Speaker 1: Callaroga Shark Media, Hello Chunny Mack with your daily comedy news.
Speaker 1: Whitney Cummings tells The Dallas Observer, I always worried that
Speaker 1: if I ever got happy, I'd stop being funny. I
Speaker 1: wish that someone had told me sooner that that's not
Speaker 1: how it works. My act was about me and my
Speaker 1: self sabotaging behaviors. But now it's obvious about the world
Speaker 1: that I'm bringing up my son into and needing to
Speaker 1: understand it a bit better. It's a nice upgrade from
Speaker 1: an emotionally fraught, confused person to someone who is less
Speaker 1: confused and no longer emotionally fraught. As a comedian, I
Speaker 1: could stay image sure forever, but I learned I could
Speaker 1: be mature and be happy and still be funny. Micha
Speaker 1: Leean blacks All the Inside Hook on Twitter. I learned
Speaker 1: very early on I'm not going to change anybody's mind
Speaker 1: about anything, and I no longer try. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to change anybody's mind. What I'm trying to do is
Speaker 1: engage with people on the basis of their arguments, not
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to convince them, but because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to help people who may feel the way I do,
Speaker 1: but don't necessarily know how to approach these conversations. And
Speaker 1: I don't either a lot of times, so a lot
Speaker 1: of time when I'm engaging, it's not because I'm so
Speaker 1: sure of my own position. It's to understand my own
Speaker 1: position better. It's to be able to defend my own
Speaker 1: position so that if I were to have a conversation
Speaker 1: with you in real life and something would come up,
Speaker 1: I might have an actually informed opinion rather than just
Speaker 1: kind of a knee jerk liberal response to something. Inside
Speaker 1: Hook points out that Michael Ian Black is not shy
Speaker 1: about calling out his fellow comedians, including appearing in the
Speaker 1: recent Louis Ck documentary Sorry Not Sorry, or about writing
Speaker 1: a piece about the time Andrew dice Clay threatened to
Speaker 1: kick his ass where Joe Rogan's lazy use of slurs
Speaker 1: in his latest special. Michael ian Black has a substack
Speaker 1: which I follow is pretty good, which reminds me I
Speaker 1: should promote my own substack. Mine is called media Thoughts
Speaker 1: by John McDermott. I'll throw a link in the show notes. Basically,
Speaker 1: I have music Mondays where I just write about whatever
Speaker 1: band I feel like writing about. Wednesdays or podcast recommendations,
Speaker 1: and maybe once or twice a week on the other
Speaker 1: days I'll write about podcasting. It is not a comedy blog.
Speaker 1: If I want to talk about comedy, that's this anyway,
Speaker 1: It's free. I hope you will check it out link
Speaker 1: of the show notes. Michael Black says it feels hypocritical
Speaker 1: of me to call out politicians for crappy behavior and
Speaker 1: then somehow not call out fellow comics for crappy behavior.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be that guy. Like in a
Speaker 1: case of Rogan in particular, he is such a massive platform,
Speaker 1: He's such an influential part of the culture that when
Speaker 1: he releases a special in the punchline to one of
Speaker 1: his jokes is I don't want to say the word
Speaker 1: rhymes with make it. I'm like, you can do better,
Speaker 1: and you oughte to your audience to do better. Because
Speaker 1: he knows who his audience is, and he knows the
Speaker 1: influence he has over them. So when he's giving them
Speaker 1: more a license to be a jerk faces, they're gonna
Speaker 1: take that license. Slight paraphrase there by me, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's enough when you're at Joe Rogan's level to say,
Speaker 1: I'm just a comic. You're not for better or worse
Speaker 1: or whatever the term actually applies to you. In particular,
Speaker 1: you're a thought leader, and I think if was me,
Speaker 1: I think you just have responsibility there not to make
Speaker 1: things worse for people. And I know that's not his intention.
Speaker 1: I really, in my heart, I believe that. But that's
Speaker 1: the effect it has. And so Joe Rogan doesn't give
Speaker 1: a hoot about what I think. Joe Rogan doesn't know
Speaker 1: who I am. But I thought it was incumbent on me,
Speaker 1: just to my own conscience, to calling out Greg Fitzsimmons
Speaker 1: talked about working with Ellen and said, working with Ellen,
Speaker 1: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that it killed me. It was amazing watching the
Speaker 1: evolution of that show. I was run in to help
Speaker 1: come up with ideas for the show before it launched.
Speaker 1: It was a really exciting feeling about it. It was all
Speaker 1: about positivity and possibility. Then we started winning Emmys and
Speaker 1: it became very unpleasant. There was a lot of fear
Speaker 1: going around. It didn't feel fun at the end. I'd
Speaker 1: go on the road and all these Midwestern housewives would
Speaker 1: come up to me after the show and be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you were with Vellen what she like?
Speaker 1: And I would tell them what she's like, and you
Speaker 1: could see their shoulders slump and tears wall up in
Speaker 1: their eyes and they'd be like no, and I'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: America loves to tear down its level icons. In some cases,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's unwarranted. But in this case, it's
Speaker 1: amazing to me to see her going out. She's doing
Speaker 1: this new special where she was talking about how she
Speaker 1: got thrown under the bus. Let's just say it was warranted. Wow.
Speaker 1: Ali Sadiq spoke to the spokesman. Ali said people make
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes in their life and go through
Speaker 1: things you should have went right, but he went left.
Speaker 1: He zigged when you should have zagged. Things happen. You
Speaker 1: don't get a chance to pinpoint a lot of times
Speaker 1: when you went wrong. During his time in prison, he
Speaker 1: reflected on the mistakes he had made and pinpoint into
Speaker 1: the exact year in which the first domino fell, leading
Speaker 1: to his incarceration. The Domino effect was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a one off, but he says, as people got to
Speaker 1: wonder how I got locked up, I want to give
Speaker 1: the history of it. Once I did Domino Effect and
Speaker 1: people were interested, it was like, oh, what a way
Speaker 1: to go, and I can continue to do them. He
Speaker 1: recalls comedian Billy D. Washington telling him, when you're not
Speaker 1: being funny, be interesting. Ollie says, the Domino effects are
Speaker 1: a reality of that. When I'm not being funny, the
Speaker 1: story's interesting. I don't even start off trying to be funny.
Speaker 1: It's me telling the story and taking this deep dive
Speaker 1: into what I've experienced versus what somebody else has experienced.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to get better as a storyteller. I'm
Speaker 1: not the best that I can be, yet I can
Speaker 1: get better, I can develop better. I'm doing other specials
Speaker 1: in order to get better what I actually do and
Speaker 1: put out all these different works. He says he wants
Speaker 1: to be like Denzel Washington. By the way, you know,
Speaker 1: if you had a time machine. So when I graduated
Speaker 1: from Fordham at University in nineteen eighty seven, the commencement
Speaker 1: speaker was some unknown actor Denzel Washington. We weren't impressed. Boy,
Speaker 1: I like a do over on that one. Dumb teenagers,
Speaker 1: Ollie says, denzil Ell is Denzel Regardless, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what role he's in, he just tells you something else.
Speaker 1: I want to get better in my craft, to beat
Speaker 1: myself and give you all this different work. It's like, Yo,
Speaker 1: he was great in this. He was great in that.
Speaker 1: He was different than this, but he was still great.
Speaker 1: Same chair, same microphone. He's just giving us something different
Speaker 1: from the Daily Mail. A Ricky Gervai's skit was shown
Speaker 1: in court. Man claimed he was copying at Ricky Gervase
Speaker 1: when he allegedly did a Nazi salute outside a Jewish
Speaker 1: museum in Sydney. Three men were charge with behaving in
Speaker 1: an offensive manner in public after knowing displaying Nazi symbols
Speaker 1: without an excuse near the Sydney Jewish Museum last October.
Speaker 1: The men told the police they were joking. One of
Speaker 1: the men said he was copying a Ricky Gervay's routine,
Speaker 1: and a clip played for the court. Ricky Gervas performs
Speaker 1: a mock Nazi salute while pushing his hair down to
Speaker 1: Mimick Hitler and says, I do that quick so no
Speaker 1: one can take a picture of me doing that. Not
Speaker 1: a traditional subject for comedy. The Old Holocaust Magistrate Jennifer
Speaker 1: Atkinson question the timing of the acts, which occurred less
Speaker 1: than a week after the attacks by Hamas last October.
Speaker 1: She told the court, it really is a matter of
Speaker 1: common knowledge what occurred in Israel days earlier. You might
Speaker 1: have said it as a joke, But why that location,
Speaker 1: why that time, the magistrate added, I'm not making a
Speaker 1: decision about Ricky Gervais. Friend of the Show, Jason Zenneman
Speaker 1: writes in The New York Times under the headline is
Speaker 1: the comedy club booking process broken? The owners of a
Speaker 1: new spot say hiring comics based on referrals from other
Speaker 1: stand ups is no guarantee the acts will be funny.
Speaker 1: This is the Bushwick Comedy club owner Jad and his
Speaker 1: partners plan to book via tape submissions rather than referrals.
Speaker 1: Jad tells Jason, whether or not you get on stage
Speaker 1: at most clubs in the city is very little to
Speaker 1: do at this point with how funny you are. Most
Speaker 1: major clubs use a referral system to varying degrees. That
Speaker 1: means to get on stage you need other comics to
Speaker 1: vouch for you. Naturally, comedians pick their friends. There's even
Speaker 1: motivation to promote mediocrity. Jad told Zenneman Honestly, you don't
Speaker 1: want to follow someone who buries you. Wow. Our main
Speaker 1: difference is gonna sound stupid, but simply put, we're gonna
Speaker 1: actually watch submission tapes. Referrals will not matter, nor will
Speaker 1: social media followers. Only how funny you are on tape?
Speaker 1: On its Grambush What Comedy Club promotes itself as the
Speaker 1: only club in New York who books that's line up
Speaker 1: purely off video submissions. So what's gonna happen? You submit
Speaker 1: a tape, the three owners watch it. If all three
Speaker 1: give a thumbs up, you become part of the rotation.
Speaker 1: If one doesn't like it, you're out. They've already pored
Speaker 1: over one thousand tapes and signed up seventy comics. I
Speaker 1: got news for these guys. That's gonna get old really quick,
Speaker 1: and comedians gonna be like, hey, you know who's funny?
Speaker 1: You should check out this guy, Zenman writes. Several newer
Speaker 1: club owners, including one of the Tiny Cupboard, describe only
Speaker 1: watching tapes as impractical because there's not enough hours in
Speaker 1: the day. Amen. They also say this critique mischaracterizes the process,
Speaker 1: which typically finds talent through multiple sources, including submissions. This
Speaker 1: weekend in DC. It's the second annual because they're Funny
Speaker 1: Comedy Festival, the BTF Festival. I mentioned this before. I
Speaker 1: think they're being very generous with the word festival. Saturday
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock, Dean Cole hosts the second annual Breakout
Speaker 1: Comedian of the Year competition, All Right to Get Dion
Speaker 1: Cole and six comedians. Leslie Jones performs Sunday at eight eight.
Speaker 1: It's not really a festival, guys. That's two shows and
Speaker 1: some good branding. Shane Brendan has an album out today.
Speaker 1: It's called either Way Pretty Funny. It is a funny
Speaker 1: album and Shane Brennan is way cool. How do I
Speaker 1: know because I listened to the album and I interviewed
Speaker 1: Shane Brendan. He'll be the guest on tomorrow's podcast. Loved him.
Speaker 1: I got to talk to him for another hour, but
Speaker 1: I had a volleyball game at ten minutes after the
Speaker 1: end of the recording and I had a split. Portland,
Speaker 1: Oregon based comedian and military veteran Shane Brendan releases his
Speaker 1: debut album Via Blonde Medicine at today in in either
Speaker 1: Way Pretty Funny, Brendan obsesses over NBA rookies and endearingly
Speaker 1: gripes about his family and if you ever want to
Speaker 1: hear somebody do slam poetry about working at McDonald's, well
Speaker 1: he's got you covered. He is my guest tomorrow. It
Speaker 1: is a wonderful conversation. Please check it out. Also out today,
Speaker 1: Paige Weldon's comedy album I've Turned Out Fine. This one
Speaker 1: from a Special Thing Records, Recorded in la It's Page's
Speaker 1: third comedy album and includes personal stories about working in
Speaker 1: a library, being an only child, and not attending high
Speaker 1: school reunion, as well as takes on her parents, tattoos,
Speaker 1: surprise continents, and health Therapista likes strippers now I'm remembering.
Speaker 1: I asked the record label if Page Weldon wanted to
Speaker 1: do the show. I didn't hear back from them. What's
Speaker 1: the deal with that? And that is your comedy news
Speaker 1: for today? Why? Because my voice just gave out. I'd
Speaker 1: recorded three of these in a row to accommodate my schedule.
Speaker 1: So that's your comedy news for today. If you'd like
Speaker 1: the program with us commercial interruption, there's a link of
Speaker 1: the show notes. I'd tell you how to do that.
Speaker 1: This podcast supports podcasting two point zero if you want
Speaker 1: to stream some SATs my way, use a podcasting two
Speaker 1: point zero app and you can do that. I like
Speaker 1: true Fans. I also like Hastematic is another good app
Speaker 1: for that sort of thing. And it always helps to
Speaker 1: grow the show. If you tell a friend about it,
Speaker 1: if you like the show, they might like it too.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Yeah, see you tomorrow with
Speaker 1: Shane Brennan. He's really great.