Larry Miller has a new weekly podcast. He’s a marvelous comedian and storyteller.
So, the smodcast backlog has now been edited to remove the music, and add the commercials in.
Uggh.
I imagine they got contacted by someone about the music.
And if them getting paid by Fleshlight and Adameve keeps the damn show free, then I’m fine with it. Hell, sometimes the commercials are amusing. Though not the ones with Jason Mews. Those are awful.
WFMU’s The Best Show hasn’t been mentioned yet in this thread. It’s a radio show that’s been on for 10 years or so and has been a podcast for a while as well. A lot of comedy podcasts (Comedy Death Ray in particular) clearly owe a big debt to it.
The holiday party episode from last week with John Hodgemen is as good a place as any to start. The show is an acquired taste, what with all the fake callers and genuine freaks who call in, but it’s worth giving it time.
I’ve mentioned it in other podcast-related threads. Remember: The best you can ever be is to be worse than The Best Show.
I don’t know if I would jump in with the Four Loco episode with John Hodgman from last week, unless you’re interested in hearing what a descent into madness sounds like when broadcast over the radio. (My favourite part of that episode, by the way, was somebody mentioning something about the final episode of MAS*H and Scharpling grabbing the mike and screaming “IT WAS A BAAAAAAAAABY!”) I would suggest starting with the one Hodgman and Jon Oliver did a few months ago, as Oliver was new to the show as well, so it he provides a nice audience stand-in for new listeners. Plus they were both hilarious.
The other thing to check out is the Best Show Gems podcasts, which are a nice way to catch up with the seemingly endless well of Newbridge residents. There’s an early Gem that has a super early Jon Wurster call, back when they still let him interact with real people, where Wurster plays the owner of a restaurant called the Batter Butler. That call is literally one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
The newest Comedy Death Ray podcast with Colin Hanks was very funny. El Chupacabra gets me every time.
If you mean the June 22nd episode, it doesn’t appear to be available on iTunes. No episodes between April 29th and July 1st are.
You can always check out the archives here: http://wfmu.org/playlists/BS. It’s a pop-up player, but it does the job.
Other than Bob Ducca, the characters that show up on CDR get kinda boring for me. I always fast-forward through Jesse Ventura.
I’m the exact opposite. When I am finally made King Of North America, my first decree will be to make Lil’ Gary the permanent guest host.
Although I love the characters on CDR, I am totally with you on Jesse Ventura. The only problem is that Jesse Ventura and Huell Howser are package deal, and I am not about to give up Huell! (Actually, now that I think about it, I hate every James Adomian character except for Huell)
Yeah, I’m a fan too. Glad to see I’m not the only one who likes his schtick. I always listen on my own, and he’s the only voice on the show, so it just seems like sort of a solitary experience. But he cracks me up.
I don’t mind the ads at all, they actually are pretty funny most of the time. What I don’t like are the constant references to the music in the background, when it isn’t there. It is weird.
Man, I like Larry Miller and John Hodgman, got their podcasts and hate them both. Maybe I just got bad ones? Larry did a sad Andy Rooney-esque schtick where he complained about the price of food at a hotel, told a weird non-joke anecdote about getting a drink at a bar and then went on for what seemed like a thousand years about a soap that was shaped like a cheeseburger. On the other hand, John Hodgman turned me off immediately when he had unfunny douchehammer Jesse Thorn as his ‘bailiff’ and the actual court stuff, a couple disagreeing on the value placed on attractiveness, wasn’t funny at all with the exception of John Hodgman pointing out the guy’s physical flaws in their wedding photo.
I’m a little sad, too. Like I said, I really do like Larry Miller a lot, and while I thought his books were a little overrated, I’ve always liked John Hodgman on the Daily Show and when he did speaking engagements locally. Hell, I ran into him once at the grocery store and he was a really nice, funny guy. Maybe it’s just that shitty Jesse Thorn. That guy’s somewhere between liver cancer and the Robin Williams film Old Dogs on the list of things that are funny.
Bahimiron, try the Hodgman one where he officiates the custody of the robot giraffe. That one is really funny, and the two young women on it are adorable.
What? I find that Huell is way too lazy (though maybe I’m biased because I genuinely admire the guy), but I do love Jesse Ventura.
(Otherwise, I’m all over the board on CDR characters — some work and some don’t.)
And alexlitel demonstrates once again that his tastes are strange and foreign.
I don’t think non-Californians really “get” Huell or are capable of making an informed judgment on the man in any capacity. He’s unfairly admonished for insatiable love and curiosity for the state in which he resides.
The Howser character is much closer to that lame Sacramento reporter than “Huell Howser Tripping.”
The reliably funny Sklar brothers had him on a little while ago. I tried to give him a fair shake in that my only exposure to him was the PA incident. Holy shit, he did a bit where he named dog breeds of the year (or something). It was such a closed loop unfunny concept that even the Sklars couldn’t mine it for anything. Thorn seemed smugly self satisfied with it though.
I meant to respond to this earlier. You listened to the absolute worst of the Hodgman podcasts. (Jesse Thorn is bad in all of them, but if Hodgman is good enough, you can ignore him). The one I would tell you to listen to is the “Christmas” episode last week which was supposedly about when to put up Christmas decorations, but instead turned into Hodgman making fun of religion, and the question of whether Catholics should spend Advent mourning about the end of the world. It also features the best final judgement of all the episodes.
The problem with the episode you listened to is that the guy in that argument was an douchebag, and putting him and Jesse Thorn in the same podcast sent the episode spiralling off a cliff.
That said, if you listen to the Christmas one and still cant ignore Thorn, then probably its not for you. I manage to tune him out.
Also, while its not normally a comedy podcast, This Week In Tech had their holiday blowout last week, featuring Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, and John Hodgman. Its long (like all TWiTs), but everyone is drunk by about 30 minutes in, and it gets pretty funny at times.