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Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. A lot of Shane Gillis reactions, but first let me tell you about a Seattle comedy club that canceled four stand up comedians. They are Dave Smith, Lewis, J Gomez, Jim Florentine, and Kurt Metzger. They were canceled after angry community activists complained.
According to the comedians involved, these shows were at the Capitol Hill Comedy Bar, and the version that we’re being told is that left wing community actives and progressive comics were offended. The comedians say they received an email from the club co owner, who’s also a stand up comics, saying the gigs had to be canceled. The decision came after discussions with our team, investors’, local comedians, and neighborhood advocacy groups. An email posted by Jim Florentine and Kurt Metzger says Capitol Hill is known for its progressive values, and we received significant feedback expressing concerns about the alignment of these upcoming shows with the neighborhood’s eth This feedback includes concerns from local advocacy groups that are deeply embedded for our community and work towards upholding its values. The goal is to avoid any potential negative impact on both our club and the artists involved, as well as to maintain the harmony without our community.
Gomez on his podcast said, are they idiots for booking us?
And then on booking us?
Yes, it’s a dumb move. Is my former agent an idiot for booking me at a superwoke progressive venue like that? The entire lineup was like blue haired freaks. That’s what happens when comics don’t have anything going on, they look for drama. So the owner found drama within the comedy space there, and she was like, all right, I think they’re great, but I don’t need to make it a thing.
According to a report from Kiing five, the Capitol Hill Comedy Bar makes comics adhere to the Code of Conduct, which outlines expectations for respectful behavior and language, helping to create a welcoming space for both comics and guests. Podcaster Joshua Smith said, who needs comedy when Seattle is already a joke? Okay? Comedian Toby Turner tweeted the community bought tickets the people sabotaging. It aren’t really the community.
What’s going on over there? Fox News’ is tyrus said friendly advice book and another venue close to the town. Sell it out and kill it in three months. When they tell you it’s all good to come back, send them the same email. Juno Mann is a local comic and show producer who works with the club and hosts Funny Queer Asians.
She said, I have loved working with this club and a more resolute and doing so given their decision to prioritize the safety and inclusiveness of the local community. So I see an article from last May from a King of five Comedy born now open in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. According to that article, Capitol Hill Comedy Bar is dedicated to supporting the art and craft of stand up comedy with integrity and professionalism. The staff believes that creating a safe, accessible, and respectful environment is of utmost importance. The goal is to provide a harassment free environment regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body type of race.
All comics performing on stage must either adhere to the Code of Conduct, which outlines expectations for respectful behavior and language, helping to create a self and welcoming space for comics and guests. So you know, I can both sides this one. If the club wants to have a certain vibe and style and expectation, sure go ahead. But why book these guys? These guys are known, they do a festival called skank Fest.
I mean, did nobody do homework? How did they get booked? A lot of Shane Gillis’s reaction as expected. I on Sunday Night watched the entire episode as opposed to just watching the individual clips. I thought it was an above average episode for the last two years of Saturday Night Live.
It didn’t hit the heights of say the Nate Berghatsy episode, but they’ve been far worse. The Io Atabury episode was also pretty good. She was great. So I’ll continue to say what I’ve been saying. I find Shane funny, I find him charismatic.
I also think some of the points that I talked about during one of last week’s podcasts about some of the guests he’s had on the podcast, so those are worrisome. Vox writes. When Shane Gillis tells you who he is, believe him in that article, they write. Shane Gillis is a thirty six year old guy from Pennsylvania who was chasing a fledgling stand up career when he began making inroad in twenty sixteen through the medium of comedy podcasting. This included a stint hosting a show called a Fair One for Compound Media, a podcast network created by Anthony Kumia, a notoriously offensive shock jock known for his own racist comments.
Yeah that’s Anthony of Opian Anthony. Some of his comments are so controversial. When I teach my college class on the fall, I spend two and a half weeks just talking about Opian Anthony. And these are now twenty year old incidents. Aunt plays on the side of the street that I don’t want to play on.
I was actually asked to run the Opian Anthony channel and I declined, and it probably didn’t help my career at the old place, but I just didn’t want to deal with any of that. I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken to Anthony. I know Opia a little bit and fed ob to be a good guy, Fox writes. Compound Media also hosted Gavin Mcinness, the white nationalist who rallied other members of the network together to form the Proud Boys, the extremist group that played a major role in both the twenty seventeen Charlottesville Unite the Right rally and the January sixth insurrection. Doesn’t want to deal with any of that.
Compound Media was the platform on which Gillis dropped the racist slurs that ultimately got him dropped from SNL, but it wasn’t the only medium in which he aired his views and his independent comedy work. In other projects, he was not shy about voicing repugnant views, as one Philadelphia comedy club noted in twenty nineteen and a sense deleted tweet, we like many were very quickly disgusted by Shane Gillis’s over racism, sexism, homophobian transphobia, expressed both on off stage. Upon working with him years ago, Gillis’s fans, including more liberal comedians like Gerrod Carmichael, seemed to believe that, rather in being actually racist, Gillis is consciously cultivating his offensiveness purely for the purposes of his comedy work. Vox writes this view as as old as comedy itself, but in the current cultural era, it’s evolved into what nprs Eric Deakins is called bigotry denial syndrome. The thinking goes that a comedic project has a certain level of importance and purpose, the level of which should completely negate any suspicion that the comedian truly believes what they’re performing, let alone that they deserve consequences for the offensive material.
In Gillis’s case, it seems more accurate to say that he’s not performing ironic racism at all. He’s coasting on other people’s good faith belief that he must be acting totally ingest. In a twenty sixteen interview with Gillis, he claimed to be running experiments on his audience. He said, it’s funny what people will laugh at compared to what they’re so eager to prove that they’re not laughing at. The conclusion we’re left with is with all that panic, as it so often does whenever someone is supposedly canceled, has subsided, likely to have dissipated.
In the wake of Gillis’s continued success, Vulture put forth two reasons for hosting the gig, and the timing, one that perhaps Michaels is trying to remain a political during an election year and wants to do that by opening up a platform for comics who appeal to the right. And two that Lorne Michaels lives for the drama Pointer had a good note and they had me wondering what Dave Chappelle might have done, how Dave Chappelle might have addressed his own controversy point right, So I saw Gillis’s monologue as an opportunity badly missed and what might be his only churn. Ever, his host, Gillis would have smartly addressed his past controversy as well of his style of comedy. By the way, if you haven’t heard the monologue, I played clips from it on Monday’s podcast. Shane could have explained his point of view.
He could have given his critics something to consider instead of letting them assume as comedy goes to the lowest common denominator. If Gillis is talented enough to actually have once been hired as an sl cast member, and funny enough to still end up being a host after being fired, shouldn’t he be clever enough to come up with a monologue that weaves together as comedy and commentary about his comedy that is an excellent point by pointer. Gillis took the safe way out and delivered a moment, then a real no impact, A hollow reporter writes. Fortunately for Shane Gillis, the SNL writers know how to deploy a Gillis type, and he amiably played average white joes and most of his sketches, including a contestant on the floor desperately trying to convince others that he actually can identify famous black people. And as Forrest Gump’s former bully who peaked in high school, I thought both sketches were good.
Gillis played an Ohio Catholic dad who drags his family to church quifacationing in Jamaica. He catches the spirit. The whole sketch ends with a literal crossing of the aisle as the white source family and jams alongside the Jamaican congregation. I also thought that was a funny sketch. Vulture wrote, Shane Gillis got away with it, though we sometimes comes off as if barstool sports were a person not bad.
What Gillis does best in his comedy is translate red state values and interest for a slightly broader audience. In his SNL monologue, though he does the opposite, explaining at one point in the least defensive way that you can muster what a dude himself thinks gay men are like. It’s just filled without data cliches that have no business in an era of this show that tends to assume viewer familiarity with the modern landscape of sexuality and gender, and, considering that his firing was partly due to homophobic content, performing this bit in the setting seems particularly unwise. It did not go over well, especially with the house band so many articles about the young and guitarist. She’s probably getting a lot more attention on than she wants.
The Guardian says, what’s ironic about all this is how Gillis’s actual comedy doesn’t gell with either a narrative. Certainly, his persona is that of a meat headed conservative bro, but his material for his edge, Lordy as it can be, more often than not ridicules that demographic and with four sharper accuracy than ostensibly left leaning comedy, including an especially snl. Anyone who’s seen his recent Netflix special Beautiful Dogs and as being Honest with Themselves recognizes his talent, even as his web series Gillian Keeve suggests he’s a mediocre sketch commedian in at best. For as much he did online discourse as Gillis hosting BEGAT over the past couple weeks, it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling strongly about this episode one way or another. Gillis didn’t exactly make a case himself as any great missed opportunity, let alone the iconoclast as most ardent fans were expecting.
In fact, writes The Guardian, his reluctance to address this firing made him look soft, especially when you compare it to the nineteen ninety nine episode that Norm MacDonald hosted one year after his determination. But then, Gillis is no Norm. The Guardian marked the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks. This by Brian Logan, who wrote five years ago, I spoke about Bill hicks legacy with comics who weren’t even born when he applied his trade, and was startled to discover and how low regard they held his work. Of course, I knew some of his material was out of step with the times, but the extent to which the entire manner, the whole Bill Hicks way of being as an outlaw, comic, of teller of truth or power, and a man splainer now for many things A thing hideous to behold that caught me by surprise.
I have always found within the industry Bill Hicks to be revered. Brian Logan Rights, I push back against it a bit. I still would now, but revisiting Hicks material thirty years since he died, I see more clearly what they meant if you’re not familiar with Bill Hicks. Basically, Dennis Leary lifted Bill hicks entire persona, so that might be a way to shorthand it. But do yourself a favor and look up Bill Hicks on YouTube.
This reminds me of back at Serious before the merger, Comedy Intern number five loaded some albums by Bill Hicks, except there’s another artist named Bill Hicks who did like smooth jazz guitar albums. So I’m listening to my channel one day and there’s like Bill Hicks guitar on and I’m like, did you not listen to the clip? Stupid intern intern did not get a job at the end of the semester. Logan Rights, I suppose that my taste and standards like anyone else’s can’t help but be shaped by the changing world around me. And with each passing half decade, I get a bit more distance from the teen comedy fan that held Hicks to be just about as good as comedy gets more of that tomorrow, getting a little long here.
Donnell Rawlings has a new special out today. It is called Donnel Rollings A New Day. Actually it’s called Chappelle’s Home Team, Donnell Rollings a New Day. You’ll find this on Netflix. Dressed in a blue suit, red sox and lotion ankles, Donelle’s here to discuss toxic relationships, traveling in New Zealand, aging cope, parenting, and much more.
Kind of weird, right that Donell had all those controversies last week and was shouting to Corey Holcomb and just a week later he’s got a new special on Netflix. Weird. A correction on yesterday’s podcast, I teld you tig Nataro’s special is out. No, yesterday was February twenty sixth. Tig Nataro’s special is out on March twenty sixth.
Sorry if I ruined your Monday night. Amy Schumer has revealed she has been diagnosed with Cushing’s syndrome, a relatively rare hormonal disorder that can change a person’s facial appearance and cause weight gain. She spoke with the newsletter News Not Noise. Amy said there are a few types of cushing, some that can be fatal require brain surgery or removal of adrenal glands. While I was doing press on camera for my Hulu show, I was also in MRI machines four hours at a time, having my veins shut down from the amount of blood drawn, and thinking I might not be around to see my son grow up.
So finding out how this kind of cushing that will just work itself out and I’m healthy was the greatest news imaginable. It’s been a crazy couple weeks for me and my family. Aside from fears about my health, I also had to be on camera having the Internet chime in. But thank God for that, because that’s how I realized something was wrong, just like when I had realized I’d named my son something that didn’t sound so good. The Internet is undefeated, as they say.
The only thing I’d like to add is that this is a good example of the fact that we never know what’s going on with someone. Everyone is struggling with something. Maybe we can all be a little kinder to each other and ourselves. Late Night with Seth Myers turned ten years old over the weekend. Seth said it’s took about six months for the show to find itself.
He think a big change is when he stopped doing an opening monologue and just sat at the desk. He jokes, once people stop seeing my legs, we turned a corner. Another change, he said, it seems so silly to wear a suit with no audience during the pandemic, so I was in casual. Then when the audience came back, I just felt more in my own skin. Dressing more like myself allows me to be more like myself.
I don’t know if it’s permanent, but it’s a nice feeling. The other day I put on a suit for something else and I was like, ugh, I don’t ever want to feel that way. Will he still be doing this job in ten years? Sas says, I don’t know. I’ve tried my career to never think that forehead.
I’d like to do it for a few more years. I can’t imagine anything being more enjoyable than that. I’m coming up on twenty five years at thirty rock, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get a watch or maybe a nice pin tell you this. If I don’t make it at twenty five, there should be an investigation because that means they just don’t want to spend watch money. Conflicting reports.
Donald Glover suggested that the community film script was done, but Dan Harmon, who would know because he’s writing it, tells Variety it’s almost done. Dan says, what can I tell you about it? Set on the campus of Greendale Community College. I’m super excited about it and we’re almost done. And that is your comedy news for today.
If you enjoy the program, let’s tell more people about it. Share it on social media, or tell your friend at the bar at trivia and I’d be like, Hey, I was listening to this podcast and this guy’s not that annoying. You should check it out. Something like that. Much appreciated.
See tomorrow