Catching Up With Comedians

Bill is one of three comedians I have given a second episode to as they had all achieved fifty plus years in the comedy business. 

In part two with Bill we discuss his 14 Tonight Shows as well as his introduction into the Norman Lear family by way of Alan Thicke. Martin Mull and Fred Willard hosted two groundbreaking television shows America Tonight and Fernwood Tonight! Bill as the bad toupee wearing, lounge singer, crushed his audition and was on both shows from beginning till end. 

Alan Thicke also got Bill a recurring role as Coach Lu...

    (Part One: of my podcast with Bill)

My guest, Bill Kirchenbauer came of age during The Comedy Boom of the 1980's.  
Bill had been on the road ever since he was born in Romania, in 1953 as the son of a career military man and his wife.
Once in the U.S. the army kept Bill and his family on the move, where they lived in almost all fifty states and he attended 20 different schools in 13 years; one year he attended 3 schools.
    As an only child, Bill loved television as it was his companion, teacher, frien...

This is part two of my two part episode with Comedian John Kensil. I re- ran the final 90 seconds of part one to create a smoother transition to parts one and two. We were chatting about comedians when we were young and John mentioned how many of them came on to The Mike Douglas Show ( which was taped for many years in Philadelphia) and many actors came on Mike Douglas as they were acting in dinner theater so as to keep their careers afloat.  Bob Crane was doing dinner theater after his tv work dried up and that became h...

John Kensil was an absolute pleasure to chat with on my podcast. He brings over thirty years of comedy chops to our mics at C.U.W.C. and he is unbridled about the comedy business and its evolution. Unlike many comedians, however, he has a very fun and affable way of accepting what was/ is/ and always will be an ever changing and evolving business in terms of comedy tastes, comedy styles, approaches, genres and whatever else gets thrown into the stew.  We ended up chatting for quite awhile and so this will be # one of what will b...

On my second visit with Comedy Director Linda Mendoza, we cover her extensive directing of the Gershwin awards for Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Burt Bacharach, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and her equally expansive direction of the Mark Twain Awards for American Humor, including: David Letterman, Bill, Murray, George Carlin and Tina Fey.

We also discussed her directing of so many icons of comedy in both sitcoms and specials, including, but not limited to:  Martin Short, Bernie Mac, Chris Rock, John Leguizamo, Nikki Glazer, Wanda Sykes, Robert Klein and Robin Williams, who besides his comedy genius, Linda says h...

Chip Chinery‘s life and career should be a college course, a documentary or at least a footnote at the National Comedy Center in Jamestown,
New York.

Chip started Comedy as an amateur at just 15 years of age. He performed stand up through high school and into college where he was active in Theater, film and video classes and he produced and starred in his own documentary at Miami University in Cincinnati titled “From Here To Fraternity’l

After college Chip worked at the CBS TV affiliate in Cincinnati as a cameraman and later won an...

Bob Greenberg, conceived in the Catskills and born at New York Hospital in Manhattan was destined for the stage.

Bob has done everything in this business from comedy clubs to television sitcoms, dramas, mini-series and films.

A longtime member of the Friars and Lambs, Bob has Won Best Actor Awards for Jimmy Breslin: How To Read The Newspaper and The Stella in two New York Theater Festivals.

A talented character Comedian and  impersonator, he regularly portrays Jackie Gleason, Lou Costello, Oliver Hardy and many other notables in stage shows and comedy performances. 
Hi...

Jimmy Shubert born and raised in Philadelphia was one of seven boys with a police detective Dad and a school teaching Mom.

Jimmy attended a magnet  high school for the creative and performing arts and he was a professional working magician by age 15. He especially liked taking the acting classes

Jimmy started performing stand-up comedy right out of high school in the local Philadelphia area. He moved out to Los Angeles during The Comedy Boom of the eighties and after being noticed by Sam Kinison, he became one of Sam’s outlaws and performed with the...

Linda Mendoza is an award-winning Director, born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She was a Sociology Major before falling into the television industry.  Linda got her start in the multi- camera/variety genre as a production assistant. She worked her way up on hit shows such as 'In Living Color' and ''Saturday Night Live."

Linda’s love of stand-up started at an early age.  Later her opportunities working with artists like Robin Williams, on 'Robin Williams at the Met', Billy Crystal’s 'Midnight Train to Moscow' and Martin Short's  "I Martin Short, Goes Hollywood" allowed her to learn t...

Tom Ryan has been a full-time standup comedian for over thirty years.  He made two appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman and recently performed at  Carnegie Hall.
Since  he was about 10 years old, Tom wanted to be a standup comedian. The  first standup comedy he ever heard was from David Brenner and George Carlin. 
At  26, he left an insurance job in his hometown of Philadelphia to move to  Florida where he landed a job at a local golf course. The job lasted  only 3 weeks. Ryan  says, “Losing that job was the best thing that ever happen...

This is Gene Hamm‘s third visit to my show. He brings a lifetime of art and animation to  his third feature film Entitled:

 "Don’t Call Us, We’ll Kill You!"     It will be on the Roku channel.

In addition to his work for Disney, Hanna Barbera, and many others, he has also taught animation for over 25 years at the Art Institute in Marin County.

He is also promoting his new online  course where he will teach animation from conception to completion.   
In this class, Gene will take you through all the component...

Andy Huggins:

Andy Huggins always loved Comedy and has a vivid memory of the sound  the audience made laughing hysterically in a huge movie theater, when he first watched the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

After graduating from high school in Virginia, he started doing Open Mic nights and telling jokes between the musical acts.

He moved to Los Angeles after Johnny Carson kept mentioning that all the wave of new comedians came from The Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard.

After working in LA for a couple of years, some comics h...

My guest Joe Dalo was born in Philly and raised in South Jersey. He started out like  most comics working open mics and progressed to the real comedy clubs like The Comedy works  and The Comedy Factory Outlet.

He also wanted to be an actor and he was in the road company of Toni and Tina‘s wedding.

Joe had a building and construction background which gave him another side hustle;

He started getting hired on prank and hidden video shows as a builder and prop-master.  Due to his positive demeanor and leadership he wo...

Rhonda Shear grew up as the youngest of four kids in New Orleans.
Her Mom Supported her dancing and  modeling while Dad instilled in her the Mind of the Business Model.
She left Louisiana with a College Degree from Loyola University, and the Title of Miss Louisiana USA/World/International

My guest today Ted Lange was born and raised in Oakland California. While most people would recognize Ted from his 10 seasons starring as Isaac the Bartender on  THE LOVE BOAT;  before that show he  had already appeared in 4 to 5 films, was a regular in a sitcom that ran for 39 episodes and he had already appeared in the  Broadway  production of the musical HAIR!

TED Lange is a  GRADUATE from LONDON’S ROYAL ACADEMY and is  also a MEMBER of the  AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE!

Ted went on to write and direct a dozen episodes of  THE LOVE BOAT <...

My guest today is Comedian Vince Harper.

Vince was dancing a lot as a teenager and inspired by his older brother, he started pursuing it full time.

From a young man, he had joined a dance group that performed on the stages at Disneyland and eventually they were good enough  to perform on TV shows, American Bandstand, Dance Fever, The Midnight Special as well as the Merv Griffin Show.

His group known as  "Dancin Machine" eventually was performing for the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas and soon after the group got a gig at...

My guest on the podcast this week is Mr. Jay London. Raised in the Bronx, Jay’s two passions in life have both served him well:  stand-up comedy and boxing.

In both enterprises you are fighting for your life and in both you can kill or bomb out and die.

Jay fought his way through the Bronx neighborhoods and school yards and later through the local comedy clubs and 
“Live at the Apollo!”

He fought his way into the house on season two of “Last Comic Standing” where he first came to...

George Hamaty started as a stand up comedian at Penn State and continued for twelve years developing an act while also studying acting.

After college, he decided to head west to Los Angeles, which is where I first ran into George.

He was only in LA for the years 1985 through 1991,  but he rose up the ladder from opening act to feature act and met many people and definitely made his mark.

George is  proud to say that as an Arab American, he relied heavily on his ethnicity.

 Personal drama forced him to...

Linda Marcus Smith joins me this week for her second appearance on the podcast. 

Linda gained much notoriety during the pandemic when she interviewed not less than 1000 comedians for her podcast "The Comics Spot."

Since the end of the pandemic, Linda has worked tirelessly rising up the ranks in the Las Vegas Comedy Clubs and Casinos.   Just over a year ago she decided to make the move back to her native homeland, New York City.

Linda has worked very hard over the past year to build up her Comedy Chops in the many Co...

Welcome Dan Rosenberg to the podcast .

In 1992, Dan moved to Los Angeles to start a stand-up career at age 22. 

He sold cars in the daytime and did stand up at night.

When the Northridge earthquake hit in 1994,  he took that as a sign to leave LA while he could still catch a plane that had an accessible runway.

He moved back to Pennsylvania to coach basketball and  after that he ended up teaching Comedy traffic school in Orlando, Florida, which basically jump started his return to sta...

My guest today is David Uhlfelder who was raised in Colorado and started his comedy career when he was barely 20 years of age and pursuing an engineering degree at Cal State University, San Luis Obispo.

He earned his degree and has been working as a comedian for eight years now and without the assistance of a day job.
To understand how you could visit:

https://www.daviduhlfelder.com/    as well as 
https://www.cal comedy underground.com/ 

Not only can you see his credits and comedy history but you can also peru...

My guest today is Comedian, writer, actress: Brenda Pontiff.

A Texas, Gal, born and raised in Bay City.

She was in the second generation of comics who started at Houston's Comix Annex  which began the famed careers of Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks and the Texas Outlaws.

One of these Outlaws has had a rebirth of late:  Andy Huggins, of AGT fame. Brenda
worked with Andy many years ago and now is opening for him at select clubs on the West Coast.

Brenda, who refers to herself as a TEX-A-CORNIAN, proud of...

I am proud to Welcome Comedian Bob Zany on my # 50 Podcast today.  

Born, Robert Tetrault in West Covina, California; the family later moved to the Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys section of the San Fernando Valley.

With two older brothers and one younger sister, Bob was Ensconced well into middle child status, but the family unit was close and parents very supportive of their brood.

Bob Zany started out in Comedy at the tender young age of 15 on none other than "The Gong Show" starring Chuck Barris 

The Gods of sho...

Today, joining me for his second visit is Gene Hamm;  a writer- producer and Animation Film Maker.   Gene has been working in animation for over 40 years… …….starting out with Hanna-Barbera where he was a model maker and then onto  Prema Vision as the in house free lancer with the iconic "Art CLOKEY" who created Gumby, Pokey and so many other Beloved childhood characters using stop action editing. 

          In the ensuing years he worked for the likes of Disney// Sega video games,

          Walter Lantz, Tex Avery  and has also been teaching young people animation at

             the Academy of Art for over 15 y...

Welcome to the show today, Wyatt Cote. Wyatt had figured out very young that he was a water child. He loved the ocean and by six years old, he was starting to surf the inside breaks in Long Beach and Huntington Beach. He loved the beach vibe and has been a surfer ever since.

Though he attended the University of Hawaii as his father wanted him to pursue a professional career, Wyatt decided early on the collegiate life was not for him and against his father‘s wishes he quit school and decided to start doing something he...

Max Dolcelli is a man who has had to claw and fight for anything he ever had in life.  Born in Liguria, Italy the first son of a ship builder, he lost his father when he was but five years old but under him were a 3 year old sister and a baby brother. Life got immediately harder as mom couldn’t raise three young children without a job so Max and his sister went into a catholic orphange and mother moved in with Grandma with her infant and they would put one foot In front  of the other...

Erin started her career in the Bay Area ( San Francisco) after earning her degree from San Jose State in Marketing and Advertising.  She worked for a few years in marketing and walked by a comedy club one day and thought, Wow, what is this?

Just a young woman in her early twenties and comedy was barely one to two years away from experiencing a BOOM! Comedy clubs would be opening in every major city in the country, with smaller satellite clubs putting on amateur and open mic. night comedy nights in every bar, restaurant or room where t...

John Caponera grew up in a large family on the south side of Chicago. 
The family home sat just across the street from a large park which became a playground for him and his friends. No matter what season, they played baseball in the warm months and when the pond froze over in winter they played hockey and fit in every other sport in between.
John went to college wanting only to play baseball but he felt he wasn’t getting enough playing time so he took his English Professor's request and auditioned for a ma...

Denny Johnston returns for a second episode. After amassing fifty plus years between his musical and comedy career, I feel it is only right to devote at least two episodes to Denny Johnston. I already wrote a lengthy bio for Denny in the previous podcast #43 so let me just say that we go a little deeper into his beginnings. If you have ever listened to the great theme song for the TV show: THE ROCKFORD FILES, you will hear the work of the student who was in the same metal shop class with Denny. None other than Mike Post...

Denny Johnston started his entertainment career performing with the Back Porch Majority in 1967-68 and went on to work with The Christy Minstrels in 1969. Young comedian Steve Martin was opening for these musical acts at the time and Denny watched Steve carefully and was amazed how he came out every night to just entertain the audience using every tool he had in his bag to be funny!

 Denny became friendly with Steve Martin, Gary Muledeer and other comedy acts who used musical instruments, lyrics, and singing to add variety and entertainment to their act.  As this was th...

Pete George is one of those guests who comes on and just wins you over immediately. He is a fount of energy and enthusiasm. Every comedian has their own story which is what makes doing this podcast so exciting and entertaining for me, and hopefully for my listeners as well. 

Pete came from a musical background as his Dad played the accordion, which has spawned its share of jokes over the years but he was the first accordion soloist at West Point, and in the course of his duties he played for Presidents and heads of State.

Comedian Jann Karam started out close to home in Arizona when she embarked on her journey in Stand Up Comedy. She soon traveled to Chicago where she studied in The Second City School of Improv, doing comedy sketches. Before long she traveled To New York City where she ultimately met the people and made the connections with the comics, writers, agents and clubs which helped define the path her career would take for the next thirty plus years. 

She not only got on those early stand up TV shows like "An Evening at The Improv" ( 4 appearances) but a...

There are more layers to this podcast that could fill the podcast time alone, much less a short description. Film Director: Brian Burkhardt raised in New Orleans had a rather colorful childhood which led him to performing his first stand up comedy in a federal prison in Texas. Mickey Joseph: born and raised in the Bay Area of San Francisco started comedy back in the hey day of the comedy boom and through some rough roads of his own still does comedy today as well as produces and sells some very unique art and enjoys playing and producing music.<...

Tommy comes back for a part two where he deftly and hilariously lays out the second part of his comedy career;  once the 90's came and out went the once burgeoning comedy clubs.  Thankfully what happened for Tommy and other enterprising and well rounded entertainers were The Poconos ( resorts) The Catskills ( much more varied) than most folks had come to believe, The Casinos, Atlantic City, Day Cruises, and wherever a group of folks assembled of any race, color or creed and entertained the thought of being entertained. 

Tommy is one of those rare folks who has mastered jus...

The Legendary, Comic, Writer, Producer from Philadelphia joins me for a much anticipated second appearance.  Because he is such a fan favorite and an old school gent, I was able to persuade him into ( A TWO PARTER ) telling us stories that chronicle over fifty years in the business of fun, funny and making people laugh. 

In this first episode # 38, Tommy regales us of stories that predate the comedy clubs which slowly started appearing in the seventies. Then a comedy boom started across the country in the eighties and by the nineties the clubs started to disappear due to...

Kivi Rogers,  who I worked with early on in our stand up careers, went on to work in television sit coms, series, movies and has been happily employed as a Top Headline Comedian on the Royal Caribbean line of cruise ships since 2008. 

In his early days he worked on the road at comedy clubs as well as the college circuit. After getting into Las Vegas and getting more of a name for himself he was a top opener for the Temptations and other high profile music acts for a period of time between the nineties and the ea...

Carrie Snow was raised in the Bay Area with one sister and two parents.  These days that might not always be the norm but in her day it generally was.

In 1978, she took an under grad degree from ( CAL) Berkeley, and to the sheer delight of her parents,  started doing stand up comedy at what she, nor anyone else knew, was to be the advent of a comedy boom unlike any other time in American or modern day history.

 Many things contributed to that timing but Carrie was actually hopping on to a train that had...

Craig Shoemaker says you can’t hit a moving Target and he proves that every day.
He started comedy as a junior in high school and put himself through college doing stand up. 
Craig Shoemaker may not have hit the ultra fame of Seinfeld, Tim Allen or some but he has gone far beyond the limits of many comedians.
He tore through the early years doing every show that comedians did like Evening At the Improv, Caroline’s, Comedy Central, and as his career flourished he did two Comic Reliefs and through Whoopi he did 75 Hollywood Squar...

Bruce Baum first attended UC Davis as a Poli/Sci Major and intended to play for the Football team. But providence stepped in and he joined up with his cousin Ken and started a comedy duo on campus where they also played guitar and banjo, sang funny songs and started getting people's attention. 

Before long he wrote a screenplay and moved back to LA and was accepted into the UCLA Film Dept. based on Bruce's screenplay and their ever growing list of gigs they were performing around town. 

AS Bruce says on the pod this wa...

Comedian Mark Knope has the distinction of getting divorced and doing his first stand up comedy spot, while he was training for his insurance license in Albuquerque, New Mexico way back in 1986.

That sounds more like the start of a Farrelly Brothers comedy film but for Mark it was the start of a new life and his comedy career has been going strong for 40 plus years.

Mark had been working as an insurance salesman for Liberty Mutual, but once he found comedy he attacked it with the type of perseverance that one truly needs to...