Have you been outside today? Of course you have — you’re not an invalid, and nobody is accusing you of that. It’s probable, though, that when you did venture outside of your apartment/house/hobbit hole today, you raced to get to your destination as fast as possible to avoid melting into a you-shaped puddle on the sidewalk on account of this heatwave. Do you know what makes a determined walk through ungainly temperatures go by quicker? A comedy podcast. Here are the best ones this week:
Top 5 Comedy Podcasts This Week (In alphabetical order)
Affirmation Nation with Bob Ducca
Affirmation Nation is a special listen. The host, Seth Morris’ fictional creation, Bob Ducca, explores the tragic comedy of moroseness. If there is a disease, real or fabricated, Bob has two of it. A sick pleasure comes from hearing about his meandering kneecaps that prevent him from jumping rope, or his need for Diastar Comfy Feet diabetic socks. This is nothing new for those familiar with his CBB appearances. What has been so arresting is many of the episodes border on inspiring. Take episode 6, the best thus far. In it he talks about the eyelid-less dog belonging to one Ms. Hardtar (classic Ducca weird name). The dog, BB, has a hard time maintaining proper eyeball moisture, and as such is overfed things like whole pots of fondue, missile pops, yogurt pops, and cumin covered bedroom slippers with awful results. Eventually, it’s revealed to be an allegory of sorts to the perils of overindulging in one’s vices. Bob Ducca is the saddest of sacks in the field of motivational speakers.
If it’s getting a little Earwolf-heavy in here, it’s because the podcasting network is firing on all cylinders, as evidenced by their flagship show, Comedy Bang Bang. The main guest this week is first-timer, John Mulaney, who is legit one of the funniest stand-ups working right now. Saturday Night Live is lucky to have him as a writer, and so is Scottabot this week. As he did when he guested on The Best Show last fall, Mulaney talks about his experiences on SNL, and his almost slavish devotion to watching Law & Order. This being Comedy Bang Bang, though, there is also some character work going on. Nick Kroll stops by in the guise of Fabrice Fabrice (and oddly, Marv Albert) before reuniting with John Mulaney to revive their old stage show personas: Oh Hello. Very briefly, they even morph into the Coen Brothers for a bit based on an offhand reference to the directing duo. All in all, this episode strikes a fine balance between informative interview and total wackiness.
The runtime of Julie Klausner’s podcast is no longer than most. It’s actually shorter than a lot of them. Somehow, it seems like she gets more material in than most other shows, though. Because it’s broken up into separate bits, and because those bits are uniformly solid, How Was Your Week feels pretty substantive, despite the trivial-sounding title. On this week’s episode, Julie expounds on her controversial-stance against prostitute-strangling and makes a convincing case against the new Woody Allen movie before welcoming her first guest, comedy writer Julieanne Smolinski, whose byline you might be familiar with from everywhere. These two could easily fill the hour, but instead they spend the segment focusing on which celebrities Smolinski would like to bone. Capping the hour off, the hilarious essayist and editor Mike Sacks lists some of his most hated comedy movie clichés. As Julie correctly predicts, though, it’s hard not to get stuck on his surprising opinion about Pixar movies (he hates them). It would take a lot more than that to derail this episode, though.
Judge John Hodgman –The Friendship Inquest
On face(book) value, this week’s case, in which Will wants Adam to join Facebook, is fairly innocuous; instead, what resulted was classic Hodgman. Three minutes in, John shouts at Will for secretly being a “buzz marketer,” a term he proceeds to throw around ever 45 seconds or so. It’s nothing new for the Judge to have antagonistic relationship with his guests; rarely is it this pointed and, well, silly. He implores Adam to “try to say one sentence without the word Facebook in it” and when he fails, asks for 30% of the money the website is obviously paying him. Then he chastises Adam for buzz marketing his personal training business and the Swedish Massage Institute he attends. “Buzz marketing” is legitimately repeated an absurd amount of times, leading John to say towards the end “I know Mark Zuckerberg is laughing it up listening to this podcast.” He probably was, as was everyone else.
On some episodes, Howard Kremer’s ridiculousness just hits harder than others. He carries himself like a precociously inquisitive 10-year-old, leaving Kulap and the guest (this week it was TV’s Andy Daly) both endeared and forced to try to make sense of him. The amount they’re laughing is good barometer of how funny the episode likely is to the fans. On that scale this week’s “Costumer” might have been their best effort yet. Very quickly things descend into the desired level of silliness, with Howard imploring (via song) that everyone start thinking of his or her “Summah Secret” — i.e. kill a hobo. During the music chart there was a perfect example of the patented Howard Kremer non sequitur question, in response to an appearance by Bruno Mars’s “Lazy Song”: “What if you’re doing the P90x, the doorbell rings, a really nice girl is at the door, you start having sex with her but the sex is kind of mean?” It seems the unofficial start of “Summah” has brought new life into the show.
Honorable Mentions
WTF with Marc Maron #181 — Brian Posehn
Back in the day Marc and Brian were two upstarts in San Francisco. The episode avoids WTF cliché, as unlike a lot of comics who make it out to the Cat Ranch, Brian was never under the impression that Marc hated him. Brian is a good egg and it’s a joy listening to him walk through his varied career.
Ordinarily, the episodes that are taped in a studio without a crowd seem sapped of their energy, but that is not the case this week. With Samm “The Ma’am” Levine teamed up with his friend, Kevin Pollack, the jokes and stories flow pretty steadily throughout. A special focus on poker this week leads to a dissection of the movie Rounders, pointing out some pretty bag plausibility gaps that beg to be explored.
Glitter in the Garbage #26 — Sarah Baker, Ian Gary
There are a number of excellent albeit longwinded sketches on this week’s GitG. The best of which has all three searching for a chupacabra. Sadly, this wasn’t Nick Kroll’s chupacabra, just a run-of-the-mill goat blood sucking lizard-man.
These week’s guest is Pete Holmes, who you might know as the voice of the E-Trade baby, but who you should know is a seriously funny comic. He more than holds his own with the Sklars this week, and as a palate cleanser, Jesse Ventura (James Adomian) stops by to discuss what really went down with Macho Man Randy Savage’s untimely death.
Jesse Fox is a freelance writer, podcaster, cat person, and Jew (in that order). He lives in San Francisco. His iPod is broken.
Joe Berkowitz edits books and writes stuff. He also has a Tumblr.
