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Callaroga Shark Media finally know Johnny Mack
with your daily comedy news. Jerry Seinfeld

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still thinks about a heckler from thirty
years ago. Jerry was on the In

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Depth with Graham Benzeger show. Jerry
said, I had this amazing bit about

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weddings. It was fantastic. It
was so long, covered everything, and

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I worked on it and worked on
it and worked on it. It takes

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me forever starting to the bit and
somebody else heard it. That was a

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tough one. I still think about
it. I mean it was true.

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Jerry explained it was a bit they
had been working out until he thought he

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finally made it perfect. I guess
the fellow had heard an unfinished version of

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it. Terry said, I think
now audience is a little more sophisticated.

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There are pieces that we work on
for months and months and months. You

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don't do it once and works.
Every scene you see in a movie.

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They did that eighteen times. One
time it was good. Same with comedy.

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I've done it one hundred times and
now I finally got it. Corey

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Holcombe called Donell Rawling's recent special a
new day mild. Rawling said people try

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to use the word mild as an, but I'm over fifty years old.

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I don't even like hot sauce.
I get heartburn. There's nothing wrong with

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walking in the line, but not
pushing it. That's where my comedy is.

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Donnelle Hall's life been feel lately.
It's good and it's gonna continue.

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The only thing we can do is
try to evolve, especially as a stand

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up and artist. We have to
be the best we can and give the

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people what they want. I don't
think I'll ever hit the max. I'm

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always gonna try to go next level. He talked about working with people like

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it Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.
The notes I've taken from Rock and Chappelle

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are that anything is possible, and
if you work hard enough, you give

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me in a situation where you could
say I'm rich bitch and Philerinas as for

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his catchphrase, there's been some good
and some bad. The good is people

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recognize my voice from that phrase.
But the bad is when I go with

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my friends to dinner, they don't
even open their walls. They look at

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me and like, I thought you
were rich, bitch. Ha Donelle filmed

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the special three times. What was
missing? The first two Donnelle said,

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I don't think anything was missing.
The first time I did it, I

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knew was funny, but Chappelle told
me, Donnelle, you're one of the

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funniest guys. I know you'd rip
any room, but it doesn't make it

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a great special. The second time
we did it, I took his notes,

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but then we an issue with the
production of it, but it was

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never a high level or frustration.
A lot of times people don't get multiple

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opportunities to do it, but Chappelle
believed me enough and the product I could

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produce, and we got it together. I have no regrets, all right.

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How's that feud with Corey Holcombe going? The last time was an l

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I went to this club and Hulcomb
was there. The first thing I asked

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him was could I be on his
podcast? He said, yo, d

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why do you have something against me? I said, bro, you can't

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say that. I've always shown you
love. My only issue was why he

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felt they need to put down some
of the people who are moving the culture

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of comedy. He agreed with me, so I'm going to do a show.

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For some reason, the black comedy
community thinks only one comic can make

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it at a time, and a
lot of times they don't support each other.

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This room for everybody. There are
different styles and genres of comedy.

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One of the hottest things now is
social media influencers transitioning the stand up.

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They have the platform because people want
to see them. Then you have their

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crowd work, which I'm not a
huge fan of. It's a muscle in

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itself, but it was shunned back
when I was coming up because it usually

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meant a comic didn't have an act. But I don't knock it. A

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lot of people my age think these
young guns coming up don't respect the art.

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But when I started, if you
wanted to be rich or famous off

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this, you had to be good. That was the only way you can

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get noticed. But nowadays these kids
are making hundreds of thousand dollars a month

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and of no incentive to be good. You can't tell them to work on

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that joke. They're like, I
heard what you said, but I just

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made one click and made ten thousand
dollars. But if you're a real comic,

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you can protect the craft by being
good and evolving. One of the

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comedians I came up with hated shows
when a YouTube guy would come on behind

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them. He wouldn't go to those
shows, but I told him, get

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your money, go to the show
and teach them a lesson. WPR asked

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Dmitri Martin about his creative process.
Dmitri said, what I usually do is

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daydream a lot. A lot of
my jokes come from that. I've teld

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some stories over the years, but
once I've told a story five, ten,

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fifteen or whatever number of times,
I get pretty tired of the story

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and myself because I'm usually in the
story. But with jokes, especially shorter

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ones, I don't get sick of
them so fast, and if I do,

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I could drop one out of the
set and it can reappear months later

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or years later. Most of the
jokes aren't about me. They're more about

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ideas or perspective. So in terms
of the process, there's a much more

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enjoyable pursuit because I'm daydreaming and brainstorming. Sometimes jokes just don't float into my

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head. But I'm getting ready for
a stand up special or tour I'm going

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to record now or something. Then
I'm trying to force them out. I'm

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really pushing it. That's when I
spend more time, especially on flights,

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when i'm touring, I bring a
spiral notebook, write jokes, underline them,

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and then write as many as I
can until the plane lands and see

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what I can come up with.
Ali Sidiq spoke to Cracked. He said,

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I did Domino Effect my first special, and then people started asking me

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about the rest of the story.
The simplest way was to do it in

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chronological order. If they're going to
listen to the whole story, just do

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it off all the way until I
got incarcerated, because people knew that I

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was incarcerated, but they didn't know
how I got there. I got out

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of prison October twenty first at nineteen
ninety seven. I went to Just Joking

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Comedy Cafe December of ninety seven,
and I learned observation, being able to

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look at an audience and determine what
I'm going to do. Was Apollo Knight,

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and that's where you had to start. You get everybody on Apollow Knight.

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They were singing, doing poetry,
magic, rapping. I didn't understand

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that this was a younger crowd.
I have on a suit because I worked

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at the men's apparel store, and
because I have on a suit, they

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brewed me. They didn't even say
anything other than hey, y'all doing and

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they started booing. So I waited
two weeks for them to forget me,

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and I went back up there with
a regular shirt, jean sneakers, looking

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just like them. I did good, and I kept coming back every week.

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I remember what DL Hugley told me, The funniest you're going to be

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is based on how honest you want
to be. I asked Bruce, Bruce,

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you think you can become a great
comic if you have a job,

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and he said, man, do
not quit your day job until your stand

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up comedy is making more money for
you consistently than your job. I wish

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I could have run into Don Rickles. I would have asked him, how

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are you so brave? On stage. Seth Meyers is sad about losing his

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band. He told Deadline, I
think they know how sad I am that

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they're not going to be part of
the show moving forward. Lord Michael saw

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the New York Times. I think
everybody had to go through belt tightening.

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Seth said, I feel incredibly grateful
to have had the eight G band for

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ten years. Somebody like me never
thinks they're going to have the luxury of

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people playing music before they walk out
on stage. I feel grateful for the

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time we had together. The band
will be with the show through the end

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of the summer, Meyers said,
I'm happy we get them through August,

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so we'll value this time together until
that comes. But mostly I just reflect

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on it as a gift that I
had for a great many years. Good

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article from Auto Straddle of Bennie Jones
under the headline as a trans woman getting

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into stand up comedy? Can I
avoid jokes about my identity? Benny writes,

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Throughout my teens, Dave Chappelle was
my favorite comedian. That's easier to

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admit that it might seem. As
a child, my favorite comedian was Bill

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Cosby. My father had a warn
VHS copy of Bill Cosby himself and would

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sit my brother and I in front
of it. That's because Cosby was clean.

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I didn't decide to take a stand
up comedy class as an act of

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contrition, but I'm aware that this
is an inauspicious origin story. If I

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ever decide to pursue comedy as a
career, I'm gonna have to invent one

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with less problematic early influences. This
essay isn't about them, though I didn't

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give stand up a try in response
to Dave Chappelle Ricky Gervais at controversial recent

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specials. I did so because I'm
both a lifelong stand up comedy fan and

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a trans woman of color. And
yet my current favorite working stand up comedians

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are James Acaster, Bo Burnham,
and Dimitri Martin. All cis straight white

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men. I realized what I appreciate
most about each of them and some older

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favorites like Bitch Edburg and Stephen Wright. Is there a comedy typically focuses on

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one liner's wordplay, absurdity, and
playing with the form of comedy. They

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tend to tell jokes rather than stories. It seems as though their assis straight

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white maleness means they aren't forced to
comment on their identities and their work.

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They're free to be funny in a
way that others aren't. There are three

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things in stand up that I'm tired
of. The first I share with most

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everyone hackneyed reliance on derogatory tropes i
e. Punching down. The other two,

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however, seem to be the bread
and butter of modern stand up comedy,

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amusing storytelling from one's life that leans
heavily on having lived through an interesting

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experience rather than having written a clever
punchline, and observations and or explanations about

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one's gender sexuality erase, I'm a
trans woman of color, and being trans

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is frequently hilarious. But why should
straight white men get to have all the

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fun writing one liners on wordplay jokes. Why should they get to be absurd

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and silly and observational rather than relatable. I didn't want to tell stories about

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my own life. I've done enough
of that in my writing. The saying

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says, if you can't find the
art you want to see, you have

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to create it yourself. Good stuff, and that's your comedy news for today.

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If you enjoy the program, tell
a friend about it. They might

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like it too, and I'll meet
you back here tomorrow

