The Comic's Comic Presents Last Things First

This is a special edition of Last Things First, recorded live during Clusterfest 2018 in San Francisco. Comedy Central was kind enough to ask me to host a series of Clusterfest panels for the media that they called fireside chats. In this session, I welcomed Jim Jefferies, Rachel Feinstein, Nikki Glaser and Sam Morril, and we quickly got into the headlines of Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee making...

Nemr grew up in San Diego and then moved back with his family to Lebanon, where he almost singlehandedly introduced the Middle East to the idea of live stand-up comedy. He definitely introduced many American comedians to Middle Eastern audiences over the past decade and more, and he has since toured both there and here in the States as a headliner. You may have seen him on CNN and Comedy Central's...

Joshua Jean-Baptiste   and Edson Jean met as students at New World School of the Arts in Miami, where both learned how to become multi-hyphenates in this new world of show business, as actors, playwrights and filmmakers. Jean's college thesis, the short film The Adventures of Edson Jean , was licensed by HBO, and he has appeared in TV and film projects including Moonlight, War Dogs, Ballers and Bl...

Mark Viera has entertained audiences around the world with stories of growing up, getting married and raising kids in the Bronx. Viera has released a Showtime special, "Tales of a Nuyorican," opened on tours with singer Marc Anthony and comedian Gabriel Iglesias, and performed everywhere from cruise ships to the Leathernecks of the U.S. Marine Corps. Viera sat down with me to talk about his career...

Who is Nell Scovell? She's the creator of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch , first staff writer hired for SPY magazine, second woman ever to write for The Simpsons , and one of only a handful of women to ever write for David Letterman. Scovell's other TV credits include Murphy Brown , Coach and The Muppets . She also wrote jokes for President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and co...

Jim Florentine rose to fame with his bestselling recordings Terrorizing Telemarketers and by voicing the wildly popular character Special Ed for Comedy Central's "Crank Yankers." Florentine has won an Emmy for his work on HBO's "Inside the NFL" and had two Billboard top-ten comedy albums within a single year. He used to co-host That Metal Show for VH1 and continues to host the Metal Midgets show o...

Jim O'Heir is an Emmy-winning actor and  comedian  best known for co-starring as  Jerry Gergich  on the NBC sitcom  Parks and Recreation . He's a Chicago guy who trained at Second City in the 1980s, then thrived in an independent improv and sketch group called White Noise, which took him out to Hollywood. O'Heir enjoyed tons of small guest-starring roles on TV for the past two decades before landi...

Louie Anderson won an Emmy Award for his performance as Christine Baskets in FX's Baskets . He previously won Emmys two decades earlier for his voiceover work in his own animated series Life of Louie . He's also hosted Family Feud , made a memorable early splash in the Eddie Murphy movie Coming To America , and was part of Rodney Dangerfield's 9th Young Comedians Special. He just released his late...

Brandon Rogers is a YouTube star with four million subscribers and one Streamy Award to his credit. He has starred in two webseries, Sam and Stuff for Facebook, and Magic Funhouse for Fullscreen. Brandon was a New Face at Just For Laughs in 2017, and he stopped by my studio while he's on his first live comedy tour this spring. So let's get to it!

In the movie Most Likely To Murder , Adam Pally wants everyone in his hometown on Long Island to believe he's still the king of his high school, now making it big in Las Vegas when in reality, he's still stuck working as a bathroom attendant. Over a holiday weekend, he drags them all into his murder-mystery comedy, including Rachel Bloom, John Reynolds and Vincent Kartheiser. The film premiered at...

Bo Burnham is the quintessential YouTube comedy star. While still a teen, Bo went from recording funny songs in his bedroom to best-selling artist with Comedy Central. Burnham become a successful touring stand-up comedian as well as an actor, appearing on the big screen in Funny People and The Big Sick , and starring on the small screen in MTV's Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous . After directing two...

Rachel Bloom is the creator and star of Crazy Ex-Girfriend on The CW, for which she has won the Golden Globe and the Critics Choice Award for best actress in a comedy series. Bloom's first big break in musical comedy came in 2010, when she made a music video celebrating author Ray Bradbury. Along the way, she has written and/or performed for Allen Gregory, Robot Chicken, and BoJack Horseman . She'...

Bill Hader was nominated for three Emmy Awards for acting during his eight seasons as a cast member on Saturday Night Live , has written for South Park , lent his voice to animated hits such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Inside Out , and served up memorable supporting roles in the films Superbad , Tropic Thunder and Trainwreck . After co-creating the great IFC mockumentary series Docume...

Sharon Houston punked Magic Johnson, Too Short, and 18 other celebrities on Punk'd , fooled Kim Kardashian's fans on Celebrities Undercover , and has filmed hidden-camera pilots for VH1, E!, Disney Channel, Style Network and Dick Clark Productions. Sharon has been a fixture in clubs and cabarets since the 1990s, first in New York City and more recently in Los Angeles. Her podcast, Daytime Justice,...

Brian Volk-Weiss is the founding president of Comedy Dynamics, which grew out of New Wave Entertainment to become the largest independent stand-up comedy production and distribution company. You see the Comedy Dynamics logo on almost every new stand-up special you see these days, no matter where you see it. Since 2016, his company also has produced series such as History's Join or Die with Craig F...

Candice Thompson is a former finalist on Stand Up NBC's talent search who has performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and served as a correspondent on the E! series, The Comment Section . She has starred in her own YouTube sketch comedy series, and written for the game show Smart, Funny and Black . Thompson just launched her own podcast, The Struggle , but first, she sat down with me t...

Benji Aflalo is a stand-up comedian, who alone together with comedy pal Esther Povitsky, created, executive produces and stars in the sitcom Alone Together — which already has been picked up for second season by Freeform. They play versions of themselves, friends from different backgrounds trying to find love and success in Hollywood. Alone Together is also executive produced by The Lonely Island...

Jade Catta-Preta is a Brazilian-born comedian and actress who you can see on the truTV series, Those Who Can't , and in person frequently at The Comedy Store when she's not touring as a feature act for Bobby Lee, Kevin Nealon or Bill Burr. In 2014, she co-starred as a regular on three different series, MTV's Girl Code , Showtime's Californication , and ABC's Manhattan Love Story . She's also appea...

Jeff   Dye  was a finalist on  Last Comic Standing  only three years into his comedy career. Since then,  Dye  has hosted two MTV series –  Numbnuts , and  Money From Strangers  – one Spike game show,  That Awkward Game Show , appeared frequently on ABC's  Extreme Makeover: Home Edition , and competed against other celebrities on both  Lip Sync Battle  and  I Can Do That . For two seasons now, he...

You probably recognize  Matt   Jones  from the critically acclaimed AMC series, Breaking Bad , where he played Badger. But  Jones  has an extensive comedy background, starting in Southern California, where he performed improv in high school, then eventually to Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, and back to Hollywood for multiple TV roles in sitcoms and sketch shows the likes of Reno 911, Community, The Of...

You may think you know Katt Williams, but you don't know the Katt Williams behind the headlines. You may know him from his role as Money Mike on Friday After Next , or from Wild 'N Out , or from his four HBO specials: The Pimp Chronicles, Pt. 1 ; It's Pimpin' Pimpin' ; Kattpacalypse ; and Priceless: Afterlife . He now has his first Netflix special called Great America , and is ready to tell me the...

Jena Friedman is a stand-up comedian, writer and producer who's now about to star in her first late-night special for Adult Swim. Friedman has written for The Late Show for David Letterman , produced for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart , and taken a one-woman show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She later taped that show, American Cunt , as a special for Seeso. It's available on audio on iTunes....

Cipha Sounds got his start carrying crates and opening for Funkmaster Flex and was a longtime DJ on HOT 97 in New York City and VJ on Yo! MTV Raps . But his comedy cred is just as impressive, serving as the DJ for Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central, going on tour with the likes of Chappelle and Michael Che, and hosting a variety of comedy showcases, from Take It Personal: The Hip Hop Improv Show a...

For a third consecutive year, New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman has invited me into his home so we can tackle the year in comedy, but hopefully from a largely positive standpoint by focusing on the MVPs, the most valuable performers in comedy this year. In 2017, despite the Trump effect having much more serious repercussions than some expected, we had plenty of positives to look back on,...

Jackie Martling was a longtime writer and performer on The Howard Stern Show from 1983 to 2001, who also was showing up monthly in the pages of Penthouse magazine, opening comedy clubs on Long Island, released six dirty joke records, and published Jackie The Joke Man Martling's Disgustingly Dirty Joke Book . After splitting from Stern, he hosted Jackie's Joke Hunt for several years on SiriusXM sat...