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Looking for some quality comedy entertainment to check out?
Who better to turn to for under-the-radar comedy recommendations than comedians?
In the 1980s, it was commonplace for networks to air their passed-on pilots as prime-time specials.
Cenac has been a deadpan voice for New York, and specifically Brooklyn, for years.
When I was a baby, everywhere you went it was just colors and shapes everywhere.
Gentrification has changed all of that.
In my old neighborhood, I remember on the corner there was this amorphous yellow blob.
Now its a Chipotle.
Rather than make anotherLouie, he wanted to branch out.
Alan flips channels between sketches that include a made-for-TV movie about James Brown in jail, anE!
True Hollywood Storystyle biography of Mr. Ed, and cameos aplenty.
Shelley Berman, the Smothers Brothers, Alex Trebek, and George Carlin all make appearances.
If you think a family sitcom wont have multiple opportunities for horse-fucking jokes, youd be wrong.
I was blown away.Sure.Whats Alan Watching?was a pilot.
I got a VHS tape and I recorded it.
But unlike Walter Mitty, hes not really a player in it.
But there are all these bizarre and fun things happening.
Like a television movie about James Brown.
Were you as deep into TV as Alan?
I found myself really identifying I made mixtapes as a kid of all my favorite shows on VHS.
Did you have that relationship with TV as a kid as well?Yeah, I loved television.
It was the thing that I always wanted to have on, and I would watch anything and everything.
There were some days where we didnt go to church.
And I became the biggestJemfan because that meant that I didnt have to go to church.
I dont know whats going on.
But Im in, because it means that I dont have to drink the blood of Christ.
Ellen Cleghorne has a cameo in this, and then did a spot onaka Wyatt Cenac.
That must have been a nice full-circle moment.It was.
She came the morning we were shooting, and she was so great.
She brought such a fun energy to what she was doing, and improvised.
And to get to direct her, too.
Eddie Murphy is featured in this show, and he was an executive producer.
When you look at James Brown, that sketch is James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub.
Everything about that sketch is such an absurd idea.
It doesnt feel that different.
It speaks to just how media gets consumed today.
Hes flipping through channels in the same way that people run through a Twitter feed.
He was watching documentaries about Mr. Ed.
Not that it was a scary movie it was just a weird, bad movie.
I think if I was watching any science shows, my mother would have been very happy for me.
It wasnt until probably I was a teenager that I was able to watch the live show.
Your show isnt exactly surreal, its our world but with more vigilantes.
At the time there were a lot of those shows already on the air.
I was thinking we might be at peak television about the mundane life of comedians when theyre not onstage.
And the thing that came to mind was vigilante crime fighter.
With that as the thought going in, the characters still had to feel like real people.
But who you are in real life, thats where the interesting stories come from.
Or how communities should police themselves?
And I do feel like thats the first thing that I would want to talk about resource allocation.
In low-income neighborhoods that are considered high crime, the resources sent into that neighborhood are police.
And so for me, I would be curious to see a conversation on resource allocation.
Its very easy for me to say that as someone who doesnt have access to the citys budget.
But I wont make you run for mayor.Thank you, I appreciate that.
I dont want to run for mayor.
It feels like its a shitty job.
Youre principal of the city.
But the principal is in the pocket of the superintendent.The Simpsonstaught me that.That is true.
Comedy is in the pocket of Big Simpson.
