I want to write all these complimentary things about my friend Dave Attell but he hates it. Truly hates to be complimented. Loves to be teased. Joked about. The little baby. Won’t even let a guy talk about how damn great he is or how flat out hysterical his Netflix special is.
F**k him. I’m going there.
HOT CROSS BUNS is so much fun. People are talking about it too. So many have brought up to me how much they love it. Multitudes. It seems like it’s getting the reaction by people that have seen it that Sticks and Stones, or Live in Austin got. Paper Tiger.
It’s such a perfect encapsulation of Attell. He’s really got it down, whatever you call whatever it is he does. It’s just so him, and he’s so damn funny. If you haven’t seen it yet, just go watch it. You’ll be glad you did.
For some reason I can’t even find a trailer of it or I’d post it. COME ON, NETFLIX!!!
Oh, and guess what, he also happens to be on STANDUP WORLD this week. (I’m told the only podcast he’s going on.) Ep. 65 Out now.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE EPISODE
— Mike Binder (@MikeBinderjokes) March 30, 2024
Also, if you’re in LA. Monday night, come to the Laugh Factory for a great show. An amazing line up. We’re building up the Monday night show, so come on out and support! Thanks.
AND A WEEK FROM SAT. 9-28
Her new crowd work special lays out exactly why. She can find laughs in anything. Anything. There is seemingly no point of view, reality, ideology, or world view she can’t instantly unpeel, dissect and reveal the obvious humor and hilarity of. Sometimes watching her in this new special she doesn’t even seem human. There’s moments she’s seems like a great cartoon character standing onstage in front of a bunch of howling humans. I think this is really her best special. I love all of her stuff, her material is routinely sharp and she normally weaves it in and out of her crowd work so that it feels so much fresher than a standard routine. This one is different. This is Jessica just talking with the audience at the Comedy Cellar in New York, in two different performances, for fifty some minutes.
I have to say by and large I don’t really love crowd work specials or reels. They always seem to have a ‘guess you had to be there’ aftertaste to them. This one is different.
Whether she’s vamping a song born from an interview from an audience member at the side of the stage with her piano player in show 1 or singing about Sanitary pads in an improvised riff in show 2 she’s got an old fashioned Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett energy infused with a very modern point of view that could only be as bold as it is in today’s environment. She easily gets away with it all. She’s a woman, she’s gay, she’s Jewish, she’s a mother, she’s brutally honest about herself, and as a result, the audience will let her go anywhere. She comes off so brazen and bold, so angry, yet so damn nice. It’s just a great combination.
She tells an audience member. ‘I don’t have a cruel bone in my body. Unless someone is cruel to me. Then I will annihilate them.’ in a way that there is no doubt of the veracity. By the way, I feel the same way. I think all, or most of us do, which is probably why she’s so popular. I also have to say I get a vibe that in this special she’s really having fun on stage. Not that she isn’t in the stuff I’ve seen before, but there is a sweetness in this one that works for her, a pace and a pleasant pop that is pure joy in the work. She looks great and she’s got a light in her eyes that makes it so much fun to watch. If you haven’t seen her live this is the best thing next to it. It’s a great set.
Here it is;
Here’s her live dates coming up too. Go see her in person. She’s putting on some amazing shows. There’s nothing like laughing as hard she’s making people laugh. By the way, just so you know, because I talk a lot about my friends. I don’t even know Jessica. I’ve never met her. I’m not selling one of my buddies. I just love her. I’ve gone and seen her live a few times. She makes me laugh hard. You owe it to yourself to get out and see her, and if not, at least to watch this special. It’s perfect.
https://www.jessicakirson.com/
Also, she’s been written up a lot lately. Check our home page’s Latest Industry News for the links to all the articles on Jessica for a deeper dive.
If you’re in LA; THIS MONDAY at THE LAUGH FACTORY Check out this show.
And A week from Sat. 9-28 at the Ice House in Pasadena
CLICK LINK FOR TICKETS
https://www.showclix.com/event/ice-house-Mike-Binder-and-Acquaintances-9-28-24-8-30-pm
Joe Lists third special shot in the basement of the Comedy Cellar has been up since last Friday and it’s already an indisputable success. It’s his best special according to anyone that’s seen it, it has well over two hundred thousand views in just a few days, and the comments and reviews are all pretty stellar.
CLICK TO WATCH THE SPECIAL ON PUNCHUP
I’m not really sure what it is that’s so great about Joe. He’s not like anyone else that I can think of. He’s unique not only in style and looks, but also his take and tack on the way to get ahead in stand up. I mean, I guess he’s similar to his playdate pals, Mark Normand, and Sam Morril in tone, but also in their particular run up the hill. Sling-jokes-fast-work- hard podcasting-forge little digital pieces- guest on other shows-tour constantly-come out with a yearly special- rinse and repeat. It’s the new working man’s road to the center of town. Joe and his pals have locked it in as a winner route in the last five years or so.
But sadly, You Tube, which sucks ass, has decided they can’t fully monetize him for a few jokes they didn’t get. This happens more and more. Steve Byrne and friends have a new site up called PUNCH UP which is another place to get the special so watch it there and Venmo or send Joe some Paypal dollars if you like it. (Full disclosure; We’re working on something to drop soon here at Standupworld where comics can upload their specials exclusively and non-exclusively and take their share of up to have of the profits of the six buck subscription price. It’s pretty exciting. Places such as what we’re doing (fully uncensored Free Speech, hell yeah!) and Punchup and Moment.co are really going to change a lot of things, and Joe is smart to jump early. He’s been a jump early guy for a long time.
Joe’s style is unique to Joe because he’s only about Joe. The closest I can compare him to is Larry David back when he was doing stand up. It’s the same dry open sore sense of the world coming down on his head live two shows a night. He also keeps getting better and better. A piece he does about seeing his wife’s butt-hole is very Larry David, yet distinctively Joe List. Similarly a story he tells about a high school auditorium opposing team’s fan bleachers chanting ‘you’re so ugly’ to him, and then his home crowd’s response in his support is hilarious, and something probably only Joe and maybe Woody Allen could have pulled off.
He was on my podcast this week. We had some technical difficulties, so it wasn’t my favorite episode (and a dog ate my homework) but I did enjoy talking to him about his podcasts.
STANDUPWORLD #36 w/ @JoeListComedy Check out the interview with one of my favorite comics. Joe List. Joe has a new special that dropped last night on @YouTube Enough for Everybody. It's really excellent. Funny as hell. Check it out, and enjoy this episode. #standupcomedy… pic.twitter.com/Gdl88tqZQH
— Mike Binder (@MikeBinderjokes) August 19, 2023
I love some of the little digital stuff he does, including this one.
He’s got about five podcasts or something. Here’s an episode of one that I like with Ari Shaffir
If you want to see Joe live go to his website ComedianJoelist.com
Hey, ALSO, if you’re in SANTA MONICA..
The second week of a new comedy venture at Las Puglia, the best Italian restaurant in Santa Monica. Is going to be great. Last weds was packed and people loved it. If you’re in the area, come out.
LAPUGLIA
1621 Wilshire blvd. One blk west of 17th street.
Get your tickets NOW! It’s only 75 seats. An intimate little room for a night of hysterical comedy and exquisite Italian food.
Shane Gillis’s Live in Austin, has now been viewed somewhere between 12 and 20 million times if you add up all the platforms. I don’t know how many Netflix specials beyond the Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Ricky Gervais specials come even close to that number. I think probably not too many. This speaks I guess to the power of the new world, but even more to the power of Shane Gillis. My friend Dan Soder, no slouch himself, said to me awhile back, “Shane Gillis is a once in a generation level talent”. I obviously agree.
Anyone who reads this blog or my Standup world Substack, since day one, knows how much I think about this guy’s talent, style, and place in the moment. He’s just a funny fucker. Bone marrow funny. Definitely the next down the line from Bill Burr and Ricky Gervais in terms of just speaking a truth that seems to roll out of the side of his mouth with an almost magical ease. Yet, like those two, there’s so much more going on below the surface, backstage, and in other exercises of the craft with this guy. Whether it’s his amazing sketch show Gilly and Keeves, his podcast with Matt McCusker, Matt and Shanes secret podcast. Or any of his appearances on JRE or a dozen other podcasts, there’s a bumbling brilliance that hard work, an amazing ear, a passion for the craft, and a sledgehammer level of talent and vision are allowing him to make it look like he’s just making it all up as he goes along.
The Austin special though is the tip of the spear. It’s the opening salvo. There’s a reason that anyone that has seen it will talk about it over and over and over again. There’s a good six or so bits that are just so organically funny that they need to be rewatched and retold. From his talk of his dad, to his racist/ hungry analogy, and even little lines like his dad’s coining of ‘Hidden Figures’ as, ‘Madea goes to the Moon.’ The special, his debut special, sits alongside of Chappelle’s Sticks and Stones, and Burr’s Paper Tiger in dealing with the world as it, real time, in a raucous, and rowdy, yet still controlled and smoothly paced journey. His very first special. A complete win.
It never stops or slows down. He just stands there and let’s joke and riff’s fly, one after another, as if he’s in a batting cage smacking one ball after the next. He’s Babe Ruth as a stand-up. Just a big lug of a white guy, supposedly at the end of his race and his gender’s time in the sun, leading the pack, setting the bar for the next era of stand-up to come.
The Shane Gillis train has left the building. There’s no doubt. The gun’s been fired. He’s out there headlining theatres, and will be in arenas before long. I’m sure there’s another special coming, maybe Netflix, more seasons of Gilly and Keeves, which is without a doubt the best sketch show being made right now. I’m still snickering at what a moronic move Lorne Michaels made in letting him go. I think he’s right up there with Bert Kreischer and Sebastian in the ‘which of these guys is going to be the first break-out comedy movie star’ and he hasn’t even done a movie yet. (Mark my words, comedy films are coming back, and these are the guys, and the guys that follow after them, that will bring it on.)
But this special is the starting point. That’s why, if you haven’t seen this it in it’s entirety, I urge you to watch it. You’ll laugh your ass off, and more, you’ll understand what it is that people are loving about Shane Gillis. It’s all right here in this effortless little picnic of a set. This is the kick the door open special that every comic dreams of making, and he made it. Just set it out there on the world and it caused a ruckus. No production value, no swooping cranes, nothing. Just this dude in a t-shirt standing onstage in a little club. Sold by word of mouth, viewed millions and millions of times. No marketing campaign, nothing.
Just talent.
Nice to know it still works that way.
How, when, and why I went nuts over George Carlin.
(Which coincidentally, you can get free by signing up for our newsletter.)
His breakthrough album, Class Clown, came out when I was fourteen years old and was actually a practicing class clown. I listened to it over and over and over, then over again. Mt. Rushmore for me as a kid consisted of George, Woody Allen, Robert Klein, and then, Albert Brooks. Those four were true North to me in so many ways, but George with Class Clown and FM & AM, which basically dropped in the same year, pulled me into his orbit with a force that I’ve never been free of my entire life.
I tried to speak like George, deepening my fourteen year old voice to sound like his. I used to dress like George, trying so hard to look like him even though he was rail skinny and Irish in his late thirties and balding, while I was fourteen, chubby, and Jewish with a giant tuft of bright red hair. I was sure I was his doppelgänger.
My family would take car trips from Detroit to Florida and I would do bits from his albums word for word until they would beg me to stop.
“You ever notice there’s no blue food? How come there’s no blue food, man? Where’s all the blue food?”
The begging would eventually become top of the lungs screaming.
“Michael, stop! I mean it. I’ll pull this damn car over and take the belt off if I have to hear that blue food crap one more time!!”
“There’s no blue food, man, I mean what’s the deal??”
Breaks squeal. Tires Skid. Siblings scream. Horns honk. I laugh. (Was most likely high.) My dad leans back and takes a wild swing, hits my brother Gary by accident.
Anyway, back to George. Later, when I was in junior high and high school, George would come to town once a year and play Pine Knob Music theatre. I was there every year. I would drag my buddies who were not really comedy fans to go with me. In fact, I would sometimes even buy them tickets. I wanted them to come so badly, to see George and to love him as much as I did, but truthfully, I mostly wanted them to come to Pine Knob so that they could see the part of the show where George and I worked together as a comedy team.
I needed them to see the ‘bit’ that George and I did together every year. The one that ‘killed’ every time without fail. We had been doing it together for about three years at that point. Every year I would wait for a nice pause in his act when George was having a drink of water or something and I’d go down to the front of the stage and offer him a joint. A fat one.
I’d stand there like an adoring idiot and wait for him to see me until he’d politely decline the gift which would lead him perfectly into a routine about what to do when you move into a new city if you wanted to not get busted for marijuana…
“No man, thanks, but I’ll give you a good tip instead, so you don’t get busted with the shit, here’s what I do, when I first move into a town, I go over to the police station. Right away. I take a bag of pot with me. I say hello fellas, my name is George Carlin and I just moved into the area and I happen to have found this bag of weed. I thought I should bring it straight down here to you. First thing. Civic duty and all. That’s Carlin. With a C. Thanks. That way, if I’m ever driving around the streets and they pull me over and they find a bag of my grass in the glove box I just tell them, ‘Yeah, I found this dope and I’m on my way down to the station to turn it into you. Check my file. George Carlin. It’s in my M.O. Clearly stated.”
Then he’d nod, thank me, and I’d walk back up to my seat while he was getting a big applause, my chest swelling thinking that I somehow had something to do with it.
In eleventh grade my friend Scott Parry’s mother worked at the Sheraton Hotel in Troy, Michigan’s reservation department. She had big news for me. George Carlin was booked to stay there when he played Pine Knob that year. My friends and I all went to see George’s show again. His set that year was incredible. His stuff was mostly from his new album Toledo Window Box which was hilarious. Yet it was all about pot and getting high and shit. I went down to the stage, offered up the joint so ‘we’ could do ‘our ‘bit’ and he just politely declined. That was it. Didn’t do our hunk. It was too much like the rest of the show.
The walk back up to our seats was the longest, saddest journey I had ever taken at that point in my life. My legs almost gave out underneath me. It seemed to me the whole arena audience, all seven thousand of them, understood that I had just gotten fired by my comedy partner. I was out of the team. It was over.
My friends back at our row loved it. It was funnier to them than anything that George had said all night long. They were howling hysterically.
After the show I wanted to go over to the Sheraton to wait for George to come back and say hello and meet him. Introduce myself. I had been waiting all week. Prepping for it. My buddy Scott and the other’s had no interest. They left to go to The Wagon Wheel, a bar in Royal Oak we regularly went to. One of the few places our fake I.D. worked at. I went to the Sheraton and waited for George like a deranged stalker. Waited until 4 a.m. He didn’t show. I went home, then found out the next day that my buddies were all up the bar at the Wagon Wheel when in walks, you guessed it, George fucking Carlin! They hung with him for two hours. Got him to sign t-shirts and take Polaroids with them all clowning around. They bought him drinks and had an amazing time until he went off to a private airport near there and flew out in his own plane with his pilot. He never came back to the Sheraton.
They asked him to write me a note though, and he did. I lost it over the years. One of the many ‘deepest regrets’ I have. I remember what it said though because it was short and sweet and it was him, so it’s burned in my brain and I’ll never forget it.
‘Mike. Thanks for being a fan and a friend and for all of the joints. George Carlin.’
Some more years later, I was doing a comedy show in Detroit called The Detroit Comedy Jam. It was a thing I had put together every year with my brother Jack, and we had always wanted to shoot it as a special. That year we had my friends Howie Mandel and Dave Coulier and Paul Rodriguez and myself on the bill and we had it at the Royal Oak Music Theatre. We sold out two shows in one night. It was a big deal, we were all pretty much new comics yet there was a buzz to the show, and stand up was hot again. Howie was on an ensemble show called St. Elsewhere and I was a regular on Make me Laugh a syndicated comedy game show that played all across the country and Paul had an ABC sitcom called AKA Pablo.
George Carlin was playing the Meadow Brook Amphitheater two nights later. After the success of the Royal Oak shows Jack and I were feeling so puffed up with success that afterwards we went to the Meadow Brook’s stage door and I asked the nice bouncer guy there to let George know that Mike Binder from Show Business was around back to say hello. (I actually gave the guy that weekends Detroit Free Press article on the Detroit Comedy Jam to show George.) Well, to my surprise, we were taken back to meet him.
He was alone in his giant dressing room post show and was the warmest sweetest guy I could possibly ever have dreamt for him to be. Jack and I sat with him for at least an hour. He was beautiful. Calm and open and attentive and funny and precisely how you’d think/want/hope/pray George Carlin would be if you were a twenty two year old that had been stupid crazy about him since you were fourteen. We showed him all of our stuff and told him what our plans were to make a special of The Detroit Comedy Jam and asked him if he would help. He said he would. Just like that. He told us to leave all of the materials to give to his manager and producing partner, Jerry Hamza, and that he’d call me and tell me what he said.
When we left George’s dressing room, we went out to my car in the now empty parking lot of the amphitheater. I couldn’t talk for the longest time. I was overcome, gutted with emotion. So was Jack. We were floored with the level of sweetness and respect George had shown us. Over the many years to come I came to know that was just who he was, this guy. The real deal. Through and through.
That night sitting there in the pockets of blackness between the flood lights of the parking structure I couldn’t know that. It was my first experience. I decided then even more that I wanted to be like George. I wanted to be that authentic, that real. Sure enough over the next couple years George and Jerry helped us get our special ‘The Detroit Comedy Jam’ shot at Detroit’s Fisher Theatre and shown on HBO. His company Executive Produced it.
We were never great friends, George and I, but over time we had a few special talks and one night I came home from a trip and there was a long almost rambling phone message from him telling me he just watched The Contender, a film with Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen that my pal Rod Lurie made that I had an acting role in. He went on and on about it and my performance, which was so nice and really kind of silly. It was a nothing role, yet he was so supportive and was bringing up all these other things he’d been seeing me do. (Another thing I wish I’d saved.)
I remember standing over that answering machine, barely able to breathe, transported in time back to being fourteen years old in my bedroom in Detroit, just thinking about all the hours I spent listening to Class Clown, and Toledo Window Box, over and over and over. Then over again. I remember how great his every turn of a phrase was. How hard he worked on his pieces. How he crafted them like a cabinet maker or a fine jeweler. How every word had to land one after another, fall like a tumbler. George was so unique. His stuff so precise.
Even little odd throw aways he had were wonderful.
“How is it possible to have a civil war?”
“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”
“If four out of five people suffer through diarrhea .. does that mean that the fifth one enjoys it?”
I think though my favorite quote of George’s was something he said that wasn’t a joke. Something he was completely serious about. Young comics today, in a tough time, need to keep this one in mind. It’s the secret sauce on the road to comedy greatness. It’s George’s gift to you, so I’ll end this part by reminding you of it. (It’s also really become the theme and bone marrow of this book.)
“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn, and to cross it deliberately.” George Carlin
RIP LEO GALLAGHER. The Court Jester of comedy. He was the original cable TV comedy star and the first huge Stand-up fool our generation had. He was Rip Taylor or Phyliss Diller in an a moment when David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Tim Allen were taking the stage and making it even cooler than it ever was to just stand there and talk. He may have been followed by Emo Phillips and Judy Tenuta and an early version of Howie Mandel with the glove on his head, but in his original days, it was not at all smart to have too much of a hook and he had an uber-hook with the props, which he then took to a ridiculous level that quickly overshadowed his great joke writing and onstage straight stand-up skills. I remember in the early days at The Comedy Store how good Gallagher was with audience play.
Gallagher; Okay, yell out your astrological signs and I’ll tell you all about yourself.
Audience Member; Virgo!
Gallagher; Virgo. Sign of the loudmouth!! First to yell out in any crowd!
(Gallagher and Joey Camen at the store)
He was a great joke writer but his fame came from his wild and ridiculous props. The Watermelon, obviously, and the Couch Trampoline. He pioneered the cable special and became a touring act, originally only playing in places where people had Showtime, (his cable home) in an era where Showtime. and HBO weren’t yet ubiquitous. Nonetheless, the comics at the ‘store’ and the Improv, despite the fact that he was a killer onstage, (and damn hard to follow) never gave him much due in those day. I remember it embittering him in a way that he wore the pain on not only his sleeve but on this props as well. The more the ‘cool kids’ would belittle his act the more the watermelons became the focus of the set.
I was on a TV show with him for a few years called Make Me Laugh which was a syndicated deal that aired five nights in a row on local stations throughout the U.S. In it’s time it was highly rated and the comics on it helped launch, fuel, and grow the comedy club business out in the hinterlands. Gallagher and I did more shows than anyone. (Maybe Bruce Baum and Bob Saget as well.) It was fun to work with him, and overtime in need of material as the show ate up ours like a cookie monster, we all turned to bringing out props to make people laugh in the contest. Rather than feel we were stepping into his category, Gallagher was happy to have us in his lane, and often helped hone and tone the gags we were using the props with.
I remember once he gave me a lecture on not returning fan mail. I was nineteen and some young girls would send me letters to the show and I would answer them word for word. Leo came into the production office one day and saw me doing this. He went off on me. ‘Throw them out. That’s what I do. Or at the least just send back a damn signed photo.’ He went on to explain his theory that I was breaking some sacred fourth wall by answering those letters with a handwritten reply. I was just happy to be getting fan mail. It was all new to me. He was sure I was doing the fans a disservice. He may have been right about one aspect, once I wrote back a detailed letter, I got more and more from those people and when I didn’t go tit for tat, they’d start writing me to tell me what a ‘stuck-up’ brat I was. Gallagher loved to see those letters when they came , seeing as they validated him.
He had a surly side to him as well. He always pissed off about someone or something that had done him wrong, and later in his life was perpetually unhappy, walking off of shows or picking public feuds with former friends. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in years and didn’t much pay attention to the negative, choosing to only dwell on the great barbecues we had with Gallaher and Jay Leno and Alan Bursky, Vic Dunlop, and Argus Hamilton, or the early shows we all did at the ‘store.’
RIP Gallagher. You were a well written character.
David Brenner was one of my favorite comedians growing up. I used to love to watch him on the Tonight Show in my early teens. He, to me, in the seventies, was the best of the new comics Carson had on. He was one of the first of the ‘young comics’ of his day to win by doing repeated shots on Carson. I know the comics today work their buts off, and come up with a whole new hour with every special, but back then a guy like Brenner had to dig deep to constantly come up with six minute spic and span sets for television. It was hard tedious work. Stand up pointillism. Brenner was a king in this realm.
He did hundreds of Carson spots. In fact for several years, as he’s talked about, Carson made him come on and do a full stand-up before sitting down. Much longer than he made any other comic. One night during a commercial break Johnny asked David if he was curious why he makes him do a stand-up still after all this time on the show. Brenner was curious. Johnny told him that sometimes during the show he needed a break where he could sit back in the dark and laugh and smoke a cigarette. That’s where Brenner came in.
My favorite joke about first doing The Tonight show is one of David’s. We put it into the Comedy Store Documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-emIs_c8nZo
Brenner had a lot of class. He was also someone that truly befriended younger comics. New acts like Richard Lewis and Jimmy Walker talked often, and still do about his generosity of the spirit and heart and even how he helped comics out who needed money.
He really was one of the all-time best. He may not have changed comedy like a Pryor or a Lily Tomlin did, but he gave the joint a lot of class. He worked his butt off and he always put on a great show. Watch some of his stuff. He really mastered his craft. I hope we never forget this guy.
If you aren’t into Are You Garbage yet, this is a great primer. Stand-ups Kevin Ryan and H.Foley host a raucous fun podcast and also take it live to great effect. Check out their special on Youtube, and also their podcast.
These guys are great. So much fun. Truly out of their mind. Get into them now before they end up dead or in jail. (Or both.)
They’re on tour, check them out.
CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THEM ON PATREON
https://www.patreon.com/AreYouGarbage
Thanks!!
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