The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

Kansas native Jeremiah Watkins trained at both The Second City and The Groundlings, and has become a fixture at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles as part of several trademark shows; among them, he was one-third of "The Wave" for Roast Battle as it developed and grew from late-night Tuesdays to multiple seasons on Comedy Central. He's still the bandleader for Monday's Kill Tony. And for more than a decade, Watkins has hosted an improvised riffing showcase there called Stand-Up On The Spot. You also may have seen and heard Watkins as the the saxophone-playing roadie for The Goddamn Comedy Jam. As a solo artist, he hosts his own podcast, Jeremiah Wonders, and was a New Face in Montreal's Just For Laughs in 2018. At the end of 2020, Watkins has released his first stand-up special through Comedy Dynamics. "Family Reunion" really does bring it all back home quite literally for Watkins, as he filmed his special over the 2019 holidays with his family and friends in attendance at The Comedy Club of Kansas City. Watkins joined me in New York City to talk about the special, his career and more, so let's get to it!

Colin Quinn seems to have his finger on the pulse of stand-up comedy and America just about as well, if not better, than almost any other comedian in America these days. His most recent solo stand-up special, 2019's Red State Blue State, poked holes in how united Americans could be in this digital era where everyone's opinions can carry equal weight, no matter how outlandishly crazy or off-base they might be. Quinn's special even premiered on CNN, although it's now on Netflix along with his previous two shows (Unconstitutional, and The New York Story). He followed that up with a book, "Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the Fifty States" And when the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting down American businesses and comedy clubs with it in mid-March, Quinn not only predicted the near future for stand-up (performing for cars at drive-ins) but also got an HBO Max showcase for himself and his friends. It's aptly-named Colin Quinn & Friends: A Parking Lot Comedy Show. I sat down with Quinn over Zoom this week to find out what else the comedian and former Saturday Night Live Weekend Update anchor can tell us about the state of comedy, SNL and America today, so let's get to it!

Sam Reich was 21 when CollegeHumor hired him as its first Director of Original Content in 2006. In a few short years, the success of in-house webseries such as "Hardly Working" and "Jake and Amir" got Reich and CollegeHumor a sketch comedy show on MTV. While that show didn't last, Reich helped executive produce, write or direct several others. Among them: Adam Ruins Everything for truTV, Hot Date for POP, and "Rhett and Link's Buddy System" on YouTube Red. In 2020, Reich acquired CollegeHumor from IAC, where he continues to oversee the making of original comedy videos for the channel's 14 million subscribers on YouTube. He's also CEO for Dropout, a subscription-based streaming platform he founded — its shows include Um Actually, Dimension 20, and the game show, Game Changer, which Reich himself hosts. It's been a long, strange trip making comedy videos, and it's not over yet for Reich, so let's get to it!

Negin Farsad began her comedy career while advising campaign finance policies for the city of New York, and over the course of the 2010s, she has mixed social justice and comedy on stage and on the road. She made and performed in a road-trip documentary across America in 2012 called "The Muslims Are Coming!" She has delivered multiple TED Talks, one based on that documentary, and another on her book, "How To Make White People Laugh." Since 2016, she has hosted a weekly podcast on the Earwolf network called "Fake the Nation," and has become a regular on the NPR comedy quiz show, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" She also has appeared on HBO's High Maintenance, and written for Jena Friedman's Adult Swim specials, Soft Focus. Farsad sat down with me to focus in on her own career and how she remains optimistic about comedy's ability to positively influence public perceptions and policies. Even on the eve of the 2020 election. So let's get to it!

Melinda Hill moved 27 times as a kid before making her biggest move from Kansas to Los Angeles to make it as an actress. She studied with The Groundlings, where she performed as a tooth fairy alongside Kristin Wiig. She starred in a Creed music video. She competed on America's Got Talent. She performed on Adventure Time, Lady Dynamite, The Late Late Show, and Reno 911! She made a webseries for Funny or Die with Maria Bamford, and another one for My Damn Channel called Romantic Encounters. And for 10 years, she helped run a popular Monday night stand-up showcase in Hollywood called What's Up Tiger Lily. This year, she performed in an upcoming movie with Diane Keaton and Jeremy Irons, started a podcast called Let's Process This about creative people overcoming trauma, and turned her own personal trauma into comedy in her debut stand-up special, Inappropriate, out now via Comedy Dynamics. So let's get to it!

J-L Cauvin is a native New Yorker who started his stand-up comedy career in Washington, D.C., while going to law school at Georgetown. His first big break came in 2007 when he performed on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, but J-L has found many more fans and followers thanks to his uncanny impersonations, whether they're of people he has been told he looks like, which includes Barack Obama, Adam Sandler, or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, or by lampooning other comedians such as Louis CK, JB Smoove, George Lopez, Gary Gulman, or Adam Carolla. J-L's Carolla impersonation got the attention of Carolla himself, leading to multiple appearances on his top podcast in recent years. Since 2016, J-L has found his mockery mark in Donald Trump, releasing multiple videos and two "Fireside Craps" albums as Trump that have hit #1 on the iTunes comedy charts. At the start of the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020, J-L released a video, "Donald Trump vs. God on Easter PPV" that went viral, with more than 2.5 million views so far. J-L caught up with me just prior to the 2020 elections to talk Trump, why he hasn't done a Biden impersonation, and his own long and winding career, so let's get to it!

So much has changed in the world since the last time I caught up with Lewis Black in September of 2016. But last things first, obviously: Black managed to film his last live show before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down live stand-up comedy, recording his March 13, 2020, performance at Four Winds Casino in Michigan and releasing it in October 2020. It's called, appropriately enough: "Thanks For Risking Your Life." Black spoke with me over Zoom about the special, about his longtime support for the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY, and about America's seeming lack of community in 2020, which prompted me to ask Black if his former boss, Jon Stewart, won the battle against CNN's Crossfire but ultimately lost the war against cable news. So let's get to it!

Adam Conover is a comedian and writer best known for the truTV series Adam Ruins Everything, which he created and hosted from 2015-2019. Conover's comedy career began while still a student at Bard College, where he was part of the sketch comedy group, Olde English, along with future Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Olde English performed at the HBO Aspen comedy festival in 2007, and in 2012, wrote and released the feature film, The Exquisite Corpse Project. Conover also began writing and making videos for College Humor, where his 2012 parody Mitt Romney Style has earned more than 64 million views and counting on YouTube. College Humor also helped give birth to Adam Ruins Everything. Conover sat down with me in Los Angeles in February 2020, just as he began his newest gig as host of the Nickelodeon game show, The Crystal Maze. We spoke about the heady early years of Internet comedy videos, and how Facebook and other factors brought it all crashing down, even before the COVID-19 pandemic took the comedy industry by storm. So let's get to it!

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything in March of 2020, thousands upon thousands of comedians suddenly experienced the existential dilemma that comedian Mike Birbiglia had depicted in his 2016 movie, "Don't Think Twice." Birbiglia himself didn't think twice, however, quickly starting a nationwide fundraising campaign called Tip Your Waitstaff, with proceeds going to the employees of comedy clubs suddenly shuttered for who knows how long. His conversations with other comedians has prompted Birbiglia to start his own podcast, Working It Out, in which he and other stand-ups riff on premises with hopes of turning them into full comedy routines. Birbiglia already has successfully mined his own life and observations into four one-man shows, Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, Thank God For Jokes, and The New One. The first he adapted into a feature film; the latter three he filmed for Netflix, and the newest one, so to speak, also is a new book that includes more poetry from his wife, J. Hope Stein. You may have heard him tell his stories on Ira Glass's This American Life, or also recognize Birbigs from the movie Trainwreck or from his TV roles in Girls, Broad City, Orange is the New Black, and Billions. So let's get to it!

Calise Hawkins is a stand-up comedian and writer based out of Jersey City, where she raises her daughter, Asha. You may have seen her stand-up on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (NBC), Russell Simmons Presents Live At The El Rey (Comedy Central), Stand Up in Stilettos (TV Guide Channel), and Nick Mom's Night Out (Nickelodeon). She was a cast member of Oxygen's Funny Girls and has written for multiple shows on Comedy Central and the Disney Channel. Among them: Disney's Walk The Prank, Disney's Just Roll With It, Adult Swim's Soft Focus, Comedy Central's @midnight, Comedy Central's Hood Adjacent, MTV's Totally Clueless, Girl Code, Charlemagne's Uncommon Sense. For her 40th birthday in 2020, she recorded and released her first comedy album, "Calise Hawkins is 40 AF." Hawkins spoke with me over Zoom about helping other comedians in show business, learning to help herself, single motherhood, how Hollywood writers room experiences left her feeling insecure, and what she learned in the making and writing of Comedy Knockout on truTV. So let's get to it!