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The Shark Deck. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News from Scary Mommy. Lean Morgan said, when I was selling jewelry in women’s houses like Mary Kay and Tupperware, I was booking so far in advance that the big company noticed and asked me to speak at their regional rallies. So I’d breastfeed a baby on the toilet at the Opera Land Hotel and then hand the baby over to my mom and I’d go up on stage. She talked about how fast her kids grow up and said, I’d tell people anybody to enjoy it because it goes by like that.
I have children that are no longer toddlers, and I agree wholeheartedly. Everyone will give you that same advice. She’s right, Leanne said. Then all of a sudden, there you are in your gown watching the third hour of the Today Show because you don’t have to take anybody to school. Salon talked to Tom Papa about his new book, and they were like, hey, Tom Papa.
In the book, you talk about how it’s a red flag when people don’t laugh. That reminds me time out, Time out of time out. Tom. I have in the past mentioned specifically on one of Tom Papa’s specials that he was getting a lot of claptter, So just catch everybody up. What clap heer is is when a comedian does like a big segment and the audience doesn’t actually laugh.
They clap to be like, Okay, we appreciate what you just said, but we’re not actually laughing, which seems weird to me in a comedy show, and Papa has suffered from that in the past. Mark Marin on his podcast last week talked about that, and even Maren said that he’s noticing more and more it’s hard to get an actual laugh, So if audience has changed. Maren kind of got into a little bit saying, maybe there’s so much Netflix comedy now that people have just seen so much comedy and they’re getting I have this. I call this the Emperor of Rome syndrome. So what’s that, Johnny Mack if you’re a new listener.
I ran serious XM comedy for ten years. So for ten years I’d be at work and I would have the radio stations on all day every day, so eight nine hours a day, plus listening on my commute, plus listening in the car. Right, so I listened to a lot of comedy, and what happens over time is you get numb to it and you do this thing that the comedians in the back of the room do. And I’ve spoken to comics about this where I’m going to be up on stage and you’re analyzing it and you’re like, oh, that was really funny. Oh awesome, callback, Oh great set up there.
Oh I love what you did. But you don’t actually laugh anymore. It’s terrible. Anyway, Maron got into that on his podcast that came out last Monday. Tom Popa has talked about it in the book, and Tom said, when people don’t laugh, it terrifies me.
Before I was a comedian. As a kid, I would see people that didn’t laugh, or teachers that never laughed, and it was like, something’s wrong here right now with my kids, will meet these other parents that your children. You realize that the husband doesn’t laugh, the wife never laughs. What’s it like living in there? There’s no release valve.
You’re taking everything too seriously. It’s got to be a pressure cooker. Makes me very, very uncomfortable. I don’t understand that way of living. So you just brood over it and have real, honest conversations every night.
They asked Tom if he’s feeling the pressure not to offend anyone, and this cancel culture, it’s cancel culture even a thing, right. Every comedian’s like, there’s no cancel culture. And Dave Chappe’s playing arenas Papa said. Look, if you’re a comedian and you have your audience, you could say whatever you want. You can do whatever you want.
Your audience considers the source. They know when you’re joking. They know that this is an idea that’s just trying to push us further, and we all find funny and we’re all grown ups about it. So when you attach us some corporation, if you have a show on NBC, if you’re being hired by a company in a studio, then you’re in trouble. I’ve watched a lot of people get shows taken away, a lot of people you don’t even hear about.
There’s the big cancelation, but then there’s a whole other level of being canceled quietly you don’t even know, and you don’t hear because of one joke. They end up in trouble and have projects taken away, and it’s pretty terrifying interesting. Tom POMPA very interesting. The good thing about the moment, though, is you don’t need those corporations. So all these comedians you notice are starting their own podcast, starting their own networks, writing their own material, going out and performing.
If you’re not beholding to a company that’s frightened and hasn’t figured out how to make an adult stand and there’s playing to the whims of a few people complaining, that’s when you run into trouble. So all these comedians, now we have the freedom to speak, we have to do it on your own terms. Good Morning America asked Kevin Hart. Hey, how do you stay motivated to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Kevin Hart said, working out started off as just something to do to try and get in shape, but it’s become pretty much a part of my life.
So when it comes to health and wellness, it’s now embedded in me. It’s assist them a structure that I live by, stay true too, and ultimately helps me stay focused. The level of focus comes from the structure of the system. I stayed true too for probably roughly about the last seven eight years. Kevin, you have any tips for finding time when you’re on the gone?
Kevin said, you’ve got to have a moment where you can kind of black out, and block out meaning taking time to clear your head, being your own thoughts, being your own space of happy, whatever that might be. I think it’s different per person. For me, just a nice little quiet hour where I can close my eyes. Honestly, a lot of that time takes place in the gym. Putting yourself in an environment where you get the best out of yourself is where you find the best moments for yourself.
Lots of water, a lot of water. Ahmed Ahmed talked about getting in a comedy and said, I started going to movies. One of the first movies I ever saw as the kid was Rocky and I remember coming out of the movie theater feelings so inspired, just so full of life, and I thought, wow, movies could really move you. And so entertainment was kind of the direction I wanted to go in because I enjoyed it so much, the entertainment aspect of it, not the glitz and the glamor in the Hollywood toxicity, not even the money. Really, it was more about entertaining people, making people laugh.
Like Dan had a great sense of humor. He always cracked jokes. He was always the guy in the wedding or the birthday party, or the dinners or even the funerals, in the corner of smoking a cigarette holding court. Maybe that’s where I got it from. I’m atm.
I had talked about breaking in Hollywood, saying when I started, for about seven years, I took every role that was coming at me, the terrorist in this, in that movie. They were cool projects. I got to work with Kurt Russell and Halle Berry. I was in on these big action movies that took place on a plane or a train, and I was always the bad guy in the back, holding the gun and screaming and stuff like that. And I started getting a lot of backlash, including from my own community.
I’d get a lot of haters from the Arab and Muslim world saying, why are you doing this. You’re perpetuating stereotypes. You should be taking roles like that. And I thought, but if I don’t take this role, they’ll give it to a Simon guy or a Mexican guy. I played every terrorist role you could imagine.
I was the go to terrorist for a while. At one point I called my agent and said, can I audition for the friend? Can I audition for the police officer, the teacher. And they’d say, no, change your name, is what they’d tell me. I said why and they said, casting people in Hollywood is in a box and they just see your name.
I said, if my name was Joe Smith, they wouldn’t know where I was from. I refused to change my name. Was really stubborn about it. I said, call me if you have anything other than these terrorists. Rolls the phone stop bringing and ran out of money and I went back to waiting tables.
Wow. Nola dot com caught up with Jean Marcos Serresi. He was one of the new faces at Montreal JFL last year and in my opinion killed it was the best of the twenty comics I saw that night. He’s got a special called shelf Life, filmed a few years ago in an outdoor show when Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a small masked audience grouped in pods. Remember the pandemic that was the thing that happened.
Yes, Jean Marco says. Those shows were soff shows a big open fields where dogs are running around. There were date time shows and I’m doing Catholic priest jokes. There were shows in parking lots for people staying in their cars honking their horns instead of laughing. But he did do some pandemic material.
This is pretty good. I had a roommate who I didn’t really know, and whenever he came back to the apartment was like accusing your ax of having an affair. You’re like, where have you been? Did you wear a mask? From The New York Times, a little Amsterdam improv club launched big American careers.
Seth Myers, Jordan Peel, Amber Ruffin, and some of the ted Lassos owned their comedy chops at the United States at Boom Chicago. The Times right. Seth Myers had no idea what to expect when he got a job in nineteen ninety seven performing at a comedy club an Amsterdam called Boom Chicago. Seth said, I knew not one thing about the Netherlands. My first thought was to get some good hiking shoes, I guess because I thought I was going to Switzerland.
And then I showed up literally in the flattest place I ever lived. While the place is celebrating their thirtieth anniversary and from the fifth through the sixteenth, it’s the Boom Chicago Comedy Festival. Your Headliners July sixth, Brendan Hunt you know Coach Beard from Ted Lasso July sixth and seventh, Seth Myers U thirteenth, The Dutch Comedy All Stars July fourteenth, Best of LA Comedy Showcase. Imagine going there and going in LA Showcase. This is for the locals.
Don’t be caddy, Johnny mack Oh July sixteenth, at the show called f Mary Killed. Do you know that game? That’s where you picked three people and you realize which one you’d like to marry, which one you’d like to be cozy with, and which one you would kill. It’s a brutal game. The club now has its own theater in the center of Amsterdam, and it’s still what it was at the beginning of venue for two hour improv and sketch comedy shows by five performers who engage in comedic games and stunts based on audience suggestions.
The founders were inspired by Chicago. In the eighties, they attended late night improv sets at Second City. In nineteen ninety two, they took a trip to Amsterdam and they visit a coffee shop. One of the city’s legal marijuana cafes. They said, we had one of the best stoner ideas ever, which was to quit our jobs in America and come here and start a comedy club.
A city clerk said, your idea won’t work. Dutch people don’t want to see a show in English. Tourists don’t want to see a show at all. You know that actually sounds like good ways to me. But they did it anyway, and now we’re thirty years later.
Seth Meyer said, we got to be on stage four or five nights a week, and that was never happening for us in Chicago.
Also, we got to be in Amsterdam in our early twenties.
Amber Ruffin said at Booms Chicago, the learning curve is steep man, but once you get it, it’s the most funny person can have. It was the perfect place for young person to learn, the perfect mix of partying and then having to deliver. Seth said of the Dutch, they don’t give it away for free. It’s not really a language barrier, but I think they just are discerning. I have a great affection for the audiences I had there because it is the truest balance you are ever gonna get.
Brendan Hunt liked it because in Chicago, if you have a bad show, you have to wait a week to get the taste out of your mouth. At Boom, you have another show the next night. It sounds like a lot of fun, and I am bookmarking that to talk about, especially with that July sixth start date, because you know here in the States after July fourth, there’s gonna be a little lull in the comedy news. So I having something to talk about on the sixth, seventh, and eighth is gonna come in quite handy for Johnny Mack.
And then it’s your comedy news for today.
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