You have a lot of youtube "content" out there, some better than others, a lot of it lazier than others.  This is especially true in the perverse genre of comedy meta-analysis.  Much of which boils down into trolling and gossip about whichever various comedian.  But then you have something like this which fills the heart and soul with hope for the future creative resistance against algorithmic slavery.



 

You may or may not recognize Robert L. Hines from a YouTube video that "went viral" about sixteen years ago called Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage:



 

Last edited by Rampop II (8/24/2025 4:48 am)

Rampop II wrote:

I had no idea Rogan was re–branding himself as a comedian.

Haha.  Funny you should mention it.

Joe Rogan started out as a comedian, and has continued an intermittent career as a stand-up for over 30 years.  The fact that you are unaware of this is not surprising.  Joe Rogan has never been a very good comedian, which is why he's generally more well-known as a TV personality (Man Show, Fear Factor) and more recently a podcast host.  If anything, it is that Rogan has been re-branding himself as a political influencer with his recent moves into courting more explicitly right-wing figures on his podcast.

Rampop II wrote:

I don't believe for a second that he's really any sole gatekeeper of comedy...

Of course not.  The point is that he thinks he is, and his motivation to set up his own comedy club in Austin (which he calls the "center of the comedy universe") is to try and establish himself as one.  It hasn't worked out.  Rogan has about a dozen sycophants, most of them noted in this video, who have moved out to Austin to serve their master, but most people know that these guys (and they are overwhelmingly guys) are not funny.  Most comedians, of any talent and worth, while playing nice with Rogan, using his podcast for promotional purposes, have studiously avoided getting too sucked up in his vacuum.  The biggest comedians - Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Doug Stanhope - have been more conspicuously absent from Rogan's purview in recent years, with Burr and Stanhope explicitly mocking the kind of pandemic-era hysteria around masks and vaccines and MAGA more generally which Rogan has since made a primary aspect of his brand.

Rampop II wrote:

but the tongue–in–cheek-ness of this video assures us to not take that assertion too seriously.

What the video takes more seriously than that is on the role that Rogan plays as more of a gatekeeper into the apocalyptic cult of the Tech Bros, which is the real, ultimate cult described here.  Even before the pandemic it was clear that the Tech elite - Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen - were grooming Rogan into their various theories and dreams of a post-liberal "technofeudalism", which Rogan has eagerly adopted and disseminated on his podcast.  The pandemic simply accelerated his conversion.  And it's no coincidence that these Tech elites were on his podcast as frequently as such MAGA folks - Trump, Vance, Patel, Carlson - in the run-up to the election.  Rogan is quite clearly trying to steer his considerable audience in this direction, towards a rejection of liberal democracy, a rejection of cultural pluralism, towards this apocalyptic notion of walling off the virtuous from the heathen (the Great Replacement Theory) and embracing the ideal of a "CEO-monarch".  As a paleo-intellectual, Rogan must find this scenario primally irresistible.

I've written quite a bit on such post-liberal tech-bro schemes, like "effective altruism", "long-termerism", the "dark renaissance" or the "butterfly revolution", pieces by Douglas Rushkoff (author of Survival of the Richest which describes this apocalyptic scenario of these billionaires holing up in bunkers) and Naomi Klein who calls this movement "End Times Fascism", as well as a breakdown of all of these tech billionaires and their respective interests in surveillance and social control, such as Peter Thiel's Palantir.  All of these things are referenced in the back-half of that video, and this is really, beyond Rogan himself, where the video gets truely timely.

Rampop II wrote:

And what enriching psychological insights, like the "lie as loyalty test." It makes the inexplicable so crystal–clear. It's the same principle I suspect is at the root of Project 2025's true purpose: anyone so sycophantic, or gullible, or insane as to pledge allegiance to that, is exactly the kind of recruit they're looking for.

I've also touched on this specifically in regards to how it's been employed by Trump.  It isn't so much that Trump lies and expects you to believe him, rather he wants you to submit to his lie.  Not only is this a compromising demonstration of loyalty, at the price of one's scruples, but it also gives Trump leverage over you, ala kompromat.

Jinnistan wrote:

Everyone will see and understand that this gesture is the final sacrifice of integrity for power on the alter of the Almighty Don.  It's a particularly perfidious omerta because it's meant to be public, it's meant to be generally understood.  The ultimate message is clear, to intimidate and remind the country that Power, not morality or integrity, is now the ruling virtue of our culture.  The definition of fascism, by the way.

That's exactly the kind of Rogan skewering I'm looking for. Too many close ups of Tony Hinchcliff's face though. Next time I need a target for when I projectile vomit though...

Bill Maher's interview with Woody Allen was about as frustrating and embarrassing as you can imagine.  Maher is, again, preoccupied with projecting himself onto Allen's life rather than bothering to listen or even allow Allen to complete a number of his sentences.  Maher's interruptions are somehow less irritating than his tendency to try to explain to Allen himself (a 90 year old man who's just written a memoir) how Allen really feels about things or sees the world.  Allen's response was usually a polite, "that's very interesting", clearly uninterested.

One illustrative example is early on, when Maher is defending himself for having never seen - never being interested in seeing - what he terms "art-house foreign director films", instead claiming some virtue in enjoying films that "common people" watch.  Allen is clearly appalled.  So in an attempt to prove his point, Maher asks Allen if he's seen this year's Oscar winner Anora, and to paraphrase the exchange:

Allen: No, I haven't seen it yet.

Maher: And that's OK that you don't want to see it.

Allen: Oh no, I just haven't gotten the time....

Maher: I understand, it's OK.

Allen: I want to see it.....

Maher: I know, it's OK.

Allen: I don't want to give the impression....

Maher: It's totally fine that you haven't seen it.  We don't have to see everything.

An hour and a half of this.

Maher is also super impressed that this "little Jew" could "score so much tail" in the '70s.

Allen: I've been very lucky, I respect these women.

Maher does not understand, and tries to explain to Woody how women lie about being attracted to a man's sense of humor. 
 

crumbsroom wrote:

it's not like he's going he's going to get to talk beyond all the abuse allegations anywhere else....

Maher did try to get Allen to talk shit on the actors who have distanced themselves from him or apologized for working with him in the past, but Allen graciously refused: "They did what they thought was right...I enjoyed working with them", etc.  For someone as vindictive as Maher, this was a confusing response.

crumbsroom wrote:

but isn't it better just not to talk to anyone if it's Bill Maher inviting you down to his basement?

I've been assuming that a lot of these higher profile guests may not have a clear idea of the Club Random vibe, or how Maher is outside of his professional gig.  It's not like Real Time Bill is the epitome of incisive inquiry, but, as I've said before, CR has managed to make even our worst presumptions of off-stage Maher's personality seem awfully short-sighted.  Maher is far worse than the smuggest cunt he seems on Real Time.  I get the feeling from some of these guests that they may not have actually watched a lot of these podcasts, and seem genuinely baffled by Maher's extremely lame interviewing skills.  I think that some of these guests, like Joel or Allen, have probably been arranged by "their people", and Maher still inexplicably seems to have a lot of friends left in the entertainment business who can facilitate these arrangements.

What's more revealing about the Allen episode is that it's one of the only ones, that I've seen, where Maher refrains from getting high on camera, making the lameness of his interview skills even less excusable.
 

There's these bastards who do an "official" Saturday Night Live podcast, on a Youtube channel called 'Saturday Night Network'.  Basically they're sycophantic asskissers.  How do I know?  Because that's pretty much the only way that Lorne Michaels would allow them to do an "official" SNL podcast, with access to show clips without copyright strikes, access to cast members for interviews, access to at least some amount of "official" backstage tea for their wrap-up analysis of each new episode (which for some reason tends to last longer than the episodes themselves).  These guys are insiders, in other words, and as such deserving of suspicion and occasional scorn.  Obviously every show is never less than a "good effort", and equally obviously the show is just as good as it ever has been in the past.  Any criticisms tend to be polite....or the host's fault.

I can't even stand these cunts enough to sit through most of their content.  And you might be wondering, "Say J, aren't you yourself kind of an obnoxiously rabid fanboy of the show?"  No, I am not.  I am an obnoxiously rabid fanboy of the original seasons of the show, and a reasonably enthusiastic advocate for the very best to follow in their wake - Murphy, Crystal, Carvey, Hartman, Hooks, Handy, Smigel, Macdonald, Ferrell, Rudolph, Forte, Hader, McKinnon, and maybe barely a handful of others.  As I've described many times, I am a terminal fan of the show, a somewhat broken believer who still gets season tickets so I can sit alone in the cold bleachers and yell at the players for constantly fucking up.  And the coach especially.  "How could you trade off Jenny Slate when she's got three good years left in her?!?!?"

This SNL Network channel is full of scared stooges, way too intimidated to call real or accurate balls and strikes.  These are guys who fully embrace the false dogma of Lorne's invention - "everybody's favorite era of SNL is the one they grew up with in high school".  Guess what, Lipz?  I grew up on SNL in grade school, and even then my favorite era was the one I never saw on live TV.  I had to learn!!!  Too many people assume that whatever media is being served in front of their passive faces is the most relevant to their interests.  The high school analogy does seem apt in one, however pathetic, aspect, which is that some fools never outgrow their chauvinist delusion that their class, or their alma mater, is just naturally the best thing there ever was in their pitiful little lives.  Like Adam Sandler said, "We all know that the first cast was the best".  Who we bullshitting here?

So where's this leading?  This Saturday Night Network recently compiled their list of the "50 Greatest SNL Episodes of All Time".  Daunting task.  But of course they didn't bother.  You can see nearly the full list here, at 3:00 minutes in, in their final entry.  Look at this math.  Out of 50, a total of five episodes from the original cast is included, while no less than 20 episodes since 2010 are included.  30 since 2000.  There is exactly one show from the Eddie Murphy era (again ass-kissing, as Lorne Michaels does not like to recognize the Dick Ebersol era), and zero episodes from the legendary Billy Crystal/Martin Short/Christopher Guest season.  Perversely, adding insult to injury, they did select one episode from the absolutely terrible season 11 - the one which featured Francis Ford Coppola - and placed in the top ten!  No episodes hosted by Buck Henry, Lily Tomlin, Elliott Gould, Madeline Kahn, Robert Klein.  

This goes quite beyond the phenomenon of 'recency bias' into straight up generational bigotry.  What's the point of having an "official" SNL podcast if these people don't know any better than this?  They sure as hell don't demonstrate any affinity toward humor on these podcasts, droning on like their giving some kind of marketing seminar.  Whose useless nephews are these exactly?

Anyway, the new 51st season of SNL debuted last night, and it was characteristically superlame, because, as has long been the case, the writing is pure elephant shit so that even those in the cast with some modicum of talent (Hernandez, Padilla, Dismukes) don't have a whole lot to work with.