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The Shark Deck Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. Vulture had a really good article from John Roy. He’s a comedian and pop culture writer. The headline, Jim Gaffigan’s most popular joke is a stand up master class. John Roy writes, I first saw Jim Gaffigan perform in twenty thirteen at the UCB in LA for a hundred skinny twenty something hipsters.
He was older than anyone else on the bill by ten years, and he was wearing a bright canary yellow T shirt one might charitably describe as a little too tight. I was worried the audience might reject a mainstream dad comic known for working clean. But Gaffigan was ready. The first words out of his mouth were an impression of a skeptical audience member reacting to his entrance. Look at that shirt, he whispered.
He’s trying to look young, he added, and then went for the jugular with he’s fat, and I got applause. Not only had he won the crowd over in less than a minute, he was ready killing and he hadn’t even talked as himself. John Roy is impressed by Jim’s famous bit hot pockets it’s four minutes and thirty seconds on one time, it’s lean at under six hundred words, and it’s packed with act outs and character changes. It gets so many laughs that two thirds of the way in, Gaffigan is essentially performing over a rolling applause break. The bid is track seventeen on the two thousand and six album Beyond the Pale.
Gaffigan starts Hot Pockets by confessing that he ate one and feels awful, like a metal band choosing not to play above a certain decibel level. Gaffigan, having opted out of using taboo words, has to find something else to replace their transgressive power in his material. His first solution is to get mean. He says that Hot Pockets warning label should read hope you’re drunk or heading home to a trailer you hell billy enjoy the next NASCAR event. He dinfuses that by doing his in their voice, I like Nascar.
He’s a jerk. Two seconds later he’s at it again, having lost no. One. He gets nine laughs and his first forty seconds. Then starts to run the crowd, a technique where, instead of letting the audiences laugh, fade so they’re ready for your next joke.
Comedians starts the next set up in the middle of their laughter, giving them no time to think. Gaffigan cuts five laughs short to get to what will become the bits mantra, singing the Hot Pocket jingle and a high pitch, breathy off key warble. Then he pulls his foot off the gas and lets the audience get it all out. They reward him with nine seconds of applause at the one minute mark. Writing and performing society.
Hotpoch had succeeds because of the central observation that grounds it. Corporations, surely you know when their product is trash. Some products are clearly so trash that the most believable explanation is that it’s intentional. What if the company just came out and said it based on the enthusiasm which we as a society consume hot Pockets. Gaffigan seems to suggest that it wouldn’t make any difference at all.
Great stuff there. Conan O’Brien was on Kara Swisher’s podcast. I got to add that to my playlist. I told I downloaded it, but I didn’t actually listen to it. They were talking about Tom Shells, Remember that guy.
He was a famous TV critic, and Kara was like, hey, Conan, you may recall he wrote a devastating review of your show in ninety three, but ninety six he said he were the only good thing on late night. Conan said, yeah, that was quite a turn around. I was eternally grateful for that, and that was very nice. That was something I did not see coming. And that was a different era too in TV.
Where you think about it, Tom Shells had so much power. The media has changed so much that I’m hard pressed to think of a TV critic who could potentially end a TV show, but Tom shell certainly had that power. Conan talked about retirement. What I retired from was the volume business of late night television because I loved it. I really did love it, and I did it for twenty eight years, and I did thousands and thousands and thousands of hours and I’m told four of them were quite good, and I love that very much.
What I started to see is that there were things that I became kind of more in love with, and the podcast is one of them. Fortunately that was just a happy accident. But another was doing the travel shows, going to Cuba, going to different countries and shooting remotes with people I found and doing found comedy around the world was electrifying, and I realized not rather be doing this late night had changed because there were so many late night shows, and I started to feel, Okay, I’ve done this. We only get so much time. I’m no spring chicken like to really focus on these other things.
The Tennessee has answered the question why comedian Nate Burghatty stole a chair from the Bridgetone Arena. Nate was at the twenty twenty three Snids and Friends Pro am golf tournament. Everybody was a little nervous, so they had Nate tell a story back in a role. Nate said the Bridgetone Arena all time attendance record at nineteen three hundred sixty five, beating out the previous record holder, Morgan Wallan, who held the record at nineteen two hundred and ninety two. Wallin only had the record for a month.
Nate was determined to hold the record much longer than Wallen did and perhaps forever, so he swiped a chair from the arena on his way out, thus lowering the capacity. Nate said, I’m just trying to secure my spot in history. You don’t get a lot of chances like that as a comic because the music acts are so big. Cause I was like, maybe I’ll just take a chair, and I did. As long as they don’t throw another chair in there, I should be good.
Nate talked about his sports prowess and said, I got cut from basketball back in high school. I think I got cut from golf. To be honest, I played track my senior year. I don’t think you played track. I played track my senior year and that was the only thing I made.
He bounced back by thriving when he played church league basketball. Nate said, I was a bit of a problem for the competition when I played on that court. Actually it was a carpet that we played on. His uncle, Ronnie, was a three sports star and went on a coach basketball at Vanderbilt in a bunch of other places. It said, growing up here was all Ronnie.
I get it from all guys all the time. Are you Ronnie’s boy? We’re here because of Ronnie. Ronnie was each part of my dad’s life. When my dad came to Nashville.
We’re big Vandy fans, and the reason is because Ronnie was very involved in Vandy. Then my mom worked at the ticket office there, so we just got roped into it. Lunell will make her Netflix comedy special debut on September twenty sixth Town Business proper title Chappelle’s Home Team Dash Luinelle Town Business Netflix, September twenty six shot during her set in her hometown of Oakland. Town Business sees Lunell expose all of the absurdities of air travel, the importance of keeping the window shade up, and why she appointed herself the unofficial air Marshal of the Skies. Dave Chappelle executive produced the specialist part of his Chappelle’s Home Team series.
The first one of those was Earthquakes. Back in February of twenty twenty two, Leo Weekly caught up with Chris Tucker. Tucker back at doing stand up and said, I started out doing stand up comedy. You know, that’s a big source. So I think it’s the source of everything.
It’s like an actor going on Broadway or coming up through Broadway or off Broadway. It came up through the comedy clubs and that’s sparked me. It’s the gate that opened the avenue, the doors for acting. So it’s everything to me. It’s stand up.
You have freedom to talk about whatever you want to talk about, man, your personal life, all these things. When you act, you have to play a role, not stand up. It’s really about my life, real life and real life events. It’s a great, great art form, all right, Chris Tucker. Who are your favorite comedians?
Dave Chabelle, Chris Rock and Kevin Hart, all those guys and many others like Earthquake. Who are some of your influences of growing up? Definitely Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor definitely growing up and Red Fox too, all right? Who are the comedic goats? His answer, I would say Richard Pryor.
He inspired even Eddie Murphy, so I would say Richard is the goat, all right. Who would join Richard on the amount rushmore of comedy? Definitely Eddie Murphy. All right, we need two more, two more, all right, Dick Gregory and Red Fox. Back on Friday, I was reading you the very very very very long biography of Derek Small’s, the bassist from Spinal Tap.
Derek has a new single called must Crush Barbie, and as part of the press release, this absurdly long bio and I’m still not going to read the whole thing, but I did want to get back to it jumping in the middle. Spinal Tap carved a reputation as one of England’s loudest bands. Its series of mishaps, breakups and reunions drummers perishing was chronicled in a nineteen eighty four film. Derek calls it a hatchet job. There were plenty of nights where we found our way to the stage, but of course they didn’t show you that.
In the late eighties, as Spinal TAP’s fortunes waned, Derek joined a Christian heavy metal band, Lamb’s Blood. Their best known song, Whole Lot of Lord made a respectable showing on the Christian shorts to cement his relationship with the band members, all of whom were Americans. Small’s got a Christian fish tattoo. Tap reunited nineteen ninety two. Concerned he’d have to cover up the tattoo, Derek hired an artist to fix it, and the piece now is a devil eating the fish.
Following that short, Spinal Tap broke up and reunited twice more, once in two thousand at a historic New York venue that Derek described on stage as Carnegie Effing Hall and in two thousand and nine and appearances at Glastonbury and Wembley. Derek appeared in TV commercials for the Belgian snack food Floop and Serve for a time as a judge on the Dutch reality composition show Rock Stars r ok Strz before the show was rebooted as Tomorrow’s Hip Hop Hero. Derek stepped forward as a composer during this time. His jingle for Floop, which is I’m in the Flop Group, was a regular earworm on European TV until the publisher of the In Crowd threatened a plagiarism lawsuit. In twenty nineteen, smallest parlatest celebrity in the Low Counties of Europe as a position as brand ambassador for brubacoin a Dutch based crypto coin Boy, that’s a lot all right?
Should we hit the First Vegan Comedy Festival, a two day orgy of comedy and music plus extensive vegan food and drink. Everyone is welcome, vegan or not two days September thirty one October. First Award winning character comedian and UK pun champion Lee Brace says people have referred to vegan comedy as an oxym. We’re on you know, a bit like humane slaughter, but vegan comedy exists and it’s plant weddingly funny. Fifteen musicians, twenty comedians.
There’ll be a bar, tea, coffee cake, mocktails, cocktails, juice bars, and some truly inspiring independent vegan traders exhibiting at the show. Everyone is welcome, Vegan flexitarian, We’re vegan curious. It’s the Vegan Comedy Festival. That’s your company news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify YouTube.
Thanks to Draft Kings for supporting today’s show. See you tomorrow.