There’s no other side to it. But even then we knew that meant in the opening of the show, JD had a step onto the mantle of you need to be there for these kids.

What I was to you, Lawrence says, Doctor Cox is a huge character on the show. He comes back at the end of the year and will continue on next year. Now that’s interesting is Lawrence telling us that this show has secretly been picked up for season two. I’ve been assuming that they would do one of those day one. Oh my god, the ratings were so big that it’s immediately coming back.

So it looks like Bill Lawrence knows that this will be back, which is great now possible major spoiler here. McGinley said, I’ll come back to the hospital in a profoundly different capacity. Deadline said, I hope doctor Cox is not dying. McGinley said, we all die. Nellie, yikes, can you imagine.

Don’t do that to me. Don’t just don’t do that to me. I can’t handle that. Zach, how do you feel about JD being the new Doctor Cox? Zach brav said, I think one of the things you see in the pilot is that JD hasn’t been a teacher in years, but you can see how good he is at it, how much you miss is it.

Whereas Cox is such a tough love kind of teacher that doesn’t really work, and as we learn from researching, isn’t not really in a loud anymore, and he sort of burned out. He’s like a dinosaur.

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And then he clocks JD helping the interns and being able to actually speak to…

I’m too old. The line is they need someone to do for them what I did for you, and I think that’s one of the main themes of the first season. Plenty more to unpack. I’ll do another one of these tomorrow, but Johnny Mac is thrilled that Scrubs is back. If you haven’t checked it out, please do make sure you set the DVR.

This is technically season one according to YouTube TV, so if you go to record Scrubs, make sure you’re not recording old Scrubs and you record the new one. But great to have the show back. So happy. I know I’m rambling today, but I’m so excited about this again. We’ll do another one of these tomorrow, back in the morning with a normal episode by

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Featured: Tim Dillon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, John Mellencamp, Michael Ian Black, Conan

What’s in This Episode

• Late night comedians react to Trump State of the Union address
• Bill Maher announces he will not tour due to political anger and assassination concerns
• Bill Maher criticizes State of the Union as performative and misleading about presidential power
• Scrubs revival premiere and uncertainty about host’s jury duty
• USA men’s hockey team gold medal win controversy
• Houston House of Blues books conservative comedy show sparking social media backlash

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Schrodinger. Sure, Johnny Mac It’s face. Daily Comedy News, a daily briefing on stand up comedy comedians on the comedy industry. A sentence that the algorithm loves.

So I don’t know if I have Jerry duty or not. So I’m taping Thursday and Friday back to back. Today is political. If you don’t like politics, you can skip today. I’ll remind you yesterday I did like five minutes on John Mulaney beer.

Okay, but today we are serious because it was the State of the Union. I like this thing Tim Dillon posted on Facebook prior to the State of the Union. Here’s how Tim envisioned it going. I think this is brilliant. Trump points to Eric Kirk, who seated in the balcony.

She stands up and takes out a mike. She begins to sing a song no one understands. Trump is swaying to the beat. He says she’s top notch. Then Trump says, we bombed a round five minutes ago.

Eric is now singing louder and the words don’t make any Since Trump reprimands her, it says he doesn’t you got to build on the chorus. Then Jeffrey Epstein and Julaane Maxwell stand up a mix of cheers and booze. Trump says, you too have caused me a lot of trouble. They both laugh. Aoc rolls her eyes, a Dominatrix quawk, shirtless, Lindsey grahmman on a leash.

Graham Yell’s death is the one true God. Erica Kirk is now scream singing to the point where everyone is uncomfortable. Trump is shaking his head, saying she’s blowing at big time. Then Trump brings in the little kid from the last State of the Union, saying he’s in ice now, and everyone cheers pretty much. If you’ve never listened to Tim Dylan, that’s what Tim does on the late night shows, Jimmy Kimmel said of the State of the Union, UoN was angry, right, It was an angry speech.

The theme of the speech was all foreigners are murderers. Trump said zero illegal aliens had been allowed in the United States on his watch, but the door’s always open to those who come in to be his next wife. So that’s something Jimmy Kimmel continued, And you can send your letters to Jimmy Kimmel, we have a nut job want to be king who’s doing everything he can sense her opinions he doesn’t want to hear. He has his goons arresting, of course, and killing American citizens. He’s got funding for cancer research and children’s hospitals.

He’s gut funding for cancer research and children’s hospitals while he breaks in literally billions of dollars for himself and his family. He’s protecting pedophiles and won’t explain it. He’s lining the pockets of billionaires, all while neglecting the sick, the poor, the hungary. In the name of Jesus. By the way, you can read all about in a Donald Trump edition of the God Bless the USA Bible.

It is made in China and available for ninety nine ninety nine. That is the state of the Union. Kimmel added, the speech went on so long Christy Nomes’s dog shot himself. Stephen Colbert was live after the show. He joked that he dropped an edible and strapped in.

Colbert described the state of the Union as according to Trump’s team, the official theme of the speech was America at two fifty strong, prosperous and respected, though, if you have to say you’re strong, prosperous, or and respected, it kind of feels like you’re not. Colbert noted Trump looked a little tired, but his hair was nice and fluffy. Yet did you notice that as the President was walking in it was kind of uh, kind of could have used a brush, Colbert said, Personally, I think he could have kept his head in the cotton candy machine a little bit longer. Jimmy Fallon with his Biting Edge commentary noted that Trump’s speech focused on his major accomplishments, and when those eight seconds were up, he just riffed for an hour and a half. Wow, even Fallon getting in on the president of the United States.

Falon said, And if you didn’t want to watch Trump, there was an alternative State of the Union with bad Bunny instead. Yeah. Trump walked into the Capitol where he saw members of the House, Senate, and Supreme Court and was like, oh crap, is this an intervention? Second joke. Trump was greeted by the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and he said, wow, everyone, I ate in one room.

Amazing. Fallon said, it was basically two hours of Trump telling us how great he is. I feel like we’ve been getting that State of the Union address every day since he took office. You know who to send your letters to. Tomorrow’s fun.

Okay, I’m taping back to back. No politics tomorrow, actually a little politics. They asked Conan about politics. That’s tomorrow. I’m shroudingers Drewer.

Did I survive to see Scrubs last night? Who knows? None of us know? I pretape this at what time? Is it?

One thirteen in the afternoon? Hopefully I made it to eight o’clock? Who knows? Is Friday the last episode ever? Did I like Scrubs?

Am I on a jury? Who knows? If everything goes according to plans, Saturday’s episode will be guessed Pete Holmes unless the United States District Court decides they would rather me talk to them than talk to Pete Holmes and will feel very bad if I have to cancel on Pete Holmes. So let’s hope you tune in Saturday and hear Pete Holmes, at which point you would know I lived long enough to see Scrubs come back. I digress.

Did you see the USA men’s hockey team gold winners beat those Canadians? Making the people up in Moose Antler’s British Columbia. Pretty sad the USA, USA, USA, the hockey team came by the State of the Union. Michael ian Black on social media posted one day at least some of these hockey players will have to explain to their children why they allowed themselves to be used by a fascist. Bill Maher jokingly called for the end of the State of the Union this on last week’s A Real Time mar said, nothing has misled the American people to the warp belief that the president can act like a king more than this stupid, boring performative after dinner speech from hell, with members of Congress lining the aisle like medieval peasants hoping to touch the royal garments.

Then he proceeds to tell Congress what he wants them to do, making it look like the president’s in charge of everything and it’s he who sets the agenda. But that’s not what it says in the opening manual, you know the Constitution. Bill Maher said that he will not tours a stand up. The seventy year old is concerned about the political anger out there and worried he might get quote unquote assassinated due to the political climate. On The Club Random podcast February twenty third, while talking to guest John Mellencamp, Mars said, I never wanted to make an announcement because maybe I’ll go back, but it doesn’t seem like it now.

First of all, I wouldn’t want to be on the road right now. I feel like I got off the road at a very good time. There’s just so much political anger out there. I could get shot from either side. They could get together and have a joint assassination.

You know, they all have a reason to get me. I mean, I just want to want to be out there in the atmosphere we live in today. I mean, it’s just chippy out there. Later in the podcast, Bill Maher said he fears Democrats less than Republicans. Despite being unhappy with the Democrats, mar said, Yeah, there’s a certain wook part of this country that hates me that refuse to just let them get away with insanity that they never used to try before and never used to say things like that before.

But in general I find them of the Democrats less alarming than the Republicans and the Conservatives who don’t believe in con seating elections. Lots of other basic democratic stuff. But yes, I think both sides have to be called out. Bill wanted you to notice he was criticizing both parties and said, and I live in Hollywood. This town does not believe that.

They do not believe in calling out both sides. A little kerf fluffel in Houston, The House of Blues in Houston booked a show called The Right Side of Comedy. It’s not until June twelfth. The Right Side of Comedy would feature three conservative comics. People on social media are sad.

One person posted on Instagram hosting this is so embarrassing. The marketing for the show is aimed at conservatives. They’re calling it the Gulf of America tour. Comedian Kenny Webster had both said on Facebook, I promised you all a big announcement for the twenty twenty six Texas GOP Convention exactly one block from the convention on Friday, June twelfth. This will be the biggest party of the event.

Our social media responses, one person wrote uncensored, unwoke, unapologetic, unfunny. Kenny Webster wrote, the Right Side of Comedy is a show that laughs at itself as much as others. We might lean a little of the right, but a lot of our jokes are aimed at Republicans. SNL creator Lauren Michaels once famously said his show pokes fun at the GOP more often than dims because Democrats tend to ticket. Personally, Republicans think it’s funny if people on social media are upset about our event.

That really proves Lauren’s point. We don’t mind when people host pro LGBTQ plus theme comedy shows or other left leaning events. Why should we comedy before politics. Well, there was a follow up to that. Kenny Webster in the Houston Chronicle wrote, when my buddies Jesse Payton, Alex Stein and I hatched the plan host the Right Side of Comedy the Gulf of America tour at the House of Blues this June, we thought we were geniuses.

The Republican State Convention will conveniently be happening right next door, filled with attendees ready to buy tickets for a conservative stand up. We pictured a packed house of folks who get our style EDGI but not evil, making fun of everybody, including ourselves. We booked it, posted the fly, and went back to whatever losers like us do. Then the internet happened. Liberals saw the event posted on the House of Blues website and lost their minds.

It was like we’d announced a show called Kicking Puppies for the GOP instead of just three dudes telling jokes. Next thing, you know, my favorite local newspaper Round a story about the controversy, and conservative swarmed the comments section with their own flavor of outrage. They weren’t mad at us, thank god, but at the lips for being mad and a Houston chronicle for covering the story. He continues in this day and age, getting canceled for comedies practically right of passage. Kevin Hart lost his Oscars gig over decade old tweets that were dumb but not evil.

Yeah, I forgot that happened. That was the thing, wasn’t it. Shane Gillis got bounced from SNL before even landed a dressing room because of his old podcast bits. Dave Chappelle had Netflix staff walking out over trans jokes. Gilbert Godfried lost his role voicing the affleck up for being Gilbert Godfried.

If I recall correctly, that was after his post nine to eleven joke. Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer had to grovel over old satirical bits. The problems there were punchlines, not hate crimes. None of those come needs for bad guys. At worst, they were just not that funny.

But apparently it’s easier to get folks upset about bad comedians or in my case, an excellent comedian and his two friends, then about things that actually matter. I like this an next section, but here’s the part that the clinically online canceled crowd conmediately ignores. Jesse, Alex and I do a ton of charity work with our shows and events. We’ve raised money for veterans, local causes, to children with cancer at the Sunshine Kids you name it, Operation Comedy Therapy benefit nights where tickets go to good stuff, help support disabled military veterans, at wheelchairs for warriors, or fine homes for shelter dogs at Citizens for Animal Protection. Even if you don’t like our politics, even if you incorrectly you believe our jokes aren’t funny, you gotta admit that we’re actually trying to do some good in the world.

They had some more podcast awards. Now I can’t get excited about podcast awards. There are podcast awards, maybe once a week, maybe three times a week. There’s just too many everybody in podcasting. Can we just stop with the award shows?

We don’t need five thousand of them? Okay? The Ampies had podcast Awards. ConA and O’Brien won Best Comedy Podcast. He also won Best Ad Read.

Whatever Comedy Survivor continues today as the last day to vote for what are we in? Week seven? Week eight? I lost track? What you do is you go to the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group.

There you will find a drawing of me extinguishing the torture of Jim Gaffigan. You’ll see a list of who is still in the game, and you can vote one of those comedians off Still in the Game Nikki Glaser, Kevin Hart, John Mlaniosco, At Kotzka, Sebastian Manascalco Signataro, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, and Bert Kreischer. What you do is you write down a name and you say I’d like to vote off whoever. Make it super clear so we don’t have one of them there controversies. We don’t need that Comedy Survivor in the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group.

You know what’s back? Actual Survivor. I had no idea because Scrubs and Jackie Kashin and Pete Holmes and The Knicks and the State of the Union. There’s a lot of TV going on this week. But yeah, last night Actual Survivor came back.

And the reason I noticed it was Jeff probst when on the Tonight Show at Jimmy Fallon. So see that a good promotional appearance, because otherwise I would have a week from now went wait, Survivor was on. We learned on the Tonight show starring Jimmy Fallon that Jeff Probsed is finally putting himself into the shoes of the contestants. In the Survivor of fifty teaser, several famous Survivor fans, including musicians Zach Brown and Billie Eilish, social media personality Mister Beast, and Jimmy Fallon himself are involved somehow in this new Survivor fifty season. Probes to explain the theme of this season is in the hands of the fans, And in the back of my mind, I thought, man, there’s some really cool famous Survivor fans.

I wonder if they would want to be part of it. Propes to remember last time he was on the Tonight show. Fallon told them you should compete on the show, and Probe said I will if you will, and we shook on it, and that night is when I decided we should have a few celebrities. Hmm. We didn’t get too much out of Probes.

He said, I am a man of my word. I’ll just leave it at that. Fun was like, do you compete? Prope said, I’ll just leave it at that. It’s enough of a tease.

Fallon continued, Jeff Probes can be Survivor. Prope said, yeah, I do. Was only fitting that I’ve talked so much smack for so many years that I finally compete. And I’m not gonna say how it went. I’ll to say I have a lot of respect for the players.

Hmmm. Survivor Season fifty, not to be confused with completely legally distinct parody comedy. Survivor got a lot of TV to watch. The Pit. You like the pit, I love the pit.

My wife loves the pit. Boy Between Scrubs and the Pit, we’re gonna be like a couple watching TV together twice a week. What are we? Newly Weeds? Been twenty years since that happened.

You’ve been married for a while. Hey, I’m going downstairs see in two hours. People in their thirties and they were like, that’s horrible, they’re not in love anymore. And the people in their fifties like, yeah, I get it. I didn’t realize the person on the pit playing the American Sign Language interpreter is comedian Mosha Kasher.

I didn’t put that together at all. There was a quick scene the minorist of spoilers. There’s a patient who is deaf. Mosha Kasher, the interpreter signs happy to be here, and then the scene ends and that’s always see if Mosha Kasher. But Kasher wrote on it in Instagram.

Thus begins the saga of Jacob the Interpreter. Interestingly, in real life, Casher is a child of deaf parents, which resulted in him becoming a certified ASL interpreter. In real life, Casher said every child of deaf adults has essentially the same experience, which is a fifteen year non consensual Sign Language Interpretation internship training program. Apparently, the son of TV’s John Oliver is upset that baseball player Pete Alonso left the New York Mets for the Baltimore Orioles. The Baltimore Orioles posted this clip from Pete Alonso addressing John oliver Son’s concerns.

Hey, what’s up, John. It’s Pete Alonso here. So I saw what your son had to say about being upset of me signing with the Earls, but hey, he can always become an O’s fan. Would love to extend an invitation to you and your family to come down to Camden for a game this year, and you guys can get out on the field for batting practice and hopefully you guys come down, have some fun and hope to see you soon. Go ohs.

You may have seen that Martin Schwart’s daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Schwart passed away earlier in this week. Because of that, obviously, Martin Short and collaborator Steve Martin have postponed dates for their tour. The Milwaukee Miller HIGHLFE Theater posted just a very clean statement saying, due to unforeseen circumstances, Steve Martin and Martin Schwart’s show, originally scheduled for Friday, February twenty seventh in Milwaukee, has been postponed. Catherine was the eldest of three children Martin Short, adopted with his late wife Nancy. A representative for Short put out a statement saying, it is with profound grief that we confirmed the passing of Catherine Hartly Short.

The Short family is devastated by this loss and asked for privacy at this time. Catherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into this world. Catherine Short was forty two years old that your comedy needs for today

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Featured: Nate Bargatze, Jeff Foxworthy, Jim Brewer, Pete Correlli

What’s in This Episode

• Nate Bargatze’s ‘The Greatest Average American’ game show premiere on ABC
• Scrubs reboot premieres on ABC
• Game show format compares to Pete Correlli’s ‘Out of Touch Game’ from earlier appearances
• Prize money for ‘The Greatest Average American’ set at average American salary of $67,920

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hi there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, a daily briefing on stand up comedy comedians in the comedy industry. How about that State of the Union. Huh, We’ll talk about that one tomorrow because we have so much to talk about today. Plus I went to bed big TV day.

We have the Scrubs reboot. I have lived long enough that Scrubs came back. Well, don’t chink yourself, John, If nothing horrible happens today, well one, if two things are gonna happen, I’m either gonna watch the Scrubs reboot or this is the final episode of Daily Comedy News. Hopefully there’ll be an episode tomorrow. You know what I’m saying.

Oh wait, No, I record earlier in the day, so it’s possible that I record Thursday’s episode, then something horrible happens, and then Thursday is the final episode. So if there’s not a show Friday, call my wife. I digress. Scrubs is back, and Nate Brigatzy’s Game show is around. Now.

I was thinking I was gonna be coy and say that. A friend of mine said, there’s no way this thing’s going to be good, right. But then I realized Nate’s never doing the show. And I say that because when he announced his book, I reached out six months before the book came out, and this is before he really popped, and the agency types that run Hollywood and run show business decided Nate was it. Before any of that, I reached out and I still didn’t get him, So there’s no chance of him doing the show now.

So I’ll just say it. There’s no way this thing’s gonna be good, right. A press release from ABC shared a description of the show, The Greatest Average American, which premieres today on ABC right after the Scrubs reboot. You don’t even have to get off the couch. You can just sit there, we are told.

Each round is packed with laugh out loud challenges and trivia as contestants try to guess how every day Americans think and live, which reminds me I have a debate tonight because Wednesday night is trivia night. But I already told the guys I still don’t know if I have jury duty. I can’t call until five pm today, so I can’t even tell the boys until after five if I can go to trivia or not, because if I have jury duty tomorrow, I have to work tonight and record some shows, which again leading into the horrible option there maybe I record a show at seven thirty and then something horrible happens and I don’t live long enough to see Scrubs return. But because I’ve recorded early, there is a Friday show, so you might have to wait till Saturday to find out if you need to call my wife or not. Boy, it is this morbid.

I’m just trying to have fun. We’ve had so much ridiculous with the politics that I’m just trying to fund with the show. Where were we? Oh? Yeah, we were on the couch, still alive watching Scrubs and then Nate Pergatzy come on if he didn’t go to trivia.

And of course I have the complication of my wife wants to watch Scrubs with me. So if I do stay home tonight, do I grab her and go, hey, can we actually watch Scrubs? Because you know, I host this comedy podcast. I’d like to actually talk about it. But if I go to trivia, I won’t get home to nine twenty, and then even I won’t want to watch it tonight, So who knows?

Who Knows? Stay Focus? John The Greatest Average American premieres tonight after the Scrubs reboot. Nate Pergatzy said, each round is packed with laugh out loud challenges. I challenged that premise laugh out loud challenges or snicker?

Okay, that was kind of cute. Challenges Who Knows? And trivia as contestants try to guess how everyday Americans think and live? Can I tell you something? Pete Corielly the Gator did this with Jim Brewer and Jeff Foxworthy a million years ago.

Cori Elly called it the out of touch game. Foxworthy was in at I think the clip exists, Yep, yep, I have found the clip, So let’s play it here. Now. I’ve cut this down a little bit. But also I want you to pay attention to case you’re like Johnny Mac just makes up crap.

He doesn’t know any of these people. If you listen to the very beginning here, you’ll hear Jim Brewer say, what’s up, John? What’s up? Jeff? I’m the John, what’s up?

Job? What’s up? Jeff? How are you? Can I say one thing?

Jeff? Go ahead? Last time we had you on here, it was so cool to meet you, and how you just you really are a regular dude.

And then I always say brew because Bruce’s a regular guy too, but you know he…

And I would make up this stuff. And though I wrote some stuff because you were coming in, I’m always like, your best one, this is I’ll give you the best one. So you gonna do like what you do to me? What Yeah, I want to do them with both. Then I will tell you this and you gotta bat me up being the redneck guy.

People get like disappointed that I don’t live in a trailer, you know. You know, I was like, oh, you have a regular houseow. Man, you know, like you ain’t nothing like THEMN jokes. Yeah, but god knows, I spent many a night in a trailer. It’s just when you’re making a little money, you’re like, you know what, screw this corrugated metal around the bottom.

We’re getting a house, you know. And here’s what you guys, tell me, what do you think cours Moore, A John dea right on lawn mower, cheapest one. Right now, we went on the site that you could buy or a bottle of crystal at the forty forty club jay Z’s Club in New York City, a brand new ride on John expensive a bottle of crystal. A jay Z’s the bottle of crystal. I’m gonna say that to you only because if it’s jay Z, it’s gotta be bling bling.

They’re right, a touch nine hundred dollars. Forth bottle of champagne. Low Moow is fifteen hundred dollars cheapest one. Does this put me more in touch? If I actually own a John Deere tractor?

Let’s see attractor. No, it’s the attractors we got lowmows. It’s my poor event, Georgia. I got a tractor you own, George. That’s what I’m trying to say.

I have digressed again? Where were we? Abraghats? He said? Each round is packed with laugh out loud challenges, a notion which Johnny Mac challenges, and trivia as contestant to try to guess how every day Americans think and live.

In the end, one lucky player will be crowned the greatest average American and get the chance to win the ultimate grand prize, the average American salary of sixty seven twenty dollars. Okay, let’s talk about sixty seven thousand, nine twenty dollars. Is that a lot of money? Sure? Is it?

Almost definitely less than ABC’s charging for one thirty second commercial during the show. Yeah, And how much do you think Nate is being paid for this? Let me see if I can find that. I can’t find that. Now.

I get that they’re probably saying sixty twenty dollars is a funny amount. But everybody’s making money on this thing except the winner. We’re told, with his signature dry wit and clean humor, comedian Nateperghancy, he’s stepping into the game show spotlight. Nate told Pause Rewind, I travel all over the country. I would jokingly always call myself the greatest average American that I know all the average American things, and so I wanted to make a game show that kind of celebrates that.

It’s fun, it’s silly, it’s weird, little questions that you wonder. I kind of came up with the idea and then got paired up with John Quinn, who’s a producer who actually knows how to make the game. So then we created it, and yeah, I’m excited for it to come out. As for the prize money, Nate says it could change each season as the economy fluctuates. It should be going up, so you hope goes up.

Everybody. He’s going to know the average American salary, so you hopefully will get to see that go up, and we will go up with it. We are sold Nate brigets. He doesn’t just stand on the sidelines. He jumps into the hilarious challenges himself without knowing what’s coming.

Nate explained, I don’t know what the challenge is before we go in. I was like, I’d rather just go in and not know. Don’t tell me what it is. I need my natural reactions. So if my first answer is probably gonna be the dumb one, let it be the dumb one.

Here’s one of the hilarious segments. We put shopping carts into the cart return station. You see if you can make it into the railing of the parking lot. And so that was one I enjoyed. I was better at it than I thought.

Nate hopes the game show becomes destination worthy. He said, it’s like when you see people want to go on Prices, right. I like the idea of creating something that people want to be part of. If you get to come to the show, there’s a great chance you’re going to be shown on the show and you play a big part in it. Boy, I am excited about this one.

Nate also caught up with ABC thirteen dot Com. Nay were curious if he watched game shows growing up. Nate said, I did. I watched Pressure, Luck, Prices right, all that kind of stuff. I was a big game show fan.

You could tell because he named two game shows. But nothing’s so crazy that I imagined I’d be hosting a game. We’ve got some more details in the second round. They’ve got to get into my mind. I do a challenge like one was naming state capitals.

How many state capitals can I name in sixty seconds? Then they bet the over under and someone picks a number to see who wins. I do free throws and other challenges, so they’re betting on me and the last one is betting on the audience. ABC thirteen asked Nateprigetzy if we asked your family what the most average thing about you is. What would they say?

Nate said, it’s going to be food. It’s gonna be McDonald It’s my fast food. I love fast food. Nate BERGATZI the Greatest average American Tonight, nine pm Eastern, right after the Scrubs reboot on ABC. Are you excited?

I am? I know you guys are like John, Can you please talk about the state of the Union and get all political on the show? Stop having fun? Well, no, nope, We’re gonna keep it fun today. Boy, are we really this?

Wow? I just checked the clock. We’re pretty foreign already. All right, Maybe I should hold on to this one. I’ll tell you what it is.

From chowhound dot Com, I tried years John Mulaney’s non alcoholic brand of beers, and this is the best one. Maybe I should do it because I can kind of do a half assed Milleni today. Okay, they reviewed John Mulaney’s non alcoholic brand of beers. Choehound writes, non alcoholic beers usually don’t taste like actual beer. Some come pretty close, as I found when comparing brands of NA beers to their alcoholic counterparts, but there was always something a little bit off, not to say they’re all bad, just different.

I’m kind of nailing that today. Mike Biggley is gonna write my name down and pass it to John Mulaney, isn’t he? And they have been ranked coming in third at number three. The classic Pale. We’re told the classic pale tastes like a bright, authentic pale l which, as you know, is similar to an ipa, but with less hop content.

It builds gradually inside your mouth and leads up to an aftertaste that sort of punches you in the head in a good way. It’s worth knowing which NA beers are worth buy and which ones to avoid, because many NA beers have an aggressive aftertaste, and not in a good way. Beer number two is the Belgian Wit. We are told. The Belgian wit is very pleasant.

It’s very drinkable. It’s softer and hazier than the others, just as a Belgian witch should be. As they take a drink of it, it literally feels like I’m at a brewery, does it? Are you sitting there going? You know we’re doing well, But these trivia guys are gonna ask the Mariana Grande questions in the fifth round, and only the fifth round matters anyway, so stop arguing about question two in the third rounds.

It all comes down to do they ask old man questions in the fifth round or do they ask music questions? You don’t know the answer to you, old guys, is that what it feels like when you drink? Sorry? Sorry, I went off on a tangent there. It’s trivia Night, Bestmantrivia dot Com.

Check them out, Hire them. They’re based out of New Jersey. I don’t know how far they go. Will they go to San Diego to do your trivia show? Ask them?

And the number one non alcoholic beer beer Number one, the original pilsner. We’re told if you had to compare it to a regular beer, Year’s original Pilsner tastes pretty similar to a bit burger, but fruitier. It tastes like a classic German style pilsner. The tastes seest of beers, which quite frankly, is a tiny miracle. Okay, Johnny Max getting long in here today because we’re silly.

What do I need to tell you about? Tell you about Bill Martin? But see that’s political that going for tomorrow.

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Now, let’s do this a vibe spoiler for Taylor Tomlinson’s new special, new con…

If you know, last night there was Taylor Pete Holmes trying to get Pete Homes on the show. Everybody say nice things about Pete Holmes on’t once you like tweeted Pete Holmes and tell them to do Daily Comedy News. I’m trying to get Peed Homes on. I’ve asked the people over there behind the new special. Well, last night alone we had Taylor and Pete Holmes and the State of the Union and the Knicks.

That’s a lot of TV. I don’t know how late you stay up. I don’t, but the guys at Ready Steady Cut must have had one of them fancy screeners there or else. They got up at midnight and banged this thing out. But they wrote.

Sure some of the specials derivative. There’s a great sentence and not particularly illuminating, but the payoff in the final third works pretty well. A surface level breakdown of some of religion’s most morribly questionable fables and inherently hypocritical teachings feels ald. There’s a personal quality to the gradually unfrilling of religious trauma and how that relates to matters like being a professional comedian and coming out as bisexual. That lends a newer, more specific tint to the subject.

And this is kind of a backhanded comment. And Tomlinson’s finally hon stage persona is enough to carry audiences through to the good stuff. So it sounds like Taylor is a better performer than the material. That’s what I’m getting there. A bit of serious news to get in.

Russell Brand has pleaded not guilty to two fresh charges of rape and sexual assault. He did that in London on Tuesday. The BBC reported that Russell Brand wore a leopard print shirt and dark coat. Brand denies charges of sexually assaulting a woman in London in two thousand and nine and raping another woman in that same year. His bail was renewed at the end of a brief hearing.

He’s due to face trial in June. In May, he pleaded not guilty to five other charges relating to four women, one count of rape, one of oral rape, too of sexual assault and one of a decent assault between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and five. Awkward segue Today at eight pm East on YouTube. It is the YouTube premiere of Jackie Kation’s a new special Altercation, Love It, Get It, and Jackie will be hanging out in the chat. There will be a premiere event at seven Eastern with Jackiecation hanging out in the chat.

All right, so you could line things up. You could hang with Jackie at seven Scrubs, more Scrubs, and then of course Nate Pergatsy’s the Greatest American Average whatever it’s called. I could have made an edit there, I chose not to and we’re very busy today. Or I would point out that part of the description here for Jackie Caation is she’s been quote heard on Bob’s Burger’s interesting phrasing there, but I can unpack that today. Altercation includes stories of her buddy system parameters around reaching against strangers, including a story from the years when the drinking age was eighteen before she set foot on stage.

Forty years ago, while attending college, Jackie was asked to perform comedy for the first time. More specifically, she was approached by security while heckling Sam Kinnison mid set That’s Bold and was told that open mic is on Sunday. I imagine Sam was really good at shouting down Heckler’s. She loved it so much she did it every night for the next year. I got a one point eight GPA that semester alter Kation YouTube premiere eight pm Chat Hangout thing at seven pm Eastern when we come back.

The rest of the episode will be about Scrubs. John, you did a Scrubs preview on Sunday, I know, but I didn’t do the Scrubs reviews, all right, So if you have no interest in Scrubs, you might as well bail now. If you’re excited for Scrubs, come back after the break. I will be talking about some reviews. So if you don’t want to know or you don’t care about Scrubs, I’ll catch tomorrow.

Everybody else, hang out. I’m having fun today, all right. Scrubs tonight, eight o’clock Eastern ABC. Case you missed it, I did a preview of this on Sunday, That entire episode of Scrubs. In case you can’t tell, I like Scrubs even when we are fighting off fascism during the summer.

You will remember I didn’t just sit there and push that green Hulu button on my Roku remote. No, I went all the way upstairs to get the DVDs in solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel. You remember that, right, yes? TV Insider reminds us where we left off spoilers ish picking up with JD returning into Sacred Heart, Scrubs awkwardly attempts to settle back into familiar rhythms. It speeds through significant updates with all the show’s main characters while introducing us to a scattering of underdeveloped new ones.

For fans who are tuning in since two thousand and one, they may recall that Scrubs technically at two finales, one in season eight and another in season nine. But as we get ready for the new season, forget about season nine never happened. Don’t ask questions, Just watch season eight and then skip to this. I’ve seen good reviews and bad reviews. This one’s a bad review, but stay around.

Most of the reviews I’ve seen have been pretty good. This one says most of the show lives in the shadow of JD returning to his past while taking on a new role, one that Zach Brath lacks the comedic range to ever live up to. Ouch. It’s so centered on him trying that it leaves a shallows sense of how the medical field knows in it of change, beyond many eye rolling asides about how the youths are too sensitive. Now, oh, I’m going to eye roll that later in this episode.

I know what I have in my script. Now, any want to know who wrote this? Megan Doorwish for TV Insider, I’m going to guess Megan Dorwish is not a fifty six year old man, TV Insider says. Megan Dorwish is a senior writer for TV Insider and contributor to Swoon and TV Guide magazine. She has worked with the team since twenty sixteen, and that took me to this.

She is a class of twenty seventeen from her particular college, So someone who graduated college in twenty seventeen is probably around thirty one years old, And looking at Megan’s picture here, I would guess she’s around thirty one. So all I’m saying here is this cranky fifty six year old man recording a podcast’s basement relates to doctor Cox like a lot, whereas someone who is thirty one years old may have a different perspective like I lost my mind on Sunday with people getting mad about the Todd. They missed the point of the Todd character. As I said Sunday, even in two thousand and one, we knew the Todd was ridiculous and you can’t do that kind of thing. But that’s where the fun comes from.

It’s a sitcom, the review continues. Instead of bringing the same self facing humor and sharp jok them into pacing that define the show decades ago, the reboot is trapped in the shadow of its better days. It’s like an adult going to a college party, silly, though mostly just sad. What are you saying? Hmm?

And then there are some more spoilery type things that I won’t ruin for you for here, I just ruined it for myself. But that’s why I didn’t do this on Sunday. But I’m up against the clock now I gotta hand it. In a podcast, Seattle Times said the Scrubs reboot is missing its heart and brain. Oh no, they write, Zach Braff’s character still loves his apple Teeni’s, but his shell just leaves a sad, sour taste in the mouth.

Oh no. Variety writes the revival airing on ABC feels so off. In the warm glow of nostalgia, Scrubs is inoffensive, and the harsh light of the present its age begins to show. Oh No. In the series fifteen year absence, the medical show is progressed where Scrubs has not.

John, I thought you said there were positive reviews. No, I have some, my promise now. The rap got smart people over there, like Jennifer kelsh and Armstrong who writes Scrubs review or fresh. ABC reboot feels like a medical miracle skipping around there. It’s a testament to John C.

McKinley that he doesn’t lose his edge, while also making a touching case for JD to do so. The main cast slips right back into their roles effortlessly, with the chemistry of the original and a long history together reads on screen. It’s a particular pleasure to see Sarah Chalk and Judy Race in these roles again, with Rays as commanding as ever and Chalk having grown into her authority as I’ve been doing a Scrubs rewatch. Judy Rays is a killer in that role. It’s like when I went back and watch Seinfeld that I came away and I was like Julia Louis Dreyfiss is the MVP.

Judy Rayis is awesome. Now John McGinley is the MVP of Scrubs, but Judy’s really fantastic there. The rap says, it’s interesting to consider why this reboot works while so many others have failed so miserably. Raps, it’s mainly due to the hospital setting. As long as you don’t turn over all the characters at once, viewers can remain engaged and a scrub shows us here characters can also return seamlessly, while the turn of patients provides dependable short term storylines that reminds me, I was driving with my wife last Friday.

Why don’t they bring back love Boat? Like I don’t know, how about Kelsey Grammar is the captain of the love Boat.

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And then on any particular episode we have I don’t know, Zach Braff mister be…

I digress and I’ll leave you with this from John C. McGinley, who talked about his wonderful rants. I love doctor Cox. Doctor Cox is my favorite. McGinley said, I didn’t improvise those Billy wrote them.

But I crossed gender GD a couple of times. I called him girls’ names, which may or may not be acceptable in twenty twenty six, but he says Doctor Cox still does it a little in the new series because old habits die hard. Dude’s okay, Johnny Mexican to get canceled. Here, guys, it’s a sitcom. If we can’t deal with Doctor Cox sitcom character calling J D.

Shirley, I mean, pull up your bridges, folks, I mean, at that point, let’s just not even attempt to do anything the least bit Funny. McGinley says Cox is one hundred percent burned out because the new crop of students he has are also an exercise in mediocrity. So now he’s charged with trying to teach them and it’s an ongoing frustration. So he has tools to deal with the frustration, and it’s usually pretty aggressively gruff. And that’s why we love Doctor Cox.

And that is your comedy news for today, Right. That was fun. Now tomorrow I imagine I’ll have something to say about whatever Stephen Colbert is said about the state of the Union. So tomorrow you just remember that I spent like seven minutes talking about John mliney beer. Okay, you remember that when we’re political tomorrow.

See then,

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Featured: Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert, Taylor Tomlinson, Pete Holmes, Jim Jeffries, Brian Posehn, Jenny Agrino

What’s in This Episode

• Conan O’Brien discusses Rob and Michelle Reiner murders at his home
• Nick Reiner court appearance with murder charges and death penalty enhancement
• Stephen Colbert’s future and late night show challenges
• Taylor Tomlinson Netflix special ‘Prodigal Daughter’ release
• Pete Holmes YouTube special ‘Silly Silly Fun Boy’ premiere
• Jim Jeffries on political identity and missing hosting duties
• Jenny Agrino crowdfunding for comedy special after struggling post-COVID
• State of the Union broadcast tonight with Colbert live following

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. A daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. A sentence the algorithms really love. The numbers are up.

It’s incredible. All you have to do is say that sentence. I guess today is a mix of happy and sad politics and goofy will get to it all today, We’ll start with the sad. Conan O’Brien opened up to The New Yorker Radio Hour about the murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner. You may recall the Reiners where at Conan’s party earlier on that day.

Conan said to have that experience of saying good night to somebody and having them leave and then find out the next day they’re gone. I think it was in shock for quite a while. I mean, there’s no other word for it. It’s just very It’s so awful. I think about how Rob felt about the things that are happening in this country, how involved he was, how much you put himself out there and have that voice go quiet and an instant is still hard for me to comprehend.

Meanwhile, well, Nick Reiner pleaded not guilty. On Monday, Nick Reiner appeared in La Superior Court, spoke once, and agreed to a future court date of April twenty ninth. Nick Reiner is facing two counts of murder with an enhancement that could carry the death penalty or life without parole if convicted. No mention was made of Reiner’s mental state during the hearing. Reiner is being held without bail at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown LA.

Meanwhile, Conan spoke about what’s going on with Stephen Colbert, quoting Conan, Yeah, he’s pissed, I think rightly, but he’s got a big staff and cares about those people. I’ve been in that situation and that is excruciating, and so I think he has all the appropriate feelings. What I try to tell him is, there’s so much of this that doesn’t have anything to do with you. Those giant glacial plates are moving and you’re doing the best you can, and you’re such a talented guy, and he’s done an amazing job. And yeah, there’s definitely a thumb on the scale.

We all saw that with Jimmy Kimmel with the FCC that was just outratous and wrong. But the larger picture, when you look worldwide and see voices being silenced, they really get silenced. I don’t think that’s going to happen with Amy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert or anyone who’s doing a late night show. Conhan pointed out about life on the other side, there’s a lot of really beautiful opportunities, and I’ve been having a blast and getting to have these types of interviews I never could have had in that old you’re up in the attic format.

Speaking of Colbert, he’ll be live after Tonight’s State of the Union broadca…

This is a late show tradition and apparently will be the last one unless somebody uncancels the show. Tonight should be particularly interesting. If you’re not in the mood for the State of the Union, you can watch The Knicks like I’ll be doing, or you can watch Taylor Someilet send his new standup special, which I’m also going to watch, but not while the Nicks are on, you know what I’m saying, And I will also check out the State of the Union. I’ll probably be doing the side by side on the Big TV tonight anyway, Taylor Thompson. She’s on Netflix.

It is her fourth comedy special, this one called Prodigal Daughter. Filmed at the Fountain Street Church in Grand To Rapids, Michigan. We are told Taylor tackles topics ranging from coming out as bisexual in her thirties to why Easter is better than Christmas. Netflix says Taylor Thompson returns to her roots with a tight new hour about deconstructing your faith, processing religious trauma, exploring your sexuality, and confronting your fear of death.

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Also out Pete holmes new special, Silly Silly fun Boy.

Now that’s a great title. That’ll premiere on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla is a YouTube channel at h pm Eastern tonight. We got lots to watch. We got the Nicks State of the Union tailor Pete Holmes. I still haven’t watched Kat Williams because the Olympics has been on for two weeks.

Pete’s always good. Definitely check this one out. In Silly Silly fun Boy, Pete Holmes delivers fresh takes on parenting, marriage and more. Pete Holmes Tell’s Deadline I’m very proud of Silly Silly Fun Boy, an hour of pure silliness and fun and boyitous. It’s my favorite special to data.

Love the way it looks, the amazing Portland crowd, but most of all, I love these jokes and hope people will too. As also out today on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla, Matt Rife and Paul Elia’s Low Key Comedy Special, Brian Posain caught up with Northern Public Radio and said I was always an alternative comic before they had a name for that. I just don’t feel connected to the mainstream, and I never did. Brian thinks the current climate of comedy is a little different than it was a few years ago. Brian says it’s a little bit of revenge of the jocks, if you want to look at that way.

It’s kind of a win for the good looking, tough guy. Jim Jeffries told Life Without Andy. I’ve always seen myself as a right wing Australian and a left wing American, and I’ve read this. This makes a lot of sense, he says. I believe in fairly type borders and things like that, but I also believe in a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body.

I believe in national healthcare, I believe in social services and all types of stuff, and I’m an anti gun guy. But those beliefs make me the biggest hippie on earth in America. I’m a left winging extremist in America, and then in Australia people are like, I’m all right. Jim says, I don’t think religion should be in our politics. They think religion should be in our politics.

God bless America all this type of bs. As Jim jeffries, eighty percent of us are moderate. It’s eighty percent of us are sitting in the middle, and we’re the most silent, and then we’ve got the ten percent extreme left and the ten percent extreme right. Jim, do you miss doing the Jim Jeffrey Show. Jim Jeffries said, I’m very happy that I don’t do that show anymore, because I wouldn’t want to be hosting a show right now and having to talk about people from ice shooting people the streets.

I don’t want to dissect the bloody Epstein files. I don’t want to talk about every week something stupid. The Trump said, I’m glad I don’t have that show. In twenty twenty six, had a great time doing the show. I made a lot of friends and that type of stuff.

But if I had to do another comedy program, I want to do a sitcom is all I want. I want to do a multi cam sitcom. I want to do friends. Imagine that with Jim Jeffries. Comedians are meant to perform in front of audiences, and that’s when we’re at our best.

Give me an audience and give me a script, then off we go. Jinny’s Agrino is raising funds for her new comedy special after Birth, which explores themes of transformation and draws from personal experiences like her sister’s death and a breakup. She caught up with the Minnesota Post and asked, how do I break the algorithm to go viral to make money? I think comedy is suffering husually on that because it used to be that these jobs paid us enough that we could focus on our craft. She explains.

I was in movies, I was in television. I was fully wrapped by agents and managers, and I felt like the world was my oyster.

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And then COVID happened and slowly everything fell apart.

We learn her first special for Comedy Essential, produced in twenty seventeen earned her twenty thousand dollars. She says it felt really cool that money gave me two to three months a time. By twenty twenty one, she had to raise money herself to make a special tapping her fans through GoFundMe. That special, gen Z, was picked up by Comedy Central and released in twenty twenty three on YouTube and Facebook. On Facebook, she has a business page for videos that go viral or photos that get a lot of shares.

Facebook pays her. She says it’s not uncommon for some comedians to make two to three thousand dollars a month that way, but you got to feed the beast. Jenny says, I want to make great work, and great work doesn’t happen in one week. As for after Birth, I have to hope someone buys it, and if they don’t buy it, I have to put it on YouTube and then I have to pump my own marketing into that. Because Netflix won’t even look at you unless you have five hundred thousand or more followers.

It’s a cutthroat system that discounts comedians who might have families and kids and can’t dedicate all this time to social media. Now this next one. I can hear in my own voice that my voice is thin. So I’m not sure I’m going to be able to channel my best inner Jim Brewer today. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get gravelly enough.

But apparently Jim is mad at American Airlines. He’s even put out a video with the cringe title never flying American Airlines again. Jim Brewer reacts, Oh, Jim, all right, let’s do the story straight first. Comedian Jim Brewer has publicly criticized American Airlines after Jim Brewer says he was removed from his paid first class seat to accommodate a commuting pilot. The incident occurred on a recent flight from Honolulu to Phoenix.

Now I’ve gone ahead and pulled some of the clip, and I’ll play some of the clips for you. But for some reason, maybe I’m delusional. I prefer my inner Jim’s version of this to what we actually got out of real Jim. I’m flying back from Honolulu, right and they say to me, hey, we need your seat. We may need my seat.

We got a pilot and the pilot needs to sit down. Jim was flying from Honolulu to Phoenix. Jim claims he purchased a first class ticket but was reassigned to an economy seat shortly before departure economy. The comedian described the experience is unfair and labeled to move. Theft aviation blog View from the Wing published additional details about the incident.

Apparently the airline needed to reposition a pilot for operational reasons. Brewer says airline staff informed him that a pilot required the seat and Jim would be moved to Row eighteen in the main cabin. Brewer said he was not given an equivalent first class alternative and felt blindsided by the decision. We learned the Honolulu to Phoenix route is typically phone by an AID three twenty one, where first class is arranged two to two across an economy is three to three on a narrow body aircraft. The difference is not subtle so far.

I don’t think Jim is wrong here. Brewer said he was offered a next day option, but only in extra leg room economy and not seated together with his family, so there’s no real recovery path back to any sense of comfort. I’ll let alone first class. At the time, Jim’s video was recorded Jim had received a four hundred dollars refund and a five hundred dollars voucher. Let’s check in with Jim.

I know for a fact fact I am personal friends with an American Airline captain. There’s pilots and then there’s captains captains at different level even though they’re a pilot. I’m also a good friend with two flight attendants who tell me the way it works is they’re narrow when they show up, they’re not guaranteed to be on. A flight period. If they got to go in a different flight, they’re not even in uniform.

They’re not guaranteed. We learned that Jim Brewer, before boarding, was told fill out a complaint form, which I did, and I got an email several days later. I asked, Hey, can I speak to somebody from American Airlines? But that request has gone unanswered according to this report. I’ll keep you posted on what develops there.

My voice is giving out in case you missed it. Yesterday I dropped a surprise bonus episode with Mike Chisholm from The Letterman Podcast. Now. The reason I dropped it immediately rather than holding on to it is a couple of reasons. One, we talked about the blizzard that hit the northeast too, we talked about the hockey game, and three.

But I didn’t want to wait the weekend because by then Mike’s encounter with David Letterman would have been about two weeks old. So I just wanted to get it out. So I did like eighty minutes or so with Mike earlier today. So that’s I’m sure why my voice was shot. Plus doing Brewer never really helps, so you’ll find that in the feed.

Comedy Survivor really interesting last week, so we had to not count something that may or may not have been a vote. It was unclear if it was a vote or not, and the AI ruled that it was not a vote, So a mini controversy on Comedy Survivor. But Jim Gaffigan went home, which is really really stunning. So you want to get in the Facebook group Daily Comedy News podcast group. You’ll find a picture of me extinguishing the torch of Jim Gaffigan and you can vote for who is like left on Comedy Survivor.

I should actually tell you who they are still in the game. Nikki Glaser, Kevin Hart, John Mulaney, Osco, at Katska, Sebastian Manascalgo quietly going along in this game, Star Trek Ruiner, Tick Nataro, Sarah Silverman and Leslie Jones and Bert Kraser. A couple early votes here so far there’s a vote for Sarah Osco, Nicki and Kevin so Jump on the Facebook group Daily Comedy News Podcast Group, and again, please be clear who you’re voting off, not just be like, ah, I’m thinking about maybe. No, just right, I’m voting off so and so. We don’t need any controversies and just a goofy bit that was designed to get us through the winter when comedy news is a little slower.

A Comedy survivor Daily comed News Podcast group here. Let me do this one. Since my voice is a little shot. I got an email from one of the listeners. Now, I don’t use anybody’s name just you know, because it’s an email, unless you tell me you want to be shouted out.

But this person knows who they are and they say they believe that my speaking voice sounds like Maynard Jay Keenan from the band Tool. Interesting. Now. The email was titled Today’s Comedy survivor so on Comedy survivor. I use a different speech pattern because there I go into the very deadpan and I’m making up these votes.

You know, Fred has voted for Joe Coy, Tim has voted for Jay Leno, and I’ll get very deliberate like that. So I don’t know if he means that or if this normal sing song delivery that I use on the podcast. This is not my normal speaking voice either. This is just a little bounsier than the way I would speak in real life because I’m reading you scripts and I’m trying to word paint a little bit. None of it’s fake.

It’s all just different shades of my speaking voice. Plus I have a little processing here. On the podcast. I had a little deeper end to my nasally voice, and I get rid of a little the high end. So even the podcast mix is a little different than if you met me in real life.

Anyway, I pulled some audio of Maynard J. Keenan from the band Tool, and let’s listen to mister Keenan speak, and I’ll let you guys decide does he sound like me. And I at this room effect, you’re coming back through the mic and you’re driving all the stuff, and you’re hearing the effect is now being applied to the snare drum right, or you know, or the base next to you, or you know, the art symbols, nemesis symbols. As a singer, you hate the symbols, of course. But what we’ve done is because around the grid we can then take effects that would be on the vocal open mic facts and that’s actually on the tracks.

And we’ll do one more here and we’ll go home. Well, I’m already home. I recorded in the basement, you know what I mean. Joel McHale and Dennis Leary were doing some press together to promote their sitcoms on Fox. Animal Kingdom is now also airing on Netflix, so people are watching that.

They did press together and spoke to the rap. Dennis Leary said, my dream is to literally do a musical one day. Is that because Bill Hicks did a musical? Oh? Sorry, did I say that out loud?

Sorry? Sorry, No, he didn’t. He didn’t mention Bill Hicks. They’re sorry. Why would Dennis Larry mention Bill Hicks?

My dream is literally to do musical one day? He said. His first experience with show business happened in high school when a nun stuck me in musicals and I hated it. I really don’t like most musicals, but he ad it’s. My two favorite musicals are the anti musical Spam A Loot, which is a brilliant show, and Book of Mormon, both fantastic shows.

I saw both on Broadway. Dennis Leary thinks he would be a good Sir Lancelot, a role once played by Hank Azaria. Leary then mentioned how Going Dutch and Animal Control, which is Joel Mchal’s show, are both on Hulu, but only Animal Control was on Netflix. Joel McHale explained they were like, we’re putting yours on Netflix and not Dennis. Joel says, I went why and they were like, just to tick them off.

It was a weird move. And that is your comedy news for today. Go vote on Comedy Survivor, and if you missed the late yesterday episode with Mike, check that one out to meet you back here tomorrow.

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