This American Life, my favorite radio show, is—by the looks of it—about to become one of my favorite television shows. They recently cut together a trailer to promote their March 22nd television debut on Showtime. I can’t wait.
Thanks to everyone who tried to listen to me today on kbeach. They’ve been having some technical difficulties and as a result the online broadcasting has been down. So it turned out I did a whole show for the two people in the student union. Their expressions never changed, so I have no clue if they enjoyed “Send Me An Angel” by Real Life, but I like to think they did. Hopefully this will all be remedied for next week and I’ll let you know if that’s the case around that time.
Just a reminder, I’ll be on kbeach.org (I hate the name too) from 1 to 3 pm pst today. I’m going to start off with an indietastic set and work my way into the hijinx probably next week. So if you feel like being gently rocked for a couple hours, please tune in.
It looks like I’m going to be a dj again. Starting next week you can listen to me every Tuesday from 1-3 PM on kbeach.org, the CSU Long Beach station. It’s internet only, but hey, I can’t really complain. All the shows will be archived as MP3s on the site, and I’m going to work on setting up a podcast of it. It’s free format for the summer, so I’m going to mess around and talk and play weird stuff.
I recently uploaded some Phil Hendrie bits for a friend and decided to share the links. These are both bits with Dave Oliva, one of my favorite characters. In the first one he’s convinced that “King Kong” is a racist film and is warning black people to “stay cool” and “keep it off the streets” during the run of the film. In the second bit Dave has been watching horror films to train himself for the kinds of stuff he’ll encounter as a member of LAPD. People call up and hilarity ensues.
Stephen, Ricky and Karl of The Ricky Gervais Show
From the NY Times:
“Karl Pilkington has debated the merits of eating a kangaroo’s penis for breakfast, envisioned a wristwatch that counts down the time left in a person’s life and proposed a new population control system in which elderly women give birth at the moment of their deaths. He has mused on topics ranging from caveman “bear pants” to dishwashers on Mars, and reported “news stories” about the triumphs of chimpanzees as bricklayers and television talk show hosts. In so doing, Mr. Pilkington, a 33-year-old unemployed radio producer from Manchester, England, has become the object of a global Internet cult, a Guinness world record-holder and the unlikely harbinger of a technological revolution.”
The Ricky Gervais Show should really be called The Karl Pilkington Show, as the whole thing is pretty much Ricky and Stephen, who co-wrote and co-directed “The Office” and “Extras,” talking to Karl and getting Karl’s incredibly weird take on things. Karl is amazing. Never has one man been so stupid and brilliant at the same time. Or so entertaining.
Here’s a video of Karl from Ricky’s Politics DVD:
And here’s Karl, Ricky and Stephen watching “Brokeback Mountain”:
If you want to hear the podcast that got everything started, you can download all the episodes from the first season for free, right here. The second season can be downloaded (also for free) here.
Doug Benson, of VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” The Marijuanalogues, and who is also one of the best and nicest comedians performing these days, was recently interviewed on the AST Radio Podcast. Once a month Doug hosts a show at the UCB theatre called “The Benson Interruption.” Comics will go up and do their material and Doug will constantly interrupt them. It sounds like it could be annoying, but it’s actually totally hilarious. Anyway, Doug discusses his career, the interruption, and everything else. It’s a good listen.
You can download it here.
And I also recorded a set of his back in February if you want to get an example of what his material is like. Listen here, and if you want to hear him interrupting Demetri Martin, who is another amazing comedian, listen to this.
Phil Hendrie announced yesterday that he’d be retiring from radio on June 23rd. If you’re not familiar with Phil Hendrie, check out his wikipedia entry. The man is a comedic genius and this is a tough blow.
Here’s what he does: live on air Phil talks to a variety of outlandish “guests,” who are actually Phil in character. Phil has a phone in one hand and a microphone in front of him and will go back and forth, having a conversation with himself. He’ll spend a bit of time explaining the story, interrupting himself and employing a variety of tricks to make it sound entirely believable that the guest is real. People who aren’t in on the joke will then call in, and get into some serious arguing with the guests. Phil as host will interject intermittently, and the craziness of the call will keep increasing until Phil normally ends up hanging up in disgust on the “guest.”
Here are some of my favorite recent bits:
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