Speaker 1: Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Johnny Mack with your
Speaker 1: daily comedy news. Tomorrow on this program, one of two
Speaker 1: things is going to happen. Either I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: my guest today is Matthew Bissard, or I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you how Matthew Bisard canceled. And I have no reason
Speaker 1: I think he's going to cancel. Well, that's a plan
Speaker 1: for tomorrow because I'm taping him in about an hour.
Speaker 1: Matt Riife's book came out this week kind of quietly.
Speaker 1: It took two days for anything on Google to show up.
Speaker 1: I had kind of forgotten. I don't know what to
Speaker 1: make of that, but now he seems to be doing
Speaker 1: some press. The book is called Your Mom's Gonna Love Me,
Speaker 1: and he talked about his change in looks. Did Matt
Speaker 1: Rife have plastic surgery. He claims it was simply puberty
Speaker 1: that led to an accelerated appearance change. He writes puberty,
Speaker 1: after its sweet time for more than twenty years, finally
Speaker 1: decided to hit me square in the face. He claims
Speaker 1: he went from looking like a thirteen year old to
Speaker 1: an actual Grownish man. He says his wider and more
Speaker 1: prominent features were all from a bizarrely stunted journey through puberty.
Speaker 1: People who have accused him of getting classic surgery have
Speaker 1: a frightening lack of common sense, and claims that his
Speaker 1: attractiveness has negatively affected his career. In the book, he says,
Speaker 1: is a comic, you're supposed to make the audience like you, right, Well,
Speaker 1: who the f likes attractive people? No one? Okay. He
Speaker 1: did an interview with US Weekly. He says he has
Speaker 1: no regrets about anything. It's comedy. Sometimes you don't hit
Speaker 1: the mark. Plenty of people think I did. He was
Speaker 1: referring to the controversial joke in his November twenty three
Speaker 1: special Natural Selection. He says, to me, the joke was
Speaker 1: just that, a joke. I wasn't trying to make some
Speaker 1: kind of profound statement about the state of society. I
Speaker 1: was trying to set the tone for the rest of
Speaker 1: the show via personal spin on a classic joke. He
Speaker 1: wrote that practically overnight, and he went from a TikTok
Speaker 1: sensation to basically canceled. Maybe it wasn't dear taste. That's fine.
Speaker 1: That happens, not to me very often, but it happens.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't make me a support of domestic violence.
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up with an abusive stepdad. Verbal abuse,
Speaker 1: psychological abuse, fiscal abuse I experienced at all. He says.
Speaker 1: The only negative thing about the special is that people
Speaker 1: were upset. He says it's inevitable with almost any comedian.
Speaker 1: We're in the business of making people happy. But I
Speaker 1: gotta be me. The immense positivity I received at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of my career can't last forever. It sought
Speaker 1: me to respectfully not give a hoot. I know my intentions,
Speaker 1: I know where my heart lies. Matt turns thirty in
Speaker 1: September of twenty five and said this was the perfect
Speaker 1: time to release a memoir and show fans the real hymn.
Speaker 1: Not only did I feel it necessary to explain more
Speaker 1: about my life and everything it took to get here,
Speaker 1: but it also feels like I've already lived a lot.
Speaker 1: So much of your life when you're in the public
Speaker 1: eye is open interpretation. Gave me a chance to tell
Speaker 1: my story on my terms. Matt Riife went on the
Speaker 1: view Whoopy Goldberg said the book is wonderful and asked
Speaker 1: if he recorded the audiobook version. Raife said he did
Speaker 1: the audiobook a little lazy, but I respect it. Joy
Speaker 1: Behar said the comedians are runner attack now. Raife pointed
Speaker 1: out that his close friend Nate Berghetzi, I didn't know
Speaker 1: those two were friends. That's fascinating. He says. Nate doesn't
Speaker 1: come under the same fire for his jokes, which are
Speaker 1: less raunchy. That's where you'd have to decide how much
Speaker 1: you want to be yourself and how much you want
Speaker 1: to pander to a community that might not even care
Speaker 1: about you in the first place. Whoope, Goldberg greed, telling
Speaker 1: Rife on the panel that comics are always under fire.
Speaker 1: Inlander spoke to David Cross and I asked him about
Speaker 1: the people he surrounds himself with. Is that important to
Speaker 1: his own creativity? Cross said, well, it's less about importance
Speaker 1: and just what I prefer. It's a great thing that
Speaker 1: I'm able to do. I mean, I know plenty of
Speaker 1: people who aren't creative, but creative people are more fun
Speaker 1: to hang out with. He talked about his podcasts and
Speaker 1: said for years I didn't do one. I had no desire.
Speaker 1: I don't listen to podcasts myself. I have nothing against them.
Speaker 1: I just don't occupy my time that way. Then I
Speaker 1: started doing it. I loved it. It's really fun. It
Speaker 1: is really fun, and they're just conversations. I would have
Speaker 1: the why I approach it is what I tell people.
Speaker 1: It's just like, imagine we're strangers and we're sitting next
Speaker 1: to each other at a pub that kind of conversation. Wow,
Speaker 1: it sounds like he went to podcast programming executive school.
Speaker 1: One oh one. The amount of meetings I've been in. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a conversation. Cross, Do you get
Speaker 1: annoyed by people who come up and recite arrested development lines?
Speaker 1: Cross said, Oh, that's annoying. I've experienced pretty much everything,
Speaker 1: and by far most people are cool and respectful, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of folks that aren't. Good question here,
Speaker 1: what's it been like seeing a decent chunk of the
Speaker 1: commit landscape shift from alt comedy to alt rights comedy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I agree with the premise. It's
Speaker 1: a good question, but there's It's not like alt comedy
Speaker 1: went away. Joe Rogan opened a club and Tony Hinchcliff's
Speaker 1: podcast took off. That's it, Relax everybody, Cross it Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's depressing because I've never really enjoyed or
Speaker 1: take import in comedy that punches down and makes fun
Speaker 1: of the disenfranchised or vulnerable out there. That's never been
Speaker 1: my thing. So it's a bummer that it's so celebrated,
Speaker 1: you know, financially rewarded. I mean, I don't make one
Speaker 1: one hundred thirty amount of money that some of those
Speaker 1: guys are. But I'm going to do my stuff and
Speaker 1: always be me. I've always had a kind of stew
Speaker 1: of different stuff. I have very silly jokes. I have
Speaker 1: some that are kind of a little offensive. I have
Speaker 1: stuff that's anecdotal. I'd say easily a third of the
Speaker 1: set is just about anecdotal stuff. This thing happened to me,
Speaker 1: or this thing I observed, And then obviously I dip
Speaker 1: into the current state of affairs. And there's always going
Speaker 1: to be a little religious stuff in there for people
Speaker 1: who know my body of work, which there are literally
Speaker 1: decades worth of specials and alms and stuff. It's that MOA.
Speaker 1: Mayer's show is getting a season two. The show is
Speaker 1: called mo. You may remember this one, the Netflix comedy
Speaker 1: about a Palestinian immigrant attempting to secure Silomon Houston I
Speaker 1: either didn't know or forgot they renewed it. I like
Speaker 1: that show a lot. It was very good. The next
Speaker 1: batch of episodes spoilers, we'll see Moe stranded across the
Speaker 1: border and desperate to get back to Houston before his
Speaker 1: family's asylum, hearing he's going to need all the hustle
Speaker 1: and charm he can muster. Little does he know that
Speaker 1: the journey home is just the start of his troubles,
Speaker 1: and there's a new guy in town ready to steal
Speaker 1: both his longtime love Maria and his Falafel Tago recipe.
Speaker 1: Mo back on Netflix January thirtieth, Moa Mara says, I'm
Speaker 1: thankful to continue to tell a universal story of struggle
Speaker 1: that relates to so many refugees and millions of underrepresented
Speaker 1: humans trying to be seen around the globe. Sarah Silverman
Speaker 1: was politically active this fall, supporting the losing candidate. After
Speaker 1: the electoral College numbers came in, Silverman said, I thought,
Speaker 1: oh God, what am I doing? Why am I on
Speaker 1: the road right now? I want to go home, But
Speaker 1: being on the road has made her feel better about
Speaker 1: the future. Sarah says, it's been really for whatever it's worth,
Speaker 1: a bit of a solve. I don't know what fresh
Speaker 1: air we're in for, but to be together in a
Speaker 1: big group of people at night, it's been nice. Having
Speaker 1: that kind of feeling connect on a local level has
Speaker 1: been oddly comforting. The optimist in me feels like community
Speaker 1: is going to be our savior. Being on tour feels
Speaker 1: like the beginnings of that for me. Bill Maher, who's
Speaker 1: totally not going to quit his HBO show, Stop dude,
Speaker 1: listen to yesterday's podcast, mar is taping his next special
Speaker 1: tonight and tomorrow at the CIBC Theater in Chicago. Defector
Speaker 1: wrote an article that caught my attention. The headline crowd
Speaker 1: work isn't a substitute for comedy? Right there. I love
Speaker 1: the article because they've already nailed the premise. Defector writes,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but the biggest laugh in
Speaker 1: James Acaster's new special, Heckler's Welcome, comes from a hackle.
Speaker 1: I made it seven minutes into that special, or was
Speaker 1: it eight? I can't remember. I think I made it
Speaker 1: seven into Jesly Neck and eight into a caster. Either way,
Speaker 1: a total of fifty minutes between the two. Didn't enjoy
Speaker 1: either one Defector writes fast forward about thirty minutes into
Speaker 1: the latest special on the punch line to another a
Speaker 1: Caster joke as a guy yelling to a bunch of
Speaker 1: bullies that their parents don't love them, to which one
Speaker 1: audience member pipes up, my parents are dead. A Caster
Speaker 1: is so impressed by the callback that he says, lovely
Speaker 1: to have a Heckler in here who appreciates stretcher to
Speaker 1: be fair to the audience. Heckler's welcome is in a
Speaker 1: Caster's best work. From the title on the setup, you'd
Speaker 1: expected to be quite a bit of intervention, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's what he was expecting, but there isn't a ton
Speaker 1: Yeah that was I can't even get out of sentence.
Speaker 1: I'm so perplexed by the special. Yeah, I was watching it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where are the Hecklers, what's going on? Where's
Speaker 1: the comedy? And I bailed that life is too short.
Speaker 1: I got too much to watch. If you can't get
Speaker 1: to it in the first seven eight minutes, I gotta
Speaker 1: move on, Defector, right. So I wonder if ay Caster
Speaker 1: thought it'd have more to work with by opening the
Speaker 1: floor to the Hecklers, But he was a little thrown
Speaker 1: off by the relational change to his audience. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I know he's usually a lot better than this,
Speaker 1: and they recommend that you check out his previous special
Speaker 1: Coldasignia Hate Myself nineteen ninety nine for an example. Matt Rife,
Speaker 1: that browie comedian who sells out arenas and looks like
Speaker 1: he was manufactured by a chad machine. Hey, look, Matt
Speaker 1: Rife did not have plastic surgery. He's made that clear. Okay, defector.
Speaker 1: He became TikTok famous about six years ago off his
Speaker 1: crowd work. I mean, fine, he's quick, but the recurring
Speaker 1: Nazi punch lines also seem a little overly available to him,
Speaker 1: and explains that these clips allowed you to promote your
Speaker 1: gig gun Law without ruining it for anybody who actually
Speaker 1: pays to come. It's kipping ahead. Despite CrowdWork being leveraged
Speaker 1: in the past by older comics like Todd Barry, who
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen released the crowd Work Tour, newer comedians
Speaker 1: say they're expected to produce content incessantly, and releasing audience
Speaker 1: interactions allows them to do that without burning material or
Speaker 1: SNL Writer and comic Vanessa Jackson sold the new York Times.
Speaker 1: The younger crowds, I think enjoy authentic content more than
Speaker 1: something that's crafted. Wow, I'm just gonna build a cabin
Speaker 1: up here on Old Man Mountain then and listen to
Speaker 1: Old Kamedy. Colin Jos is out there promoting what is
Speaker 1: it pop culture Jeopardy? I keep wanting to say celebrit Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: It's pop culture Jeopardy. I actually misspoke that in the
Speaker 1: Wednesday episode. Now to use the AI to replace my
Speaker 1: own words, you'll hear someone say pop culture jeopard if
Speaker 1: you want to go back and hear that at it.
Speaker 1: Joe said, I found pop Culture Jeopardy harder than regular Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: I was really impressed. You have to know different erarors
Speaker 1: really well. You know, I got a trivia on Wednesday night,
Speaker 1: and part of it is, you know, my crew and
Speaker 1: I were reasonably smart and reasonably educated. It depends what
Speaker 1: the trivia guys pick. Like some nights they hand in
Speaker 1: I just called them arian and gro questions and I'm like,
Speaker 1: we have no chance tonight because whatever they're into, like
Speaker 1: twenty ten's music and I'm like, we don't know any
Speaker 1: of this. And then other weeks they ask a lot
Speaker 1: of eighties questions and we crush and we went a
Speaker 1: T shirt. Joe said, I was fascinated when no one
Speaker 1: would know something from the nineties, or no one would
Speaker 1: know something from the early two thousands. Maybe that's just
Speaker 1: generational because there were a lot of younger groups competing.
Speaker 1: Pop Culture is so different for everyone in what sticks
Speaker 1: with them, and especially in modern things can get very
Speaker 1: divided because in almost in an algorithmic way, your experience
Speaker 1: with culture is so fragmented. Joe says, I promise, in
Speaker 1: no way am I trying to steal Ken Jennings's job.
Speaker 1: He's very good at his job. I also have a job.
Speaker 1: He and I texted during the Pop Culture Jeopardy tapings.
Speaker 1: Actually he was supportive. What he was saying is true.
Speaker 1: There's almost no one that knows what it's like to
Speaker 1: host the game. You know, all those crazy specific things
Speaker 1: you have to do in every game and we keep
Speaker 1: track of. In addition of just what seems like normal
Speaker 1: hosting stuff, the gameplay of it is so specific and
Speaker 1: fast and precise that it's just an experience that almost
Speaker 1: no one gets to have. It's like talking to someone
Speaker 1: who used to host Weekend Update. It has its own
Speaker 1: vocabulary and its own experience. That's very specific. He used
Speaker 1: to host Weekend Update. Well, he has released a deluxe
Speaker 1: edition of his Holiday Seasoning Christmas album. He added nine tracks. Now, Jimmy, dude,
Speaker 1: what if I bought this thing three weeks ago? Say,
Speaker 1: I spent fifteen bucks and now you're like, here's nine
Speaker 1: more tracks. I mean, I have Apple Plus, so I
Speaker 1: don't care. It's all unlimited streaming for me, except for
Speaker 1: that pesky monthly payment. But you know, if I had
Speaker 1: actually bought a CD or a cassette or an a
Speaker 1: track and now you drop nine more songs, come on,
Speaker 1: that's not cool. Who did this? The new tracks are
Speaker 1: called Christmas Alone. The Elves are unionizing Broadway. Do you
Speaker 1: remember today at Christmas time? Remember Christmas with Lang Lang,
Speaker 1: Elvis on the Shelvis Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, and
Speaker 1: Holiday with the Jonas brothers in el Cooljay. And that's
Speaker 1: your comedy news for today. All right, tomorrow Matthew Brissard
Speaker 1: or not, so come back and find out what happens now.
Speaker 1: I have no reason to think that he's going to cancel.
Speaker 1: Sometimes with these tape things, the comedians forget and it's
Speaker 1: all good. I understand. It's a dude in the basement
Speaker 1: recording podcasts, and they forget. I feel like I'm throwing
Speaker 1: Basarda under the bus. He's done nothing wrong. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's one o two pm and I'm recording with him
Speaker 1: at three point thirty. Anyway, come back tomorrow and we'll
Speaker 1: find out what happened. See you then,