Speaker 1: Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Jenny Mack with your
Speaker 1: daily comedy news. Ari Shafir caught up with Fox News
Speaker 1: Digital and tell some stories about the dark years starting
Speaker 1: out in La. Ari said his early days learning the
Speaker 1: ropes in West Hollywood's Comedy Store were the dark years.
Speaker 1: It was evil. We were like doing crazy stuff. We
Speaker 1: had like gambling rings in the back. People would be
Speaker 1: hooking up in the back. It was just like crazy
Speaker 1: stuff would happen there, drug use and it was awesome,
Speaker 1: but there was no crowd. Every two weeks would have
Speaker 1: a show where there was just no show because nobody
Speaker 1: showed up. But because of that we got used to failure.
Speaker 1: Ari said, it's harder to break in in La compared
Speaker 1: to the other big comedy cities. It's so disheartening. The
Speaker 1: open mics, the little level stuff is so crappy. It's
Speaker 1: so crappy that almost all my funny friends like failed out.
Speaker 1: There's no positive feedback ever. It's just terrible. Eliza Slessenger
Speaker 1: is going to be down in Sydney and at Sydney Fest.
Speaker 1: She caught up with The Sydney Morning Herald and explained
Speaker 1: her morning I have a strict tied of two cups
Speaker 1: of coffee and at least nine hours of scrolling in
Speaker 1: the morning before even talk to my children. I try
Speaker 1: to remember how much of this is not real. I think,
Speaker 1: especially in the past few years, you're an idiot if
Speaker 1: you think what you're being fed is based in any
Speaker 1: kind of reality. She does like social media. It's allowed
Speaker 1: more international fans to discover her work. She had just
Speaker 1: recently played some dates in Japan. Eliza said, at its finest,
Speaker 1: social media has a connective tool. The Internet is a
Speaker 1: credible thing, but at its worst, the way most of
Speaker 1: us experience it, it's our sugary demise. If you go
Speaker 1: see her at Sydney, she'll be doing her latest hour
Speaker 1: get ready, and she enjoys the up for anything energy
Speaker 1: of Australian crowds. You guys love a good time. Anyone
Speaker 1: who's ever gotten drunk while in Australia knows this. You're
Speaker 1: like tropical British people. I'm really looking forward to coming
Speaker 1: back down Under, though please note I did cringe when
Speaker 1: I just said down Under. I sound like such a tourist.
Speaker 1: Gabeglacias talked about one approach to his comedy which is
Speaker 1: nobody wants to hear about you having a good day.
Speaker 1: They want to hear about the struggle. Gabe collects watches.
Speaker 1: He also is known to collect cars and Marvel memorabilia.
Speaker 1: Neil E. Times is curious where does the drive to
Speaker 1: collect stuff come from. Gabe said, that comes from not
Speaker 1: having stuff. When I was a kid, I always wanted this, this,
Speaker 1: and Mom's like, now, we can't afford it. So when
Speaker 1: I got in a position where I could get those
Speaker 1: toys that I wanted as a kid, I made sure
Speaker 1: to do it. I figured out I don't have any
Speaker 1: crazy habits. There's no drugs. There's just nothing that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm spending money on. So I'm gonna buy
Speaker 1: the toys. I'm gonna buy the goodies, the collection from Marvel.
Speaker 1: That comes from me being a fan of the brand.
Speaker 1: I love Marvel. I watched DC, but I'm pretty one
Speaker 1: sided on that one. I even got offered an opportunity
Speaker 1: to be in a DC film, and I turned it
Speaker 1: down because I'm like, I'm gonna be a hypocrite if
Speaker 1: I do it. That's crazy. Gabe. First of all, I
Speaker 1: wonder who he would have played in a DC film.
Speaker 1: And that's crazy, dude, that's like really crazy. You should
Speaker 1: have said yes, game said, I'm gonna hypocrite if I
Speaker 1: do it. As far as the buses go, my first
Speaker 1: car was a sixty eight Volkswagen Bus. Many years later,
Speaker 1: I got my ex her first car back. I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to get my first car back.
Speaker 1: I got one, and the guy who got me the car,
Speaker 1: I said, if you want another one, let us know.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, if you come across something
Speaker 1: to cool, let me know. And it kept going and
Speaker 1: going and going, and now the whole building's full. I
Speaker 1: recently got a free car from Volkswagon because they found
Speaker 1: out about the collection. They came down here and said, wow,
Speaker 1: you aren't battinate about our product. Gabe's grateful that he
Speaker 1: still has his career. He says, this career as a
Speaker 1: shelf life. It's not supposed to last this long, and
Speaker 1: I feel very fortunate that I'm still able to do it.
Speaker 1: And the fact that we're still going up it's insane
Speaker 1: to me. So I'm enjoying every day and I want
Speaker 1: fans to know that I feel lucky and I'm grateful.
Speaker 1: And if this goes away tomorrow we can all say
Speaker 1: we did all this. Felipe as Sparza also spoke to
Speaker 1: the La Times and said, I think as a comedian,
Speaker 1: you can make a joke about anything you want, but
Speaker 1: you got to be prepared to take the consequences of
Speaker 1: your words. You can't forget that part. One time, early
Speaker 1: in my career, I was asked to do a clean
Speaker 1: comedy show and I didn't cuss, but he did some
Speaker 1: jokes about racism and religion, and I said the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: and it ticks some people off, and the microphone was
Speaker 1: cut off. And I had a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the content, not necessarily the cursing. But it's important as
Speaker 1: a comedian you know the audience, especially when you get
Speaker 1: hired for private or corporate events. Now though, if I'm
Speaker 1: hired when he do shows, people know when you you
Speaker 1: get what you get. If you know my shows, you
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna make jokes about drug, sex, marriage, race,
Speaker 1: religion and more. I'm gonna use vulgarity. But it's a
Speaker 1: stand up comic. I've evolve from a one liner to
Speaker 1: comedian that tell stories, and it's some really dark stuff,
Speaker 1: but I find it all funny. I don't like to
Speaker 1: be too political. But I do touch on immigration and
Speaker 1: race somewhat in a soft way to make people laugh.
Speaker 1: For instance, in one joke, I noticed how white people
Speaker 1: don't work all month at their jobs then send money
Speaker 1: back to Scotland or Ireland. White people don't have immigrant
Speaker 1: relatives from Germany or Belgium showing up the door with
Speaker 1: blankets saying they need a place to live. If I
Speaker 1: get people to laugh at some of the topical jokes,
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. One thing we proved in this
Speaker 1: last election is you can't put Hispanics and Latinos in
Speaker 1: the same category anymore. We're not all the same brown people.
Speaker 1: There are some Mexicans that want other Mexicans and Central
Speaker 1: Americans deported from the country. It's insane. But overall I
Speaker 1: try not to take the angle where I come out
Speaker 1: saying all whites are racist and kill all white people,
Speaker 1: because that's not really funny. There really isn't a joke there.
Speaker 1: I try to make little jokes about the topics and
Speaker 1: get people to laugh. Trenmarco Ciresi, a friend of the show,
Speaker 1: described how his comedy has evolved. He said, coming up,
Speaker 1: I worked at a club in Times Square called ll
Speaker 1: that no longer exists, Thank god. Yeah, John Marco's not
Speaker 1: kidding there, you know, wasn't the greatest New York City
Speaker 1: comedy club, just saying a lot of the crowd was
Speaker 1: not paying attention for some English was their second language,
Speaker 1: some were drunk or just noisy, and he had to
Speaker 1: cut through all that. So your jokes had to move quick,
Speaker 1: and he tried to really pop. I got a lot
Speaker 1: of skills out of it, but the turns and twists
Speaker 1: had to be so sharp, they were less true and
Speaker 1: relied on being a little extra dirty or edgy. It
Speaker 1: was tough to build a world or tell a story.
Speaker 1: Now that I could tell a story of paint more
Speaker 1: of a picture, the punch line's more meaningful. Explained it.
Speaker 1: In his newest work, He has a joke about feeling
Speaker 1: suicidal and having a friend who's suicidal and explains if
Speaker 1: I've done that in at ten minute club set, people say, dude,
Speaker 1: I just want to have a good Friday night. What
Speaker 1: are you doing? But my fans know my point of
Speaker 1: view and like darker things, so I can explore these topics.
Speaker 1: But almost every comedian, even the greats, gradually get worse.
Speaker 1: One factor is performing for your fans who like you
Speaker 1: and will laugh even at a failed joke, you lose
Speaker 1: the fear about keeping their attention and having to write
Speaker 1: something so sharp. Stand up is it's a tricky art.
Speaker 1: For him, you can feel like a try hard. In
Speaker 1: the beginning. You could have accused me of being too
Speaker 1: theatrical without the jokes to back it up. I got
Speaker 1: labeled as two to one man show at one club,
Speaker 1: which was frustrating. But for me, it's pretty natural. When
Speaker 1: attention is thrust upon me, a flamboyance emerges. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to lean into that without exaggerating it, always asking how
Speaker 1: can this be funny and serve the storytelling? As my
Speaker 1: stages literally get bigger, I look at the real estate
Speaker 1: and think, after use it for something, what can I
Speaker 1: use the stool or the mic stand for in a
Speaker 1: way that doesn't feel overly choreographed but still adds a
Speaker 1: dimension that a lot of comics in the generation above
Speaker 1: me veered away from. Gary Owen thinks we're in a
Speaker 1: golden age of comedy. He says, you don't need the
Speaker 1: machine anymore. It used to be when I started, you
Speaker 1: needed a producer or director or somebody to see something
Speaker 1: in you to put you on something. Now, as long
Speaker 1: as you got your phone, you can record anything you want.
Speaker 1: If you can put any stand up clip you want
Speaker 1: out there, you never know what's gonna go viral. That
Speaker 1: brought the conversation to Matt Rife. Wife's a guy. You
Speaker 1: post something on TikTok, goes to bed, wakes up the
Speaker 1: next morning and it's like, seventy million people saw this joke,
Speaker 1: and he's like, what happened? I think you got more
Speaker 1: comedians right now, selling tickets, doing theaters, doing arenas. Comedy
Speaker 1: clubs are packed. You see Andrew Schultz, you see Shan Gillison.
Speaker 1: The way they're pushing the envelope, you could see this
Speaker 1: is what we want. We want to go into these
Speaker 1: rooms and be uncomfortable. We want this dark humor, and
Speaker 1: nobody's taking it personally. Chelsea Handler was on Zack Shephard's
Speaker 1: podcast and said she did not want to break up
Speaker 1: with Joe Cooy, but felt like she had no choice.
Speaker 1: She explained, I felt like it was a decision between
Speaker 1: having a relationship and being full honor, choosing myself and
Speaker 1: my sanity. Sanity is an overstatement, but I would have
Speaker 1: compromised my own value system. That's interesting, She explained. What
Speaker 1: I thought was a mature, healthy relationship and what he
Speaker 1: thought was a mature, healthy relationship with two different things.
Speaker 1: I know have had to compromise everything I stand for,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't willing to do that. We had a
Speaker 1: couple instances where it was obvious that we had different
Speaker 1: ideas about togetherness and the amount of time would spend
Speaker 1: together in the expectation of me as his girlfriend, which
Speaker 1: to me were very outdated, old fashioned and not gonna work.
Speaker 1: The biggest takeaway from that relationship was that I was
Speaker 1: able to be in love in a vulnerable, mature, healthy way,
Speaker 1: and that when I realized it wasn't going to work out,
Speaker 1: I was able to end it in a healthy, mature
Speaker 1: way and not divulge all the stuff and the ugly
Speaker 1: that might have happened in between, because I didn't want
Speaker 1: to focus on that. Chelsea said, Joe Cooy got me
Speaker 1: to point in my life where I needed to be
Speaker 1: reminded of my strength and my power of who I am,
Speaker 1: and he reinstalled that in me because I had kind
Speaker 1: of lost interest in my work in the job and
Speaker 1: that is your comedy news for today. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: the program, tell a friend about it. They might like
Speaker 1: it too. See tomorrow.