Things I Like Month: Humor Podcasts Edition
Ha, ha, ha! Ho, ho, ho. Hehehe!
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you there. I was just having myself a good laugh, as I do now and again.
Why, you ask?
Well, the podcasts below certainly help me, I’ll tell you that.
(Yes, thank you, thank you. It was a brilliant opening and not at all cheesy. I know, I know.)
Typical warning: this list is by no means comprehensive and you may find fault with what I label humor versus what I don’t—for instance, both THE FLOPHOUSE and HOW DID THIS GET MADE could’ve easily ended up here—so please know these are just a few podcasts I enjoy, not a rejection of your taste or opinions. On a different day, I’m sure your favorites would’ve made the list too.
That said, please feel free to let me know about them. Always excited to laugh more, of course.
John Oliver (you know, that guy hosting the Daily Show now) and Andy Zaltzman (British stuff, cricket stuff) provide bi-continental bullshit (their word, not mine, but fitting, certainly) for approximately an hour every week about news around the world. Although focused, understandably, more on the US and Britain overall, the show does actually delve into international incidents and crises beyond just how it will affect their respective current home countries, which is something it has over cable news right away. Of course, the fact that Zaltzman often spends considerable time and effort in making up the facts he shares does undermine things a bit, but you take the good with the bad.
Ooof, I fear I’m not doing right by the show here. Let’s see…ok, we’ll try this. It is an hour long comedy podcast that derives its content from international news. Zaltzman and Oliver clearly have been working together for some time and their chemistry is quite good. Zaltzman loves his pun runs, Oliver does not. Oliver will occasionally give us a little song, often something from LMFAO.
Arrgh…it’s funny, ok. It’s funny. If you like news based humor, you’ll like this.
And now, since I botched the review anyway, I will tell you about the time I saw Oliver and his then girlfriend, now wife eating in a Friendly’s after watching his standup routine. It’s not a good story, but I promise it is short.
My wife and I went to Friendly’s after the show for ice cream and shortly thereafter Oliver in Mets cap and lady friend arrived. I debate saying “Enjoyed the show” or what not to him, but I imagined, given the hour, he was a bit hungry and probably not in the mood for praise from strangers. So, I held back. Instead, as I left, I threw him the “hey, what’s up” nod—other celebrities to receive said nod include Stan Lee so it is real rarified company, let me tell you…a big time honor—but given that we are both Mets fan, it carried so much more. It wasn’t just “I’m aware of your existence but am to polite to say so while you eat with the woman you are sitting across from,” it also said, “excellent job on stage tonight, my wife and I both laughed quite a bit,” and “Rough season, right? So it is for us Met fans.” And his nod in response said, “Well, thank you. I love the fans here in Connecticut, they really get it, you know,” “oh, you could’ve dropped by, always like speaking to a fan, especially one as handsome and obviously educated as yourself,” and “Boy, don’t I know. Good thing us Met fans have each other, right?”
Anyway, listen to THE BUGLE. Even if I’ve done a fairly bollocks’d (is that how they use that word) job of selling it.
Released: Weekly
Twitter handles associated with the podcast:
The “live stage show in the style of old time radio” becomes “your favorite new-time podcast in the style of old time radio” in weekly installments. THE THRILLING ADVENTURE HOUR, done once a month in Los Angeles, is broken up into its individual parts and doled out as the producers, Ben Blacker and Ben Acker (real names, I believe) see fit. So while lie guests of the show do truly get an hour long “broadcast” with a variety of radio shows, consumers of the podcast just get one segment a week. But it is still damn good.
Segments include the superhero send-up “Captain Laserbeam,” the sci-fi western “Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars,” its spinoff “Cactoid Jim,” a couple of time travel centric pieces “The Cross-Time Adventures of Colonel Ticktock,” in which the British Ticktock races here and there to stop various time crimes and “Amelia Earhart, Fearless Flyer,” wherein the most famous female pilot of all-time didn’t die when she disappeared but rather volunteered to fly through the fourth dimension fighting Nazis to prevent them from winning World War II through time travel, and, finally, the supernatural “thriller” “Beyond Belief.”
Boasting considerable voice talents including Paul F. Thompkins, Busy Philipps, Paget Brewster, Mark Evan Jackson, Autumn Reeser, Joshua Malina, John DiMaggio, Mark Gagliardi, and Nathan Fillon, as well as tons of drop-ins like Joseph Gordon Levitt, Linda Cardelini, Keegan-Michael Key, Emily Blunt, Thomas Lennon, and John Kraskinski, I find each segment delightful. The favorite is, of course, the Thompkins/Brewster master class “Beyond Belief” in which the duo play a Thin Man-esque couple but drunker and with supernatural abilities, but “Sparks Nevada” is a close second, if for no other reason than Mark Evan Jackson impressively sonorous voice. And I’ll stand up for the oft-maligned “Amelia Earhart,” which I think is great and full of just barely touched on sexual tension between Earhart and, well, everyone else.
Released: Weekly
Twitter handles associated with the podcast:
MIKE AND TOM EAT SNACKS
On the surface this is podcast in which Tom Cavanagh and Michael Ian Black, castmates from the TV show Ed, take on the issue of snack using the PER (Pick a snack, Eat a snack, Rate a snack) system. However, that is just the surface.
First, it would be important to them that you note that they’ve done more since Ed. Cavanagh, for instance, had a recurring guest spot on insta-classic Royal Pains that should’ve, were there justice in the world, been spun off into a show all its own: JACK O’MALLEY, TERMINALLY ILL GOLFER. But what can you do? Michael Ian Black wrote a book with Meghan McCain. And other stuff…presumably.
Second, here’s an incomplete list of what else is important about the show: what they do is rate snack, what they are about is respecting women; they know where Greenland is; they’re on the run from thugs from Hostess; Ian McShane stole Michael Ian Black’s part in Deadwood; and storm troopers hit the ground every episode.
Give an episode a listen. It’ll all start to make sense.
Released: Weekly
Twitter handles associated with the podcast:
Tomorrow: Webcomics (FINALLY!)