Daily Comedy News Podcast Transcripts

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Featured: Nikki Glaser, Tom Brady, Bob Newhart, Hank Azaria, Lauren Michaels, Jamie Lee, Bill Lawrence, Joe Cooney, Taylor Swift, Billy Joel, Dave Chappelle, Dick Van Dyke, Trevor Noah

What’s in This Episode

• Bob Newhart passes away at age 94
• Nikki Glaser’s Tom Brady roast success and media coverage
• Nikki Glaser’s HBO special ‘Someday You’ll Die’ release
• Nikki Glaser’s Emmy nomination for Outstanding Variety Special
• Nikki Glaser’s Amazon comedy series ‘Unsettling’ with Bill Lawrence
• Nikki Glaser’s interest in hosting Saturday Night Live
• Nikki Glaser’s ambitions to host award shows like the Golden Globes

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

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

Bob Newhart has passed away at age ninety four. You won’t hear me speak about Bob in today’s episode. I had recorded it. I was actually editing it just as the news came in the episode below. This one on the feed is an oh bid episode published around five pm on Thursday afternoon, and later this morning.

I plan on doing a follow up to talk more about Bob Newhart. So in the meantime, here’s the normal Friday episode. Caloroga Shark Media really busy again, especially for a summer Friday. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your daily Common News. I had pumped that Hank Azarias story till tomorrow.

I’ll do it tomorrow for sure. I’m planning on recording back to back here, maybe sneaking a beach Friday. Nikki Glaser’s publicist, you have earned your money. Nicki got one of those wax job articles in Variety. Nikki also got a wax job article in Deadline.

Wow, let’s start with a Variety. They wrote. It may have only been nine minutes in a two decade comedy career, but it was one that had all eyes on Nikki Glaser in a very good pivotal way her set roasting Tom Brady, etc. Et cetera. Yes, it was a very good moment.

Nicki said, I knew it was going well, but ride this way if you can’t relax, I can’t celebrate anything until it’s officially over. That’s what her head was telling her as she was doing the roast. You have this really short amount of time where you have to be excellent. There’s no room for error because it’s live and just the amount of eyes on you, the amount of detail that was involved in each joke, it felt like a balance beam routine. Honestly, as soon as I stuck the landing and finished it and walked back to my seat, then I just felt like it was a dream.

Yeah, she nailed that set for sure. Varidy’s wax Job says her name was immediately buzzed about and people became aware of her who weren’t aware of her before. As luck would have it, within day she hit the bullseye for a second time. Her HBO comedy special Someday You’ll Die was released and was another huge hit. I’ll push back on that.

I don’t have the numbers, but I feel culturally nobody talked about that special at all. And off the heat of her roast. That should have been a huge special, and it was on HBO. It wasn’t onlike Johnny Max’s basement streaming service should have been major. But I don’t feel like anybody saw it.

I could be wrong, Nicky says. Even though all I crave and want is attention and all those things. When I get it, I kind of cower need to undermine myself and create all the reasons why I don’t deserve this. I must have done something snaky to get this. How can I prove myself that I don’t deserve this?

Comedians don’t operate from a place of I’m amazing, look at me. It’s more like, am I amazing? Will you look at me? And when you do, do I really deserve it? It just never happened to me where something has been that critically and societally accepted and celebrated like this.

And I don’t ever want to base only happiness around if people are recognizing me at a Starbucks or not.

Now here’s where the publicist is really going for their money.

They just slipped to Variety that you know Nicky would really like to host Saturday Night Live. Boy, I hope somehow Lauren Michael sees this. Do you think he reads Variety? You think anyone will put this in his news clippings package he probably gets every morning from NBC. That’s a thing that happens in the business.

You get a news clipping package. I don’t know if Louren Michael’s gets one every day, but I guarantee you the news clipping package exists. Nicky says, I have loved the show forever and admire the cast they have. Now I’m not waiting for the call, but when it comes, it’ll be an absolute Yes. It’s like you’re dying for the call.

But you’re also like, please don’t call me, because I know that my life will be so hard. But you know, that’s what this career is. It’s just a series of hard things. Variety writes Lauren Michaels, Are you listening, so publicist? You earned your money?

Not just that one. Here’s the one from Deadline. They wrote about Nicky’s news series and development at Amazon called Unsettling. She’ll play the lead in it, opposite fellow comic Jamie Lee. Nikki Glaser said, I just love the people involved it.

They make some of the funniest most heartwarming TV there is, and I’m so excited to move forward with it. It’s slowly coming along, so it seems like something that will be happening, but you never know what is it. It’s a half hour single camera comedy about two childless best friends in their thirties who decide to go in on a baby together, navigating their lives as brand new platonic co parents. Bill Lawrence is behind this one. You know him from such things as Scrubs and ted Lasso.

Good pedigree there. Nikki received an Emmy nomination for her special We’ll talk about that in a second, says, it’s the kind of thing. It’s a big moment for an artist, just because I’ll always get to be Emmy nominated Nicky Glazer. Now, it’s like you have that title for the rest of your life, so they can’t take that away from me. I’m just excited to go to the Emmys.

I love going to award shows. It’s one of my favorite things to do as a person in this business. Publicists laying some more groundwork. They got this one and I are in deadline. I think hosting an award show is something I’ll be doing a lot of in my future, just because it’s something that falls in the same kind of category as the roast ray of this prepared monologue.

And there’s a lot of pressure on Nicky, dare you host the Golden Globes and mick a say Taylor Swift joke? You know that doesn’t go well. One time Joe Cooy made a Tailor Swift joke. Let’s listen the big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL. On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.

Oh, Scott beck in front of the show. Who hates that bit? He emailed me on the Thursday morning, So Scott, you’re on my mind. That one was for you. Scott Beckett, thank you for listening.

Nicky says, I really thrive at those kind of settings when you’re an audience some people that showpen this and you have to do a really tight, tonally perfect and funny monologue. I’d love to do it. I think my name is being tossed around in those kinds of conversations, but we’ll see. Yes, please host the gold Globes. Actually, I want Joe Cooi to come back just so I can do the bit for another year.

I run out the chance to do things that generally would scare other people. I think that stand up and risting are both categories of entertainment, and other people in the business are like, I wouldn’t touch that, and thankfully I don’t have that aversion to it. Paublos is getting it more done. They got this in there. I’d like to make a movie and being a round comm at some point, I’d like to act alongside Julia Louis Dreyfus.

At one point, I’d like to host SNL mentioned again. I’d like to host an award show. I’d like to sit in the VIP box at a Taylor Swift concert. I mean, there’s little goals here and there, but I’m really just happy with how things are. And that’s been the greatest realization is I honestly want more free time with my family and my friends and my dog.

I love how she’s thrown out this list. I’ll throw out a list. I want to host the Tonight Show on a Friday night. I want to do The Daily Show on a Tuesday. I want Letterman a guest on my podcast.

I know those three things are happening, but I’ll throw them out there. I’ll also host Saturday Night Live. If Lauren asked, Lauren, are you listening? All right, you’re me. Hominees for Outstanding Variety Special pre recorded are Billy Jowels Live at Madison Square Garden, Dave Chappelle for The Dreamer, Dick Van Dyke’s ninety eight Years of Magic, Nicky Glazer Someday You’ll Die, Trevor Noah.

Where was I out of those five? I would say, well, from a comedy standpoint, Trevor was the best of those five. I didn’t see the Dick Vandyke. I did see some of the Billy Joel. You know, Billy could get a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dick Van Dyke, for sure could get a Lifetime Achievement Award. I’m not sure Nicky is gonna win this one. And award shows do love giving awards to Dave Chappelle.

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All right, Let’s talk about the intersection of politics and comedy.

Alonzo Bowden was asked, when can you make a joke about, say, someone trying to assassinate someone. Alonzo said, it’s never too soon unless it’s not funny. Comedians will always make it funny no matter what happens. That’s what we do, it’s how we communicate. In this case, Donald Trump is such a character, and the fact that he wasn’t killed the joke started immediately.

And I don’t think he minds. He’s one of those people. As long as you’re talking about him, it’s a win. Matt Friend wrote in an op ed for The Daily Beast, and he said, I dealt with my shock and sadness by posting a graphic of my social of the instantly iconic image of Trump with blood on his face pumping his fist. Under the photo, I wrote, how long before this becomes merch?

Got admit I had the same thought As expected, I received a mix of positive engagement and furious backlash. I had conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, the joke was making fun of Trump’s habit of turning everything he does in a merchandise. On the other hand, I was trying to be funny after a former president was nearly killed. I ended up taking down the post, and that caused my head to circle with questions, does this mean I didn’t stand up for comedy?

Where’s the lines that I cross it? In order to get closer into answering these questions, I’ve been turning to comedy’s pass for advice. Johnny Carson once said, I think one of the dangers if you were a comedian, if you start to take yourself too seriously and start to comment on social issues, your sense of humor suffers. Somewhere in nineteen eighty one, Carson hosted the Oscars one day after Ronald Reagan was shot. At that time, Johnny said, he happens to be in very good spirits.

After all, you must remember this as a man who, yesterday, while he was in the hospital unable to speak, wrote on a sheet of paper, all things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. So tonight the show does go on, my friend said, while a delicate joke, Carson managed to gracefully touch on the attempted assassination of Reagan. Trey Crowder apparently knew jd Vance back in the day and did a three minute joke field rant about him. Trey Crowder said, you know, if you were to tell me when I was a kid that one day a white trash hillbilly would have a shot at the White House, I would have been like, what with a potato gun? No?

No is the vice president. Damn, that’s wild. Tell me more about this hero. What was he? A man of the people, civil rights attorney, no Ivy League educated venture capitalists who first rose to fame by selling us all out.

Oh well, that’s disappointing. From the Guardian, a twenty eight year old German comedian got in trouble with Trump supporters and then Elon Musk after a series of tweets. Sebastian Hats, who posts and performs as el Hatso, lost his job as a broadcaster this week for the tweets. He apparently tweeted something along the lines of that the attempt on Saturday had been like the last bus. Unfortunately just missed those of the words of Hats, not me.

He also published a post saying it was absolutely fantastic when fascists die. Hatts has seven hundred thousand followers on Twitter. He deleted the original post, but screenshots of them we were published on social media. He then wrote absolutely no one forces anyone to sympathize with fascists. You can do without it without the slightest consequences.

The controversy prompted the Berlin based public broadcaster RBB to cancel Hots’s involvement with one of its radio shows, which he had co hosted since twenty twenty two. The program director said his remarks are not compatible with the values for which RBB stands. I always like hearing from you guys. My email is in the show notes. The Facebook group Daily Comedy News podcast groups another a great way to hit me up there.

You can hit me up in Facebook Messenger. I always love hearing from people. Heard from Tom yesterday around lunchtime. Always good to hear from you, Tom, and Tom is a supporter. Buy me a coffee.

Dot com slash Daily Coming News. Much appreciate it. Always great to hear from you. Out today a new song from weird Al. We don’t know what it is yet.

Well we might by the time you’re listening to this. As Johnny Mac records this, Johnny Mac doesn’t know if it’s a parody or an original. Will it be a physical release. His last new song was called now You Know, played over the closing credits to weird the Al Yankovic story back in twenty two. In twenty twenty three, weird Al told comicbook dot Com, I don’t think I’ll do another conventional album.

The soundtrack came out last year, but that’s a various artist album. I’m not giving up music. I’ll probably put out at least one new track next year. I guess he didn’t lie, but I don’t really like the business model of waiting until I have twelve songs and then putting them all out at once. I like coming up with an idea and if it’s good enough, I want to get it out immediately.

And now I can because I not be holding to any contract of business model. Roywood Junior will put his next stand up special on Hulu. He’ll tape in in September at the Lincoln Theater in Washington. Hulu is bringing the comedy This Falls. So far, they’ve announced Jim Gaffigan and Bill Burr.

They’ve also licensed a bunch of specials from eight hundred Pound Guerrilla. See we’re hearing a lot about those guys now in Comedy Dynamics. Netflix will have Matt Riffe’s next special. This one going to be all crowd work. Rolling Stone reports for a full hour at the Comedy Zone in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Matt Rife alied solely on his audience to keep the show afloat Rife’s off the cuff performance was captured for his upcoming Netflix special Lucid out on Netflix August thirteenth.

Matt Riife says that this show is going to be completely different from anything you’ve ever seen live or on Netflix before. This is just me and you guys. There is a trailer. Let’s listen to the beginning of it before he gets a little too naughty. This show is going to be completely different from anything you’ve seen live or on Netflix before.

This is an entire crowd work special. This is just me and you, guys. I don’t know what you’re gonna say. I don’t know what I’m gonna say. I want you guys to be aware you are equally as at fault for how this goes as and that istra comedy news for today tomorrow normal episode.

Ran out of interviews. That’s fine, there’s plenty of news. I bumped a lot of stuff from today’s show. So tomorrow’s a normal episode. Monday’s a normal episode.

If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it. They might like it. To see you tomorrow and I’ll have a new hard thing mid morning. See you back in a bit

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Featured: Bob Newhart, Suzanne Pleshette, Tom Poston, William Sanderson, Tony Papinfuss, John Voldstad

What’s in This Episode

• Bob Newhart’s death and TV legacy
• The Bob Newhart Show career overview
• Newhart series finale twist ending
• Bob Newhart’s influence on modern sitcoms
• Guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory

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. Today we’re taking a break from our usual recaps to pay tribute to a true television legend, Bob Newhart, who sadly passed away on July eighteenth at the age of ninety four. Let’s dive into the incredible TV career of this comedy icon. Now, when you think of Bob Newhart, you might first picture that deadpan delivery, that signature stammer, or those one sided phone conversations. But today we’re focusing on how this stand up comedy genius translated his unique style to the small screen and became a sitcom star for the Ages.

Before we get into his TV work, let’s set the stage a bit. Newhart’s journey to stardom was anything but conventional. Here was a guy who, at thirty years old, was still living with his parents, working as an accountant, and looking more like a junior executive than a comedy superstar. But his nineteen sixty comedy album The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart changed everything. It soared past Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley to hit number one on the Billboard charts, making new Heart the first comedian with a chart topping album.

This success catapulted new Heart into the spotlight, leading to frequent appearances on TV variety shows, but it wasn’t until nineteen seventy two that he found his true television home with The Bob Newhart Show. Running from nineteen seventy two to nineteen seventy eight on CBS. The Bob Newhart Show was a game changer. Newhart played doctor Robert Hartley, a Chicago psychologist dealing with a quirky cast of patients and an equally eccentric group of friends and family. The show was part of CBS’s Powerhouse Saturday night lineup, alongside classics like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family.

What made The Bob Newhart Show stand out was how it perfectly captured Newhart’s understated comedic style. His character was often the straight man, reacting to the chaos around him with that trademark deadpan delivery, and let’s not forget his on screen wife, played by the incomparable Suzanne Plachette. Their chemistry was off the charts, and they created one of TV’s most believable and lovable couples. Newhart was insistent that his character not have children on the show. In a two thousand and one interview with The Newark star Ledger, he explained, I didn’t want to do a certain kind of show, which was the dumb father who keeps getting in these pickles and these precocious children and mother get him out of it.

This decision allowed the show to focus on adult relationships and situations, setting it apart from many family sitcoms of the era. The show tackled some pretty progressive topics for its time, including sexuality and mental health, but always with Newhart’s gentle, understated humor. It ran for six seasons and one hundred and forty two episodes, earning Newhart two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. But Newhart wasn’t done with TV sitcoms yet. In nineteen eighty two, he returned to CBS with Newhart, a show that in many ways was even more surreal and absurdist than his first series.

In this show, Newhart played Dick Louden, a how to book author who moves with his wife Joanna Mary Fran to a small town in Vermont to run an in. New Heart ran for eight seasons from nineteen eighty two to nineteen ninety, and it allowed Newhart to play the straight man in an even zanier world. The show was populated by some truly unforgettable characters, including the dim witted handyman George Utley, Tom Poston, and the backwoodsman brothers Larry Darrell and Daryl, William Sanderson, Tony Papinfuss, and John Voldstad. One of the most memorable aspects of Newhart was how it leaned into absurdest humor. The show often broke the fourth wall and played with TV conventions, culminating in what is widely regarded as one of the greatest series finales in television history.

In the final episode, Dick Louden is hit on the head by a golf ball. The screen goes black, and when the lights come up, we see new Heart in bed, but not with Mary fran Instead, he’s next to Suzanne Plaschett, his wife from The Bob Newhart Show. He wakes up and says, Honey, wake up. You won’t believe the dream I just had. The entire eight year run of New Heart is revealed to have been a dream of doctor Bob Hartley from the previous series.

This twist ending was a stroke of genius, catching viewers completely off guard and cementing New Heart in TV history. It’s a testament to Newhart’s comedic instincts and his willingness to take risks, even after decades in the business. But Newhart’s TV career didn’t end with New Heart. In the nineteen nineties, he starred in two more sitcoms, Bob nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety three and George and Leo nineteen ninety seven to nineteen ninety eight. While neither achieved the long running success of his previous shows, they demonstrated new Heart’s enduring appeal and his ability to adapt his style to new premises and co stars.

In his later years, Newhart became a welcome presence as a guest star on various TV shows. He had recurring roles on Desperate Housewives and Er, showing his range by taking on more dramatic parts, But it was his role as Professor Proton on The Big Bang Theory that introduced him to a whole new generation of viewers. This performance earned him his first Primetime Emmy Award in twenty thirteen for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. What made new Heart such an enduring TV presence. I think it comes down to his unique comedic voice.

In a landscape often dominated by loud, brash comedy, Newhart’s understated style stood out. He didn’t need to shout to be funny. His carefully timed pauses and stutters could get bigger laughs than any punchline. New Heart’s TV characters were often the calm in the center of the storm, the voice of reason in a world of chaos. This made him incredibly relatable.

We all sometimes feel like we’re the only sane person in an insane world, and new Heart captured that feeling perfectly. Moreover, Newhart’s comedy was always intelligent and observational. He found humor in everyday situations, in the absurdities of modern life and human behavior. This approach gave his shows a timeless quality. While some sitcoms from the seventies and eighties feel dated now, new Heart’s work still holds up because it’s rooted in universal experiences and emotions.

It’s also worth noting how new Heart influenced the sitcom format. His insistence on not having children in The Bob Newhart Show allowed for more mature storytelling. The surreal elements of New Heart paved the way for more experimental sitcoms in the future, and that finale it’s still being referenced and parodied today, over thirty years later. New Heart’s impact on television comedy can’t be overstated. He showed that you don’t need to be loud or crude to be funny.

He proved that intelligence and subtlety have a place in prime time comedy, and he demonstrated that a strong comedic voice can translate across different shows and formats. Many modern comedians cite new Heart as an influence. You can see echoes of his deadpan delivery and reactive comedy in the work of comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan. His ability to find humor in everyday situations pave the way for observational comedians like Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres. As we remember Bob Newhart’s incredible TV career, it’s important to note that he never really left the medium.

Even in his later years, he continued to make guest appearances and take on recurring roles. His love for television and comedy never dimmed. Bob Newhart’s passing marks the end of an era in television comedy. But his influence lives on in the shows we watch today, in the comedians who were inspired by his work, and in the countless reruns that continue to make new generations of viewers laugh. So the next time you’re watching a sitcom and you see a character react to the craziness around them with a deadpan stare or a perfectly timed stammer, think of Bob Newhart.

Remember the man who showed us that sometimes the funniest reaction is no reaction at all. Before we wrap up, I want to share a personal anecdote. I remember watching New Heart reruns with my dad when I was a kid. At the time, a lot of the jokes went over my head, but I was fascinated by this mild mannered man who seemed perpetually bewildered by the world around him. As I got older and rewatched these episodes, I began to appreciate the brilliance of Newhart’s performance.

He could say so much with just a raised eyebrow or a well timed well. I uh. Bob Newhart’s TV career was a masterclass in comedic timing, in finding humor in the every day, and in creating characters that feel like old friends. He may be gone, but thanks to the magic of television, we can still spend time with doctor Bob Hartley and Dick Louden whenever we need a laugh. Bob Newhart was ninety four.

I’m Joe Mitchell. Rest in peace, Bob

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Featured: Bob Newhart, Suzanne Pleshette, Richard Pryor, Al Franken, Mark Twain Prize judges

What’s in This Episode

• Bob Newhart death announcement at 94
• Bob Newhart’s Grammy-winning comedy album The Buttoned Down Mind
• The Bob Newhart Show CBS sitcom 1972-1978
• Newhart sitcom finale twist ending 1982-1990
• Bob Newhart Mark Twain Prize for Humor
• Richard Pryor and Bob Newhart record store anecdote

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 man Bob Newhart has passed away. I was just sitting out on the deck seriously putting together Friday Show. I had just published an episode of Ballot Our political podcast, and texted Mark Francis, my business partner, to tell him I really enjoyed the episode, and he wrote back, I thought you’d be working on Bob Newhart and I was like, oh new and jumped on the internet and I see the news here. Bob has passed away at age ninety four. His death announced by his longtime publicist Jerry Digney.

Jerry Didnight’s cide a cause of death. Bob’s wife, Virginia, passed away in twenty twenty three after sixty years of marriage. They had four children. The Washington Post wrote, Bob Newhart was still living with his parents when he was thirty. He was a balding, sylshied former accountant who talked in a calculated, halting stammer.

He was no one’s idea of a superstar, Yet within a year, his understated comedy routines had made him a national sensation. Yeah do you know about the Newhart’s first album got him a Grammy. He became the first comedian with a number one record and the star of two long running sitcoms, The Bob Newhart Show and New Heart. There was a third one. It didn’t last long, and that one was titled Bob.

I appreciated the joke and calling it Bob. His debut album, The Buttoned Down Mine of Bob Newhart, sword past the recordings of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley to reach number one on the Billboard Charts for fourteen weeks in nineteen sixty. It was also the first comedy album to sell more than one million copies. Bob Newhart remains the only comedian and win Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Album of the Year. It’d be hard to imagine that happening ever again in modern times.

Newhart best known for doing basically a straight man, often in the form of a phone call. In one of the phone calls, he imagined a press agent telling President Abraham Lincoln, listen, a what’s the problem you’re thinking of shaving it off? Hey, don’t you see that’s part of the image. The Bob Newhart Show ran on CBS from nineteen seventy two to nineteen seventy eight. Part of a lineup that included listen to this power house lineup, the Bob Newhart Show, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and the Carol Burnett Show, which is the quote unquote worst of that lineup.

I don’t even know how to rank those. Wow. On that show, Bob Newhart played a Chicago’s psychologist coping with his patients and all their quirks. Suzanne Pluschette played his wife. On that show, Bob insisted the couple be childless, saying I didn’t want to do a certain kind of show, which was the dumb father who keeps getting in these pickles and these precocius children and the mother get it out of him.

That was one of the few conditions that I insisted on, and I think it was one of the factors that made the show work. The other show, New Heart, ran from nineteen eighty two to nineteen ninety. That finale famous because Bob is knocked unconscious by an errand golf ball and he awakes aside Pluchette and the bed of their Chicago bedroom. From the other show, Bob Newhart and character says, Honey, wake up, you won’t believe the dream I just had Suzanne Pluschett is in the bed and goes all right, Bob, what is it? Newhart says, I was an innkeeper in a crazy little town in Vermont.

Bob Newhart was proud to receive the Mark Twain Price for Humor because the first person win the award was Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor had told Bob a story in which Pryor had stolen a copy of The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart. Newhart thought Prior meant he had stolen part of routine. Pryor said, no, I stole your record from a record store in Peoria, Illinois. Newhart said, Richard, I used to get a quarter an album in royalties.

Prior turned and said, somebody give you a quarter. Prior handed Newhart the quarter as if repaying a debt. Bob Newhart all time great age in ninety four. I’m bummed about this. I’m sure you are too.

All right in the morning the normal episode, and I’ll probably wind up doing a bonus episode in the late morning as the reactions come in and more is said about Bob. Right now, I just did a quick search on Twitter at his four p fifty two PM Eastern on Thursday afternoon, and the only thing I’m really seeing is from Al Franken here, who wrote Bob Newhart was a giant to genius and a great guy. I’ll always remember when he hosted SNL and did a stellar show. He was, as you might expect, a joy to work with. May his memory be a blessing.

See you in the morning.

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Featured: Stephen Colbert, Anthony Anderson, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stewart, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Shane Gillis, Adam Ray, Tony Hinchcliffe, Ralph Barbosa, Rachel Feinstein, Asif Ali, Jackie Fabulous, Serenity Krimmel, Nathan McIntosh, Preacher Lawson, Leslie Lao, Saw True Heo, Jeremy Allen White, Steve Martin, Martin Short

What’s in This Episode

• Late night monologues about Trump and JD Vance at RNC
• Kill Tony episode with Shane Gillis as Trump and Adam Ray as Biden
• John Stewart explains security changes for RNC live shows
• Variety’s Comics to Watch 2024 list announcement
• Emmy nominations for variety talk series and comedy
• The Ballot podcast live from Republican National Convention

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 Chiniac who with your Daily Comedy News and it’s a good one today. A lot going on. Let’s start with Late Night. They had some pretty good jokes.

Stephen Colbert said Trump entered the arena like Rocky belt Boa if Rocky fought for Russia. Anthony Anderson, subbing it for Jimmy Kimmel said Trump entered the convention like a heavyweight champ with the swagger of Mike Tyson in the ear of a vander Holyfield. John Stewart talked about JD Vance and said it’s like for Vice President Donald selected the actor who would be hired to play Don Junior in the Lifetime movie. That was pretty good. Seth Meyers said JD Vance looks like teen Wolf graduated and came back to coach the team.

Seth added, I got a bunch of these, but it’s a long campaign, so I’m gonna save some. Jimmy Fallon pointed out in a new interview with Lester Holt, Joe Biden admitted that he hasn’t watched the whole debate with Trump. Fallon said, oh, so that’s why he thinks he should stay in the race. If you like keep political jokes, go check out The Ballot podcast live from the Republican National Convention this week. Numbers are up on that one.

We’re having a good time doing that one. Another thing you absolutely want to check out is kill Tony. No, that’s not a violent act. That’s the name of a podcast slash YouTube series. You know, Kill Tony.

Tony Hinchcliffe, the guy that you thought was funny at the roast of Tom Brady. He has amateurs come up, they do one minute of comedy and then he has celebrity friends come by. Anyway, on Kill Tony, Shane Gillis showed up as Donald Trump. Adam Ray showed up as Joe Biden. The clip is hilarious.

Let’s listen to Shane Gillis do Donald Trump while dressed up as a pretty convincing Donald Tony. What an unbelievable experience it is. What a great show this could be. Instead, we’ve got an absolute idiot here running the show. As the clip goes on, Shane can be seen breaking character as he couldn’t hold in his laughter while reacting to Adam Ray’s Joe Biden impression.

The Biden impression is I’m not sharing any audio, because it’s really just a guy staying off into space and then says something vulgar, and we don’t do that here. John Stewart explained why they didn’t go to Milwaukee and said, well, obviously we were supposed to be doing our shows for Milwaukee for the R and C this week, but because of the attempt on the former president’s life, the venue on which we had planned to do the show, a theater, which was originally located in the soft perimeter, as they called it, security wise, was shifted understandably to the hard perimeter. You don’t really want to be in the hard perimeter. Less facetiously, he explained that crowds wouldn’t have been able to get to the theater, so there was no reason to do a live show without people. That all makes sense, John Stewart, all right, Two big stories came out.

The first one Variety’s Comics to Watch for twenty twenty four. This is an annual list of some people to keep an eye on. Let’s take a look at the list. First up, Asif Ali, I’m not familiar with Asif, Variety says, Ali’s been making his rounds in the acting space for some time. From appearing on shows like Wanda Vision, The Mandalorian, and BoJack Horseman.

He’ll soon be seen starring in the upcoming Hulu comedy series Deli Boys, where he leads an all South Asian led show. He’s a member of the sketch group Goatface, alongside Fahim Anwar, Aristotle Athari, and Hassan Minaj, all of them who I know, all right, that sounds a good recommendation. This next guy. If you listen to me every day, you probably know Ralph Barbosa. He’s had a couple specials out and that was the guy George Lopez took a shot at, right, So Ralph we know.

Jackie Fabulous has been hustling in the comedy game since realizing her log gig at Caltech wasn’t doing it for her anymore, and at thirty five Stand Up Comedy. She was on America’s Gut Talent in twenty nineteen. Next up, and I’m gonna have to try to not go on a total rantier Rachel Feinstein, why would you rant? John Well? Many years ago back at Sirius XM, we had Rachel and Steve.

Who’s Steve? Steve’s just some guy but Rachel and Steve were hosting the morning show. The Rachel was Rachel Feinstein, who’s now a comic to watch. Back in the day, we were pretty good at identifying talent. The boss is no long term vision.

Hey, boss, would you like Amy Schumer to do a show for you know? Who’s that? Get us? Chris Rock? I’ll get you, Chris Rock.

Do you have a million dollars? You know? So that kind of thing would gone. So we had Rachel doing mornings, and then when it was time to redo the budget, a boss said to me, well, why would we compete against Howard Stern? The reason you compete against Howard Stern, Boss is because Howard Stern isn’t for everybody, And over time people age, including me the boss, Howard Stern, and younger generations come along.

And if you talk to Howard’s been behind the paywall now since two thousand and six, it’s almost twenty years Howard to anybody under I don’t know, forty forty five. Nobody listens to Howard. Old people listen to Howard. So I think there was a case to Rachel do mornings now here ten fifteen years later, I’m not sure Rachel would still be doing mornings on the Raw Dog channel. But anyway, you could have given us some bucks for this one.

Rachel Feinstein, one of Variety’s ten comics to watch, Johnny thought you said you weren’t going to do a slow burn. I can’t help myself. Do you want to hear about how we wanted to give Deane Cook a show and there was no budget. You know how popular Dame Cook was there ever a while. Serenity now Krimmel originally attended college to study journalism.

She signed up for a stand up comedy class at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington. She spent years working on her craft and since discovered that her disability was a strength on stage, realizing it wouldn’t make people uncomfortable. Now, the article didn’t address her disability, but I found this wonderful quote from her. She says, I get that I’m unconventional. I’m disabled, but I’m not totally committed to the lifestyle.

A lot of people when they see me, they think I suffer from cerebral palsy, which I don’t. I have cerebral palsy. Tony Awata is one of the latest additions to the Daily Show News team Tony started earlier this year. Preacher Lawson first broke out in the comedy scene on America’s Got Talent in twenty seventeen and now one of the comedians to watch. Leslie Lao went from working in human resources at Netflix to appearing on Netflix’s Verified stand Up this past year.

Hmm. I want HR to investigate that. Did you go through all the resumes of potential comedians who wanted to appear Unverified stand Up? I wonder if that was a proper HR search. I might report Leslie loud at HR and she’s the HR.

Hmm. Nathan McIntosh, I’ve been telling you about him lately. His special up on YouTube is awesome. Check out down with Tech on YouTube. Saw true.

Heo first realized his comedic sensibilities when his classmates at culinary school told him his future was not in the kitchen. Hey, he would have been perfect on the bear. He started in comedy in twenty ten, has most recently appeared on Comedy Central Stand Up Presents, and has an hour long special in the can. He’s working to find home for well after this article, I bet you already have one. The other big story for today the Emmys.

The nominees are out for variety talk series. The nominees are The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Night with Seth Myers, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Interesting there people thought John Mulaney would be nominated. He was not all right. Who would I pick out of Daily Show, Kimmel, Seth Colbert, I’d pick kim All.

I think Best Comedy. The nominees Matt Barry What We Do in the Shadows, Larry David for kerb, Steve Martin for Only Murders Martin Short for Only Murders, Defarow Woon a tie for Reservation Dogs, and Jeremy Allen White for The Bear Love the Bear. I know this is a very hack conversation everyone’s having, but my take, the Bear is not a comedy. Have you watched The Bear? Season one might have been a comedy, Season two and three not a comedy.

So as awesome as Jeremy Allen White is, he’s not getting my vote. Let’s say out of Barry, Larry David, Steve Martin, Martin Short. Oh that’s tough. I don’t want to give it to Larry David. I didn’t think the last season was that Strong.

Should we give Matt Berry a Lifetime Achievement Award? We could do that. Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Quina Brunson for Abbott, io at A Berry for Non Comedy The Bear, Selena Gomez for Murders, Maya Rudolph for Loot, Gene Smart for hacks, Kristen Wigg for Palm Royal. I’m giving that to Gene Smart and not thinking for a second about it.

That’s the winner there. Outstanding Comedy Series, Abbot Elementary, The Bear, which is not a comedy curb only murders, Palm Royal Reservation dogs. What we do in the Shadows, huh, I don’t want to pick any of those. I like shadows. Let’s give shadows a victory lab.

I was looking more at the nearer comedy festival lineup, especially after listening back to yesterday’s show, and it caught my ear the second time around. They’ve already announced a bunch of the Carnegie Halls shows, so if more names are coming, they can’t put the big names at Carnegie Hall because they’ve already used that venue. So unless there’s like I don’t know, Sebastian of Manascalco is gonna play the Garden or something like that. Coming a bit of an underwhelming lineup. Oh, I’m so excited about this next.

I’m gonna save this next thing for tomorrow. I’m so excited about this. It’s about Hank Azaria all right, but I’ll save it because we’re getting a little long here. Oh so pumped about it though. You need something to watch, all right?

Head to the eight hundred pound Garriilla YouTube channel at seven pm Central Time. I’m still mad that I didn’t ask those guys what the Central time stuff’s about. Nick Swartzon’s make Joke from Face premieres today. It’s seventh Central, separately on YouTube.

Also at seventh Central, Laura Murley’s Belly slapin Fun I love that title.

Eight years in. It’s Laura’s debut comedy special. Her half hour consists mostly of non sequiturs and seemingly random observations in a distinctively disjointed, hilarious style inspired by Mitch Hedberg and Maria Bamford. That sounds like it’s in my wheelhouse. Maybe I’ll channel flip between that and the RNC tonight, Hey are you in Cleveland?

Summer Slam’s coming to Cleveland? Why are you mentioning this? Johnny Mac Well WWE has announced a Sammy Zen stand up comedy slash storytelling event. It is called Sammy Zan and Friends do Cleveland Friday, August second at eleven pm. You know you could go to Cleveland.

You could stay over the next day you hit the Saturday five pm mass Deacon Mike’s doing the homily. You could tell him you heard about his preaching here on Daily Comedy News. You’ll make his day. And that’s your comedy news for today. I’m going to do another minute or two here on another subject, but that’s your comedy news for today.

If you don’t want to hear me talk about commercials, you are dismissed and I’ll see you tomorrow. So every now and then somebody will post something on the Apple podcast website with a comment about there are too many commercials on the show, and I just thought i’d explain how this all works. First of all, most transparently, this podcast is here to make money. This is how I make a living. How it works is the ads you’re hearing.

They’re called dynamically inserted ads or dynamic ad insertion DAI. Now what happens is when you download the show, your phone or device goes Okay, where is Mike. Mike is in Cleveland, Let’s serve him some ads that are targeting Cleveland. So, for example, when election time comes around, Mike in Cleveland might hear some ads for a local Cleveland congressional race. Here in New Jersey, I won’t hear them.

Mike in Cleveland might hear some commercials for a local business here in New Jersey. I won’t hear them. So what happens is the computers are bidding on the spot. So on this show, I’ll tell you I’ve got two open spots before the show, three in the middle and two on the end. In those sometimes I internally bid.

For example, this week we’re pushing the artist a Killer’s Canvas. I’m running an in house spot at a thirty dollars bid so that it wins the spot more often than not. Now I don’t actually have to pay the thirty dollars because I’m paying myself the thirty dollars, you know what I mean. It’s a fake bid in some ways so that it outbids, say the Ryan seacrestchump, a casino spot that I get all the time. So the computer goes, hey, who’s bid the most things?

And then whatever has bid the most dollars goes to the spot. Now, the person in question mentioned that they were hearing the promo for the TJ Show a lot. The promo for the TJ Show is a favor with the people that I’m in business with. They asked me if i’d help promote the TJ Show. I said, sure, happy to help, and I have that in as a lower dollar amount.

So this one listener who’s frustrated that whatever combination of device you’re using, location you’re using for some reason, the TJ Show is winning that bid, whereas here in New Jersey, I haven’t heard the promo for the TJ Show on my own podcast in weeks it’s running. It’s just being outbid by other things in my locale. So does that all make sense? So again, when you download the show, your phone goes where are you? And it sees if anybody wants to serve commercials too specifically you Anyway, I just felt like sharing how it works.

I have not increased the commercial load at all unless I do an hour long show. When I do an hour long interview on Saturday. And by the way, I don’t have one this weekend unless Hank Azaria throws me a lifeline and writes me back. I can’t wait to tell you about Hank tomorrow. But when I do an hour one, I throw in a second break because again, I’m here to make money, just being transparent.

Hope you understand. Oh, and that’s why we’re pushing the subscriptions. Like, I get that you don’t like commercials, but like something’s got to pay the rent. So four ninety nine gets you the show commercial free. Help support the show much appreciated.

If you don’t want to do that and you like things quote unquote free, totally get it. But then there’s going to be commercials. Hope that’ll make sense. See you tomorrow.

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Featured: Judd Apatow, David Tell, Bill Maher, Tracy Morgan, Gabe Iglesias, Joe List, Dan Soder, Jack Black, Kyle Gass, Taylor Tomlinson, Stephen Colbert

What’s in This Episode

• Comedy industry feeling stagnant and formulaic in summer 2024
• 20th Anniversary New York Comedy Festival November 2024 lineup announcement
• Comparison of current festival lineup to 2013 lineup diversity
• Jack Black cancels Tenacious D tour after Kyle Gass assassination attempt joke controversy
• Taylor Tomlinson profiled by Variety as only woman hosting late night network series

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 Johnny Mac with you Daily Comedy News. I don’t think I’m in a mood, but I just have this feeling today as I record comedy is a little boring right now. I just feel like there’s a rhythm of Hey, it’s Tuesday. There’s a Netflix special, okay, fine, and HBO does one a month, and the comedy podcast there’s like a circle of ten people and they all go on each other’s podcasts and that’s all fine.

We’re doing some comedy festivals every weekend, and there just seems to be nothing new, and there’s not a new face. There’s no one shaking things up. There’s no one bringing anything new to the format. I don’t know what I want, but I feel like it’s been a minute, you know me. I’m always looking for a good controversy or something to goofon at George Lopez, Tacos, at Jim Gaffig and Bourbon.

There’s just nothing. It’s just very workmanlike in the industry right now. So let’s see if that’s just summer doldrums. There has an announcement that I think maybe fed my malaise. The New York Comedy Festival will put out their initial lineup the twentieth Anniversary New York Comedy Festival, and this November will feature more than two hundred comedians in more than one hundred shows throughout the city.

I’ve spoken about this festival in the past. The people who work with it, especially back in my serious XM days, nothing but great to me. But New York is so large that this festival, it’s New York City. Man, it disappears. It doesn’t have the presence of, say a, a Montreal comedy festival, or a comedy festival in a smaller city.

This one. They all hang a couple banners up. But if you don’t know about it, you won’t know about it all right. It’s November eighth through November seventeenth. The headliners include Judd Apatow.

This is alphabetical order, David Tel, Bill Moore, Tracy Morgan, JB. Smooth, and Jabuki Young White. I mean those are your headliners, mar Morgan, JB. Smooth, at Tel. Yeah.

Other headliners include Jeff or Currie, Zorna Gorg Gabe Iglesias. I’m surprised he’s not that topless there, Joe List, Matt McCusker, Nurse John, Miss Pat, Adam Ray is Doctor Phil. The rest is history, justin Silva, Dan Soder and Jimmy o’yang. The New York Comedy Festival is the largest and longest running annual comedy festival in the United States. That’s kind of stunning, but probably also true.

Launched in two thousand and four, not that long ago, festival founder Caroline Hurst said, from up and comers to a less stars, a diverse town lineup brings laughter to a wide range of comedy fans and venues all across five boroughs of New York City, with even more shows to being out soon. At a time when we need laughter more than ever, We’re thrilled to make New York laugh once again. Here’s the lineup so far, Friday, November eighth. You can hear my excitement and I’m trying not to be a Debbie Downy here, but just like like I said in the open, I just feel like comedy’s going through the motions right now. Seven o’clock Jeffy Currie, seven o’clock, Miss Patt, nine to forty five, Dan Soder at town Hall.

Okay, Saturday Night Joe listed Town Hall Jimmy o’yang and Carnegie, Jed Appatow and Friends at the Beacon and Justin Silva at town Hall Sunday the tenth, Nurse John Wednesday the thirteenth, The Rest is History Live at town Hall, Thursday the fourteenth, JB. Smooth of town Hall, Jabuki Young White at the hard Rock, David Tell at town Hall Friday the fifteenth, Tracy Morgan at town Hall, Jubuk Young White Again, Gabe Iglesias at the King’s Theater, Adam ray Is Doctor Phil Live at the Beacon Saturday, a podcast taping, Matt Moncusker, Jibuki Young White Again, and Bill Maher at the Beacon, and then on Sunday Zarna Garg. That’ll clearly fill in more. But I’m on the New York Comedy Festival dot com history page now I wish they went a little further back. The farthest background go is twenty thirteen, and as they write, the festival marked its tenth year featuring Now listen to this lineup?

Is this a little more exciting? Maria Bamford, Hannibal Burs, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Kathy Griffin, Jim Jeffries Anthony, jessinek Nick Kroll, Bill Maher, John Mulaney, Charlie Murphy, j Farrell, Nix Wardson, and Wanda Sykes. There was a stand Up for Heroes show, which included Bill Cosby all Right, Jim Gaffigan and Jerry Seinfeld, and musical performances by Bruce Springsteen. You see what I’m saying Like I’m having trouble getting too excited for this one. I’m sure it will fill in.

I don’t know. Sorry to be a downer. There is a controversy. Jack Black says he was blindsided by band made Kyle Gas’s remark, and Jack Black has canceled the Tenacious D tour. Kyle Gas made a comment after the assassination attempt on Saturday.

Tenacious D band member Kyle Gas joked, don’t miss next time. Jack Black said, I was blindsided by what was said at the show on Sunday. I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form, amen, Jack. After much reflection, I no longer feel its appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour and all future creative plans are on hold. I’m grateful to the fans for the support and understanding this is a great job by Jack.

I mean, it sucks for the fans, but I like someone having the courage of their convictions. And no one should advocate violence, and obviously no one should say something about, you know, not having someone killed. Does that not go without saying. We can disagree on the politics of stuff, but I mean, come on, Gas apologize for the comments and an Instagram post on Tuesday morning, he said the line I improvised on Sunday night and Sydney was highly inappropriate, dangerous, and a terrible mistake. I don’t condone violence of any kind in any form against anyone.

What happened was a tragedy and I’m incredibly sorry for my severe lack of judgment. I profoundly apologize to those I’ve let down and truly regret any plane I’ve caused. Don’t forget someone was killed on Saturday. Today’s st was planning to perform seven shows across Australia and New Zealand over the next two weeks. Sounds like that partnership may be over.

Taylor Thomlinson’s publicist deserves a raise. A coworker used to call these articles wax jobs, and Taylor got quite the wax job from Variety the headline how Taylor Thompson overcame debilitating fear and became the sole woman of late night with After Midnight. Some publicists worked real hard to get this one in. At the center of a simple but colorful stage stands the thirty year old Thomlinson, the picture of calm in a pantsuit that manages to tow the line between professional and hip. Thomason, the only woman currently hosting a late night network series, will later reveal that when she first took the job, Steven Colbert gave her some value of advice, which was You’re not going to be amazing right away.

He let me know that this would take a while to learn and not to expect to nail in the first week. And that helps so much because I still feel like I’m learning how to do this job every day. That is true. Like any profession, things get better with reps, including this dumb show here that you’re listening to. Tomlinson was a natural since it’s January seventeenth debut.

To this day, she reads like a season pro, rolling with the punches, putting her guess at ease, and keeping the audience entertained. Again, I’m not here to make fun of Taylor Thompson. I’m making fun of the publicist deserving a raise for getting Variety to print this thing. Even Colbert is impressed by how quickly she seems to have adapted, as why he first selected her for the job. He says, I like that she’s young, grew up in social media, and can work at a high reference level world, but still seems suspicious for what social media feeds us every day.

What I didn’t expect was how someone so young can be so confident in the role and adaptable to changes so fluidly. She’s thirty years old. Let’s not act like she’s twelve. She’s an adult woman. Disguise the limit for the comic who seems up for any challenge.

Asked if there’s anything about Tomisin that might surprise people, Steven Colbert says she spends her free time racing motorbikes and can bench press two hundred and fifteen pounds. She also doesn’t mine when friends lie about her to the press. If you enjoy what I do here, one way to support the shows, go to buy meacoffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News. I will take your money and I will get a large iced coffee with caramel and milk. I haven’t been getting any of the processed sugar products lately, and I just feel a lot better.

That’s not a crusade. And I’m not anti processed sugar products. Believe me, I like them. I just when I came back from Los Angeles, I got on the scale and I was like, ooh, you need to chill out, buddy. And I’ve been chilling out and I’m down six pounds.

How about that? Huh? I mean I’m up five pounds, but I’m no longer You’re up eleven pounds. But I do get my coffee every morning. I need my coffee to get going.

Have you downloaded The Artist a Killer’s Canvas yet? Come on? Hook us up. That’s our new limited series for mature audience. Is rated.

Are about a serial killer that’s called The Artist a Killer is Canvas. I like this lead from the Stranger. They wrote Joe Para is the ace knuckleball picture of comedy, and I think they nailed that there. What do they mean? They say, Joe Parra’s jokes come at you slowly and unpredictably.

While they may initially see maunderwhelming compared to those of high velocity comics. They invariably wind up in the strike zone and make you shake your head in disbelief and amusement at their off kilter trajectory and their revelatory thud they make in the catcher’s mid of your mind. His deadpan oki oki delivery belies a sharp, sneaky wit. You nailed it. They’re the Stranger.

The stranger was curious. They asked, Joe, hey, Wikipedia, is your birth year is either nineteen eighty eight or nineteen eighty nine. Can you set the record straight or do you prefer to remain a mystery. Joe Paris said it doesn’t matter. The stranger said it might matter to so people, And Joe said, am I thirty five, thirty six at thirty seven?

Let that keep them up at night. The stranger says, does it seem like an advantage for your comedy to not have everyone know other thing about you? Joe said, it’s different nowadays. Before the TV show Joe Para Talks with You, it was nice to go on stage with a complete blank slate and win an audience over reveal a little about yourself bit by bit. But I feel like it’s not even possible nowadays, because people know a decent amount about me through the TV show and my other work.

It’s a different feeling. At the beginning of the shows, there is already a kind of a background of who I am, what kind of comedy I’m gonna do. In some ways, it’s nice not to start from zero the audience. At other times it’s kind of less fun. You can’t get to know each other together.

At the same time, I love this too. The stranger said, I haven’t seen every minute of your comedy, but I’ve seen a fair amount. Do you not dip into the well of your Italian upbringing? Joe said, well, I’m no Sebastian Maniscalco, but I got a couple of jokes about my Italian upbringing this time around. There were some mild mentions of it on the TV show, the way the grandmother made the meatballs, the way she was always cooking.

I’m not an immigrant myself. I’m a few generations removed, so I don’t feel like it’s part of my everyday reality. It’d be a little weird if I was a blonde guy talking about being in Italian the whole time. There’s a new comedy album out today from Mickey Overman ROUBM is called This is Me. You can get that on the eight hundred pound Gorilla.

Dave Chapelle has announced an intimate New York City show. It’s this Thursday at the Grammarcy Theater. Tickets went on sale by the time you heard this. Sorry, I try so. I imagine it’s sold out and it’s one of those cell phone free events, which is just a pain in the hat.

I wouldn’t even want to go. I need my phone. I don’t want to deal with your stupid pouches. A message from the venue reads, with your confirmation, you agree to place your phone in a lock pouch, which you keep throughout the evening. If you need to use your phone, return to the distribution tent at the entrance.

Anyone caught using a cell phone during the show will be immediately ejected. Stop it’s just annoying. It’s a twenty first century dude, So someone’s gonna put some crappy cell phone video of your joke on the internet. Whatever. That’s your comedy news for today.

Let me know your thoughts in the Facebook group A Daily Comedy News podcast group. Am I just in a mood today. It is comedy, a little flat right now, and I’ll see tomorrow

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Featured: Pete Davidson, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, Ari Shafir, Neil Brennan, Sam Morrell, Mark Normand, Jim Gaffigan, Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, Nikki Glaser, Ricky Gervais

What’s in This Episode

• Jon Stewart and The Daily Show cancel Milwaukee live broadcast after assassination attempt
• Bill Burr cancels Milwaukee show due to security closures and travel issues
• Ari Shafir discusses Joe Rogan’s impact on stand-up comedy
• Comedians launching liquor brands including Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, and Jim Gaffigan
• Sam Morrell and Mark Normand’s drinking podcast and liquor venture origins
• Nikki Glaser’s Taylor Swift concert obsession across Europe
• Ricky Gervais working on animated cat show with Afterlife cast

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 Shoenny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. I got to see where I am with the political comedy right now. Obviously it is an intense time. However, I think comedy is best when it’s reflecting on society.

So I’ll probably just do what I’ve been doing, which is following where the news takes me, and the news today takes me to the Daily Show. They were supposed to broadcast from Milwaukee, and then after the attempted assassination on Saturday night, they changed their plans. John Stewart was expected to host a live show following the convention’s conclusion on Thursday. On Sunday, the Daily Show put out a statement saying, our apologies for the inconvenience, but due to logistical issues and the evolving situation of Milwaukee, we need to reschedule our events on the ground in Wisconsin and we’ll look to make those up in the coming weeks. They’re never going to make those up.

Stop lying about that The Daily Show was supposed to record from Uline Hall. Hope. I pronounced that right at the Marcus Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee. Not sure what made them make this decision. I could speculate security concerns, but I found that very curious.

But I’m kind of surprised that they made that move.

Also, Bill Moore canceled his Sunday night show in Milwaukee.

He posted on acts it’s not gonna happen. I can tell you first, they said it’s gonna be impossible to get to the theater because downtown Milwaukee is going to be closed off for security reasons. Mars said he wanted to go to Milwaukee anyway, and maybe things will change. I hate to cancel shows. I was really looking forward to it.

Would do anything to be there, but I just can’t fight this. Another possible reason is that his plane broke and he was in Minneapolis and tried to get a commercial flight, but that was not possible. So I don’t know what’s going on there either. Shifting gears, Ari Shafir was on with Tucker Carlson. I don’t even know where Tucker Carlson has a show right now YouTube Twitter.

Who knows the topic Joe Rogan and Ari Shafer said, I mean he’s the best, the amount of support he has. Ari said, all Joe looks for a guest is whether they are funny or not. He’s just like, I’m the name, I’m Joe Rogan, So I want to put this guy on or that guy on, And if this guy’s funny, I want to push him to a big platform instead of like, what’s going to help me book my show. It’s interesting how he’ll be. Just the casual talking of the outlawness of stand up has helped all of us, whether or not you’ve been on a show or not.

He’s made stand up more popular. So now it’s all just succeeding on a crazy level. You know. I thought this was interesting. Back on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Neil Brennan spoke to Joe about Netflix specials.

I had missed this. I just haven’t gotten around to that episode yet. Oh by the way, top of mine, Tom s Goora had on John Stewart probably a month ago. But it’s a pretty good listen if you want to check that out on two beers, one cup? Is that called that one?

Anyway? The gist of the problem with a Netflix special, and I hadn’t thought about this before very interesting. In a live event, comedians are able to build up to the jokes instead of shortening the jokes and reaching the climax faster. The point being in a live event, the audience doesn’t want off. On Netflix, you can hit click Today’s Will Ferrell’s birthday.

Happy Birthday, John Will Ferrell. Decider caught up with Sam Morrell and they were curious, what’s the deal with comedians starting their own liquor brands? And I love this? Sam said, well, who else is there? There’s not many of this.

Bert Kreischer and Tom Sigora avaka Mark Norman and I have whiskey.

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And then who else is there?

And Decider said, Jim Gaffigan just came out with his own bourbon. If you listen, you know I’m a big fan of Jim’s bourbon, and so SA have said, he copied us. You got to talk to Jim about that. Like, I love Kreischer and Tom because they were like, we don’t want to step on their toes. We’ll go clear spirits Gaffigan it didn’t seem to care.

It started as some limited edition thing, and now I think he’s going all in and we’re like, all right, he sent me a bottle. I’m not promoting it. If it was clear, I’d promote it. Sam, Why did you and Mark Norman do your deal with Padiga? Cat?

Sam said, Mark and I are old drinking buddies. That’s why we started a drinking podcast that is called We Might Be Drunk when we were young comics. That was the premise of the show, was that drink at the end of the night where we never get to see your friend, because that’s what happens at first. You get to hang out and drink all the time when you’re an open micro. But then we start hitting the road and that would turn into like one or two nights, and all that cashing up is caught up in one night, and every time we’d be like, all right, we should go one more drink, and then that one more drink turns into like six more and we be like, uh, it’s gonna be a rough Tuesday.

Because a comedy seller would just stay open, had to be blackout curtains and you’re like, I don’t know what time it is and you leave at six am. So we ended up doing a drinking podcast, and we talked about all these celebrities who have their own liquor and like it was cool to have your own liquor, and Mark’s like, too bad. We can’t do that. Wait, why can’t we do that? We have listeners who run distilleries.

I bet you have a good listenership of drinking people, service industry people, distillery people, And sure enough we got hit up by so many people and it went from there. If you want to do something, there are ways to do it. You might have to do a little bit more of the work and it might be annoying. But I’ll tell you sometimes you go with the bigger people and they don’t know how to do. They do it yourself type stuff, and they could use a little more of that.

You know, when things are all buttoned up in corporate sometimes there’s forty people on an email and nothing gets done. Oh my goodness, boy, I’ll tell you, having worked at some big broadcast companies, I’ve worked at a mom and pop and now I’ve got my two man shop here in the basement. Two man shop is the easiest. Mom and pop is the second easiest. The big corporation.

You have forty people on an email, nothing gets done. I hear you, Sam, And when it’s just you, we have to make sure it gets done. So you know, there’s benefits to do it yourself, but also to a point, it could be stressful both ways. Nikki Glaser was on the Jimmy Kimmel Liss Show last week Come outnn Gianni was the guest host. Nicki started talking about going to see Taylor Swift and said, I was on a break from tour and I was seeing Taylor Swift.

That’s what I do with my free time. I was following Taylor around Europe. Europe just happened to be there when she was there. When I have weekends off from my own tour, I fly to go see her. She compared herself to a divorced dad doing his best to see his daughter.

Nicki says she’s been to seventeen shows in fifteen months and has never taken a bathroom break in any of the concerts, and average at Taylor shows around three and a half hours. Nicki said, for me, it’s either that or cocaine, and luckily I can afford both. Ricky Gervais is working on an animation about cats untitled show We’ll see Ricky Reunite with seven Stars of Afterlife. Ricky said, we started it and it’s going to take a long time because it’s animation. It won’t be finished until later this year.

I don’t think there’s anything like it. I did animation because I thought I’m getting old now and filming is a hard slog. I thought animation, that’s easy. It’s not. I’ve been a fool.

So this morning I was at the National Donuts chain getting my coffee and Evil Billing Vall sitting there in the corner, and I almost said hi to him, and then a couple of things. I’m like, One, I don’t actually know Evil Billingvall. And two, perhaps even more importantly, he doesn’t know that he’s Evil Billing Fall. He’s in his life. He’s just a guy at Dunkin Donuts.

And this guy comes in with a baseball hat every morning around seven am. So I have to remember I don’t know the bad, but Evil bill Ingvall was there this morning. Did you check out the artist A Killer’s Canvas. That’s the new podcast from the Caloroga Shark Media Network about a serial killer. You definitely want to check that one out.

Also, all this political stuff if you like it with some snark, pay attention to ballot. That show’s been in a real nice groove since the debate, the whole Iden stuff last week. You know now we’ve got the Republican National Convention. The stuff over the weekend clearly not funny, but Ballot did find a way to make a joke about it, and that joke was and I was involved in the writing on it. So we were trying to figure out out how do you cover this and be a smart ass but not be a douchebag about it?

And we found that the Asbury Park Press went with the headline this was real stars of the Jersey Shore react to Trump shooting and we’re like, oh, okay. So the joke that came out of that was when the situation gets serious. The situation gets serious, Ballot, wherever you get your podcasts? Oh, I want to talk about the audio chain too. I mentioned last week I got a new MacBook because the keyboard on the old MacBook broke.

Specifically the letters C, D and E. All of those appeared in my last name. See also appears in commands such as control C for copy. So it was getting really hard to make any shows. How about a new MacBook?

And I haven’t totally got the audio chain back to match what I used to have. I had a step. There’s a program called aphonic that it would used to level the audio as the last step, and the auphonic program doesn’t run on these new M three chips that Apple has, so I have to figure out a way for that. So if the audio has been like a little different, that’s what’s going on there. Let’s hit gossip corner.

Pete Davidson spotted in Yellow Springs, Ohio. You know who’s often spotted in Yellow Springs, Ohio? Dave Chappelle. Well, somebody on Facebook captured them both in the same photo. We see Pete Davison walking next to Chappelle with a large smile on his face, both of them wearing all black outfits with white shoes.

Mariah said she saw the comedians walking across the street from Peach’s grill, and said she and her husband briefly exchanged pleasantries with the two while driving by. Wait, it’s one thing to like walk down the street and be like, oh, hey Dave, hey Pete, Hey, how you doing great. It’s another thing to kind of what slow down, roll down the window, hey dad, And then they nod back and they go hey, and they go back to the corners. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know. I’m speculating I’m making things up, but the story does say briefly exchange pleasantries with the two while driving by.

Chris Getten is getting a podcast. This one’s called Idionically Speaking with Chris Getten, a weekly comedy and variety podcast. It’ll launch July twenty fourth and feature guest chatting with Chris and his co hosts Andy and Joseph, and then participating in an improv comedy scenario. The podcasting executive and me noticed that the story says they signed Chris Cattan to a multi year contract. I don’t know what to read into multi Let’s assume it’s at least two multi year to me suggests three, but let’s say it’s two.

That’s aggressive, guys. Some of the guests on Idionically Speaking will include Fred Armison, Dana Carvey, Rachel Dratch, Tim Meadows, Bobby moynihan, Chris Parnell, and Cecily Strong. So it sounds like this is playing on the same corner that the Dana Carvey and David Spade podcast is playing on. Chris Catten said, Andy, Joe and I are incredibly excited to launch the show with such a joy to interview old friends reconnect and chat about our journeys from our days on SNL to our lives today, and we can’t wait for fans to hear the hilarious new sketches we’re cooking up with these comedy legends each week. And that is your comedy news for today, right Go download the artist to Killers Canvas.

Download it, come on, do it. And if you would like this program without commercials, if you’re on Apple, click the banner no commercials, thirty day free trial. At least go for the thirty day free trial. If you’re not on Apple, say you’re on Spotify or you have an Android phone, go to the link of the show notes, which is calaruga dot com slash plus. Don’t forget to check out Ballot, the political podcast with some snark and I’ll meet you back here tomorrow

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Featured: Nikki Glaser, Taylor Swift, Joe Coy, Jimmy Fallon, Louis C.K., Sam Morrill, Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Andy Samberg, Kevin Hart, Brad Williams

What’s in This Episode

• Nikki Glaser’s Taylor Swift jokes at the ESPYs
• Jimmy Fallon’s Joe Biden Titanic joke
• Louis C.K. documentary review and criticism
• Sam Morrill special and comedy influences
• Jerry Seinfeld discusses missing dominant masculinity
• Jason Alexander on George Costanza bobblehead giveaway
• Andy Samberg leaving SNL for health reasons
• Brad Williams on comedy career challenges

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

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

Callarogashawk Media. Hello, I’m Jenny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Oh man, some high risk poker here. Nikki Glaser dared invoke the name of Taylor Swift while performing comedy. You gotta be careful doing that.

I mean, one time Joe Coy did that, who did not go well. Nikki Glaser was at the SBS. Let’s listen. But I’ve actually been a huge fan of sports ever since I first watched Taylor Swift watch a football game. It really changed my life because now I know who Patrick Mahomes is.

I mean before I only knew him as that guy in the State Farm ads and based on his acting, I just assumed he was the CEO’s son. But truly, it is such an honor to present the award for Best Male Athlete. The nominees include peak athletes who push their bodies to the limit, and also a golfer. I’m sorry, Scotty, I do know that golfing is hard. I mean there’s putting, chipping, and driving over a CoP’s leg.

I mean, what I’m trying to say is that nothing will stand in the way of these incredible athletes in their pursuit of greatness. I mean except the Florida Panthers. But boy Connor, that must have hurt to lose a game of ice hockey to a place that doesn’t even have ice. For now, the only Stanley Cup Connor will get to hold is the one his wife asks him to grab out of the cabinet. But let’s get to it, because no one is more excited to find out the winner than me.

Well except for show Hayes interpreter, because he’s got a lot of money riding on this so good clip there by Nikki as she is riding high. Normally, I lead off with the late night jokes. There was one from Jimmy Fallon that I think illustrates the point I was getting into with Alex Bennett a days ago, nine days ago on this podcast, if you missed it, I interviewed Alex Bennett, who’s eighty four years old, and Alex doesn’t appreciate old jokes, and I said, I like a good old joke that’s not really about anything. Here’s one from Jimmy Fallon. This is what I’m talking about.

Joe Biden hasn’t seen this many people jump ship since he took that vacation on the Titanic. It’s funny. Is the Titanic a tragedy? Yes? From one hundred and ten years ago.

Was Joe Biden on the Titanic? I don’t think so. I’d have to check see the same thing there. It’s just a joke. It’s silly.

Obviously Joe Biden wasn’t on the Titanic. He’s not that old. It’s okay. You can make jokes about things sometimes. That Louis c.

K documentary came out to The Washington Post didn’t love it. They gave it two and a half stars out of five. I believe the New York Times had a similar mi review. Apparently the gist is people aren’t sure why we’re dusting this off again. The Washington Post did right.

Perhaps the most dismaying sentiment in this gloomy film is delivered by an anonymous comedy fan who apparently bought a ticket to watch Ck perform at Madison Square Garden last year. On camera, the young man explains away his guilty pleasure, saying with a shrug, everyone lives with a certain amount of hypocrisy, and this is the amount I’ve allocated for myself. Wow, this thing’s ninety minutes I wish it were just streaming somewhere. I would definitely watch it. I don’t know if I’m going to purchase it, but it’s on the video on demand.

Sam Morrill, did you watch it? A special from last week? That was pretty good? Unfortunately for me. One of Sam’s a big comedy influences where the movies of Adam Sandler Slam’s brother, showed me Billy Madison and I couldn’t believe it existed.

I was like, oh my god, this was made for me. Adam Sandler is so immature and outrageous. Then you grew up and you watch it as an adult and you love it for different reasons, or you watch it as an adult and you go, I can’t believe anyone likes this movie. Sam says one of the first albums that I really got into was Chris Rocks. I couldn’t believe it.

I thought it was so thoughtful and intelligent, even at a young age. I didn’t get all the jokes, but the ones I did get, I was like, Wow, Rodney Dangerfield reminded me of my grandpa, So I love Rodney Daingerfield. Back to School remains my comfort movie. Dam’s first set I drank four beers during my first stand up set. I was only on stage for like five minutes, so not good.

It was an open mic. I had a friend come with me, and he laughed at all my jokes. He was the only one laughing. It was pretty brutal, but I did feel good that I did it. I got over it.

I’d go into Barnes and Noble and just read joke books and I’d be like, Okay, that’s how you write a joke. I would study the structure. I can make my friends laugh, but it takes a while to figure that out on stage. One of my first jokes was my teacher told me I reminded her of a young Hemingway. I was like, why because I’m a good writer, and she goes, no, you’re an alcoholic who’s going to kill himself.

That is a pretty good joke. Sam says some of my jokes stunk, but I had a couple that were like, all right, not bad. If you don’t have any stories as a kid, you haven’t lived life. There’s nothing interesting that you’re gonna say. Friend of the show Scott Beckett, who’s probably very thankful that I didn’t play the Joe coy clip.

But there’s plenty of time left in today’s podcast, Scott, and it is a summer Monday, so it’s possible the show’s a little short. We’ll see what happens here. Scott sent over this clip of Jerry Seinfeld talking about manliness. I’ve always wanted to be a real man. I never may, but I really thought when I was that in that era.

Again, it was JFK, it was Muhammad Ali, it was Sean Connery. Howard goes hell, you can go all the way down there. That’s a real man going to I want to be like that someday. Well, no, I never really grew up. It’s that’s a I mean, you don’t want to as a comedian because it’s a childish pursuit.

But I miss a dominant masculinity. Yeah, I get the toxics, but still I like a real man. Jason Alexander, you know him from Seinfeld, pretty popular sitcom back in the nineteen nineties. He was talking about the George Costanza babblehead. Recently, the Yankees gave out eighteen thousand of these bobbleheads.

People bugged at Jason Alexander on social media about it and Jason tweeted, I’m so glad Bobblehead George was a fan fit. Nope, I don’t get anything for it except joy that thirty five years after putting on those glasses, people are still enjoying our work. The show was a gift from you to us. Thank you for keeping it alive. By the way, if you watch the early episodes of Seinfeld, Jason Alexander as George Costanza is how old?

He’s twenty nine? Yeah, twenty nine. I also learned if you watched the first season of Gilligan’s Island the Skipper, he’s forty three. Mister Howell, he’s fifty one. I could lose some weight, but compare to all that, I look pretty good.

Mackpacker and Mackpacker. Andy Samberg was on Kevin Hart’s A Peacock Show, which is called Heart to Heart. I’m gonna put Heart to Heart in the bobs Burgers category. Have you ever seen Hart to Heart? And have you ever met anyone who’s seen Hart to Heart?

I’m sure Peacock thinks it exists, and Kevin probably tells him that they film episodes, but has anyone ever seen this thing? Samberg said he left Saturday Night Live in twenty twelve to prioritize his physical and mental health, telling Kevin Hart, for me, it was like I can’t actually endure it any more, or physically and emotionally, I was falling apart in my life. He explained that the schedule for S ANDL involved working long hours to write for the live show while making new digital shorts weekly, and it became difficult physically. It was taking a heavy toll on me, and I got to a place where I hadn’t slept in seven years. It’s basically like four days a week, you’re not sleeping for seven years.

I just kind of fell apart physically. Brad Williams spoke to Trip Live and said a lot of people ask about a comedy career, and it’s kind of like when someone loses a lot of weight. Someone says, hey, had you lose the weight? They know the answer, but they’re hoping at the time you say, oh, I took this magical pill, woke up every day, kept eating junk food, kept not exercising, and all the weight just fell off and now I have a six pack. It’s kind of like that with comedy, when people are like, had you make it in comedy.

They’re waiting for you to tell them. Oh. I decided to be a comedian one day. So I went down and met with the vice president of show business and I said that I’d like to be a comedian, and they said, great, here are your jokes, here your tourity. It’s go be funny.

That’s not how it happens. It’s a long grind. I haven’t done the international stuff. In a minute. Over on Shortal, Tim harding under the headline you’ll struggle to find a better overview of what’s good in the stand up right now, Okay, let’s see what’s going on.

Tim headed over to the Actually Rather Good Comedy Festival ARG stands for Actually Rather Good Comedy Festival Torotal Rights. As usual, ARG gave us a roadmap for the fringe, highlighting some great new acts and building some buzz around promising shows. Here’s some of Tim’s favorites. Clown King John Luke Roberts is putting on a retrospective this year of all his previous shows. It wasn’t my favorite of his shows, but I love when comedians mount old work, and I’d love to see it happen more.

I’m guessing that’s more of a British Australian thing of where you’re doing more themed hours rather than I don’t know, do we want to see Chris Rock get up and do his greatest hits? Maybe we do want to see Chris Rock get up and do his greatest hits. Who knows. Lou Wall really bowled me over when I saw him for the first time last year. Lou Wall Versus the Internet was an incredibly full on multi media experience.

Their new show, The bisexuals Lament is even better, slowing things down to a rate where it can now be perceived by the human head and turning a genuinely horrific sounding year into a tragic comic musical epic. This is the most excited I have been about a new comedian in a while. All Right, Abby Wamba made a promising the impression with their work in progress. The first three minutes of seventeen shows. What a great eye concept for a debut hour.

It’s such a fun way to keep the show dynamic and entertaining when you’re regularly switching between my musical props and other styles of stand up. Milo Edwards new show Howard Volting Sorry to Offend once again using his family history as a jumping off point while launching into a rangy explanation of the British class system and hmm, a word I don’t want to say on the show. It’s like say you really enjoy something and then things get sticky that trying to keep the clean Now. Yesterday I was telling you about the Edinburgh Fritten shows that The Guardian was excited about, and I realized I shouldn’t read twenty in a row. Some of the shows are excited about Dan Tiernan’s stump.

I’ve seen Dan’s name a few times recently. I guess the Gorilla guys mentioned Dan on Saturday, didn’t They quite the debut last year from Dan, whose show going under raged at Tunan’s lot in life, gay but straight, seeming at odds with his sickingly nice stepdad. A Best Newcomer nomination followed, and so expectations are raised for his follow up. John tot Hill lies on a sofa, wearing zebra striped boots and holding a rose in one hand, a wineglass in the other, and looking rice surrounded by balloons. Teacher turned stand up made an impression at last year’s Fringe with an Unlike anything else.

Faux sermon on hedonism and transcendentdence through history. Camp Flirty and Delighted with Everything. John tot Hill returns with something to do with Biblical plagues.

Also from short Ole, Comedy club owners hit back after venues branded their c…

That’s right. The folks at Nottingham’s Just the ton Of Comedy Club are not happy at being named the second filthiest entertainment venue in the UK. Some reviews on trip Advisor found that more than one in ten visitors mentioned dirtiness in the comments. The only club dirtier is the Heaven Nightclub in London. In case you’re curious, some comments the floor is so dirty that my shoes stuck to it.

That’s half the bores that I spent my twenties in. However, that comment was left more than a decade ago, when the club was in another location. Club founder Daryl Martin told Chortle, all this report shows is how stupid trip Advisor is and how you can’t do anything with it, even years after change has been made. Analyzing reviews from twelve years ago and assuming they’re relevant today is similar to looking at photos of Britain in the seventies and saying that all British people today seem to have really long hair. Another visoner mentioned, despite the toilets being filthy and the hand dryer being broken, we had a good night.

And then it’s your comedy news for today. If you would like this program without these pesky commercials. If you’re on Apple Podcast, click the banner thirty day free trial, and then after that it’s four ninety nine a month. If you’re on Spotify or Android, go do the link in the show notes calrogod dot com slash plus four ninety nine a month, no commercials. Oh, and the artist is out today.

You like serial killers, don’t you? Yeah? I bet you do. Well, We’ve got a heck of a show about it. A serial Killer Rated R for mature audiences only.

It is called the Artist a Killers Canvas. That’s right, The artist a killers canvas. As a half assed mark of normant impression, might say, downloaded, check it out, see anymore

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Featured: Conan O’Brien, Jason Zinneman, Dmitri Martin, Mark Norman, Liz Melly, Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Tom Green, Ali Sadik

What’s in This Episode

• Conan O’Brien on longevity and unconventional funeral wishes
• Dmitri Martin discusses voiceover technique in his special ‘Dmitri Deconstructed’
• Mark Norman’s comedy hour development process
• Liz Melly on viral social media clips taking jokes out of context
• Will Ferrell’s legal name confusion from childhood
• Comedy Central’s In Dog Decision 2024 voter registration and pet adoption event
• Tom Green’s new reality show ‘Tom Green Country’ on Prime Video
• Ali Sadik on independent comedy special releases and social media follower requirements

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 Joinning Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Conan O’Brien told a friend of the pod, Jason Zinneman of The New York Times, that longevity is overrated. Zinneman says the first time Conan made this point was in April at a restaurant in New York, when he proposed that all statues and monuments should be made with durable soap that dissolves in seven years. A month later, Conan declared himself anti graveyard, So does he want to be cremated?

Conan said, I want to be left at a ditch and found by a jugger. W p R spoke to Dmitri Martin about is a recent special Dmitri deconstructed they were curious about his use of voiceover to give the audience a sense of what it’s like being Dmitri. Mister Martin said that speaks to the screen relationship or viewers who perform relationships. That’s different when you’re on a screen than when you’re live, because you can get entighter depending on your coverage, which I think is interesting comedically because now we can get a lot closer. It’s a surprise sometimes a suddenly we’re in height, but then once you are closer, you can be a lot closer auditorially, so close that you can get into the performer’s head with a voiceover, if you can pull it off.

I used it sparingly, but I think it worked pretty well. It’s a simulation of the experience of being on stage, especially if you’ve told jokes so many times that on the show X number of times, you get accustomed to it and try to keep it fresh and present. But you know, it’s just how the human mind works. Sometimes your mind wanders and you’re telling a joke, but you’re thinking about, oh crap, what times? Only flight tomorrow?

Hey, Mark Norman, how’s your newest hour going? Mark said, it’s cooking because I have short jokes. The Beast reality joke that took months to fix and got going. It’s about thirty four seconds. All this work I’m putting into it.

I guess it’s stupid and kind of kind productive, but it’s almost like collecting pennies to try to save up money. Each joke is like a penny, and you’ve got a jar of pennies, and you may have something worthwhile there, but it takes forever, so I’d say I’m about thirty five minutes in. Liz Meely says I owe my career to social media. Some of her early material went viral and said it’s sort of the best thing that’s ever happened to me and the worst thing that’s ever had happened to me. I started clipping up my jokes over fifteen years ago, and that’s how these viral videos very early in my career, via YouTube at first and then Instagram.

It’s those clips and singular jokes that gained me an audience. But as a storyteller and someone who’s more long winded, you need to know a little about me to even appreciate every joke. I’ve had people say mean things about me because they have no context. I did a show in Istanbul and the booker clipped up a joke about my cat dying and me kind of flippantly being like, I don’t care. All the hate comments I got I had to translate them.

They were like, you don’t deserve cats, you horrible person, and I’m like, WHOA. Both my parents are veterinarians. I love cats. It’s a joke. But because the clip was out of context, I look like a monster.

If you had watched even the first jokes around it, you’d know how much I love my cat and cats in general. How tongue in cheek. The response was, when you clip it up and take away context, I was getting Turkish hate mail. Will Ferrell’s legal first name is not Will. Apparently this bothered him when he was a kid.

At the beginning of every school year, Will was on Christina Applegate and Jimmy Linn Siegler is a podcast that exists. Apparently Will said, this is some minor things in terms of it’s not even really trauma. But I remember feeling so embarrassed because my real name is John John William Ferrell’s. The first day of school, I’d be John. The teacher would be like John Ferrell, and was so embarrassing for me to have to say, here, but I go by Will.

I don’t go by John. Boy sounds like a rough childhood. Huh. Wasn’t my choice. My parents named me John, but they called me Will.

I grew up as Will, but on a rule sheet, my legal name is John Ferrell. I don’t know why that was so embarrassing to me. I have to explain I’m actually Will the self aware. Will Ferrell said, people are going to be listening to this going that is the lamest thing ever. Are you in Milwaukee?

Can you get to Milwaukee? Do you want to be in Milwaukee? Well? Today you want to be in Milwaukee. This week it’s the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

We’ll be covering that on the ballot to podcast Baublelot, where you get your show’s funny show ten minutes being snarky about the politicians. A lot of fun that one, anyway, Comedy Central is hosting in Dog Decision twenty twenty four, Rescuing Democracy. This is a voter registration slash pet adoption event in Cathedral School Park today eleven am to five pm. The free event is designed to encourage fans to rescue dogs and democracy. It includes giveaways, doggy swag, pet adoptions, voter registration opportunities, and a meet and greet with members of the Daily Show team and more.

In Dog Cision twenty twenty four being co host with Headcount, a voter registration organization, and Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission mad Act Love It. There’ll be another one of these in Chicago on August eighteenth, the day before they started the Democratic National Convention. So you might want to put that on your calendar, Becky and look Redisha to vote, vote for wherever you want. But if we get to the end of this thing and you’re like mad about it and you didn’t vote, that’s on you sort of. I mean.

Alex Bennett over the weekend explained how electoral college works and in some states it’s not really gonna matter, but vote vote, but especially down ballot on the local stuff, super important. To vote Tom Green to remember him. He is now a celebrity farmer in rural eastern Ontario. During the pandemic, he purchased a one hundred acre property at White Lake after living in La for twenty years. His new reality show Tom Green Country features his simple post LA life with a fifteen hundred pound mule, a donkey, and six chickens.

The unscripted series is among seven new Canadian content productions getting the go ahead for release on Prime Video. Ah Yes that local Canadian production money Love It. Ali Sadik spoke to Cracked and said, people relate to me because I don’t win in every story. A lot of people win in every story. But you know, even Superman and Batman get beat sometimes.

I always admired Muhammad Ali because he was a four time world champion. The point is he lost three times. You can only become a four time champion. If you lose, you gotta lose. Not true.

You could like retire and then someone else gets the belt and then you come back, and then you could be a four time champion without ever losing. I think Ali, you gotta aspire here. He often talks about releasing his own stuff, and he says with other entities like Netflix, they own your special for the duration of it. Somebody owns a part of your life. So me going the independent route is important to the legacy of my children to be able to own the rights to my material, to my life.

As always putting out independent albums, why not put out an independent special? Remember comic selling DVDs after show? You were putting up some type of money to make that DVDA. Just scale it up. I’m not reinventing the wheel.

I’m just taking advantage of the wheel. The new thing with YouTube and the Internet and Instagram, at Facebook and TikTok now they’re putting a stipulation on young comics. You have to have a certain amount of followers. For us to put you on shows, need to become an asset with your followers. I get it, but you’re judging people by Instagram and Facebook and all these things.

Now, these are not marketing people. These are people who do stand up. I feel like an audience is like a friend, and with my friends, I can tell you the good and the bad. We’re gonna laugh and cry together. The Guardian took a look ahead at Edinburgh twenty twenty four and wrote, find the funny with these twenty comedy shows.

Let’s fly through these on a hot Sunday afternoon. Let’s see a show about wealth and relatability. Olga Koch or Coke comes from Money. Olga stepped into the big league at Fringe in twenty twenty three, rights to The Guardian with a show called Prawn Cocktail, pairing SaaS tales of trans national hookups with a thoughtful critique of soul bearing comedy. Next show MSCID is Sue Gray Emma cutter Teeth way back as a character comic on the Edenburgh Fringe.

Now she returns with an intriguing new offering in disguise as the Grand Inquisitor of Partygate turned power behind Keir Starmer’s Throne. Next up, Bobby Davaus. Everything is funny if you can laugh at it. Bobby bounces back after suffering a stroke on stage just six months ago. Wow Rose Mottafeyo’s show is on and on and on.

Her first solo show since her prize winner Horn Dog Roses show is expected to be the hottest of tickets, says The Guardian. That’s only four. I’m not doing twenty. I’m doing five and I’m splitting this up. But John, what are you thinking doing twenty five?

We’ll do five and the fifth one Demi ade Juibe is going to do one. Demi, a writer for James Cordon’s CBS show, promises original comedic songs, presentations and one single backflip. Those are five of the twenty I’m not doing all twenty shows that The Guardian is excited about. I will tell you the others. Don’t worry.

We’re here every every day. It’s not like there’s a cap on the amount of comedy news I can do. Just some point. I’m like, all right, I’m not going to read twenty and that’s your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program, Tell a friend about it.

They might like it too. If you’re like John, these commercials, I can’t take him anymore. Can he do something about it? Well, I can kind of do something about it, But you got to do something about it. You go to Caloroga dot com a slash plus for four ninety nine a month.

You’ll get this show and a bunch of others on the network ad free, including the artist that comes out tomorrow commercial free. While you’re hearing horrible stories about people being chopped into bits, you don’t hear Ryan Seacrest telling you about an online casino. Do you know that would be awkward? To calor Roga dot com slash plus and pay the four ninety nine, Or if you’re on Apple Podcasts, they’ll put it right in front of you. There’s a banner head there and you can click on that and you get this thing, you know, free thirty days trial.

Try it? You know why not? All right, I’m silly today, See tomorrow

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Featured: Ian Adkins, Ryan Bitzer, Mark Normand, Matt Rife, Leanne Morgan, Sean Patton, Jim Jefferies

What’s in This Episode

• 800 Pound Gorilla Media’s international expansion strategy
• Melbourne Comedy Festival coverage and artist acquisition
• UK and Australian comedy scene differences and similarities
• International comedy distribution and worldwide release strategy
• Fresh hour writing expectations in Australian vs American comedy
• Preserving comedy specials from international festivals

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 Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. It’s a Saturday in the summer, so that means an interview. This might be the last one unless I book somebody being honest to My guests today are the guys from eight hundred Pound Gorilla Media. They’ve produced, they’re distributed some of the biggest things like Mark Norman’s Out to Lunch, Matt Rife’s Only Fans, Leanne Morgan’s I’m every Woman, Sean Patten’s Number One.

In this forty five minutes or so, we talk about all things comedy. I started asking them about the international comedy scene, but as we go along we’ll get into how deals are made and distribution and who’s cool and what they’re excited about. Founding member Ian Adkins and co founder Ryan Bitzer are my guests. Let’s dive in. I love how you guys are exploring the international comedy scene.

Those of us who spend a lot of time in comedy, you get I call it the Emperor of Rome syndrome, where you tend to start at in comedy rather than laughing, you stand on the back of the room and you go, oh good callback really well written. I like how this is structured. I find it’s the international comedians these days that are tickling my brain a little bit more and coming at me from angles that I wasn’t expecting. Now. So I saw as part of the prep here that you were down at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, which I’m just totally fascinated by.

I talked about it every day on the pod for about a month and it just seems so huge. So let me actually ask you a question. What was the Melbourne experience for you? Melbourne was great. It’s something that we’ve wanted to do for so long.

It’s just the logistics of flying a few people down there, and just the time of year it is and everything. It was quite an undertaking to organize and get done. But it’s something we’ve always wanted to do, and really we needed the right reason to go there. And one of the first releases we ever did was audio for Jim Jefferies, and so we got in earlier.

And then when we started to really expand outside of the United States and Ca…

It was really cool and it was a great experience. And like you said, the kind of material they were doing down there is just different. It’s a small scene. It’s a really support that everybody supports each other. It’s a really I had a great time, really great time, and I’ve had Auzzie comedians explain to me that how it’s more similar to the British scene in which you put together a i’ll call it a show an hour, and then you do that for a full year, and then you throw that hour out, as opposed to the American I guess the Americans throw out their material when they do a special, But the way you’re throwing in new material, trying out new jokes, whereas they’re writing performing starting from scratch once a year, and you’re expected to do it once a year.

We’re not sitting here going just top by Deer Welcome. Dan Cook doesn’t have a new special. Actually he does this summer. But you can take three years in America and that scene apparently you can’t. That’s right.

It’s one of those things that’s fascinating. What got our attention is going over there and being a part of Fringe and then Melvin Coobrick’s Festival and Citney Comedy Festivals in the same respect is that so many of those great hours never got captured, whether it’s audio, video anything. So you’ve got this these fantastic crafted narrative hours that have lost and so that we’re lost to time. And so that was one of the real big opportunities that we saw to go down there. And this deserves to be put out properly because if we’re able to put this in front of the right audience internationally, no matter where you are, it’s going to resonate.

And because you are doing fresh hours every year, the budgets just aren’t there sometimes to do that, and I think that we strategically take the right projects to preserve. How did you navigate the scene? There’s so many shows every night, like how do you pick? How do you even as a podcast host, as us going through the schedule trying to pick out three or four to highlight every day for thirty days. There were so many like how do you even navigate that?

Yeah, that’s a good question. Laura, who’s not on this call, heads up our UK comedy signing and she’s watching through all the comics all the time. That’s her job, right, And like Ian said, there’s a close alliance between the UK and Australia and so there are often times going to each festival back and forth, so she’s able to see a lot of these folks, also see their specials on YouTube and things like that.

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And then she literally blocked out all of our calendars and said, Ryan, you’r…

But she did a fabulous job of like, everyone, go see these things, so we can cover a lot of ground. And she’s also yeah, shout out definitely to Laura and our office Laura brooksus She’s been going to the Friends Fringe Festival for years and years. This was her first Melbourne comedy festival. She does it right. She goes up sometimes at Fringe for twenty plus days and she’s really able to drill down and find like the really special things that we can focus on and then we can come in the last few days and be able to see the best of the best, and yeah, her creation is unparalleled.

So are you acquiring these shows for US distribution, worldwide distribution or are you just scouting talent? Why are you there? Yeah? So we enter into relationships in a variety of ways, but most of the time it’s for worldwide distribution and an investment into the both of the markets. We also like and stuff as well.

But the goal is really to comedy so universal and it’s not restricted by boundaries race, religion, income, everything like that. So there’s really a lot of potential for bits and acts and hours to really succeed in a number of countries. And I think it’s really just the lack of promotion and being able to find the audience to put content in front of has always been historically the challenge. Just looking at our data and analytics that we use when we market these releases. It’s really fascinating to see the type of people that resonate with somebody in Kentucky resonating with somebody from Glasgow, and it’s just it’s really nice to see.

And as you head towards Edinburgh, will it be the same sort of approach that one’s I’ve never done either, always looking for a business reason to do so one of these years, but that just seems equally huge. And from what I’ve read in the past, I hope you’re not sleeping in a tent or in somebody’s garage. I hope you booked your hotel early. No, that’s funny. That’s one of the last things last year because Ryan hasn’t been over before and I’ve been up the last the past few years.

And one of the first things I learned was, you’re exactly right. Is book your accommodation the year why the year before so you can get something nice. And I was so excited I found this place last year and I caught up Brian. I’m like, guys, we can get a refund, but we’ve got to book it now. Trust me on this one.

And so that’s what we’ll see in a couple months now. So you guys have really come on the scene hosting the show every day for a few years. I had seen your name out there, and I guess for me personally, the acquisition of the old Laugh Button website is what really started to get the Gorilla name into my head on a daily business. Can you talk me about talk to me about that acquisition, why that website and how the site factors and everything you’re trying to do. Yeah, that’s a good question.

We entered into a partnership, I want to say it was like twenty nineteen somewhere around there with the syndicate. The syndicate it’s out of New Jersey. They owned the Laugh Button I’d been running in the last ten years, and we started to podcast network with them and Robert Kelly, the comedian, and right as we got going, the pandemic hit and things became difficult, especially in New York. You’re familiar with that scene. It was tough to do shows and things like that if they weren’t online, and we had the studio and it was a lot of work, and so we did a lot of pivots during that time, like a lot of companies trying to find our footing, and I think we did good work.

I think the amount of time we put into that entity didn’t equal what the outcome should have been. And we decided we’d all reached the place at the same time where it was like, why don’t we just all focus on our course of what we do and part ways and what do you do with the laugh button? And it was something we really liked and something I think they were like, we want to see it have a good home and continue on. And so the fit was good for us because we have so many people coming to the site every day. It’s like, how do we what can we put in front of them that’s topical, that’s the thing they’re interested in, and comedy.

It just fits really well. And we acquired it at the end of that relationship and then rebranded it over the course of three to six months dating her Pound World News, preserved all the links, all of the data that was within it, and then really you know, honed out that staff. So we have I don’t know, six seven articles coming out a day. I’m not sure what it is, and we keep it refreshed, we try to have them, We try to have people at the festivals, reviewing everything, multiple news hits a day, and then the goal is there is to just hey, if you like Kyle Kanaane because you read you’re here for the news article. Do you know he has the last three specials over here that you can watch.

And that’s the idea. It’s a tremendous resource. I love being magicians showing each other our tricks. I have a sub stack and I will write article. Here’s some podcasts that I’m listening to this week, and one or two of them will happen to be from my very own network.

So I appreciate the Gorilla News site. It’s a legit comedy news site that I use to prep for this show on a daily business basis. But I see it’s in the oh, by the way, and here, we’ll totally get it. And it’s so smart and it’s well done and the whole point and I guess it gets back to everything you guys are trying to do. It’s helping the artist surface content.

Right, that’s what this is all about to begin with. Yeah, and that’s exactly right. We have this talk about how not to be like Succession, where you own the news and you just talk about yourself or your narrative, and so we try to really stay out of that world and not influence it. But to say that we don’t put things in there that we want to showcase would be silly. Our goal is to do everything we can to help the people on our roster get to their next level, and so the news is one of those.

But yeah, we do talk about a lout and joke around a lot about it, but it’s something we’re very conscious of staying separate and let them do what they want. Yeah, I was using it earlier today. There’s a fantastic article up on the day that I recorded this with you guys, the top ten specials for the first half of the year, and it doesn’t match my personal list. And a part of that is is there’s so much content that I just can’t consume it all, or sometimes something comes and goes and I forget. So I was looking at your list, going, oh wow, there’s seven here that I need to get around to.

It’s a wonderful resource. It’s a great job by the editorial team. That’s great. They’ll be happy to hear that. It’s really fun to watch because there’s not many people in the space doing daily stand up comedy news and to see like an a list artists retweet something that is throwing like a bunch of caffeine all over this part they just said, pumped like it’s the excitement you can feel in the whole office whenever something like that happened.

So it’s really nice to see that it’s resonating and people are finding out and staying current on what’s happened in comedy more with the eight hundred pound gorilla guys. In a moment, I will remind you if you would like this program ad free, you wouldn’t have to listen to this upcoming ad break. You could go to Calaruga dot com slash plus and for four ninety nine a month, the ads go away. I guess you’d still hear me doing this though. Oh well, if you’re on Apple Podcast, there’s a banner you can click it there and you can actually do a thirty day free trial to see if you like it without the ads.

Maybe it’ll be like, you know, I wish there were more commercials, Well here’s your wish. What’s the philosophy here working with the artists, it seems to be more of It’s not the Chris Rocks and the Jerry Seinfelds, who don’t need anyone’s help at this point. It’s more people who need exposure breaking through. So walk me through the process with the artists. What’s in it for them?

What’s in it for you? How does this all work? Yeah? From the very beginnings, Damien and I formed the company. We’re artist managers and we managed comedians for a while, and Ian comes from the space as well.

A lot of us started in music and entertainment and things like that, So the idea was always a necessity. We needed something like this for our clients, and it just didn’t exist in the way we wanted to see it on so so we would complain about it all the time, and then finally we just decided to start it, because you start sounding an idiot when you complain about the thing that you could go build, and so we started building this. We didn’t really understand the marketplace fully, and I think that helped us because we asked a lot of dumb questions. We stumbled around a lot in the beginning finding our footing, and then once we captured the sauce of like how to put a track into the Internet in a social media form and have it spray out across the world. That that’s a cool feeling, and so that everything you do is going to have that virality and you can’t really plan it, but when it happens, it’s very cool.

We just try to take every project that comes in, do the best we can buy it, and then let the fans take it from there. So in terms of how we do deals, we kind of mold to what the artist is looking for. There’s no set it and forget it. There’s no one contract. Every artist comes to us with a different take on what they’re trying to do or what’s important to them, And so the initial conversation after we like an hour or we like what thirty minutes they have done on tape, is what are you trying to accomplish?

And then it’s always very similar things, and then you really try to hone in on ways that you just want more butts in the seats when you do the tour, do you want to make money? You just want more eyeballs on the special? What’s the goal?

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And then we fine tune the strategy and the deal from there.

Who’s recording it, who’s outlaying the money, what’s the risk, and then if we’re putting up the money, then it’s a pretty simple deal where it’s late. We just want to make our money back. You’re going to prove everything that we spend, so there’s no bs, and then once the first dollar profit goes in, it’s split and it’s we just try to create something that’s fair. But we also got to make sure we’re a business in twenty twenty five. And how do you go about scouting talent or is it mostly on the web these days you’re out hustling in the clubs.

You got the younger guys doing that. That was my trick at Series XM as I was middle aged manager who is also expected to be at his desk at eight am. I can’t be at the truckle huntil one on a Tuesday. Yeah, exactly, we’ve got we’ve got a bunch of Yeah, right, you can probably fill in more of this, but yeah, we’ve definitely got a bunch of people that then do that Laura over in the UK and several people will go out and do the same over here. A lot of our relationships just come from the long standing history we’ve had with agents and managers that will be able to send us like, hey, this makes sense, but you check her out and as we’ve grown as a company, if it makes sense for us and them, and then we put it through our own role, our own process, vending process, and then it goes from there.

But Ryan, you could probably expand a little bit more on what’s happening in Nashville and us New York. And yeah, there there’s a lot of younger people on the staff that stay out later and they’re going to the shows I know, Katie, And our office is up in New York once a month just going to the seller and the stand and things like that, looking at the talent.

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And then we have folks out in LA and keep us informed there.

A lot of it does come from managers and agents or artists recommending other artists. We get a lot of that, but it’s got to go through do we like this, Is this something we’re jazzed about, because if not, then we’re not going to help the artist. You know, once these things come in through those filters, then you run it through. Is this get anyone excited here? And someone’s got to champion it through for us to work on it.

It’s really important at a generic level, what would be something that excites people. I’ll go first. I was watching some specials over the weekend and there was one that I watched on YouTube. It’s not one of yours, and it was fine. As a bit of a comedy snob, I’m like, this is fine.

This is a comedian doing an act and it’s fine. And if you need an hour of comedy, it’s fine. I don’t it. I don’t hate it. It just is, whereas other specials will just really make me go, oh wow, So how do you what is the subjectiveness of Okay?

This is one that gets through. Yeah. That’s why it’s really important to have a little bit of diversity in the office, because not everything I’m gonna find funny that Katie finds funny. I think that’s really important. And once you put enough stuff out, if we put up everything I like, it’d be a pretty boring site, I think for most people.

So you’ve got to be trying a whole bunch of different things. And if something really tickles Marcus or Katie or Mick on the team or Evan, Damie and so on and so forth, you’re then and they’re going to tell the team. This is why I like it is why I think it’s important. Then you get the data on the back end, and the data on the back end is going to tell you, Okay, this is working, this isn’t working, and it’s important to listen to that. So it’s this combination of what do we like as a group, what are we thinking needs to be heard, and then what’s the audience saying about that, and working that blend constantly.

I think is really important. If you have one scout, it just doesn’t go good because there’s all different kinds of things that make people laugh, is what I’ve learned. I think that’s smart. When I ran Serious XM Comedy, I really believed in having a diverse staff in all ways, and an important one was age. So when I started there, I was probably I don’t know, thirty four or so, and I remember telling the staff that we had to be careful that we didn’t age.

Back then, Jim Brewer was doing Afternoon Drive and I said, I don’t want us to go twenty years later going hey kids, Eddie Murphy and denim jackets and rock and roll, right, because you just you wake up one day and you’re really old. So I would always pay attention to the kids just out of college and what’s going on. Because it’s very easy to sit here in an old man mountain and go, matt Riife, I don’t get it, but somebody clearly does. Yeah. Yeah, six twenty seven million views.

It’s one of the highest few comedy specials of all time. So it doesn’t really matter what we think about it. The audience has spoken and they like it, and what do you do with that information? You are absolutely right, and so we’ve got to be listening those people I just mentioned earlier, they’re all pretty much out of college, so we try to listen to the younger folks as much as possible. Yeah, and with that diverse catalog too, you get if you’re talking about YouTube specifically, you’ve got specials next to specials that the audience is just they’re not going to find both funny, right, and so yeah, different funnels coming into your channel, and it’s really about that recommendation algorithm, and even on our website as well as someone coming in to buy a specific title, how can we position something that we know that they’re going to like.

And that’s where the data comes in, and we have way more control over putting the right thing on our own site than we do to YouTube’s algorithm, although it’s fantastic, but it’s just a dance of how how to get the most out of both platforms. Yeah. I remember working with the comedians the New York brick wall cigarette smokers don’t like the La All scene, and neither side likes the blue collar guys who were the nicest guys in the world and making more money than the first two groups. It was just always this whole weird It wasn’t like sports teams or gangs. It was just like New York for U s LA.

And I guess now we’re Austin’s in the mix as well. Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s where Damien in our office and myself come from specifically, is the we were out as promoting comedy promoters back in the day with Blue Collar Comedy Tour and Larry Cable Guy Fox where they all this and really that’s what opened my mind is someone that wasn’t in that scene specifically, and I’d go out and I see the amount of people that come out. It’s undeniable and it’s just complete overlooked market and it’s I don’t know. It just really opened my eyes about different things out there and how they could really excel.

I want to hear more about that. I put together Blue Collar Radio for serious and the first time I met the guys, it was down in Nashville, and I asked them, don’t be ip me. I don’t want to sit in the second row. Put me up in the upper deck and I’m taking notes there, mental notes, And I remember the things that got big ovations were y’all ever been to the Walmart? A Jimmy Buffett reference and Elvis reference And it really helped inform me on how to program that channel and go right down the middle where Series XM Raw Dog was.

If it were a person, maybe it would be Bill Burr, Hey, go f yourself, But Blue Collar was God, Flag, America, Chevrolet, Chick fil A, whatever you want to put in that category. It was just it was a different vive. What did you do with the blue collar guys? So we promoted us with outback concerts at the time, and they that was really the premiere tour that we did and went everywhere with it. And really it is how we worked with other acts and comedians and even you know a lot of music bands and stuff like that as well, where we would take one artist, and then we would tour and we would we book and rap the tour, and there was a level of familiarity between us in the act, so they knew what they were getting through.

The deals were easier, we knew the right markets to go to and everything like that. And so through that, just getting thrown into the fire out on the road like that, finding these little towns I had never even heard of and seen ten thousan fifteen thousand people showing up, it just blew my mind. I’m like, where is everybody else? Like where, why isn’t anybody else doing this? It’s and it’s there are good people, it’s a good show.

It made a ton of money, and it’s just fascinating. So then you just take that that all that knowledge you learn and try to apply it to what we’re doing today. But it’s not just the blue collars, sub subpopulations of people that are underserved, and is how do we connect those people and how do we identify them and then how do we give them exactly what they want, when they want it, and on whatever platform they wanted. That’s what I took from that previous life. Yeah, I remember those days, That’s when these days Andrew Schultz plays Madison Square Garden and we could walk down the street and ask one hundred people and maybe three out of one hundred would know who Andrew is.

And I’m not dissing Andrew. It’s a different time. But twenty years ago, that Blue Collar tour, that’s when we started to really see the size of arenas ramp up. I remember I was doing prep. The bosses were asking me, it’s serious.

All right, we had a clean channel and a dirty channel. What else could we do? And I started noticing all the ticket sales on southern comedy or blue collar is what I meant, And all right, we started looking at that, and then we went down different genres and we did the deal with Jamie Fox, the one we could never figure out. I was regularly asked to do it, and I just couldn’t solve how to do just at the top level term Latino comedy, just because of the different genres of people speaking Spanish or Spanglish. We could never really figure that one out.

Yeah, talking from that period of the career, we had a similar type when Russell Peters was coming up and we were another huge, huge, But depending on which hundred people we asked, we might go ninety nine out of one hundred or three out of one hundred, but he’s huge. You’re absolutely right. But when we were going out, when he’s just starting doing theaters in the US and out of the clubs, and it’s about identifying that population that really his stuff resonates with and then it just expands from there. It’s and that’s exactly the principles we use right now, is you put the right thing in front of this this audience, and they’re going to come and they’re going to love it, and then you learn a lot about those that audience and how to get how to serve them. But yeah, yeah, absolutely, Joe Koy unfortunately best known right now for I think Taylor just murdered him.

Is the way I phrased it on the podcast. If she would have just smiled at the joke and just went ah, it would have been fine. But the story just became Joe Coy Bond of the Golden Globes, and he deserves better. But he’s another guy that just just playing these huge arenas. Yeah, and it’s say one of the things that to tie back to Australia from the beginning is when we I think Schultz had just been there and did eight nights.

Theovont did six in arenas over there, and that blew my mind and you start thinking about I mean, it’s the power of the podcast and that speaking directly to these people that are going to come out and support you. But I could not believe the amount of tickets they saw down there, And it was great to see because we’ve been working with Scholtz for a long time and just it’s fascinating how quick that can happen. You’re so right about the power of the podcast theo Tim Dillon Quiet Master, which is fantastic. I love that you guys are doing comedy albums here in twenty twenty four. What’s the business of that.

A lot of other labels have pulled back over various royalties fights. As I mentioned, I programmed series for ten years. I currently handle the comedy properties on Live one, and there’s a lot of times not the depth of the librarya that used to be available because people have pulled things back. As a programmer, I love the discovery aspects, so I like what you guys are doing and having more lesser known names or new faces might be a better term. So what is the state of the comedy album and are we doing physical releases or other than maybe a vinyl to be cool?

Is that business dead? Is it all Apple? Yeah, let’s start with physical. If an artist like a Tim Dillon who’s going a big podcast wants to do a physical product like a vinyl, we’re in on that conversation. It’s all about audience and what is the appetite in that audience for that product.

We don’t do a lot of physical though. In fact, in many cases we’ll give those rights back to the artists to do their own physical just because you know, they need, they like product to sell at the end of the shows. And why are we keeping track of that and sharing pennies with each other. It’s let them have it. It’s a moment anyway for the artists to meet the fan and to have an interaction.

We don’t do a lot of physical unless there’s audience there. With digital, you know, Serious is still a major player in that. Spotlight feels like Pandora paused everything for the time being.

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And then Apple has put forth a lot of interest in comedy.

They’re not sure what their strategy is, but they’re interested in this genre. So there’s a lot of conversation around that right now, and then Spotify has just been yeah, we’ll put it up kind of thing.

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And then Amazon, I just wish, I wish Amazon would jump into the space because…

But we just don’t see a lot of leadership in these DSPs. And again here we are at this place where we complain about it, like Apple and Spotify, the don’t even have a genre really, and to not even respect a genres is crazy to us in twenty twenty four of an entertainment form that’s growing double digits. We just went back to our team and said, if we’re not going to get the attention we want, then we need to go build it and complaining. And so that’s what we’ve been working on, is filling the void of really what Comedy Central left. When I was coming up, Comedy Central was the place I was there every night, I could be there when it wasn’t working, I was watching Comedy Central.

And it’s been much what is happening, especially recently with just pulling everything down, and so we were like that’s still a need in our society. Let’s go do it. Let’s go build that. So we’re building out an audio platform right now on YouTube which will be available is available, but it’s in beta right now with playlisting and things like that. But we’re going to put a lot of attention into that on YouTube, and specifically YouTube because that platform is future proofed with whatever happens with litigation.

It has all the necessary tools in it already because they’ve already been down this battle with music. And we’re putting a lot of BED on YouTube and then we’re putting a lot of BED on our site. And so what we want to be able to do is if you like comic acts, through data, we’re going to be able to figure out what the YZ is for you specifically and then keep pushing you down to artists you maybe haven’t heard before. And that’s the idea is discovery, right and once I get a few data points on you, we could probably put a fourth joke in front of you and nail it, but we need a little bit of data. So that’s the idea for the next eighteen months.

As a programmer, totally get where you’re coming from. I always explain to folks, I got to play the hits to bring him into the door. But once you get in there and you trust us a little bit, and you trust the host or the brand, then you can do the discovery and be like, Okay, now that you feel that I might know what I’m talking about, here is somebody you haven’t heard of yet. That’s super awesome. Yeah, the tools are finally available, like for us to even be able to quantify on those data sets.

So that’s where I get really excited. That’s where EAM gets really excited because we’re total nerds. But if if we can figure out a few things about your and what tickles you, man, that’s going to be fun because then we can put something right in front of you and you’re like, I’ve never heard of that? Have you heard of this? This is the best and that’s what we want more with the eight hundred pound gorilla guys in a moment, don’t forget.

On Monday, that new podcast, The Artist a Killer’s Canvas makes its big debut. You like serial killers? That sounds weird? Yes, I love serial killers? Shun Well, good for you.

There’s a podcast about one. It’s called The Artist a Killer’s Canvas. It’s out on Monday. You can follow it in your favorite podcast app right now, especially if you’re an Apple podcast hit that plus you know it’ll help climb the charts. Nuts nudge and know what I mean?

So one of your models is pay what you want as a consumer? Do you mean it? What if I want to pay you zero? Is it a dollar? What are you hoping the price point is?

What’s the actual audience behavior? Now? Fortunately, especially with YouTube and the generation’s younger than me, there’s been a good culture of Patreon or tipping or buy me a coffee whatever. So I think there is an understanding that we can’t have endlessly free content and if you like an artist, actually support them. So how is pay what you want working for you?

It’s good it started out. It’s something that we’ve tried and really to get to have a chance to identify the super fan for the artists. It’s really what it’s about. And we put titles up for a pay what you want model, And I should just clarify it’s not zero, So there is a floor to it. Currently I think it’s ten and then it goes twenty fifty, one hundred.

But what we’ve found is when we go up and announce these titles, we know they’re going to be on YouTube down the road. So most of the time we’ll be able to say, hey, this video will be available on YouTube on a certain date. However, if you want to watch it first and support the artists, support the comedy scene, support want to have that early access to this that you can then message the artists or talk to your friends about whatever, you have a chance to become a super fan and pay for it. And what we’ve found is when you put all that out, you’re not doing any bait and switching on it saying like you pay it and then now it’s free. You’re very clear with it.

The people that you get to buy during that the most valuable people that you could ever have as an artist. And so that’s really what it’s all about. And when there’s other strategies that make sense, like Ryan spoke about earlier about goyn straight to YouTube right away if you want tons of numbers, but in essence you’re getting that data right to Google. At that point you’ll never know who those rabid fans are. So this is just an opportunity to be able to say here’s who it is here.

Here’s who knew it was going to come out in a month or two, and here’s who reached in their pocket and wanted to support you and be into that. So that’s really the where it came from. And the art like the fans want to support these artists. That’s the thing. This was all just a guess.

Like we didn’t know. We started doing a dollar, we started doing three dollars. We didn’t know how this would work. We just tested and tested and fans toiled us over and over again. This is important to me.

I want to spend money at it. And you would be shocked that the number of people sent through one hundred dollars. I’m shocked. It blows my mind. But it’s like, I think these people want to see this scene develop.

They’re happy that this product came out, and they want to attach themselves to it. And I think where we’re going with that is we want to lean into that more. How do we bring the fan and the artists together in a meaningful way. Those are some of the things we’re working on in twenty twenty five to get these projects made. Because we don’t have an endless bank account to go fund all these things, but some of them need to be done, and so how do you choose them, and then how do you bring in the fans to support it earlier.

I think there’s a some calculus we could do on that and get really good at that and make them a part of the process. Because I don’t know about you, but I’ve bought things online like kickstarters and things like that, and you get to see it being made along the way, and I think there’s something to that. And I think there’s a bond that’s developed between the fan and the artist through that process and it doesn’t erode over time. It only makes your fandom of that person better. Yeah.

I think it’s a lot like music I used to love. And I’m so sad that it’s at least on hiatus, hitting in Montreal just for laughs and the new faces go up there, reset my knowledge with twenty comedians that nobody knows, and then come back and tell my audience about it and really champion somebody. I guess at the last one two years ago, I came back thinking Gianmarco Soresi Airesse won the night and he just put something out over the weekend, and it’s just there’s somebody I’m rooting for this person. I feel like I’m along for the ride. They’re not yet a household name, and I feel like I’m in there.

And we’ve seen in this culture on YouTube of the super chats. I’ll watch a quote unquote YouTuber and it’s hey Joe in Saint Louis for fifty dollars just for one comment. And on Old Man Mountain, I’m like fifty dollars to text somebody what what? But that’s the culture. So I love what you’re doing because it also allows uh the artist to get the material out there.

It’s at some point we all have to pay rent, right, there’s no like free Comedy Society endorsing the arts. We all including this podcast. I’m running commercials. This is a money making organization here, but I try to place the commercials not mid sentence. It can be frustrating to watch a special on YouTube.

So there’s two ways to go about it, or three ways. One pay for the special and see it uninterrupted, and you’re whether it’s through what you guys are doing or Netflix or Max, we’re paying for this content. If we consider a quote unquote free YouTube special with commercials in it, did anybody bother to place the commercials with a marker, so at least it’s between chunks. There is nothing worse than a break coming mid sentence. Yeah, yes, and having YouTube give you that ability is important too, So yes, we want to work more and more with YouTube.

They finally recognize what we’re doing, and we want to get really a lot smarter about that. There’s so much to learn. Every layer you get into that world, it feels like, oh, there’s another layer, and so I think we’re on our third layer now, and I just know how far it goes to be honest. But the bigger you get, the sort of more things that are available to you, and we want to get really good at that. That’s important.

If you take a victory lap, would have been the big successes so far? What are the names or the specials or the pieces of content that would all be like, oh wow, those guys. Yeah. I always start that conversation with. The greatest asset we have is the team we’ve built here, where we’ve got a team around the country and around the world that is the best in comedy right now, person here in markets comedy is the smartest person marketing comedy in the world in my opinion, right now, so it starts there again.

Like these people develop these talents over years, these sets over three years, five years sometimes and so they’ve done all the hard work and all they really need is an honest partner that knows how to extract the gold from it and then put that gold on specific platforms and get it moving. So to take credit for Mark Norman’s Out to lunchbsolutely ridiculous. That was all Mark Norman. But did we know where to put it and how to get it out there? Yes, and that helped.

That helped that career and we couldn’t be happier for Mark because he’s a fabulous comic. So on and so forth. Though with we did some specials with Nate that I think we’re really proud of with Nate Bergozzi did Greg Warren, Joe Zimmerman and Mike Fechion, and those have taken off and I think are really impressive to see those comics out there in a big way now. It’d be stupid not to mention Matt Rife and was the biggest thing of last year and continues to be the biggest thing of this year. Angela Johnson, Michael Yo has been a big one for US.

Sal Volcano’s new special obviously is taken off, but it’s the ones that you don’t expect that really are fun to see in viral. I’ve got one of those, Ryan that the Ferd Brady would be a great example of it that for us, it’s one of the first ones we invested in over the UK. And if you’re not familiar with her, the Scottish Scottish comedian and we really didn’t know how she would translate to a North American audience, right, and we had licensed that to the BBC in the UK and it did fantastic because she’s been on Task Match, she’s a star and it was amazing being I think it was that last fringe. Actually I was at the Monkey Barrel and she was in the green room up there and she was looking because we had just put up her special and on YouTube and for North America we had to block out UK at the time, and her Instagram and YouTube, we’re just or her Instagram was just blowing up with all these people from Texas and she’s in this She’s like, where are all these people coming from? And there she got all this surge of fans when we dropped it over here and that was the most surprising and exciting one because it’s a fantastic hour.

You should check it out. Power and Chaos. But then such a great special and really, like Brian said about Mark, it’s all Fern and people were able to really witness her genius. And she’s got a fantastic Netflix special now and she’s got a book, she’s been on test by all this stuff around her. It’s just so great to see.

But how she resonated across the ocean really blew my mind. And who’s coming up that we should be excited about. That’s on your upcoming release roster if you can chare, We’ve got some great releases coming up. We filmed a speaking of up and comers that were stand out at Fringe last year, Pat Young and Dan Tiernan both nominated for Best of Friends. We filmed them in a really cool spot in London, just this really special hours that resonated throughout that whole festival that honestly was one of those things that may have gone away Alvi coming was just such a nice opportunity to be able to capture that and really looking forward to putting those out there in the world.

They’re just they’re wonderful and just something to build on for sure for the next one. Those would be the probably the top two that I’m looking for to releasing right now. Yeah, Also Josh Glance, that’s gonna be a good one. We’ve gotten Nick Swartzon’s New Hour coming out, which would be a good time. That’s not really he’s a known entity.

Francisco Ramos another project from him, which I’m really excited about.

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And then one of my personal favorites is James Adomians never put out an hour…

He finally committed to it, and so that’ll be out in August. I think the sixteenth is the date. I’m really excited about that because he’s a voice that has been left out of this scene for a while. He’s been doing so many things on television and whatnot, but stand up wise, he needs to be seen. He’s a freaking treasure for comedy.

So I’m really excited about that one. But there’s so many. Just looking at this list, it’d be unfair for me just to run down because there’s just so much. Yeah, and there’s a great thing too about Australia too. There’s a fantastic the agency down there called Token and there’s a lot of titles that they’ve shot beautifully that are I have never been outside of Australia before or New Zealand, and we’re going to have quite a few of those releases coming out in August and we’re just continuing and building that Australian comedy audience that we’ve been working on for a while.

Stiose are really exciting too. As a consumer, what’s the best way to keep up Subscribe to the YouTube channel. I don’t know you probably are you subscribed to our new speed That Monday morning brief of what’s coming in the week. I find very useful. It’s on our site.

You can sign up there at eight hundred PGM dot com. It hits your inbox every Monday and it gives you everything from TV film to stand up just anything comedy. It hits the highlights of what’s happening in a week. That way you don’t miss things.

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And then the email list shoots out every Friday with what’s happening on that…

I think people Generation Z for some reason, it’s really liking classical comedy, which you wouldn’t think makes any sense. But they love this oldest new thing and we love serving it up. So having these older things find a trip as well. I’m a big Bob Hope fan. I love listening to just a standard appearance at a random army base.

It’s just the rhythm of the joke where you don’t need to know any of the specifics, but hey, General Johnson is here. I bet he’s just here for the free hot dogs. It’s just a joke, joke. Cope delivers it. It gets a laugh.

You don’t even know what it means, but it’s just I love Bob, so that’s awesome. Yeah, someone has to do this work of preserving this stuff because it’s just so important. We just love it. I mean, is it the thing that makes who bunch of money now? But it’s passion all the way, and it needs to be preserved.

Yeah, I’m glad. Check it out. It’s called Clomb Jewels. That’s an imprint we manage. If I’m an artist and I want to work with you, how do I reach out to you?

Do? I have to have been doing this for more than five minutes, five years? What’s the process? So a lot of our stuff now comes through agents and managers, but other comics when a lot of the comedian community wants to help each other out just emailing us cold, yeah, you can do that, but it’s better if one of these acts come to us and says, hey, we just did that with Blake Wexler, for example, Siamon said we love came to us and said, I found this guy. He’s great, Blake Wexler.

We need to do a project together, and we did. And that’s a really good way to come into the organization because now we’re using his audience to help this new comic who’s up and coming at a phenomenal hour. So that’s really the best way. It’s like anything, right, it’s like anything with relationships. If you intro me to someone, I’m going to get a much warmer reception.

Yeah. I just think that’s a really great way. Yeah, I can only imagine back in the serious days, I would have this stack of CDs that would sit on the right hand of my desk, and every now and then there’d be a Friday afternoon where all the work had been done and I’d finally get to the pile. And if you were lucky enough that I and I’m not saying that I’m anybody, but if you’re lucky enough that I had the free time and I picked up your CD and I put it in and I hit play, you had four seconds of my attention. Not that I’m a jerk, but just I’d hit play and was it recorded right?

Did you come out of the box with a good joke? Did a coworker come in and distract me and I didn’t hear your good material? It’s so hard to just cold call like that, is my point. Yeah, relationships are everything. Yeah, And I think comics they see other comics working hard and they finally get that good fifteen minutes and it’s like, oh yeah, let’s make the intro.

Let’s get this thing going. It is something that’s great about the comedians as they like bringing younger guys along. Now, sometimes somebody maybe has a shorter career path to super fame and the jealousy kicks in. Another person used whatever shortcut in the media at the time, and there’s that jealousy there. But for the most part, if somebody’s out there just doing good work night after night, the guys in the middle tier and the cooler A listers will really stick up for them.

It’s fantastic, it’s healthy. We get a lot of that, and I like that. I like that way it comes in because then I’ve been seeing this guy in the club for a long time and he’s ready. The site is the eight hundred Pound Gorilla and that’s the YouTube channel. Anything else to plug You guys have been fantastic and very generous with your time.

I don’t think I don’t think we need to plug anything. I just thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for raising the visibility of comedy. It’s our favorite art form. We need it, not more than ever, especially going into the November elections.

Yeah, let’s just keep growing the form and get these artists raising up, the next wave, raising up the ranks, and they can pay their bills. Thank you Ian Atkins and Ryan Bitzer for a deep dive on the world of comedy. I hope everybody enjoy that back in the morning with a normal episode. See you then,

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Featured: John Mulaney, Olivia Munn, Bill Burr, Jim Gaffigan, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Trevor Noah, Dion Cole, Leslie Jones, Pete Davidson, Jeff Foxworthy, Kevin Hart, Andrew Schulz, Bert Kreischer

What’s in This Episode

• John Mulaney marries Olivia Munn over July 4th weekend
• Hulu launches Laughing Now comedy special banner with Bill Burr and Jim Gaffigan
• Eddie Murphy discusses Bill Cosby rivalry and early career competition
• Trevor Noah Microsoft Chief Questions Officer disclosure controversy
• BTFF Comedy Festival announces Dion Cole and Leslie Jones as headliners
• Pete Davidson to headline Rochester Fringe Festival
• The Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineups in Edmonton and Winnipeg

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, a very robust one for a summer Friday. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Catching up on an item. John Mulaney is married.

So behind the scenes here what happened was I had to buy a new MacBook and you connect the old MacBook to the new MacBook and the stuff transfers over and it takes a few hours. And as soon as I did that, I saw, oh, John m’laney got married, So I did a quick bonus episode on my phone in case you missed that. Anyway, catching up on the story seems over July fourth weekend, John Mulaney and Olivia Munn got married. So who was at this wedding, Well, not too many people. Malcolm was there, okay, and Sam Waters did.

I was like, huh, Well, it turns out that Sam and Olivia Munn co starred in the newsroom and I was like, oh, yeah, that’s right. I watched that show on HBO. I really enjoyed that Sam’s wife was the ceremony’s only witness. According to TMZ, congratulations to the happy couple. Hulu is making a big push into stand up comedy.

They have signed Bill Burr. Interesting right. Bill Burr Special is taped in June at the More Theater in Seattle. It will air on Hulu as part of Hulu’s Laughing Now banner. Hulu de banner is kind of lame, like just Laughing Now lame.

So whoever came up with that doesn’t know comedy, get rid of that.

Also under the really really cool Laughing Now banner.

Jim Gaffigan his special The Skinny, will kick off on November twenty second. The plan is to have twelve specials across the year. Man, if you’re starting with Bill Burr and Jim Gaffigan or Jim Gaffigan and then Bill Burr, that’s a pretty good launch. By the way, Jim Gaffigan I see on his Twitter he just put out an album that’s on Comedy Dynamics. It is called The Prisoner.

I haven’t checked that out yet. That kind of went underpromoted a lot of press from Eddie Murphy lately, much of it going back to that New York Times interview. They dust it off. You may or may not know this, depending on how old you are. Bill Cosby back in the day he gave Eddie Murphy the business Eddie said, language was the way he would come at it.

It wasn’t so much language, it was the times we were in. This is back when you know, one black person at the time was getting in the mix. When I came on the scene, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby were like, Oh, this is the new stuff that’s coming up. There’s a new thing coming on. Then that’s a threat to whatever that thing is.

That’s what Bill Cosby had. He went on to say that Pryor saw him as an up and comer who was trying to be like prior, Yeah, you think, Richard Pryor, I’m with you on that one. Consequently, Richard Pryor did not see Eddie Murphy as a threat, Eddie said. Bill Cosby was like, is this the new way it’s gonna be? Now?

They’re gonna be on stage grabbing their you know, central region there and talking all crazy. So we had come at me with, oh, the language, which was more like it’s one at a time, and is this the new guy who’s gonna knock me out of the spot. That’s what was going on back then. Cosby is an interesting cat. I remember when he was booked on Jim Brewer’s show.

It might be twenty years ago now, coming up on that. My phone rang one day and it’s Bill Cosby on the other end of the phone, and he was asking all kinds of questions. You know, what’s this show? Like, is this this guy work dirty? You know?

Cosby was keeping up that public image and like really working at it. You know, in later days we found out all kinds of things about Bill Cosby, But boy, he was came comping up the image.

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And then I remember when he did that.

I guess it was his last special for Comedy Central. We had him up and same thing. He was really vetting the room and is this safe? And you know you guys aren’t going to be all naughty and stuff. Boy, he kept up that public image.

I have another Bill Cosby story which I will tell someday. Got a hold onto that one for a while. Dion Cole and Leslie Jones have been tapped as headliners for the second annual because of their Funny Comedy Festival That was a good Festival last year. This year’s events September twenty seventh through the twenty ninth, that the Wharf and DC improv the BTTF Festival will include panels, comedy classes, networking events and the betf Care is a charity fundraiser. On Saturday, September twenty eighth, six finalists will compete for a ten thousand dollars grand prize and the opportunity to secure representation by some agents.

Leslie Jones will perform on the Sunday. Leslie also is going to be part of the NBC Olympics coverage coming up soon. Pete Davidson will headline the Rochester Fringe Festival. This one’s September thirteenth at the East Mennut Theaters Kodak Hall. Rochester’s not for profit fringe has become one of the largest and most successful fringe festivals in the nation.

The full lineup for the thirteenth annual Rochester Fringe will be announced on July twenty third. They’re coming for Trevor Noah. Apparently, The New York Post is like, Hey, Trevor Noah, what’s the deal with you and Microsoft? The article suggests that Trevor Noah has a history of discussing Microsoft without clearly disclosing his affiliation with the company. You see, in twenty twenty two, Microsoft named Trevor Noah it’s Chief Questions Officer that same year.

The Hollywood Report noted, though his Chief Questions Officer title there is new, the tech whiz has been consulting with the company for six years, and through his work with the product development team, has applied from multiple patents. The New York Posts says the Federal Trade Commission has recently ramped up actions against influencers and celebrities who failed to disclose a monetary relationship with products they endorse. Late Night Er says it’s unclear what prompted the article, which does not claim Noah is being specifically investigated by the FTC. The New York Post has described Trevor Noah’s interviews of various Microsoft execs on The Daily Show as glowing.

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Also noted in the article is Trevor Noah’s appearance in twenty nineteen for …

Very interesting. Why are they coming for Trevor Noah all of a sudden? These articles don’t just happen. You don’t just walk in at The New York Posts and be like, hey boss, I’m just gonna write an article about Trevor Noah and Microsoft for no reason. Okay, yeah, whatever, man, we got a newspaper to put out right whatever you want.

Like somebody had a conversation about this. I want to know why. Let’s keep an eye on this one. The Great Outdoors Comedy Festival hits Edmonton this weekend. Kevin Hart, Andrew Schultz, and Bert Chraysier.

Not bad. Coming up next weekend in Winnipeg, The Great Outdoors Comedy Festival as Tom Sigoora, Bill Burn, Natepergatsi. That is no sloushy line up there. Jeff Foxworthy is in Tucson tonight. Tucson dot Com asked Jeff if he might incorporate his grandchildren into the show like he did with his two daughters when they were young.

Jeff said, I was making good money off them till they became high school age and asked him to stop. They took away a good revenue stream. That’s the great thing about when they’re little. They don’t realize you’re talking about them Saturday Night. Don’t expect him to do You might be a redneck if he stopped doing it a few years ago, thinking maybe his audiences were tired of it.

I think you’re wrong there, Jeff. We like that one. He might reboot it for the twenty first century because Rednecks still certainly exists. They’re trying to be hip and all, but deep down underneath, it’s like, Nah, God only made like one hundred hit people in the country, and the rest of us are pretenders, and I’ve reached the age where you quit pretending. Foxworthy says there are days where he has to get up at four am to get to the airport and their back to back show weekends where he asked himself why still doing this?

But when you’re on the side of the stage and they turn the lights down and people start clapping, it’s like an adrenaline rush. You’re like, I still got to do this. I really honestly feel like I’ve cheated the world and that I got to do something I love doing this much and made a fabulous living doing it. I’m like, I gotta be one of the luckiest people on the planet because I would have done it for free. Go see Jeff Foxworthy this weekend DDCAZ dot com for tickets.

Don’t Forget on Monday, that Rated R Mature Audiences podcast the artist A Killer’s Canvas makes its debut. You want to open up your app and follow that right now so you don’t miss an episode. Plus it’ll help it climb the charts. Nudge, nudge, winkwink, say no more. Know what I mean?

The artist A Killer’s Canvas. Wherever you get your shows, if you would like this podcast and a bunch of others, including the artist commercial free. If you’re on Apple Podcasts, there’s an option right in front of you. There’s a banner. Click that and there’s a thirty day free trial and after that it’s four ninety nine a month.

Or if you’re on a different platform, go to the link of the show notes at calaruga dot com slash plus four ninety nine a month, no ads. Some big time comedians are taping specials tonight Hasan min A. She’ll be taping at the San Jose Civic Center in San Jose, California. The shows are sold out though.

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Meanwhile, Gabe Iglesia is taping every night this weekend, Friday, Saturday,…

Lesser known as Chris Allen, described as a nationally touring stand up and podcaster based out of Washington, d C. Chris’s styles a mix of well crafted jokes and stories about his life, ranging from his family to fatherhood, the military, and marriage, coupled with quick witted crowd interactions. Chris Allen is taping his special tonight and tomorrow at Carlson Comedy in Rochester, New York. Needs something to watch? Josh Glands of Room Vroom g l A and c Vroom Vroom is on The eight hundred Pound Gorilla.

Josh sold out of shows at Edinburgh Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Viewers at home can enjoy his sketches and off the wall sense of humor. Katie Bowman’s album Neurodivergent Nightmare is out. You will hear jokes about being diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, working at planned parenthood and withstanding their dad’s resentment of their ted hues. Katie Bowman out today tomorrow on the program an interview with some honchos from the eight hundred Pound Gorilla.

We’ll talk some comedy, as I’ve been doing on Saturdays in the summer. Here. Sunday’s a normal episode and I hope you have an awesome weekend. To see you here in the morning,

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