August 15, 2024
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Mike Binder
Dave Landau shoots his thrice weekly comedy / talk / sketch /podcast show at a giant studio somewhere outside of Dallas that is owned and operated by conservative media kahuna Glenn Beck. It doesn’t look anything like any of the studios I’ve seen, or you’ve come to know from movies and television in places like Los Angeles, or New York, or even London. It looks more like a giant business park that was taken over by some new species many years after some version of an Armageddon.
Dave and his co-hosts, Quarter- Black Garret, and Angela, put on their show in the cavernous halls of the seemingly very busy studios, yet you have to squint really hard to point out Dave as the guy in charge. In fact, the episode I was on, though it ran quite smooth, didn’t really seem to have anyone in charge. I believe a lot of that comes off of Dave’s personality. He’s very easygoing. Mellow. More interested in what he can find, dissect, then riff on about the absurdity of a day, a moment, the wind, or the traffic in front of him, then how he needs to manage any of it. He seems to get most of his kicks out of observing.
It’s a pretty perfect perch for a comedian to watch the world go by from.
We both came up through Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle outside of Detroit, just a few decades apart. Dave came up in a completely different era of stand up. You didn’t need to go out to L.A. or New York, and in fact Austin wasn’t even a thing yet. I think he just came along in a time where The Kings of Comedy, the Blue Collar tour, the rise of Netflix, and start of You Tube, sent the sniff out that if you just got good where you were, well, that could work too. You didn’t have to go to the big city.
I get the feeling the other thing that helped Dave was the political winds whipping up at the start of the new century with shows like Opie and Anthony, and Steven Crowders building a counterculture off-ramp to stand up and talk television that would pave the way for Joe Rogan, Tony Hinchcliffe, Jimmy Dore, Andrew Sullivan, YMH, and all of the underworld that has almost become, if not mainstream, then something even better.
I don’t know the story, I wasn’t around and he isn’t a guy that likes to discuss that kind of thing. My guess is he either got tired of taking Steven Crowders crap and left, or Crowder fired him and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Dave. He did land on his feet nicely though with his own and an incredibly strong stand up routine. A large cavalcade of fans. He’s pretty amazing. His stuff is incredibly organic is the secret, I think. Torn from the pages of his life and his mind.
His show Normal World, like I’ve said, is all over the place. It’s a talk show, a sketch show, a variety show and a podcast all rolled into one. It’s shot on Glenn Beck’s dime so it obviously has a right of center edge to it for the most part, but it really doesn’t stick to that. It’s more whatever they find worth teasing. They’re brave, and they go out on the ice, but in a real comedically dangerous way, a Jimmy Dore, or a Sam Tripoli way. It’s not a fakey ‘White women suck, and who cares about the WNBA?’ kind of risky. They aren’t trying to please everyone. You don’t get the feeling Dave is asking his wife’s permission who he can and can’t make jokes about.
Check him out this week on the podcast, on Normal World, also on tour.
That’s it! Thanks.
Also, if you’re L.A. Next Monday night. An amazing show at the Laugh Factory!!! 8P.M. Some really great guests. Monday August 19th!
Erica Rhodes. Dane Cook. Adam Hunter. Griffin James. Dave Murphy. Dwight Pryde and Sammy Weiser, You can’t beat this show. Get tickets now, and come out next Monday night. 8pm.
