Ever since jumping on the podcast bandwagon about a year ago, I mostly find myself listening to gaming-related podcasts at work. But a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine pointed me to Doug Benson’s ludicrously funny podcast I Love Movies, and from there I’ve found a couple of other semi-related ones like Never Not Funny, Comedy Death Ray and Comedy And Everything Else. Never Not Funny is hilarious, but they only give you the first half-hour for free because I guess Jimmy Pardo wants to make money or something. Comedy And Everything Else isn’t terribly good unless they have a good guest on. I like Comedy Death Ray, but it’s not as funny as Benson’s.
SModcast is Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier (or one of Smith’s other friends) basically doing funny stoner humor. Very vulgar - possibly not suitable for mixed audiences.
You Look Nice Today is three or four guys doing what I could best describe as a comical hipster routine. It’s hard to categorize, but I laugh. Of course, they also only post about once a month if you’re lucky.
Is he still doing his show? Also, follow-up question, is he charging for his show?
Another one I forgot - The Onion Radio News, which is about a minute every day but is usually entertaining and makes a nice bump for other podcasts.
Another one I forgot - The Woot Podcast, which almost never has anything to do with the product they’re selling. Varies in quality and it about 1 to 4 minutes daily. Their Stupid Six entries are usually good.
Another one I forgot - The Bugle, which is a joint podcast from The Times Online and that British guy on The Daily Show. They cover international news and try to be funny. It’s hit or miss for me, but the humor is somewhat in line with what you’d get on Good News Week.
I do listen to the SModcast, which I forgot to mention. I go in spurts with that one, for some reason.
I haven’t tried the Adam Corolla one, because I’ve never actually found him funny in any incarnation previous. Considering I never liked The Man Show or anything else I’ve ever seen him do, is it still worth listening to?
I love SModcast, but there’s definitely a point where I’ve had enough for a while. It also kind of depends on the conversation. I love it when Scott Mosier turns the tables on Kevin and makes Kevin his straight man. I also love it when they go into SModcast Theater with Kevin and Scott playing roles. The one going on about a Make-A-Wish child’s last wish being to ‘see a man die’ was hilarious.
On the other hand, when Kevin starts talking about masturbating while staring at his wife’s asshole, I start to get a little bored. I’m sure it’s exciting while it’s happening, Kevin, but it’s not quite so interesting to listen to. With the exception of Malcolm Ingram, I don’t find many of his guests to be very funny. Walter Flanagan is especially grating.
There’s also a certain amount of superiority involved in SModcast. I don’t think anyone who posts on this board would ever come away from an episode of SModcast feeling dumb. Listening to Kevin and the others always leaves me with a faint, smug sense of intellectual elitism. Sure, I might not be a millionaire moviemaker, but I’m never going to insist that the language of ancient Rome was Romanian.
I don’t know if he is anymore, but he did when I listened.
The show is over, it ended like 3 years ago, but there are 3 seasons, and they are all hilarious. The show also is “timeless” in the fact that they don’t talk about recent events and pop culture. It doesn’t matter when you listen to it… it is still funny.
When they get to reading Karl Pilkington’s diary, I just about pissed myself laughing.
Did you ever listen to Loveline? That was the best venue for him.
Depends on the guest a lot of times. Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Simmons and Dave Damesheck are usually pretty good.
Its an hour a day podcast so there is some hit-or-missness to it. But I’d say its more hit than miss. And just turn it off if he starts talking politics.
So true. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything close to as funny as the Rick Gervais show when it comes to podcasts. I tried listening to “Never Not Funny” since someone here recommended it, but I don’t even know what he’s talking about most of the time.
The only thing that came to being as consistently funny as the Ricky Gervais show was the old Air America shows when they first started up, especially Morning Sedition with Mark Maron and Mark Riley. Now THAT was a hilarious show, but it was heavily dependent every single day on that day’s news, and the way they spun that for comedic value. Still, I wish I’d kept some of their old podcasts around, since they seem to have disappeared from the web now.
That’s an excellent summary of the problem I have with Comedy And Everything Else, which is Todd Glass and Jimmy Dore’s podcast. A lot of it is them sitting around talking about politics or news, but they don’t seem to actually know anything. It’s basically like listening to my idiot relatives talk about current events.
Any movie fan or stoner (or, in my case, both) should listen to I Love Movies, though. Benson is a disarmingly funny guy. There’s a couple of shows where he and his guests are clearly too high to be in front of a crowd, but it’s usually hilarious, especially if you’re in the right age group to appreciate references to obscure 80s flicks.
I really love how Kevin Smith changed his stance on pot. He used to dislike it and drinking. He talked about how he didn’t need that stuff. Listening to it now, he sounds like a major pothead.
I would say the 2nd funniest podcast (after Gervais) is probably Smodcast. Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier have an awesome dynamic. They endlessly riff off of eachother. One of the best podcast of theirs recently was the one where Scott got back from Cambodia. I was in tears during the “owl sale” bit. Pretty funny stuff.
Also, I would check out the Giant Bomb Bombcast. Of all of the gaming podcasts, this one gets me to chuckle the most.
Well, in gaming podcasts I’d have to recommend Idle Thumbs - I laugh at them all the time. They actually read my letter in the latest one. And made me funny. Me. Funny. Also, I am apparently now Brian Cyborg. Who knew?
Which gives me the analogy that I was looking for for You Look Nice Today - it’s like if the Gamers With Jobs podcasts was funny and not about games. Does that make sense? Probably not.
There’s actually five seasons now (well, since the podfather trilogy is generally considered season four), plus a “Ricky Gervais’ Guide To…” series of audiobooks centered on various topics. There’s a lot of Ricky being full of himself going on in them, but that’s just who he is, innit.
None of the podcasts are free anymore, but you can get the old radio shows they did on “a tinpot station” called XFM 104.9 here (legal download).
Phill and Phil’s perfect 10 - Phil Jupitas and some Welsh bloke yakking over 10 random questions sent in each week.
From the BBC:
The News Quiz/Now Show - Alternates every 6 weeks. News quiz is just standard format panel show. Now show more satirical, again hit and miss, but I like Marcus Brigstocke’s rants.
While it’s not technically comedy I love Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film reviews
I gave Comedy Death Ray a shot today, because of this thread and because the Comedy Death Ray album is pretty great. I thought it was funny, but man, they could really stand to drop the songs. They’re the kind of thing I’d like when I was 14, maybe - thank christ for OS 3.0’s better podcast fastforwarding.
That bit with the cop was really funny, though, so thanks for the recommendation!
Really good Keith and the Girl ep yesterday with comic Marc Maron. It’s not laugh out loud hilarious but If you’re into stand up comics they go into a lot of interesting stories.
