The Podiwan Review 14 - Never Not Funny (Pardcast)

Never Not Funny with Jimmy Pardo is, as the title suggests, never not funny, or at least not very often not funny.  Jimmy's podcast has been called the holy grail of podcasts and essential listening for podcasters and civilians alike.  Without offending our brothers in the middle east, Jimmy's show is the Mecca that stand-ups turn to face everyday.

Hmmm,. too much hyperbole? 
OK, so the show isn't going to cure cancer or create world peace.  I don't even think it's the best podcast on the net (though many other people do), but I do like it and here's why.

Jimmy is funny. Usually
Jimmy has great guests who trust and respect him. Mostly
There is such a back log of shows to listen to that you could listen for a long time without running out. Definitely

Here's what I don't like.
If you want to hear the whole show, you have to pay actual money. I know,.. it sucks.  I'm poor and I don't pay for podcasts. I'm just not going to do it. Even if I had money, just on principal I'm not going to pay for pod. And yes, I know that since I only get to hear 24 of the 90 minutes the show usually lasts that I'm missing a lot of show.  Does Jimmy have a right to try and make a living?  Yes.  Does he have a right to monetize his show the way he wants to? Yes.  Does this model suck? Yes. He's right and it sucks.  Both are true.

Hey, Jimmy!  Find a fucking sponsor or twelve.  Don't tell me you can't find somebody to foot the bill for the show because you want to be offensive or use colorful language.  SModcast is sponsored by Fleshlight for god's sake.  Mike Schmidt has some programmer in the UK sponsoring segments of his show and nobody says fuck more than Mike (somebody call Guinness and we'll check).  Enough people listen to Never Not Funny (NNF) that you can support ads.  If Howard Stern taught us anything, he taught us that you cannot offend advertisers.  You mention their names and they get business.  Even if you say shitty things about them.  Even if you mention horrible stuff before and after their ads.  NNF reaches a lot of people.  You can do ads.  Stop with the fucking memberships for listening to the whole show.

Other than that, maybe this show is the holy grail of podcasts.  Every stand-up in the business does this show.  Most people who listen to comedy podcasts listen to Never Not Funny and Pardo is generally regarded as one of the funniest hosts and quickest wits behind a mic. The show is considered a "Must-Listen" on every list of the best podcasts (some people may be copying the lists instead of doing the work, but...)

The Jimmy Pardo style of interview isn't groundbreaking.  It's just comics talking.  Jimmy asks some set up questions but mostly they talk. And yes, Jimmy can talk too much.  It sort of goes with the territory.  He wouldn't be a stand up if he didn't like to talk and tell jokes.  He doesn't often step on his guests but when he does I have felt the urge to reach through my ear buds and put my hand over his mouth until the guest has finished a complete sentence.  Just one complete sentence would be enough.  But Pardo's mind moves at a higher pace than many so I can see that he sees the end of the statement coming and just jumps to it rather than wait the 2 or 3 seconds it'll take to get there naturally.  I do it too. I understand it. But that doesn't make it easier to sit for, but sitting for it is easier than waiting for a slow mouthed guest to finish (I'd step on them, too). In the end, it's a matter of style and that's a style I can live with because I do, every day.

My rating scale

Is this podcast entertaining? - Yes
Am I likely to listen to the next podcast? – As soon as I run out of Nerdist and the Bugle
Do I recommend this podcast to friends? – I have and I will

The Podiwan Review 13 - Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast

I've been putting this one off for a while now. There are several reason for it like; I blew out my knee and I wasn't feeling like writing a review, or I keep looking for new podcasts that I like and end up spending a lot of time going back to old fav's because I'm not liking many lately, but most of all, I didn't want to judge Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast too soon or too harshly.  Like another review I posted recently, I wanted to like Bill's podcast because I've liked his stand up act.  Mostly he's funny.  Usually, he's acerbic.  And absolutely always, he's a pissy Irish guy from Boston or Philly or some such place with a fuck load of drunk Irish guys picking fights with non Irish types and generally pissing on stuff because somebody else likes it.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mind that part of it.  The truth is that sometimes I like that, ..sometimes.  I'm not Irish (much), but I am pissy most of the time and I like to see others with my affliction just so I don't feel so alone on the planet.

But his podcast is not his stand up and I'm not reviewing stand up.

Bill does his podcast, as the title suggests, Monday morning.  Since he's a comic, his weekends are filled with stage appearances around the country doing an act that he admits is filthy and can run towards mean.  Most of us know what Monday morning feels like and I assume that it's worse for a guy who works late nights in places filled with drinks, drunks, smoke and assholes.  On Monday morning, he's back at home and he does the podcast with every bit of that weekend effecting his mood and demeanor. 

The "studio" for his recording is his apartment and I assume that since he occasionally mentions that he's walking around that he's just plugging a wireless head set mic combo into a computer and recording like that.  That's as tech as it gets.  The sound quality is mostly OK though sometimes the levels are off but this is the wild west in podcast years and though some may have big fancy studios, most have a room, a mic and a computer,... so Bill is right on par.

Bill's show is a one man dialog.  Just him, no help, no guests, no regulars, no callers. Sometimes its a rant.  Sometimes its a diatribe and sometimes, sadly, it is simply a waste of time.  By Bill's own reckoning, some shows are shit and he's fighting internally with whether or not to keep it or erase it and start over.  I listened to 5 shows (picked randomly from the list available on iTunes) and in two of those shows Bill tells the listener several times how sucky the show is and how much he wants to start over and how many times he already has.  In a third show that he didn't like he kept saying how tired he was  and used the shortage of sleep as an excuse for why he thought the show was so bad.  Hint: If you want people to like something, don't tell them how bad it is.  Tell'em you're on fire and this is the greatest shit since shit started coming in brown tube shapes.

Thing is, though, it wasn't as bad as he kept saying it was, except for the fact that he kept saying it. It wasn't good, but it wasn't the horrendous crapfest that he kept telling me it was.  The complaint had that irritating whininess that you sometimes hear from somebody who's good at art saying to anybody who is in the room how they're no good at art and it sucks and they don't really like it and waa waa waa and,... you know what?  I don't give a fuck.  If you don't like it, don't show anybody. If you show it, accept that it might die on it's own but it could be great.  So Bill, if you don't like the podcast, erase it or archive it for later so you can use it for ideas or inspiration or whatever, but really, stop the fucking complaining about how bad the podcast is.  Let the listeners judge it on their own.  As a listener, I judge that that is the worst part of your podcast.

Most of the other shows I listen to and review are group efforts or buddy shows.  Some have guests, some have games, etc.  The only other one man show I've listened to enough to review is Mike Schmidt's 40 Year Old Boy podcast.  They're a little the same thing but mostly not.  Mike's is a stream of consciousness monologue with the kind of hyper enthusiasm that borders on mania and Bill's is a guy talking to a headset while his energy is low on the Monday after a weekend of shows.  Mike's is self loathing humor (emphasis on humor) and Bill's is self aggrandizing venting with not much in the way of humor (considering that he's a comic).  Mike will tell a story including every single painful detail in tangents and asides while maintaining the through line of the story and I listen intently to every syllable with interest and laughter.  Bill tells a bitch fest about another comic that pisses him off for not following the unwritten rules of stand up or some guy carrying a purse (man bag) and getting made fun of by large drunk Irish pricks who might fight at any moment (but don't) and I find it hard to care because the more I listen, the more I think of Bill as a racist, homophobic, misogynist who I would find it difficult to stand and converse with for more than a few minutes without just telling him to fuck off. (for the record, I'm white, straight and married with kids).

In the second half of each podcast, Bill answers viewer email and gives advice.  On five shows out of five, the letters were from dicks asking dicky things in dicky ways and Bill's advice was perfectly suited to that audience, that level a maturity and that point of evolution.  In real life, I avoid people like this because it's just too hard to keep from saying how disappointing they are as humans.  This is the group that Bill appeals to in the podcast.  I don't know Bill so this is just a guess based only on listening to 5 recordings of him talking to a mic on Monday morning, but I'd say his demographic is spot on.

Of course, as I said earlier, it isn't all bad, but even the stuff that wasn't bad, wasn't particularly good.  That isn't reason enough to listen when there are other choices  (even limited choice is choice) available.  If you're really into Bill Burr, there's only one Bill Burr podcast on Monday Morning and you can get it at iTunes or Bill's website.  However, if you have a standard that includes being genuinely enthusiastic about listening to the show then this probably isn't the weekly feed for you.

  Usually, when asked for advice about what to do with a life, a wizened elder says follow your passion.  It's why writers write, singers sing and artists art.  They're driven to it.  They would do it even if they weren't getting paid.  Comics are the same way. They need to get up on stage and do that thing called stand up.  It's cathartic.  It's standing in the glow of love. It's adulation and high wire walking rolled into one.  It's a lot of things and different to all, but they all need to do it.  I don't think Bill needs to do the podcast in the same way that he needs to do comedy or in the way that the Chris Hardwick (@nerdist) needs to do his Nerdist podcast or @KevinPollak needs to do his chat show.  These guys, and others like them, are driven to do it. They need it and even when it isn't going well, they love it, try to save it, fix it, turn it around and make it entertaining. They fight for it and they never tell me how much it sucks.  I'm not really sure why Bill does the podcast.  I don't think he enjoys it.  It doesn't seem like he's having fun or that he really has stuff he needs to say to listeners, issues that need expressing, open wounds that need to be cleaned.  In fact, I get the feeling that when he gets up on Monday morning, there's a voice in his brain saying, "Crap.  I have to do the fucking podcast again."

So Bill, I'm letting you off the hook.  You don't have to do it if you dont' want to.  This is America and everybody has the right to not do a podcast if that's how they feel.


My Rating Scale
Was I Entertained? mostly not
Am I likely to listen to the next podcast? no, not really
Will I recommend this podcast to a friend? only if I bump into a person in that demo.

The Podiwan Review 5 – Nerdist

The totally plugged in and constantly available on every podcast known to man nerdist himself, Chris Hardwick ( @nerdist ) is a charming host and an expert snark. He knows everybody in the business including Weird Al Yankovic @alyankovic and Thomas Lennon @thomaslennon (Officer Dangle from Reno 911) and, 'get of gets', he got Stan Lee on a recent podcast doing a Q & A at the NAB in Las Vegas. He does especially well with quick witted people whose minds are razor sharp and amphetamine fast and willing to go way down the path to make a premise pay off. EPs run about an hour and are sitting in the living room comfortable with one or two guests.

True to Nerdist ideals the talk centers on tech but quickly devolves to comedy, popular culture, food, pitch meetings and the issues of writing comedy. My favorite episode was Adam Savage @donttrythis from the Mythbusters TV show. This EP was done in front of a live audience (at UCB, I think) and Savage did his first ever stand up and killed. I was never not interested. Least favorite was the Muppets. It seemed staged (duh) and lacked the rapier repartee that I enjoy most about Hardwick.  However, it was interesting enough to listen to all the way through.

Hardwick also tours doing stand up, recently opening for Joel McHale (the Soup). There are days when the nerdist earns the Explicit warning label at iTunes willingly using marine style language to bludgeon the conversational subject into submission, but mostly, his command of the language allows him to work only slightly blue. He’s a sharp guy and the podcast educates and challenges the listener.  Then, as a payoff for the work, it also makes you laugh.

There are only 14 podcasts in the library at this point, but the venture is new and a fresh podcast goes up every week. Sometimes there's an extra bonus podcast.  All EPs are available at iTunes and on the Nerdist website.




My rating scale
Is this podcast entertaining? - Yes
Am I likely to listen to the next podcast? – Yes
Do I recommend this podcast to friends? – Regularly